Speaker 1 (00:00:20):
PMDD shaped my life for 17 years before I could name it, I spent those years searching for answers, questioning my sanity, and desperately seeking treatments that actually worked. My painful journey had an unexpected twist. Helping others heal from PMDD became my life's purpose. Hi, I'm Jess, a board certified nutritional therapist coach, the founder of her mood mentor and your host. This is PMDD PEP Talk, A weekly reminder that your suffering is real, your experience is valid, and your future is brighter than your symptoms suggest. Each week, we're going to explore the truths about PMDD that nobody talks about, the kind of truths that shift something deep inside you and make you think maybe there's more possible than I imagined. Whether you're in the depths of luteal darkness or riding the clarity of your follicular phase, you're exactly where you need to be because here's what I know for sure.
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Healing PMDD isn't just about managing symptoms, it's about transforming your life. This challenge, as brutal as it can be, is an invitation to know yourself more deeply and live a more joyful purpose filled life. PMDD might feel like your whole story, but it's just a chapter and you get to write what comes next. Welcome to PMDD, pep Talk, quick pep talk, pause. Remember that everything we talk about here is meant to educate and inspire. Always team up with your healthcare provider for personal medical advice. All right, now let's get into it. Hello, this is Jess with her mood mentor for another episode of PMDD, pep Talk, and today we have such a treat for you. We have Amanda Curry here who has just been like an instant inspiration to me as soon as I met her. She is going to bring so many insights, some deep conversations for you in the realm of somatic and mom rage and so much more.
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So buckle in. It's really going to be such a treat. And I want to give you a little background on Amanda before we get started. So Amanda Curry is her full name. She is a trauma-informed doctor of physical therapy, a certified oncology specialist, a training camp for the soul master facilitator, a breathwork facilitator and inner child and re-parenting coach. Amanda has a fierce commitment to supporting those who struggle with feeling that they're too much. I'm looking at everyone listening to this podcast and also for those who are tired of living in shame and denial of their true essence, which is so much of the PMD community. So we're so excited to have you. Thanks for being here, Amanda. I am
Speaker 2 (00:03:07):
Jazzed to be here. Jazzed. I'm excited. And if you can't tell by the laundry list of things that I have after my name, I am a recovering doer, activity stuffer type, a tight ass, basic ass. So we're still in it, still evolving, still
Speaker 1 (00:03:25):
Embodying. I think that's one of the reasons I took to you so quickly too because I'm so similar, but also because the work that you're doing now was informed by all of these other pieces before, which just makes you such a unique person to talk to in this somatic space. Your journey has led up to this work that you're doing now, which is very different from where you started, as most of us do. But tell us a little bit about that trajectory so our listeners just get a feel for what some of those words we just said even mean and how you got here, what you're doing in the day to day.
Speaker 2 (00:04:01):
Yeah, it has been the most organic process. I was one that knew exactly what I wanted to do when I was a teenager. I wanted to either be an athletic trainer or a physical therapist. I was very clear on becoming a physical therapist soon after that, and I always wanted to help people. I always wanted to have a hands-on approach to supporting people. It's just interesting how it's shifted like 45 to 90 degrees as to where I started as a traditionally trained physical therapist. And now stepping out of that realm at the end of this month and really stepping full-time into this work that I've been a part of for the last five years. And I was, again, one of those people that was achieving and doing and really just existing in the world as my worth is tied to what I do and what I produce and what I provide.
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And although everything looked or appeared very shiny on the outside, I share a lot about how I was, my internal and external did not match at all. I was quite cold, quite withdrawn, overtly critical of myself. I was really just crumbling on the inside. And most women that will be listening to this podcast, everything was great or manageable until you get married and have kids. And then it's like the universe or God or whatever you subscribe to is like, hold my beer. I have some lessons for you. And it was really, again, in this time because of the things that I had experienced as a girl and in high school I had been to traditional therapy. I had done all of the things I had done, even the multilevel marketing companies that are supposed to be positive and fill these holes in your life. I'd done it all, read all the books, done the podcasts, even though that was just coming out when I was out of college and having kids, and I just still felt lost.
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And so it was really the unraveling of myself that brought me to this breaking point of having a two-year-old and a five-year-old, and my introduction to mom rage, my introduction to this whole other level of amped, fierce rage and energy that woke me up to this is not supposed to be this way. And I just kept heeding this little, it was a whisper. It was my intuition saying, there's something else. Keep going. There's something else. And so I was deep into, again, as a doer, I was deep into CrossFit deep into that culture. And it wasn't until I was scrolling a very famous podcast platform that the work that I do now, my mentor, this type of healing just fell into my lap. And that really in 2019 changed everything for me. And again, it was first and foremost, how can I be better for myself, for my kids, and for my partner?
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And I have, although not every partnership is this way, the most patient, the supportive, the most gracious partner went through hell and back with me and always saw a version of me that I am now or continuing to strive to be. And so it was really up to me to take on this new form of healing and to really surrender to everything that had built up until this point and then was being set ablaze by hormones and all of the things that postpartum life brings to you. And so again, this was born out of my own needs of love and acceptance, and also the safety to ride emotional waves, hormonal waves. And from there, it became something where I was like, I didn't have this and other women don't have this. I'm not seeing it in the spaces like I do now. And so again, it was just this trusting of this intuition, this nudge of get into a certification program, be equipped with this so you can equip yourself and those around you.
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And it was just, again, brought me to this point on September 4th where I am ready to dive full into it because I know there are so many more women and supportive partners that want to know how do I support my wife? What is it the things that she needs? What can I now understand? Because the great thing about social media and about platforms like podcasts like this is that the information is there and we get to continue to not just share it, but act upon it to make change in our life. That's actually ones that we can see that change. We can feel that change. And so that's really what's brought me here. And following those nudges brought me to you. So I just continue to trust that this is where I'm supposed to be, and my mess gets to be my message now.
Speaker 1 (00:09:08):
So beautifully said. I mean, you're such an eloquent speaker. You can really paint these pictures of, paint a word picture where we can feel not only what you've been through, but also understand more deeply the concepts and the things that we're going to be diving in here in this conversation together today. And it's so often the work that we need to do that we then facilitate for others. We start out with it in this guise of, I have to pull myself out of this hole and get my life together. But then when we really see the impact that it's made for us, we can take it out into the world and help to start to spread that impact. And so that's the work that you've been doing through the trauma therapy, through the somatic work, through the inner child, the breathwork, all of that is playing in. And I think, I mean, just to nerd out for a second, it's so cool to have that physical therapy background and to have worked as a doctor in physical therapy for however long. How long was that? Can we get a
Speaker 2 (00:10:16):
Number? 16 years?
Speaker 1 (00:10:18):
Yeah, a long time. Decades going on two decades where you now, I'm sure you look back and you could see some of that deeper wounding playing out in injuries and ways that people held their body and now using that long experience and education base to pull this trauma work into, because not a lot of people have that type of background.
Speaker 2 (00:10:46):
Yeah, no, and I think that in the way of, not to get off on this tangential thought too much, but in the name of where healthcare is right now, it is a lot about productivity and it's a lot about efficiency and monetization. And so there are a lot of therapists out there, really good therapists that aren't stopping to notice the signs of someone being an overwhelm. They're not noticing their own signs of being an overwhelm. And so a byproduct initially before I even got into coaching after this work had started within me is I started to notice that it felt safe to bring down my walls to patients and their families. So I worked in a cancer hospital with children, so it was very easy that one of my gifts is to compartmentalize. But I noticed how that was taking away from the aliveness of relationships in my personal life, but it was also taking away from, I mean, I delivered incredible care from a biomechanical standpoint.
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I created the ICU program that we did at our hospital, but I started to realize that people need more than just your actions. They need your presence. And that was a really huge byproduct of this work, even if I would've stayed in the realm of physical therapy. And I think that that's what people get to take away from this too, is that whatever your occupation is, whether it's a stay at home mom or you're in the classroom teaching, or you are a workout coach or you're an accountant or a doctor or whatever, this work gets to ripple throughout our community and culture. And it doesn't have to just be at home. And I think that that's sometimes a, oh, I forgot that
Speaker 1 (00:12:24):
It's relevant to every human being on the planet.
Speaker 2 (00:12:28):
Yes, a thousand percent
Speaker 1 (00:12:29):
So deeply. And I love that somatics is having a kind of the moment in the sun in rotation, especially on social media, of trending things. I'm like, yes, let's trend this for as long as possible because we can't get enough of it. It's not spoken about enough. And in the work that we do with clients, we are going to talk a lot about irritability and anger and rage today. We address that from some fundamental physiological standpoints, like a major driver is going to be your diet, any sort of deficiency, we often see that a lot with mineral profiles that are driving irritability and anger rage. We see that with blood sugar dysregulation. We see that with poor sleep hygiene and phases of life.
Speaker 2 (00:13:17):
That would be me. That was me. That was the driver
Speaker 1 (00:13:21):
Phases of life when you have young children and sleep hygiene is not really a part of the program.
(00:13:27):
And so many of those pieces. And we work with nervous system and we're working more and more with nervous system work, but we can't do everything at once. And I think going through the journey that I've had myself and then getting to this place where it's like you're saying you can't just have a protocol, you can't just have these action steps. We also, especially for the PMM DD community, there's so much work to do and deep work with the nervous system and then deep work with that inner child, deep work with working with accepting your emotions, feeling your emotions, moving through the emotions in a way that feels safe, so much embodiment work that isn't quite, I'm not really seeing a lot of practitioners bringing that in. And I mean, we have the research on HPA, which is your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access to that stress response system driving PMDD symptoms, like plenty of research to talk to us about how and why that happens with women living with the PMDD brain response. But then it's like period.
Speaker 2 (00:14:43):
Yeah. And I think what's interesting about that is I don't think that people are expecting, or I'm not expecting for every single provider that does care you do to have this as a part of the program. But I think that it's not even talked about as a springboard or a transitioning out of that care. And I think that's where I'm here to really give permission to, if where you're at is your supplementation and the work that you're doing, awesome, everything that you do to support yourself is going to eventually get you to the next landing spot. So if you're listening right now and you're like, oh my God, I've been doing these protocols, but I'm not doing enough. No, no, no, no, no. Take a breath.
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You're doing the protocol. That's what you're doing right now. But you also know that there are other ways to support yourself. And I think it gets to be that, and we get to stop trying to focus so much, and again, increasing our own hormonal and systemic response with there's still more I need to be doing more. I need to do it now. That's not what we're saying either. We're saying that there is a well-rounded holistic way to treat a lot of these things, but they don't have to be done all at once. And I really love, right, exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:16:01):
Yes, yes. You're not even ready for some of this work in those early stages. I mean, there's so many pieces to the puzzle, but the takeaway too, that I hope our listeners can grab from the conversation so far is something that we're always hyping is that you have so many options. You're going to feel like, I've already tried it. All right, there's nothing else for me. And I'm constantly reminding our students and our clients and the women in our community about limiting beliefs and how limiting that belief is and how it's not true, and how having more opportunities can feel overwhelming at some points, but it's a good thing and you're going to be ready for different things at different times. There's not just this linear trajectory of this is the way for every person. It looks different. And that's actually a great thing because if there was, it probably wouldn't be as effective as it is. We really have to have personalization through our experiences. It makes it so much more impactful. So just to rewind back a bit here, for people who don't really haven't seen all of the somatic talk, maybe that's a new word for them. Can you just kind of paint the picture of what that means and what some of this work that you're doing is to someone who may be totally unfamiliar or somewhat unfamiliar with just what we're even talking about here in the first place?
Speaker 2 (00:17:31):
And I'm glad that you're teeing this up because my interpretation in the way that I describe somatic work may be a little bit different than what you read from chat GBT or any of the 12,000 different accounts on Instagram that claim and uphold. I'm a somatic practitioner. This was described to me by a mentor previously, and I just really loved how it flowed, and I loved really the way that it was all encompassing. It was holistic as well. So the soma means body, but what she described in the way that she interpreted that is that it's your entire body. So it's your physical body, your cognitive sense. It is also your emotional body, so like energetics, emotion, sensation, but it's also your spiritual body, like your sacred body, whatever you subscribe to. And so there's essentially this triune or this triangle of the soma that gets to all work together.
(00:18:35):
So for instance, you can have people that are body-based somatic work, for instance, somatic yoga. It's not always that you will find somebody that is doing the body-based energetic work with the spiritual work, with the cognitive work. So for me, the inner child work, thematic inner child work that I do, it encompasses all three of those. It's a higher self or a higher being. It's your energetic emotional body, and it is your cognitive mind as well, because I'm not here to shit on mindset work. That's what I did for 10, 15 plus years. Again, it's what brought me to where I am today. But there are two other aspects to your soma. And so that's really specific to me and to who I was originally introduced to as that concept. And I feel like it feels really supportive in sharing it that way because even just saying like, oh, it's body-based work is some kind of esoteric abstract view of it. And so I feel like that the three points, especially in the Deep South with how we all love Christianity, everyone gets with a triune. They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I've heard of one of those. Yeah, absolutely. So that's the way that I explain it. And I feel like that if anybody wants any specific other thoughts on that, we could just do a whole other podcast
Speaker 1 (00:19:56):
On that,
Speaker 2 (00:19:57):
But we'll put a pin in it for now.
Speaker 1 (00:19:58):
Yeah, I think that's a great just initial introduction because somatic, yeah, it's like what does that even mean? Oftentimes we just think of the body, but rarely have we zoomed out, and again, more opportunity here when we zoom out, there's more areas to dig into and more tools and resources available when you aren't just thinking about it as this one thing. It's really a combination of things as everything is so nuanced and complex. We love that. So that work that you're doing is integrating it all and you're seeing a very different type of result from doing that work than the work that you've previously been doing, both for yourself and now for your clients. I mean, it's kind of clunky to just jump right into this, but
Speaker 2 (00:20:47):
Let's do deep end. Let's go,
Speaker 1 (00:20:49):
Let's go. We're going. We're diving off. So mom rage and mom support is a big part of your work. It's not all that you do. Again, you're nuanced complex. You provide a lot of resources and talk on a lot of topics, but it's something that you've personally experienced and worked through and used these tools to integrate that experience. So I think it may be helpful to just briefly share if you're willing and open to share this a little bit about your experience of mom rage, just so some of the moms that are listening can just relate and be like, I'm not alone here. Amanda gets it. Could you speak to that a little bit? Would you be up
Speaker 2 (00:21:32):
To that? Yeah, and I want to preface this by there's a little bit of more passion and there's a caveat to my relation and experience to mom rage because I have always been fiery. I have always been very passionate. My energy has always been big, and now I know that I've been able to, before I got into this work, hold big energy and not dissociate from it, just be present even if I was then doing other maladaptive things with that fire. So for me, I don't know that I had the experience of being scared by my mom rage. I just noticed the elevation of it. Whereas lots of my clients, these are women, again, I'm going to speak to the deep south that we are to be prim and proper. We are to be silent. We are to be seen and not heard. And that any variability in emotion, but also bigness in emotion has been pathologized.
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And so that I see my bigness as a gift. And I also, I'm here to give permission to women that this was also a part of you, whether you rejected it before you had kids or not, that gets to be there too. So this may be the gift, I guess, as some people may be spitting out their coffee or laughing. The gift of mom rage is that it's giving you access to something that has always been there, but you get to notice, how can I use this to feed the village instead of burning it down?
(00:22:58):
So for me, again, fiery Amanda, I had my first, and I was going back from the gym, and I remember where I was driving. I looked at the clock and I looked at the date, and it was the 25th of June, and I was like, huh. As I have my hand in the backseat holding the passie of trying to quiet my screaming child, I was like, oh, it's six months to the day and I feel this new sensation. It's really, really hot in my face, and I could literally scream bloody murder right now. It was not an anger or a frustration that I'd ever felt before. It was a different flavor. It was a more hot, intense flavor of that. And I wasn't at the point where I was going to drive off the road or throw something, but I was like, Ooh, wow, that's something new.
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And again, six months to the day from that moment forward, there was a new elevation of my ability to erupt. And again, for me, it was more of a curiosity than being scared of it. But so many women, when it turns itself on, it is quite frightening to their system for a variety of reasons. And so again, I just thought that this was a culmination of, again, not enough sleep, not being supported, being all alone with my kid all day long, not being able to do the things that I wanted to do, always having someone that needed me. I just thought it was that like, oh, I've never been maternal, so I just really hate my life more because I don't get to do the things that I want to do as much anymore. I thought it was just a perpetuation of my own selfishness and pattern than actually thinking of it being a hormonal response.
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And so it was really a lot of trying to figure it out myself, like, okay, well again, let's double down on therapy. Let's do this or that. Let's talk it out with my partner. And it just felt like that it continued to escalate. And it was something that again, until probably it wasn't probably until I had my second daughter, my second daughter, my second kid, my daughter, that it really, that's when Instagram started to kind of flood a little bit with more of the PMDD because I was only worried about having postpartum depression. That was the forefront of my mind. I did placental encapsulation. I don't want to be sad, I don't want to be depressed. So it never really occurred to me that the anxiety piece would then manifest as anger, which is a result of me just not being able to support my nervous system and what it needed and the inherent changes of my hormones.
(00:25:44):
So that for me, really now looking back at it, introduce this twofold, maybe threefold component of mom rage is like, yes, there are physiological things like your hormones that are doing all sorts of craziness, but there's also this sense of what are the limiting beliefs? What are the energetic and bandwidths that are not allowing you to also maneuver within these hormonal waves in a way that's more grounded, I don't even want to say calm, but just in a present state. And then we throw in this third bucket of cultural norms, societal norms, lack of community. And you have, again, this trifecta, this triune of a shit storm. And so I didn't know that at the time, but again, was all buttoned up on the outside like Mr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde. Mr. Jekyll, great on the outside, terrible on the inside. And again, I wasn't one that was going to talk about this with other women.
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I honestly saw providers and no one really thought to say anything, maybe because I wasn't this blubbering, collapsed mess on the floor, but it was very jarring now to see how clear it was of what I was experiencing and that I really had no resources to turn to until again, my youngest was two and my oldest was five, and I entered into this realm of, oh, somatic work, nervous system regulation. That could have helped for sure. So that has been my experience with mom rage and the different buckets that I have watched both my clients and myself really toggle between as those that are the perpetrators of really bringing out the full breadth of mom reach.
Speaker 1 (00:27:42):
Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that and thank you for making those distinctions because I think like you're saying, the majority of women, they feel so out of control and they feel so scared by this. And when that happens and when you're in that survival and fight or flight, it's harder for you to have that curiosity or even the body awareness of it's building, it's getting stronger. How is it playing out? As I try to bring in some tools, there's less of that consciousness and more just reactionary survival
(00:28:16):
And it can feel hearing despite my efforts. I'm not a mother, and so I can't speak to the mom rage, but I work with so many mothers and so many clients that also aren't mothers that experience this rage. And I think that societal conditioning, whether it be providers not screening for this and providing resources, that's obviously a factor. But then there's just the stigma of this is scary. If I go to a practitioner or even my partner and say, I'm having this rage, there starts to be these questions, is it safe for you to be with the kids? Do we need to call child protective services? There isn't really a safe space to even have the conversation because the conversation has not been had yet. A
Speaker 2 (00:29:02):
Thousand percent, a thousand percent to that huge problem. I've listened to podcasts after podcasts of women, well intentioned women that share that same thing. What I thought about too is that I come from privilege. I am privileged. I have a supportive partner. I had a stable home, I have a stable work environment. We didn't have any of those stressors, and yet I was still struggling the way that I was. I cannot imagine having financial stressors, having more than two children, not having a supportive partner, having preexisting conditions that perpetuate having other trauma that hasn't been addressed. I mean, I shared a little bit of mine, but this can go all the way up to a thousand and the range gets to be there, but it also gets to be dealt with as well. And again, that's not just us in this conversation here, but so much in society has to change, but also in our awareness and our knowledge of what is actually at play here.
Speaker 1 (00:30:08):
Yeah, I love hearing that because what I heard was you're not hopeless. You're not too far gone, that your case is so complex and you've dealt with, you have so little resources that this isn't available to you. I'm hearing for every person, listening for every person out there, there are tools, there are support, there is support, there are ways to make this work for you regardless of where you fall in the spectrum of life experience and financial circumstance and support systems and trauma history. There's a place for you here. Everyone is welcome and everyone can be helped.
Speaker 2 (00:30:47):
Yeah, I was just going to say too is that there is also this obsession in our culture of this duality of either I have something and it's bad or it's all gone and I don't have to deal with it. And I do want to give premise to, I always tell my clients that I am not your fairy godmother that is going to whisk away all of the stress and all of the realness that is being apparent in this day and age. But if you can be equipped with tools to go from a 10 to a six or an eight to a four, that is doing something. And I let women know all the time that the purpose of this work is to be more present and not perfect. I know that you have had an incredible story of your symptoms and of the work that you've done, and that's amazing. And I love that for you, and I love that for anybody else that has really dramatic changes to their symptoms, but knowing that it doesn't have to be all or nothing either, it gets to just be improved bit by bit.
Speaker 1 (00:31:51):
I love that message. It compounds as you regulate more, as you get more tools. And I think we're human. We want an easy, quick solution. We're impatient, definitely can resonate daily with that desire. And I see this with my clients, and I'm sure that you see this all the time with your clients where it's like there's actually so many gifts in that two steps forward, one step back where clients will feel like I'm regressing or Oh, I'm not making any progress. And it's like, no, this is exactly where you're meant to be because there is knowledge and awareness and wisdom for you here before you're ready to take that next step forward. There is no way it should be or timeline that you're supposed to be on. Every step of the way matters. And even when you're stepping back, which you always have to do in every single thing in life, right? You're always having two steps forward, one step back, working with that mindset work and creating safety in the body to know, we can tell you, and you know it, so cerebrally in your brain, but you probably may not yet know that in your body, but through this type of work, you start to know it and trust it in your body and you slowly soften over time. And that step back where you're like, what's the lesson here in this step back? What is this going to give to me and serve me in this step back? And you really no longer see it as a step back as a regression. It's kind of more of taking a breath, pausing before we move forward.
Speaker 2 (00:33:24):
It's an integrative step is what it is. You can name it a step backwards, but I was listening to a reel that somebody had posted today, and it was talking about how we're obsessed with optimization. Optimization. And I thought about how that is so true because in this work, I'm not teaching you to optimize your life, so you show up perfectly. I'm teaching you that when you take the step back, your world doesn't fall apart. And that if you feel frustrated with the step back, that you get to fully feel into the frustration instead of just stuffing it or dissociating it from it. My husband is part of a macro program right now where he's crushing his health goals currently, but there was a little bit of starting to work with a coach and having those feelings of one step or two step back. But I kept reflecting to him is that whatever you're feeling, you get to feel while also expressing it and then also moving forward. And I think that that's what people are still trying to evade and bypass is that, well, I don't want to feel what's there in the step back girl, let it rip you. You're pissed that you had three great luteal phases and then this one sucks. Let's let it rip. Let's scream into a pillow, man. Let's do it. It's holiday season or it's back to school season, or it's whatever. We can have all the reasons, but we also get to feel into what's there and feel safe and to feeling what's there. So
(00:34:48):
I'm all about the stepback, honestly. Just call me the stepback coach.
Speaker 1 (00:34:53):
We're rebranding Amanda. People are going to be like, no, I don't want to buy that. The Stepback coach. It's hard to market. Hard to market.
(00:35:01):
Well, this is such a juicy message and we're going to get into it deeper, but for the PMDD community, we do not feel safe with our emotions. We feel out of control. We don't trust them. They have traumatized us. There is so much there. But in the context of anger, to just kind of bridge the societal conversation into this, I think for mom rage, for any irritability and rage symptom, we're just going to say what you already know, this is not a feminine energy, a woman safe type of emotion to feel or express, right? We have been told since childhood, how many times I've even been told, calm down, you're too much, you're too angry. Shut it down, calm down. It's
Speaker 2 (00:35:43):
Not what you said. It's how you said it down.
Speaker 1 (00:35:46):
Yeah, it's just unacceptable. It's repulsive to society to feel a very natural human emotion, which a range irritability, anger, and rage. But there's something I think an extra stigma of that with the PMM DD community because it is so often a common symptom. And we're going to get into the luscious, what can be under the anger, but just to call out if you haven't been feeling safe with your anger, 1:00 PM DD is a factor in that. And two, there's a lot more underneath that that has nothing to do with you. And it's just really how we've been conditioned to express ourselves and what's acceptable and what's not.
Speaker 2 (00:36:30):
A thousand percent. Yeah, it's cultural, but even apart from cultural in the work that I do, we drill it down to mom and dad. Mom is an extension of self. You were in her belly for nine months. You took on the cellular memory that she has, her thoughts, emotions, all of the things that she was present to you were present to. And then from zero to seven, as that subconscious gets developed and you are just the sponge taking it all in, anything that she said to you modeled to you or even still energetically felt and maybe did not say, and maybe she didn't even feel it about you, she felt it about herself. You took that on. And then dad is a reflection of others, society, the world. And depending on what your parent structure is, whoever held you first as the other counterpart is that person is that energy of what you believe about others and what you think that others believe about you.
(00:37:26):
And so it is very straightforward, but can be complex in where did this exactly come from or in what way is it playing out? And so a lot of times in the work that I do, we look at the self or mom first because if you can't hold the inner beliefs of your own in a really solid grace-filled nonjudgmental way, it's going to be really hard to put that out into the world and have people receive you in that if you don't feel solid in that. So a lot of times it is about addressing what are my direct beliefs about my own emotions, my own anger, my own variability. And in that, so many women are like, oh, wow, I didn't know that I judged myself so harshly on that or that I thought, oh, well, if I act that way that I shouldn't receive love or that I should be punished. There are these things that feel like very meta macro. And then when you get really specific about them, they hit your system in a completely different way.
(00:38:29):
And that's where you get to learn and equip your body to accept not just the cognitive portion of what the limiting belief is, but have your nervous system learn to expand and accept as in hold the charge of that limiting belief. And for a lot of people, we may be talking about anger, we may be talking about variability or frustration, but what that limiting belief sets apart in your system or sets forth in your system is sadness, grief, shame. So that's when you're talking about that underneath part is like, yeah, we're talking about anger, but there's lots of other things underneath that you get to also be with that allows you to have a different relationship and perspective to how you show up in your fire, as I call it.
Speaker 1 (00:39:18):
Absolutely. I, and now you're getting a taste for what I was mentioning when I said, we're going deep here with this work layer beyond layer, beyond. I mean, there's not an end to this. There's not an end point to this type of work. You just continue working through layers. And another something I so commonly see underneath, especially for moms, underneath that anger is overstimulation.
Speaker 2 (00:39:45):
Oh, a thousand percent. And that goes more to the mechanical bucket that I talked to is that when you have multiple children, all of the touching, all of the sensory, all of the sounds, that is something that can be somewhat modifiable, but to an extent, that's where we're like, okay, can we take it from an eight to a six? And something I feel called to make this point now, I feel like it'll be supportive for the rest of the conversation is there's not an end to this work. But there is a through to this work and the through, and I'll get probably a little emotional on this because I've watched so many women shift this for themselves is your anger center is directly related to your power center. So where you feel anger, your chest, your gut, your midline, that's where that originates. And there's a reason for that because on the other side or through the expression of your anger, you actually drop the mask or the pattern or the belief.
(00:40:48):
And what you get to access is your personal power and autonomy. So many women that have played small their entire life that have wanted to go out and get a job to put the kids in daycare, to have an extra hobby, to go on a girl's night, to get extra help, they are in their own way and that they won't fully feel through or surrender to their anger because they're afraid of what all of that autonomy, all of that agency will do for them and what their life may look like when they get to that realm and say, I'm not doing that anymore.
(00:41:22):
And that gets to feel scary for people because again, that sets up a whole conversation of family structure and what happens with that. But the reason why I want to name that, because a lot of what women don't know what the actual issue is, it is anger, yes. But it's also a sense of getting through that and being like, what do I finally want? What really lights me up? What do I really need? And for a lot of women, that is much scarier than any form of expression of anger. And so particularly for the moms that you bring up or the women that have children, what does it look like for me to equip myself to be able to move through this anger in a healthy, grounded way? And to be able to say between six and seven, I'm going up to my room, you've got the kids, you'd cook dinner, don't cook dinner, I don't care.
(00:42:17):
I'm going for a walk. And so in this conversation, I just want to keep reverting back to what's on the other side of being able to feel more safe with your anger. And that may be different for every person that listens to this podcast, but that's what you get to consider on the way of like, oh, that feels too scary. I can't do that. There's too many limiting beliefs. I can't change, blah, blah, blah. So I will let you take back the reins, but it feels like that was going to be a jump that I wanted to make that would be really supportive for the rest of the conversation of what's possible and what does this work look like and where is it leading you to.
Speaker 1 (00:42:54):
Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. It is so important. And I'm hearing the first thing I hear is a misalignment with what's happening because at least in the clients that I'm working with, they're feeling the rage and there's an automatic repression, distraction, calming. It needs to be calm, it needs to go away. Right now it's a problem, and this is not okay. It's scary. So there's no feeling not happening. The second thing that I am hearing here is I know I totally lost my train of thought. I'm in luteal, Amanda. Well,
Speaker 2 (00:43:34):
I mean to fill that in. I think a lot of people, if you were to ask those clients is not only do they struggle with anger and frustration, but they also struggle with what am I passionate about? What do I want to do? Why do I feel so I'm floating in life, feel so purposeless. And those things are very much they can be related. And so when you access one, you often get a lot of vitality, not from the fact that you're shifting some hormonal states and supporting things that need it nutritionally, but you're also just accessing your truth and your inner wisdom that has been covered up by the need to dissociate or to stuff anger and frustration.
Speaker 1 (00:44:10):
Oh, thank you for sharing that. It helps prompt me. And it's so true that the second thing I was hearing was just like symptoms are a communication and anger and irritability and rage fall in the symptom category. The feeling, the emotion is also a communication. So when you start to shift, this is we have such limited processing handles on this of it's good or bad, there's no nuance. And that's something in the work with the mood meter, for example, where it's like, wait a second, can we just take a moment and explore what are actually some other words that are tied to anger that might be more true of an emotion that you're feeling to help us understand the emotion? But we're not even close to that work, right? A thousand percent. The starting point is starting to do the mindset work to understand the anger is simply a communication, and so often it's a communication of a boundary violation most commonly with yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:45:18):
Yeah. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. There was a podcast that I was listening to recently on mom Rage as well, just to get other people's perspective of how they were describing it. And that is exactly what they said is that there is a boundary that's being crossed, a need not being met. And so when you look at anger as a data point for that, it's like, oh, okay. When your kids' needs aren't being met, you meet them and you don't stuff or make them be quiet in their anger. I mean, some of us are like, Hey, let's take a breath. But it's the same thing. And the way that we treat ourselves is usually the way that we treat our kids too. And so being able to expand your capacity to be with your own fire, your own frustration, anger, whatever the mood meter is, is going to allow you to be able to be that space holder for your kids too, which I know all of the moms out there want that. They want it so
Speaker 1 (00:46:08):
Badly.
(00:46:10):
Yeah, separating the anger because you don't intellectualize your toddler's anger, right? It's like they're hungry. Oh, they didn't get the toy that they wanted. You're not sitting here like intellectualizing it, but you're anger you are, oh, I have shame around this. Oh, I need to hide this. This is bad. This is offensive. This is something about who I am as a person. It's too much. And it's like, wait a second. It's nothing about you as an individual. It's simply an emotion. And thank goodness, isn't it fantastic that you can feel that emotion, that you can feel the intensity? I think that's a gift. I know people are going to be just, like you said, spitting their coffee out when I say this because nothing about PMDD feels like a gift. When you're unmanaged and your symptoms, you have no resources, it gift. It does not fall into the category of the universe whatsoever.
(00:47:04):
But as you do the work and you start to heal through the process, you can start to see gifts. And something that I celebrate about PMDD is the women who experience PMDD can feel, boy can they feel, and what a gift of the human experience to be able to feel that much, but what even a better gift to resource them with more words to describe their feelings, more safety, to feel the feeling where it doesn't feel like it's going to be out of control and there's no way to get back for themselves. That through line of what's on the other side of me letting myself be okay with this simply emotion that is coming in right now. Ugh, chills. I think that work is just, I mean, obviously transformational, but soul level healing.
Speaker 2 (00:47:57):
It is. We had two women individually in the mastery program that I help with that both had both had big, big T trauma, some of the worst trauma you could probably imagine. And they came to our mastery retreat and there was an intention around anger. They both struggled with anger and just shut it off compressed. It didn't even access it at all. There wasn't even the, I'm going to intellectualize this, and in a matter of five days their ability to feel safe and surrender to that, the shifts that they had were incredible women that had been afraid to even hold anger in their body, much less express it, were expressing it through this modality and coming out the other side fired up about their relationships, their business. And I'd never seen that fire from them in the previous two months of the container. And it's only continued to allow them to embody more of their essence and their truth. And so again, do they have PMDD type symptoms? No, not necessarily. But this anger piece spans all of women, and it's something that we all get to connect in that this is just a part of us, just like everything else is just a part of us. It's a matter of how are we relating to it?
Speaker 1 (00:49:20):
And so often it's a protective part, right?
Speaker 2 (00:49:23):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (00:49:24):
Which it's like doesn't feel like that, don't want to accept that that's what it's doing, but it is playing a protective role for those emotions to be there. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (00:49:36):
A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And that is something that we all get to grapple with as we get to that point of, am I using this fire because it's just the norm, it's become the norm, or is it because I'm protecting myself from really the dissatisfaction in my relationship or the grief of plans changing or a friend falling away or whatever it may be. And I think that, again, like you said, it's a signal and a signpost, and if we can take a breath enough to take a step back, we can start to get curious around what's the need there? What is the thing that's not being met?
Speaker 1 (00:50:14):
I feel so much too that this needs facilitation. It's really hard to do this by yourself. So if you're listening to this and you're like, can IDIY this in ways, yes, but I
Speaker 2 (00:50:27):
Will say this. I'll say this, absolutely co-sign on the facilitation. You need to have somebody that is a witness or a safe space for you. But I will give this little preview caveat to being able to start this work.
(00:50:41):
And again, this is for people that we're all the way on the spectrum of, I don't even want to look to the left at this emotion. And it doesn't have to be, it could be any emotion, but focusing on anger, frustration, rage. What I want people to do is the next time that they're feeling that or conceptualizing in their mind that they're angry or frustrated, I want you to first notice the sensations in your body. And all I want you to do is notice them, describe them, shape, color, texture, weight. I think that's it. Size, if it's moving or if it's static. And I just want you to name it, describe it, and just notice how much presence you can give it. You don't have to do anything. I'm not asking you to scream into a pillow. I'm not asking you to stomp your feet. I'm not asking you to do breath of fire. I'm not asking you to do any of that. I'm asking you to notice where it's at in your body and to breathe and just say, safe, to feel this, safe to be with this. You could do that for a day, a week, a year, doesn't matter. But you're not going to be able to move through the feeling safe of letting that energy move or of letting that energy out if you can't identify it and hold it.
(00:51:57):
And so that is one thing that I, after I explain that to clients, that is part of their homework. Most people can just notice something. And again, if those noticings feel really out of control and you feel like that it's a dangerous situation or unsafe for you to do that, absolutely pause, get a loved one, a facilitator, something therapist, coach. But it is something that most individuals can start to do is to just notice it and describe it
Speaker 1 (00:52:28):
Such a good first step. It absolutely has to be awareness and understanding are always before action.
(00:52:36):
And I think in my experience with this, as I've become more less scared of the emotion and less judgmental about it, I can notice all the steps and all the sensations that come before. And then it just naturally is more manageable because I'm not in reaction already in a guilt and shame spiral of, oh, now I have to apologize. Oh, now I have to clean this mess up. I just erupted. I'm catching it so much earlier where I can use the tools that I have and play with new ones and shift it before it escalates into a full on PMDD episode or rage episode or whatever it is. So there is a very natural, it can happen so naturally when you just allow the noticing, allow the witnessing without assigning all this meaning and leaning into the fear that can come with strong emotions. And I think something else I wanted to just hear from you on this is, and this goes back to our earlier conversation, but I think really plays into where we are now, is that impulse when there are strong emotions, especially low energy type of emotions, where it's like it needs to be calmed, anger, we need to calm down when that's not always, there's a lot more accessible to you than just trying calming nervous system regulation exercises.
(00:54:11):
Sometimes we need to allow some of that cortisol to flush and some of that energy to just move through the body in a way that might not look super calming and just anything that you could speak to that. I think that's where a lot of clients get stuck, or it's just that mindset of I need to calm down, and you might not need to calm down at all.
Speaker 2 (00:54:32):
Right. Yeah. And I think that this very much lends itself to the other thing that I was going to share on this is that the goal is for you to do that noticing and holding, probably not when you're at a 12. It's not as easy when you're at a 12, right? Because you're probably just seeing red or white or whatever color that you see when you've ejected out of that experience. So my invitation to people is you may be on day one of your luteal phase and you're a little bit confused and a little bit annoyed that you're confused. Can you notice the sensation of just at a one or a two of a little bit of frustration you just said like, oh, I can't find my word. Oh, welcome to luteal. Can you notice even just those sensations? Because the goal is that you're noticing the cumulative effect.
(00:55:23):
You're not just noticing when you're exploding. And then yes, when you are at a place where you're at a two or a three and you're in a safe confined area and you created a masculine structure around, okay, I'm going to carve out 15 minutes to feel what has been there all morning, you get the kids off to school, you come back from drop off, and you're like, there's just this buzzing of kind of irritability and frustration. That's when you get to use the volume button and the toggling of the up and down. Maybe it is. A lot of women I know, at least for me, what I used to do to manage is again, CrossFit and heavy lifting and working out a lot of different patterns of stress. We compress them or we stuff them. And so what the system needs is movement. It's literally jostling.
(00:56:13):
So that can be heel drops, that can be, I call it the Grey's anatomy hop, when they used to dance to the music, energetically revving up your system a little bit or at least waking it up and then noticing what's there. And sometimes what happens is that when you move the system, it joles things in a way that what you start to notice is, oh, I'm discerning that. That's not irritability, that's sadness that I was supposed to get help with getting the kids together this morning, and I didn't get help he left before we even woke up. So it is able to get you out of that stuck compressed state and really give more tangible feedback and data points to be like, oh no, that's not actually anger. Or maybe it is. And again, there's a variety of tools to be able to turn up the volume on anger and frustration, but you have to know that it feels safe to hold it before you move it.
(00:57:13):
I know that all of your clients want to be able to move it and get rid of it, but you can't do that until you're able to hold it and feel safe in that. And honestly, it's not even feeling safe in it. It's that you've removed the shame and judgment around it too. The five stages of healing that I take people through and through the method or the methodology that I use, some of my clients that are in the awareness and the acceptance phase, we stay there because they could be like, yep, I feel a shit ton of emotion right now and a shit ton of energy, but you know what? I'm sitting here judging the hell out of myself. This is not that big of a deal. Why am I making a big deal about it? So again, I think that the larger discussion is that how much capacity can we, from a cognitive and from an energetic center open ourselves up to the safety of whatever comes through our system before we get to this need of, it needs to be shut off.
(00:58:07):
It needs to be turned down, or it needs to be revved up and moved and let go of, right? Because what I would say to people instead of the, I need to calm this down, I need to regulate this, I need to control, this is really, the word regulation is for me, a little edgy because I feel like people have switched it into a place of like, oh, can I just control? Can I control my nervous system? Can I regulate my nervous system? And instead of having that mentality and that energy behind it, can you just say, I'm just going to be with this, because usually you being with it is going to simmer it down it just wants to be witnessed. It just wants to be seen. It just wants to be heard. And I guess what I'll say to the calming down part, I'm using quotations is the, can I just be with this?
(00:58:56):
Can I just sit with this? The way that you can sit with that is breath and sound. It can be movement, just kind of like swaying back and forth, letting your hit. Can I just be with this anger? And just again, doing those things that typically calm you down, but not from the energy of this needs to be removed or let go of, but from a place of I'm just being with this kind of like a little kid. You talked about a little kid earlier. When a little baby cries, what do we do? We usually will rock it and sing to it or make some soothing noises, right? This is not funny of shaking, baby, but we don't rev it up. We don't. You have to be quiet. So that is what I would speak to in the realm of calming things down, because what you're actually doing right now when you're trying to calm yourself down is you're just trying to use a strategy to get rid of it, which is usually compression, stuffing, dissociation, or being analytical.
Speaker 1 (00:59:57):
Yeah, so well said. And so true. I love that reframe of how regulation can quickly shift into the control. And I wonder too, because there's so much intergenerational healing and so much more access to information now, there's such a negativity bias with PMDD where we just fall into these patterns of, and every human does this, but I think it's grooved in a little bit more in our Milan sheaths for the PMDD community where it's like, I'm so used to feeling irritable and angry that that's just kind of my default if I have negative emotions. But I wonder if I had a mother like you growing up, Amanda, who could show me a list of all of the different words for different feelings, and I was able to sort out earlier in my life, this is what this feels like. And it doesn't just all fall into that anger and irritability bucket. You have such an opportunity to put voice to an emotion that fits your experience so much better than irritability, anger, and rage. That just might be what and what you've embodied and what you've spoken to all of this time. But when you do find those words and you start to realize, I'm disappointed, or I'm frustrated, or I'm overwhelmed, very different
Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
Experience.
Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
And you say that out loud, even if it's angry and you say, I'm feeling really angry right now. Somehow you're less angry after you name it, right? Bring it entertainment
Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Into the light.
Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Yes,
Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
A thousand per day. That's
Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
A whole part of the process, but I just want to speak to our community a bit there. If you're feeling like irritability, anger, and rage, because I've run about 200 symptom assessments and do 200 introductory calls a year with clients, and those symptoms are always on the list because that negativity bias and dysphoria the opposite of euphoria. Premenstrual dysphoric disorder is a very negative experience that lends well to those feelings of irritability, anger, and rage that you've just patterned within yourself and embodied. But again, there's more underneath that, there's more words, there's more emotions that are actually happening. And when you just start to have a vocabulary for that, it can be such a relief because again, you're able to create that distance rather than just being like, I'm an angry, irritable person. I'm an angry irritable mother. I'm a frustrated and overwhelmed mother. A totally different way of, it's so simple. It's not easy, but it creates an energetic shift within yourself where you have more context.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
And that lends itself to my original point midway through that. I just went on that tangent. Is that what I call for women that want to stay in that space of curmudgeony, angry, fiery, whatever. Is that number one, is that really serving you at this point? And two, are you really afraid of what's on the other side of letting go of this script, right? There is so much to be gained, but also empathetically speaking so much that you could be scared of the unknown of what if everything was okay? What if you weren't pissed? What would you have to step into then, or what would you get to step into then, and what would it be like for you to, again, because anything, it can be predictable. You're a happy person. You're an angry person, you're an easygoing person. That's your identity. That's who you are.
(01:03:52):
And so you get to start to unpack and unravel that this is not who I am. This is a part of me. And so there were about a year and a half ago that I was doing a breathwork journey, and I just got a message that said, you get to put down the fire. And so I got to start to retire in more ways like my fiery, really passionate, overtly big self. What that allows is for there to be more range of your expression. Most women that come to me, they are either trying to rebel against and so they're quiet, soft spoken mom, and they're only staying in this range, or they are fiercely afraid of any sort of anger. And so they're staying in the people pleasing really sweet range. What we want to open up is the probability that it all gets to be there and the safety that it all gets to be there.
(01:04:47):
And I have a client that I was talking to yesterday is she was the only girl in her family. Her mom had had a hysterectomy early on, and so she was the only person that was having a cycle in her household. Her husband is all boys. And so she very much feels like her emotional variability is a problem, a problem to be fixed. And so what I gave her permission to start to consider is that you are going to be the first woman in your family to be able to, in your both nuclear family and your extended family, to show that women can have range. And that's allowed, right? I can be super fiery and passionate and pissed off and maybe even not flip a table, but flip over a plate or something and then come back and be like, you know what? I was really overwhelmed and I would never want you to be afraid.
(01:05:37):
The repair creates so much opportunity for not only growth within your relationships, but growth with yourself to where you get to start to learn that you don't have to show up perfect every day, but that you are taking the steps to expand your capacity, show up differently and start to toe dip into these other possibilities of ways of being. Because it's not, I mean, we weren't meant to be these monoliths, right? We're supposed to have all of this different range, and I think a lot of women have never been taught that or told that or give permission for that.
Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
And I mean, this is pmdd pub talk, right? So that comes back to the gift. That totally comes back to the gift of you have the range. If you're listening to this and you're experiencing PD, you felt the highs and the lows, but what about everything in between that you haven't been able to feel? And I know my heart is sitting with you as I say this. I know that this sounds offensive to hear, and I'm saying this to my past self too, but there's a reality of, I'm kind of scared to say this. How do I say this? There's a reality of you have lived with what you've known. And so we're screening with readiness indicators for women coming into our program because not everyone is ready to do the work that we do. It's very deep, it's layered, it's comprehensive, and it requires you to show up for yourself and you'd be willing to integrate and meet these versions of yourself who had been quieted and underneath all of these extreme symptoms. But something that I had to learn for myself, which was uncomfortable and can be triggering, is that I felt safer staying the same for a long time, preach, even though it was preach brutally wrecking all my relationships,
Speaker 3 (01:07:30):
My
Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Opportunities for my future, my sense of self, my self-esteem, on and on. Because what was on the other side of that, and this isn't necessarily consciously happening, but what was on the other side of that one, I didn't even know what was possible. And two, I was a little sketched out by it, so I had to get so disgusted and sick of myself staying the same to be ready to be like, I'll feel it. Okay, I'll start trying to notice it and let it be there.
Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
Yes, yes. No, I think I still actually have one of the first group coaching calls that I was on, and I was so hard into my rigid pattern that my mentor was, Amanda, anything that you've ever done successfully up until this point, it's not going to work here. It's just not going to. So you can either keep using those patterns or you can do what we ask you to do. And if I were to hear myself now six years ago, there would be things that I would be like, get the F out of here. So if you are crying in your fruit loops right now that gets to be here. If you are pissed off at Jess and I, that gets to be here too. You get to meet yourself where you're at because we're not expecting you to just be open arms in all of this. That's why this is a pep talk is that it's truth telling, but it's also life giving. And it's something that I almost want people to push back a little bit on what we're sharing because it just means that they care enough about what we're saying to be like, what is this? What is this? I want it, but what is this? This is ridiculous. So yeah, all with love. All with love.
Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
It can sound so many of the things that we work through can sound so simple. Simple doesn't mean easy and simple doesn't mean non nuanced and non personalized to you. So some of this just notice it sounds very simple, but again, you can't tell you enough and you hear it in your brain, what a big difference some of this can make. You have to live it and you have to feel it yourself, and it has to speak to you and your body in the way that it will, right? Because no amount of talking that we're going to be able to do to get you to know it within your body. But this work is, I feel a non-negotiable for the pmm DD healing journey at some point when people are ready and just to tell them, Hey, if you're not ready for this yet because you're not sick of yourself enough yet, or it feels too scary or foreign, we've been there. And that's a place on the journey. So no shame and guilt to had to attach to yourself around that. And then the last thing I want to touch on, I knew we would go over because we just could
(01:10:16):
Bestie for hours,
Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
Riffing hard,
Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
But I really want to make the distinction, and this is something that has been, again, such a gift that comes out of the facilitating healing in the PMDD community. And then for myself, as I've learned to feel that range and feel safe in that range, how much more yourself you become, how much more authentic and just trusting and connected to your intuition, which if you're living with PMDD, you do not feel any of those. You do not feel confident, you do not feel any of that. But I want to point out that throughout the process, and this is something coming up with a lot of clients right now, it's funny, you notice these patterns where it's like this is a huge topic. Every single client is talking about this week
Speaker 3 (01:11:04):
Percent. Yes.
Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
So something that's coming up in the last two weeks a lot with clients is them saying some version of I have that are high and low outside of the luteal face, so that's not PMDD. And it's just like, oh, being alive, it's being human. We have over-identified and are attached ourselves so much to the experience of this label and this category that we've kind of forgot, Hey, everyone feels these feelings. Maybe not cyclically, maybe not to the clock, but everyone does. And you also will outside of the luteal phase. And so the tools that we're providing for you, they don't just help you with BMDD in the luteal phase. They help you in your entire life, in every spectrum with every emotion and not just help you feel the negative emotions and be present and embody and safe with them. But on the other side of that is feeling so much more present and deeply connected to all of the joy and pleasure and presence.
(01:12:12):
That is an unexpected thing that has come out of this work because right, I was in that head space that many listeners will be. I just want to not really feel the anger or feel it in a way that feels like I can control it more. I have that rigid pattern I didn't expect I'm going to play ball with my dogs and just start weeping of how cute my little dog is. Jumping in the air, catching this ball and looking at my husband sleeping and feeling the feeling so much stronger and feeling safe and present and connected with the whole range of feelings. Before it was just like, I'm pretty much only aware of these negative feelings or these manic high feelings.
Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
Yeah, a thousand percent. A thousand percent. Yeah. And I think that, like I said earlier, that you get to do the, can I just notice this? Can I just be with this? I do that if I have back to back coaching calls that I for some reason have scheduled back to back, yeah, yeah. It's always a good idea until it happens. And I'm feeling a lot intense heaviness or fatigue, it has been a game changer for me to just lay on the floor and just be like, can I just be with this? Just notice it. And I'm telling you, connecting yourself with the sensation of whatever you're feeling and then being able to use a little bit of breath, a little bit of toning, it is very likely that the intensity at what you're feeling, it will go down and you will be resourced even in a small amount of time to be like, okay, what's the next best thing that I can do to support myself?
(01:13:41):
So yeah, a thousand percent. I think that this work gets you access to more of your range, but it also gets access for you to express that range to others as well. And yeah, I can only tell you a dozen or more stories of how that day-to-day being able to access all of those different ranges and not just the high and the low has been a gift to myself, but also to others. You would not catch me voice shaking about to cry six years ago. It's like I would lock that shit up, but now it's like I can have a conversation, have my voice break a little bit, feel that wave, and then be able to just continue and be like, yeah, there gets to be there.
Speaker 1 (01:14:27):
Yeah. It really changes the way that, and that's another I love, I'm really stuck on right now expectations for some reason of what was the expectation I had, which we have, even if we're like, I don't have any expectations. Yes, you do. What is the expectation versus the reality? And something I didn't expect coming out of this work, not only was feeling so much more and loving that because when you feel with PMDD, it's like, yeah, maybe not, maybe less feeling right. You just drive towards disassociating distraction. You don't want to feel as much as you're feeling, so like a welcoming of that feeling and that being very foreign, but holding space for it, but also the way that it changes how you relate to everything else, like how I'm cleaning my house, how I relate to my mother-in-law, how I relate to my dogs, how I'm communicating, how I'm holding my body. There are downline effects of this that are going to be different for everyone. It's not going to be my same experience, of course, but some surprising things are going to come out of doing this work that you can't predict or expect. And you would be so disappointed if it only lived up to your expectation when it becomes so much bigger than
Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
That. A thousand percent, a thousand percent. Most things in life are far exceed your expectations, and that's the gift of it.
Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
So beautiful. So beautiful. Amanda, this is so fun. Thank you for being here. So fun. We did not disappoint when I said this is going to be tasty and juicy and deep. We took you there.
Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
We're like cutting ourselves off. Now it is like we got to, we don't want to.
Speaker 1 (01:16:06):
We've to, but we got to. I know we could never ending, have this conversation, but thank you so much for being here. Where can our community find you? They want more. I know they
Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
Do. Yeah. So I've kept things really simple. I have an Instagram page, has so many resources on it. The things that I'm promoting right now, my monthly breathwork circles, everything that you would want to know is going to be there. And if you have any questions about this podcast, every new follower that I get, you get a personal message from me. So I'm going to find you. But if you have a specific question about this podcast, feel free to reach out. I am the somatic DPT, so as a physical therapist, our credentials are D as in David, P as in Paul, T as in Tom. And so you can find me on Instagram at the somatic DPT.
Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
Yes. And please do, because like she said, she has so many more resources and so much more support for you there to dig deeper into this work and also to access all of the resources and support that you have outside of Instagram. That's just one little piece of it. So you're working with clients on the regular, and hopefully we'll also be coming into our program to do some work with our clients here in the future. Yes,
Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
Such
Speaker 1 (01:17:20):
A guest. Well, thank you so much again, Amanda. I hope that everyone takes a little time after this conversation to just let it sink in. Let yourself integrate the knowledge and the wisdom that was shared here today. Know that there is hope for, there's so much beyond the anger, irritability, and rage. It can be safe to feel those. You can access deeper parts of yourself. There's so much more available to you, and we are here to support you through that. So don't hesitate to reach out. And until next time, bye bye.
