THE ACCRESCENT™ PODCAST EPISODE 138

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.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to The Accrescent Podcast. I feel like I need to record a solo episode on just reflections of the year. This is something I like to do anyways, when we’re at about that six, seven month mark, halfway through the year, I love to look back at. Some of my intentions and maybe goals for the year, but I feel like it’s even more warranted.

’cause even sitting down today to record, it feels like the last two months has been six months. All in and of itself, all the things that have happened, how much has changed, how many new people I’ve met, it has been kind of a whirlwind in the best way possible. So I feel like there’s fun updates and great takeaways and great reflection to be had there, but that is not today’s episode.

Today. There are two really specific topics I wanna speak to. The first is, how do I know when I might. Need to do some subconscious work as part of my emotional healing journey, personal growth journey. We’re gonna answer this question and then the second piece is I want to share, I guess, kind of a, a lens or.

I don’t even know what to call it exactly, but a way with which I look at emotional wellness and emotional healing, and this idea of soothing versus solving. These are two terms that I’ve sort of coined together and have started using so much more to distinguish the types of emotional work and modalities and practices.

So I’m gonna get into that. A lot more too. But where I wanna start is how do I know if I should be doing sub subconscious work, if that’s might be something that’s helpful for me, or maybe that is a piece of the puzzle that I’m missing, or just a piece of the puzzle that could really super speed my progress.

For me, there are two clear signs that communicate a disconnect between the conscious and the subconscious mind. Two clear signs that if I see either one of these, it’s yes, subconscious work is probably warranted in this case. And I’ll just super quickly pause and distinguish the conscious and the subconscious brain.

I have said it so many times, but just in case you’re new here. The conscious brain is responsible for more analytical thoughts, picking up this cup, typing this message into the computer, picking up the phone, and calling someone. The subconscious brain is where memories are stored, repressed emotions, unresolved experiences, limiting beliefs, and so much more.

And the subconscious mind is responsible for 80 to 95% of the decisions we make in a day. And so I say this to every new client that I have. The repressed emotions, the unresolved experiences, the limiting beliefs that are stored in our subconscious, they are running 80 to 95% of our life, which is why for me, that is the.

One of the primary lenses that I look at emotional wellness through This is the core, core, core of what I am looking at and puzzling out with clients. So I just wanted to touch in, touch in on that in case the idea of the subconscious, this is new to us, or we don’t totally understand why this is even important.

So great. Okay. Subconscious work. There can be beliefs that are keeping me stuck. There can be unresolved experiences that are keeping me stuck. How do I know though that that might be going on for me? So one of the first. Signs is if you have a pattern that you feel like you have been stuck in for a while, maybe it’s an emotional pattern like anxiety or anger, or fear or grief.

Maybe it’s a behavioral pattern, like I keep letting this coworker take advantage of me, or I keep, um, soothing my emotions with alcohol and I know I shouldn’t be doing that. Or I just can’t seem to set boundaries with this one family member. A lot of us have. Patterns in our life and things that we would like to or need to shift, but no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, it just feels like I just can’t make any progress here.

I’m stuck no matter how hard I white knuckle it. Nothing seems to change for me. That is a clear sign when we consciously know that we want or need something to change, but we just can’t seem to make that change happen. That is a clear sign that there is something going on in the subconscious that is keeping us stuck.

So if that’s you right there, dinging, ding, dinging, that. Is a sign that you might wanna consider some type of subconscious work to figure out what is going in, what is going on down there that might be keeping me stuck. Likewise. A second way we can see that maybe subconscious work could be impactful for us is same thing.

Maybe you have a pattern that you’ve been stuck in and you’re wanting to shift and you actually have made progress. You. Set the boundaries. You’ve shifted your drinking habits. Maybe it’s even financial. You’ve shifted your financial habits. Whatever it might be. But inevitably you find yourself in some kind of pattern where you fall back into the old habits, the old pattern, the old ways of thinking, and you find yourself in this cycle of, I can shift into the new thing that I want for a time, but I always end up falling back into the old.

Or yo-yoing back and forth, I can do it and then, ah, I fall back. I can do it, and then I fall back. This is another sign that there is still something in the subconscious that is keeping me stuck. Something in my mind is telling me that this old pattern is safer or is what I deserve or is the only thing that I can maintain.

There can be any number of things involved in that, so I hope that’s helpful. Those for me are the two clear, clear signs. That there is something going on in the subconscious, I wanna start sharing that more and educating on that more. So it becomes easier and easier for individuals to be able to go, oh, that this is what the subconscious means.

This is what subconscious work might entail, and here’s how I can know if I might need it. And I guess on that thread of what does subconscious work entail, it’s a lot of. Us doing detective work, us puzzling out the maze or the nodded yarn ball of the mind. What? A lot of times it’s what are the beliefs keeping me stuck?

What were the experiences that created those subconscious beliefs in my mind? And likewise, what is still unresolved or unacknowledged or. Invalidated within me that needs to be expressed and heard, seen, validated, et cetera. And then I think the additional piece of my practice specifically is as we start to puzzle some of that out, we do dip our toe in the past with that work.

But the other piece of it is also very forward focused. What was modeled to my subconscious and now going forward, can we create practices and and routines and bring in different modalities and experiment with different things to start to expand the resources that our mind has to go to in certain moments.

What can I do today when I go home over the next week to start to shift this pattern? So we’re looking at both. We’re looking at what are the barriers, keeping me stuck, and let’s start to clear those out. But then also, where do I wanna get to? What does that look like? What habits would I need to step into?

And sometimes we have to break those down into smaller pieces. Maybe the ultimate goal is to get to a point where, I can stand firm in my worth and my boundaries and not let that boss or that colleague take advantage of me. But that might be the end game. There might be a few steps we need to get to first.

A question I might ask in that instance is, what are some of the smaller ways we’re not protecting ourself? We’re not standing up for ourself, we’re not showing up for ourself. And this could be something as simple as when a restaurant gets your food order wrong, you don’t go back and get. The correct order.

That is one of the simplest ways we can show up for ourself. We can protect ourself, we can make ourself feel seen and worthy. So there, it’s definitely a process, but that’s a little bit of a broad overview of what subconscious work might entail. At least here with me at the A Crescent with clients. Okay, so let’s get into now soothing versus solving.

What does this mean? I am so excited about this because I think it makes it really clear, and I also think. This is just, this idea came out of the last three years being totally immersed in the world of emotional wellness, mental health, deep emotional healing, personal growth, and starting to see these patterns emerge.

So what do I mean by soothing versus solving? For me, these are the two buckets or the two categories that I would delineate. Different types of emotional wellness modalities, practices, practitioners that we might work with. So I think there’s emotional support tools that we can use that are soothing.

And then I think there’s emotional tools and work that is. Solving, and they’re both important, and I’m gonna expand on this. So emotional support tools, resources, practitioners that are soothing are the resources we go to and can use to soothe a frazzled nervous system to help restore a sense of calm and composure when we’ve been triggered or upset.

When we go into a state of dysregulation, these are the tools or resources we can use to restore regulation. And these can be things like breath work, meditation, e f, t, sound, baths, acupuncture, even. There’s any number of things that go into this. Calling a friend, even talking to a therapist, can be very soothing to our nervous systems, to our mind, body and spirit.

But the work can’t stop there. We also need to be doing, at least in my personal opinion, I really do believe we also need to be doing emotional work. That is solving and solving emotional work is work that asks the question, okay. What caused the dysregulation in the first place? What caused the upset or the trigger or the turbulence such that I needed to go and do all these soothing practices?

And here’s why I think this is so, so important because, The soothing practices are amazing. They’re wonderful and they’re necessary, and they can be so, so helpful, and I do believe they can move the needle forward in terms of emotional healing, personal growth. However, I. I do feel that if we’re only doing soothing work, at some point, that growth journey is going to plateau.

And in fact, we might even find that the soothing tools aren’t really achieving what we need them to do anymore, or we need to add in more and more and more tools because the deeper root cause. Of that turbulence is still being left unattended to, I have a lot of clients who are very much in the alternative, integrative, functional, holistic medicine world, and a term that we use often in that world is root cause.

And it’s kind of the similar thing, right? A lot of conventional medicine. Is we are treating symptoms, but we’re not getting to what is the root cause of this disease or this illness. And if I were to use those terms in this case, it’s kind of like the nervous system dysregulation, the anxiety, the panic that.

Is a symptom of something deeper going on within. And I’ll bring in a little bit of a caveat here because this isn’t necessarily always the case, and I don’t want someone knocking on my door, um, confusing this. So here’s what I mean by this. Oftentimes, especially with the chronic things we’re experiencing, chronic anxiety, chronic fear, chronic grief, that is a clear sign.

There is something deep and unresolved within me. That is creating this. So if I just keep doing meditations every morning and doing my EFT and doing my breath work, but never asking that question, what is unresolved, what might be some inner turbulence around this, we’re not solving the root cause of that.

Now, the caveat here is sometimes there’s not deep, deep. Puzzling detective work that needs to happen. Let’s say I’m driving down the freeway and I almost get in a car accident. Well, that is triggering. That is going to probably send us into a state of dysregulation, maybe a fight or a flight response.

And so in that case, Great. Let’s go. Maybe once we’re off the freeway and we’re parked and we’re safe, we can do a quick, soothing exercise to restore that sense of calm and safety to our mind, body, and spirit. And in a case like that, no, I don’t think we need to do all this deep digging of, oh, what caused the dysregulation and this, and is there something deeper going on?

No. In that case, I almost crashed. Let me just restore safety. Great. Now I can move on. Awesome. However, I do think many, many, many of us have a lot of inner turbulence and unresolved experiences and repressed emotions and limiting beliefs that are causing that turbulence, that is causing that chronic dysregulation that needs to be looked at at some point in time.

I say this because I feel like I’ve been seeing on social media a lot lately. A lot of rhetoric and posts of, you know, all we need to do is nervous system work. All we need to do is somatic body work, and we don’t even need to look back. We don’t even need to ask where this came from or what happened. We just need to address the physiological symptoms of the trauma.

I do think that is an important piece. I don’t think it can always stop there. Maybe in some instances if we had a traumatic experience and from that experience we didn’t ingrain a lot of subconscious beliefs, maybe then that nervous system work, that somatic work can release the excess stress and emotions from our body and we can move on.

But I think oftentimes that in and of itself isn’t always enough. We do need to ask the question, ’cause that might release the emotions from our body that might release the energetic tension and the uncompleted stress cycles from our body, but, If I had, let’s say, a chronic experience as a kid of being neglected or abused or bullied in some way, that probably also created any number of beliefs in my subconscious.

So maybe we let go of the repressed emotions in some of the somatic. Work, but those beliefs are still ingrained in my subconscious and they’re still running a big part of the show. And so that’s why for me, both of these pieces of the puzzle are so important, solving work and soothing work. So what does this look like in.

A practical sense in everyday life. I think as always, it can be so fluid, it can be so individual to each person. What I would love in my ideal world is on a daily basis, we are all doing both. We are doing something that soothes and supports our nervous system, and we’re doing a little bit of the solving.

But I get that for a lot of people, that’s a big jump from maybe where we’re at today. And if I’m being totally honest, I don’t even do that every single day. A good starting point for me would be, at the very least, if we could bring in some kind of soothing work on a daily basis. And guys, I cannot stress enough, this can take five minutes.

And it can be free. We don’t need to do anything crazy with this. Honestly, my biggest suggestion is jump on YouTube. Look up vagus nerve exercises or nervous system breath work, or guided meditations or emotional freedom technique videos. There are so many amazing free resources on YouTube online. Choose one of those videos, sit down, do it for five minutes in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, whatever fits your schedule.

But even five minutes a day of soothing work for me is a big step and a big, big win. If we’re not doing anything yet, then what that might spill into is that solving piece. I think especially initially. It might really depend on your personality and what fits best with you, but I feel like for some, that’s a piece that we might need some guided support with initially.

Now, not always. Maybe you can just pick up a pen and start journaling out, oh yeah, what? What’s going on here? I got triggered by this, and what was really deeply going on inside of me that got triggered by that. What are the beliefs running the show here? Absolutely, you know, start to ask questions of yourself, start to get curious, start to observe and bring in that awareness.

But I do, I do have a hunch that maybe for many people, the solving work, Might, they might need that guided support in that, and that might be working with a therapist that might be doing evox, that might be any number of things, EMDR, even something like hypnotherapy. Again, so many things that fall into this category.

Life coaching even is a great way to start to ask questions and start to do some of that solving work. Ultimately my goal is with my clients, we do both, and this is what I love about Evox, is the biofeedback part of Evox therapy is incredibly soothing to the nervous system. But while we’re in the session and they’re getting all this biofeedback and they’re getting all of the soothing, we’re also doing that solving piece.

We’re also asking questions and doing detective work and puzzling out. Okay, what beliefs might be keeping me stuck here? Where do they come from? What’s unresolved? What do I need to release, et cetera. Yeah, and maybe for many of my clients and many of you, that solving piece starts with working with a practitioner.

But as you go through and you learn more techniques and you learn more questions to ask, you can start to integrate pieces of that on your own at home in your own way. This is one of the things I love most, is I have so many clients who will say, You know, I’ve started asking myself so many of the questions you ask me in our sessions now, and they’re doing their own solving work in real time almost instinctively, because we’re also training the brain how to process, how to do that solving, and that’s really big and I think something worth pointing out that.

You know, here I am saying, let’s do solving work. Let’s, let’s process our emotions. Let’s look at our subconscious. But the reality is, how many of us in childhood or even in adulthood, were ever actually taught how to do that or even modeled how to do that? How many of us grew up in a home where our parents were modeling?

Expressing and processing and releasing their emotions well, or we’re teaching us how to do that. It’s very, very few and far between. So I wanna encourage you if that feels overwhelming or even just confusing that you are not alone. That is so, so common, and that’s a big part of what. I think I’m trying to do, and my mission is not just help us solve some of these deep things and clear the subconscious blocks that are keeping us stuck, but also really start to empower and educate individuals on how to.

Continue this process in their everyday life in the interim, so that they feel like, whoa, I, I’ve developed an amazing emotional wellness, personal growth routine, and I know how to maintain that. I know what serves me. I know what works for me. I know what questions to ask, et cetera, et cetera. So, Short, sweet to the point.

I hope that was helpful. The, you know, the two things we touched on today, how do I know I might need subconscious work and soothing work versus solving work? This is something I’m really, really excited to start to talk about more and more. I haven’t heard emotional work talked about in these terms before, and I just think it makes it so clear for us of, oh yeah, okay.

There’s stuff that soothes. There’s stuff that solves, they’re both important, and what are the things that go under each of those categories? When might I use those, et cetera. So hopefully more to come on this topic. But as always, thank you so much for tuning in, and we will be back next week with another guest episode.