Are you a prisoner of your past? Is it possible to access your inner child to heal the wounds that keep you stuck? Can intergenerational patterns of violence and pain be shifted? Absolutely! Although some believe that we leave childhood issues behind as we enter adulthood, I’ve found that our negative childhood experiences—including wounds, trauma, and destructive patterns—stay with us until they are healed. Some cope by running away from or compartmentalizing the pain and shame, but true healing only comes by facing and moving through trauma. The mindful creation of healthy new experiences of love and relationship is part of the healing process. As we compassionately learn to understand our wounds, we let go of negative patterns. This empowering episode focuses on finding freedom through gentle self-awareness and self-love. As expert Rebeccah Silence notes, “Healing is not promised, but it is POSSIBLE for all of us! There is no emotional wound or pain that can’t be healed.”

 

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

 

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr.carlamariemanly8543

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly

 

Book by Rebeccah Silence:

Coming Back to Life: A Roadmap to Healing from Pain to Create the Life You Want

 

Connect with Rebeccah Silence:

Website: https://www.rebeccahsilence.com

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Create a NEW Experience of Love and Relationship by Healing Your Inner Child with Expert Rebeccah Silence

Transform Trauma into Vast Self-Love to Foster Inner Freedom and Healthy Love!

We often believe that we leave our childhoods behind us as we enter adulthood. Yet as a clinical psychologist, I found that our childhood experiences, including destructive wounds and the resulting trauma, stay with us until they are healed. Some cope by running away or compartmentalizing their pain and shame, but healing only comes by facing and moving through trauma. Could the mindful creation of a new experience of love and relationship be part of the healing process?

We’ll focus on this listener’s real-life question. “I finally decided to take a look at my childhood after a series of dead-end relationships. My last partner, like a few before her, told me that if I didn’t face my childhood trauma, supposedly from my alcoholic dad’s rage and unpredictability, I’d never be a good partner. It’s hard for me to believe that my childhood has anything to do with my adult relationships. What do you think?” That question is the focus of this episode. I’m Dr. Carla Marie Manly, and this is Imperfect Love.

 

 

I’m joined by a very special guest, Rebeccah Silence, who will be sharing her experience on emotional survival and coming back to life after trauma. Welcome to the show, Rebeccah. It’s such a joy to have you.

I’m thrilled to be here, Dr. Carla. I can’t wait for this conversation.

It’s going to be a good one. I already can tell that. Before we dive into the listener’s question, could you tell us what makes you you?

I love that. What makes me me is I am the space where all healing is possible. I’m a real stand that healing isn’t promised, but it is possible. I believe that there’s no especially emotional wound or pain or heartbreak that can’t heal.

I’m with you. We might scare off a few with this. It’s my perspective that one of the biggest pieces about the healing that makes so many people consciously or unconsciously resist it is that it doesn’t happen with a pill, it doesn’t happen overnight, and there is no magic to it. It’s that often, and I’m not saying that psychopharmaceuticals aren’t necessary sometimes. That’s not what I’m saying here. What I am saying though when we’re working with trauma is it’s not going to go away unless we work, unless we have patience, perseverance, and in my mind, a lot of courage.

 

 

Amen. I like to say healing is freedom. You know you’re healed when you feel free. You know there’s healing to do when there’s any hurt. I’m a mom, I’m a wife, I’m a woman, a community member. I’m all of these things, but I am someone who has set myself free. That doesn’t make me unique or special. We all have the capacity to fully heal. It’s just most people don’t believe there’s life beyond survival, even if they get that conceptually. One of the things I love to say is if you can survive survival, you can also survive alignment.

If you can survive survival, you can also survive alignment. Click To Tweet

I want to go back to something you already said that’s even, in my mind, more profound. Healing is freedom. Many people don’t realize that trauma keeps us locked in the trauma that’s held in our bodies, in the trauma that’s held in our minds, in the trauma that’s held in our souls. When we’re having a negative reaction, we shut down, we freeze, or we’re hypervigilant, all of those things that are often letting us know that trauma is somewhere lurking.

Once we begin to heal, we have the freedom where our thoughts, our feelings, and our mindsets aren’t dictated by something that occurred sometimes before we had words in those preverbal years. We then come from a place where we’re able to be mindful and reflect and respond to a situation as we would like to, which for most of us, I would think would be with grace, compassion, love, and integrity. If we are letting trauma rule us, we’re in a jail cell created by that trauma, which wasn’t our fault.

It gets inherited. Not only is trauma not our fault, but we inherit trauma. We inherit our survival, coping mechanisms, strategies, and our survival personality. It is something that we have control over to say, “Wait a minute, I’m not going to let my past win. I’m going to win in this lifetime even if I don’t know how.” You don’t know how. I think it starts with that decision. We can each decide to decide that we’re no longer going to be a prisoner of our past or our ancestors’ pasts.

We can decide that we will learn in this lifetime how to use trauma to our advantage, how to beat it, and how to come out the other side in control of our lives, ourselves, and our destinies as healed adults. What happens when we’re trapped in that trauma is we’re at a stuck age with stuck emotions. The adult in us is not the one driving or leading our experience of life or our decisions anymore. It’s our wounds and our unhealed inner child. We can free that child up, grow from the stuck age, release the stuck emotion, and have a new experience even when the external hasn’t changed yet.

 

 

Let’s give our audience a little bit of a break here. This is some big material. Let’s start with the first thing you bring up. This might be a foreign concept for many people, but the idea of inherited trauma is what I as a clinician would know as the intergenerational transmission of violence. When we look at that, people think, “No, I inherit my DNA. I inherit my dad’s green eyes and my mom’s brown hair. That’s what I inherited. Maybe I inherit a propensity to high cholesterol, but I am not going to inherit trauma.” Let’s lay the foundation of what we mean when we’re talking about inherited patterns or intergenerational transmission of violence.

We can use possibly, if it’s okay with you, our listener’s question. He has an alcoholic dad. We don’t know how old our listener is. Let’s imagine he’s had some people in and out of his life, so let’s make him for the sake of argument, 38. We have this 38-year-old who’s realizing, “Maybe all of these people are leaving me and I can’t have a quality relationship. They’re all saying the same thing.” It’s like, “There’s some stuff going on with your alcoholic dad, and it’s making you miserable to be with or unhealthy to be with.” Explain how his alcoholic dad’s patterns are affecting his current life. He’s not an alcoholic. We’re not hearing that.

So much of this is unconscious. Part of what’s important to me is that the trauma conversation becomes an empowering one. I’m not smiling and light as we’re having this very serious conversation because I’m trying to make light of how significant trauma is to not just each of us but to the world. The point is we can be in an empowering conversation that helps us understand so that we don’t repeat it. This isn’t anyone’s fault and we’re innocent, and it’s almost always unconscious.

The work that I do with my clients and this work to heal through inherited trauma. We’re not waking up in the morning and going, “Poor me, I have to play out the patterns of my past again today. My alcoholic father is still running my life today.” We don’t think about it consciously. Let’s address that first and foremost, but let’s look at it like this. Let’s take fight, flight, freeze, for example. Our nervous systems go into fight, flight, and freeze when we’re dysregulated and when there’s a perceived threat.

When we’re growing up, we learn which way is the better way to cope. We learn there’s someone or something to fight. We learn there’s someone or something affected. We learn that there’s someone or something that’s going to be the saving grace. What we don’t learn is that this isn’t all there is. Fight, flight, freeze, otherwise known as Karpman’s drama triangle, victim, persecutor, rescuer. None of this is who we are, but we learn to survive, we learn to cope, and we learn the ingredients that go in the recipe called “family.” Those are the only ingredients we know go into the experience of family until and unless we get some support and a breakthrough.

For the audience, I grew up in an alcoholic home and I decided I was never going to be the abuser and I was never going to be the alcoholic or the addict. What that meant was, “I would keep falling in love with them, and I would be the victim like my parent who wasn’t the addict.” It becomes this limited self-inflicted glass ceiling that we don’t even know is there.

We learn on some level that what we’re tolerating and growing up with that’s dysfunctional is how it is, especially when it comes to family. What we need to understand is this isn’t a conversation to throw our parents under the bus, at least from my perspective. It’s about understanding it so that we can be the one in the family who raises our hands and says, “The cycle stops with me because I’m aware and it can.”

I am with you 100%. I say repeatedly on this show with clients and groups that there’s no reason to look at your past to shame or blame. Simply, let’s look at the past as objectively as possible, often difficult, so that we can learn, “What happened here? What here did I learn in my childhood, if anything, that is wonderful and that I want to carry on into my future? What here happened in my childhood that wasn’t productive or was traumatic? Why did that occur? How can I change my patterns?”

All of this is where the work and the courage come in. “How can I change my pattern in order to make my life, my relationships, and then if I choose to have family or already have a family to make those patterns different and healthier than what I grew up with?” In that way, we’re not reacting to the past, in which case we’ll repeat it or maybe create a worse version of it. We are looking and saying, “Wait a second, I want to do this differently.”

I think about it much like when we are out learning to ride a bicycle or a motorcycle. We fall or we put the gas on too much and we topple over a hillside. We don’t go, “Let me get back on and keep going.” If we’re wise, we look and say, “Why did I fall off the bicycle? Why did I go over the cliff on my motorcycle? What can I shift? What do I need to do? Maybe I need training wheels on my bicycle for a while. Maybe there was a pebble in the way. If it’s a motorcycle, maybe I need a smaller motorcycle or maybe I need some motorcycle training.”

We’re good at it in so many areas of our lives, but when it comes to this essential area, our body, mind, and spirit, all of which are interconnected, so many people don’t see that it’s the same pattern. We simply have to look at where it goes wrong to make corrections so that the future is better, so we don’t keep doing the same falls over and over again.

I love what you’re saying and said another way, we get to look at and be curious about what are the energies that I’m a vibrational match for because I got used to that growing up that now I don’t want to be a vibrational match for. What I like to teach is there’s a difference between our feelings about what’s going on around us and what we learned. Abandonment is learned. Guilt is learned. Shame is learned. Rejection, jealousy, competition, I could go on and on. These are experiences that we saw as a possibility, but we weren’t born predestined to experience those things.

Our emotions are natural. Anger, fear, grief, joy, and excitement. A baby has these emotions, isn’t confronted by them, and can move through them all in two seconds. A baby can go from anger to fear, to grief, to joy, to excitement just like that. We all can too when we’re clear. The thing that I learned early on in my graduate work was that I’m a vibrational match for experiencing rejection, for example. What if I wasn’t? What if I could experience the same set of circumstances differently? What’s the experience I would want to have instead?

I’m saying it this way because I want people to see it from that place of courageous curiosity. One thing I also wanted to say in response to what you were saying is don’t be afraid when you start to address survival in a way where you don’t want it anymore for yourself. If you start to feel threatened by letting go of your survival skills and your survival self, that’s okay. Read through it.

I do believe that when we let go of survival, it can feel like we are dying, but we’re not. It’s our ego. It’s our survival self not wanting us to die that’s hanging on that doesn’t know we can survive without bracing ourselves for our next heartbreak or attack or rejection or whatever it might be. I want people to understand that you don’t have to be a vibrational match for anything that isn’t serving you anymore. How do you know it’s not serving you? It doesn’t feel good.

 

 

You have so much information. Let’s get some working definitions for our audience. We’ve had one definition already. Intergenerational transmission of violence. We have that pretty well. Intergenerational transmission of patterns for that matter. We have that one done. Let’s go with a lovely definition of what you mean by a vibrational match.

My guess is you’re going to say something like, “You grew up with an angry alcoholic dad. That feels normal to you. That’s your normal. You didn’t know anything else. You are going to be seeking unconsciously.” No one’s going to wake up when it’s time to have a partnership and say, “I’d like to go and have a partner who’s just like my angry alcoholic dad.” We don’t do it consciously.

Instead, there’s this sort of victim who then falls in love unconsciously with the person who has the energy of the alcoholic dad. That unpredictability, the mercurial ways, the walking on eggshells, the fear, the kind guy that turns into the mean guy at the flip of a switch. If I’m hearing you right, vibrational match or vibrational energy would be that you’re unconsciously looking for someone who vibrates at that level. Did I get that right?

Yeah, or said another way, you’re in alignment with this experience and with this pattern. You’re comfortable there. You’re used to it. Back to what I said earlier, healing is freedom. You can heal and free yourself of that availability to have the experience that hurts, that causes suffering and distress to you, your body, and your nervous system. You don’t have to continue that.

Healing is freedom. You can heal and free yourself of that availability to have the experience that hurts and causes suffering and distress for you. Click To Tweet

What gets scary is, especially if you’re someone who’s highly sensitive and empathic, I think what gets real and scary for so many of us is, if I’m not a vibrational match for this, does that mean I have to lose the relationship? What I want to say is, there’s no threat. There’s no danger to being vulnerable and authentically communicating. “This isn’t working for me anymore. Here’s what I need instead.” It starts with that honesty with yourself. This experience. This low-level vibration.

Say you keep experiencing rejection in your relationships. “Wait a minute, I am no longer available to experience it as rejection. What I want instead are relationships that are real and reciprocal.” If my standard is I want real reciprocal relationships, if someone isn’t meeting me at the level that I’ve shown up at and I’ve communicated and I’ve said, “I’m ready for a next level of relationship with you, do you want that too?” If they say no, I’m not rejected, this just isn’t the right fit.

I want to lessen the charge, the fear, and the threat when we’re talking about what are you and what are you not a vibrational match for. I like to say the only thing you have to lose is you. Don’t you dare let that happen. Especially not letting your past win in the season of your life where you recognize it can be so much better for you because it can. The right people will stay, I promise you that. The ones that don’t, they’re not wrong or bad, they’re just in a different vibration.

I think about it like a bunch of circles or rings. If I am able to have this higher standard and higher availability for more in my life, but somebody else is in a different vibration and I’m going, “Let me be less so that you are comfortable and you want a relationship with me,” I betrayed me instead of being respectful of the vibration and the version of myself that I am now. What I like to do is hold on to my vibration and my expansion and give people the opportunity to meet me there. None of us are wrong. I’m not wrong. You’re not wrong. This is the vibration I’m unwilling to abandon because I’m unwilling to betray myself. That’s a paradigm that we can all take on.

One more big thought here. We don’t need a breakdown to break through. We don’t need a crisis to light a fire under our butts so that we’ll finally make our life ours and so that we’ll finally step into healing and freedom. We can decide, “I’m bored.” I was doing a Peloton ride with one of my friends this morning and we were talking about a place where she’s bored in her life. She asked me, “Is it okay that I want more?” Any of you that are wondering that. Yes, it is okay that you want more. Yes, to the listener with your question, I know you didn’t word it this way, but it’s okay that you want more than a life where your past has to keep being part of the conversation, but you have to deal with it, so it isn’t part of the conversation anymore.

We don't need a breakdown to break through. Click To Tweet

I’ll take what you are giving to us and then feed it back toward his question, which sounds as if, with his former partners, were at one vibrational level, may have been attracted to him at the beginning, and then they found, “Wait for a second, this isn’t working for me. You are not willing to show up. I’m talking to you about it, but you’re not willing to do your work. I’m out of here.” Yes, they lost the relationship. They weren’t rejected. He wasn’t necessarily rejected. They just said, “Not a good fit. I’m moving on. Do some work.”

All of these relationships later, however many there have been, this last one, maybe he finally got some of the message of all of these people saying somewhat the same thing and he’s saying, “Wait a second. I’m at least going to dip my toe in the water to see if there’s some truth here.” All of these people are saying this. My supposedly bad childhood or it sounds almost as if the dad is still perpetrating some of this negativity and emotional abuse. It almost sounds as if he’s on the verge of saying that not only is he curious because he asked a question, which is brilliant of him to come forward and reach out and ask a question. That’s huge. It means he’s open, he’s looking, and that takes courage to read out, reach out, and write a question. That’s courage.

The next step would be for this individual to say, “I want to do the work so that my vibration’s already changing. I want to match with someone who is going to give me a different experience on the planet. An experience that feels loving. An experience that feels safe. I want to give that to them rather than repeating the terror. I imagine it would’ve been a pretty scary childhood, always unpredictable, which dad is going to show up, the nice guy, the mean guy, the ambivalent guy, and then create that change in himself that will allow him the freedom to have healthy, fulfilling, and truly loving relationships.

Let me take slightly differently all of what you said, but also what if you no longer have to be a vibrational match for women telling you you’re not okay as you are? What if, yes, there’s work to do because you choose, you don’t want to repeat patterns, but you can be in a partnership where we’re not telling each other what’s wrong with each other? We’re honoring ourselves, taking responsibility for ourselves, and being our best for ourselves, which then creates a healthier relationship. I want to take it back to the vibrational match piece because sometimes we’re attracting what we’re used to. In an alcoholic comb, there’s typically a lot of criticism. Especially, children of alcoholics are experiencing low self-worth, low self-esteem, and not feeling worthy of healthy love.

Not telling each other what's wrong with each other but honoring ourselves, taking responsibility for ourselves, and being our best for ourselves creates a healthier relationship. Click To Tweet

Again, it’s so unconscious most of the time. I want to empower the audience to go, “Why don’t I take a beat to journal my standards of what I’m looking for in a partner?” Not just who I need to be loved, which is more of the pattern of growing up in an alcoholic house. You don’t need to be any more or different for you to be worthy of healthy love, but you can make a list of the standards you’re looking for in this season, then become all of that, and then see what happens in your next relationship.

I love that you’re talking about making a list of standards. In all of my books, I talk about that as this an essential piece because some people say they want to be abusive, unkind, horrible, lying, and betraying, and then they say, “Take me as I am,” but they’re expecting their partner to be faithful, kind, and all of those things. I started off saying, “Wait a second. Look at what you expect from yourself. Look at what your standards are. Look at your moral compass.” When you’re working, and we can all do this, we can all keep working to refine and evolve and be better humans. That alone starts changing, whether you call it vibrational energy, emotional palette, or magnetism, whatever way you want to look at it, it becomes part and parcel of who you are.

If somebody’s coming to you and they’re trying to be gaslighting you or being emotionally abusive, it’s like, “No, this is not going to work for me.” Many people hear words like vibrational energy and they’re like, “Too woo-woo for me.” What we’re talking about is your character and your essence. We’re all responsible for how we cultivate our character and how we cultivate our essence. We may have inherited some of it. Some of it may have been more hardwired into it, but we can all change to become the person we want to be.

We can all get 100% of the love we want. We unconsciously think love means things that we experienced growing up, but it can be whatever you want it to be now. I laugh because I made a list eleven pages long, front and back before my husband and I got together. My first marriage was domestic violence. My track record was a shit show. Even with all of my education, I still couldn’t attract the next level. Vibrational match means, what is the level you’re attracting right now? I sat down and made an eleven-page list front and back, and I made sure I was fully embodying every single thing I wanted and exceeding my own expectations.

Many people, when they’re making lists about the partner they want to manifest in their lives, meet, bring into their lives, focus on, “I want him or her to have dark hair, dark eyes, slim figure, vegetarian, carnivore. I want them to make six figures. I want them to want two kids, no kids.” We’re focused on what we want from the other person. I am with you. The key to starting that is so interesting. This is one of the first elements of my book, Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly, why do I start with that? We can’t. We can, but it’s not necessarily the most healthy thing to do. It’s to say, “This is the list I want from another person, but I’m not going to worry about what I’m bringing into the mix.”

That’s the primary piece. We want to know what we have to offer, what we have to offer ourselves, and what we have to offer other people. No shame, no blame, no judgment, but know what it is and be able to not ask for anything from somebody else that you are not willing to cultivate. If you are a person saying, “I want to respectful partner, a hardworking partner, and a loving partner. I’ll just sit back and let myself be loved and taken care of.” Ideally, we want reciprocity where we’re willing to be hardworking and loving and all of those things. What do you think of that?

I couldn’t agree with you more. When I’m working with couples, my favorite part of the couple’s work is the moment they each become the healed adult and they get to meet each other for the first time as two healed adults. Many of us are making our list still reacting to our childhoods, “Here’s what I don’t want any more of.” It is essentially doubling down on I’m still a vibrational match for it because I have to put down, “I don’t want this.” Put down what you want in the specific direction you’re looking for. Not, “Here’s what I don’t want,” and then believe it’s out there.

This is the other piece. I have to dot our i’s and cross our t’s here because it’s easy almost to fantasize and make the list, but do you believe that it’s going to come to fruition? Do you believe this is a person that you’re calling in? Do you believe you are worthy of this level of standards of relationship?” The funniest part about my 22-page list because it was 11 pages, front and back, third day with my husband, I brought out the list thinking for sure I was going to scare him and he’s going to be running for the hills in about 2.5 seconds. I finished the list, and he pulled out his own. His was a half-page, but he had his own list that was in his wallet. We’d been looking for each other.

For many people, I believe in the inner child experience. I believe in how much control that inner child exerts for the positive. Our creativity often comes from that great inner child, but also an unhealed inner child can run the show. We often see this, you’re in an airport or supermarket and there’s an adult 30, 40, 50, and they’re thrown a temper tantrum. What? That inner child is big and active. Behind closed doors, we hear about it in partnerships where one or both partners are great at their jobs, great in the world, and sometimes, especially if there’s one that’s the abuser, that inner child comes out and takes hold. It’s yelling and screaming and being emotionally abusive, sometimes physically abusive.

I believe as you believe that we get stuck. People get stuck. This may be even the case for the audience. We don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors, but we tell by these people leaving him that there are some patterns, whether it’s emotional abuse, physical abuse, whatever it is, or people are saying, “No, thank you.” Let’s give our audience a working definition, just give a description of it. If you would give a working definition of this inner child who has unhealed trauma and how that makes that child stuck. Maybe at a 5-year-old place, a 7-year-old place, a 3-year-old place, sometimes we see it as a 12-year-old place. Please explain.

Our inner child was born trusting who we are. It was born knowing that emotions are healthy, not conceptually, but free or liberated. Back to the example of flight freeze. If you want to fight the moment you’re in, if you want to run from the moment you’re in, or if you find yourself frozen in the moment you’re in, what do you know? The inner child wants to or has already taken over that moment. Here’s what I mean. We can catch it quickly and we can understand. Newsweek quoted my book Coming Back To Life by using this quote. “We don’t lose our voices, we stop talking.” It’s because we think the world can’t handle our truth or we think that if we don’t talk, we somehow resolve conflict quicker.

 

 

The healed aligned you are already an unshakably whole, knows, loves, and trusts themselves to be able to navigate and lead any moment in front of you. Here’s what I mean by that. Your inner child is often riddled with self-doubt. Heartbreak has had you guard your heart. When you’re guarded and in that self-protection consciously or unconsciously, the universe is saying, “You’re available vibrational match for protecting yourself.” Play with this.

The next time, back to the listener’s question, someone is telling you that you’ve got to do X, Y, and Z to be an acceptable partner for them. Notice, do you want to run? Do you want to fight the moment? Not physically, but defensiveness. Are you finding yourself frozen? If any of that’s going on, take a deep breath back to the courage conversation. If you had nothing to fear and nothing to lose, what would you do next? Versus playing out the pattern of protection. It’s more of the same. What’s a different dance step?

Again, I think these metrics of fight, flight, and freeze are great alarm bells and indicators that the adult is either already taking a backseat or about to be. There’s nothing wrong. You’re innocent. There’s nothing about this that means you’re doing something wrong. It’s just a better way is available, then there’s life beyond fight, flight, freeze. Most people don’t know that, especially when it comes to intimacy or relationships.

For our audience, when we are talking about these patterns, they happen when we are triggered and it’s happening unconsciously. It is less than a split second where the brain decides, “This person is frightening me or threatening me.” You don’t choose one of these responses. You don’t choose fight, flight, freeze. I use the four paradigm model, which has appease in it. Audience, if you hear that from me or other people, “Fight, flight, freeze, appease.” Appease is the one where we go, “I’m sorry, please love me.” We see it in all of these in the animal kingdom where maybe you’ll see a dog roll over and like, “I’m sorry.” That’s the appease pattern.

Many people and often women. Men tend to go to fight or flee. I’m overgeneralizing here because no matter what your gender is, you have four choices and your brain is choosing one of those very quickly, very unconsciously, that many women go into the appease position immediately or the freeze. They’ll then say, “I’m conflict-avoidant,” but it’s all hardwired from childhood. Anything that’s hardwired in childhood, the beauty of neuroplasticity is that we can rewire it with conscious awareness.

I love that you are breaking it down into these beautiful principles that help us understand that trauma happens. It’s not our fault, but we can make conscious choices to change the patterns that take hold of us. It takes mindfulness. I’m saying “just” but I’m not minimizing the amount of work. It takes a lot of work to start noticing the patterns, stepping back from them, and choosing healthier patterns. That takes, as we started off with, so much patience, perseverance, commitment, and courage. At the end of that is the freedom,

Right, and alignment. That’s the alternative. Life beyond fight, flight, and freeze is alignment. It’s on the table. Life beyond fight, flight, freeze, and appease is alignment.

Life beyond fight-freeze-appease is alignment. Click To Tweet

Please explain to our audience when you say alignment. Many people think alignment means your body is straight and you’re sitting tall. Let’s go into alignment as you are using it.

This is so huge because back to what you said earlier in this episode, the patterns will repeat until they heal. The point is you don’t need the person to behave better and then you can be okay. You don’t need the diagnosis to change or your partner to have not cheated and then you are okay. You don’t need this woman to want a relationship with you, and then you can be okay. What we need, if we want it, is alignment.

Here’s how I define alignment. I teach what I call the aligned intimacy method. I have five of these that go with it. When you are living in a commitment to the vision you have for your life and when you are living in the values that you choose. Not the values that were those ingredients in your family recipe growing up, but the values that are yours on a soul level, what light you up when you are vulnerable, communicating because you can. Self responsibly, no blame, no threat, no intimidation, vulnerable. Here’s me on a platter. Communication.

When you know how to validate yourself, what I mean by that is I’m a cancer survivor. I had a 5% chance to live diagnosed while I was pregnant eight years ago. I made a choice to quit chemo. I had to know how to validate myself whether that was the right choice for me at that time because everyone around me was panicked. There were no other treatments. I had a 5% chance to live. I quit chemo because I had a vision, I owned and lived in my values, I vulnerably communicated it, and I was able to self-validate. From there, my fifth V is vibration. These are the five steps that I teach and embody when I think of alignment. Alignment is this ability to rest in unconditional self-love in your unshakable wholeness, regardless of circumstances.

Alignment is the ability to rest in unconditional self-love and your unshakable wholeness, regardless of circumstances. Click To Tweet

What courage did it take you to do what you knew was the right step for you? I’m glad you are well and healthy. I’m glad you made the choice that was right for you. For our audience, because that was so much, I’m going to repeat those very precious and priceless five Vs. Your vision, your values, and being vulnerable, which is so hard for so many people. Self-validation, and then your vibration. Those beautiful five V processes, all of which you’ve done an excellent job of explaining and allowing our audience to see how that works in your life.

Taking it back to our listener’s question, it sounds to me as if he would be able to have a vision for what he wants himself to be. What does he want to be? Not what his dad was, but a vision of, “Who do I want to be? Do I want to be loving and kind? Do I want to prioritize relationships? What do I want?” That then goes into the values. What are his values now? Not his dad’s values. What are his chosen values? Being vulnerable is so hard, particularly for people who went through childhood trauma and grew up with alcoholic parents. If love is viewed as a child love as unsafe, love is walking on eggshells, love is people criticizing me, love is all of these negative things, who wants to be vulnerable? If love is toxic, no thank you, I’ll shut the door on that.

I think that happens to so many people, even when they meet a truly loving partner. They may be like, “You’re kind of love is too unfamiliar. You’re too kind. I’ll take the toxic kind of love because that’s what I’m used to. It takes that reformatting to be vulnerable and to see, “This person is going to stay. They are going to love me. They are going to want the best for me and I for them. Good on that piece of self-validation.

I love how you showed us that in your own life. You followed your steps and you validated yourself. I can see how that works because this listener is validating himself and saying, “Wait, I am on this path. I’m evolving. I might choose to go to therapy. I’m making good choices. I am evolving.” The last is the vibration, which sounds like a gift. When your vibration starts changing and you’re going, “I’m safe, I’m loving, I’m whole, I’m evolving,” your whole energy changes because you’re coming from a place of freedom rather than fear.

Also, alignment rather than survival. No one will know better for you than you do. It’s such a cliche term. I would never say, “Cancer patients listening, quit chemo.” It was what was right for me. You are the authority in your life and you get to vibrate. Another way to define vibration is living. How are you living? You get to live, relax, and rest in the best of who you are. There’s never a moment that doesn’t offer us a choice. Survival would have us choose disempowered without meaning to. Alignment offers us the option of choosing empowered. Understanding there’s nothing more powerful than the truth of who we are and the best of who we are. There’s nothing outside of you, more powerful than you. Nothing.

 

 

Beautifully said. I love your message. I love the concepts. There’s such richness here. I could talk to you for quite a while on many of the subsets. As we wind down for the day, could you please tell me where our audience can find you and your work?

Please visit RebeccahSilence.com. There are plenty of free gifts there for you. I have a Trigger Trauma Release Masterclass to help you understand triggers and how to make your triggers your bitch instead of your triggers owning you. That’s available. I have a spa day for your heart, mind, and soul, all available for free. Also, I’ve got a workbook that will teach you my aligned intimacy method as well. Lots of free resources at RebeccahSilence.com.

There’s also a free Facebook group called Reclaim and Rediscover You. It’s my community that you can join and be a part of. You can check out my book, Coming Back To Life: A Roadmap to Healing from Pain to Create the Life You Want, wherever books are sold. I was so honored to be awarded one of the top ten best Self-worth and self-love books in the world by the Best Ever You Network. This read will change your life. it is my story of liberating myself. Lots of places to see me and work with me, and I would love to have you in the community.

Thank you. You’re also on Instagram and Twitter?

Absolutely yes, @RebeccahSilence on Facebook and all the places.

Thank you, Rebeccah. It has been a true joy and a true pleasure. I’m so grateful for your time and energy.

I am so grateful for the work you do. Thank you for being a practitioner who empowers and liberates us all. It’s such an honor to be here.

Thank you, too. Audience, we thank you. I’m closing for now.

 

Important Links

• Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly
• Coming Back To Life: A Roadmap to Healing from Pain to Create the Life You Want
• RebeccahSilence.com
•  @RebeccahSilence – Facebook
• Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com
• Instagram: https://www.Instagram.com/drcarlamanly
• Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/drcarlamanly
• Facebook: https://www.Facebook.com/drcarlamanly
• LinkedIn: https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b
• Youtube: https://www.YouTube.com/@dr.carlamariemanly8543
• TikTok: https://www.TikTok.com/@dr_carla_manly

 

About Rebeccah Silence

Meet Rebeccah Silence, an award-winning National Marriage and Family Specialist and Top Emotional Health Coach, distinguished by REDx Magazine and Business Insider in 2022. Having dedicated herself to the field of healing since 2002, Rebeccah possesses extensive expertise in human behavior, with a rich background working in psychiatric hospitals, school counseling, and more.