Transcript

Tanya (00:00.162)
Just invite my friends and colleagues, Tanya and our main podcast page. One second. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Today we are going to be talking.

Tanya (00:25.103)
whether it is helpful or helpful. Let's see. Yeah, sorry I was late. It's okay. I didn't even realize what I looked like this morning. Look at how I'm the same. This is the first time I've looked at myself in the mirror today. Nice to see you. How are you?

Good to see you too. Yeah, I'm good. good. And yourself? Yeah, I'm good. Thank you. I'm a bit dishevelled, but I'm good. Thank you. Right now I'm all plugged in. I'm really good. Oh, good. Lovely to see you. Sorry, go on. No, no, I was just saying, just, before you came on, I was just saying that we were, what we were planning on talking about today, which was a little bit around our thoughts.

on some of the messaging in self-help. Yes. Yeah. So I don't know if you want me to start or you'd like to start? Yeah, yeah, you go. Yeah, so Emma and I were talking because we're both coaches and we've both been through, you know, extensive personal and

professional development, to get you along the way. And I think that most coaches do. And I think also if you are a natural seeker, then you do, you immerse yourself in a lot of, you know, the personal development staff, self-help. And it's had many faces over the years, right? I I remember the first self-help

thing that or that I saw was when I was a teenager and you know you have infomercials and there was this Tony Robbins one and you could buy the you could buy like the videotapes of Tony Robbins and that was like the first sort of thing that I ever saw about self-help. But it wasn't for me it wasn't really until

Tanya (02:48.334)
I was like, maybe around, I was like, well, I always read like self-help books, but I hadn't really sort of delved too deeply into personal development until I was in my 40s. Yeah. And I had reached this place by 10, my children were a little bit older and I got to the space where I was like, I don't even know who I am anymore.

And now I know a lot of it is probably due to masking the whole time. But I really started at that stage seeking and then had my first encounter with personal development, which was life changing at the time. But now if I look back at that,

process was also incredibly traumatic. Right, yeah. Because there was a lot of things there that were not very consent based. Yeah. And also that I felt I had to engage in because of a lot of the language that comes up in those spaces and wasn't very trauma informed either.

So I don't know what your experience was with that sort of process, Well, my experience has been a mixture. mean, I think growing up, I remember my parents having things like The Power of Positive Thinking and those kind of books and things growing up. And, I even relate it to a certain extent with that, you know, it's like this continual quest for to be better.

And I'm thinking of Jane Fonda workout videos as well. All of this kind of narrative around, we've got to be improving all the time, we've got to be better, we've got to be living our very best lives. And I know, so probably that was kind of like my initial introduction to kind of improvement. And then for me, I've always had a first for these kind of things.

Tanya (05:09.968)
And so I, like you, of, I've been on retreats, I went to kind of listen to great innovative speakers talk. I listened to people like Tony Robbins, like you say, and, you know, and all of those kind of, you know, kind of what wellness gurus and for a long time as well, you know,

kneeling at the kind of altar of people like the Huberman, know, Huberman and Bessel van der Kolk and to an extent and even I've been trained on the, I trained on the Diablo Marte but Diablo Marte and Ecoltole and all of this kind of, these kind of published authors around, you know, what's the best way to think in the world.

So I think for me, I like you as a comedian and I was probably unconsciously imagined quite similarly, was sucking up, know, well, how can this all feel better? How can this be better? How can how can I stop feeding so?

not and I probably wouldn't even have registered that it wasn't okay but I know once I had my kids I was quite anxious because all of those things that I put in place to keep me safe as a younger person were no longer viable for me because I had two humans that didn't know the rules and how we kept this ship afloat. So that kind of like trying to control all of that.

And then, you know, things kept not working out. I was like, well, I'm doing everything that I think I'm supposed to be doing in order for things to work out. So why do I keep coming up against all these barriers? And I think really as well, and again, I'll stop in a second, but I think part of it as well is certainly for our generation being brought up with that. We can have anything and everything mentality for women.

Tanya (07:22.327)
and not really, probably very naively, not really seeing the impossibility of it all. And genuinely going out and thinking that that was actually like a realistic impossibility. There's a lot of creativity in my story, I think. Yeah.

It's such an interesting journey. know, I think I was probably very naive about the whole thing, maybe even until like, you know, later on. I grew up in a very religious household. And so there's a lot of, you know, following a particular dogma and a particular set of thoughts.

with that, which I think, you know, really kind of

Tanya (08:26.916)
shuts you off from a lot of like empowerment stuff because it's very sort of like follow the leader type you know messaging when you belong to a religion or a church and

Tanya (08:48.825)
So I didn't even know, and this is going to sound absolutely, like it sounds really ridiculous to me when I think about it now, but I didn't even know that I could question my thoughts. That I could question my beliefs. And.

Tanya (09:10.576)
I just thought your thoughts are just things that just of float through your head and they're the truth. So it was really eye-opening for me. The first time, so I went to this, it was through my work. I was working as a centre manager for a early childhood centre. And it was sort of like our leadership retreat. And the...

the owners had taken all the leaders on this leadership retreat and we were exposed to this this woman who honestly such a powerful woman she'd been through so much in her life and she started talking about like You know the stuff that we went through in our childhood and the different feelings that in different like emotional states that that Brought up in us that sort of come back

when we're in crisis or in particular moments. And I just remember for like the two days that we were there, just like crying uncontrollably the entire time because it was just, you know, so, so different, but it brought up so much stuff. And then we were kind of told that we had to go on like this week long retreat with this person. And it was very like,

Tanya (10:38.928)
I suppose very much modeled over after like the Tony Robbins kind of experience. So you were there from like really early in the morning to like 10 o'clock at night. Yeah. And it was just constant. You had to live in the situation. And in a lot of ways, it was like really transformational for me because

Through this process, I realized that I didn't really want to be a teacher anymore, that I wanted to do something different. And within 18 months, my life looked very, very different. But there were parts of it, right near the end, and we had to, there was a segment where we all had to confess the worst thing we'd ever done in front of our employers. And that power dynamic,

is not great, but you kind of felt since you had been part of this...

process for days and days where you're around these people that you really didn't have a choice because every time you sort of go, you know, your instincts rose and went like, this doesn't feel safe. You were told, well, this is just your resistance. You just need to push through this resistance. Yeah. And I hadn't thought too much about it until a few years ago. I was listening to the

Glennon Doyle's podcast, know, the We Can Do Hard Things. And they were talking to a woman there who had brought down the NXIVM cult. I listened to that one too, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and then that made me want to like, watch the whole documentary and like, because I love cults. I think that probably because I feel like I could very easily have been like,

Tanya (12:42.87)
indoctrinated into a cult earlier in my life because I was just so naive and open. But a lot of the things that the people in that documentary were saying, I could like relate back to this experience. And I was like, my goodness, I could have so easily have been part of their cult. Like I was

probably their target audience or their target person and could have really got myself into such an unsafe situation. And I also feel like maybe because I am audio HD and I've spent my whole life trying to follow the rules.

And really purposely trying to push myself outside my comfort zone because no growth happens in your comfort zone and you've got to constantly push through.

I was really probably quite a easy target for abusive situations. And I think a lot of neurodivergent women are. I agree. Because we have been taught that we just need to follow, we need to follow the rules and that keeps us safe and or fit in. And it just really makes us vulnerable. Sorry, I've spoken a lot there, but

No, I think it's very helpful and when you look back on it now, that experience that you had with work, if you're willing to say and I don't feel that you have to at all, of course.

Tanya (14:35.697)
Because I've heard a lot of even recently this week, one of my clients was talking about a similar experience happening literally just like last week in a work environment. And I think, yeah, it can be very dangerous for people, can't it? think, yeah. And I think what you're talking about there in a couple of things, the work, the power dynamic, and then also

particularly like you say, and I think for those of us, I was talking about this yesterday as well, for those of us who have been taught to push down our needs, our gut instinct, and to override it constantly in order to be acceptable and not to have big emotions and to, know, because we start to become very disconnected even if we were connected biologically to begin with.

which makes us incredibly vulnerable, think. And I think particularly, know, neurodivergent or not neurodivergent, but I think female-side at birth humans, and then with the extra layer of neurodivergent on top from our generation, particularly, where one of the things I really notice is that, you know, and I've got myself into some real situations with not being able to quite be sure

of that my safety response was something to be relied on and if I relied on it would I be mocked or made to be a fool because I'd made a fuss over something that wasn't actually and I'd misread the signs because I couldn't really I didn't really understand them properly or I often got them wrong or it felt like I often got them wrong even though quite probably I got them right it's just that people didn't want me to have got them

I think it's, and I wonder for you, having had that experience, which sounds really quite scary and probably even more so in retrospect, because a lot of the time we do these things, don't we? Because I kind of work, we're kind of operating. And then afterwards, you're like, gosh, that was, I didn't feel good. Yeah. Yeah. I think

Tanya (16:59.441)
I think when you feel like you don't really have a choice, none of us, I know there are probably people who don't feel this way, but a lot of us don't want to be that person, right? That person that's going against the grain. The person that's saying, hey, like this doesn't feel right. I'm not going to do this.

We don't want to be that person. And then as you say, am I making a big deal of this? Everybody else seems to feel OK with this. And then also just with the work dynamic as well, right? If I don't do this leadership retreat that makes me feel very uncomfortable, I don't engage in this activity, is this going to impact my work? Yeah, right.

And then also like when you're doing it, like when you're confessing things and there were people that like they confessed some really horrendous things. You're like, okay, so how is this information going to be used? Or is it going to come up in a conversation with my employer? Yeah. Are they going to see me in a different light? You know, that that kind of stuff is

is really, really difficult. In tricky territory, it doesn't feel safe, but when you're, when you don't feel like you can safely disagree or opt out, you know, that it's, it's a really tricky situation. And, the thing too, like, I really want to just kind of talk about the complexity here too, because for me, there are these two realities, like,

I don't feel like I would have been where I am now in my life if I hadn't gone through that process because I really clearly needed something in my life to

Tanya (19:01.572)
allow me to break free from what I needed to. But on the other hand, I can also admit that that was a really unsafe situation and really traumatic for me. Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you for sharing it as well. I appreciate it because I don't think it's a unique experience. Like I said, literally in the last couple of weeks, I've had people that I've been working with talking about this exact thing happening and how

and say if it feels, you Yeah, I think it's really relevant and I think it's really.

I'm trying to think of the right word, but think it's very dangerous for companies, corporate companies to be doing this kind of work when they're not really trained to hold people. just reflecting on, you know, even in my own groups, there's times all the time where I have to make changes as my knowledge increases about humans and human reactions. know, we

We start off in our work and even with all, you for me training as a cancer and psychotherapist and doing trauma training and there's still things that I get wrong, you know, and as I go along and I think something's a certain way and then, you know, it might not be, or I've got, you know, I have to change what I thought was the right thing to do or because somebody's expressed a difference, you know, can have such many different experiences of feeling unseen.

For one person, I'll give you an example. So in group, some of my group, sometimes people who are kind of on the more extroverted side of things find the more introverted people kind of watching them share their stuff quite unsafe and the more introverted people

Tanya (21:02.3)
don't want to come and share their stuff because that feels unsafe. So it's like, how do you find a, you can hear both people have a perfectly solid perspective and point of view. And so it's trying to work out what the right thing is to keep everybody feeling as safe as they can. And look, we can only, we can do as much as we can do as well. But I think there's so many things that we can do that can make things feel a lot,

a lot safer than current processes that seem to be in place with people are. don't think anyone doing any kind of work about family of origin really needs to understand trauma. I think, you know, that's the thing, you know, I think that's the great thing about working in the spaces that we work in.

because you don't know until you've experienced it, until you've heard from other people's perspectives. I think it just, makes you be a more reflective leader and professional if you're willing to listen to the feedback. A lot of people aren't, right? And I think also having that experience of feeling unsafe in a group has really made me sensitive to

what that felt like and also just understanding that different people can feel differently about particular situations. That's right. We're always looking through our lens, right? Yeah, absolutely. It's a fascinating one. think probably the area for me

I don't think there's been a couple of things where I've found interesting. I haven't so much had my own experience of being in on kind of like retreat or self development experiences where I'm immersed and felt unsafe. But what I do find a lot in my experience and in a lot of courses and things that I do is I find the language very

Tanya (23:27.845)
because of, you know, I think working with a lot of neurodivergent and people who've had trauma and, having my own share of all of that as well, I do find a lot of the language that we use in our society around self-development and self-improvement very...

difficult.

Tanya (23:57.671)
Yeah, yeah, I totally get what you're saying. know, sometimes I'll see a post on Instagram, for example, where, you know, like a prominent

personal development person, I'm not going to name names here, have posted something. And it's widely accepted as like the truth or like that this is the right way. And then I look at it and me say five or six or seven years ago would have looked at that and saw nothing wrong with it. And now that I'm looking through the lens of neurodivergence, I'm like,

Hmm, that doesn't sit right with me. And sometimes it will challenge it in the comments and say, that wasn't my experience or have you thought of it in this way? But, know, it definitely, definitely does change your lens when you're looking at it from a different perspective.

And I also just, you know, like even just some of the things that we do at the beginning of the year, right? We set goals, we come up with our word of the year. And those are all really beautiful practices. You I don't begrudge people those things if it works, but it can also bring up so much stuff for people, right? Like if I think about some of the mums that I work with,

like where they're just trying to survive the day and then there's this pressure of like, well, now you've got to come up with your word for the year. And you're like, well, can it be survival? like, hey, we've got to like settle these goals for the year. And then if your life and your reality is, well, I'm just getting through today five minutes at a time and I...

Tanya (25:58.0)
don't have a long term goal. don't even know what my long term goal, like what my short term goal is or what tomorrow is going to look like.

That kind of language can be, can just put so much pressure on us. Yeah. Because we feel like we're doing something wrong or we're doing life wrong. That's right. That's right. I feel the same way. And I think it's, you know, it goes through everything. There's this assumption, and I think it's a very privileged assumption that people...

It really, and again, it comes very much, I think, from that individualistic culture, very much the, you know, almost the American dream type culture, which has never really been a reality for anybody really, because it's not possible often for people to break through there.

social economics status and you know, it's not always possible. This is the thing that really gets to me and makes me sad is that for so many of our beautiful humans that we work with who are really doing it tough every day, like really tough, know, there's housing insecurity, financial insecurity, children who are struggling,

and they're trying to, you know, hold it all together. And then they're beating themselves up because they're not adhering to all these kind of rules. And again, it really comes back to that sort of basic masking and this idea that as a culture, we have created this impossible standard for particularly the female assigned at birth humans, but for everybody.

Tanya (28:00.914)
That's all about performance and it's not doesn't take into any account. People living in really, really tough, you know, it's like that Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? It's like when people's basic needs aren't met, can't be pumping their fist for, you know, self-improvement.

mantras, mantras not gonna, I find like for me one of the things I find very difficult and I understand them and sometimes I have found them useful but things like affirmations for me when they've always felt a little bit like gaslighting myself and I think that's quite often a neurodiversion. Yeah, yeah. I am having a great time, it is wonderful here, it's like well.

But we've, and again, we all, you know, it's again, it's like, you know, if anyone asks us how we're doing, we've all got to pretend we're fine. It's the same. We've to smile and be happy and it's amazing. It's, it's, yeah, it's exhausting. Oh, it is, it is. I don't think, you know, this, is like what I see too in my work with parents is that this productivity culture is one of the things that

really make it hard for parents to feel safe with their children's recovery through burnout. Because we live in this culture where you've constantly got to be producing, improving, being a

productive member of society. And then when our children aren't able to do anything, it brings up so much fear because we're just, can't live up to that standard. And then if your belonging, your sense of belonging is part of like meeting a certain standard, like it can just, it brings up so much fear for you as a parent because...

Tanya (30:26.608)
Yeah, and then, you know, our children feel it. They're like, well, everybody else is doing this. Everybody else is managing to live life. I should be able to do this too. And then I also just feel it comes into this like our sensory discomfort as well, right? Because so much of the messaging is like just post-re discomfort. you know, a lot of us have really

a really hard time just even being in a room sometimes because of the sensory stuff. And so then you shut off parts of yourself because like, because that's what it's required to get you through the day and not realizing the toll that it's actually taking on you as a person. So there's just so many like little bits and pieces that kind of fit in this puzzle.

It's huge and it takes us back again to the it's it's dangerous. Like the more you keep doing this and keep and I do it all the time, Tanya. So I'm not like when I'm talking about this, I am not being like, you know, there's me not pushing through. I do it all the time. do it all the time. Yeah. And I can feel, you know, putting my productivity because I hear it from all my clients as well. You know, all of us like

pushing through to do things that we think mean that we can say this is an acceptable life that we're living. We've met the tick, tick, tick list and then we can feel okay. And then we'll be okay. And then what really happens is for my clients it would be, and then we drink because we're so freaking exhausted. It's the only way that we can keep going and we use alcohol to sit down because...

we can't sit down without it because we cannot give ourselves permission because giving ourselves permission to sit down without it feels unsafe because if we know about it know society can take and people you know burn out as adults as well as children looking at themselves and finding themselves continuously wanting because they're not doing the things that their body maybe used to be able to do or that society tells us we're able to do.

Tanya (32:42.322)
And again, even with things like when you talk about being in carers burnout, you'll get a professional who should know better, perhaps telling you, you know, Oh, well, can't you get your kids to help out? it's like, Oh, the kids are in burnout. It's all bloody in burnout. Yeah. kids can't cook a meal. can't cook meal. No one's cooking anything else. I know. Typical kind of like advice that comes from, it's just, think unless you have that knowledge.

or experience, just so difficult for them to understand. absolutely. you know, I've recently... Like, the other thing that I often see is that, especially with, like, some professionals that assess, you know, children in burnout for, like, autism and things like that, I've heard parents say to me that their child was so distressed and...

the assessor just carried on through because part of the assessment was to see how uncomfortable the young person would become. you know, so like, let's traumatize this child to just test their comfort levels. And, you know, that's really difficult too.

What I just really resonated with what you said about not being able to sit still is like, remember a little bit better at it now, but a few years ago, if it was like on the weekend, and I didn't have something to do, like a chore to do around the house or gardening or something, and I was just sitting down, like relaxing.

It felt so hard for my body to just even do that because like I wasn't doing anything. Yeah. And I think we even come so conditioned to constantly like forcing ourselves to do more and more things. Yeah. Because we're trying to live this ridiculous made it life that. Yeah. I was like who made this? This is like.

Tanya (35:02.973)
But I mean, I imagine, can well imagine who did it, but it's, it's, it's very difficult for people as well. And exactly what you were saying, I think this is really important at the beginning, you where we don't know yet. And I, you know, this is a continuous journey for all of us, right? But when we don't know that the experience that we're having inside ourselves, whatever that looks like, because we all have different ones, isn't necessarily

our unique authentic experience. You know, we haven't created ourselves, the conditioning that we have is not, we didn't, we didn't, that's not our essence of human. But like things like the busyness conditioning, know, often it will be parents who've, you know, growing up

stories I hear of parents who like, you know, when kids would hear their parents put up at the door, they'd all jump around and start doing because they had to be parents that they were doing, you know, chores and housework and the things they were supposed to do. Otherwise they would get into trouble. And if they got into trouble, they'd be sent up to their room and left to be on their own and be in trouble. So, of course, as a young child, that then becomes our conditioning. I can't sit down. If I sit down, I might get into trouble. So I've got to keep doing it. And it becomes

you know, unconscious, but no one ever gave us permission to sit down and stop. And so we don't know how to give ourselves permission to sit down and stop because no one ever taught us. Yeah. And that's been such a huge thing for me to unlearn as a parent. I feel a lot of guilt and shame that I perpetuated that.

cycle in my family with my own children for a very long time. You know, when I grew up, children did chores, they did things around the house, they helped. And yeah, very much if you were sitting still or not doing something, then you got in trouble for it, because you hadn't done XYZ. you know, and my husband had the same upbringing. So

Tanya (37:18.037)
with our children, you know, there's always chores, always things that you had to do on the weekend. like now listening to my children talk about that and how harmful that was for them. It really just, it's so hard for me to hear it, but it was really important for me to hear it too, because this is where the healing happens when we are able to listen, see the patterns.

recognize that it is just a pattern and that we can change it if we want to. 100%. It's so powerful. And it as well to the same idea, which I always find really useful because I know people get very anxious about talking about family of origin stuff because again, we've been culturally conditioned not to speak bad of our family of origins. And we know why that's the case as well.

but it makes people feel very nervous to talk about that. I think one of the things I heard once, and it's very helpful, it's like, it's not really about blaming our parents, it's about having our experience. But also, it's about recognising that if our parents or us behave in a certain way, again, that didn't come from nowhere. You if they behave that way, they would have been, that's how they were treated as well.

And they may even improved upon how they were treated so hard. That's what we all do, right? Yeah. bring a bit less. But I hear you Tanya and it broke my heart and I did not realize because we don't realize, you know, I think that's when we started to learn it was during Covid and I was trying to get my kids to do all these chores and had chore charts and all this kind of stuff. We were trying to get them to do and they just couldn't do it. And it was causing so much.

horrendous lack of love between us all, like genuine lack of love between us all because I was feeling, you know, we were all feeling resentful and hard done by you. And then once you get that lens of like executive functioning development and you know, the exhaustion and you know, all of that stuff and you like now, my son, who's nearly 18, can do considerably more than he could when he was 16.

Tanya (39:38.409)
can do considerably more than he could when he was 15. But trying to hold our kids to neurotypical standards and then getting angry with them when their executive functioning isn't developed, or that is a really, really difficult thing for them. I genuinely do think for me, me growing up, I was at least seven years behind in that kind of stuff than the regular neurotypical kids and held to those standards and seemed to be faulty.

But yeah, as I grew older, you I became more able to do things because my brain developed more, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I totally hear you. And yeah, I can totally relate to the tour charts and the getting grumpy with each other and, you know, the arguments that often happen in families because we're not living up to the particular standards of our...

saying, well, I might go and do the grocery shopping. She's seven and then she cooks dinner. Yeah. Or, know, the typical thing, you know, like, well, I didn't get away with that when I was a child. Yeah, yeah. I had to do as well about children. Yeah.

Tanya (41:04.895)
But you know, I just want to come back to the part where you said about, you know, like our parents have improved on. And I definitely think, you know, if I, I, I know I hold two truths when it comes to my parents. I know that they loved me with all their heart and they did the absolute best that they could. And there were things from my childhood that I had to heal from.

The same is going to be true for when my children look back on their childhoods. But then, you know, I look at my dad who grew up, his mum died when he was eight. He had a really horrendous childhood that had a lot of abuse. My mum's dad died when she was like 14, you know, and...

they had incredibly hard childhoods, but still managed to improve on those childhoods so that we could have a better one. And when I think even of my great grandparents, you know, like who lived through the depression and world wars and like my grandmother was one of like, I think 12 children. You know, like, yeah, totally. You have to, you have to look back.

at your ancestors with a bit of compassion as well because you know a lot of the circumstances that they lived through like wow you know like yeah how would we have turned out if we had lived through those those same things right exactly exactly i mean totally and then like you say two things can be true and i think one of the biggest

learnings and the biggest difficulties that we have as humans in midlife is acknowledging that, you know, things can be bad and for other people, but we also get to have our experience as well. Yeah, it's like that I really struggled with I hear so much. You know, can't mustn't grumble. Can't complain. Look at all the people over there. They're having a much worse time than me. Possibly. Oh,

Tanya (43:27.133)
How dare I even consider that I could actually have my own experience as well and that it might be less than ideal. And again, all that performing, all that masking is just exhausting. Yeah. And yeah, and that's that's where like I think multiplicity of holding those two truths at once has been so helpful for me because there definitely is this

this tendency for us to minimize our experience, for us to push down our experience, try to bypass it in some way, which is not healthy for us either. So that has been a helpful framework for me to be able to have.

And I think it's what we're talking about there is actually really kind of like brings me around to something that I wanted to just touch on very briefly as well, which is probably that I have the most difficulty with working with neurodivergent humans and humans with trauma is the concept that and just exactly what you're talking about there that basically I, my experience with neurodivergent and trauma, people with trauma is that we already

think the worst of ourselves most of the time. That we're coming from a childhood where we've usually had to mask, we've usually not been acceptable in some way, shape or form. And so the child part of us has made ourselves bad and wrong in order for us to feel safe in the world so that the world around us being not ideal didn't feel quite so scary because it felt like we had some control because we could control ourselves. So naturally,

most of us go into adult life kind of making ourselves a problem to be fixed, you know, taking us back to the original thing. We're on this like path to self-improvement, destination happiness, you know, we've all got to be. And one of the things that I find really difficult is the language. And that was one of the things that I was kind of like, I've noticed it so much. Words and it's so harmful to my clients and I found it harmful to me as well.

Tanya (45:42.538)
And even things that weaponizing words like resilience, for example, is a classic one. But even self care to a certain extent, especially for neurodegenerative marks can be weaponized. absolutely. And I've had school meetings where I've walked in and someone said, you know, I've looked frantic because I've had this crazy morning and they're like, how's your self care? And it's like my self care is going to solve the problem. And again, it's making

20 and victim blame. It's like, you know, you're if you were doing a self care correctly, then maybe wouldn't that we wouldn't be having all these problems. So that kind of Yeah, there's this whole I feel like, you know, even for particularly for neurodivergence as well, like the use of words like codependent when we're talking about the parent child relationship.

a lot. Especially people who are not seeing things from a neurodivergent, neuro-affirming lens, you know, could often see our relationship with our children under that lens, when in fact it's actually co-regulation. that can be very harmful. These words, for me, people pleasing, I find quite a hard word. I prefer to think of it as the fornid safety response. Because again,

No one wants to be a people pleaser because again in our language, in our culture, feels like it's got this sort of like stigma to it, we're slightly less than them. Actually, very resourceful thing to be doing. Same with your masking. Very resourceful behaviour. Actually, our body and brain try to keep itself safe. And again, know, self-sabotage. Well, often it's because like I have a lot of clients talking about food or body alcohol, they're like, why do I keep self-sabotaging?

And so because, you know, what if we had it a different name? What did your body actually need? And my body needs to feel cared for. It needs to feel nurtured. It needs to treat. I need something that feels nice in my tummy. You know, these are not self sabotaging. We're meeting needs. And so there's so much language that and that was one of the things I want to talk about because I find it very harmful. And I think people don't take, you know, I'm having a pity party means I'm

Tanya (48:08.309)
I'm actually allowing myself to have my experience of the feelings that I'm having, but somehow whether it's bad or wrong, and you have to be a little bit ashamed of it. Is that that sort of thing? I think we use these words to...

Tanya (48:26.121)
without thinking about how they're received and they land on somebody who already thinks they're the problem. Yeah, you know, and I find a lot of it is like,

You know, then another word that I find really difficult is, you know, the inner critic. You know, when I started off with my journey with self-improvement or self-personal improvement, you know, like, were like, well, you know, this is just your self- your inner critic. need to silence your inner critic. And what I've learned now is like, well, actually, my inner critic's just trying to keep me safe.

This is a really young part of myself that is just really learned that life isn't safe for her. And if I'm going to love myself and take care of myself as a human, I need to love all parts of me, not try to silence or bash parts of myself, because that's still part of me, right? I find the more that I try to silence the parts of myself,

that try to protect me, the louder they protest and they show up in all different parts of my life. And then I'm even just beating myself up more because I wasn't able to do what I wanted. I mean, my practice now is just like, okay, I can hear you. What did you want to tell me rather than like, this is a bad part of me that needs to be silenced or punished? Yes. And usually for my clients, that would be so

it'd be silence without call, you know, because it's like, how do we get rid of that? Because it doesn't feel nice to sit there. So, you know, again, it's such a reframe and it makes such a difference to people, I think. And it's made such a difference to me having that reframe, having somebody say to me back at the beginning of this journey, you know, when you're dealing with all of this stuff, take a moment to just check in with yourself. How are you? You know, like, take a moment, just like what's happening for you right now.

Tanya (50:37.685)
And it's like, what? Yeah. And then your experience, that your experience in this is valid, right? And you have an experience. you even have an experience. Most of us ND people, a lot of us, you know, we're so, we take everybody else's experience into our bodies so much because we're such empaths and we're so sensitive for all different reasons as well. But there's never barely any room.

I know for me one of the reasons I used to drink was because I used to take everybody's experience to my body. It was just too much. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. You know, we were talking about this white European, you know, sort of, yeah, Western culture. And I think the thing that's been the best self-improvement for me is learning.

is immersing myself more into the Indigenous culture here in New Zealand, the Māori culture, and looking at the world through that lens, which is very collective, and, you know, everything's connected, and that has been so healing for me. And so I think, you when you're talking about changing your perspective, I think...

allowing ourselves to explore the wisdoms of other cultures. I mean, there's a difference between exploring and appropriating, but allowing yourself to actually get curious about some of the viewpoints of the world can be also just incredibly enriching for us.

Yeah. Okay. Well, we had a powerful conversation then, Tanya. We did.

Tanya (52:45.942)
It's great. That was really lovely. Yeah, and thank you for sharing your experience with that, the work thing as well, because I think that's going to be really useful for people because I really think it's a lot more common than people. I've heard, like, over the years as well, you know, so many people said to me, oh, this thing happened at work. It was really not the right thing. was really too, you know, the people who run it didn't have that. I think it even happens in

you know, personalities, online personalities, know, running coaching, kind of like great big seminars and stuff. I've heard a lot of people talking about, you know, those kind of things sometimes being, you know, little bit not thinking enough, perhaps about the impact of those things on all of the different people that are going to be in the audience, you know. Yeah. And, you know, if I'd like to just finish off with one thing, I would just like to say that, you know,

come back to that, you you are allowed to have your experience and you are allowed to, if something doesn't feel good to you or comfortable to you, then you are allowed to, like, you're allowed to listen to that. Yeah, 100%. And sometimes you might not be able to do anything about it at the time. And that's okay as well.

And if we're going to freeze, don't we, with things and we just sort of like going through the motions because we don't know how to navigate it.

And then afterwards we'll be like, that really didn't feel like problem. And then we'll beat ourselves up, why didn't I say something? But in actual fact, know, you're keeping yourself safe. Yeah. Yeah. And what we do in survival mode, you know, it is called survival mode for a reason, you know, we did whatever we needed in those situations to survive. And I think for all of us, like,

Tanya (54:50.719)
new ND people particularly it's very hard to put boundaries and to put to stand up for ourselves and so you know often we'll do it and it and we'll feel like we didn't do it right or you know I often feel like that I'm sure you do as well and and and that's okay as well right it's a you know it's like yeah I know I often like so embarrassed because I've like tried to put boundaries on I've tried to say I don't not happy I've done it in a kind of like really clumsy way

I have to share this, this is kind of embarrassing, but when I was like manager for teaching teams, used to, I didn't know that I had really bad RSD. And so I would go into like, you know, an area and I would tell staff that I needed to tidy something up or do something like, try to put a boundary in, right?

And then I'd go back to my office and I would feel so bad about that boundary and I really had to stop myself from like going back to those people and saying it's okay, don't worry, I'll do it for you. Because honestly, that just felt so hard for me to do that. I'm much better at boundaries now, but like, you know, it was just what you said there just really brought up that experience for me.

that it is sometimes so hard for us to, for lots of different reasons to put on those boundaries or, yeah. Work in progress, life work. Work in progress, absolutely. I think we should probably finish, shouldn't we? Yeah. What was your magic moment? Can you do yours first? Because I need to think about mine for a moment. Sure. Mine is that I have been

writing again, and I really love that. And I've been, I've been writing a book. And it's just one of those things that just like, I got inspiration to do it like a few weeks ago. And it's just like a whole collection of little short stories. And it's been really just like so fun to be able to be creative. So yeah, I've just really found that to be quite

Tanya (57:13.624)
medical and just sort of following my interest on that. Yeah, lovely. Absolutely lovely. I love that too. I'm trying to think of mine. This has been a bit of a tough week for me. But I have had moments and I think probably yesterday I spoke at the Yellow Ladybugs Conference recording panel and that was really scary. And I've also got massive RSD over it, as you would imagine.

But it was so lovely to feel like I could speak. Because I think sometimes as parents, particularly, we going through the burnout and the school can't and all that kind of stuff, we often don't get to ever be heard. And so it's really nice to at least feel like, you know, I've been able to kind of share a bit of my story so that it was out of me. It makes sense. I know that sounds so tough. But like,

hopefully someone else will resonate with it, but also I had made a record of it, if that makes sense to you. There's something powerful about that storytelling. it's like, and I wonder if we, you know, we need, we need more of that, you know, getting, having, feeling seen, feeling heard, feeling, you know, witnessed, I guess, in our experience, absolutely. And I saw

Like you post a little clip of that recording in your story and I think you did really well, Emma, from what I saw. was lots of crying though, I'm like... I cry all the time too when I share my story and you know what, I think that's such a normal thing for us to do because, you know, it matters. yeah, it does, it does, it does, it does. Yeah. thank you, Tanya. I've really enjoyed it.

speaking with you today. I'm so glad we did this because Tanya earlier I was like, I'm a bit flat and Tanya's like, you don't have to do it. And I'm like, no, I think it will give me energy and I will really enjoy it because it's lovely to talk with you. And it definitely has. So thank you so much for today. It's a pleasure. You take care, my friend. You too. We'll catch each other next week. We will. Take care. Lots of love. You too. Bye bye.