Midlife Awakening & Soul Work: Breaking Patterns, Healing Trauma, and Finding Your True Self with Vanessa Bennett

21:55Vanessa Bennett:Do you think that like when someone starts questioning this, are there usually, I've just seen this in my own, this, I could be a one off. I don't know. But do you think that there were signs and there were like your, your body has been trying to tell you something for a long time, but you just, it's easy to suppress and go on autopilot and keep like, we're all busy. We're raising kids. We're trying to advance our careers. You know, it's easy to just be like, they're there. I'll deal with this later. I mean, yeah, exactly. And that's why a lot of us, it does take.

22:33In a classroom of sodas, most stay quiet. Then there's Mr. Pibb, sweet cherry, bold outbursts, the kind of flavor that gets attention.

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23:26So psyche, soul, whatever word you want to use is like tickling a feather for a long time. Like, hello, hello, something's wrong. Something doesn't fit, whatever that is, right? This relationship's not right for you, this job, whatever. And we just kind of, like you said, brush it off, whatever, keep, keep being busy. Usually then it's like he throws a brick. And even at the brick stage, most people still don't listen, right? It's usually the Mack truck where we can't not listen. So, you know, an injury, a death, a losing of a job, a complete life transformation, having a kid, right? An ego death, something like that, where you're like incapable of not paying attention anymore.

24:09And I would say a lot of times that's that point too, where people come to therapy. I'm like, oh, this makes sense. I know I've had the subconscious thoughts of, you know, something's not right or whether they know what it is or not. Look, what advice would you give to kind of speed up so they don't have to waste time to get to that Mack truck. Or don't get hit by a Mack truck. Or don't get hit. Is there a way to avoid it? Which is probably better, yeah. I guess the way that I would answer that is, you know, I say that everybody gets tickled with the feathers. I mean, this is not, you know, a one-off situation.

24:50We're all born with the ability to pay attention and to be still and to intuit what's happening in our lives and what works and doesn't work and what's fulfilling and not fulfilling. It's just that we live in a society that kind of squashes that because those of us who are connected to self and connected to intuition are actually pretty dangerous to systems who kind of function on the backs of those of us who look outside of ourselves for validation, right? So for those of us who buy the next fanciest car because we think it makes us look a certain way, you know, that capitalistic drive to keep us looking outside of ourself would be really hard to push on people who were connected to themselves, right?

25:31Who knew that that actually didn't matter when it came to like a sense of worthiness or a sense of lovability and all these things. So I guess my, to go back to your question, I would suggest getting into a practice of conversation with that part of yourself, conversation with the turned down voice. It's been turned down, it's not gone. And sometimes that looks like, you know, people might say like journaling. People might say it's contemplative, contemplative. There we go. Contemplative practice, which is stillness, which is quiet, which is taking a beat, right? Now, I know you have a two-year-old.

26:09I have an almost six-year-old. Finding that time is really difficult. But if we don't make that time a priority, and I'm not saying it's got to be hours a day, But if we don't make time to be with ourselves in stillness and in quiet, the Mack truck's kind of inevitable. What are some other symptoms of how it shows up in our body? Can it be physical, like my shoulders, my lower back or whatever? Yeah, I mean, for sure. There's a lot of conversations currently right now. Gabor Mate has been talking a lot about how women make up a disproportionate amount of autoimmune disease holders, right? And what he's talking about is actually how women in our society are what we would call like the shock absorbers.

26:57So we're the ones that process everything for everybody. We're the ones that make sure everybody's okay. We're the ones that are making sure things are still running and moving and functioning. We're the ones that are hearing the news and then being like, how do we have a conversation about this? We're the ones that are walking into a room, feeling the vibe and then deciding how we're going to approach the person to have a conversation that feels hard, right? What does that do to the body after a long period of time? Well, it doesn't feel surprising to me to his point that women make up the larger percentage of people who have autoimmune disorders.

27:32You know, your body is literally attacking itself from the inside. So it can be something as extreme as that, or it can be, yeah, to your point, I mean, it could be, I have this like pain in my neck and it won't go away. Right. Or for me, very physically, it showed up around 38, kind of out of nowhere. I started having really bad heart palpitations and I thought I was dying. I mean, I went, did all the things, all the cardiologist appointments, all the things that I'm healthy and I work out and I take care of myself and was very dismissed by the cardiologist who just said, I think you just need more sleep.

28:06And I was like, bitch, that is not what I came here for, right? I want my money back. Like, yes, shocker. I have a three-year-old at the time. I need more sleep, you know? And so I actually went on a bit of a rabbit hole around HRT and around bariomenopause and how heart palpitations are one of the biggest symptoms that go undiagnosed, right? Got myself on HRT, started to minimize the heart palpitations. I was like, oh, there it is. Check. Like I solved it myself, right? About six months or eight months, they really minimized. And then they started ratcheting back up again. I hadn't changed anything.

28:44Cut to, we lost everything in the fires last year in LA. And so, I'm so sorry. Thank you. So six months of chaos, um, figuring out what the hell our life is going to look like, all the things, um, we actually decided in June. so about six months after the fire, to pack up and move to Costa Rica indefinitely until we just figure out what the hell's going on. I was here for about a month and I had a revelation where I looked around and I was like, holy shit, I don't think I've had a heart palpitation since I've been here. And so one could argue the stress and the pace of my life in Los Angeles could have very well been trying to tell me something somatically.

29:32Now I'm not saying maybe perimenopause also isn't a part of it, but it wasn't just that. Right. And so y 'all, I literally have, I've taken myself off the HRT to see what happens. I have like one every couple of days. Now I was having multiple a day. So that could be an example of it.

29:50Vanessa Bennett:What's the Costa Rica. I just, I'm going there next week and I was just there in November for the first time. You came during rainy season, girl. Yeah. What's like the theme? There's like a theme there. Pure Vida. Pure Vida. Pure life. You're like manifesto. You're living that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's slower and it's more community oriented. And you just do less here. There's just not this constant drive and pace that I think most of us are used to in the States or in the West. Oh, 100%. I mean, the States, it really is, I call it the land of abundance because there's just, everything is available.

30:32Vanessa Bennett:And then this badge is like, how hard can you work? Oh, you didn't sleep for a week? Awesome. All of these things that it's just like more, more, more, more, more, more, more until it's not. Until it's not. Until it's not. You work with archetypes as well, correct? I do. Mm hmm. So for anyone who's not familiar with that, can you explain what an archetype is? Yeah. So an archetype, you know, again, another kind of asset or facet of Jung's work. Archetypes are really kind of innate patterns, images, ways of being that are shared collectively and what Jung called the collective unconscious. So I'll give you an example.

31:18in grad school. Actually, I did a project around the archetype of the virgin mother and child. And what happens when you actually do research around this image is that the image that we all know in the West of Mary with Jesus sitting on her lap is an exact image. I mean, even down to like body posture, format, et cetera, that goes back as far actually as we have the ability to track images, statues, cave drawings, et cetera. It is an image that shows up. The archetypal image of mother and child is a shared image across every human psyche on the planet, right? And it literally shows up in the same way.

32:03So that would be an example, right? Or there could be an archetype could also be like a, I don't want to say persona necessarily, because we're kind of confusing too, but maybe like a role. So there's like the archetype of the trickster. Let's use that one. So we all probably know of somebody who falls into the archetype of the trickster, right? They're the one that's constantly, you know, making light of things, poking fun at things. They're a little silly, but they're also a little mischievous, right? We all can embody that archetype at some point in our lives, right? It's an archetype that again, is kind of shared amongst human beings.

32:38The mother, the mother archetype, right? The maiden archetype, the crone archetype. These are archetypes that really, again, it's an image or kind of an embodiment that everybody across the world can tap into. For our listeners, I mean, there's probably the caregiver is probably a huge one. But how does archetype play into your therapy or healing or do we get stuck into because really is it it's kind of how you show up, right? You could almost explain an archetype is this is how I show up like the hero, the caregiver, the lover that I mean, you know, people that are a victim, like, no matter what happens, they're always Yeah.

33:27So is your work also help like break that pattern of your archetype, if you will, like how it is that you show up? Sure. Or it can also be again, like, what is this archetype attempting to tell us, teach us through the embodiment that you're giving it? Right. So if you're embodying the victim or the martyr archetype, let's, let's talk about what that purpose is. Like what need is it attempting to meet? Because it's showing up for a reason, right? And so oftentimes when we can dialogue with the archetype or we can kind of personify or understand why it's coming through us, it helps us loosen the kind of air quote negative behaviors that go along with it.

34:13Because there's going to be a golden and a shadow to every archetype, to every pattern. And so if we can look at both of those, we can also say, what is the golden side of like, let's say the victim? Well, I would say the victim archetype is really strong in those that are desiring to be seen and be held and be rescued, right? Okay, well, let's talk about that in relationship to your life. Where can you attempt to come in and be your own rescuer or be your own savior, right? Do we need to talk about the relationships in your life and how they're not fulfilling and you don't feel seen or heard.

34:51Why is that? Right. So they become a gateway in a lot of, um, in a lot of therapeutic tools. I find it's a gateway to a deeper conversation or understanding.

35:01Vanessa Bennett:How many people do you think when, I know this could vary greatly, but for someone that's like, Oh, I would love to get some help from, from a therapist, this kind of, um, therapy. Are you long-term like you, you got to commit to six months to a year? Is it, I mean, I'm guessing you can't just do a few sessions. I think it depends on the person. I think it depends on what they're working with. I think it depends on maybe what their experiences with self, um, like this idea of like being introspective. Right. Um, I think it takes a, it probably tends to take a little bit more time if somebody is coming completely green and has never really done any introspective work before.

35:41Um, but I've worked with people, yeah, in more of almost like a coaching capacity where four to six weeks and they've really had some big ahas and some shifts and then we'll touch base a couple times a year. And then I've had people that I've been working with for years regularly, right? Because they're kind of on this journey of like continued evolution, if you will, and are just really fascinated by and love the work, right? And then a lot of times what happens too is you'll come during like one phase of your life or you're kind of embodying an archetype, right? We together kind of move through, usher you over this threshold.

36:16You go back out into the world until the next time you're standing on another threshold or you're embodying another kind of tricky archetype and you come back. And so that happens a lot as well.

36:28Vanessa Bennett:What does your practice look like? Do you have like a journaling, meditation, you know, daily habits, daily practice that you do? Yeah, it's changed a lot. I think since coming to Costa Rica, I think what I used to do then, I'll tell you before I had a kid, and I actually think I wrote about this in the book, I think how the West, it's kind of actually what you were saying about how we've got this constant drive, right? The West really commodifies wellness in some way, right? Like buy this fancy journal, buy this expensive meditation app, buy this fancy elixir, right? And then you'll be kind of healed or better or good enough.

37:08And so I was an avid meditator. I do a lot of yoga, a lot of introspection, journaling. I would go on retreats, all these things. When I had my daughter, I felt so much guilt and shame, I would say, around how all of the practices I used to have that were so important to me, I could not make my way back to incorporating them on a daily basis. And I really struggled with that. And I would say I struggled with that for probably a year. And then it dawned on me through some more reading and some more work. And again, kind of the work that went into writing this book, that once you become a mother, a lot of, at least in early motherhood, a lot of the contemplative time that you had prior or that work that I would consider meditative is actually done mothering.

37:59So for example, like my seated meditation of 20 minutes every single day went out the fricking window. Cause when you're a mom of a young kid, your mornings don't belong to you anymore. Right. And so what I found was that my meditation was done in the process of bathing and dressing my daughter. My meditation was done in the process of breastfeeding. My meditation was done in the process of washing her clothes or doing the dishes or tidying up. and I started realizing I'm missing it. There's actually moments and opportunities everywhere to be doing this practice embodied. It just looks different right now, but it doesn't mean that it's better or worse.

38:38It just looks different. And that was a huge revelation for me. And so I guess to go back and answer your question, it looks different now. I think for me now, she's a little bit older. She's gonna be six. I've got a little bit more space. Still don't have my mornings back. But now it might look like surfing. You know, a lot of times for me, it's active work. It's still my yoga. It's still my Pilates. It's getting in the water. It's floating in the ocean for 20 minutes. I mean, these are the times when I get to be with myself. How did it feel losing everything? Not good. To make it like as simple as possible.

39:14Not great. It was... That's a profound experience. Yeah, it's been a very interesting year, you know, because I could talk about how hard it was to lose your things, your home, you know, my grandmother's rings, her silk scarf collection she gave me before she died, you know, my yearbooks, like all of the things that you absolutely can never replace. And so there's a grief that goes along with that. and unlike people who might lose, and this is not to maybe do some comparative suffering, but unlike somebody who might say like have an electrical fire in their home and they lose their home, what happens when you have a wildfire is we lost our entire community.

39:58Our whole town is gone. So we were on the East side, right? Naltadena. And there were 10 ,000 structures burnt. There's nothing left. So it wasn't just the physical personal items. I mean, it was our community. It was our neighbors. It was our restaurants. It was our schools. It was our everything. Right. And so it's, it's been a, I think a practice of finding home again. What does home look like if you don't have a physical home, you know, finding home within, finding home within your family, keeping your friends as close as you can once you've actually physically had to disband, not taking it for granted that you used to be able to see your people often and now you can't.

40:45So you have to change and do more work to maintain those structures. Yeah, it's been really destabilizing, I think is probably the best word. And I'll tell you, one of my therapists actually said to me, talk about the shock absorber thing I was talking about with Gabor Mate. It was probably like eight months after the fire when I first started really going into it in therapy. Up until then, I was in like mom mode. Like I, we got to get a house. We got to figure it out. I was taking care of my friends. Are you good? Insurance, like all of this stuff, right? Very compartmentalized because I didn't have time to, to feel that much really.

41:24And you're, you know, and I'm somebody who obviously has a lot of practice around this, but I was very aware that there's a time and a place and right now is actually not the time. And so once I felt like I had landed a little bit and I could breathe and I was in my own therapy again, we started kind of pulling the threads a bit. And, you know, she was very quick to say, you, what was the word she used the other day? Actually, this concept of being a metabolizer. She's like, you were the metabolizer for everybody. You were taking everything that everybody else was experiencing and you were metabolizing it into bite-sized, understandable, tolerable experiences.

42:06And unfortunately, what happens when you're constantly metabolizing is at some point you tap out, right? Like you're not getting filled. And I think that was kind of the wall that I had hit about eight months post where I was like, okay, it's time to take a beat, you know? And to fill it and probably grieve it for yourself. And that's what it's been. It's been waves and it's just the practice of letting it come up, even when it feels weird and inconvenient. Why is that happening right now? And I mean, you both know with the work that you do, but for me, actually, a lot of my grief has been in movement.

42:43So not necessarily like, let's say lifting weights, but if I'm doing an ecstatic dance practice where it's actually unorganized movement. So I'm kind of crossing that right and left hemisphere and I'm tapping a little bit more into the unconscious realm in my movement. That's when I find the tears come. So I've been trying to make sure that I'm incorporating some movement or like surfing, incorporating some movement that doesn't have a specific structure to it. Because I find that that's what's doing some of the releasing.

43:16Vanessa Bennett:and Costa Rica it sounds like that is a healing that's been part of the healing journey as well yeah I mean it's been a forced slowdown you know whether I like it or not it's been a forced slowdown do you think you'll be there for a long time yeah I think we just recently decided that I mean all our alternative is to go back to LA right now and you know rent a house while we rebuild that is probably four times jacked up in rent than what it would be because everybody jacked up the rent after the fire because, you know, lovely. And I was like, why? Why would we do that? Why wouldn't we just stay here and we can do the rebuilding from here?

43:56We love the schools. We love the community. And so, yeah, we've just decided we don't know what the timing is, but it feels good right now. And so that's all we know. That's all we can lean into.

44:07Vanessa Bennett:If we look at your books, so you have two books. I do. Both of the titles are pretty intriguing. The Motherhood Myth. So that's one category. And then I love this. And I had to say it multiple times because we always say it backwards. But it's not me. It's you. I was like, dang, okay, break the blame cycle. hmm yeah that was the book that I actually I co-authored with my now husband wasn't husband at the time um and that was an interesting experience because as you're writing and you're really in it and again your your things are coming up and you're kind of processing and working through things we had this like shared google doc where we both be writing our parts and so to have to read the other person's perspective on the thing there was a lot of moments where we would have to be like, I think we're going to have to have another conversation about this.

45:07I thought this was a different, I thought we had kind of squashed this. Apparently we hadn't, you know, or whatever. So it's quite interesting. Yeah. And that one is really just like, we're both, both therapists, relational therapists. We do a lot of couples work as well. And I think it was just our way of saying, Hey, you guys, you're not broken. We're the same as you, even though we're therapists, doesn't matter. You know, these top, let's say 10 issues that you guys all struggle with, we do too. And so here's what that looks like. Here's some ways that we work with it. Here's some tools. And we've gotten a lot of feedback where people are like, oh, I'm so glad it's not just, it's not just me.

45:43You know, this is attachment differences and, you know, sex drive differences and just all of these things that we hear so frequently as couples therapists. It's like, yeah, we get it. And here's some ways to look at it.

45:54Vanessa Bennett:If someone's listening to this and what, what book would you recommend? You have two books. If someone's not going to go to therapy right now and they're, they're, they're just tapped out. They don't have the resources or the time, or maybe they're just not ready to deal with that. What do your books promote? Um, and what would be appropriate for different women? Yeah. I mean, it's not me. It's you is definitely a book where I've had people who have read it, who are not actually currently partnered and they've seen themselves a lot in their history and their past relationships, that relationship I think is really important to look at your patterns relationally and start to see how do you show up?

46:36Because often, very common, we tend to be drawn to like the opposite of us, right? So let's just use attachment. It's like if I'm a little bit more avoidantly attached, I'm gonna be drawn to the more anxiously attached, right? And vice versa. And so what that helps you do is because John and I, I and my husband usually embody the opposites. You get to read these two perspectives and say, oh, that's me. Oh, that's my partner, right? You see yourself in it and then you can start to understand it, be empathetic, break it down. Where is that coming from? And then there's actual tools in there, right?

47:08So it's a real like relationship-based book. The motherhood myth for sure is a bit of a departure because this is where I let like my depth kind of nerd go wild. this book was really coming on the heels of my kind of ego explosion coming into motherhood where I looked around and I was like this is bullshit like anybody else think this is like why is this so hard this is not what I was promised it would be and no one's talking about this you know and so it's a bit of there's a little bit of like an anthropological background in there I do a lot of like how did we get here deep diving helping us understand like why are we parenting alone in a house with one, maybe two adults when we were supposed to be parenting in a village of 20 adults that were capable of helping with our children, right?

47:57How did we get here? And it also helps us really understand, I think in particular in the West, a lot of the relational struggles that couples have once a child enters the picture. So the book is broken up into three sections. It's motherhood, sex, and relationships. But it's through the lens of parenting, right? But also I wouldn't say it's just from others. I've had a lot of men actually come to me and say, I'm really grateful I read your book. It's been really eye-opening for me, not only to see my partner or like, you know, my wife differently, but also to see my role in it and how I'm, you know, needing to show up differently.

48:35Vanessa Bennett:So in closing, as we wrap this up and we look at some take-home points for women, where do you start? And what would you recommend to wrap up this conversation? If there's clearly going to be questions, um, any advice that you would give to women that are, that are maybe feeling like we, we mentioned the first of the podcast that something maybe is, is off or something's been feathering and you're, you're, you're coming around to it slowly. What advice would you give for those women? Pay attention. Um, you know, again, do your best to involve some contemplative time. Um, again, even if that's, you know, doing the dishes, like I don't care where it is, but be with yourself, right?

49:21Carve out some very important time to be with yourself, to listen, to write, to journal, to just make sure that you are hearing yourself. Like, is that me or is that out there? Right. And starting to get clear on whose voice it is. And then I would say, you know, I mentioned this in the beginning and it was a practice that I did, but I've used with many clients is follow the breadcrumbs. So just start to pay attention to what brings you a sense of aliveness and lean into that. It doesn't have to make sense, right? So if this book or if this topic or if this workshop or if this person suddenly are just invigorating something in you, amazing.

50:03Lean into that. Let yourself kind of indulge in whatever that energy is without having to kind of put logic or reasoning on it and allow that to open that space in you, that aliveness space. And then that breadcrumb will inevitably, always does, lead to another breadcrumb, which leads to another breadcrumb. And this is kind of what I find almost like the path that starts to unfold back to ourselves is through connecting to that feeling of aliveness. And that might be, oh my God, it's this book. Like I should read this book. Or it could be like, oh, wow, I should check this author out or whatever.

50:39But whatever it is, don't question it. Just kind of allow it to have space. Love that. I do too. True. And it is controlling our self-talk an important part of the internal work too, the negative self-talk. Yeah. I mean, I would say be mindful even of using the word controlling it. Wow. Because when you just said controlling our negative self-talk, I had this image of like what we might say to a child, like cut it out. Right. Don't talk like that. And you know what we were talking about, about this idea of like, what is the symptom or quote symptom trying to say? I think there's actually an invitation in our self-talk to pay attention rather than try to like squash it or push it away.

51:24Vanessa Bennett:I feel like we just barely got into the beginning of this conversation. To be continued. We can do this again. Don't worry. To be continued. So Vanessa, where can women find you to learn more about your therapy as well as your book? Yeah, everything's on my website, vanessabennett.com. I'm mostly on Instagram, although I think like most people, I've got a love-hate relationship with social these days. So Instagram, Vanessa S. Bennett. And then yeah, on my website, you'll see all the things. So the book is there. I have a community. I have a coaching academy actually where I train in depth in spiritual psychology and all that jazz.

52:04It's all there. And you take clients still? I don't take that many. I do have a few in my practice. I find now it's more groups. Actually, I run in my private community. I run weekly groups around this exact topic and codependency recovery and a bunch of other things. So I'm more focused in the group realm right now, but I do take some clients and I actually have a group of depth oriented coaches as well as therapists that I've trained who work underneath me and I kind of oversee. And so I always tell people to reach out and kind of put an application in for coaching, because I can always pair you up with somebody who I know is going to be amazing and helpful.

52:43Vanessa Bennett:Well, thank you so much for your expertise and for opening my eyes for sure to this incredible conversation that I didn't even really know existed, maybe in different terminology, but such a deeper understanding. I'm really curious to keep learning more about it. So thank you so much, Vanessa, for your time today. Thank you, ladies. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a five-star rating and sharing the BodyPod with your friends.