Transcript:

Isha  0:01  

Welcome to Devotional Anarchy, a podcast about intimacy, attachment, sexuality, spirituality, self expression and other relational themes from a trauma responsive somatic energetic lens. And with the queer polyamorous twist, of course, I’m Isha Vela trauma, psychologist somatic intimacy Alchemist shadow doula love at our guest, intuitive channel and sovereignty coach. You’re here because you understand that integrating intimacy wounds build safety and trust within your body. And that safety and trust is what allows you to fully own and direct your erotic and creative life force in your relationships and purposeful work. My intention is for the conversations and tools shared in this podcast, to light a fire in your heart and under your magical ass while supporting you on your kinky human journey to owning all of yourself. Revolutionary Rompereglas, visionary leaders, mystical entrepreneurs. I’m realizing that in episode three of the season I defined intimacy wounds and how relational strategies form but then I never came back to tell you what exactly they were which, you know, what are the five intimacy wounds So, such as my brain, we are going to get into it today. And before we do, I want to let you know that I have three one on one mentorships available open to work with me through my program called legacy. And legacy is a nine month mentorship for social impact, mission driven and spiritual entrepreneurs, to unwind the deepest fear connected to our intimacy ones that get in the way of getting visible online, of clearly sharing your story and your truth. attracting clients that are energetically aligned and having a trusting relationship with money. It’s really about building safety and trust in your body. Always. I know that you have medicine with which to impact the world. And I want to support you in doing so with your full humanity intact, your nervous system regulated and your body open to receive wealth in all of its forms. And during our mentorship in the inner alchemy, right inner work, you’ll receive repeatable trauma responsive practices to regulate your nervous system through all of the bumps and challenges of mission led entrepreneurship because there are always bumps It’s like a It’s a spiritual journey, right. You’re going to deepen your, your connection to intuition and divine guidance, you’re going to establish energetic boundaries like a boss, you’re going to remove shadowy obstacles to receiving right because Shadow Work is part of the experience, it’s probably the deepest part of the experience. You’re gonna meet your fears with a tune. Compassionate really is not about getting rid of your fears or fucking your fears. It’s about getting really close to them and intimate with them and letting them ride shotgun in the seat next to you as you as your spirit or your intuition holds on to the wheel. And, again, creating safety and trust within your own energy system right at the base of your body at your root at your foundation. And it includes legacy includes 21 sessions with me where we’ll work on supporting the trauma healing process with pleasure and devotion. And there’s between session Voxer support. You also get membership to my online community revolutionary Trombetta glass where you have access to all of my online courses including fiercely expressed leader own your know, which is my course on energetic boundaries and sovereign, which is my 12 month course on healing intimacy wounds for energetic authority. And inside of the community, you also have access to additional support by a bi monthly group coaching calls a monthly Full Moon movement event called alchemize. And we have guest teachers and other teachings in the community. There’s a book club and everything. So get on a free 30 minute curiosity call to see if it’s an aligned fit for where you are right now in your entrepreneurial journey. And all the links are available in the show notes and I really look forward to connecting with you. So here we go. The five intimacy strategies and gifts associated with them. Hope you’re drinking some tea with me, I got my my my thing. So

the intimacy wounds and subsequent relational strategies I work with come from neuro affective relational models that focus on the attachment nervous system, as well as personality theory. So it takes from those two, two disciplines and then I combine that with somatic work that’s steeped in both Tantra and energy medicine using the human energy field so that those are sort of all of the influences that are coming in that really make up my I work. And to keep it really simple On this episode, I think of the framework I use as the INIA gram of intimacy. Right. So instead of having like 10, it’s collapsed into five. So the strategies are five. And it really, it helps simplify things. For me at least. And what’s really nice about this model is that it’s compact and simple. We all have, we have all five strategies, but we have different degrees of them. And we tend to, we tend to use, we tend to prefer rather, two or three of them. And, you know, I’ve been in I’ve been in situations or in sessions with people where I know that, you know, with my therapist, we were in a session once and I was in a state of overwhelm, which is usually when these when these strategies kick in. And I could see myself going through all five strategies, right, so we’re employ the favorite one. And then if that doesn’t work, we’ll employ the second favorite one, and then the third and the fourth, and the fifth. So we you know, these are these are ways that we manage fear and overwhelm our system. And it’s the framework, frankly, that I use to observe my myself in my relationship behaviors, and it helps me clean up any of the stray energetics in my relationship communication, whether it’s in my personal life, or my professional life, with integrity and self ownership, because it helps me get to the root of what’s getting activated in any interaction. So it’s a really, it’s basically like my, my meditation, you know, I go throughout my day, I have interactions with people, I’m noticing what’s arising. So that’s how I move through my day. And you can’t take responsibility for the energy you bring into relationships, if you’re not energy attuned, first of all, and if you don’t understand or can’t track your social nervous system. So if you want to learn more about how intimate intimacy wounds form, and how the relational strategies come in, as a consequence, then go back and listen to episode three, where I get into the interaction of intimacy in detail. And, you know, again, just so that we’re clear, you’re most likely to use the energetic strategies when your nervous system is in overwhelm when you’re stressed, or when you’re afraid. And when you you know, when you look at the nervous system, and I’m not gonna, you know, nerd out on the nervous system, I’m just going to be the most basic, when you look at the options, your nervous system has to respond to something or to react to something, there is fight, fight, fight, fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and free, right free being safe and social. The other four are all fear based. So there’s only one that’s not fear based. And I it’s just goes to show how primed, our nervous systems are for danger, like how it really is there to keep us safe, and not safe in the way that allows you to be fully expressing your creativity but safe like, like shut in safe, like not liberated, safe. So just wanting to add also that your nervous system holds a lot of different histories, right, it holds your personal trauma, both shock trauma, and these intimacy wounds, like the developmental trauma, as well as the trauma of your ancestors through epigenetics. Then there’s the collective trauma, right, which can be slavery, or genocide or colonialism, but then it also has the trauma of,

you know, coming of age or just being steeped in the energy of systems of disempowerment. Right? The conditioning of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, for example. So what I want to what I want to offer you and sharing that is that, you know, because we’re, we, the generation that’s alive now we are doing trauma healing that previous generations have not done. And, you know, we experienced so much. Maybe depression and anxiety and malaise and there’s so much shadow work happening right now, because this is all coming through ancestry like this is all like, we are carrying this on our backs, and we are the ones having to sort of wrangle with all of this, and so on. our nervous systems are spring loaded, spring loaded for fear. And becoming energy aware is being able to track your nervous system and your fear responses in your body. And that’s really, really important is the tracking peace, like becoming a nervous system ninja. And at the end, after sharing the five relational strategies, I will share how I practice it, how I practice it in my own body and how I teach it to people. So the first energetic relational strategy is to leave, it’s the leaving strategy. And in this strategy, there is a moving a way from other people, there’s a energetic fragmentation in the body. And it’s a little bit hard for me to talk about these things, because I experienced them energetically. And you know, there’s only so many words I could use to describe this process, or describe how I experienced them in my body, or how I see them happening and other people. So hopefully, you’re with me on that. So the developmental stage for this, this strategy is prenatal to six months. And I want to highlight the positive aspects and gifts of these strategies, because that’s really what it’s about, it’s like, we heal them, so that we so that the gifts can be expressed, right? So people in the leaving pattern or the leaving strategy, they’re very sensitive, sensitive to and aware of energy, their creative, playful, joyful, and sensitive, many empaths right, many empaths have the living strategy, many empaths get really overwhelmed by being in crowds of people, right. And some of the difficulties that people in the leaving strategy have is being fully embodied being grounded, people in the leaving strategy, have difficulty feeling their emotions, or allowing their emotions allowing themselves to be fully human, right, like allowing themselves to feel rage or anger, like the the emotions that are maybe more taboo. They tend to be up in their heads, and I say they but you know, I always mean, I, me, I have a lot of this believing strategy. So I know this really well, like I sort of like when I feel overwhelmed, I exit my body out of my left shoulder. And yeah, so we, you know, we leave energetically, we leave our bodies, we need to leave or escape a situation physically, sometimes we’ll leave a party, if we’re feeling overwhelmed, sometimes we limit the amount of contact, we shut other people out. And sometimes we leave energetically our own bodies. And so just in terms of of painting a picture of the environment, like, like the what the wound actually looks like. And this may be something that I share this because I want you to get it, I want you to get a feeling for it in your own body. So this, I want to say that this might have like a trigger warning to some for some people as you’re listening. So I want you to feel your feet on the ground. And I want you to take some, some extra breaths down into your hips, and maybe allow that breath to come into your feet. Hmm. I just kind of notice, notice what it feels like to receive some of this information into your system. So the typical parent maybe was ungrounded themselves. Maybe they were angry. Maybe they were hostile. Maybe they were ill and they couldn’t attune to the child.

Maybe they were insufficiently grounded. Maybe they were hospitalized for a long time. Maybe, you know you You came early. You were her. You were a preemie and you had to be in an incubator, like all of these situations can create this strategy, right? Because they create situations of fear and overwhelm. So the wounding is energetic and, and perhaps the environment or even the parent was perceived as hostile by the spirit or the child and the wholeness of the energy, right? Because we were all whole, the wholeness of the energy got scattered in lots of different directions and that’s why I say fragmentation is goes like, right? And that is what I would feel in my body. When I would walk into a party or a crowd of people my energy would go shatter like glass it was, it would just break apart. So the default emotion is fear. And there is a general doubt around the right to exist right around the physical existence and sometimes people in the Leaving strategy don’t take care of their bodies very well, they sort of deny their bodies, they find the experience of being human overwhelming, or they don’t know how to do it. Sometimes they feel like, I don’t even know how to do relationships, I don’t know how to like human, I don’t know how to human. Sometimes they feel like they might fall apart and go crazy because of the overwhelming emotions. And some, you know, because our, our nervous systems work in tandem with the ego, we have pattern thoughts that match what’s happening in our nervous system. So when our nervous systems get overwhelmed with, you know, in a certain in a specific way, sometimes in the leaving strategy, we have this pattern thought of, I don’t matter, or no one cares, right? So there’s the disappearing of the self. And so even in an entrepreneurial way that can show up as my work doesn’t matter. Or why say anything, because it doesn’t really matter if I say anything, or nobody really cares if I show up live today, on Instagram or not. Right. So that’s how it can sneak its way into how you show up in your business, how you show up in your relationship, right? Like, what does it matter if I share my feelings in this partnership, because they don’t care. So it’s like, it’s the pattern thought, and you could see how it plays out in each domain, right. So the task of the person in a leaving strategy is to practice embodiment, to integrate the scattered energy and to individuated as a human. Okay. And that can happen in lots of different ways that obviously movement, breath vocalization really allowing themselves to express the rage. I know that for me in this strategy, like, I didn’t want to be human, I didn’t even want to be here on earth for a while. And I really had to express my like, my disdain for humanity and my, like, anger for being put here, because that’s how I felt I was like I was put here on Earth. And I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here. So, so that’s a, you know, a way of like, moving the energy and, and like dry. Like, I remember the moment I dropped in, I was having this like, I was driving. And I had this grief response of like this feeling of I want to go home, I want to go home. And I knew that home was not here on Earth. And that’s when I felt myself finally drop into my pelvis. And I was like, weeping. And it was really a really profound experience. But anyway, moving on to the second relational strategy. Okay, so the second relational strategy is the merging strategy. Muscle, I love this strategy, because

so many people who are, you know, who are helpers in the world who are like spiritual entrepreneurs, or, like, mission driven people, or mission led people have this strategy. So I have a lot of respect for all of these. And for me, like, you know, when I talk about the wounds, I never, I never think of them as like pain points, I think of them as like, let’s, let’s uncover the gifts. So in the merging strategy, we move towards others, we tend to like want to blend with others, right, just like we want to merge. And the developmental stage is somewhere between six months to two years. And other people say birth to one year, like different people say different things about them, the developmental stage, but the positive aspects and gifts are that people in the merging strategy are caring, they’re nurturing, they’re loving, they have a great capacity for pleasure. And, and merging people are also really generous with their giving. And this is in a in a healed state, right in the healed state. They are able to give abundantly from a sense of fullness, because as I’m going to share with you in a moment, there is a the wound is of insufficiency and so in a healed state, they they feel sufficient and that that Abundance flows from their sense of sufficiency, their generosity flows from that place. And one thing that I want to say about the merging strategy that I really love is that, you know, I feel like a lot of people in the polyamory world have this pattern like they’re really like they’re such givers, and they are really able to To hold the space for multiple relationships, because they have so much to give. So I really think it’s a beautiful thing. So one thing people in the merging strategy might have some difficulty with is with needs really owning their needs, feeling their needs, expressing their needs. Some people and you may relate to this, you may have difficulty receiving, you can give really easily, right, but when you’re sick, and somebody offers to bring you soup, you’re, you know, it can be a little like, I don’t, I don’t want to make people feel obligated. Like there’s all sorts of like about it. So there’s a struggle in, in receiving in being held in accepting help, and digesting what you receive, like, when you receive a compliment, does it slip off of you like Teflon, or you are you able to really, really take it in.

So in the merging strategy, when we’re fearful or overwhelmed, we seek safety through merging and codependency and merging people tend to get into relationships where they’re the helper, or they’re being helped, right, it can go in either direction. And in this sort of home environment, how the wound forms is that the typical parent situation was maybe, you know, intentionally intentionally depriving, which is not usually the case. But, you know, maybe they were like limited in terms of what they were able to give. And so the child, you remained sort of deprived. Maybe the parent was ill and was limited in their giving in that way. Maybe they were just neglectful because they had mental health issues. Maybe they were absent, you know, for lots of different reasons. It could be work, it could be, maybe they were imprisoned, maybe, you know, maybe they were in the army, like it could be lots of different things. Doesn’t need to be intentional. And my my intention here is never to blame the parents because I certainly am not a perfect parent, and I wound my children for sure. So the wound here in the merging strategy is it’s physical, and interpersonal. So it’s, it’s, it’s relational, for sure, all of them are relational, relational, but this one in particular, because there is like a physical deprivation, like the child did not get full. The child did not receive enough nurturance and love. And the effect of the wound is that, like, there’s a sense of insufficiency in the body, like there’s just like, not enough, it, there’s a there’s this feeling of emptiness. And maybe there’s a neediness, that’s like, covered up sometimes the person feels their need a lot, and they’re self conscious about it. And sometimes that need is kind of buried and comes out sideways, which is sort of more of a shadowy kind of situation. And in the merging strategy, there’s like a trigger, the activation is deprivation. And so when that deprivation gets gets activated, there can be an overindulgence in substances, right whether it’s foods, food, drugs, shopping screentime in an attempt to fill up drinking even and sometimes merging people project their own needs onto other people and they identify as the giver while denying their own needs that was that was me I used to do that so as to be like, Oh, those people need help that person needs help but when it is like what do I need I don’t need anything I’m fine. Like I’m I’m good and so there was always the that person is needy that person needs that person because I needed to feel like valuable and and useful that was the way I got my ego filled up. So there’s this this illusion around if I need I will be abandoned because the experience of the child is of of the needs having been too much for the parents so the parent is Lana like oh, they get overwhelmed the child feels abandoned in that overwhelm. So there’s a shame around needing and I and I get the question a lot of like is are these needs legitimate is okay for me to need? Right? So there’s a doubt around around your right to need like that you are that you are human and you have needs and and the right to have like to have to really like take in digest, ingest and digest. So there’s a fear of abandonment, rejection, deprivation, and there’s a fear of not having enough of anything. And so again, how that plays out Obviously, you can see how that plays out personally. But it also plays out professionally. Like, if you feel like there’s not enough, there’s not enough money, there’s not enough time, there’s not enough clients, this is something that is living in you, it doesn’t actually reflect reality, sometimes, like, the reality is that you are like, it is sufficient, you have enough, but you don’t feel like you have enough because that’s not the reality that you’re experiencing inside of your body. So, again, you can see how there’s this, this feeling of scarcity can drive you to do things in your business, perhaps that, that maybe aren’t the most aligned choices. But if you’re not aware of the the insufficiency that you’re carrying within you, then you can’t attune to it, and you can’t do anything about it. So and

the, you know, for the, for the merging strategy, the healing is really about filling up with their own love. And I love working with merging people because the energy, so goes outward, there’s such an attuned, attunement to what’s happening externally, they’re externally referenced about like this person’s needing this person needing or, or even like, this is the person who needs help in my business, right? Like even even that the mission being led by mission also has you going outward, but sometimes like, we create businesses, out of our own needs out of out of like what we didn’t get. And so that’s part of the healing of the merging is really like creating something that helps others in the ways that maybe we didn’t get but then we also have, the second part of that equation is that we also have to allow ourselves to receive in it, we have to allow ourselves to receive the fruits of this business that we’re creating, or the relationship that we’ve that we’ve cultivated. And in the merging strategy, it’s such a beautiful experience to have that energy that is so quickly directed out, to have that turned inward, to have the strength of that powerful, powerful love and generous love to be turned inward on the self, I find that to be so so amazing. And that is the healing to recognize that there is enough love. There is not just enough, but that is abundant, and that that you can get filled up in your body. And I’ll never forget the session I had with my energy teacher where it was the first time that I felt filled up in my body. And I will never forget it because I referenced that moment all the time as like my new reality. When I feel like I’m in that place of insufficiency I was like no, actually, that’s not, that’s not real, I have an experience of sufficiency to counteract that pattern thought. Okay, so the third, energetic relational strategy is the enduring strategy. In this energy, there’s like the, the energy goes in and down. Right. So it’s like, it’s pulled back into the back body, and it’s pressed down towards the ground. So as you can imagine, or as you can even maybe feel, as I’m talking about this is that it’s very buried. It’s very hidden. But the positive aspect are the gifts of the enduring strategy is that people in the enduring pattern are really, really grounded. They have a ton of stamina, they are steady, they are patient, they have a long patience, and they’re very diplomatic. So they are you want them around to support people like that, I think of them as like, like the trunk of a tree, like deeply rooted and very, very strong. And what they have difficulty with is, with expressing themselves with taking action, claiming their space, right, because it’s so hidden expression feels super risky. And they seek safety through hiding the authentic self deep, deep deep inside them and resisting other people. Right, they, people in the injuring strategy tend to turn their will against themselves. And this is sort of typically what we call sabotage, or self sabotage. I think I want to be kind when I say that, that is really it is a nervous system experience of limitation. It’s like a very narrow range of expression. And so when there’s a bigger effort to express there’s a there’s a pulling back. So in the in the typical home environment The there was perhaps a parent who was intrusive think about a helicopter parent, or a parent who was dominating, who was authoritarian who really didn’t allow you or the child to be expressed to allow them to have their no right to have them, to let them be who they are, essentially. And this one is also interpersonal, the child, or you may have felt invaded, humiliated or punished simply for expressing their autonomy. Right? Very simple. There’s a, you know, for example, it could be something as simple as,

you know, when when a parent is feeding their child, and the child doesn’t want to eat it. The parent says, oh, eat it for Mommy, you did for mommy. And so the child because they don’t want to lose their parents love, they eat the food. And so they, they, they have a no, they don’t want to eat it. But then they swallow that No, literally, because they don’t want to lose the love of the parent. So this is, again, a stupid, simple example. But then when you multiply that by 1000, right over the over the course of, you know, ages zero to six, or something, or, you know, beyond that, obviously, because you live with your parents much longer than that, you can see how this can really solidify in the body energetically and even physically. So the effect of the wound is that the child or you can’t control their own body or their own space, right, because they feel invaded. They fear self expression and taking action because they don’t trust themselves. So they resist, they survived by resisting and hiding. And there’s this like, because they’re no wasn’t fully honored. They often say no, in a way that is passive aggressive, that is, like, hidden. And they often feel caught externally, right, they have like a, they feel like, oh, I have to work I have, they feel obligated to do things, they feel like they they’re pushed to do things. But the double bind is actually internal, right? Because they’re, they’re pushing down or they’re pushing themselves. They’re negating themselves in some way. And oftentimes, the people in the enduring strategy, they think that they’re, they’re trying to please people, like, I’m trying to please you, and I’m trying to please you, and then they feel angry, because then they feel resentment, because they’re not honoring their authentic self, their authentic expression, but they feel guilty when they do. And they doubt their right to be autonomous. So they seek approval. And they, they also fear being invaded again, they fear being humiliated, or they fear being controlled. So the way the ego tends to, tends to play like they tend to read, read people trying to control them, when that’s not necessarily what’s happening. Or there’s a feeling of having to hold it. All. Right. And so there’s, you know, in, in the personal life that can be like, you know, your relationship with work for perhaps, maybe you feel like you have to hold it all at work, or maybe you feel like you can’t express yourself freely at work. And then you are resentful. But it really is about approving, you’re approving of yourself, right. So the task for the enduring, the person in the enduring strategy is really to move their physical body literally, just to move it in a way that is free in a way that isn’t like following some sort of script, to express yourself, express themselves physically, maybe it is artistically and then acting from their own will acting from their desire acting, or acting from their impulse honoring their impulses, right? Because their impulses were were squashed, were held. Okay, I’m going to get another drink of tea. And then we’re going to hit the last two. So the fourth, relational, energetic relational strategy is the challenging strategy. And then this energy, this energy pulls up from the legs and hips into the chest and head. So and there’s also an outward movement of that energy right where there’s like, through the eyes, pulls up from the legs and the hips into the chest and head and out through the eyes. So this developmental stages around two and a half to four years and the positive aspects and gifts of The strategy is that people in the Challenger strategy, they have big energy, they have a powerful will they have a lot of charisma, you know, people, people tend to think of them as natural leaders, because they’re really courageous, they’re mentally strong, they’re competent, they’re resourceful.

But they also have difficulty with trusting other people, they have some difficulty containing themselves, because they tend to take up a lot of space sometimes. And they seek safety through power, right, they value power, they sometimes use power over, we all do this sometimes. And they reject their own needs, they reject their vulnerability. So they tend to idealize power, like I said, and they tend to dominate others. And we’ve seen, you know, I’m sure that you’ve had someone at work that has been in this, like, we all have had that boss that was domineering, or that was controlling. And, you know, truthfully, when you think about the home environment of this, of this pattern, or how this pattern forms is that one parent was seductive, meaning that they made the child feel special, really cared for, and maybe there was like a, maybe an incestuous emotionally incestuous relationship there. And then the other parent, usually, same sex parent, although I’m not really like, I don’t do the whole gender sex thing. The other parent was authoritarian. So they, they cut the child down, or they expected them to be more than who they were, they, you know, this is often a product of narcissistic parenting, right. So the wounding is deeply interpersonal, again. And what I want you to appreciate is that, you know, during a time of intense vulnerability, this child was left alone, this child did not have someone to support them. And so they had to will themselves to survive, they had to really go inward and pull from those inner resources. And so that is actually what helps them be so courageous is that they had to bury their fear, they had to resource from within, which is what they then use to sort of navigate these, you know, these, these scary situations, they’re just like, No, we’re gonna do this. And so in that way, they can be leaders, but their task is also to be a leader, with vulnerability by, by with humility, you know, so they feel powerful, but they’re also alone. They fear their vulnerability, they fear being betrayed, it’s like a huge one, right? And so they cut off, or they deny their own needs, and sometimes they act aggressively. Sometimes it comes out in an aggressive way. And so the, the illusion that they’re in is like, it’s just a matter of will, like, they just like, they throw their will into it, and they’re just like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do it the way I want to do it, when I want to do it, right, they really go from that place, instead of surrendering to what is or surrendering to life circumstances, perhaps, you know, and we see this, like, we see this all over in in leadership, we see all types of leaders who are who are leading from a challenger strategy, who are not doing their healing work, and who use power over dynamics, who are aggressive, right, and are not connected to their hearts and not connected to their own vulnerability, which, again, if you’re not connected to your own vulnerability, you can’t connect to other people’s vulnerability, right, you’re not going to be really tuned into them. So the default emotion is anger. And there’s a fear of trusting others, there’s a doubt around their own capacity to feel safe in their bodies, right, which is always like, why the energy is coming out of the eyes, they’re scanning their environment, because they see yourself. They they fear being betrayed. They feel weakness, they fear being dominated, they fear betrayal. And they have really difficulty trusting and letting go. So some of the ways that the thought patterns can go is like I can and I will, or my way or you’re not enough, right? This is like when we get into this critical, critical place. And sometimes we turn it on ourselves, right? We are critical with ourselves. We demand that we do better that we that we’re not enough, right that we do more. So this can be an internal experience, as well as an external experience with our partners, right? We let our partners know that they’re not enough. They’re not doing it. Right. And, yeah, and so, so that’s how it plays out in the personal sphere. You know, and we’ve certainly seen how it plays up out in the entrepreneurial space where you know, Maybe you’re you’re the CEO of your business, and you have,

you have people that you work with, and you want them to do things your way, and they’re not doing it and you get angry when they don’t. And, you know, all of these little, all of these nuances. So on to the fifth and last, energetic relational strategy, and that is the rigid strategy. So in this strategy, the energy is constricted. So I’m doing this with my hands sort of like fronting my hand, because I want you to imagine that, you know, if energy is freely expressed, it’s sort of like imagine it sort of as a spark, right, almost like a star shaped spark. And in the rigid strategy, I want you to imagine that the points of that star are pulled in and constricted within a mesh, like, like a metal mesh, egg shape. So right, all the points of the stars are really sort of pulled in and constricted. That’s how I see it. So the developmental stage of this strategy is between three and a half and five years. And so the positive aspects and gifts of this strategy is that no people in the rigid strategy really appreciate beauty. They create order, form and structure in everything that they do. So they really have an appreciate for appreciation for the law, for example, or for rules are their high achievers. And they’re highly functional people. I call this the wound of white supremacy. And I don’t mean that in a joking way, I mean that in like, like a real, like, there’s a heart pelvic split. And because we grew up, we all grow up in the soup of white supremacy. The rigid strategy is the one that is the most, let’s say, popular, the one that is most widespread, the one that we really all have, like, no matter what, no matter what, what race you are, we all have the rigid strategy. There is, you know, the difficulty with people in the rigid is that there’s a fear of feeling the emotions all the way fear of feeling, a fear of trusting yourself, and like, don’t we all lack trust in ourselves at some time. And we seek safety through containing ourselves correcting ourselves, we cut off our spontaneous expression, right? We control our experiences by referencing the rules instead of ourselves, like, we’re say, like, Is this appropriate? Is this Can I do this is this right? So in that way, we really don’t trust our, our, our spontaneous humanity to be expressed. And, you know, again, thinking about this in a business context, you know, I think about, like, showing up on video, for example, we don’t allow ourselves to, to make mistakes, or we, you know, we make a blunder. And then we’d like to do the video over again, or we don’t want to show that we don’t know something, we want to look professional, right. So we, we rigidify, how how we show up. And it becomes sort of in the process to become less relatable, less human. So the typical parent in the home environment was maybe rule bound, and valued function over feelings. This is, you know, an example of someone, a child who was maybe like praised, not for who they were, but for what they did, how they performed, whether the performance was helping or whether the performance was piano or whether the performance was school or, you know, academics, things like that. But this pattern can also arise from the opposite extreme, I went out to want to say opposite, just a different scenario. One of chaos, like people who grew up in,

in households where there was a lot of mental illness, for example, or where there’s just a chaotic environment where there was little structure and very little emotional safety. Like the way that the child then copes with that chaos is to contain their own internal chaos by by locking it up by rigid defying. So that’s also another way conform. So the wound is intrapersonal, but it’s also spiritual. So the child was taught to ignore or distress their inner experiences. Maybe there were gaslit right, and to trust only outer rules and forms as a point of reference. So the effect of the wound is like this fear of the internet Experience and this this a strong disconnection from intuition. There’s a fear of losing control, if you feel your emotions, so there’s a feeling there’s a need to intellectualize. And they emphasize though, that’s this order. And this correctness, this performance and achieving, and the illusion, their, their false belief is that they are their performance. They don’t really trust that they, that who they are, is really like the medicine. So the default emotion is criticism, judgment, blame. The there’s this feeling of like, something’s not right, I’m not right, you’re not right. So there’s, there’s always looking looking for the gap looking for what’s missing. And there, they doubt their own right to feel their emotions, the the right to trust themselves, they fear chaos and disorder, they fear their own imperfection. So there’s a they fear criticism. So they, they limit that they, they get into perfectionism. And there’s the, again, the fear of surrendering to feelings. So the patterned thought is something is wrong, someone is to blame, right. And their task, their spiritual part of their healing task is to feel and value their own inner experience. And so what I want to say, around these five, these five wounds, and the strategies and the gifts is that these are constantly moving in your system. They’re constantly moving. And most of our struggles with intimacy in our personal lives and in our businesses traces back to either collective trauma, or these intimacy wounds. And if you can identify the narrative of the pattern thoughts, or the story connected to whatever fears coming up, or the hurt, you can decide how you want to respond to them. So these come out mostly during stress and overwhelm, right when our nervous systems are regulated, then we’re not as susceptible to them. But when we’re stressed, it’s harder for us to observe them, it’s easier for us to get caught up in them, it’s harder for us to slow down. So that the key is to track them to track them like a skilled Dom, tracks or sub. So remember that your nervous system is always always always tracking for safety, right, your nervous system is like the quiet hum in the background of all of your experiences, all of your interactions. And so you really have to be able to slow down and tune in to that nervous system channel, so to speak, to be able to listen to what’s happening, and where you’re feeling the fear in your body. And what about. So when I get activated, which I do get activated quite a bit, not as often as I used to, and definitely not as intensely.

I use embodied relational presencing to get clear as to what’s happening and also to, to meet whatever part is getting activated. So it begins with sort of that curiosity like, Okay, I’m feeling activated, instead of like going out there and like aiming for the kill. I get curious as to what’s happening inside, it’s kind of like, Ah, okay, let me go inward. And so I take some breath, I breathe space, to the place in my body where I feel the activation. And I begin this process of compassionate self inquiry of really asking, like, what is it that I need right now? And really listening to that body part, or listening to the activation to see what it needs? How it wants me to respond? And then I take aligned action, I respond based on what came, right, what came in through the listening. So basically, you’re tracking fear and you turn inward, you notice the activation and the charge in your body? And you ask, what’s the fear? Like, what am I right? What am I reacting to, and you turn towards it from the space of of a tuned presence, like really creating the space to feel the need underneath the fear. So oftentimes, we usually meet fear with avoidance because feeling fear and it’s and distilled form is so fucking uncomfortable. It is so incredibly uncomfortable. But paradoxically, when we’re able to tune into the fear or attune to it, it tends to dissolve and we don’t need to feel all of the fear all at once, but we can feel a little bit of fear and your nervous system settles when we’re able to meet the fear when we are able to acknowledge it and not have it take over our whole experience but allow it again, like I said at the beginning of the podcast, to to sit next to you in the passenger seat while while your higher self or your mission driven self is at the wheel. So I really hope this was helpful. I really welcome your questions because I these five strategies are so integrated into my body in terms of like the knowledge of them. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m sharing enough, but it’s really so, so much more complex than what I’m able to really offer you in a podcast. And this is a longer one, this time the longer episode. So I really wanted to limit it. But there’s so much more that goes into the experience of these ones. This was just the tip of the iceberg. All right, love you. See you next time. Thank you for listening to today’s episode. Remember to hit the subscribe button to get notified of new episodes dropping on the new and full moons of each month. And if you haven’t already, leave us a five star review on iTunes to make sure that everyone who needs this transmission receives it. Until the next episode I’m sending you fierce fierce love.