Turn Your Painful Past Into Your Powerful Future | Katherine Woodward Thomas

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:12First, you have to identify, okay, I'm saying over and over again that no one loves me, that I'm always left behind, or I'm not enough, or I don't matter, or whatever one of these beliefs is. I'm a burden. I'm bad. I'm wrong. All these things. First, what I'm hearing you say is learning to identify of what's keeping us playing small from these feelings, and then figuring out How do we break free of each one that we identify with, which is really hard if you don't have the tools? Well, and I think people have been trying to do it for years. I mean, I became a psychotherapist kind of from the inside out only because I was so committed to breaking free of my own unconscious false beliefs.

0:55I actually call them source fracture stories, the original break in belonging, right? The original wounding. and that I went to therapy for years. And yes, it helped. Oh my gosh, it saved my life actually, really, because I was a compulsive overeater. I had an addiction that was severe. I was non-functional. So therapy really helped. Overeater, is that what you said? Yeah, overeater. I was a binge eater when I was in my early teens and early 20s. It was out of control. I was even unemployable. So it kind of was a great thing, really, because it forced me to do my own work. I couldn't progress in life unless I handled that.

1:35So I went to therapy. I went to 12-step programs. I did all sorts of things to try and heal it. Now, it helps to go back. You've got to grieve. You've got to see what happened. You have to understand it. But after that, if you just stay stuck in analyzing why you are the way you are, which I did for years because that was all that was really available, you kind of solidify the self of that story. Yeah. You stay stuck in the past as your identity, right? It's like you're staying in it rather than integrating the healing and transforming beyond it and creating a new story. Well, what we focus on grows.

2:15Yes. So if you're constantly, oh, there it is again. I'm not, oh, it's because my father and oh, it's because my mother. Actually, it is because your father, it is because of what happened and how you interpreted that. And, you know, and then it's how you started to show up. This is another piece of it. how we are the source of our own experience. So in the I'm not good enough, what we tend to do is we over-function, we over-give, we do, do, do, do. That was me for a long time. Which then... Achieve, accomplish, or whatever it is, yeah. Well, and you start over-functioning with other people so that they start under-functioning.

2:52Yes. So in a way, you're training people that your time is not as valuable as theirs. You're not really as good as them. You're more subservient to them. This is how we then enroll a relational field that validates that story. Yes. Because self is not a solo phenomenon. Self is relational. Yeah. And so what's happening for most of us is that we're working on our issues, but we keep going back to the past. And what happens where we get stuck is that we get victimized by our own imprinting now. Right now my father was this way and now this is how I am and I can't get out of it. And we get mad at ourselves and we don't know how to figure out to reprogram ourselves.

3:41So we keep going backwards to do it. I did this for well over a decade until I finally figured out when I was like around 40. And I'd been working on myself since my early 20s. It's a long time to be swimming and analyzing why I am the way that I am and then going to school to help other people analyze why they are the way they are. It's the future that actually pulls us forward. So understanding the past is a good thing, but staying there is not, is what I'm hearing you say. That is true. It will save your life, but it won't change your life. Interesting. So we can't just bypass the past and just say, oh, I'm not going to think about it.

4:23I'm just going to only focus on the future. It's almost like we need to heal the memories of the past, make sense and meaning of them, but then say, okay, that is a different chapter of my life. And I'm creating a new chapter with a new vision. And I don't have to be stuck in that belief anymore. But I will tell you, I have a new form of psychotherapy that I've developed. And I have a group of therapists. We've been working on this together. you can actually bring a positive possible future into your preliminary work on healing the past. Right. So in other words, it's like, I know you have a big destiny.

5:01And I know that your life has been really handicapped by this history that you have with trauma. The commitment is, the context of our work is, within two years, you're going to be standing on that stage. or you're going to be in that happy relationship. Let's get to work and clear that now so that the context is still the future because the future, what you initiate with the future is development. Who will I need to be in order to manifest and sustain that future? You don't necessarily initiate development in just healing the past. You look at it, you feel it, you grieve it. You know, you learn how to regulate yourself.

5:45it's not necessarily developmental in, you know, and most of us can't actualize our potential yet because in being stuck in past trauma, we were actually missing certain skills and capacities that would allow us to create something other than the patterns we feel stuck in. It's probably hard to think of a, a beautiful possible future if we're stuck in past trauma as well. It's probably hard to. It is. step into it for always have something kind of dragging us back or weighing us down emotionally. Yeah. It's, you know, I don't know. It's going to be like in fight or flight trying to accomplish.

6:25Well, you're in non-possibility. And by that time, living in the story of I'm invisible because you had a narcissistic parent who punished you every time you, you know, dared speak your truth or shamed you, you know, inside of the I'm invisible, what's underdeveloped is the capacity to even recognize your own feelings or your own needs, and then to be able to bring that forth to others and negotiate those needs with the assumption that other people might actually care about those needs if you brought them forward. That's like a whole new concept to someone with invisibility, because the invisibility projection onto others is that other people don't really care about my feelings and needs, so why would I have it to them?

7:08Yeah, because every time I try to talk, they shut me down, or they don't pay attention, or It's the interpretation of what happens in relationship to others, right? Yes. And then there's a deeper level of complexity. I'm going to bring it all in because you have such a great audience who's following you and knows all this stuff already. But if you're in and on invisible and you know that you need to speak up and tell your truth, what you might not know is that you're speaking through the filter of other people don't really care about me and other people are selfish. if you ask somebody for what you need through the filter of other people don't care about me you're gonna it's gonna come out like well i want a glass of water too you know as opposed to hey honey would you get me a glass of water right right right which then makes people defensive and we'll get your own right which that's how we're generating our own experience through the consciousness that we're centered in yeah and you used a word earlier about enrolling people we're enrolling people in our relationship on how we show up and how we communicate based on an interpretation of our past and based on our beliefs.

8:13Yeah. Globalizing that. This happens a lot with I'm not safe. People feel I'm not safe. You know, so they're going into their close relationships like this. Okay. Prove yourself. Right. Right. Because the projection onto others from the I'm not safe is others have ill intent. Others are going to hurt me. So this is where you get love avoidance behavior, people crazy making, destabilizing, in, out, push, pull, long distance, you know, all that stuff, trying to manage how you can have love, but not have commitment, not have anybody too close to you because people will hurt you. So in order to really evolve beyond something like love addiction or love avoidance, you really have to get to the root of it, which is this is the core belief.

9:02How old is that part of me? You have to differentiate your wise self from your wounded self. Usually when we get triggered, the wounded self is in charge and running the show. Yeah. Right. So we have to learn how to hold and contain our own younger selves that were wounded with deep compassion, presence, love, but get that little baby buckled up in the backseat of the car and not driving the car. That's got to be so hard. I mean, it was so hard for me for so many years to figure out how do I have a wise self in me when my wounds are running my life? Yeah. And it's so hard to like, when you feel like you're suffocating because one of these beliefs is just feels so true to you.

9:51I'm not enough. People don't listen to me. I'm wrong. I'm whatever it is. If you're just like, this is true to my core. Yeah. Your wounds are running your life, not the wise version of yourself. Right. Not like this, you know, 10 year in the future version of you that's had all the experience. experience, it was so hard for me and it's so hard for I think a lot of people to breathe and not feel some type of tension in their nervous system or clenching in their throat or pain in their stomach or fear or anxiety around how is someone going to respond to me or react to me if I don't do X, Y, or Z.

10:31It's such a fear if you haven't grown up with the experience of having a safe environment emotionally, I guess. So what's the process from identifying, okay, I know something is off in my life and I feel anxious sometimes. I feel avoidant. I have these patterns and relationships. Once someone is able to identify that and they know they want a greater future, they want to be able to create something more beautiful in their life. What is the process afterwards to start healing and start leading with their wise self rather than the wound itself? Yeah, beautiful question. Okay. So in the seven steps of moving beyond your painful past, where we begin is with a positive possible future.

11:18Now, I'm not talking about a goal. Because goals are kind of like, to me, and this is my definition. So, you know, people could argue with me. But to me, a goal is like the best possible situation that you could imagine, given who you are and your resources. Like what's the best outcome that could possibly be predicted here? When I talk about intention, I'm talking about let's get right to the gold. Let's get outside of your current identity. Because the I'm not good enough is not going to think big enough. And the truth is that what's coded in our souls is so much grander. I mean, this is what you're waking up in people.

12:00It's why people love you. School of greatness. School of greatness. It's not the school of average. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or school of best you could think you could be. Oh, yes. It's school of greatness. Like what is that seed of greatness? Even if you have no evidence, what did you come here to create? What were you born for? Let's go. Yeah, let's go. So somebody's hungry for love. I don't want you just dating better people. I want you to go for the gold. Even though you've always had crappy relationships, go for the highest and the best. Go for like a Lewis and Martha situation. You know what I'm saying?

12:33Or with finances. So, you know, whatever it is, your career, your self-expression, your artistry, your music, whatever it is that you have in you.

12:51I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you wanna make it easier, you wanna make it flow, you wanna feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is gonna help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following. And thank you for listening to this episode of The Daily Motivation Show.

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