How Reconnecting to Your Essential Nature Heals Anxiety and Self-Sabotage

We explore the concept of essential nature and how reconnecting to our true selves leads to authentic living and healing. Licensed therapist and author Harmony Kwiker shares insights from transpersonal psychology on moving beyond our conditioned patterns.

• Transpersonal psychology looks beyond personal identity to access the spiritual dimensions of our humanity
• Our essential nature often becomes hidden behind conditioning as we adapt to family and social expectations
• Traditional therapy often positions the therapist as the expert, but a client's innate spirituality is actually the guide to healing
• Nervous system regulation is key to healing, but dysregulation isn't "bad" - it's important for integration
• Self-sabotaging patterns begin as adaptive responses that continue after they're no longer needed
• Mindfulness creates space between thoughts, allowing us to access possibilities beyond what our ego can imagine
• Alignment occurs when our thoughts, feelings and actions are congruent with our true nature
• Being a secure base for yourself means honoring what's true for you while recognizing others may have different perspectives

You can find Harmony HERE

Link to The Awakened Brain by Lisa Miller

I would love to hear from you! Share your thoughts on this episode through the "send us a text" link in the show notes. If you're enjoying the podcast, consider joining the Growing Garden of Violets using the support link below.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to No Shrinking Violets
• 2:13 Meeting Harmony Quaker
• 5:29 Understanding Transpersonal Counseling
• 10:14 True Self vs. Conditioned Self
• 17:06 Trauma, Pain and Nervous System Regulation
• 31:42 Breaking Free from Self-Sabotage
• 39:54 Practical Tips for Accessing Your True Self
• 48:10 Episode Closing

Transcript

Mary: 0:05

Welcome to No Shrinking Violets. I'm your host, Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist and certified integrative mental health practitioner. I've created a space where we celebrate the intuition and power of women who want to break free from limiting narratives. We'll explore all realms of wellness what it means to take up space unapologetically, and how your essential nature is key to living life on your terms. It's time to own your space, trust your nature and flourish. Let's dive in. Hi and welcome to the show.

Mary: 0:41

Before we start, I wanted to share a podcast review with you. River Pebbles wrote a great listen. I love listening to each episode. Your interviews are interesting and moving. I can relate to each and every story. I appreciate reviews so much. This podcast is truly my heart, and hearing from listeners is so cool. I would love to hear from you too. Okay, on to the show.

Mary: 1:07

You may know that I often mention essential nature when I speak about taking up your space as the unique person that you are. When I say this, I mean that we well, all beings, animals, plants have an essential nature that is informed by well nature, our genes and our DNA, and nurture our way of being that has been shaped by our experiences, especially as children or those experiences that were the most impactful, like true trauma. I believe, and I have seen from my work and in my own life, that we often get farther from the nature part of our essential nature as we move toward adulthood and, amazingly, it's often as we get older that we are drawn back to something simpler. We recognize on some level that we aren't living as we were truly meant to live. My guest today has literally written books about this. She writes about our true self versus our conditioned self, very similar to what I mean when I talk about essential nature, and, as a fellow licensed therapist, she not only helps her own clients reconnect to their true selves, but she trains other mental health professionals to apply the same skills in their own work, which is so cool. Here's a quote from one of her books entitled Align Living and Loving from the True Self, where she's talking about the transformation in clients as they see themselves with more clarity, they remember their essential nature and naturally find their way back to their wholeness. I just love that. My guest today is Harmony Kwiker.

Mary: 2:45

Born into a family of healers, harmony started the practice of transcendental meditation at age six. During this time, she glimpsed her future self and knew that she was here to be a healer, a teacher and an author. When it came time to choose a major in college, psychology seemed like the only reasonable choice. Wanting to find a way to bridge the progressive healing techniques of her parents with traditional psychology, she chose a graduate program with a strong foundation in social justice and a more holistic lens of clinical psychology. After 10 years of teaching general psychology, harmony accepted a position as a visiting instructor at Naropa University, where she currently teaches transpersonal gestalt counseling and transformative clinical skills. Harmony also founded the Institute for Spiritual Alignment, where she offers continuing education and training for therapists and coaches who want to bridge the divide between traditional and spiritual transformation. Welcome to no Shrinking Violets, harmony.

Harmony: 3:48

Thank you, Mary. Thank you for that lovely introduction and I just so love the way you describe the essential self. Yeah, thank you for having me here.

Mary: 3:58

Sure, I'm really excited. As I read more about your work, I felt like so many of the things align, which is kind of ironic because that's the name of one of your books. So I gave a little bit of info about you, but I wonder if you could give us some quick highlights about how you ended up where you are today with your own podcast for clinicians, as well as all the wonderful skills you bring to your clients and to the world wonderful skills you bring to your clients into the world.

Harmony: 4:31

Yeah, my journey has been one that is really beyond what my mind could have planned. You know, I had a lot of dissatisfaction with traditional clinical counseling and because of that I sought out a degree like I wanted to understand how to create a container for a client to really return back home to their essence, to their essential self. You know, I really found my answer in transpersonal counseling, and it isn't something that you know many people talk about. It's not a very common word that we use. I was just like excited to find that there's a whole branch of counseling dedicated to the transpersonal nature of the human condition.

Harmony: 5:14

And for those of you who don't know, transpersonal literally translates to beyond personal identity, and so in transpersonal counseling we're really opening up to this spiritual dimensions of humanity, accessing transcendent experiences. You know maybe more of the mystical nature of being human. As opposed to engaging from our personality with our client's personality, we're seeing them beyond their conditioned self. And so in my practice with clients I just became so deeply in love with the human condition, with the way people fall asleep, to their true self, to their essential nature, and also to be present when they awaken and they remember deeply from this embodied sense, like a deep remembering of who they truly are, and I honestly feel like everything I know I've learned from my clients, you know, just being with people all day, every day, and supporting them and moving through these sort of barriers that they've built against themselves and against contact, and opening back up to themselves and learning how to develop self-trust and reconnect with their innate wisdom and their deep knowing.

Mary: 6:38

That's really a beautiful definition that you gave of transpersonal. I will admit that in my training and I've been around for, I think probably longer than you 35 years in the biz, but that idea of transpersonal was really not part of my training. But I feel like the longer that I did the work, the more I started to recognize that we can't just work from the neck up. I mean, you know we, we call the the word, we call psychologist shrinks, you know we think about. We're just working with the thoughts and the brain, and it's so much richer than that and I think our modern society has made the work that you do even more important.

Harmony: 7:24

Thank you. You know I agree with that and as a teacher, you know who teaches transpersonal gestalt counseling. I see that in my students. I feel so grateful that there's this whole wave of new clinicians who are really passionate about learning how to tend to the therapeutic container as a sacred space for clients to return back home to themselves.

Mary: 7:49

Yeah, I also love the idea of container because we do hold space. We need to hold space for that exploration and I think in your story it's so cool that you started that part of a journey for you at age six and I think when we are at that age, five or six we are really truly ourselves. I would go to the woods at that age and spend so much time in nature and I think as we get older, we start to get these messages and that's another thing I talk about. But we get these socialization messages that you know some of those things they're not okay or they're weird, or, and so we move away, I think, from what we as children recognize that we truly love.

Harmony: 8:36

Absolutely. I feel very lucky that I was raised by healers and had parents who really instilled trust in my intuitive senses and really honored me for more than my personality. And you know, at the same time you know, given the name of your podcast, as you're talking about my six-year-old self I'm really remembering that it was soon thereafter that I started to hide and didn't feel safe in the way that you were describing. I stopped feeling safe and really showing myself fully to the world, and I think children are so wise at sensing the environment and learning how to create an equilibrium with the field around them. And that's, you know, an essential part of gestalt therapy. Part of the theory is is really the way that we make contact with the environment. We're either meeting the environment as we are or we're sort of unconsciously manipulating ourselves to fit into an environment that we don't feel safe in.

Mary: 9:51

Yeah, yeah for sure. So, as I said, my listeners often hear me mention essential nature, which we've talked a little about, and I think your idea of that true self and the conditioned self are so similar. But I feel like your approach, your theory, brings a lot more spirituality into the work that you do. So how do you see the role of spirituality, how would you explain that, in healing and transformation?

Harmony: 10:14

I believe that a client's innate spirituality is the guide of their healing and I really think that this is where psychotherapy is imbalanced. And I really think that this is where psychotherapy is imbalanced. If we look to the therapist as the expert who guides the healing, we're making them the source of that repair and it actually puts a lot of pressure on the therapist, and I think this is why so many therapists feel depleted. They're working so hard to do something that's not theirs to do, to do something that's not theirs to do. And so when we're really let go of in the seat of clinician letting go of our own personal identity and letting go like this isn't for our own ego fulfillment, so letting go of our ego and really just opening up to the inherent intelligence of the space we can start to listen to the innate spirituality that's actually embedded in the condition patterns, like there's a wisdom in each pattern. We can listen to the innate spirituality and the innate wisdom in any nervous system, dysregulation or discomfort in the body, and as we listen in this very nonviolent, loving, accepting way, we can start to just see this. It's sort of, in my mind, looks like a golden thread of interconnection where the client can start to follow their innate spirituality, also as sort of this guide back home to themselves. So it's not something that I'm teaching somebody to do. I'm not making them do it. I'm listening to their system in such a way that they begin to listen and then they start to open up to themselves in a very deeply healing way.

Harmony: 11:57

And you know I've been doing this for about 20 years so not as long as you, but for quite some time and from what I've seen and experienced in the healing potential of a therapeutic container is that a client's innate spirituality is the source of their healing.

Harmony: 12:14

It doesn't come from their mind. The deep repair comes from the reconnection to the spiritual self, and there's actually some research that supports this theory. That's new, that I absolutely love. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Dr Lisa Miller out of Columbia, but she recently wrote a book titled the Awakened Brain and she just so beautifully highlights through neurobiology the way that when we're in our stress or trauma response, our access to what she calls the spiritual brain, the parietal lobe, the access to our higher consciousness, shuts down as we mobilize to find safety. And so when we are dysregulated and, you know, or using our condition patterns hyper-identified with our personality, we actually disconnect from our spiritual self, and so in the healing process we return to a regulated state of awake awareness where we're embodying our spirituality. It's not an idea or a dogma, it's a felt sense of our spirit.

Mary: 13:24

I had not heard of that, but I just made a note of that book and I will not only am I going to look it up, but I will put it in the show notes, but I think that is really valuable to start to unfortunately, I think, in our society put some science behind it, because there, I'm guessing, you've heard a lot of questioning, maybe seen a lot of raised eyebrows with the approach that you use.

Harmony: 13:49

Not in my circle. I don't know, maybe it's just because of the part of the deeply I'm not teaching them this, I'm in the process with them that the felt sense is so peaceful and reassuring that there's just a tremendous amount of gratitude that I trust them this deeply, that I trust their innate wisdom and when I'm teaching my students and you know, naropa University is known for its transpersonal program, so we attract a lot of students who are passionate about non-ordinary states of consciousness, which is what I'm talking about that people seem to be really excited, and I do also think that psychology is shifting a paradigm right now and that I'm part of this and you're part of this. We're sort of ushering in a new way to do this work and I feel very excited about it.

Mary: 14:50

I'm really excited to hear that, that you are part of a world where there isn't, as I said, the raised eyebrow, Because I think that this well, as I talk about this, essence is in everything. I mean, plants know what they need to do, and I think we know what we need to do, but we've started to doubt that. And I also love what you say about shifting from this idea that the therapist is the expert. I mean, it's not a word I ever loved, but I feel like the client really needs to be empowered to. They already have enough self-doubt, I think. I think they need to be empowered that when they have a sense of something or a sense of a direction, they need to move in. That we should support that. So I think that that idea of our stepping back and you make a great point that I think we in this profession, we tend to shoulder a lot and we tend to believe oh, we're responsible for the healing, and I think to share that with the client makes it so much more powerful.

Harmony: 15:59

Absolutely, it's a collaborative process. So my witness it's a collaborative process. So my witness, my seeing my client accurately contributes a lot to a session, because clients often don't actually see themselves accurately. They're sort of swimming in their own water and they believe that what they're experiencing is it. It's like the reality of their existence. It's like the reality of their existence, and so my witness offers a clarity for them, along with everything that they feel and think and experience along the journey back to this deep desire, this deep longing that they have. And this is really the essence of being client-led. I think in our field right now, there's a lot of talk about being client-led, but to fully, fully let the client lead really requires a lot of trust in their innate wisdom.

Mary: 17:07

Yeah. Well, it occurs to me that this idea of spirituality. So I worked a lot of my career with college students and now I work mostly with women in midlife. So I think back to when my college students would do an intake form and we ask sort of I'll say the 360 degree view of themselves, the question about spirituality. They would often not answer or put an NA, not applicable. Many women at the age that I am, in this midlife part of journey, I think, have really recognized that either spirituality has been lacking for them or they're really starting to reconnect. So I'm curious how you help clients access and trust that part of themselves. What is that? Can you share a little what that looks like?

Harmony: 18:05

Yeah, the first thing I want to say is that I don't talk to my clients about spirituality. I don't want to become another voice of should. I don't want to share spiritual dogma or like even practices that they think they should do in order to be different. In the work that I do, instead of trying to change a client, I'm actually creating space for them to be more of who they are, as they are, and it is through this deep welcoming and in Gestalt we call it phenomenology, from opening up to the phenomenology a client begins to change organically and naturally and their organismic self-regulation and innate movement towards health just sort of comes online and they find their way back. And so it's not that I'm talking about spirituality, it's more that it's a spiritual experience, and part of that is the state of consciousness that I'm sitting in when I hold space. Not to get too clinical here, but my third book just came out and it's titled the Awakened Therapist Spirituality, consciousness and Subtle Energy in Gestalt Therapy.

Harmony: 19:17

And in Gestalt therapy we're looking at the whole of an individual. We can't separate a person down into distinct parts, so spirituality and a person's soul and their essence is part of that whole, and so when we are listening to their thoughts. Spirituality is not separate from those thoughts. Everything is interconnected in gestalt. Gestalt literally means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It's just sort of an essential part of the container. But the tone is really set because I'm not playing expert. I'm not interpreting my clients, analyzing them, dissecting them, figuring them out. I'm really opening into awake awareness.

Mary: 20:03

Well, and I'm going to guess that for some people they've never had. Well, I'll use the word container again. They've never had a container created or a space created where they truly can just lean into that and access who they really are.

Harmony: 20:20

A hundred percent, mary. I mean, and the thing is, is that clients come in because they want to change and so they're already wrestling with themselves, they're already in this inner conflict, and then if I come in and I'm also trying to change them, then it's just creates more inner tension and there's not a lot of spaciousness for increased awareness, increased clarity and discovery.

Mary: 20:46

Yeah, well, and I think so often people think that they go to therapy to figure out what to do, and I think so much of it is more figuring out how to be like, how to be in the world as the being that you really are Absolutely, and I think sometimes we get confused between religion and spirituality. So, to have a shared kind of term for that with listeners, spirituality is really a connection to the highest power, correct, a larger sense of the world.

Harmony: 21:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas religion is a tradition with, like you know, practices and ideas. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas religion is a tradition with, like you know, practices and and ideas. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. I often say to people that I really believe it's not about what we say or what we do, but the place within ourself from which we speak and act. I can say something from my conditioned self, for example, I could tell my husband that I love him. But from my conditioned self, I'm like trying to get him to love me too or, you know, trying to have him feel appreciated, so to get him to be different, maybe, or something like that. But if I'm really seated in my true nature and I say the words I love you, the quality is so much more expansive and liberating. There's not this confinement or this sort of tit for tat that can happen with the conditioned self or the ego.

Mary: 22:27

Yeah, and I would imagine that for some people the enormity of that brings fear, and so this is, I mean, another thing that I touch on often with women. They'll hear me say take up your space, and I think that to expand ourselves into what our potential is, I think is terrifying. So when you think about that in the work that you do, is that more that women step towards their true self and they need to step a little bit away from their conditioned self, and that's how they would kind of move into their own space.

Harmony: 23:05

I actually think the answer rests in neurobiology. I think that women have traditionally experienced a fawning response where, in order to find safety in society, in family, in the systems that we exist within, we've needed to be very accommodating, nice, agreeable, which are all fawning characteristics, where we don't have an opinion, we don't have a desire, we don't get mad, and that is a survival mechanism. And I think it's because we've been in a disempowered, you know, state place in the, in the system and, so to say, take up space. Of course they're going to feel fear because they're you're inviting them to move out of fawn and into hyper arousal, so from a hypo aroused state of fawn into hyper arousal of action, you know, and so so, yeah, I mean, I think it's all's all. Just, you know, this is why therapy can be so helpful, is because when we can co-regulate through the fear, it's fear is valid. You know, it's okay to be scared.

Harmony: 24:20

I remember when, when I got divorced from my first husband many years ago, I was so scared because I was. It was the first time in my life, I life, I was shifting out of my fawn and I was saying no to this pattern and I would feel my fear and I would just make room and of course I'm scared, you know and just make room for my fear, and I'm going to do it anyways. I'm going to bring my fear with me. This isn't about not being scared, it's about being courageous.

Mary: 24:51

Yeah, kind of a little bit like radical acceptance. I mean, it's going to be there and I think when we try to push something, it can sometimes become stronger. And you know, I like that you named fawning because that idea of we don't want to hurt someone's feelings or we don't acknowledge anger, because we're not supposed to be angry as women. That's a male emotion. All of those things are, you know, kind of let's stay small, let's not rock the boat, and fawning is also a response to trauma. And fawning is also a response to trauma. It's not just fight or flight, it's freeze. It's also fawn to keep ourselves. Well, as you said, keep ourselves safe. We can stay safer if we just smile and nod, but there's a price to pay for that. So let's hit this side path now of trauma and pain so I know you talk about that too is how do people move past deep trauma and pain? What's sort of? What are some?

Harmony: 25:57

of the keys to that. Yeah, you know, I look at it more as how do we learn to be available for ourselves in our experience and resolve the unfinished business from the past that's affecting us now, when, when we're in a trauma response, the brain can't register the past from the present, and so anytime we're in a heightened stress response which could be a hyper arousal of fight or flight or hypo arousal of freeze or fawn it really could be our past history influencing the way that we're perceiving and experiencing our current life circumstances. And nervous system regulation is just one of my favorite parts of this work. Really, truly, I think the nervous system is so wise and I think that humans have a tendency to try to think their way through their stress response or their dysregulation, and the mind actually can inhibit finding our way back to a state of regulation. And I also think there's a misconception. I think people think that being regulated is better than being dysregulated, but dysregulation is actually really important for us to, you know, heal the past and integrate more deeply. There's a lot of neuroscience that sort of shows us how important emotions are for our integration.

Harmony: 27:25

But when we try to control our nervous system dysregulation, as you were saying, we just perpetuate this sort of inner conflict with ourselves. Pushing it away doesn't actually make it go away. But people unconsciously think that I'm like I'm trying to regulate myself and I'm trying to make this go away and it's not working. And so the key, the tip that I have is really to be available for yourself If you have a sensation like let's just say it's fear, to welcome your fear and to bring your awareness to fear and, just you know, wrap fear with love and validate fear. It makes sense to me that you're scared. It's not about validating the narrative we come up with from our fearful state, but just validating the emotion of fear, and the moment we do that, we're actually becoming more congruent with ourselves. Our system settles in the presence of deep congruence like that. And yeah, it's really important on the path of healing and on the path of living from our essential self and on the path of living from our essential self.

Mary: 28:31

Yeah, that idea of trying to think our way out of it we can also that inner critic can start to come up of I shouldn't feel this way, I shouldn't be scared. I should be over this by now. And there's so much happening in that beautiful frontal lobe that we have that also can be defeating sometimes or keep us stuck and thinking about sort of neurobiology. The amygdala was sort of trained, it's trained to keep us safe and it's supposed to keep us safe.

Mary: 29:03

But I think sometimes I use the analogy it's like the smoke detector going off when the toast is burning that we have come up with these ways to cope. As soon as we hear that first beep of the smoke detector, we feel like we have to fold or we have to back away. And I think that idea of just allowing the emotion that if you have strong fear it's really coming from a place of self-protection, it's not there because you're broken I think that's also another thing that we can think what's wrong with me? There has to be something wrong with me and there isn't something wrong with us. We're just doing the best that we can.

Harmony: 29:43

Yeah, and just to bring this back to transpersonal counseling, the mind that thinks I should be different, I should be over this, I shouldn't be scared. That is what what I'm referring to as part of our personality, our thinking brain, our hyper identified self. And so the thing that I'm suggesting is really shifting away from that hyper identification with the mind. The mind is really important, like we obviously need our mind and the thoughts that we create from a state of dysregulation. They're an attempt at trying to regulate our nervous system, but they actually pull us further away. And so, even if the practice is just turning towards the mind and saying I see that you think I should be different, as opposed to listening to the thoughts and just wrapping the mind with awareness and moving into more of a transpersonal state so powerful and I really think such a different way that I mean I'm going to just talk about my own experience, such a different way than I've worked or a different way than maybe I've even allowed my clients to show up.

Mary: 31:01

I just really go back to. I love that sense of the client is the expert in themselves and it's a journey where you walk together with them as the therapist. I just think that's really, really cool and, like I said, it hasn't traditionally been a lot of the way that I work, but you've made me so curious in wanting to access more of that. I think for myself and also build it into my practice. I think for myself and also build it into my practice. We've certainly touched on this, but to pull this together, why do you think it's so hard for people to break free from their self-sabotaging habits.

Harmony: 31:42

It's such a big question and so I'm really, you know, in my mind right now sorting through gestalt concepts and just the human condition. But I see sabotage patterns as a way that a person is unconsciously trying to resolve something from the past. So the way that we interrupt our own free will or interrupt our own free expression is a learned habit. It's a learned way of being so. Even like, let's just say, a person who when they were growing up it wasn't safe for them to say what was true for them. They would have gotten punished. It was smart and wise and adaptive of them to close off their voice. It becomes a sabotage pattern when now they want to say their truth and those original circumstances of being punished aren't here anymore but they continue to stop themselves and cut off their voice. The way that these habits sort of get entrained.

Harmony: 32:51

We're really listening for what needs to be resolved here in order for this person to trust themselves enough to hold themselves enough to feel safe to speak their truth.

Harmony: 33:05

The mind looks for safety outside of us, the amygdala, as you were saying. You know scanning the environments for threats to safety outside of us. But in transpersonal counseling we're really looking at where a client can find their seat of safety within themselves, within their own body, with the way they honor themselves, treat themselves, undo patterns of self-betrayal. And so oftentimes in my work with clients, I am working with an unresolved experience from the past and teaching clients how to be a secure base for themselves. So being a secure base for oneself really means that we know what we want, we know how we feel, we know what we think and what we value and we honor what is true for us, while also honoring that other people might have a different desire or a different idea or a different value and we don't need to be the same in order to be in relationship, but that we don't play small and we don't, you know, cut off our truth just because somebody else has a different idea.

Mary: 34:09

Absolutely the way you said. That was just perfect. We have to compare Again. That's how we learn as infants we are comparing people's reactions. But I think as we get older that comparison starts to be used as self-judgment that I don't think this is okay or I've been told this is okay. And those people that early on form some of those opinions. You know, just because somebody else believes it doesn't mean it's true for you. And it strikes me, and you did articulate this, but how blessed you were to have the family that you did as a child. That level of acceptance, I think, is not true for many, many people.

Harmony: 34:57

Yeah, the thing also that I just want to highlight about the sabotage pattern is that the pattern began as a response to the environment, but what ends up happening is the person then projects onto the environment what actually is originating within them, so they don't trust themselves to speak the truth, but they're actually assigning that to the environment, even though it's not part of the present moment, and this is really what a projection is. And so if we look at what's happening within us, that's where we find the solution. That's where we find the answer. It's not about anybody else. You know, when a client comes in and they want to talk about other people in their life, in my mind I'm like, well, since they're not here and we have no control over them, what is here for you?

Mary: 35:42

What's true for you right now, instead of trying to seat our safety outside of ourselves, instead of trying to seat our safety outside of ourselves, yeah, and I think this idea of we do what we need to do to survive, to get through things hard situations, traumas, all those things when we're kids, but I think you were saying in a very eloquent way, those things then stop working or we try to generalize to everything and that sort of keeps us stuck.

Harmony: 36:14

Yeah, yeah and then and then it lives in us as a sabotage pattern. And this is where clients are like why can't I stop doing this? Why do I keep doing this same pattern? And yeah, I really think that resolving the unfinished situation that caused this like to turn towards that inner young one and just say I see that you're scared, I see that you're staying quiet. It makes sense to me that you're quiet and that you're scared, and then starting to repair and reparent oneself by giving ourselves what it is that we always needed. Maybe it's saying like I always want to know what's true for you, Like saying that to ourselves I always want to hear what's true for you, as opposed to looking to other people to want to hear.

Mary: 37:00

Yeah, Well, and I've certainly had clients that really have trouble effectively starting to create change or make a different life for themselves because some emotions for them feel so big, like the feeling of anxiety or if it starts to kind of flow into panic. So I'm guessing that may happen in your work and you've talked about regulation. Is that sort of built into this whole thing, helping them not only observe and allow the emotions, but how do they regulate the body reactions that might go along with that?

Harmony: 37:44

It's both the nervous system regulation and my interventions are really teaching clients how to self-regulate. But in Gestalt therapy we actually externalize subpersonalities and different aspects into the therapy room so that the client has a space to increase awareness and discover their way through the pattern on their own, but with my facilitation. And so this is to say that when our thoughts are, you know, right here in the forefront of our mind, they seem so real, like they're loud, and we cling to them and they're just like. It seems like they're everything.

Harmony: 38:25

But if I say to a client, are you open to trying an experiment? And they say yes, and I say I just want to invite you to take the voice of fear and put it in the chair, and I always say it's not to get rid of the voice of fear, it's just so that we can learn from fear and understand what it is that it's needing. And so I actually have my clients use their hands and take it, you know, put it over there and get some space, and we're co-regulating through that. But we're really learning what is why, like, what's the wisdom here? What is needed really to come back home?

Mary: 38:58

Yeah, that's a great visual because I'll say that with anxiety invite it to sit down beside you, but I love the idea of physically sort of placing something there because I think it makes it more real. And that may be a little beginning to the next question that I have for you, but I'm going to guess that a lot of these things are resonating with my listeners and I would think, too, that they might be like oh man, I wish I could work with Harmony. So if that's not an option for them finding someone that really can do this work at sort of the level you're talking and they're feeling like, wow, that really seems like something that would be helpful for me. But what if they want to start to simply do a few of these things in their own lives? Are there simple shifts or certain things they might start to be able to kind of access that true self as a beginning?

Harmony: 40:02

Yeah, I believe that the fundamental ground for this work really begins with mindfulness practices, and I know a lot of people say or believe that they can't meditate because when they sit down to meditate, their mind is really loud and thinking. But that's what the mind does, right? The mind thinks. That's part of the human condition, and what I'm suggesting here is that, instead of believing our thoughts are reality and that what we're thinking is the truth, instead to just maybe close our eyes and just label it a thought and take a breath and just get more space. Space is really what increases awareness, what increases consciousness, and so the more space we can create around our thoughts or in between each thought, even if it's just one breath or a half a breath, we start to open up to more possibility than the ego could ever come up with, and so that would be my number one tip is to be mindful, to just notice when you're believing your thoughts are truth, to just notice when you're believing your thoughts are truth and just take a breath and check in with your body, maybe put your hand on your heart, Remember the other components of yourself, because we live in a mind dominated society, especially with social media and computers like everybody's all up in their head all the time. And so to just disrupt that pattern and take a breath and come back, and yeah, and I really think that doing that in the morning, like, let's just say, it's even in the shower, sometimes if my day's really busy, my shower is where I have my mindfulness practice.

Harmony: 41:46

I think it's important to be intentional about where you want to live from. Do you want to live from your thought-based reality, that sort of houses, your limiting thoughts, or do you want to live from your essential self? And so to begin each day by coming into alignment with the truth of who you are and you know, I define alignment as when our thoughts, our feelings and our actions are congruent with the truth of who we are. And so when we're off balance in our mind and they don't actually serve our essence, then it can be hard to find our way back home. But those would be my two biggest tips just to be really mindful and to get really intentional really intentional.

Mary: 42:30

Well, and I think you're right that when we use words like mindfulness, people think that's such a lofty thing and we can't access it. But really mindfulness is paying attention, paying attention to where your senses are, and so doing that in the shower, where I think most of us are thinking about what we have to do that day, If we can instead ground ourselves in that. I've sometimes said like, really experience the shampoo, what does it smell like? Or experience the water, and yeah, even if you are able to do that for 60 seconds to start to truly quiet the thinking mind and just be in and experience your body.

Harmony: 43:10

Absolutely, you know, really, just to really nurture our own neuroplasticity, to allow our brain to orient to something other than our thinking, yeah, Well, you do so much amazing work.

Mary: 43:27

I love that you are helping to educate and train therapists and the way you do that on your podcast. So you make sure I'm saying this right that you have part of your podcast where you process cases, but then there's also part where, if let's say, I want to learn at a deeper level, I would access other content from that, correct?

Harmony: 43:52

Yeah, I think it might be the opposite of that. So, streaming on all platforms, there's a conversation that I have with other therapists where we're just sort of talking about being a human and working with clients, and then on Patreon I do a full case consultation where they present a case that they're having a challenging time with and I offer them consultation through a transpersonal gestalt lens.

Mary: 44:18

I love that, and your podcast is called the Awakened Therapist. It is yeah, yeah, okay. So you have two books that are kind of written for the layperson, is that right?

Harmony: 44:30

My first book is Reveal, embody the True Self Beyond Trauma and Conditioning, and it's a very vulnerable self-help memoir. My ego did not want me to write that one, mary, but you did it anyway. Yay, I did it anyway. Then I could feel how important it was to be so humbled by my own journey. And then my second book is a self-help book titled Align Living and Loving from the True Self.

Mary: 44:57

You actually have a book that you. I think it's more of a textbook, right for practitioners.

Harmony: 45:01

It's a textbook, but it's also sort of a self-help book for therapists and a workbook, and I tell a lot of stories about my own clinical work there too. Yeah, it just came out last month and it's called the Awakened Therapist Spirituality, consciousness and Subtle Energy in Gestalt Therapy.

Mary: 45:20

Well, I'm going to tell you it's already in my Amazon cart, but I will link all of these and you know, I think just to circle back before I end you know, we've talked about this idea of the therapist being set up as the expert, and I'm going to say and this is a little off topic, but I think because of the burgeoning world of coaching, which that is an entirely other topic, but I think that has sort of changed this line a little bit where about getting help? And so I think, as we also move into this modern world, people like you and I, as part of our work and part of putting things out there like a podcast, like a book, we also, I think, end up sharing more about where we've come from than is probably in the old idea of you know what is a psychotherapist? We're doing more of that and that is such an interesting journey, isn't it?

Harmony: 46:20

Oh yes, I mean, I could talk about this for a very long time, but I'll say that I didn't plan on writing a memoir. I really still was in this old paradigm of thinking that I was the expert and I wanted to show myself as an expert with my first book. And I submitted my book proposal to a major publishing house and the acquisitions editor liked it and I was, you know, of course, so excited. And she came back to me and she's like you know, I actually think this should be a memoir. And I was gutted, mary, it's like what? And she only knew part of my story because of my bio and she's like I think your story will really empower people. And so I decided not to write any books at that point. And then, two years later, I was like okay, I think maybe she was right and I was ready. It was very much an undoing of that old paradigm of being an expert for me.

Mary: 47:15

Yeah, and what I've learned is you can still have your ethical line. But, yes, we are just, you know, trying to gain comfort and I'm going to be I'll be honest. For me, it felt way safer to have that boundary in a different spot. And even now, when I have clients that say, oh, I listened to your podcast Inside I'm not going to lie I'm a little bit like ooh what did I say?

Mary: 47:39

in that one. But what we can bring to the world by learning to navigate that and stepping into that space is so extra powerful. Yeah, and just affirming our own humanity to navigate that and stepping into that space is so extra powerful.

Harmony: 47:50

Yeah, and just affirming our own humanity. You know like the way that I approach my work is to affirm my client's humanity and I must affirm my own also. Yeah.

Mary: 48:01

Yeah, very true. Well, thank you so much. This has been so awesome, because when I can talk with somebody that expands what I know and feel, that's sort of icing on the cake. And you've done that today, harmony, and I just love talking to you. Thank you so much for being here.

Harmony: 48:20

Thank you so much, mary. It's been such a delight to connect with you and I've loved every moment of our time together. Thank you, sure.

Mary: 48:28

So one of the best things about this podcast is the listeners and the community that we are creating. I love hearing from you, whether it's to respond to an idea from an episode, to give a suggestion or simply to let me know how an episode affected you. You can use the send us a text link at the top of the show notes and, if you love listening, consider joining the Growing Garden of violets and support the show using the link at the bottom of the show notes. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are. Thank you.