THE ACCRESCENT™ PODCAST EPISODE 136

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Welcome to The Accrescent Podcast. I’m Leigh Ann. This podcast is an extension of my personal philosophy and commitment to continual growth in all areas of life. I firmly believe that optimal health comes from addressing all areas of us as human beings, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Through expert interviews, I hope to both inspire and enable you to create sustained change in your own life. Thank you so much for tuning in and enjoy.

Happy Friday, everyone. Happy belated 4th of July for those who are in the States. This is such a special episode today because I am having a one-on-one conversation with a client of mine, and we do such a deep dive into the patterns that she really wanted to start to clear out and how over the course of four EVOX sessions, so literally just a month, how many things shifted for her.

I am so excited about this because as I said, we kind of go through it with a fine tooth comb and I think it hopefully will continue to make it more and more clear for all of you what EVOX is and how it can really help your day-to-day life in so many different ways. Before we jump into that, I just wanna quickly share or reiterate a couple of announcements.

First of all, last week was an amazing, an amazing week for me. On a personal note, I think even on a career note, because I was a guest speaker on Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy’s show Cancer Conversations. We talked, we dove into my cancer story. We talked a lot about the treatments and the tests that I did there at the cancer center, and I will include a link to that conversation.

It is a video, so you can watch the full video conversation of that. We also did a q and a about 20 minutes of q and a at the end that I think is really interesting and worth tuning into a little bit. But then on Friday, I released my interview with Dr. Connealy on my podcast, which hopefully many of you have already tuned into.

As I said at the start of that conversation, I really do think. That that was a conversation with Dr. Connealy that not a lot of hosts are having with her getting to talk about how I really believe my emotional, you know, my early childhood trauma was one of the biggest root causes to the turbulence, to the dis-ease, and ultimately to my disease.

And clearing out and starting to clear out that trauma was, had absolutely the biggest impact on my health of anything I’ve ever done. So it’s such a unique, and I really do believe such an impactful conversation. If you have or you know, someone who has cancer, please consider sending it along, cuz I just think it can be so, so impactful.

But even outside of cancer, emotional turbulence, emotional dis-ease can be affecting us in so many different ways. One of the things that came up in today’s conversation, which you’ll hear in just a second, is how this client was experiencing so many physical sym symptoms i b s. Doctors thought she might have lupus, and after a few sessions of EVOX, so many of her physical symptoms started to clear, really, really impactful.

The last thing is I’ll share is I was also a guest on another podcast that went live this week, the Learning to Glow podcast with Jess. She is another local small business owner. We had an amazing conversation all about EVOX. So again, if for any who are listening who want to just continue to learn what is EVOX, how can it help me, what’s the technology?

I will also link all three of those episodes down below the Cancer Conversation, my podcast with Dr. Connealy, as well as my podcast episode on the Simply Learning to Glow with Jess. Thank you so much for being here. I cannot wait for you all to hear this client conversation, so let’s get right into it.

Okay. Well welcome to The Accrescent. This is so fun to have you on today. I’m so excited. So we’re gonna be talking about, what I love about these client conversation episodes is it’s a really great chance to dive in a little bit deeper into just some of the different ways that Evox has impacted your life in a positive way.

And I know we’ll get into this a bit more, but I think this is really helpful to do it in this vocal format because what I find so often with clients is we always come in with one really clear topic in mind. Maybe it’s anger, maybe it’s anxiety. Mm-hmm. Maybe it’s certain patterns we’re trying to break, but every single client always comes back and reports that that issue got better and also all these other things in their life improved as well.

But that’s like really hard I think sometimes to type out it, it gets really lengthy. Yeah. And just like a written testimonial. So that’s what I love. About this opportunity that this platform really presents for us. But just thank you so much for being here and being willing to share a little bit with us of your

Client: journey.

Yeah. I’m so

Leigh Ann Lindsey: excited. So to start, I think as you know, as we both know, we hit a variety of different topics. Mm-hmm. So I’ll let you kind of take the lead of which topic that you came in for and that we worked through. Do you, would you wanna start with first kind of sharing?

Client: Yeah. So before doing I, we did like, uh, four rounds of sessions, like on this topic.

And before this, I had done EVOX before on different things, but I really wanted to focus on a whole month of the notion that I did not really have any self-discipline. I started noticing, especially post-grad, I just graduated from college that I. I have such a hard time completing tasks. I’ve been having a hard time completing tasks for the past four years, and every time I’m about to commit to something, I immediately almost kind of generate like disappointment for myself and I just don’t finish what I wanna do.

And I went into evox thinking like, oh yeah, like this is just not my personality and I’m just gonna get it fixed, and just something going on in my brain. Mm-hmm. But it ended up being so much more deep than that. And it wasn’t just about these, like on the surface events happening, my life, it was stuff that was so, so rooted in my self-confidence and in my trust in myself.

Mm-hmm. And towards the, probably the middle of doing those EVOX sessions weekly, I realized the self-discipline wasn’t about having. Oh, not grit and determination. Yeah. It wasn’t, and willpower wasn’t, I thought I was lazy. Mm-hmm. Like, I thought I was so lazy and it ended up not being about motivation at all.

It ended up being, oh, I just don’t trust myself. Like, I don’t have like a concrete baseline of trust for the things that I do or the things I wanna be in, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: And then, so let’s puzzle this out a little bit, which is exactly what we did in the sessions. Yeah. But really what came out of that work was, I think it was really twofold, and we can dive into each of these a bit more.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. One was my present day relationship with myself. Mm-hmm. And I think because I had had maybe a, a number of years of not following through on things and maybe some low level self-sabotage, it was like my inner trust with myself of I trust that I’m gonna follow through, I trust that I’m gonna do what I need to do to get these things done, et cetera.

That was shaky within us. Yeah. Yeah. But then that’s like present day where we’re at. Mm-hmm. And as you know, a big part of what we do and what we did was map out Okay, where did that pattern come from? Yeah, yeah. And as you recall, that took us back to childhood. And I think more specifically, we were, we were talking more about your relationship with your father.

Yeah, yeah. If you wanna say more to that and then We’ll, I’ll, I’ll highlight here and there.

Client: Some of the things, yeah. So as we were kind of puzzling it out as we do, um, I was kind of, I was like, okay, where, where did this pattern even come from? Because, In terms of like my own success, I’ve always been very academic.

I was always like, I was a straight A student. I was super on top of my thing. So like, it, it never affected my school. It was always having to do with my self-esteem or having to just, uh, accomplish things in like my career, my personal life. And I noticed that this pattern all started back when I was a kid because my father had a pattern of false promises.

Um, not even just to me but to himself. And I would observe that over the course of 18 years. And I noticed that every time he said that he was gonna do something for himself or he was gonna go to school again, or he was gonna complete this, he never would complete it. And when I would ask about it, he’d be like, oh, you know, it, it fell through and, and concurrently when we would do things together or when we had planned to do things together, I should say it would also fall through.

So I kind of grew up with this pattern of. It’s okay for like, for things to fall through and it is okay for things to fall through, but I was shown that pattern so much that I never even really got an opportunity to like learn what it means to really follow through for yourself. Mm-hmm. And to see that satisfaction and to see what that success looks like.

And I think a lot of that, when I look back, it makes a lot of sense that, you know, I was really scatterbrained as a kid and I would procrastinated a lot and I was never good at like doing hobbies consistently. Like I would join an art class and that would go on for like four months and then I would stop, like it was.

Mm-hmm. It was so present in my life and it’s so wild to think that I, I didn’t really connect the dots until now. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. And a couple things I really wanna point out there. One is this. This false promises, this not following through on things this like hyping something up and maybe tip like dipping our toe into it and then kind of forgetting about it.

Yeah. That’s just what was modeled to you. Mm-hmm. So your little brain just starts to go, oh, I guess this is normal. Mm-hmm. I guess this is kind of how things go, but a second piece that I really wanna highlight, which I think we mapped back into your present day life. Mm-hmm. Was, well, two things, I guess.

One that disappointment. Yeah. When he wouldn’t follow through, especially with things related to you. Mm-hmm. He’s gonna take me here today. Mm-hmm. He’s gonna pick me up at this time and he wouldn’t follow through. You got so used to the fallout and the

Client: disappointment. A hundred percent. Well also too, and we talked about this a lot in our sessions, I grew very accustomed to this like excitement and disappointment cycle.

High highs, low lows. Yeah. And, I would get so excited as a kid for something. It, it, it could have been anything. It could have been my dad picking me up. It could have been, oh, we’re gonna go on this trip. Oh, I’m gonna get you this, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And then that immediate fallout, that disappointment when you think like disappointing a kid is so hurtful to them.

Mm-hmm. Like just a kid being sad. Ugh, it sucks. Yeah. And having to deal with that as a kid and then realizing that I was doing that pattern to myself where I would get so excited cuz I got a great idea in my mind. Or I wanted to a, you know, a great book idea or um, a place that I wanted travel and save money for, oh, I wanna save money for this.

I would almost immediately ruin it for myself. And I’d be like, oh, well no, I can’t do that. Well actually, like, no, I don’t, I don’t need to do that. So I’m just gonna squash the idea and. In a way I, I kind of realized, oh my God, like I’m just red disappointing little me again. Like I’m doing the same thing that my parental figure is, was doing to me back then.

And that was a huge waking moment to me of like, hello, you’ve been doing this for Yeah. 22 years. What’s going on? Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. I think that was a big epiphany for you. Yeah. Kind of realizing, cuz a lot of it is we, we start to sit with those emotions at that age, you know, what did little me, what emotions did she have that she couldn’t express?

And we’re letting those come up. Yeah. But then that naturally carries us over into, we’ve just sat with, you know, for however many minutes this, how much it hurt me that he did this. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then all of a sudden when we go. Holy shit, I’m treating myself the same way. Yes. It’s like the light bulb goes on of, whoa, not only am I trying to heal from the wounds he inflicted, I’m actually inflicting the same wound on

Client: myself.

Yeah, a hundred and, and something I wanna note too, that I, I just thought about right now is also in conjunction with that is kind of the downplaying of those emotions that I did as a kid. That disappointment, I wouldn’t ever show that I was truly disappointed. I would really downplay it and be like, oh, it’s fine, it’s whatever.

And I would really push it down. And even now with the things that I’m not super self disciplined in, or they’re things that I wanna do, but kind of keep disa pointing myself in. I downplay it a lot too. I’m like, oh, it’s not that big of a, I have so much time. I have this, I have that, you know, I, I make up excuses.

Mm-hmm. To not really show, oh, you know what? I’m really disappointed that I didn’t follow through in that. Or, you know, in terms of my younger self, like, oh, I’m really disappointed that that never happened, and I was so excited for that.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. And do you feel like as a way to sit with mm-hmm. Those heavy emotions that were so chronic for you, did that take you more into kind of a dissociated state?

I know we also have talked about that you had a lot of anxie as a kid, so it might have been more like a fight flight state for you.

Client: Yeah. It was a, or going back and forth. It was a very, you know what it was, it, I, I was just in fight or flight for all of my childhood, it felt like, because it was the sudden change.

I, I, it wasn’t like I knew I would get excited and then, Oh, two weeks before we were supposed to travel somewhere, we canceled. It was always like the last minute, oh, we’re not going. Or, oh yeah, I’m already two hours late to pick you up. I’m gonna be two hours more late. Just letting you know, like it was never like preemptive like, let me brace myself.

It was, oh, this is not happening at all. Unpack your things, do this, do that. So it kind of put me in this state of change is not good. Change makes me really anxious. Mm. Change is always coupled with pain. Change is always coupled with pain. And as I grew older and going to college and going to a really esteemed college, So many changes were happening and so many different things.

And you know, I’m an actor and a writer and I’m basically a freelancer. So I have to depend on myself to follow through and do the things I wanna do. And the job that I want is so exciting and it, it has a lot of change that happens just in the industry or my career or anything. And I almost freeze the moment I have a great idea for a film or I have a great idea for something that I don’t wanna do with my career.

Cuz I know instinctively like, oh, that means a big change. Ooh. Mm-hmm That could mean a lot of last minute. Yeah. It changes in my safety potentially, or, or how safe I feel in my own body. So I think that was when I was a kid, that was the biggest thing. It, it was this immediate like panic of, oh God, like the plans are changing.

The plans are changing. Yeah. And then I kind of just froze. And was like, okay. And, and that was my way of, of coping, I think was just freezing and not really speaking out or doing anything about it. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. And two things there. One, it makes so much sense and this is why I love mapping out where these patterns come from.

Mm-hmm. Because I think it allows us to have so much more empathy. It could be really easy as an adult to be like, what is wrong with me? Why does change upset me so much? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Come on. So like, come on, this

Client: is good. This is we,

Leigh Ann Lindsey: yeah. We start beating ourselves up like something’s wrong with us. But when we start to understand no, as a kid, change never was coupled with something good.

Yeah. And when you get that message over and over and over, the brain just goes, okay, change equals bad. Change equals hurt. Change equals disappointment. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so it makes so much sense as an adult, even though from the outside looking in, they might be really rudimentary things. You know, it might be something as simple as they change the restaurant we’re gonna eat dinner at, but it like still creates this pain of anxiety and fear that goes through me.

And it actually makes so much more sense. But then once we understand that, we can bring in that empathy in those moments, and then of course, do the deeper work to clear out those deep Yeah. Things in the beginning. Yeah. But the second point I really wanna make there is it also became, and I know we talked about this in your sessions, I wanted to avoid the disappointment.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I, I wanted to avoid that feeling so much so that it almost became like self-fulfilling prophecy. Mm-hmm. I didn’t wanna start something and not follow through, or I didn’t wanna start something and it didn’t go well, or it didn’t achieve what I wanted it to. Yeah. And so then I kind of self-sabotaged too, to avoid the

Client: disappointment because it’s, it’s like, it’s a sense of safety.

It, it kind of goes back to that like, oh, well, I’ll never really know if it ended up being bad if I just kind of stop myself and let myself be in my comfort zone still. Mm-hmm. Which, you know, It worked for a few years because I was, you know, it’s this, I mean this all really started to uproot in college when so many different changes were happening and I was in my personal life, but also in my career of like, well, what do I wanna do and do I wanna do this and do I wanna do that every single time that something would maybe come up that involved a sudden shift in change or a change of plans, or a change in of outlook in terms of what I wanted.

Mm-hmm. I immediately was like, no, no, no. Get into your bubble. No. Cuz if something bad happens, you’re not gonna feel good. Mm-hmm. When really I on the surface knew that, okay, I need change to happen so I can get to where I wanna go. But it was almost like the little girl in me was like, oh, no, no, no. Please don’t, let’s just stay on the same track that we said that we were gonna stay on.

And I have a sometimes this tug and pull, uh, between my 22 year old self now and my 17 year old self mm-hmm. Because 17 year old me. I, I did not feel that lack of self-discipline and maybe it was just super really deep in my core and just was not coming out yet. But I was such a hustler to get to the, like that path that I wanted to go of being an actor and going to college and everything.

And then once I got to college, my world opened up and I was like, wait, I don’t have, I’m a very multifaceted person. I don’t want just one single track career path or everything. And that is when I think it all started to kind of show up again of the idea of, oh, I’m allowed to change. I’m allowed to change my direction and it doesn’t have to be this exciting thing.

And then I get disappointed. It can just be exciting and I move on and I do different things. And that’s been kind of the biggest thing I’m trying to learn now too. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: And I wonder if a big part of. After college is when the light got shown on some of these limiting patterns because Yeah. And I found this even for myself.

Mm-hmm. What’s great is pretty much when you’re all through school, there’s so much structure that’s uhhuh that’s externally given to you. Yeah. And when you graduate college, it really is one of the first times in our lives where it’s like, oh, it’s all

Client: on me. It’s really cr You feel like I, I tell my mom this.

I’m like, I feel like I’m like in the ocean, like doggy paddling a little bit. Because you’re right. And we talked about this, I think in the first ever like EVOX sessions we did, I had a huge like fear of success and a huge fear of not having structure. Cuz school, even when I was a really anxious kid growing up, school was like my sanctuary.

Yeah. Because it was, I knew. I had lunch at 12 there, weren 30. There weren’t false promises at school. There was not false promises at school, even at college, I knew my schedule. I made my schedule myself. I depended on that. And then once I graduated, not only was it, oh, I don’t have a schedule anymore, I don’t have a structure anymore, it was, oh, I have no one telling me what career path to take.

I have no one telling me, oh, if you wanna do this, you should do, like, that all stopped. And then I got into this kind of existential, like, oh my God, I, I have full autonomy. I can do whatever I want. Like, that is so, and I, I realized, I was like, oh my God, I still sometimes feel like that kid that has to like, ask for permission or, you know, like, wait to see if something really is gonna happen and like be good and, and not get too excited and, and whatever.

Um, and having that realization of. Like the world is really my oyster right now. Yeah. I can kind of do whatever was so liberating, but it was also so shocking at the same time that I think that was a catalyst to me starting to realize like, oh, why am I not completing tasks? Why am I not doing this? Why?

Mm-hmm. Why am I not following through and just like taking my daily walks, like as little as that.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. It’s, and again, I think because of the structure that school often brings mm-hmm. I don’t think this pattern just magically showed up. Yeah. I think it was always there. Mm-hmm. It’s just because of our external environment.

It was more dormant during those years. And then once we got out of college, it was like, you have all these dreams, you have all these goals. Mm-hmm. But all of a sudden our subconscious, our brain is going, shoot, I don’t know how to. Like captain my own ship in this way. Yeah. I don’t know how to follow through.

Mm-hmm. Consistently on my own dreams if no one’s holding me accountable. And that’s through no fault of your own. Cause you were modeled the exact opposite. And I just think that is so, so important to highlight that. Yeah. Sometimes these huge life shifts, it can all of a sudden feel like, wait a second, who am I?

This isn’t me. I know I can do this a hundred percent. But I think that can often be the case for a lot of us is it’s because of the shift in our environment or our climate, whatever it might be, the structure in our lives, our career, maybe some old limiting patterns that had been dormant just finally got brought to the surface.

Client: I totally agree. And you know what’s so funny is that sort of, um, Shock of like, oh, this is not who I am. Cuz I grew up my, both my parents are entrepreneurs, so they had that hustle mentality of get things done, get things done. And it, I didn’t put two and two together until we started doing the EVOX sessions of, oh yeah, my, my dad was an entrepreneur and he worked really hard, but he also had so many false promises himself and you can have that duality.

Mm-hmm. And I like really struggled with that for a while. Cause I was like, well my parents are super hardworking, but why am I not completing tasks like them? But it was more of like, no, it just showed differently, like in the ways that my dad did follow through with some of his stuff in his own businesses.

He didn’t follow through with me or his personal life or his own personal ambitions. And it was so strange to kind of see that duality growing up. And then now as an adult, I kind of saw that pattern of, oh well I do so well in school and I do great in these auditions and blah, blah, blah, blah. And. Oh, but how am I not still following through on my goals?

And it’s because of that duality that I saw as a kid too, which I thought, and that made kind of post-grad feel even more like, what, what is going on? Yeah. Like who am

Leigh Ann Lindsey: I? Is something, did something break inside of me. Exactly. Cause I’m not like this. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Okay. So where I’d love to pivot to now is we’ve talked a little bit about this pattern and then we went and dove into it a bit deeper.

Mm-hmm. But I’d love if you could paint the picture for us a little bit more. We talked about this pattern of false promises, but practically what did that look like in a, in your day-to-day life? How was that showing up for you? How was that limiting

Client: you? So I think it really started to unravel, like we said before, once I graduated, um, once I kinda lost that structure, it slowly kind of became known of like, oh, I am not, There’s something wrong.

And it started out more with, in terms of like my career stuff, I wouldn’t really follow through and like, oh, I was supposed to email these people. I was supposed to start this new class. I didn’t do that. Uh, I should have rerecorded that audition, but I just felt disappointed and myself, I’m, I’m just not gonna do it.

Like, it’s gonna just make me more anxious and I may not even get it. Like, I would kind of go down this spiral of like almost convincing myself not to do something and it dwindled down all the way towards, like, I wouldn’t do my skincare routine every night anymore, which was like sacred to me. Like, it, it would, it dwindled down so much that like, I could barely trust that I was gonna go to the grocery store when I said I was gonna go to the grocery store in the week.

So, Ranging from like the little things and the big things, little things being like, I wouldn’t get in my movement every day anymore. I wouldn’t do my skincare routine. Not because I didn’t want to, but because there was like this, it, it felt like there was this like block of like, I would almost get anxiety about it.

And I, any time always try and, and find new creative things to do and ideas to write and, and maybe be a part of one day. And even if it’s just daydreaming in my head. And immediately when I would get those ideas, I would almost just shoot myself down and be like, no, well that’s just, you’re not, you’re too lazy.

Like you’re too, um, scatterbrained to do that. You’re too, you don’t know how to do anything because you can barely like do your workout in the day. Like that was the self-talk I would have. And. It went from these bigger dreams and bigger goals and careers and telling myself I couldn’t do that cuz I’m not ready or I’m not equipped for that.

Down to the like, oh, well why are you even doing your skincare routine? You don’t like your skin right now. It’s not gonna get better tomorrow. Like very all or nothing. It, yes. All or nothing. And also too, I kind of grew up with that. I I, that mentality growing up from the adults around me, it’s like, it’s very, we’re going zero to a hundred or all or nothing and that’s it.

Mm-hmm. Um, so it was almost, I was having this like weird, like stubbornness between me and my, like self, my subconscious. Mm-hmm. And it was, yeah. So it was kind of those daily it, but it was, it was daily. Mm-hmm. And it got to the point where like, I, I could barely get up and do work and I would just distract myself by being on TikTok for hours in bed and just, Wasting the day away kind

Leigh Ann Lindsey: of.

Yeah. Again, kind of that self-fulfilling prophecy of, I don’t wanna be disappointed, but I’m actually more disappointed because I’m not showing up and doing these things. Yeah. So a couple, a couple things I want to point out. One, um, we’ll talk more about that, all or nothing. Mm-hmm. But two, I think something, and this is something that will contrast to where you’re at now, but I think the willpower it did take you and the energy it did take you to like, hold firm and complete some things was immense.

Yeah. Is that right?

Client: Oh, it took so much energy. And the thing is too, is, and, and when I look back even in college, like there were certain things that I did that took like the wind outta me, like just took so much energy for me. And what would happen is, I went from having like a very hustle mindset and getting X, Y, and Z done and being so on top of my things to not being able to do anything that, like, I would punish myself if I didn’t get like the five things I wanted to get done.

Like if I only got three outta five done, oh, you can’t watch that movie tonight cuz now you have to focus on this. And then I would end up not even focusing on it. And I would again be in my bed on TikTok just like groveling out, like, oh, why didn’t you complete that? Like, you’re so lazy. You’re so this, like, I would fully punish myself.

So it, it’s, it’s interesting that like, I was so like. Just exhausted all the time. And my body started to really take a toll on it too. I was getting so much muscle pain and fatigue and lethargic ness and like headaches, gut issues. Yeah. I had, oh my God, I had so many gut issues and like just, I would wake up with headaches right away in the morning and it was probably because I was already stressed out about not even like the things that I wanted to do that day.

I was more stressed about, am I even going to complete any of this today? Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. Bringing it back to the all or nothing, it’s kind of twofold. One, as soon as I miss the mark, whatever the mark was that I set for myself that day, as soon as I misstepped, it was like, okay, well the day’s

Client: a waste. Yes.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Oh my God.

And then the other piece of that though, which we were just talking about off air, is you would push yourself so hard. Mm-hmm. Like every day. I have to do 20 things and check them all off the list. And I think starting to realize that that wasn’t necessarily always sustainable. Mm-hmm. But also the other piece I wanna get to, which you just mentioned as well, is I wasn’t even doing the things that would allow my mind, body, and spirit to show up in that way each day.

Yeah. Yeah. The question I have with that though is, and I don’t know that I, we’ve asked this before, do you feel like it kind of snowballed downhill a little bit for you? Like af right after college, maybe this pattern wasn’t showing up so intensely, but as it started to show up more and more and then affect your confidence more, and then affect your energy more, that’s when some of the other daily habits started to slip.

Like, I just wasn’t caring for myself physically as well anymore.

Client: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, it was one of those things where I almost like isolated myself in certain ways. Mm-hmm. Like I started to feel. So bad about myself that I felt like I couldn’t even deserve, like, taking a break and like reading for the rest of the night, or like after five o’clock rolled around, oh, you know what?

I’m just gonna watch TV and read. Like, I felt like I didn’t even deserve that because I was so like, just entranced with this notion of like, I have to get every single thing done. If I don’t get it done, I’m failing and I’m not gonna get to this point. And like, I need to be ahead of schedule. And I, it really took a toll on me physically to the point where like I was losing sleep over it.

Mm-hmm. Because I was so mad at myself, I was disappointed. And on top of that, it made me realize like as, as it was kind of nearing the end of like, okay, I need to evox this out. I. Started to realize like, oh God, I, I don’t even wanna be around people. Like I don’t even want to, like, I don’t even deserve to like be social and I would isolate myself and it’s crazy cuz I, from like a punishment perspective.

Yeah. And I started to do that, um, actually in the pandemic where in the pandemic I was really. I just didn’t know which way was up, as did many, many people. And I kind of started to fall short. And I feel like that was really the beginning of things unraveling. And I started to kind of isolate myself from social groups.

I just like, felt really in my shell. Mm-hmm. And I felt like I couldn’t really trust people and I couldn’t really trust everyone around me. And, and on the bright side of that, it really helped me, um, cut out any toxic friendships in my life that needed to be cut out. It helped me kind of center back into myself.

And that isolation period definitely made me like more tuned into like, okay, what is really happening in my body? But also concurrently it was that kind of self hate of like, well, why aren’t you doing this? Or you don’t deserve to go out on a walk. You barely got anything done today. Mm. So it was, it was so, and it was so crazy.

Yes.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yes. Another thing, well, two things. First, I wanna talk about overwhelm, but I wanna talk about the physical symptoms. Yeah. Cuz you actually just reminded me of this and you reminded me of during that four, that four week period. Mm-hmm. Basically a month. Mm-hmm. Where you came in once a week for four weeks.

I remember again, I think about halfway through you came in and you were like, I have felt so awful this last week, inflamed all over. My joints are hurting so bad.

Client: It was bad. It was bad. And we

Leigh Ann Lindsey: had talked about, you know, could there potentially be some emotional root causes to this? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. So can you detail some of the symptoms that you were experiencing?

Because I do think this is really interesting that your physical symptoms were starting to get worse and worse and you had this one week where they were at like peak, peak intensity. You even went to the doctor, you were like getting checked for all these things. Yeah.

Client: So even before this round of EVOX sessions, The past year, I had been just going through so many different changes in my body.

I developed ibs, um, just chronic anxiety all the time. I had chronic fatigue. I was. Literally so tired. I could like barely get up at like 12 in the afternoon. Sometimes it was miserable. And yeah, just like these weird aches and pains and it just never was really going away no matter what I was doing. And then as we started doing more EVOX sessions, I started having these horrible pain flareups, like in my shoulders.

In my arms specifically. I went to the doctors, they thought I had lupus, rheumatoid arthritis was like the number one contender, like just so many different things. And it was just like built up, built up, built up pain. Um, and then finally when I had an emotional release in my EVOX session, I think it was the third session, I remember I almost canceled that session.

Cause I was in so much pain that day. I didn’t feel good, but I just went anyway. And I felt so much better afterwards. Like my pain was gone. It was really weird. I still kind of had some fatigue, but the like pain I was feeling in my fingers where like I, I could barely hold something gone. Wow. It was so strange.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Oh my gosh. It’s just wild. And I know we’ve talked before even about like IBS and the gut, the emotions with the gut are Yeah. Often fear that are connected and even what we’ve just touched on a little bit today mm-hmm. Of how much fear you experience through childhood. Yeah. Not knowing when my parent is coming, not being able to trust.

Yeah. Yes. I think there can be a lot of emotional root causes even to some of the physiological things we’re experiencing and sometimes it is as poignant and as pointed as that experience you had where it’s like, I came in, I feel awful, I leave, I feel completely different. Yeah.

Client: It was really strange.

And I think those. Especially with the IBS and the gut issues. I think that was always kind of lingering throughout my life, cuz I did have an interesting relationship with food when I was younger, but that could be a whole other episode. Um, and so it’s always been kind of lingering, but as I’ve gotten older and I think as this limiting belief of self-sabotage and false promises has been arising, it’s just been getting stronger and stronger, those physical issues.

Mm-hmm. Um, and now the point I am at now, I, my gut has done like a full 180. I’m able to digest so much better. Oh my gosh. But I think it, it’s too, I don’t have that underlying anxiety as much as I used to. Like, it’s, it’s still still there, but it’s so much more manageable than how it was on a daily basis.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Mm-hmm. That’s so huge. And I think that’s a perfect pivot into one of the other things that came up in our sessions, which is, How overwhelming I think you felt in general. Mm-hmm. But also how overwhelming, just the smallest everyday activities of daily living felt for

Client: you. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve always had I an issue with feeling overwhelmed and feeling like, especially like one of my main things with feeling overwhelmed was like, oh, there’s not enough time in the day.

I’m feeling overwhelmed. I can’t finish everything. So it would spiral to the point where like, I, I couldn’t even get like basic tasks around the house done, like laundry or like, I would start it, but I wouldn’t complete it because I was so wrapped up in this emotion of like, I’m feeling stuck. I’m feeling like I’m in this like really tight tube and can’t move.

Mm-hmm. Like just this overwhelm that I felt. And it was amplified after college because after college you just kind of get opened up. Into the whole wide world and you’re kinda like, what is going on? What am I doing? Um, especially for me, cuz I’m, I’m an actor and I’m an artist and I, you know, there’s not really a linear career path for me.

Mm-hmm. I’m not going straight to law school or becoming a doctor or anything like that. So I was really, um, overwhelmed by the fact that I had so much autonomy over my life now and I could choose so many different things I wanna do with my life. And that feeling itself trickled down to just the daily tasks of the day of, oh, do I work on this?

Do I work on that? Should I do this well? Should I rest and go here? Or should I work all day? Like, should I get a normal job? Like, it was just so, it was the, it was the what ifs that were amplifying the overwhelmed emotion.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Mm-hmm. There’s so much even in just what you just, that little piece that you just said one, which I think is big picture, maybe the brain going.

Okay. Uh, maybe a limiting belief of there is one right choice I can make. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. In terms of the job I take where I apply this next thing I do, and so I’m afraid to make the wrong choice. But then also I think this comes back to having, in a way, repeated that pattern of the false promises with ourself.

Yeah. We didn’t have a lot of trust in ourself. Mm-hmm. We didn’t have this strong foundation of I show up for me, I protect me, I see me. And so I wondered too if our brain sub subconsciously, consciously was like, uh, it feels like there’s one right decision and I don’t know that I trust myself to make that right decision.

Yeah. So I’m just kind of in this limbo.

Client: Yeah. Oh my God. It was such, I, I feel finally in this point, a year after graduating, I. Uh, almost a year after, like my first ever EVOX session, I’m starting to feel like I’m out of that limbo now. And it was such a weird space because I did feel like there was only one thing I could do.

Mm. And after studying one thing for so long in college, I’m like, all right, cool. This is my set career. And I would get like overwhelmed by the fact that as I was going on with Postgrad life, I started to find so many other things that I was interested in. And the universe was almost like showing me the different things that I could do and the different things that I was really good at.

And it scared the hell out of me because I was like, no, I’m an actor. Yes. Like, I cannot stray away from this. Like, I’ve spent so long proving to people that I’m an actor and I’m doing this. Like I can’t just change things. I can’t decide to also do something else. And that was the limiting belief I held really, really until recently of like, I can only do that one thing.

And I realized that sticking to that track of mind was making me mo more overwhelmed versus letting myself explore different avenues. Letting myself be like, oh yeah, I can be an actor, but I can produce too, and I can write and I can sing, and I can dance. I can do all these other things. Since changing that mindset, that overwhelm has diminished a ton because it’s like, oh, well now there’s not that much pressure and I have all the time in the world.

Really. Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Okay. Two things I wanna point out. One, I just think it’s so important to highlight how you were experiencing that overwhelm, even with the simple daily task. Mm-hmm. Because I think this is way more common than we initially think. I have experienced this absolutely in my life. I know so many friends, family members, clients who experience this, and it’s, it can keep us in a bit of a downward spiral because, Yeah.

You feel so bad about yourself. You’re like, why can’t I even just make myself breakfast? Like, what is wrong with me? Why can’t I even just brush my teeth? Yeah. In the morning. Yeah. And you really do start to feel like something is wrong with me. Mm-hmm. Everyone else is doing these things. No problem. Which isn’t true either.

Yeah. But then it also becomes this downward spiral that I’m, I’m so overwhelmed. I’m so depleted that I can’t do these daily things that are actually gonna give me more energy. Mm-hmm. Like feed myself. Well care for my mind, body, and spirit. So it does become this kind of nasty downward spiral effect that I just, I’m so glad you pointed it out.

And I just really wanna highlight that for the listeners, that that is way more common than I think we think, but Oh yeah. It’s not, That you’re lazy. It’s not that something’s broken inside of you, it’s just there’s a little bit of a, a storm going on in the subconscious uhhuh and we just need to figure that out.

But to that point, I gave you kind of a, like a model or a framework to start to bring into your days. Mm-hmm. And can you speak to that a little bit? Cuz I think you found that really helpful with, you know, doing one test that’s like this and one test that’s Yeah. Oh

Client: my God, it was so helpful because what you were saying before, that’s exactly how I was like, the overwhelm went from like big, grandiose concepts and themes to like, my daily life could barely make my bed in the morning.

And I felt so lazy and shitty about myself. Mm-hmm. Because I was like, you know, my, I living with my mom. My mom is such a hustler and I have other friends in my life that are go, go, go, go. And I just felt horrible about myself. I’m like, God, why can’t I be like them? Like there’s something wrong with my brain.

But in actuality, it was more of, I’m not, I’m, I’m just not framing it in the way that I’m supposed to. So the exercise that you gave me that worked really well was to choose just two things a day to do, just two, not 15 that I put on my planner. Um, and one of them is choose one thing that you want to do and would love to do, and it would make you really happy, and then choose the other thing that you are kind of dreading doing.

But you know, if you do it, It’ll make you feel better and it will make you feel more at ease. Um, so like for example, um, I remember one of the day, like the first days I started doing it was, uh, the thing that I love to do is like, oh, go in the sauna blanket for 30 minutes. You love doing that and you feel great afterwards.

And then the second thing that I didn’t really wanna do, but I was gonna do it anyway, was my laundry. Because I hadn’t done laundry for like three weeks. I was running outta clothes. And just by doing that every single day, it started to empower me because not only did it make me realize, oh cool, I did these two things, let me do two other things.

It actually gave me the confidence that I needed to be like, oh, I can trust myself. To write down these tasks and complete them. Mm-hmm. Like, let’s see if, let’s tack on one more task. Mm-hmm. Let’s tack on two more tasks that I would love to do today. And so it was kind of twofold where it like helped me kind of get out of that frame set that I felt lazy and unaccomplished.

And it also just helped me realize that the only person getting in my way from doing these tasks was myself. And it was the amount of pressure and overwhelm I was putting on myself. And now I still do those two things every single day because it’s helped me reframe and be like, okay, you know what? Even if I only did two things today, that is okay because mm-hmm.

I’m trusting myself to get those things done. And. Sooner or later I’ll be at the point where I’m gonna have days where I’m gonna do lots of things and feel great, and then I’m gonna have the days where I only need to do one thing. And that’s still a great accomplished day. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: I think it, it accomplished a lot for you because it was kind of like you had had that pattern of only doing things halfway through.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so I think we just needed to get in the habit of completing tasks. Yeah. Yeah. Even if it was literally two tasks a day. Mm-hmm. But to the point you’re making, you did those two and all of a sudden, like the, the confidence boost, the motivation goes up, the inspiration goes up, and it gave you a lot of fuel to then go do some more things.

The other thing I wanna say is, I know you had said before, it was kind of getting to a point where you were almost like punishing yourself, like not letting yourself do. Yeah, anything that wasn’t like quote unquote productive or work related. So you wouldn’t let yourself take Asana. You wouldn’t let yourself go for a walk or go to the park or go shopping because I hadn’t done all these things.

Oh,

Client: God, no. Well, and I think too, part of the issue was I wanted to play Wonder Woman a little bit. Like I wanted to write down 15 things on my to-do list and accomplish all of those 15 things. So what would end up happening is I would either do 13 outta the 15, all half ass uhhuh, and like not really complete them, or I would finish like three of them and then feel so horrible about myself that the rest of my day and night was just like shot.

Like I didn’t do anything. I would just like doom scroll on TikTok or Instagram and like just sit and feel bad about myself or waste time talking to people and, and not, and not waste time. Just more of like avoiding the feeling that I was feeling of just feeling so ashamed. And doing that exercise was like, oh my God, I don’t need to do 15 things in one day to feel good or to feel successful.

And even To feel worthy. To feel worthy. Yeah. And even, even now, like now, I mean now it’s July, I still don’t do 15 things a day. Like my max amount right now is like six. And I, but I also too was like, I was trying to, especially this past year, I was trying to replicate how I was when I was 18 and when I was 17, when I was applying to college apps and everything.

And I often forget that at that age I had. Way, way, way less life responsibility than I do now. So, of course, I had time to do all of those things. I was, you know, half the time I was in la la land, so I, I could get a lot of those tasks done. And, and yeah. So I was trying to replicate that for so many years and like, I would get so confused and like, how come years ago I could finish this, like, no problem.

And now I like, can barely get up outta bed. And it, it was because it’s like, no, you just, you’re in a different point in your life now and you don’t have to subscribe to that hustle mentality of, oh, if I don’t get this done, I’m not successful. And, and also too, I, I had to remind myself the to-do list that I had and the to loose of things that I needed to get done.

It wasn’t make or break. Like if I didn’t finish that one task for my work or for an acting class, it wasn’t gonna like stop the world, you know? Mm-hmm. Like, it really wasn’t that big of a deal. And as soon as I let go of that pressure, I just started to kind of like breathe again and be like, it’s, it’s fine.

It does.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Okay. Well, and I’m seeing too that not only did we have, maybe this came out of that pattern of false promises mm-hmm. Where I’m not following through on things for myself. Yeah, yeah. But then there’s also this piece kind of what of what you’re saying of I think really conditional love with ourself.

Mm-hmm. Which is all or nothing. If you don’t do all of this, I’m not gonna care for you. Well today. Yeah. And that’s huge. We think about what am I. Implicitly, what am I subconsciously communicating to myself mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. In my behaviors and in my actions. And I think so often we are communicating well, you’re not good enough.

So I’m gonna talk mean to you

Client: today. Yeah, a hundred percent. And, uh, I’ll speak to, to, one thing that I noticed too is, is now kind of after working through this for the past few months, I have made a commitment to have a really clear set in stone night routine. Mm. Um, because I’m still working on my morning routine because I do like to sleep in.

Um, but a few months ago if I didn’t complete my tasks or if I promised myself I was gonna do something and didn’t deliver, or if someone promised me something and then I felt really bad after it didn’t happen, I would again, doom scroll all till the night and I would be so tired I wouldn’t take off my makeup.

I wouldn’t even allow myself to read or write or anything. I would. Would literally still be in my sweats from the morning. I would just turn off the light and just go to bed. Mm-hmm. And like, not even allow myself to like, take a deep breath. And the one thing that has helped me, I feel like every day now is I have such a set night routine.

I know. And I’m, I’m very strict with it now. I’m like, if I did not complete what I wanted to complete today, I don’t care. But no matter what, at nine 30 on the dot, I’m starting to wind down. And that has helped me. So, so, so much because I’m sleeping better now. I’m not anxious about the things that I didn’t get done whilst I’m going to bed.

Mm-hmm. And when I wake up in the morning, I feel so confident again of like, oh, you know, I really took care of myself last night. Ready to start my day.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yes. Whereas before you had maybe kind of an off day, which is then spilling into the next day because we stayed up late and didn’t care for ourself. Oh yeah.

And then it just up said months. Yeah. It becomes this like downward spiral that could last Yeah. Days, weeks, maybe even months. I, I wanna now pivot to, let’s map out how some of these things started to shift. We’ve talked a lot about where we were before. Let’s talk about where we’ve gotten to in terms of these patterns.

There’s a couple things. How working on false promises, working on unconditional love with myself has affected. Maybe career has affected just the day to day, like simple day-to-day. And then I’d also love to hear how it’s affected relationships. Mm-hmm. You know, familial, your, your boyfriend, your partnership.

That’s a lot. So wherever do you wanna start? Yeah, yeah. Maybe like, because we just talked about the overwhelm. Let’s start there. How did that

Client: shift? Yes. So after my round, I did four EVOX sessions. So after that month of evox, I, it was like a slow and steady shift, but every day I started to feel like the minute changes and the trust building.

Yeah. The trust. And, and I think what was most apparent after my EVOX sessions was I do not have enough trust for myself. Like, I don’t, one, I don’t protect myself enough and I don’t trust myself enough, so I. I really started to focus on that after, and I really started to have an inner dialogue with myself of, well, what does trust look like with me?

Like, how do I embody that in my life and how can I start doing that for myself so that I can start being that for the people in my life as well? And it really all started, it goes back to those daily tasks. Mm-hmm. And that kind of exercise that I did, I was very like intentional about everything I was doing for the day.

So if I set a to-do list for myself, I had a strict rule with myself of, am I putting 15 things on my to-do list today because I really, really need to get those done? Or am I doing it because I just wanna try and make myself feel good about. Mm-hmm. Being successful and being ahead of the game and having that dialogue with myself really helps me understand that a lot of times, like I’m purposely overwhelming myself, like I’m purposely putting myself into this cycle where I.

I’m promising things to myself and I’m promising, and I’m overdelivering and then, and I get excited because I’m like, oh, look at me. I’m, I’m about to have such a productive day. That excitement all the way back to the disappointment when I inevitably don’t get it done. So having just that inner dialogue with myself the first couple weeks after those EVOX sessions, I think inherently just started to make me think differently.

And when I would do things, I, I wouldn’t do it out of like, go, go, go. I need to get this done, need to get this done. I’m like, I’m finishing this, I’m completing it and I’m gonna do it the way I want to and I’m gonna feel good about it. Mm-hmm. And then I will move on to the next task. And there’s just so many, there were so many points in this past year where I was again, working so half-ass on things that I never felt good about anything I did.

And now, even if I’m not completing everything that I need to in the day, I feel so good about this stuff that I am completing. Mm-hmm. And I feel great. And I. I now just have a trust with myself again, because I’ve seen through myself, oh yeah, I can get things done like this. This is not a crazy thing about me.

Like, I’m not lazy, I’m not, um, incompetent. Like, no, this was just a limiting pattern that I had and I slowly needed to break it down instead of going from zero to 100 every other day. Um, so I think that is the biggest effect I’ve seen. Um, also in terms of like my self-talk to myself, like I’m very, I’m a lot more gentle with my myself now, and I think I give myself a little bit more grace than I used to.

I’m still working on it. Mm-hmm. And it’s a work in progress every day and some days are better than others, but I’m really starting to feel really content with myself and how I work and how I start to view productivity now. And just again, like I. Now that I have a little bit of trust with myself again, it’s just boosted my confidence so, so much.

Mm. Especially in the areas, what we were talking about before, like with my family, with my partner, with my boyfriend, um, and just with other friends, like I’m feeling so much more open to doing things now. Like before I was so closed off again, I would not complete the things I wanted to for the week, so I wouldn’t go out to lunch with my friends or I wouldn’t do X, Y, and Z with my boyfriend.

I wouldn’t watch a movie with my mom because I felt that like, ugh, like I didn’t earn this. I didn’t earn this. Basically, I need to work in the weekend now because I didn’t finish anything during the week. And, and now I’m so much more like, no, the weekends are for myself. Truly the things on my to-do list.

I’m not like a CEO of like a Fortune 500, like that all. And I, I kind of repeated my that to myself a lot the past couple of months. Like the jobs that I have right now. And the auditions that I do and the work that I do and the things that I write, this is like, it’s, is so important to me and it really cultivates my creativity.

But I am not curing cancer. Like I, this is not like a stressful thing that it needs to be, like, it can be a light, fun, um, rewarding experience for myself. I don’t need to make it like if I have the deadlines of like Wall Street people. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, so as soon as that kind of clicked in with my relationships, I’ve just felt so much more light.

And I like to go out to dinner with my friends now when I’ll talk to people on the phone again. And I’m way more responsive to text now and, um, I’m so much more open to the ideas of like being spontaneous and going on a fun adventure and, and, and not letting myself restrict, uh, the experiences I can have just because I feel bad about not completing something or not the promising something to myself.

So, yeah. And then I think the, the last note on that is, um, making sure I don’t overdeliver to myself and really listening to my body. If I know that the day is gonna be stressful and I’m just not feeling good and I can only really complete a few things today, then that is what it is. Mm-hmm. And that’s okay.

And I’m gonna give my body what it needs because I know in two days from now I may be feeling really good and I’m gonna get 10 things done because I’m just on and, and you know, and as a woman too, hormonally, like, we go through different changes in our body throughout the month and. I’ve been kind of adhering to that as well.

Like my body is feeling tired on some days, and on some days I’m feeling really energetic. Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Oh my gosh. It’s just so huge because you went from, I have all these expectations. I’m not following through. Then I beat myself up. Now I’m punishing myself. I’m isolating from friends and family. Yeah. To now I set more realistic goals.

Mm-hmm. If I don’t meet them all, I still have grace. I still care for myself, and if I see that there’s a day where I’m, I need to lower the load a little bit, I actually can do that. Mm-hmm. I can do that with Grace. I can do that with Joy. I can do that with peace. Yeah. Rather than being anxious all day that I’m not gonna be able to get it done.

It’s just so huge. It seems so small. Yeah. When we talk about these things, but when you think about feeling that and carrying that anxiety, that nervousness, that. Self-judgment every single day. What a weight. Oh my God. Yeah. What a weight. And I think as we’re talking about this specifically, we hid it from a couple different angles.

One is, why am I so overwhelmed? Why am I so exhausted? Why is my body in such disease? We got to some of the deep core emotional turbulence. Mm-hmm. That was contributing. Mm-hmm. But then we also got really practical and gave ourselves some present day tools. Yeah. To shift things, which I just, I, I look at me, I like get so excited about this stuff.

Okay. I do wanna touch on one thing with your boyfriend, because you had said, I know you had said before that you were just on edge all the time because of the false promises Yeah. From childhood. Yeah. Even though that is not him at all. Mm-hmm. He has never done that. Your boyfriend has never done that to you.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It was like every moment of every day. You were hypervigilant for that moment to come.

Client: Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. So I, and I also feel like too, You know, my false promises in my life mostly came from men in my childhood and into my teenage years and so on and so forth. Um, and because of those false promises I started to develop as a child, this hypervigilance of like waiting for the other shoe to drop at all times.

And not even just with false promises, with emotions. Um, I sometimes, I, I grew up around some adults that were very, um, it would be one emotion and then a complete different emotion the next, and, and that’s how my, my father was like, um, so as a kid I was constantly on guard to see if there was like an emotional shift.

Mm-hmm. And if there was emotional shift, I would read it immediately. And I’d be like, okay, what’s wrong? I did something wrong, something I need to fix this. And it, it has gone on literally up until now, like I, and I’m still really, really working on it, where my friend or my boyfriend, like, just has like a shift in energy and they’re just not feeling that great anymore.

I immediately take that on for myself and I’m like, I did something wrong. Something’s going on. Uh oh. Uh oh. Red alert. This is not going well. And, and same thing with the false promises. If I felt an ounce of something maybe not working out, it would just send me into a spiral of dysregulation and I would just break my own heart just thinking of all the things that could go wrong.

And specifically with my boyfriend up until meeting him, I had been in that vicious cycle, and then the universe gave me him, who was so patient and so kind, and so just loving and understanding and I, I had never really had a male. Person like that in my life. And so I was so used to the other things that it took me months to like, and this was like an internal battle.

Mm-hmm. This was, this was, it never really erupted into, um, really any arguments or, or big, uh, confrontations with each other. It was so internal. I was, I would have this internal debate of like, oh my God, this man is so nice and he loves me so much, and why is nothing bad happening? Like, why am I not feeling like I need to read every emotion he’s feeling?

Um, and I would try to, because I would be like, what’s wrong? What’s going on? Blah, blah, blah. And it, it would never be anything. It’s just, it was more to do with his own emotions and what’s going on in his life than it was to do with me. And, and the moment I realized that so much more ease came into my part of the relationship and what I had to offer because I was no longer worried about, oh, Am I potentially upsetting this person?

Am I potentially too much for this person? Am I too anxious too? That, too, this like, and I, I started to shift it and realize, one, like if someone has an emotion, an emotional shift from like happy to sad or angry. It doesn’t have anything to do with you a lot of the times. And if it does, that person will tell you, and that person will make it known to you like, Hey, I’m angry, or, Hey, I, I’m not feeling that good because of X, Y, and Z.

Like, you don’t have to solve, or try and analyze every emotion that comes your friend’s way, your partner’s way, your mom’s way, your sister’s way like you. That is a huge burden to place upon yourself. So I think especially the past few months, I’ve been so much more at ease because I’m just way more confident about like, you know what, like I’m so deserving of a patient love, and I’m so deserving of a grandiose, beautiful love that I don’t need to worry anymore if someone is gonna betray me or someone’s gonna promise me something and overdeliver or not deliver at all.

Or I don’t have to worry anymore that there are people in my life that will be mad at me or be angry and then not tell me what’s wrong or, you know, Be really passive aggressive with me. Like that was in the past and I’ve worked on it so much now that I am no longer attracting those people in my life.

Yes.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Okay. Yes. I, and there’s a couple things we’re gonna point out here. One, it just is such a clear, clear example of how the brain is just always trying to go, here’s what happened in the past. Yeah. Therefore, this is probably what’s gonna happen in the future. Right, right. Yeah. And so it starts to just look at, you know, in your case, looking at your boyfriend through the same lens that you were looking at your dad through childhood.

Mm-hmm. And just waiting, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mm-hmm. And I do think over time, slowly, slowly, even as you’re saying, that can start to shift just from pure life experience giving you new messages. However, I think when we got in with Evox and started clearing out the. Unresolved emotions.

Mm-hmm. The beliefs that came outta those false promises from childhood, you were able to go one, I didn’t deserve that. Yeah. I don’t deserve that going forward. Mm-hmm. And my, your, I think your brain was finally able to see, oh, that’s not what’s going on here. This is a completely different person.

Client: A hundred percent.

And I, I had to almost learn throughout the past year that people are like, no one person is the same as another person. Yeah. Like everyone is different. And also too, I think the biggest breakthrough for me was as I was really talking about those false promises in Eox and that feeling of not trusting myself and all of those things.

The patterns that I developed from my dad as a younger kid, I, I started doing to myself. And the moment I started to adjust those things is harder to have more trust in myself. I started to have more trust in other people. Mm. And I felt like more people could trust me too, on being more timely and being more like assertive and being more consistent, maybe Consistent and confident with Yeah.

Our relationship or whatever’s going on.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yes. There’s a couple things I wanna highlight. One, we again hit it from a couple angles. Mm-hmm. It’s. Can we go back and release the emotions that my 6, 7, 8 year old self just didn’t have the capacity to sit with and acknowledge and Yeah. Process. I really do believe it.

I just have seen it so many times now that the unresolved, the repressed emotions make it so hard. There’s something about those that keep our brain, keep our neural pathways locked in those old loops. Yeah. And when we can go back and release what is unresolved and unprocessed mm-hmm. All of a sudden it’s like the brain is ready, it’s ready to take on some new information.

Yeah.

Client: Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: A hundred percent. But I think the other piece of it is, so not only did we expand your brain to go, oh, this was true with this person, but maybe it’s not true with all people. Mm-hmm. And maybe it’s not true with my boyfriend at the time. Mm-hmm. But I think we also started to create such a sense of safety within you that even if it were to turn out to be true with your boyfriend mm-hmm.

There’s a safety now. There’s a foundation now that’s been established now that you are showing up for yourself and that you have the self worth. Knowing I didn’t deserve that then I don’t deserve that. Now I see me, I hear me, I protect me. And of course it would be painful. We’re not saying it wouldn’t be painful, but I think it’s twofold.

One, you’re able to go, oh, that’s not what’s happening here. But even if it did, I feel so much safer in that, yeah, I’m an adult. I have autonomy. I will be able to

Client: carry on a hundred percent. Yeah. And I, I think too, I kind of realized throughout this whole process that subconsciously I had a distrust with people and, and not on purpose.

Like, and not with like for any reason with my family or my friends or, or my significant other. It was more of like, I just had that inherent like, oh gosh, like things can just turn around really fast and you have to be prepared. And now that’s just not my narrative anymore. I’m like, it’s. It’s sometimes that happens and then sometimes it doesn’t.

And I’m well equipped for both of those scenarios. And I am at a point in my life now where I am able to attract people and things around me that don’t give me those false promises and that don’t give me that self haage or manipulation. Like I am so confident now that I’m attracting people who are in line with my values and what I want for myself and what I wanna give to others that I’m no longer afraid of.

Maybe like distrusting a friend or feeling like I can’t, um, trust like coworkers or, you know, I can’t trust myself in an audition or, or whatever it is. Like, I feel so much more at ease now with the confidence that I’ve grown the past couple months. Like, I got it. It’s all good. Mm-hmm. And. I don’t have to like prep myself beforehand.

I can just do life and whatever. I’ll figure it out later. It’s fine.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Yeah. Isn’t it crazy though, how some of these limiting beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecy? Mm-hmm. In the sense that either we, we believe all people are distrust, you know, like not trustworthy. Yeah. And so we start attracting people who aren’t trustworthy.

Mm-hmm. Or vice versa, you know, maybe we believe people aren’t safe. So I never open up. Yeah. I never let people in and I almost keep them in that box so that they can’t prove that they are

Client: a safe person. Mm-hmm. Right. Right. And I, I, I have said it once and I’ll say it again. I really do feel like my boyfriend was such a blessing in my life because he is such a person that made me realize like, oh my God, I don’t have to, I don’t have to like guard myself from you.

Like, I can be as open as I wanna be and that will never be like, um, A bad thing. Like it’s, it’s, and he was really the catalyst for me to start figuring out like, oh, okay. I have like an inherent distrust with every, every person. Like, how can I reclaim that and change that narrative? Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Okay. Last one, and then we’ll close out with one final question.

So work. Mm-hmm. How has this affected work? I know one of the things we said at the beginning is maybe we had some self-sabotage, we had some inconsistency with, yeah. I’m not, um, filming the auditions. I should, I’m not responding to these emails. Mm-hmm. I’m not responding to these emails frequently. What’s shifted there?

Client: Oh my God, I’m so much more open now. Like, I’m just so much, I think I, I touched on this before, but I. A year ago, I was so adamant about only pursuing the one thing that I have been planning on pursuing for years. And it was really starting to mess with my head because acting is a hard profession and it’s, it’s, you’re basically the freelancer.

So the, I could book something and then I won’t book something again for another six months. And it’s not because of me or my skills or my talent, it’s just, that’s just sometimes how the industry is, is, especially with how young I am and just starting out in the business. Um, and. I would immediately start to close myself off from any other opportunity, writing, directing, producing, being someone’s assistant, like anything in that realm in the industry.

I’m like, no, I am an actor and that is what I’m doing. And now I am just so much more open and I’m writing again, and I’m open to potentially line producing just like so many different avenues that I wasn’t even thinking about a year ago. And a lot of that has to do with my, again, my trust in myself again, and the confidence in my feel that I feel in myself again.

And reminding myself that I am allowed to pursue multiple things and they don’t have to be these false promises I give myself. Like I am allowed to pursue different things in my career and I don’t have to feel like I. So pigeonholed the way I used to and it, it, it’s, it’s similar to the daily tasks thing where yeah, I would get so hard on myself if I wasn’t like striving so hard for the one thing I wanted.

Mm-hmm. And now I’m the fact that I’m just more open to any sort of work opportunity. It’s allowed me, ironically enough to get more auditions and it’s allowed me to network with so many new people. Um, and it’s interesting cuz I didn’t think false promises in my work life had an association, but it really did because the false promise was the root of so many different avenues of my life.

Mm. And the, the effect of that with the distrust I had with myself of potentially pursuing something else, going a different avenue and, and yeah. So it’s. It’s been a lot better. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: It is wild. I’ve, I’ve said it before in other platforms that I really do believe, of course we all have a number of wounds mm-hmm.

From childhood, from life. But I really do believe we all have, you know, a three or so core, core wounds that are creating and affecting just about every area of our life. And when we start to clear those out, not only does it, like, there’s some really obvious ways, it shifts things positively, but then there’s also all, it’s like all of these other little things just start to naturally shift to Yeah.

And we just see what an impact it’s having on everything. Okay. Oh, the one funny thing I’ll say is I remember in, um, I think it was like our third or fourth session, you were like, you know what’s crazy is after every evox all of a sudden I get a slew of auditions that

Client: come my way. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And it, it’s still happen.

And like I’ve even noticed too, like even. On the days that I’m kind of feeling like, ah, man, I haven’t really got an audition in a while, but you know what, it’s fine. I’m gonna keep working on this. I’m gonna keep doing my thing. The next day I’ll get an audition. And it’s so interesting how the universe kind of rewards you for just having a trust with yourself and just trusting, like, okay, I’m just, I’m gonna keep going.

Mm-hmm. So, yeah, it is, it is funny. Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Okay. Last question, and I think this is just helpful. Have you done other emotional wellness, mental health type modalities or therapies? And can you talk about how your experience with evox has been different? And the one thing I’ll just quickly say is this is not to say that Evox is.

Better than those. Mm-hmm. I think every single thing out there has a place, whether it’s meditation, talk therapy, emdr, there’s so many amazing things. I just think it’s helpful cuz a lot of people maybe have experienced something like talk therapy. Yeah. And to be able to hear from your perspective, what is different, I think can help give people a clearer picture too.

Yeah.

Client: So I’ve, I’ve done all types of therapy. I’ve been in therapy since I was five, um, because of the anxiety I had as a kid. And, um, my relationship with food, uh, was very much connected with my anxiety. So I’ve actually, no, it, I’m, I’m lying to you. I’ve been in therapy since I was seven, but when I was five, the anxiety started to kind of physically manifest.

Um, yeah. So since I was seven and I had done talk therapy up until last year when I did Evox with you, I did a little bit of emdr. Um, For a couple years during college, and I love talk therapy. I think it’s great and it has helped me so much throughout my life and just being able to handle and access certain emotions.

Um, but the one thing that I found, uh, that I struggled with, with talk therapy is that I would finally like, reach that point, that pinnacle of like, oh my God, this is what I’ve been feeling and this is the trauma that happened and this is whatever. And then, oh, my hour’s up and now I have to go back into my car and like, we’ll talk about it next week.

And I, I would leave my sessions like crying, not because I had a bad session, but it was more like, holy shit, I just had this huge epiphany and now I don’t really know what to do with myself. Mm-hmm. Um, and when I started going to Evox, it was, I felt so much lighter. I feel so much lighter in my EV sessions because.

You’re really good at guiding throughout evox and helping get to the root cause. But what’s so great about that biofeedback technology is that I’m getting, I can feel myself getting soothed while I’m in the session. So instead of crying in my car after my session, I actually feel like, okay, I’ve talked it through.

Like I feel good. I, I don’t feel like a huge pressure in my chest. Like I actually feel like I’ve released, especially when I have an emotional release. Mm-hmm. Like I feel lighter and I just feel like I can breathe a little bit deeper. Not to say I’ll never go back to talk therapy. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I really do love that.

And I think also too, EVOX is a great. Modality to use. If you use talk therapy, you’re right. In conjunction, I got this, I figured this out. Let’s release it now. Mm-hmm. Um, so I think together, they’re so great, but I, I think specifically what with Evox, what makes it so different from the other modalities is that you are getting that soothing regulation in your body as you’re talking through these emotions.

And as you finish your session, Leanne is helping you with questions to bring you back into that neutral stasis where you, where you feel better. Mm-hmm. Um, so yeah. I love Evox.

Leigh Ann Lindsey: Well, that was unbelievable. That was amazing. I cannot wait for others to get to hear this. Thank you so, so much. Of course. You’re such a gem.

Thank you. Love working with you. And I am just so ecstatic for everything. First of all, all that’s changed and shifted even since the start of this year. Yeah, yeah. But of course, just everything that is to come for you as well. Thank you.