Tori Jenae - How To Use Post-Traumatic Growth To Help Others Heal

30:36You know, they, of course, grieved, but they didn't grieve as we grieve, because now our expectation from healthcare is that we will live forever. And, you know, of course, if you have one or two children, and one of them goes, you're like, okay, half of my life is gone, right? I think there is a lot of that that we add to ourself because of our modern lifestyle. Yes, we are so disconnected from nature. We are so disconnected from each other. and those are the things we know that insulate us, that give us protection. You know, it's like a tree without roots. You know, we need community. We need family if that's the option.

31:13You know, it's not an option for everybody, but finding your own community and even a few close connections. One person who believes in you can give you a lot of resilience. A circle of support. So I don't claim to be a trauma expert. Alice doesn't, of course, either. I actually don't either. I don't claim to be an expert. I'm just well educated, I guess. Yeah. So actually what normally happens is when we get someone that is in trauma, we send them to you. But let me ask you this. Some people don't actually recognize that they're traumatized at all. As a matter of fact, more often than not, people will think that there is something wrong with life, but nothing wrong with them.

31:53So how does one recognize that trauma? Yeah, I would say almost everyone I've ever worked with doesn't think they have trauma. So that's a very normal thing. People who know they have trauma have very classical trauma. You know, like they've been in a car accident or they've been mugged. It's something that we think of when you see a movie. Like, oh, they're traumatized. But we don't recognize, like I said, the small everyday traumas or maybe the way that we didn't get love that we needed from a parent. So the signs of trauma are often feeling disconnected from yourself or others, being stuck in things like perfectionism and procrastination, because there's actually a lot of fear there.

32:34Am I enough? Will I fail? Being very easily triggered is a big sign. So when people say things, you know, you kind of get stuck in your head or you overreact. And just that feeling in your body of like maybe always needing to be busy or always needing to be on, like, or feeling more shut down or depressed. Hold on, hold on, hold on. What's that one? That's that one is me. What is that one? Always needing to be busy. I'm not always needing to be busy, but I have to always be doing something like thinking about something, writing something, fixing something. What is that? It's not always negative, but I find that when we're always trying to do something, that we're not really allowing to sit with ourselves.

33:18And if we're not sitting with ourselves and going inward, then there's usually something we're avoiding. Oh, hello. Okay. Yeah. So I actually love sitting with myself too, but I love to do things, right? And I do them in extremes. So I would get weeks on end where I'm constantly recording and writing and fixing and doing and so on and weeks on end when I'm completely silent, basically. Okay, well, that's still bringing balance. What I normally see is someone who's... That's not two traumas then? No, I mean, I think we've always got some kind of work to do, but it's more of like being in a continual state of never being able to sit with yourself.

33:58You know, I've worked with so many people who could not meditate for even four minutes. Like that's so uncomfortable for them. And some people who are in a lot of trauma actually shouldn't even try to meditate yet. They need to do like a walking meditation or physical yoga or something to start calming their nervous system down and feeling safe. Because, you know, when we get quiet with ourselves, all of our stuff comes up. And so if you can get quiet with yourself, you're probably good. And you also, you're doing a balance where it comes, you're kind of using your energy if it comes in waves and you utilize it to get lots of things done.

34:30And then you take the time to go within. And, you know, it's like for you, it sounds like your next level is really making life and every day more of a spiritual practice. Spot on. I was just telling a friend, actually. So I used to be incredibly spiritual in terms of like, even in my busy work life, there is a good 20, 30 % of my day spent on my spirituality, contemplating, reflecting, silence, and so on and so forth. I don't do that as much anymore. And there is an interesting side of it because spirituality is not really about doing. Okay. But at the same time, I sort of miss it. I sort of miss that curiosity where I was looking for stuff and listening to teachers and agreeing and disagreeing and so on.

35:13It's definitely something that spot on, I think, spirituality back to that level of 20, 30 % of everyday spirituality, I think is a very interesting thing. This is not my therapy session, Tori. We'll do that after everyone's gone. I interrupted you. You were saying signs of trauma. Yeah, signs of trauma. You were saying one of them is busy all the time. Yeah, so being over busy. And, you know, it also, like, some really famous trauma experts who are like, you know, Dr. Gabor Matej and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. And there's so many out there that, you know, have great work. But what we also know is that things like if you're struggling with addiction of any kind, you know, that can have a trauma root.

35:56Health issues. We know from there's a study called the ACEs study that if you'd experienced, they took, you know, middle class white families in San Diego and they studied those children over time. And if they had these 10 things occur, like a parental divorce, you know, listening to your parents fight, things like that. They followed them over the lifetime and a healthcare company did this. They found that they had 400 % increase in things like heart disease and anxiety and depression and all these things that they had four or more of these traumas from childhood. So if people are experiencing anxiety, depression, ADHD, bipolar, a lot of these things also, not to say it's just that, because, you know, health conditions of any kind have multiple facets.

36:42But I always invite people who've had health challenges, mental health challenges, look, you know, get in, get, add therapy because therapy will help you. There was a fascinating study done at University of Washington in Seattle where they had three groups of people with unknown back pain, right? They call it unknown etiology. So there's no, there's no physical reason. There's no like slipped disc. There's no broken back. But they just had back pain. And they broke them into three groups. And one group got cortisone shots for inflammation. The other group got back surgery and the third group got therapy, mental health therapy.

37:17And the only group that got better was the group that got therapy. No way. Yes. And the hypothesis was that since the back is connected to the brainstem and when the brain is constantly in a negative state, the back is responding. Like if the brain is saying something is wrong and it's giving you those chemical messengers, it's telling the back that something is wrong and their pain was manifesting. wow but then in that case we could take everything back to trauma like everything could simply be triggered by trauma and i just see trauma like if we have any issue in life i believe we've really got to throw everything at it so i believe that you know i look at things very holistically like you've got to look at the mind and the and the and the beliefs and the thought systems and the experiences and the traumas you have to look at the body and the lifestyle and habits.

38:11And then you have to look at the soul. Like, are you happy? And so, you know, or do you have purpose? Do you have meaning? Do you have, are you doing something that's meaningful to you? And all those things will help us heal. You know, I even in 2018, I was diagnosed with something called adrenal insufficiency or Addison's disease. And they really believe that that it's basically being in a state of fight or flight all the time. That's so tough. Yeah. So you burn your adrenals out and they just, you stop producing stress hormones. Like you, It's like they break. And so the Western mindset on that is to just put you on steroids for the rest of your life.

38:48And I knew that that wasn't something that I wanted to do. So I looked at it very holistically because I was sleeping for 12 hours. I would never feel refreshed. I would literally get up, sit at my desk, see a client, and then go lay on my couch in my office to like rejuvenate just so I could do the next client. And so I was so tired and it took me a couple of years, but I worked with a functional medicine doctor, naturopath, acupuncture. did more trauma work. You know, I just, I went all in and I'm finally making cortisol again. And I did that all with natural supplements. And, you know, that's not possible for everyone.

39:18Everyone's body is different, but I just know that we have a certain level of healing to all of us if we're willing to put the work in and really look at all the scary places. So challenging. It's so challenging because it's so complex when you think about it, right? would you say that the first place to start i mean you said two things now that basically say the first place to start is mental health so if you have any physical pain unless it's like a clear external germ always go to your doctor and make sure you know because because also mental health can be affected by physical you know the mind and body are so deeply connected of course if you're if you're physically in pain that's going to cause mental pain and vice versa if you're mentally in pain it can cause physical pain we know that people with depression who are diagnosed depression and they can have physical pain.

40:07You and I both had very severe, you know, you more than I, but severe loss, you know, and that grief, like you feel grief in your body. I love how people, I love how people who have lost so deeply will always say you more than I. When in reality, it's never one more than the other. You know that, right? Yeah, I mean, we lose the ones that really will teach us. That's the truth. No one, no one has ever had a loss in their life that looked at another loss and said, but not mine is easier. You know what I mean? Loss is loss, isn't it? It is. And there's really no comparison because it all affects us differently.

40:44I just, in my personal experience, you know, my brother got very sick at one point and the thought of, and he's kind of like my child. So the thought of losing him was probably the most terrified I'd ever been. You know, he's very, very sick. So I feel like, you know, at some point we all expect to lose our parents and that's just different. But I feel like the loss of a child is such a deep soul connection. That's why I say that. It's just more of a reverence for the loss. I appreciate that you're saying that. I just also look at others sometimes with compassion and say, oh my God, but losing your mother several times in your life, actually, because I don't think it was just the loss of your mother.

41:21It was that constant addiction and the way she went through that life was almost constant loss from the day you met her and then losing your sister. And then, And, you know, it's just all of them. I mean, as you rightly said, you're the eldest of the tribe now in your early 40s. So it's quite an interesting, it's almost like you're living in the 1800s. Everyone else is. But let's go back to this. So the idea of everything becoming first a consideration for your mental health, you know, if your back is hurting, if your neck is hurting and so on. I have to admit, in my mind, I always take it back to, oh, it's because I carried too many rocks into the aquarium or whatever.

42:04That's why my neck hurts. Or I slept on the wrong pillow. But you're saying, no, there's probably a mental health side to it as well. I truly believe that the mind and body work together. And that can be true. We all wake up on the wrong side of the bed. But if you're having kind of unknown pain and you didn't really do anything, or you're just feeling really tight and achy and stiff, like there is the mental health component. There's stress. There may be strife in your relationship that, you know, and a lot of us don't recognize stress in our lives. We don't think that the difficult boss or checking our emails 24 hours a day or, you know, these little things, we're so mentally used to it and we think it's normal now, but our bodies weren't designed for it.

42:49So that stress builds up and, you know, it might be clenching your jaw. You might be hunching your shoulders. you might be having some low back pain. So I just, I really invite people like, of course, go to your, your primary care physician, your doctor, make sure there's nothing physically wrong, but also check under the hood mentally, you know, check in with yourself. And is there more stress? Is there something going on that's bothering me that I'm not recognizing like that, that internal, that internal inquiry is something that most people avoid. Yeah. So I'll go back to what we should do when we recognize that we have, we're struggling with trauma but I noticed that you use this the word soul quite a few times in this conversation so what is a soul to you and why does it matter to this entire physical experience at all so to me the soul is the part of us that is infinite it's like you know if we have the divine or the god or whatever you want to call it it would be like the ocean right and each of us is a little drop of that and that's the soul and when we pass from this physical body I believe the body is kind of like a shoe and it drops off the soul and we go back to the ocean we kind of decide whether we're going to come back or not and you know this is a lot of spiritual study and like I said when if you would talk to me in my 20s you know I was probably more towards atheists so when I talk about this it's definitely you know like at this point you couldn't convince me that it's not true so it's very fascinating because you know growing up the way I did I was I was very much like how could there be a god you know what I mean like if there was a god how could these things happen?

44:23How could the world be the way it is? And having done that experience of really understanding the soul, so I really see it as the individual spirit or that part of the divine, the divine spark that is within us, that drives us, that gives us our souls, our mission, our purpose, who we are. And it's often living in this world that that part of us gets dampened down and we start to try to conform and be accepted. And when we really do that internal work of, you know, meditation, self-reflection, journaling, discovering who we are, that's when we get in contact with the soul and that's when we can really start shining.

45:05Because, you know, I tried to hide. I was always very interested in spirituality. I was always very intuitive. I understood a lot of things, even being very young. You know, my mom used to, like, when I was eight years old, she'd call me her little counselor. and I figured out a lot of things in life that I don't know how I did that, right? How does a 17-year-old work, like move out and figure out how to take care of herself? And you know what I mean? And like learn about all of that stuff. Like I think about the things that I did or even when I was a kid, you know, being like just figuring out how to cook for myself or do all that kind of stuff at like eight, nine years old.

45:39I believe that part of that's the wisdom of the soul. And I think anybody who has children understands the soul too because you have all these children that come through you and your partner and they have the same genes, right? But they're just completely unique little humans. And I think that's the soul. And you really start to see that. They just, you know, one's more introverted, one's more extroverted, one's into this, one's into that. You're just like, how are you two related? Yeah. I mean, again, it's a very, very complex view of life because, yeah, there is your DNA that's on the physical layer.

46:10There is the soul where it comes from, what it's, you know, if you believe in past lives or not, what's their what its karma is and so on and so forth but then there's also the whole cosmological view of it like the astrology like when they were born and what day and then the moon and rising and all of that complex stuff and you know it is quite a i don't know if they're all facets to the different facets to the same truth or if they are all working in tandem but yeah i i was writing the other day that you will rarely ever know. You will never meet two people who are the same, even if they're twins.

46:50And one of them slipped and hit his head when he was younger. That's gone now. The identical life path of both of them is no longer identical. One of them hit his head and one didn't. And life becomes quite interesting from that way, from its complexity. Yeah, it is, however, interesting because you say about yourself in your early years and how you did things in your early years. And when I'm sitting with you right now, you don't have those traces of anger, of like resentment, of bitterness. Have you always been like that? Oh, no, gosh. I think when I was in my teen years, I was quite angry. But I definitely used, I guess the positive thing was I had that anger and I used it as fuel to push me forward.

47:42So I don't see anger as a bad emotion. I see anger as it means someone hurt. You know, it means no or ouch. That's all anger means. And we kind of, and yes, there's toxic anger, of course. But I was very angry at what had happened, you know, all the things that had occurred in my young life. And I just kind of used that as fuel to push myself to get out of it. But now I'm very conscious of working through anger and getting to forgiveness. And I've had to forgive horrible things in my life. and I don't see forgiveness for someone else at all. I really believe that forgiveness is freedom for ourselves, and we never have to tell anyone that we forgive them.

48:18We never have to have them back in our lives. We're not even excusing the behavior because there's a lot of things that were done to me that were unforgivable for sure, but I didn't want to carry that with me into my experience, into my life because it's not going to help me be better. You know what I mean? It's kind of like Buddha was attributed to saying it, but I've heard he didn't say it, but there's an old saying of, you know, anger in your heart is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Yeah, I thought it was Gandhi or like, yeah, I couldn't find the actual root of who said it because I'm wise person, absolutely.

48:51I'm very wise person said that. And I think it's really true. It's like, so many humans don't let go of the past. And you know, and I had, I've had to make a very conscious decision to let go of the past, because I wanted a better future? Yesterday, I had a reader send me a message on Instagram saying he promised me he's going to be with me forever. Now he left me and spent two years with me and made me fall in love with him and da, da, da, da, which basically is not a new story, if you ask me, and it's not an inclusive story. Now that I'm not talking to a specific person, by the way, I will always say that when we tell those stories, we usually forget to include the reasons why on our side, how we behaved, how the compatibility, what we contributed, and so on and so forth.

49:40But it is that kind of story that can linger for the rest of her life, and she would never be able to find forgiveness. So what would your advice be for someone in that situation? Yeah, when it comes to forgiveness, I definitely always, my personal process for forgiveness is to go into all the things they did wrong first. Oh, do you? Yeah, I do. Because I don't believe you can actually get to true forgiveness without feeling every gamut of emotions that is actually there. Because forgiveness is the end game. That's acceptance. And you can't get acceptance when you have all this anger in your heart.

50:18So I have my clients get all the anger out first. So I'll have them write a letter to that person and just burn it, destroy it. And no one's going to see it, but get it all out. Like, you know, it'd be like if it was an ex-lover, like, right, dear so-and-so, like, you made me fall in love with you. You did all these, you know, all these horrible things to me. Like, get that anger out. Like, process it. You know, go take a kickboxing class. Like, get it out of your body. Allow that process of anger to run through you. And when the anger is gone, then you're ready to go on forgiveness. Then you can go and sit down.

50:50And I have my clients do often, like, even a process, right? I'll have them get some sage or crystals or whatever makes the candles, whatever makes them feel good and write that forgiveness. And then I have them burn it to the heavens to release the energy to transmute it and really let it go and put that into the world and make a new intention. And then you can start doing the work of looking back at that relationship and saying, did I show up as my best self? What patterns in me were triggered? What childhood patterns showed up in that relationship? Did I talk to them the way my mom talked to me?

51:25Was my anxious attachment? Was I too clingy? Like that's when we get to that place of peace, then we can really look at what happened. But when we're in anger and we're in sadness and we're in unforgiveness, it's really hard to do that deep work because all those other emotions are just coursing through it. And those emotions color and create the lens through which we see the situation. We all have that experience where even we have a, let's say, a small fight with someone we care about. And four or six hours later, we think of all the things we should have said and we feel bad for something we did say.

51:57that's because we know that the frontal part of the brain executive functioning when we got triggered is off we're now in the fight flight freeze you know the small part of our brain the amygdala the anger and so whether we look at it through a psychological lens or spiritual lens it's ultimately the same we have to be at a place of peace to make amends yeah i don't know if that's the process i go through the process i go through actually almost starts from the opposite end And so I start from, and what is this getting any of us? Like, how is this making the world better? How is this making my world better?

52:33Isn't it enough that I'm hurt because of what she did? You know, should I hurt myself more by repeating those thoughts over and over? I mean, by the way, I'm not undermining your method at all. No, no, you also have a higher level of consciousness. You can come at it from that level. Yeah, I mean, in my mind, I actually think sometimes I should do what you suggested. But to me, normally it goes like, so what good is this bringing to the world? Nothing at all. Second is I start to say, and what was great about it? You know, she was wonderful in this, she did that and so on and so forth. And I was, you know, very happy with those days and this and that and so on.

53:09So I actually look for the positives to say, so it's not all bad after all, right? And then I basically go into my own behavior and start to ask myself, maybe that was karma that was being cleansed. Have you done that to anyone? And so on and so forth. And when I get to that, I end up with a few things that are still suspicious, unforgivable, if you want, but they're much smaller than where I started. And then I say, so what? We all make mistakes. Let's move on, right? It's almost the opposite direction. So when you were saying this, I was fascinated by it. I mean, like, can I actually write a letter and burn it?

53:48I would enjoy that. That would be a nice thing to do. Yeah, the reason I like to do that is because a lot of us, especially if we are trying to do this work of being more positive, it is very attractive and is actually taught by a lot of people to engage in what I call toxic positivity or spiritual bypassing. Of course, yeah. and so i i always invite the process of going because i always think of negative emotions as like we've got to get them out and i can get to a place of peace with someone where i have no nothing i wouldn't feel a twinge if i saw them and that's true forgiveness like there's nothing left yeah do you think the longer we hold on to those grudges the more entrenched they become the more difficult they become to to eradicate i think they can be because the longer you tell the story You know, if we just look at that from a neuroscience perspective, you know, the neurons that fire together wire together.

54:38So it becomes a little bit more hardwired in our mind and the story that we tell ourselves around it. But I think it's always possible to forgive because I think of, you know, sometimes when you work with people later in their later years and sometimes, you know, they'll bring up this situation that happened with like their sister 30 years ago. And we've all kind of had this experience with someone who's elder. You know, and you're kind of like, wow, you've been carrying that around for 30 years. So I feel like, you know, that would take a lot more intentional work. So I try to get, I always allow myself to feel all my emotions so that I know I went through everything and I'm not hiding from anything that's uncomfortable.

55:13And then I can get to that place of peace. I think that's wonderful. I think that's the feminine way of doing it. I'm the, I'm doing it the masculine way, if you want. It's like, let's go through the logic. It's not really worth my pain. So let's just move on. Right. Yeah. And that could work. No, no, I'm not advocating it at all. I'm just actually, I'm saying my method out of surprise that it's the opposite of what you're suggesting, which I think is actually a very good method. Just let the emotions be, but don't let them be in destructive ways. Let them be in a way that actually, yeah. Yeah.

55:47So that's why I've kind of created a process, like a safe container, so that we can go into it and then come out of it. Because we don't want to get into rumination. We don't want to obsess over it. We want to go into those negative emotions and really feel them. Because the only way out is through. And particularly with the men I work with, men are not taught to feel their emotions. and and it's not great because when we disconnect from any emotion we can't selectively choose i mean we can but not to the highest level i kind of believe that like if we're not feeling our lowest emotions we're not going to feel the highest ones either so yeah i think when when when you know many definitely more men than women but also women i would say oh for sure You know, when we make the conscious choice that we're not going to feel, you're right, you know, we can't be selective.

56:39We just, you know, we don't even allow the consideration of, okay, but I'm going to feel this, but not that. You just don't feel, you know, you become, I was writing about that actually in my next book, about how my wonderful daughter, Aya, taught me how to be emotionally available, as she called it. And I promise you when she said the term, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm a lot of love. People who, who know me know that there is a lot of love in me. And, and really people who know me in my older years, they say, I'm just love, basically love. And then a fat body on top of it. But then the idea, but the idea is when I, I has such a, an amazing teacher for me.

57:19And, and there was one time when she sat me down and in a very, very feminine way said, but you're not emotionally available to me. And I was like, what does that mean? I don't even know the term. I swear to you. I wrote that openly in the book. I've heard it before. Yeah, I don't even know the term. What is emotionally available? And I think it was all of the modern world conditioning. I mean, if you lived my life, you want trauma? Oh, I can give you trauma. And my work life was so traumatic because I took on so much. Right. And it was I remember one day I was talking about it to a friend and saying it's basically like being in jail and then having the guards come in and assault you frequently because I was running such a vast geography, like one hundred and five countries and so on.

58:10And so I had that frequent 30-minute meeting pattern of which you have 20 every day. And every single one of them expects you to be fully present, fully almost an expert on the topic. And one after the next, after the next, after the next. And you don't have the choice because when the region was that big, basically some people would book that half an hour with me three and a half weeks in advance. So if I'm not feeling great today, there's no way I can tell them, no, I'm sorry, I'm not going to do it today, book it three and a half weeks later. Right. And so that constant pressure, constant going through it, going through it, I think got me to the, to the side of, okay, emotions are not to be expressed or felt.

58:54Now we just have to put our heads down and just get, get to work. And, and yeah, it's so eyeopening. Now I say that with my deep voice. oh my god it's so cool to be emotionally available it's like the best thing ever it's the best thing ever to feel fully yeah and it's it's also you know i just want to note it is a survival mechanism to shut our emotions down so that we can get through difficult things that's totally normal all humans do it no matter how they identify gender wise or other you know um i know i know that there was time in my life i was very shut down emotionally for sure and that's the only way I could have survived that.

59:31And so I was grateful for that ability, you know, but we want to look for those things of like, you know, dissociation, like disconnecting for ourselves, from ourselves, and our emotions. And, you know, when we're ready, we'll, we'll reconnect to them. And then we have so much more available, you know, we, we all want love and joy and health and all these things and doing our inner work. That's what's the good stuff is what's on the other side of that. Life will never be perfect or all easy or, you know, flow. But if we can do the inner work on ourselves, we can prepare ourselves so much more for handling it, for doing it well, you know, for greater connection, which is what we are hardwired to do.

1:00:16Tori, tell me some of your most memorable moments, like discoveries that resulted from reflections with yourself or maybe working with a client. I don't want to take you off guard. I don't know if you're prepared for that question, but were there some moments where you said, wow, you know, like big aha moments where you discovered something that was very eye-opening for you in that process? Yeah, I think the first one that I can really like that's like visceral that I can remember is I started just randomly, I got the intuitive nudge when I was like 21 to go to yoga classes. I had never done yoga.

1:00:51I didn't know it was, but I just knew I had to do it. And so I walked into this class and I did a couple of classes by the third one. It was the first time I'd ever, I think I'd ever come out of fight or flight in my entire life. At 21. Cause you know, I'd been just like going, going, going, going, like survive, survive, survive, survive. You know what I mean? Like I had to get through every day. I had to go to school. I had to get good grades. I had to take care of myself. I had to take my breath. You know, it was just like, I was always on. And, and then, you know, I was working hard cause I needed to make money.

1:01:19I needed to support myself fully. And that day I walked out of that like third yoga class and I literally felt like I was floating. And I thought, wow, I feel really, really good. And that was like the start of like my yoga and meditation. You know what I mean? Because I was like, wait, something's here for me. Like I don't have to feel this like low level anxiety and stress all the time. And so that was a big aha. And now I understand from trauma work, yoga can be very, you know, a safe, good yoga class can be very healing to the body and really help us calm our nervous system. And, and, and, you know, the first time I think I felt fully safe in my body.

1:02:00And then I think getting into psychology, like learning about all my patterns and seeing my family, you know, what would happen in my family and why I was the way I was, was also like super helpful and just that propelled me you know to keep studying keep learning more and then being able to give that to my clients like I think at this point one of my superpowers is I can just have someone tell me anything if their history and I pretty much know what's happening now like I just I see patterns like probably like a code person can read code like when someone tells me their history I can tell you what's happening right now or they can even tell me what's happening right now and I can tell you what happened in your history so those are yeah I know I actually feel the same way, you know, because one of the big decisions I made in my life is to answer every comment I get on social media.

1:02:47I'm failing to do that more and more now, but not by much, actually. I probably do still answer 90%. But the thing is, because of all of those conversations, deep connected conversations, I can, you know, see patterns so easily to the point that people would sit next to me after an event or whatever and say, Mo, I'm so upset because of A, B, and C, and I say, okay, and what else? Because it's not A, B, and C, and then they'll say E, D, F, Y, G, and, you know, they'll go through the alphabet, and then, you know, when they get to Z, I'll say, ah, that's it, that's the Z, that's the one that's really upsetting you, and they go like, yeah, that's the one that's really upsetting me.

1:03:26It is shocking, though, because in a very interesting way, are you the kind of person that will sit them on a table like, or, you know, on a shizlong like a therapist and just let them talk until they figure it out or are you the kind of person that will tell them uh hold on i see a pattern here here it is i like to do that a little more personally because i you know i feel like a lot of people talk to their friends and they get a lot of advice and that's not always helpful and a lot of therapists are trained to not ever give any advice and just ask all the questions and it's kind of backwards you know you really want your therapist to or you know the person you're working with whether that's a coach or a healer whatever to kind of give you suggestions.

1:04:06Now I do that with a lot of care and agency and empowering that other person. I'm never telling anyone what to do. I would never do that, but I will say, you know, when you're telling me this, I can see this and, and how does that resonate with you? You know, does that, does that ring true? And I'd say 98 % of the time it's about pretty right. But so, yeah, I do try to help people. Cause I feel like if someone's coming to me for help, I want to help them as quickly as I possibly can and sure I could spend three sessions for them telling me all their the pattern I saw on the first one but you know it's always too also about being ready to hear that so that's one thing I will kind of intuitively sense into and ask the questions to make sure okay is this person ready to face this pattern within themselves because that's another thing and those are some of my biggest aha moments in my life is kind of seeing my own patterns and how the things that had occurred to me growing up were coming into my current life and showing up you know like even being very visible on social media and stuff was hard for me because growing up one of the ways to avoid abuse is to not be seen you know be quiet be out of the way and I'm not shy in any way you know if you met me I'm very loud and I'm very funny and I'm pretty like confident and all those things but it was funny because I was like at first I was like I couldn't figure it out like why why don't I want to be like so visible in the world you know what I mean like but and then I was like oh that's a that's an old pattern so it's like I can always kind of find like this is happening, what occurred and how can I heal something at a deeper level to help me expand?

1:05:38Because I think that every time we grow, we'll kind of come back around to the same old stuff, whether it's, you know, I'm not good enough or I'm not smart enough. You know, we all have some story, you know, for me, the story is, I had multiple stories, but you know, life is always going to be hard. Things will always be difficult. I never get what I want, you know, like, so I had to work through a lot of that, that stuff i mean those stories are valid for someone who grew up with your childhood right for sure and it's like how do how do i shift that so that i don't keep creating it on some level correct do you believe we create what we give energy to i think we are more powerful than we think obviously some of the worst things that happen in our lives we have no control over so it's not anyone's fault but i believe that when we do get into difficulty or or you know small things, particularly in life, you know, whether it's our money situation, our love situation, or our health, like there, where we are creating our experience, we have a lot more power than I think we give ourselves credit for, you know, all of old spirituality and religion, I've not nothing against religion at all.

1:06:43So I don't say this in a negative way. But, you know, we're kind of taught that like, if we're good little humans, and we pray to something, it will be nice to us, right. and and then we and we all you know we all pray on a plane and hope that whatever's up there yeah yeah yeah so it's just you know it's like sometimes i think we were taught our whole lives or it's very especially in western culture that there is something greater outside of us that's so powerful that we hope it will give us grace and i think there is some aspect of that but i also think we can give ourselves a lot of grace by making better choices by healing ourselves by showing up differently we can you know I was a kid who was on and off welfare and you know like always struggled with money and it's like I've had to do so much healing work around that you know it's like something as small as money like we don't recognize not like it's very big in most people's lives but like I had to get empowered around that and recognize that I wasn't that poor little girl anymore that I didn't have to live that life that you know I could make money and I could be successful and I, you know, all those things.

1:07:49And I see that with particularly, you know, marginalized communities. I'm Hispanic and Native American and, you know, grew up in a tough way. So it's like I've had to come through a lot of difficulties to create success and to be open to love or, you know, all those things. It's not easy for any of us. Yeah. But some of us do have extra challenge. Yeah, I actually think openly, I think that, prayer, if you believe in prayer, works because the designer of this universe basically creates laws within it that allows you to create when you follow a certain pattern, right? So even prayer itself is basically just pulling into the source and saying, okay, I'm going to create this.

1:08:39And you're saying, oh God, please give me A, B, and C. But in almost every spiritual practice that believes in a God, the terms and conditions is talk to God, believing that the higher power can give you. And when you believe, you will be given, right? The worst book written in history, even though incredibly successful, The Secret. It's basically, I think that book was so badly written just to show that you can actually create your own reality without really being a good writer at all. Like you can sell millions of copies of a horrible book by actually expecting it to sell. And I actually say that with respect.

1:09:21It's definitely started a movement and it's opened people's eyes. But the idea here is if you saw it and you believed it and you observed it almost like the uncertainty principle in quantum physics, you can see it as if it has already happened, the rules created by the designer would say, yeah, then it will happen. Just like if you leave an apple on top of empty air, it will fall down with gravity. That's just part of the rules. And I think we don't recognize that within ourselves. So we don't recognize that we're given that tool, just like we're given the tool to let gravity pull things down.

1:09:57And, you know, it's quite interesting that when you're in trauma and you're creating, you're giving energy, you're telling yourself the world is always going to be difficult what energy are you giving to the universe you're saying make it difficult that's my belief that's how I see it no totally we live in a yes universe if I'm sitting there saying which I did life is always going to be difficult I'm always going to work really hard things aren't going to be easy that's exactly what I created in my life and and the powerful thing is that if I have the power to create that then I had the power to create something different.

1:10:32And I believe that what was missing in the secret for sure was doing the healing work, getting those negative energies out of us so that we can attract to the different, those stories and all those things. And then taking action. We are powerful creators by doing something. If I want something, even as simple as if I wanted to eat something, I can imagine it in my mind, but the sandwich is not going to float to me from my kitchen. I'm going to have to get up, open the refrigerator and make it. And that's such a simple analogy for so much of life. We can have the things that we want, but we're going to have to do what I say are part.

1:11:09Like the universe is doing its part and we have to do ours. Beautifully said. We are co-creators. It's like we have to make the choice. The secret kind of made it sound like I I can just sit in my house and meditate and the Lamborghini will be in my driveway. I live in Southern California. A lot of people drive Lamborghinis here. They did not meditate them.

1:11:34They manifested them, of course. But manifestation to me is like, yes, there are these universal laws. We can work with those universal laws and we can create. And I think that when we start taking action, that's when all those synchronicities happen. And that's when, you know, it's like, I had this intuitive feeling that I had to be doing this work. And I left my corporate job. And that was really scary. And I gave up my benefits, my 401k, you know, all those, all the, you know, what they call the, in the US, we call it the golden handcuffs, right? And I loved my boss, too. Like, I love there were so many good things about my company.

1:12:07I loved that company. I love the people I worked with. But my, my inner self was just calling me away. I just knew I was supposed to be doing something different. And so I jumped off that ledge. and I just kept following the next thing that I was supposed to do. And I've been very blessed. So much stuff has just shown up for me because I just got out there and I decided to help people. And my business is still primarily based on referrals. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I refer everyone I know. I think you're fantastic at what you do. I mean, but this is a very dangerous statement, by the way. I sometimes have to revisit this.

1:12:46I felt a calling to leave my corporate job and go do what I do. Not everyone who hears that calling should leave because sometimes it's a false calling, right? Yeah, I definitely have a plan. That is one thing that I always tell my clients that they're similar. They're wanting to shift. I'm someone who has a lot of that kind of jump out of the nest and build your wings on the way down. That doesn't work for everybody. I usually invite most people to do it as a side hustle or build it on the weekends or, you know, get it going. Because not having consistent income is very scary. And it's one of the most difficult things I ever had to make that shift from, you know, from basically being an employee who had great benefits and a great pay to not being sure what was going on.

1:13:34Especially when I first started. And that cost me a lot of stress for sure. I definitely think that like entrepreneurship, if that's what it is, or working for yourself is something that must be carefully considered. And I'm just saying that was an experience for me of like, trusting myself and taking the leap and having it work out. But it was not without a ton of learning lessons and difficulties along the way of doing that well. Yeah. Tori, so we jumped away from the energy healing side. So I really am curious about what energy psychology is. What is that? Why is it different than typical psychology?

1:14:10Yeah, so energy psychology is based on the mind-body connection, and it is a tool to help us heal more quickly. So it integrates them. It's kind of like the easiest way to describe it is it's like neuroscience and acupressure had a baby. So what we're doing is we're taking a distressing thing in your life. Maybe it's just a thought. Maybe it's an experience. and we're using the meridian system to tap on the body. And there's another form of it's called EFT or emotional freedom technique. Energy psychology is a little bit different because EFT is one set of tapping points that you do for everything.

1:14:49And I kind of say it works 80 % of the time for 80 % of things. Energy psychology is a little different because it's approved by the American Psychological Association for healing things like PTSD and trauma. And the process is different. So when I work with a client, we have a goal. So let's say maybe it's to become more successful or they're struggling with money or love. And then we create that goal. And then I start looking for any objections to healing that would be. So I'm actually looking for subconscious objections to healing. A lot of people don't know that a part of them does not want to heal because the ego does not want to change.

1:15:27We can all relate to this when it comes to exercise, right? You want to exercise. You want to be healthy. But when the alarm clock goes off at 6 a.m., you have every story in the world about why you don't want to get up. And you start, you know, your first week you do it and you're like, oh, I feel, you know, I feel so amazing. I'm going to be so fit. And then the next week that alarm clock goes off and you're like, oh, but I was up late last night. I could sleep in. The next day, oh, but, you know, I had a really, I was tossing and turning. I can't get up. And it's like that ego, that lower voice in our head just starts to get the best of us.

1:15:57And I personally believe that resistance that's in, I call it resistance. So that part of us that doesn't want to change. And when we're doing something that the mind knows will help us change, we resist the heck out of it. So I always tell my clients, pay attention to what you're, like, if you're getting the idea, like, let's say it's like, I want to take this exercise class, but you won't do it. Or you want to meditate, or you want to read this book, and you keep forgetting or getting busy, or, you know, that's the very thing you need to do to change. So in energy psychology, we really address those deeper issues as well.

1:16:30we make sure that all parts of you every you know you have no doubts about it and then we start doing the healing work and so what's fascinating in some research on just even eft is that they took before blood samples and after blood samples after doing just five minutes of eft and they found a 40 reduction in stress cortisol hormones and the first time they did it they actually thought it was a mistake the lab did so they did it again and they got the same results so what we're doing is we're helping the mind disengage stress and negativity from that experience that thought that feeling so maybe you know it's something as much like public speaking like i had a client like she's moving up in the world and she's in her expert in her industry and she had to start public speaking so we did a lot of like healing work around that you know she had negative experience with the professor so we had to like tap on that and clear that out from her body.

1:17:25So we're helping your body not have a negative experience or stress response to a particular experience because trauma gets encoded in our body. So, so for me, sometimes my mom growing up, she used to go out a lot to bars and, you know, party and stuff like that. And so when she'd get home and sometimes, you know, there'd be fighting. And so I found that if anyone came home late to my home as an adult, like when I was even younger, I would get into fight. I would be to fight. Like I would literally like, I could hear like my door, like my roommate would come home and I'd hear a door close and I'd like, I'd be ready to fight.

1:17:58That was my body's physiological response to a past stress and trauma. Right. And so I had to work with my body to teach it that not every time I hear that I'm going to have that negative experience. And that happens for so many things in our life. You know, even if someone criticizes us, we can get into that, that space. That was a little bit different for me. So yeah, I found that energy psychology was kind of a game changer even in my own healing because I had done so much work I'd done meditation I'd done breath work I've you know I've been working on myself for 22 years but being able to bring that stress response down quickly in the moment and I always give my clients like an at home too so they can do it for themselves you know I don't want anyone to be dependent on me but you know my gift is kind of seeing like what are the deeper patterns here what are the deeper traumas what are the experiences what are the thoughts the beliefs clearing all of that out just gives you so much more agency and freedom and ability to have what we call more of a flexible nervous system, meaning that we're more comfortable when we're growing, we're more comfortable when we're doing something that's scary to us, whether it's going on a first date after a breakup or speaking up in a meeting or not yelling at our kids, you know, because they've gotten us upset.

1:19:12You're amazing. I mean, in a very interesting way, that holistic view of it. So you spoke about the mind and the patterns and the stories and the experiences and how we store them. And then you spoke about emotions and how we express them and spoke about the soul and the connection between us and our soul and how that affects us. And then now you're talking about the physical form and the body and all of those feelings and tappings and meridians and so on. And it's actually quite refreshing to see someone who is going to say, all right, you know, we have that pattern, we're going to tap on that pattern or we have this emotion, how are we going to deal with that emotion?

1:19:51And I, I will have to say it's, it is complex, but it isn't. So if you've seen it, and you've tried it, it really works when you tell others to do it. It's quite interesting. Yeah, I have really great results from it, you know, because any, anytime we're in difficulty, if we can, if we can reduce that stress response, if we, if we even just think of it from that perspective you know like we all have that those things we all get in our own head we all get triggered that's very human that's very normal and it's if it gives us back our power to say like okay i can bring this stress response back down i can get back into my higher reasoning my higher self and i can respond to it differently and i always remind people that progress in life is shortening the duration of anything so so maybe yeah you know what i mean because like we think we think like winning or progress is, is not having that maybe that trigger anymore.

1:20:47And that's possible. You know, there's a lot of things used to trigger me that don't trigger me at all anymore. But I see it as like, you know, if it used to get upset me for a couple days, and now it just upsets me for a couple hours, like that's huge progress. Yeah. And then it's, it's also the frequency. So, you know, it used to, it used to trigger you every three days, now it triggers you every three months. And I think that's, that's the whole idea, how, how quickly you bounce back and how less frequently you get triggered by it. I think that's the whole game. Exactly. I just see it as, you know, yeah, I really look at everything holistically and I've studied Ayurvedic medicine and, you know, I know herbs for anxiety.

1:21:24Like I look at, like I give people the gamut of tools to really help them stay in their power, to stay calm, to, you know, to create from that place of they can do it. You know, it's not an easy place to get into, but we do have to, like you were saying, we have to have that belief that we can do it, that we can just take the next right step. That's all it's about. You know what else I love about you, Tori, which I actually monitor for anytime anyone offers me to help. There are those who position themselves as I've figured it all out, come to me, I'm your guru, right? And there are those who are incredibly effective, but they'll always say, and I'm still working on me, right?

1:22:02I still have my own patterns. I still have my own realizations. They might not be as trivial as they used to be when I was 20, but they're still there, right? And I find that to be probably the biggest marker of someone who's actually going to help because they know the reality of what I call continuous improvements. You know, there is no point in your life where you're going to say, all right, that's it, I'm done, I'm ready, I'm a perfect human, right? It's not going to happen, right? I just had that conversation the other day with a client. I was saying like, you know, we're never done like something new is always going to come up especially if i'm choosing to evolve and grow like and and like i you know there's a saying that says um new level new devil i still kind of see it as new level old devil will come back our old stuff will kind of come back with the new devil so old devil yeah exactly you know we're and yeah i think you know i love this saying and i've always said it to myself as you know the wisest man knows he knows nothing Yeah, absolutely true.

1:23:04And so I'm always working on myself, always learning, always trying to be better for myself and be better for my clients. Because if I don't keep growing, I'm not of service to anyone. Yeah. Tori, with all that happened and all the challenges that you still go through and how you started the conversation with an emotional challenge that's quite big for you, are you happy? Yeah, I find moments of happiness every day. I mean, there's definitely times where I've not felt happy, but I do find, I think at this point in my life, I find joy in so many more simple things. I think I used to want like those more eyes of happy, you know, like the big like travel and, you know, like the higher moments of happiness.

1:23:49But it's like now I can really just be happy looking at my dog or going to the ocean or talking with a friend. Like those things make me so happy. and so I think happiness is something that we have to work to cultivate in a positive way and find the joy in everyday life because life is each little moment every day you know that's what's passing us by and it's easy to forget that when we get stuck in the doing instead of the being so you know I wake up every morning and I spend at least an hour meditating and journaling and prayer, whatever calls to me that day. And then, you know, I really take those times to cultivate, even when I'm having difficult times in life, because that's part of it.

1:24:34I always go back to my spiritual practice. I really see life as a spiritual practice, which makes me happy, because when I feel connected to myself, when I feel connected to the universe, when I feel connected to others, that's when I feel fulfilled. For me personally, some people want to live in a cave alone. I like that too. I like that sometimes too as well. I mean, it's actually really interesting what you just said. It's always about cultivating. It's about enjoying those little moments. I get so many answers to what happiness is. And of course, I have my own answers. But I think the reality is if you think about life and it's not horrible, then that's a good reason to be happy.

1:25:14Any moment in your life that's not horrible is a moment to celebrate and enjoy. There's always an interesting flavor in every single moment that you go through. And unless it's very, very challenging, then it's a moment to be enjoyed. And I really think that even those moments that are very challenging eventually are going to lead us to enjoy because they'll develop us, they'll make us better. I do too. What can I say? I mean, all those little moments, including a wonderful conversation with you. I loved this conversation. I'm so grateful that you showed up. Every time I see you speak, I mean, this is the first time we spend time talking to each other rather than me listening to you giving a talk.

1:25:58And I have to say you radiate what you're talking about. You are so true with what you do. And it's just very angelic. Again, I always tell my listeners, because they may not have the same joy that I have when I'm talking to an incredible guest, that there is something truly angelic about you. When you were saying that you went through this because it was preparing you for what you were doing, I was nodding vigorously. I was like, yeah, clearly, clearly, clearly. Tori, where can people find you? I'm actually, I don't ask every guest that, but guests that I recommend very strongly. If someone's going through some kind of trauma or some kind of experience and they want to find you, how do they find you?

1:26:45Yeah, they can find me on Instagram at manifest soul success, or my website, which is Tori Janae.com. So T O R I J E N A E.com. And those are two easy places to find me online, check out kind of who I am and what I do. But, and, and I'm the same as you, I want to answer those DMS and see, you know, if I'm not the person And to help people, I'll always tell them, hey, start with this book or get a therapist or, you know, just whatever that right thing is for them to do. That's the right way to do it. And I'll leave every one of Tori's links in the show notes if you want to get in touch. I know many people who worked with Tori and got really incredible results.

1:27:28And so if you want to dig deep and reflect on something that's bothering you, I think she would be a very good place to start. So find her and find your happiness in those little moments, but also realize that the difficult moments are moments that we go through because they prepare us for an experience or they prepare us for a learning or they prepare us for a duty that we may undertake in life. And in all of those, I find that in the simple moments where it's not horrible, I can find gratitude. and in the difficult moments that are shaping me and making me a better person, a more capable person, a more ready person for my purpose.

1:28:10I have even more gratitude. I am very, very grateful that you all give me the chance to meet such amazing people, to feel that incredible surge of energy that comes through me when I have a wonderful conversation with a wonderful guest. And it's all because of you continuing to listen to slow-mo. The more you listen, the more you refer your friends, the more I'll be able to find more and more interesting guests for us to discuss amazing things with. I am very grateful for that. If you haven't rated the podcast five stars or shared it with a friend or shared it on your social media, do that today, please.

1:28:50It keeps us growing and that keeps things more interesting. Whatever it is that you're doing this week, I know you're busy. We're all very busy as we started the conversation. It's some weird times. There are lots of interesting challenges around us. But hey, there's always a tiny bit of time to slow down. I love you all for listening and I will see you next time.