Emotional Restoration: Overcoming Fear through Rest and Reflection

Fear can be quiet, rational-sounding, and incredibly persuasive. It tells us to stay small, keep the peace, hustle harder, and accept “good enough” because change feels risky. I sit down with Gilza Fort-Martinez, a licensed marriage and family therapist with over 30 years of experience, to talk about the real reasons people stay stuck even when they have insight and can name every red flag. We get honest about the fear of rejection, disapproval, and not being enough, and how that fear can shape relationships, self-worth, and the choices we keep repeating.

We also challenge the myth that change is only about willpower. Yes, willingness matters, but so do burnout, old conditioning, and the ways we chase psychological safety by clinging to the familiar. Hilza shares her practical Four R’s of Emotional Restoration framework for women’s mental health and healing after betrayal or broken trust: rest, reflection, reset, and re-engage. We talk about why healing is circular, why rest is not laziness, and how reflection is different from rumination when you’re trying to move forward without bypassing your pain.

Finally, we dig into one of the most useful life skills I know: responding instead of reacting. That tiny pause creates space for regulation, clarity, and a voice you can stand behind. Hilza also explains the idea behind her book The Loud Whispers and why ignoring your inner voice eventually comes with a cost. If this conversation helps you, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more violets can find the show.

You can find Gilza HERE

https://www.gilzafort.com/

Transcript

Fear And The Habit Of Shrinking

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There could be a variety of things that hold people back, as we both know, but I think the fear is what comes down to the core, whether it's the fear of rejection, of disapproval, of not being enough. What but the core is the fear that sits kind of in our for most of us in our gut.

Mary 0:24

For centuries, the phrase shrinking violet was used to diminish women, to suggest we were meant to be small and meek. But in nature, violets are anything but weak. They're resilient, beautiful, and essential to the ecosystem. Hi, I'm Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist, and each week I sit down with women who remind us that being compared to a violet isn't an insult. It's a testament to strength, endurance, and the power of taking up space and living by your true nature. If you're ready to stop shrinking and start thriving, you're in the right place. Hey violets, welcome to the show. We have a saying in the therapy biz: insight does not equal change. Just because we know something isn't serving us or is even harmful doesn't mean we will change our relationship with it or stop engaging with it, whether it is a person or a large pepperoni pizza. We can even gain an understanding of why we do certain things or why we end up in relationships with the same unhealthy patterns, but that doesn't necessarily mean we will change our behavior. We might recognize that we are repeating the patterns of trying to earn praise from our mom or dad by people pleasing, or denying certain innate parts of our personality, but we continue to be drawn into those interactions like an ant to sugar. We internalize early messages that clearly told us we were only worthy of love if we act in certain ways or fulfill the expectations of others. The catalyst for actual change has always been a source of fascination to me. For example, I've had clients who came to me for months or years presenting with the same issue. This is rare and it takes a bit of delicate confronting by the therapist. After all, we are change agents and sometimes we need to challenge our clients. It's part of the process, and it's actually the aspect of therapy that I've had motivated clients tell me they are most appreciative of. As many of you know, I love talking with fellow mental health clinicians on this show because first, they are my people, and second, I always learn something.

Meet Hilza And Her Turning Points

Mary 2:25

And the topic of patterns and behavior change in relationships is something that my guest today knows just a bit about. Joining me today is Hilza Fort Martinez, a licensed marriage and family therapist with over 30 years of experience specializing in betrayal, broken trust, and the emotional patterns that keep people stuck. Known as the Tough Love Healer, she is the author of The Loud Whispers, co-author of Give Me a Boost, and co-host of the bilingual podcast Letters to My Therapists. Welcome to No Shrinking Violets, Hilza.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Good morning, Mary. Thank you so much. I appreciate the invite and the opportunity to have some conversation, like you said, with uh my people.

Mary 3:07

Yes. Yeah. So I think this is going to be fun. Okay, so I always start by asking guests about flashbulb moments. And you know, I it's been pointed out to me that you and I are in a similar generation. We actually know what a flashbulb is. A lot of younger people might not even know what that is. It's the flash now that we turn on on our cameras. But when I talk about that, I mean like the times that stood out in your life. And it could be from when you were young or it could be recent, where you remember something that sort of was a catalyst or a trajectory, changed your trajectory to get you on the path of where you are now. So, what were some key moments for you that you think brought you to the work you're doing now?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Uh, that's a great question because we we often get, you know, focused on uh either where we are, where we're going, and we don't always pay attention to, you know, it's it's a whole journey how we got here. One of the first ones that that I would share with you is that I'm a child of political refugees. My parents came over in the early 60s from Cuba, and so um I was born there but came to the U.S. very young, and it was uh very much uh a piece of that growing up that my parents were um very appreciative, right, of the U.S. of being able to start over, um, but they also were very nostalgic for their homeland. So that was always a bit of a a line to that that was that a tightrope that very often had to be uh walked very gently in my family. You know, how much do we acculturate, how much do we assimilate, etc. So that theme kind of uh was a piece of my own journey. Um another flashbulb moment, as you call them, was when I really decided in college that what I wanted to do in helping people was through psychology and counseling and so forth, because I was supposed to be an attorney, Mary. See, my father was an attorney. Coming here to the US, he became, you know, an attorney again, got his licenses and so forth. And as as the oldest, I was supposed to be an attorney. And I promise you that I tried. I was a political science and a history major and so forth. But by my junior year in college, I realized that while my dad and I both wanted to help people, we wanted to do it in different ways. And that was a big one because that meant going up against my dad and his expectations. And um, and and although I always got that support from both of my parents, my father really just never understood what I did, what I do for a living, and why I really, you know, it be it has become a part of me. So that was junior year in college. Um another flashbulb moment would be when in my own going to graduate school, I was doing my master's, trying to, you know, finish my clinical psych and and getting license and so forth, I had married, who I thought was going to be my partner, you know, for life. And when that blew up and how that all blew up in my late 20s, I was in the midst of finishing my degree. So that really made was a question mark. How am I supposed to help people guide people when my own life is kind of imploding? Um, and really making, you know, an intentional decision that no, this really is what calls me. Uh, working with uh women and their families is really what calls me, that allowed me to kind of push through my own, you know, question marks. What what what am I doing telling people what to do when I don't know what I'm doing, kind of thing. So I would tell you that those those three, and and maybe the last flashball moment that I'll share with you at this point is I do remarry, and that has been a whole other journey. But I guess when I had my daughters who are grown women at this point, but when I had my daughters, those are important um moments for me that also really aligned for me. Hey, this is what I want in my personal life, but this really spills out into my professional life, you know, now having the perspective, right? The next layer of perspective, which is what, you know, motherhood can do for us, right?

Mary 7:56

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Yeah.

Mary 7:57

Yeah. And I think you bring up some important points about this idea of a therapist as an expert or sort of knowing what to do. And it kind of goes back to what I talked about in the beginning. But I think sometimes when we look at somebody else's situation, we can clearly see the signposts or here's what's going on. And but when it comes to ourselves, it is so fascinating that we can, even if we have that insight I talked about, it doesn't necessarily lead to changing behavior. Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Absolutely. And that we look at and and we might know the signs as as we call them, right? Uh, but also realize that we don't pay attention to them. We don't, uh, as you're saying, do the the necessary change that comes from having all that information until sometimes, you know, God, the universe, whatever says, Oh, you're not, you're not gonna pay attention. Okay, boom. And then we get hit with whatever the the major life situation, curveballs, as I call them with my clients, and we have no option but to pay attention.

Willpower Myths And Why We Stay

Mary 9:13

Oh, yeah. And I've said that so many times on this show that it's like the volume keeps being turned up. You know, you get a tap, and then if you don't pay attention, you kind of get a bigger nudge. And it and I can think of someone I know right now who is in a situation where the world is turning up the volume and they're not making the connection of what needs to happen. And I think, especially for, I mean, I'm Gen X, I think for me, it was always this idea that if you don't make a change, it's because you don't have willpower. What do you think about that idea of you're you're not trying hard enough or you don't have willpower if you're not able to make that change?

SPEAKER_00 9:54

I mean, we definitely come from that uh generation. And again, as a child of political refugees, because again, we weren't immigrants according to my parents, we were refugees, you know, and that was very much the standard in in my household. You need to, you know, pick yourself off, dust yourself, and and keep moving. Um in in in reality, though, part of the work that I've done with clients is as well as you know, my own work, my own family, but definitely with with clients, you I've come to really understand that it isn't just about willpower. We need to have that, right? We need to have the willingness to shift and change. I I when I I do a lot of work with couples also, and and I always say to them, listen, the one thing I can't give you, I can teach you a bunch of different kinds of skill sets, but the one thing I can't give you is willingness, the desire to want to put in the work and the effort. So we need that. And at the same time, we've done this work long enough, right, Mary, to to know that there are that there are other kinds of obstacles for a lot of us, and a lot of things that come from, you know, our own past, our own other experiences that really block that, fear being a major one, right?

Mary 11:22

The evil you know sometimes is what we often choose. And, you know, I think when we both work with women predominantly, and I think sometimes what can be hard for a woman is she gets confused between willingness and also being able to not be so hard on herself. There's a time where you can take your foot off the gas, and some days you might just not feel like doing the thing. And that doesn't mean that you failed. It's the great thing is you get to start over each day.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Absolutely.

Rest As A Radical Skill

SPEAKER_00 11:57

It that's a big piece of the uh framework that I work in in working with women, like you said, that I call the four R's, because very often for a lot of us as women, and I've I've sat with hundreds of women, right, over these 30 years, and whether you know, across cultures, across religions, across, you know, ethnicities, I I see that a lot of us carry that responsibility, obligation, whatever word we want to use, of really caretaking, right, for uh uh others and the significant people in our in our world. And then we don't know how to do it for ourselves, right? And so my my four R's, the very first R is the idea of rest, that it needs to be able to be okay for the day that you don't feel like doing any of the things that are on your proverbial to-do list, and that that is critical in being able to, you know, not only do healing, whatever work we're we're helping them with, right? But even just to do life, that we have to be able to be okay with resting. So a hundred percent I agree with you. And most of my clients, anyway, give me a lot of pushback when when I say to them, okay, so today, what are we gonna do that's gonna be rest? Oh my gosh, Hilsa, let me show you all the things that I got to get done today. That's not one of them. And and give me, I would think that you get a lot of pushback as well.

Mary 13:38

Oh, yeah. You know, and it's interesting because so I just last week I launched a book, and it is about how we are nature and nature can inform how we can live a more fulfilled life. And one of the biggest themes is rest. We don't see a flower blooming the entire year. There are and where you are in Florida, there are plants that can't even grow because it's too hot or there's not enough they need the winter rest cycle. And I think we we think that because we have this frontal lobe and you know we have this higher level thinking that that means we don't need to rest the same as everything else in nature, and it's it's just patently false.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Absolutely, and it is a big piece of the wear and tear that we see in in people, but definitely that I see in in clients, you know. It's not only that they don't rest, but that it's not even a concept like the permission for themselves to do that, you know? Um in our right, our hustle culture, resting is you know, lazy, unproductive, as you were saying before, having to continue.

Mary 14:54

Yeah. And I don't know that we always see that when we don't rest, then we do pay that price.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Absolutely. You know, absolutely. I tell my clients, you're gonna pay in the front end or in the back end. How however, but when when we don't rest, you're either going to choose when you want to rest, how you want to rest, what what we're gonna call resting, or as you were saying, life is gonna throw something at you, right? The volume gets uh turned up, as you were saying, and something's gonna knock us down. Right, right.

Fear As Protection And Prison

Mary 15:28

So I want to get to the next three R's, but before we do that, I want to circle back to this idea of fear. Because I don't know that everybody understands when we say fear is holding us back, can you explain a little bit what you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Um fear is is to me one of the most interesting of our human emotions. I know that in in in our society here and in in American uh society, anger is one that gets a lot of attention, right? But fear to me is has such interesting qualities, right? Because we need a little bit of fear, right? We need it's a protective thing, it's a very primitive emotion, right? Like if you're gonna cross the street and there's a car that turns the corner too quickly, right? You you have to have that bit of fear that allows you to jump back onto the curb or step away. Um at the same time, too much fear then is immobilizing, stops us from being able to even think or dream, right? Uh and there are so many layers that that I find uh of fear, right? The uh prominently that I whole idea of psychological safety, just feeling like we uh are okay, we belong, we you know, can love or be loved, right? All of Maslow's themes and and things like that. But fear to me then is really about trying to find kind of the the right amount, so to speak. I know we have just a little bit of it. You you you don't want to be completely fearless, although I know plenty of people that do, but you know, at the same time, you want to be able to identify it, look at it, kind of move it around so that then you can be more intentional in choosing when's in the the who what when where and how, so to speak, of of how fear is something that is holding you back. You know?

Mary 17:36

Yeah. Do you feel like that is the main thing that keeps people stuck in those patterns I alluded to in my intro?

SPEAKER_00 17:43

In my experience, yes, it's one of the the major things. Um there could be a variety of other things that hold people back, as we both know, but I think the fear is what comes down to the core, whether it's the fear of rejection, of disapproval, of not being enough. But the core is uh the fear that sits kind of in our for most of us in our gut, right? And just uh uh the the even the thinking about the possibilities, which as you were saying is part of of our work, helping people just kind of, you know, pretend, pretend and look at, um, can really uh create a great deal of anxiety and and depressive kinds of symptoms, which at least in in my experience or what tend to bring a lot of people into our offices is just that overwhelming worry and concern.

Mary 18:43

Yeah. And I think sometimes we can feel like, well, this is as good as it's gonna get because that fear stops us. And so I sort of do a little bit of what you're talking about. The first step sometimes for me with clients is say, just let it be a possibility. Start to in your brain, because that starts rewiring, right? If if people start to think about what life could be like if they could navigate through that pain and anxiety and worry, what would might that look like?

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, that whole um practicing idea that is done in in sports, that's done in schools, right? The the idea at at the emotional level, at the at the thinking level is is just as powerful. Just, you know, when somebody tells me, well, uh, I don't know. Yeah, you hear that a lot, right? You ask a question and the answer, even before they've finished hearing what I've asked them, I don't know. So my typical response is, well, just pretend for a second that you know. Just pretend for a second that you know. What do you think the answer could be? And people chuckle, and then they have they actually do have answers, right? That that are reasonable. Yeah. So it's it's even that fear, as you're saying, that blocks um the the the possibilities.

Mary 20:10

Yes. And I love that because my what I say to them is, what if you did know? And I'm always shocked if then they answer it because you've given them permission to maybe be wrong or to have because I think we do deep inside, we do know what we need. But like we've been saying, it's that it's that fear of like, what's gonna happen if I do this, or what if I'm wrong in those million questions.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

All those relationships.

The Four R’s For Emotional Restoration

Mary 20:35

Yes, okay. So you talked about your first R is rest. Can you walk us through what the other three are?

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Well, the four R is what I call the four R's of emotional restoration. It's a framework, Mary, that really I kind of developed as I was working with uh women over the years because it was just something that I kept noticing that we kept going through. So the first one is is rest. The second um one is reflection. Um the reflection and the rest tend to go together, right? When we allow people or allow ourselves to just kind of be still and and and and kind of take in the quiet, that then we start to maybe think about things in a little bit of a different way. So I encourage the reflection that is kind of asking ourselves some of the hard questions, right? But not just the ones that typically happen after we've been hit with some kind of a transition, right? Why me or why is this happening to me or what did I do wrong? Those are some questions, but I really encourage them to start to think about you know, who am I? Who am I at this point? How has this situation impacted me? What what lessons am I learning from this? You know, really asking ourselves all of the The questions. And then this process that I use, this framework, takes you into the third R, but not from a linear perspective, you know, because you're reflecting on something and you might really connect the dot, as as we say, right? And that could be, you know, mind blowing. And then we need to rest again because, right, emotionally, we just had another uh understanding. And so for me, the the four R's, the rest, the reflection, is is circular, because you may need to go back to these first parts. But when you go into the third R, which is reset, so it's rest, reflect, reset. The fourth R is re-engage. So reset and re-engage are about choice. These are in resetting, you're starting to really put together what are the lessons learned here from whatever situation you are recovering from. You are trying to pull in those lessons learned, including whatever your role might have been in, right? So that you're taking this into the re-engaging, which is choosing when, how, where you want to connect with your social world again. It might be um uh friendships, it might be, you know, dating again, it might be however it is, but it now comes in with more intentional kind of choices and decisions. And I've noticed that when people, but particularly as you said, we work with women, when women are willing to go through these four R's with uh a more intentional uh process, that they are able to kind of come out at the at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, with um tools that you know are are going to serve them beyond whatever this situation was, right? Because whenever something hits, if we remember that we need to rest and allow ourselves to kind of have the quiet and then start to think about how all of these things connect, we we use, we can continue to use the tools across other uh situations. So it's rest, reflect, reset, and then re-engage.

Mary 24:37

Well, and I love that it is not linear because we tend to think, you know, because we we see a lot of situations now with social media. So we see someone else doing well, or they we know something happened to them and it looks like everything's perfect, and of course that's curated. But we sort of have this idea that you step on a path and you walk straight to the resolution and then you never backslide, you arrive at this state of happiness, right? And that is such a disservice to all of us because it is not true. So I love that that circular idea is built into what you teach people.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Yes, yes, I and I really do encourage that that they take the pause, and so the pausing very much um has to do with every every time you sit and you rest, you can ask yourself, how come you're sitting? How does sitting help you? Right? All of those kinds of things, but you you're right. Now, right, 30 years into this, I can delineate more clearly what these steps are. And before it was just a way that that, you know, I saw people um struggling and and and and as you're saying, jumping right into, especially in the dating thing, right? We we break up and then we start, you know, dating right away. And I'm like, well, but wait, what what what about the middle part here, you know, kind of like resetting your heart and and and things like that. And right, I mean, Freud's two main psychological drives, right? Um, seek pleasure and avoid pain. We definitely want to avoid the pain part and and skip all of that thing. And that as you said, that usually just adds to our pain.

Mary 26:28

Yeah. Yeah. And I think sometimes with that pattern, it's like, I messed it up again. I messed up that relationship again. I gotta quit, get back on the horse and try again. And that is unless you are flukally lucky and you happen to intersect with somebody who actually is healthy and good for you, that pattern is gonna just keep happening.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Keep happening, right? And we see that, right? I see it in in clients, I see it in friends, right? I don't understand. I'm I I just don't uh these kinds of things keep happening to me. How come? That's a great question, but I really want you to sit down with that question, right? Yes, yeah, yeah. Um, after 30 years, I don't know about you, Mary, but I still love what I do um because human beings are fascinating and the ways that we talk ourselves in and out of stuff is really um fascinating. And and to be able to, as you said, offer possibilities to other people, I still find that extraordinarily rewarding.

Mary 27:34

Oh, yeah, 100%. I do love it. Um, and I think you've talked about this in

Breaking The “Why Me” Loop

Mary 27:40

a couple of different ways. And it's one of the things that I think is a huge challenge for me as a clinician is that idea of why me. And I know we at least when I was trained, and I think it was accurate, we don't really use the word why often. I don't use that in my practice very often. It's not why do you think that is? It's more like, what do you think that's about, or asking in a different way, because we don't ever maybe really know why, because it depends how you look at it. But when you have a client that seems to be stuck with this idea of why me or why is this always happening to me? Because a lot of trauma, especially betrayal, you mentioned if it's relationship betrayal, that was an intentional choice by someone that we trusted to do something to hurt us. And so when they seem to be mired in that why me, and I I don't want to use the word victim mentality because I think there's a there's not a great feeling to that, but it is sort of that that you're putting on this idea of I'm powerless against these things that are being perpetrated on me. How do you help somebody sort of navigate through that? I know it's different for everyone, but what are some ways you help somebody that to get unstuck from that?

SPEAKER_00 28:54

In leaning more into you know, my framework here with the with the four R's, I I really have them ask that question in a variety of different ways them themselves. With uh, as you said, um, you know, my Instagram hand handle is Tough Love Healer. And that's a story in and of itself, and that clients are the ones that helped me come up with with that. When I ask them, well, how come you guys work with me? What is it that you you know want? It it is that um that nudging that sometimes becomes, you know, a soft kick. For other people, it's a stronger kick, right? So in joking with with some clients, when they say to me, Why, why does this happen to me? You know, sometimes I start with something as basic as, well, why not you? You know, if if if they're really in that circle. How come it would be, you know, uh you were you're going to be like um signaled out from humanity in not having any kind? So I start with a little bit of of humor in that way to to kind of break that negative thinking. Um I use a lot of of writing tools, you know. I I encourage a lot of uh journaling, uh sometimes just free journaling, you know, free association kind of thing. But very often I, you know, I use tools that have very specific kinds of questions that I want them to put on paper. I I feel like we get stuck when when the negative loop stays in our head, right? But when you put something on paper and you're looking at it, it kind of, yes, it could make it real, but it could also help you to look at that circularity or or even the ridiculousness of being stuck in that particular question. Does that make sense?

Mary 30:54

Oh, for sure. And I think sometimes we make the mistake of when we feel like we're good people, we make good choices. I think there's some strange thought process that if I live a good life, bad things won't happen to me. And so we get extra angry when bad things happen to everyone. It's just that is what life is. And so I think finding a way, like you're saying, to kind of catapult people out of that and look at who you can find in your life that did not have something. I mean, there's egregious things that happen to people that we see in the news every day.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Right.

Rumination Versus Real Reflection

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Right.

Mary 31:30

So the one thing that I also started to think about when you talk about reflecting, I think there can be people that want to avoid that because they confuse it with replaying events that make them feel anxiety or depression or so. When people that can be a different kind of fear, right? When you say reflect on that, they can think, well, I don't want to think about that. How would you explain that a little more?

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Right. And that's a great point, Mary, because I hear that all the time, right? Um, and I really try to make the distinction for them in, you know, with examples and so forth, of that there's a difference between ruminating and and dwelling on a situation and reflecting. And that the that the ruminating is, you know, very much going around and around and around, kind of the vicious circle, um, and and not being able to, as you said, look at the possibilities. Whereas reflecting is really, I I literally have a mirror that I use here in my office. It's just the hand mirror, but I really say to them that reflecting has to do with asking yourself some of the hard questions, you know, that it isn't just looking at the situation again. You you've you've told me the story. Now it's about taking a look at the story from all of the different angles, the way we use a mirror. And I pull out the mirror and I say, you know, we're looking at you here in the front. So, but what happens if I move the mirror here to the side? Now you either have to turn your head or, you know, so I use those kinds of metaphors and have them actually right, move the head as ways to kind of, you know, shake up the the thinking. Those are some of the tools that that I use, but I definitely make that distinction. Ruminating and reflecting, two different concepts.

Mary 33:31

Yes. Yeah.

Responding Instead Of Reacting

Mary 33:33

No, I love that mirror idea. You know, and I think the other thing that I want to talk a little about is reacting versus responding. And so there's so much in our culture now. I think I think that one of the good things is we talk way more about mental health. Absolutely. We can also be in a situation where we start to say these things like, I'm going to protect my peace. That's good, except if it keeps you from actually engaging in the world. And so I think the most powerful thing that somebody can learn, especially if they have had trauma and they find themselves um reacting in certain situations, is to be able to shift that to responding. Can you talk about what the difference is?

SPEAKER_00 34:20

That is a really critical life skill, I think, for all of us. Um and as you're saying, there's so many different ways and places and situations where we, you know, as human beings, we are kind of getting poked. And that the that the reaction is a very primitive kind of self-protection, even, you know, kind of tool. Um, but really, the for me, the distinction is going back to kind of the the pausing, you know, the being more intentional. Like you said, when people say I want to protect my peace, I agree. We can't be, you know, engaging in every single situation around us. At the same time, what are we avoiding then? Right? I want to protect my peace, so I'm gonna be just completely isolated or insular in that way. So I I believe that the the main difference between responding and reacting is is that pause, is the space kind of in between and really making that intentional choice. A big part of the work that we do, whether in therapy, in coaching, is really about having people come to awareness, right? Like being more present, understanding where they are, what they're doing, uh, how come they're doing it, with, you know, hopefully, hopefully removing some of the judgment, right? On like the the why that you were saying, but in understanding more and having that awareness, then we can focus in that in that space in between. And therefore we can choose how to respond, what to say. Many clients will say to me, Well, I'm not gonna keep my mouth shut on this. And I remind them, I am never gonna tell you to keep your mouth shut, to not have a voice. That's what my work is all about is really creating or recreating, uh discovering or rediscovering our voices. At the same time, I want you to be able to regulate it, right? So I want you to be able to choose what you want to be able to say and how. And so for me, that is the response. When our voice goes off completely um dysregulated, that's a reaction.

Mary 36:50

Yes. Yeah. And it's sometimes thinking about what outcome do you want? Because that can inform what you do. And the other thing that occurs to me is the idea of discomfort, is we don't want to be uncomfortable. And it plays back to that idea of when fear is involved, it's uncomfortable, so we shy away from it. Or when you ask somebody to reflect, it can initially, until they can access the curiosity, it can feel like threatening and so it's uncomfortable. And I think if we can develop a tolerance for discomfort, I think that is one of the paths through because we also sort of tell ourselves if I'm healed and whole, I'm never going to feel discomfort. I'm going to sail through everything. And again, that's just not true. So I think it's developing a tolerance for situations being less than optimal. And for our feeling that anxiety, it's kind of like I don't love when it rains, but if you want to actually get somewhere and experience something, you put your umbrella up and you do it anyway.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Right. I think that's a beautiful way to say it. Developing tolerance for discomfort. Definitely as human beings, we don't like that, but definitely as Americans, we don't we don't like what we don't like, right? And and being willing and able, able and willing to sit with some of that. You know, it is such an opportunity for our person, but definitely our relationships to to have breathing room and to grow, to sit with the discomfort. I think that that's a great way to put it.

Mary 38:27

Yeah. And when you have things like that rest and reset built in, then you can take that day where you're like, I'm gonna go get a pedicure, or I'm just gonna sit somewhere outside and nobody might know where I am for 30 minutes. I'm not gonna look at my phone. Whatever that is that re-kind of uh restores your soul, that really is exactly part of it. Because when you hit discomfort, if you push and push and push, that's when we hit exhaustion.

SPEAKER_00 38:57

Absolutely. That's what ends up. When people come into our offices, it really sometimes doesn't even matter what their particular situation or story is. The feelings around what that person are are this, like you said, the the pushing through the expectations and the inevitable burnout and exhaustion is what lands them in in our offices and medical doctors' offices, right? Because we want to skip all of that part in between, for sure.

Loud Whispers, Voice, And Resources

Mary 39:32

Well, Hilza, this has been just a great conversation. I knew it was going to be. So before we end, can you review for us where people can find you, what you help with, talk about your books? Oh, the one thing I did want to ask you, um loud whispers. Before we end, define that for us. And why would people not pay attention to something like that?

SPEAKER_00 39:52

You know, uh as you were saying, and congratulations then on your launch of your book. Um, I this the the book for me was uh was a um bucket item list that I you know completed. And the the title, the loud whispers, kind of developed for me through the writing process. Um as I was putting my ideas, my four hours framework and uh together, this title came to me in that that's what what happens to all or most or all of us as human beings. There's these little voices in our heads, right? And we tend to um ignore them because of obligations, culture, experiences, expectations within all of that. And what are these whispers? Typically, they are our dreams, our aspirations, our uh ideas, thoughts, feelings, and particularly as women, but very much people in general, we push all of this thing back and we say, well, we gotta do this. And this is usually right the obligation. We gotta, we gotta work, we gotta take care of kids, we gotta, you know, the the boss. And so we push back. And and I call them the loud whispers because they get to a point that if we don't pay attention to them, they they become so loud, as we've been talking about, that it knocks us down. Okay, whatever, in whatever form, whether that's physically knocking us down, like we have illness, or you know, emotionally, spiritually knocking us down, like we are anxious, depressed, kind of lost. I have a lot of clients who tell me they don't know understand what their purpose on this planet is, and that loss of meaning, right? So the loud whispers are my book is all about that paying attention to your voice, where you lost it, if you have, how to reconnect with it, how to regulate it. Okay. Uh uh a lot of us come from families where there was more silence than than conversation. Um, I didn't. I came from a loud Cuban family. So I had to learn how to regulate my voice. And so the whispers, though, are paying attention to what's going on up there, giving them, you know, giving them some volume, you know, learning how to talk with them. Um and it's it's basically my 30 years of passionately working with with women and their families, um, and helping them to discover that their whispers actually helps them be, you know, more present for all of those other responsibilities when they tune into their own voice.

Mary 43:00

Yeah. Oh, I love all of that.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

Okay.

Mary 43:02

But thank you because I've I forgot I wanted to ask you about that. So your book, Loud Whispers, and also what are ways people can work with you? And if you can give us your website, and then I will link everything for listeners into the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 43:19

Uh absolutely. My website is probably the the best way to connect with me, and that, you know, not only does it have my calendar, but I I there are blogs there, there are resources. So my website is hilsafort.com. The website doesn't have the Martinez part on it. So hilsafort.com. There are some courses that I've done modules. Many times people aren't ready, right, to sit on our couches. And so to provide as many uh possible options for people to really want to get to know themselves, want to be more intentional. I am on Instagram as uh we mentioned, uh Tough Love Healer, on Facebook as Hilsafort Martinez, I'm on LinkedIn.

Mary 44:06

And I do want to mention that your name is G-I-L-Z-A.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

Right.

Mary 44:10

Pronounce Hilza in case people are listening and they're they want to just look for that without checking.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that because that is definitely a name that my mother made up, so you're not gonna find it. So, yes, it's G-I-L-Z-A and then F-O-R-T.com.

Mary 44:26

Okay, perfect. Well, thank you for being here and having such a great conversation today.

SPEAKER_00 44:31

Thank you very much. This is a great way to lean into the long weekend, is to have great conversation. So thank you.

Mary 44:39

Yeah.

Final Takeaways And Review Request

Mary 44:40

We're actually recording this Memorial Day weekend, but y'all probably aren't going to hear it till the end of June. So I want to thank you all for listening. And if this episode or this show resonates with you, I'd love if you take a few seconds to leave a review because it does make a ton of impact for me and my show. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.