Episode 9: Healing is a Hot Mess

Is healing supposed to feel this chaotic? In this hilarious and heartfelt episode, Andi & Mich peel back the Instagram filters and get real about the unglamorous side of healing. From screaming in your car to over-apologizing at work, we explore the messy, beautiful truth about growth, boundaries, emotional exhaustion, and the weird (but effective) things we do to feel whole again.

We also dive into:

• Why healing isn’t linear (or aesthetic)
• Weird but real healing methods that actually help
• Friendship breakups, therapy truths, and boundary hangovers
• The pressure of being “palatable” in leadership roles (especially for women)
• The double standards in healing and emotional labor—at home, work, and in our own minds

Whether you’re mid-sob in a Target parking lot or cuddling your feelings away (literally), this one’s for you. You're not alone—and you're not doing it wrong.

Tag your healing homie and hit play.

#HealingIsMessy
 #UnfilteredHealing
 #ScreamSingingIsTherapy
 #BoundariesBeHard
 #RealTalkPodcast
 #AndiAndMichPodcast
 #TherapyTalk
 #EmotionalWellness
 #HealingJourney
 #NotYourInstaHealing
 #MessyHealingClub
 #SelfCareIsntPretty
 #FunnyWomenPodcast
 #HealingAndHumor
 #LatinaPodcasters
 #WomenWhoHeal
 #BoundariesAreBeautiful
 #TherapyLaughCryRepeat
 #SpiralWithSnacks
 #EmotionalGlowUp

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Your support helps us to keep the conversations going. <3

-Andi and Mich

The Andi and Mich Podcast: Two Sisters, Two Generations, Unique Perspectives, Lots of Laughs

Transcript

0:00

Welcome back to Andy and Mitch where we get real laugh hard, and sometimes cry in the car while doing it. I'm Andy, your resident Gen X elder. And I'm Mitch, technically younger and proudly spiraling with intention on this so-called healing journey. In today's episode, we're unpacking the real unglamorous, deeply human side of healing. Let's dive in. The hot mess express, y'all. Healing is gritty and technically that's where all the magic happens, but it's in all the ugly parts. When you hear the word healing or people talk about healing, the images that come up for me are like very polished Instagramable images. That it's like you go into the yoga class, a hot mess, come out like on your super glow up. And you come out a changed person, but that's not how it is. Healing is not glamorous, it's not polished, and it's not picture perfect. Let's talk about the amount of awkward moments you have when you're healing. I didn't realize like when you start to heal, that the people that you had in your immediate circles start to dwindle away. Which we'll get into later. And also you gotta face yourself and your own truths, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It's unfiltered, emotional labor, it's work and it's rarely talked about in the depth that it deserves. And there's like entire podcasts about healing. For me personally, I have a hard time listening to them and staying with them because they don't get into the messy, ugly parts enough. And I think it creates like a false sense of what a healing journey should look like. It can also make people who are actually going through a healing journey question if they're actually healing. In reality, some of the messiest moments, are part of you trying to break outta those cycles or unlearn some of those patterns and that's why it's so messy. Even when people are trying to be raw, honest, and unfiltered, it is very polished and put together. Like scripted tears, kind of. And you're like, I just totally, had a mental breakdown in my car and I look like a crazy ass villain right now. Like there's no way that what I'm seeing, this social media person post is real, or even remotely close to it. I always envisioned it was gonna be this really nice moment, but then it was like me crying in a parking lot eating french fries blocking people on my Instagram. No seriously, regardless of age, if you're being exposed to, a pop culture theme around wellness and healing and self care but then your journey of what you're going through doesn't look like that you might not even really accept yourself in the process. Has that ever happened for you? Yeah, for a while I thought, I'm losing myself. A lot of the times I would be healing, but I would be really hard on myself and think, it's gotta just be me, i'm making things difficult for people, cause I was doing work and I was becoming a better version of myself, change comes with that. I know personally, for the longest time I was like on this bandwagon of I have to have a really good morning routine, I really bought into this idea that it had to be this like very structured, idealized, aesthetically pleasing routine that you had to have. And like, I'm not like a consistent routine kind of person. So like, I just kept failing at it, like I gotta journal and I gotta meditate and I should stretch and I should drink tea with lemon and ginger and honey, and I should do all my gratitudes. I felt really overwhelmed by this idea of this routine, which was supposed to be, part of the healing. Yeah. And it actually made me feel worse. And then I had to get to the point where I was like, yeah, I call bullshit on all of this. I had to like shift my own mindset and find a way to have a healthy start to my day that helped me prepare and feel better as I move through my day. That wasn't this kind of picture perfect, five step morning routine that would make you feel like the glow up goddess every day. I've never been structured enough to have anything like that. Funny enough, I actually found that for me, doing something very simple at night is where it's at. Part of like in my emotional maturity and growth was learning how to properly take care of myself and my house, which I do before I go to bed as a routine. For you, it sounds like environmental, there's so many different ways to practice self-care. That's the part that I was trying to get to is I didn't realize that that was part of self-care. I thought that was an obligation. And now I have this understanding of like, no, it's actually part of like creating an environment that you wanna wake up to. Get yourself ready to be in a more relaxed state. All right, so we're gonna go through a list of unconventional, creative, and sometimes downright weird, but it works healing methods that people use to process emotional pain and reconnect with themselves. So for these unconventional healing methods. Have you or would you though? Screaming therapy, aka primal scream. You go into the woods or your car and you scream your soul out. Yeah, like just screaming, letting it out. It's just a nice way to verbalize emotion and release it and let it move through you. It sounds wild, but it literally helps release pent up energy and trauma from your nervous system. Yes. And you can feel it too, like when you scream. Really intensely, like you almost feel like a weight is lifted. Along the same lines, smashing plates, rage rooms. I'm seeing those pop up everywhere. These are places like, safely destroy a bunch of shit like TVs, dishes, and then you beat the crap out of it and you just destroy it into pieces. Rage rooms are such a great business model. Yeah, we should go to one. It's weirdly cathartic and it's better to destroy stuff in a safe, intentional environment than stuff in your home. And it's also a metaphor for like letting go. Alright, what about ecstatic dance? So this is dancing freely without choreography or judgment. We also like to call it interpretive dance. It's like therapy with sweat and Spotify, and then a lot of crying mid song and then joy. I do this quite often, but I don't cry. Yeah. I also don't cry. And there's research on this, like moving your body and just movement. Aligns with this idea of like moving energy through you, stagnant energy that we hold onto. But it is great for everything, your physical health, your mental health, your emotional health. And just to have fun with it. I like to do it as like a joyful thing, or sometimes I'll put on like nineties classics that are really cringey and I'll sing while I'm washing the dishes. It's so much fun and it just brings like this little life back into me, especially if I've had like a really draining day. Okay. What about forest bathing? This is a Japanese practice of simply being in the forest. No phones, no agenda. It's meant to reduce your stress hormones and increase your feelings of connectedness and calm. And I can totally see that 1000%. I spent a lot of time in the forest, a lot of time in the forest alone. I don't know where this forest is that you've been to. You mean the mountains? Yeah, that's a forest. Sure. Okay. Nature. We are surrounded by three different national forests. I do love the idea of like, in Japan,'cause they do it in like these beautiful bamboo forests. The idea of how peaceful that is. There's just something really grounding about being in those spaces. Cuddle therapy, professional cuddlers exist. I did not know this. It's a platonic consent based therapeutic touch to help with loneliness and emotional regulation. Bonus, it releases oxytocin, into our system, which is our feel good bonding hormone. So cuddle therapy, have you or would you though? I have never, I guess I just found out what my next job is. Let's take it down a notch, like just hugging. Like when you hug somebody, I think it's for 60 seconds, your brain sends a signal and you start to release those feel good hormones that actually calm your system. So just hugging people you care about, you know, you love, has the same impact, so you don't need to hire a professional cuddler. So I wouldn't hire a person professionally to cuddle me, maybe there's people out there that really need that. They do, some experts recommend aiming for at least eight hugs to maintain mental health and emotional wellbeing a day. Alright, laughter yoga, so combining laughter exercises with deep breathing. I've seen this, I've never done it, even fake laughing can trigger real joy, breaking emotional tension. You and I use a lot of laughter as a healing modality. I dunno about this, yes, laughter is healing. Let's see. No, that just scares me. I just think villain or like crackpot, one or the other. I'm like, this person, they hit their thresholds. Oh my god. So if I'm seeing you and you're sitting there forcing laughter while you're doing yoga. I'm leaving that establishment. Just go to a comedy show, not everything needs to be combined. Alright, sound baths this is a big one. This one's gained a lot of traction lately. You're immersed in the vibrations of sound. So this is usually singing bowls. People use tuning forks. They use bells, chimes, gongs, which feels like a lot. People report emotional releases, sometimes visions or a sense of deep calm. This has also been studied a lot in like mindful practices and I personally do like sound baths. I like the bowls, like singing bowls. And I have one for my own personal use. One thing that I learned from using it that was unexpected is that. You get this, very powerful sense of clarity. It's almost like you can think through these invisible noises around us that we don't even notice all the time. I started listening to frequencies and there's a lot of like sound therapeutic research that is pretty cool to consider. Okay, so yay. Psychedelic assisted therapy, this is very controversial. So these are, this is like using substances, ketamine, MDMA, like microdosing, in a guided therapeutic setting where it's legal. And, what they're saying about this is that it's shown to reduce symptoms of depression, PTSD and emotional trauma, that they found in clinical studies. This is fascinating to me because I also, watch this on reality TV a lot. They talk about this, people going to, ketamine therapy. I have not tried it and I don't know that I would though. For me personally, I really have a hard time the idea of anything that's psychedelic. Well, I think the scary part is some of this is like mail order stuff. Like you can get this sent to you. Nope. Alright, moving on art destruction. So this is the idea where you create something like a sculpture or a painting, something artistic, and then you destroy it as a ritual release. I love this, especially if it's something that you're like creating to symbolize something that was traumatic to you. It could be great as like a mental exercise to put it into a physical form that then you can then like, destroy. Yeah.'cause then it, it helps you to feel surprisingly powerful because then that holds no power over you. I feel like we've done versions of this as children. Like where you write a letter and you tear it up, or you draw something on a piece of paper and you burn it or whatever. So it's just taking that to like the next level. Alright,what about scream Singing in the car, putting on your angsty teen playlist and belt it out? A mix of nostalgia, release, and free therapy via dashboard acoustics. Teen playlist. How dare you? I still do this every week. Sometimes it's part of my morning routine. It really is. A little rage against the machine."f you, I won't do what you told me." And then you're like, do, do, do, do. Hey, Becca! Along for the rest of your day. Alright, and last but not least, voice note journaling. So this is talking to yourself via voice memo instead of writing. It's super helpful for people who process emotions better out loud and need to talk through it, but aren't into therapy yet. I would say even if you are into therapy, it could be a very helpful tool. I do love doing this because I verbally process things a lot. I listen back to it to try to gain perspective, it's very helpful. It's almost like you're your own friend in that moment. It gives you clarity and conscientious understanding of what needs to be shared in rooms. Mm-hmm. I'm a big fan. Maybe someday I'll turn my voice notes into a book. Hey, you never know. You never know. Being a woman in the world today. Yeah. It takes everything you got. I don't know, is there, is there a wrong way to heal? Uh, yeah, don't assault somebody? Well, I mean, yeah, that's a given. Yeah. Don't go smashing up car windows. Don't go harming people or putting yourself in jail and you're good. There's a lot of gendered messaging in healing. I noticed a lot of the times that what gets put on women a lot is like, you should just be able to handle your emotions. On the other hand, I'll drop this little nugget for men. Alright, get ready men, because you're about to get a nugget. You're about to get a nugget. I think it's a big disservice that men are discouraged from acknowledging that they have experienced hardship and they have pain from that hardship. Yeah. And I think it does a disservice, to our societies, to our cultures. Men need to be encouraged to lean into doing the work, to lean in to include emotional wellness and emotional security and safety and understanding into what is considered peak performance. For men in particular or male identifying, there is, it's like a sub culture, if you will. It's like if you have people around you that are also on a healing journey or have done some healing or have gone to therapy, then it's more likely that you might be encouraged to do the same because that feels like a safe conversation that's happening in your circles. On second season of Survival of the thickest her best friend needs therapy she's like, you gotta go to therapy. And all his best girlfriends are telling him about therapy'cause it's much more acceptable and talked about in the female circles. And then he's like, we don't talk about that in our male circles. So when he finally brings it up. He learns that everybody in his male circle has gone to therapy or is going to therapy, and one of them is even a therapist. Yeah. Which is hilarious. But he, he's like, what the hell? There's like shame around the concept that a man needs help and it's like you're also human and you're not alone in your experience. Yeah. But there's not a lot that is marketed to men. I love that they talk about that in that show, because especially for men of color. It's even harder because you're talking about it even less because of all the things around like male machismo and stuff like that. Depending on the cultural background. Yeah, it's true. So let's talk about like the social media part, but what does it actually feel like. Is there an end point to healing or do you believe that it's ongoing? I think it's definitely, not a one size fits all answer. I have technically been going to therapy off and on since I was 12. Mm-hmm. That was court ordered and then. Yes, it was. Yes it was and you know what, she was one of my favorite therapists ever. She bought me this really little cute jade elephant that I still have. It took me years until I ended up going back to therapy as an adult. And then going back to therapy as an adult helped me really become the person that I am today. So I think healing for me looks like teetering between needing a tuneup every once in a while. Healing is a consistent choice. You're aware that there are certain things that can cause you to make bad decisions or maybe put you in positions that make you feel uncomfortable or trigger things from the past. I think healing is a consistent choice. Yeah, I agree. I think there's an ebb and flow to it, on different levels, but I also have experienced it as something that's ongoing and continuous. I think once you open that box and you build the awareness, it doesn't stop, it doesn't end, whether you're in therapy or not. I've gone to therapy situationally, I will say, because certain points in my life where I felt like I needed that extra support for specific things, and then I would go to therapy and I've seen different kinds of therapists for different things. But even being out of therapy, I'm still on the journey of healing because there's so much that goes into, once you have this awareness. And like you said, right now, you're making choices and they conscious choices. And in order to continue on that path and to continue creating positive change for yourself, you have to put the effort in. And I think there are certain things that you may have to heal from or work through in your life that might feel more short term. But when I think about like how I want to be in the world. That's forever, that's like for every day I'm alive on this planet and beyond. I feel like I deserve to put intention into that. So in all of this, like what you're touching on, I think really speaks to, when you start healing and recognizing certain patterns in your life, you also have to start thinking about boundaries and how you set them. How you have and haven't done it, but boundaries are messy too. Sometimes you set a boundary and that makes things feel messier before it feels better. Have you ever had that experience? Yeah, all the time, every boundary. Because the thing about boundaries is that we forget that even though we set them, that doesn't mean that other people are gonna be happy about them. No. In fact, it inconveniences other people who have benefited from you not having boundaries. There's a quote that was going around for a while that was like, if people are upset with you about your boundaries, it's because your new boundaries don't benefit them anymore. But yeah, like people will react to your boundaries, even the people who maybe have the best intentions, because sometimes they don't even realize how much they've been benefiting from your lack of boundaries. Let's just drop some knowledge in there: 60% of adults report having difficulty setting or maintaining boundaries. 68% of individuals report feeling more confident in their personal boundaries after attending therapy. 85% of people feel stressed when their boundaries are disregarded. That's real. That should be a hundred, that should be like 99%. 45% of individuals experience guilt after establishing boundaries. Also, I think, we don't talk about this enough in familial relationships, those are the hardest ones. Most of your healing journey is gonna require you to set some real boundaries with your family, and people you consider family. There's cultures that don't believe in it at all, that like, don't believe in therapy, that don't believe in healing. It's like, what do you need to heal? No, no, no, no. Just keep your head down and keep, keep going, keep going, keep moving forward. When you get to a place where you are like ready to set those boundaries, woo, those can be painful. Those are gonna test you so hard and you're gonna feel so guilty for setting them. 64% of adults say they ignore setting their boundaries to please others, including their family. And then sometimes you set boundaries that you know are healthy boundaries at work. Right. And then those are hard too, because you can set the boundary and then you doubt yourself immediately because you're then reverting back to this old pattern of being a people pleaser. And I feel like at work, that's a big thing, is like people want to be liked. Yeah, it's part of networking and being able to climb up the corporate ladder. I also think too, the thing about work dynamics that make it really hard to set boundaries is most people start at the bottom. They're not starting at a mid-level or executive position. And so when you start at an entry level role, their expectation is that you will do what you are told to do. And you should be able to be flexible and bendable and malleable, and you should be able to learn everything. And when you start at that level, it becomes, difficult for people to start to shift into a different kind of mindset, to have established boundaries. And it also depends on the environment of the company as well. Or the language, like how the workplace uses key words as a way to try and get around your boundaries. Like, oh, but you really need to be a team player. Yeah. And if you're not clear on what boundaries are and what your boundaries are. You're gonna fall right into that trap and think, oh, okay, well I'm not giving enough, or I'm not being, quote unquote a team player but when you start getting really clear on your boundaries, you're like, oh hell no. Like being a team player has nothing to do with what I'm saying. Yeah. When an executive or hire says, we're like a family here, run. I feel like when people say that, they mean the bus, but what they actually mean is they have no boundaries. What were we just saying? Like family boundaries are the hardest ones to set. They're the hardest one to set, and those are the ones that you most wanna please. I do think you can, there can be healthy workplace dynamics, and closeness, close relationships with your colleagues if you have a healthy environment but it's not familial. It should never be, you're not related to these people. I just met you today, Barbara, you're not my family. Have you ever had a boundary hangover moment, like a time that maybe you regretted setting a boundary and it's probably a hard boundary, but you knew it was the right thing to do and at some point you felt good about it, but when you initially did it, you had that hangover moment of like, oh shit, I shouldn't have done that. All the time, setting boundaries is like the antithesis of my existence. It literally goes against the chemical composition of my soul. I want everyone to be happy. I think, I'm definitely not in my people pleasing era. I don't think you ever were. Yeah, it's questionable, it's definitely questionable. I think there probably have been moments where I probably leaned more into being a people pleaser, but I don't think it's my default setting. No, I don't think so. No, that's fair. Yeah, I'm always surprised when like I'm having a conversation with somebody and it kind of is touching on like boundaries and whatnot, and my instant response is like. Just say no. You don't need to explain yourself. The answer is no. And people are like, what? Yeah, I can't do that. And I get like a hundred excuses why that's too hard or they can't do it, or they won't do it, or they feel uncomfortable doing it. And in my brain I'm like, what do you mean? Like it's just No. But not everybody thinks like that. I don't even know what you're talking about. Boundary setting is so essential, though I don't, I've come to really like myself so much, i'm the best. I really like who I am, I love me. I do. And I love that for me. And I do love that for me. And it took a lot of freaking work to get here. Now that I'm here, I can say no much easier but I do still my people please tendencies. Well, now that's in vocabulary wasn't where It wasn't even, yeah, it wasn't, didn't even exist. And that's another thing about people pleasing that's extremely, hard, is that when you create that dynamic without setting healthy boundaries, you are making yourself available at every moment of your life. And we're not always at a hundred at every moment of our lives. And what that means is that you're betraying yourself when you're showing up for everyone else all the time. And when people are like, oh, but she's so dependable, it's like, oh, great, at what cost is she so dependable to you? And is it also the question of that you are also that? Or the person, right? And so I think that setting boundaries help me to acknowledge those particular traits so that I can then identify, those in myself and those in my most valued relationships. It's also in the same vein with this idea of setting boundaries and learning how to say no. There's also the unlearning over apologizing for things. I've had more women have an expectation of me apologizing than men. Which is, which is saying a lot.'Cause I've had some very interesting interactions with people and, and because I'm okay with no, I will hold the line. You're in a position of leadership, so it's interesting that you say that women are harder on you. Yeah. In a position of leadership, because I feel that I've had it more from men and I have been primarily in like mid-level roles. The higher up you get as a woman, the harder people are on you because they have an expectation that you are going to be soft. And that you're going to bow down and that you're gonna be apologetic and that you're gonna be palatable and that you're gonna be tame and toned down and all of these things. But I'm curious to know, in your experience, has it been from more women or from more men? It's been from both. And I think that's probably one of the biggest shockers in the trajectory of my career is that as you go through it and you move up in ranks, the number of women that you weren't expecting to be that way with you, is wild. Yeah. You're like, wow, we're supposed to be lifting each other up, we're supposed to be empowering each other, we're supposed to be supporting each other. And that doesn't happen at all because they also have these, ingrained, unrealistic expectations of what your behavior should be and how you should carry yourself. Everything I've said and done, if I were a man, nobody would've said anything to me about it. You'd have like a salary of$450,000. They would never question my email. It would never question my"no" and I, and sometimes no, it's just no. It's just not gonna happen. And there's reason behind it. Yeah. I don't just randomly say no. No, you have data to support your reasons. But just the act of saying no is not acceptable. For a long time I really removed, sorry, from my vocabulary. I know you told me to do that and I just couldn't, I tried, I did my best. Yeah, I wouldn't, I would use different language, but I would never say I'm sorry because I realized how much I was saying it just out of habit and I was like, no, I don't wanna do that anymore. What about breakups? Goodbyes and grieving who you used to be? What do you think has been the hardest goodbye in your healing? This is gonna be controversial. Up until my mid twenties, I thought the hardest goodbyes were my ex-boyfriends but then in my work with my most recent therapist, I realized that some of the hardest goodbyes I've ever had that caused the most distrust were the endings of my best female friendships. And that they hurt far more than any ex-boyfriend. I've had three different really great friendships with females that burned out naturally. But I had one that really hurt, was really harsh, and it ended pretty terribly. And then I had another one that just didn't end, but shifted in a way that I didn't anticipate. And that really hurt too. How about you? Wow. Way to jump right outta that. I'm like, I ain't gonna go into details. Look at our setting boundaries. I think I've had many, and I, and this is one of the things that is part of the messy bits, right? Is like, there's so many shifts, like saying goodbye to versions of ourselves. Saying goodbye to people in our lives. Whether it's a mutual choice, like you both agree, or it's a decision that you have to make for the relationship, for yourself to say goodbye to friendships and colleagues and like to shift all these dynamics. That shit's hard. One of the hardest, for me was walking away from people who I know were not good for me and were not good for my daughter, who was a child at the time. Oh yeah. And these were some of the people that, at one point in my life would've been like ride or die, one in particular. And at one point probably would've been like, yeah, I trust my life with this person. What really got me was at some point I was like, our values do not align. Yeah. What I value as family and friendship and love and support, you do not. I had to choose myself and I had to choose, I. Who I wanted around my daughter, who was very young at the time, and how I wanted her to be cared for and influenced in life. And I didn't want that for her or for me. Yeah. And that sucks because it's very painful for you. And sometimes it's more painful for you than it is for them. I don't know what that person's experience was, but they became very bitter, very angry. They really lashed out at me really ugly. They weren't there for me when I was like sick and at my worst. It just showed so many sides of them that I didn't know existed. And it kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier, is that like people will react to your boundaries based on how they benefited from them. Yeah, and sometimes you outgrow them. I was very heartbroken by that for a long time. And once I took my own accountability in it, I was able to let it go completely and walk away 100% without regret. When it's a kind of relationship dynamic like this, like Andi's mentioning where it has run its course. They will 75 to 85% of the time challenge your boundaries. And I think that's usually the indicator where it's the breaking point where you're seeing, and it's like probably the most painful part. You kind of have to wake up to the, to the reality that this person, like Andy mentioned, is not capable of meeting you where you currently are. Yeah, and that's the other part of it is like, when you're on a messy healing journey, you will change and grow inevitably. And people are not gonna change and grow with you. Not always. No. And It might also be that they're really comfortable where they are. They don't see anything wrong with their lifestyle and more power to them, let them live where they live. But if you feel like you're growing and you're expanding past those perimeters that they've set for themselves to feel safe. Then you gotta do what you gotta do. And I think one of my biggest aha moments, intertwined with that was also me grieving myself and me grieving the version of myself that used to exist. Because I internalized that somehow everything falling apart was my fault. And it wasn't. And so I had to really untangle those two things. And look at, I'm changing and growing and developing and learning from all the mistakes I have made up until that point in my life. I had to grieve myself in the process, and then also had to grieve the loss of this very important relationship. Yeah. But they needed to be acknowledged separately. And going through all that just takes you right into therapy. I'm still surprised at how many people have never gone to therapy'cause I feel like, and this is just because I'm also surrounded by a lot of people who are very open to many different modalities of healing. What's something therapy helped you realize that you actually, that actually made your life harder? Before it got better. One of the things that therapy helped me realize that actually made my life harder before I got better was knowing when to stop being a giving person. And I use this terminology, givers and takers, like, people pleasers, people that wanna give consistently be in service of others versus somebody that sees an opportunity, wants to take advantage of that opportunity, or sees a way that they can benefit from another person and loves to lean into benefiting from that other person. Learning accountability was the hardest thing for me to grasp as like you are causing your own discomfort. What about you? What's something therapy helped you realize that actually made your life harder before it got better? Nothing, i'm just kidding. I think similarly, the accountability piece is really important. The idea of exploring your role in your own life. If you're trying to accomplish something and it's not happening, then it's not saying, well, what am I doing wrong? But it's saying. What role am I playing in this? Like what decisions am I making, that I keep ending up in this place? And understanding that from a different perspective that's more kind and compassionate and curious than harsh. Learning how to have that voice soften a little bit and just to approach things from curiosity. I think it was harder at first because that's a hard pattern to break. It is very uncomfortable to pull yourself out of those situations and really look like with the eagle eye, this wider view as to what's happening. That's the thing about like growth and healing and change is that like, it's not a like, oh, I did this thing, boom, now it's fixed. It's like a constant unlearning of all these things. And that's the uncomfortable part. It's like the next day you go right back to the same pattern because you've been doing it for however many years. Yeah, it's like a reflex. Yeah, and it takes time to create a new way of doing something or thinking about something. And that makes it really difficult, you know? And then it's like, I think it's the back and forth, like when you go to therapy, if you've never been, your therapist should prepare you for the fact that it's going to feel worse before it feels better. Yeah. Because one of the things that we forget as human beings is that a lot of the choices we make are coping mechanisms so that we don't have to sit with our feelings. And so when you go to therapy, you're basically allowing this person to come into your home and unpack all your crap and leave it there, and you're not gonna feel great about it. And you gotta sit with it. Yeah. And it's building your self-awareness, but it's also emotionally exhausting. Yes. At the same time. Especially if you've never done it before. Going through something in your life that you haven't been through before, you've never unpacked before. To add to the emotional exhausting thing. For people who are going to therapy for the first time, I do just wanna say like. One of the things I experienced is I didn't wanna go out as much, I didn't wanna do a bunch of things because I was so emotionally exhausted. That unpacking is heavy. You don't realize it, but it's like on a subconscious level, it drains the energy out of you. That's where the wellness space does kind of thrive, those little practices do really help to alleviate some of that heaviness that you end up feeling from finally facing years of repressed emotion. Mm-hmm, yeah. And for me, I've done a lot of other things that have been just as impactful for my healing. I'm a mystic. I like to explore and dabble. Like I've been to psychics, I've been to coaches, I've been to like energy healers. Like I've explored a lot of other things and I've had experiences that have helped me have amazing breakthroughs, and realizations in life, that have also been really essential to my healing journey. We call that adult math. It's real. It's real. So, if you're in the thick of it, wondering why healing feels like heartbreak confusion or that one DIY haircut that went terribly wrong. You're not broken babe. You're just rebooting emotionally with questionable wifi. Whether you're scream singing in the car or you're ghosting your therapist out of avoidance. Just know healing is not linear, but it is meme worthy and probably deserves its own. Spotify wrapped. Send this episode to that one friend who's deep in the healing trenches. And remember, if you're spiraling, at least spiral with snacks and boundaries. Until next time. Bye bye.