Healing Your Nervous System, Compassion For Everyone, and Systems of Oppression with Lindsey Lockett: Episode 218
Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and follow us.
If you learned something helpful in this episode, whether you're a regular listener or brand new to The Health and Wellness Practitioners Podcast, please consider rating and reviewing my podcast.
When you like, share, or follow my podcast, you are helping me reach more holistic practitioners who need business guidance that speaks to their unique needs.
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
Meet our Guest: Lindsey Lockett
Hey, I’m Lindsey — a trauma educator, coach, awareness junkie, and nervous system ninja.
I help people heal from trauma and the subsequent nervous system dysregulation, brain inflammation, unconscious patterns, and soul fractures that happen as a result of trauma.
I create gentle, yet powerful containers to ignite awareness, illuminate out-of-alignment lifestyle choices, soothe brain inflammation, and reduce nervous system dysregulation.
FEATURED LINKS
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
DR. DANIELLE: Okay, Lindsey, here we go. What is your most important, have to do to take care of yourself, health habit wellness routine? What is it?
LINDSEY: Eating. I have to eat. I know that sounds that's like no brainer, like duh, everyone to eat, but as soon as you told me you were going to ask that question, I was just like, that was the first thing I heard and my body was like eating and I don't think I'm one of those people that has like weird wonky blood sugar issues, but I can tend to power through and not listen to my body’s hunger cues, and then it's like, oh, I might be hungry. And then before I know it it's like, if I don't eat something right now, I'm going to murder someone.
So eating, and I eat a lot and I don't restrict my diet at all. And I eat at night sometimes. I don't do any intermittent fasting, like I just listen to my body. And sometimes I have a whole day where I just eat and eat and eat and eat, and then other times I have a whole day where I only want a few things. And so eating. Yeah. Just eating.
DR. DANIELLE: I really love that. And I actually feel a sense of jealousy when I hear you say that because I have such a difficult relationship with food. It has always felt difficult for me where it's like I can't forget to eat because I always want to eat. And, and then I don't like the way that my body looks when I'm always wanting to eat everything and anything. So it's like this cycle, it's just been a thing that I have struggled with my whole life. I literally prayed this morning like God, I'm giving this to you now. And that was the first time that I had ever done that.
LINDSEY: I was in the toxic health and wellness space for a long time that put a lot of morality on food and a lot of restrictions on food. And a lot of like this food is good. This food is bad and intermittent. Fasting is good and intermittent fasting is bad and keto is good. And like, I just like all that binary thinking with food. And I never dealt with an eating disorder, like anorexia, bulimia, or anything like that, but it's only been in the last year that I've realized that I had orthorexia. And I've been healing from orthorexia sort of spontaneously, like I wasn't intentionally trying to heal from orthorexia, but when I was so sick in 2018 was whenever I got really, really sick both mentally and physically, and I wasn't trying to lose weight, but I lost like 40 pounds in like four or five months. I mean, it was really fast and I was starving all the time. So I was eating constantly, but I couldn't eat fast enough to keep up with the weight loss. And it was just a testament to what a rough place I was in both physically and mentally. I can't even imagine if I had taken a hormone test at that time, I can't even imagine what my adrenaline levels would've been. And I was experiencing like adrenaline surges and middle of the night waking up and you don't even have a chance to wake up and your body's just in this like panic. And so my body was burning off food before I could replenish it. And when I checked myself into inpatient, mental health care, they weighed me and I weighed 125 pounds, and 125 pounds is what I weighed when I got married, and I thought that that was the weight I always wanted to get back down to and there I was, and I remember telling my husband, like, if I could go back to feeling like myself again, I'd gain it all back. This is not worth feeling “skinny.” It's not worth it.
So yeah, I've let the pendulum, it went from one extreme and now it's swung to the other side. And I have just found that, like, I feel weird about eating whatever I want whenever I want it sometimes. But then I'm like, no, this is what I want. And I just kind of override it with like, no, this is what I want. And Danielle I've gained all of the weight back and then some. There are things about my body that I don't love. Like my belly is very squishy. It looks like a bagel. I mean, it is what it is, but I just remind myself, like I have myself back and you can't put a number on a scale on that. And so I spontaneously went into healing orthorexia which is like swinging the opposite way of just eating whatever you want, and it's healing my relationship with food, it's healing my relationship with my body and yeah, it feels good to not have that on my shoulders anymore.
DR. DANIELLE: Yes. I'm sure that it really does. Okay. Next question. What do you like the least about running a business?
LINDSEY: Oh, all the tedious things. I hate editing my podcast. I hate sending out emails. I hate replying to emails. I hate keeping up with my calendar. I'm actually looking to hire someone right now. I want to hire, their position will be a director of flow. Basically they're going to be my hand. I need a handler. And I want to hire someone who lives locally to me so that I can meet with this person weekly. I'm going to have them do everything from running my calendar to replying, to my emails, to scheduling people for my podcast. I eventually hope to train them to edit my podcast. And then if they're here and it's the right time of day, I'm going to have them start fricking dinner for me. So I'm hiring a director of flow.
DR. DANIELLE: I absolutely love that. And listen, I have a director of flow. She's not local. And there are things that I really miss about not having people like working alongside me right now. And almost every day, I'm thinking like I need to have a brick and mortar business. Maybe I need to do both things even though doing both things really felt hard. I need to do both things because I like to be with people. And there are things that I can't have my team do because they're not here. Like they literally they can't cook dinner for me.
LINDSEY: Yeah, no I'm going to hire, not that I have any problems with working with people online. And I mean, my whole life is online, so it's not a thing about online. It's just more for me, I don't want this person to like, because I work from home. So I don't want them to be in my house working every day. Like they can work from home on their own computer or whatever, but like part of their job is if I'm launching a workshop, for example, like I just finished doing this week, my husband and I both were like balls to the walls working like crazy. And so dinner consisted of our teenagers scrambling eggs for us or putting in a frozen pizza or whatever. And I'm grateful. I'm so grateful that I had that, but I don't want to eat like that all the time. And I really like good nourish home cooked foods and not because of it it's good or bad. But just because that's just what I prefer to eat. And so this person it'll be one of those things where it's like, Hey, on Tuesday afternoon, I'm going to have a really busy day, I need you to come over and start dinner for me or put in a little laundry. and I don't want to call them my personal assistant because that feels kind of icky and not authentic to me. But they will make my life flow so much easier. And so it will be, they will be the director of flow.
DR. DANIELLE: I'm really excited for you to have that person.
LINDSEY: Me too, I can't wait to find them.
DR. DANIELLE: Awesome. Okay, so I found you on Instagram and we were talking before we started recording and I was like, did I find you this way? That way? I don't know. But however I found you, I was meant to connect with you. I just felt it because what you talk about is the nervous system, but your perspective on healing and nervous system is much different than the typical like health and wellness practitioners perspective about the nervous system. Like from a chiropractic perspective or acupuncturist perspective, we're always talking about the nervous system, but I go to your Instagram feed to learn about the nervous system. Things that I don't learn, didn't learn in school. Like I didn't teach these things in school when I taught anatomy and physiology. Right?
LINDSEY: That's such an honor. Thank you for sharing that with me. I feel very validated right now.
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah, you should. And this is the work that you're doing is work that practically everyone on the planet needs. And of course we say that about acupuncture, massage therapy, and chiropractic all the time. Right? But my philosophy and practice has always been to teach my patients to not need me. It's not a great business strategy because it's not good for retention, but I felt like that's how I would want to be treated by my own doctor, which never really happens, and that's what I want to give to other people.
LINDSEY: You mean you don't want a codependent relationship with your patients?
DR. DANIELLE: Exactly.
LINDSEY: That sounds pretty great to me.
DR. DANIELLE: Right, right. No, I've been in practice for 13, 14 years. I've just always intuitively known that was what I wanted to be able to provide for other people. I coach the same way. My most happy moments as a coach is when someone is done with me and like they've learned all that they can learn from me. I've done all that I can help them with and they're flying on their own. I'm so happy to see that. So happy to see that. So share with our audience, what is it that you do? I've talked a lot about what you do, but not really to describe the people that we do.
THE POWER OF A REGULATED NERVOUS SYSTEM
LINDSEY: Yeah. So I call myself a trauma educator and coach, I'm not a licensed therapist. I don't have letters behind my name. Everything I know is self-taught both through being a sleuth when it comes to research, but then also I feel like I have a pretty intense connection with intuition and just knowing what yes and no feels like in my body. And with that, being able to kind of experiment on myself and on my own nervous system to feel like what works and what doesn't work for me. I went down the path of trauma through the lens of therapy through psychiatry, I have benefited from therapy and from psychiatry both, I just did not feel like they addressed me as a whole person. I feel like therapy was more about my mind and psychiatry was more about my brain chemistry. And I didn't feel like there was anything going on with my body or releasing of trauma and all of that. And I was in a really bad place in 2018, as I mentioned earlier, my life basically fell apart, and the climax of that was in early 2019, I attempted suicide. And after that I checked myself into a psychiatric hospital and went down that route for a little bit. And I'm so grateful that I did that. I have no regrets whatsoever. I would do it again if I ever even got half as bad as I was, which I don't think I will, because I didn't know anything about my nervous system then like I do. So I checked myself out of the hospital and I was so grateful for those psych meds, but at the same time I was like, I've got to figure out what caused me to need these meds to begin with. The meds are great, they're creating like more and it really was like a faux sense of safety, a faux sense of calm. Psych meds don't heal anything, but it's okay to hit the easy button every now and again. And I also just think that like my nervous system was so off, so dysregulated, I don't know that I would've ever been able to get to the place that I am today if I hadn't had psych meds at one time. Because at that point like breath work, meditation, like that was a freaking joke to me, you know? So I'm grateful that I had those meds, but I am a holistic person at heart and I just knew deeply within myself that this is temporary and I'm going to take the help temporarily and I'm going to take advantage of itm, and I'm going to use this time to learn everything that I need to about myself. I'm going to excavate trauma and I'm going to figure out what got me to this place of needing these meds to begin with and then I'll go from there.
So that's what I did, and I feel like my healing was kind of exponentially fast in a lot of ways. And I think it's because, I mean, first of all, I'm as tenacious as a bulldog and I don't stop. So there's that, also I'm healing from perfectionism and needing to be the best at everything. So there's that. Once you based like suicide and checking yourself into a psych hospital, it kind of, at least for me anyway, it kind of like redefined what I was afraid of because like, I had already experienced the worst, right? Like that was the worst for me anyway, I'd already experienced it. So the rest of it couldn't be as hard as that, I didn't have to be as afraid of it as that. And I was terrified of going to the psych hospital, terrified, because my only experience with it was like what you see in movies, you know? And I was like, I didn't know if I was going to be in a padded room. I didn't know if I was going to be in a straight jacket. Do they even use those anymore? I don't know. I didn't know.
And so I went in just completely surrendered to the process, like whatever it was going to be is what it was going to be. And it was like one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. And so in the two and a half years that have followed I've just learned a shit ton about my nervous system and trauma and the way trauma affects the brain and why therapy and psych meds aren't enough, and why even somatic practices processing stuff through your body, isn't enough. I mean, yes, the bottom up approaches are amazing and we need those for sure. That's what regulating your nervous system is. It's a bottom up process. But we also need to understand that trauma, whether it's like ongoing developmental trauma from childhood, or being in a car accident or a bombing or a school shooting or whatever it is, anything that's too much, too fast, too soon for your nervous system, as Resmaa Menakim would say, that actually creates inflammation in our brains as well.
And so we can do all the bottom up practices. We want all day long, but if we're not addressing the underlying brain inflammation, then I feel like the process is incomplete. And so I like the bottom up and the top down, and then I also do a lot of whole big picture work. So one of the foundations of my work is awareness and consciousness. And I don't mean that in a, like Instagram, spiritual influencer kind of way. I mean, awareness and consciousness as literally like being aware of what you're doing and why you're doing it, and if it's not you making this sovereign choice to change. So there's the awareness and consciousness of it. And then also like living a life that aligns with creating a healthy nervous system.
And one of the things that a lot of my clients, because I do one-on-one trauma coaching now as well, and one of the things that a lot of my clients have such a hard time with is they aren't willing to make the changes in their lives to support their nervous systems. It's like they just want to do the breathwork and the meditation and they want to take the fish oil for their brains. But they don't want to leave an unfulfilling job. They don't want to set the boundaries. They don't want to say no when they need to. They don't want to work on their relationship or leave their relationship. They aren't willing to make the lifestyle changes to support their nervous system. And so I have to continually remind people like, that's your choice, but you're going to get well in the same environment that made you sick. And so we can only go so far with all of this nervous system work and reducing brain inflammation and all of that until you're going to hit a ceiling and it's a ceiling that exists because of your own choice to stay where you are. So that's what I do. Did I answer your question?
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. And there's a lot in what you've shared. I really resonate with what you've just said about the life choices or even just changing our lives, building a life from the start that supports the help of your nervous system. Look anywhere around you, look at the people that come into our offices, look at the people that you see online, look at yourself and your own family, and look at how our lives today are not supporting health. Period. And of course, then it's not supporting the health of our nervous system. So to make those changes, there's a lot of aspects to that, right? There's the cultural expectations and the societal expectations and the internal expectations and the expectations from parents and friends and the achievement awards and all those things that make us go, no, I have to do this and I have to do that. And it feels unsafe to make those changes and do something that maybe is not mainstream.
Look anywhere around you, look at the people that come into our offices, look at the people that you see online, look at yourself and your own family, and look at how our lives today are not supporting health.
-Dr. Danielle Eaton
REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS UNDER SYSTEMS OF OPPRESSION
LINDSEY: Yeah. I mean we all live under systems of oppression, like capitalism, for example. So I think it's important to just acknowledge we are all doing the best we can under oppressive systems that we as individuals don't have a lot of control over. And also, what are we doing underneath those systems of oppression to decondition from how we've been taught and modeled is how we're supposed to live. You mentioned the achievements and the success, and when you have a society that is conditioned, that's what you're supposed to do, that's what life is supposed to look like. And nobody has the capacity for that, right? Like nobody does, but everybody pretends that they get it, like they're doing it. Look how successful I am. Right? Social media hasn't helped us. So nobody is successful at it, but everyone's pretending like they are. But then on the inside, when you feel this like emptiness and something's not right, this isn't sustainable, I can't keep up with this, I'm not a machine, you know? Then you feel like there's something wrong with you, but really you, people who feel that way, like they're the Canary in the coal mine they're the ones who are like, Hey, this isn't sustainable for any of us. And there's nothing wrong with any of us because this isn't sustainable. We can't hustle more. You know? I mean, I keep seeing memes nowadays. That's talking about millennials and how the generation before millennials is like, well, if you guys just wouldn't spend so much money on lattes at Starbucks, like you would, you would be able to have more money, you'd be able to save more, you'd have bigger retirement or whatever. And like, I see memes about that. And it's just like millennials and the forward generation is so much different than the generation before us. And like, it's so much harder. Like of course I could just not go to Starbucks every day and I would say of what, maybe $300 a month? How much is that really going to get me ahead? You know? So it is just, I think that the conversation about trauma and healing and finding yourself and awareness and consciousness and all of that, like the fact that that's happening right now, I think is amazing because we're seeing that the way we've been going isn't sustainable for anyone, and the millennials and forward are the ones that are like, we don't want to live this way anymore. We can't be expected to perform the way our parents and our grandparents did because it was so much different for them. I mean, the oppression has always been there, but we could have a whole other conversation about the trauma of capitalism. And I feel like I'm kind of going into left field, but I want to acknowledge that all of us are living under that system and yet we still have to be responsible for ourselves. And we still have to make choices that align with the life that we want, even if that life means completely going against the grain and going against the mainstream.
DR. DANIELLE: Well, I think people that listen to this podcast have been listening to this podcast since like the start understand now why I really wanted to talk with you and share your work on this podcast, because what you've just said described so much of why I started this show in the first place. And it was specifically for women in chiropractic because that was my own experience. And I did feel like a Canary in the coal mine. I was like all the things that we've been told to do to grow our practices, most of it is not sustainable. Most of it doesn't actually even apply to us because we have a different experience, a different lived experience than these white men in suits who have wives at home who take care of the house. And that is something that I've explored a lot much differently over the last year and a half, and I've looked at some of the aspects of that that I hadn't been able to see before, so I'm a little delicate about talking about it from that perspective now. But yeah, I mean, you just summarized it all.
LINDSEY: I'm glad that was helpful.
SEEING OTHERS THROUGH THE NERVOUS SYSTEM LENS
DR. DANIELLE: A lot of the solo episodes that I did in the beginning, I look back on them now and I'm like, that's really cute. Like I was so cute - I was just me learning and putting it out there in a very public way. And there was so much that I didn't know that I was okay with doing it. Then as I learned more about identity politics, for example, over the last couple of years, I was like, whoa, I've said a lot of stuff in a very public way that I didn't really fully comprehend what I was saying. And maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it was a good thing because I didn't feel so much complexity and so much need to like, try to say the right thing and get it right for everyone as I do now.
LINDSEY: Yeah. And you're never going to say the right thing and get it right for everyone. Someone is always going to have a problem with what you say. It's always like not going to fit their narrative of how they see and experience the world. And to me, that's not wrong of you and it's not wrong of them - to me, I see everyone now through the lens of everyone is a nervous system and everyone's capacity to hold complexity and nuance is different, right? Like a traumatized nervous system is a binary, nervous system. Everything is life and death. Everything becomes a threat whenever it doesn't look, think, and act like you. So the way that we increase our understanding, our empathy for each other is first of all, acknowledging that everyone's nervous system capacity is different. Everyone's ability to hold stress, to hold complexity, to hold whatever it is that they're holding is different than everyone else's. Like when during COVID, especially like the whole, like the white Karen, like became this stereotype or this archetype for like women who were acting like, I don't know. I feel so sorry for women named Karen. I know some very nice Karens who aren't like that at all.
Compassion comes when we see everyone as a nervous system.
DR. DANIELLE: I have a sister named Karen.
LINDSEY: Yeah. So it's like a shitty thing to say, but like if we just take those women who were questioning the mask mandates, who were like, not complying with whatever, who aren't getting a vaccine or whatever, and people are calling them Karens. Like, even if they're wrong, like quote, unquote, wrong, like what is wrong, right. But like, even if they're wrong, treating them that way, isn't the answer. It doesn't make anything better. And if that's what their nervous systems can handle, it's like maybe it was a, maybe it was a fight flight response. Like, no, I'm not wearing the mask. No, I'm not getting a vaccine. I haven't gotten a vaccine myself. So I would not classify myself as a Karen. Like, I've never made a big deal about it, but those people who we call Karen, those white women that we call Karen, they're also seeing the world through the lens of their own nervous system too. And so it's again like causing more trauma and hurting more people to try to get what we want, which is to heal the world. It's not the answer. You can't heal by inflicting more pain. Yeah. We're not going to heal anybody or anything by shaming people and making fun of people, when really we may not agree with their opinions, we may not think that they're making wise choices, we may think there are public health threat. I don't know we, but the answer still is not shaming them because it is just as traumatic for them because their whole world has been pulled out from underneath them and has changed just like it has for everyone. Right?
So when you see everyone as a nervous system and their own experiences in their lives have created the nervous system that they have, and that's the capacity that they have, for me personally, it's given me so much more compassion for people, especially people I don't understand, or I don't agree with because I know that their disagreement with me is not about me. It's just that their nervous system can't hold whatever I have to say for some reason. You know? And that doesn't mean I have to change myself for them. Like I don't have to go into a fawn response where I'm just trying to be who everybody wants me to be to make everybody happy, but it gives me the power to be sovereign and to still know what my truth is and to still honor what their truth is, even if it's two different truths, because we really can have millions of different truths because we have millions and billions of different nervous systems that have all different capacities and that see the world through the filter of their own experiences and trauma and the capacity that their nervous systems have. Does that make sense?
DR. DANIELLE: What you've just said, I'm so thankful for you saying this, because this is a thing that I've been wanting to say and not really feeling confident or capable of saying, and like holding it. Holding whatever criticism might come from saying this in a very public way. Like of course, I talk to my friends about what you've just said and that like most of what we're seeing is just a reflection of what people are able to handle, and it's a whether you're left, right, white, black, something else, like whoever you are, you're human, and you've had your own set of experiences that a filter for how you're perceiving what is happening in the world today, and it doesn't mean that any of us are right or wrong and inflicting more hurt upon each other is not helping anyone. It's only making the situation worse.
LINDSEY: Yeah. We're just creating more division and more trauma and more disconnection from each other. And it's not working anymore. And that's why I talked about the nervous system, because when you can talk about the nervous system and people understand. And when I say nervous system, I'm not talking about the central nervous system, I'm talking about the autonomic nervous system because that's where like our fight flight response lives, that's where our neuroception, which is how we perceive the world lives. That's also the part of our nervous system that controls everything that's automatic in our bodies. So it makes your heart beat. It keeps your lungs breathing, it signals for your hormones to be produced, it's in charge of your digestion, your elimination, your sleep cycle, like all of those things and when people have experienced trauma, and again, trauma's anything that's too much, too fast, too soon for your nervous system to be able to handle.
So when people experience trauma, it eventually - and everyone's capacity is different depending on the attunement that their caregivers had to them, depending on the attachment that they had to their caregivers, depending on adverse childhood experiences that they may have had, I think I put genetics in there, but like very, very low because I don't actually put a whole lot of weight in someone's genetic predisposition for like anxiety or depression or even heart disease and diabetes. Because like how much of that is truly genetic and how much of it is generational trauma, where this is how people have lived for generation after generation. So that's what's become the norm in the family. And they think it's genetics. So I don't really put a whole lot of stock in genetics, but anyway, all of these things inform the capacity of our nervous systems and we can increase the capacity of our nervous systems for sure everyone can increase the capacity of their nervous system. And also the resiliency and resiliency is our ability to bounce back after stress can increase our capacity. We can increase our resiliency and our flexibility, but we can't do any of that without the awareness of what our autonomic nervous systems are doing and how they're affected by our life experiences, whether positively or negatively. And most of the time it's negative experiences because everyone's healing from trauma right now. Right?
"We can increase our resilience and our flexibility, but we can't do any of that without the awareness of what our autonomic nervous systems are doing and how they're affected by our life experiences, whether positively or negatively."
Lindsey Lockett
So people begin to experience those chronic and mysterious health symptoms that are like random things going wrong all over the body. And if they were to go to their doctor and have that particular set of symptoms, their doctor might, might run blood work or something, but then their doctor's probably going to be like can't find anything wrong with you, right? Because nobody's talking to them about their autonomic nervous system. And so it's those little random, weird things that start happening in our bodies that are actually our breadcrumbs to know that our nervous systems aren't functioning optimally. And then again, I mentioned the brain inflammation earlier trauma actually creates brain injury. You can look up emotional, traumatic brain injury. That's actually a thing now where a TBI can be from a physical source, like a concussion, or it can also come from a severe emotional trauma, it's called an emotional TBI. And if we had that understanding, like everyone has compassion for someone who hits their head and it causes them a concussion and then their symptoms and their body is wonky afterwards, right? Everyone understands that - we're having a hard time understanding how our adverse experiences from childhood developmental trauma like things like that also create brain injury. And we have less compassion for that because I think we feel like it's not tangible, but it is. If you were to put that person under a brain scanner, their brain would look like they had a concussion, even if they weren't hit on the head. And that creates inflammation and that inflammation trickles down through our body and it throws off the microbiome of our gut and it throws off the way that our nervous system is functioning optimally. And so, again, you take the emotional charge out of it whenever you see people as a nervous system. And if you don't know what their life experiences are, you don't know the level of brain inflammation that a person has from being abused as a child or from being under systemic racism or colonization or patriarchy or religious trauma.
You don't know, but you can have compassion because you don't have to know what they've been through to understand that what they can hold is different from what you can hold. It doesn't mean it's better or worse. It's just different. And like you can hold so much more compassion, empathy, and understanding for people. And that to me is I think that's where the collective is going to have to go to heal from this emotional trauma that the collective has been in for millennia. Right? Like that's where we're going to have to get to is this understanding of everyone's life experiences, informing how they perceive the world and what they perceive as safe and what they perceive as unsafe and how they're able to handle - like me personally a year ago when people started trying to cancel me on the internet, my nervous system was freaking out. I could not handle the stress and the lies that people were telling me. I mean, people were saying that I was like in the, in QAnon, people were saying that I was like right now there's someone actively who keeps posting that I'm like part of the NXIVM sex cult. That's actually happening in my life right now. If that a year ago is when it started happening and like my nervous system could not handle it. Like I was having all this anxiety and I was like, not sleeping about it. And I was hyper vigilant, like checking my phone constantly because I had to see what was going on. I had to see what people were saying about me. And like, now that happens, I know that it's happening, but I'm like their nervous system clearly cannot handle the topics or the perspective that I have and what we, what our nervous systems can can't handle, we perceive as a threat, right?
So even though I'm not like physically threatening anyone, if you don't like what I have to say, it's probably because your nervous system perceives it as dangerous in some way, or it challenges you in some way and it's coming across as a threat. So your response is to unfollow block, leave a nasty comment. Like you go into various fight and flight responses. But people don't realize that you're never going to discharge that fight flight energy through your thumbs like it's never going to come out that way. Or like out of your body is what I mean. You're basically just throwing shit all over the place. Like thinking that it's going to make everybody better or that's going to make you feel better or something it's. Yeah. I don't know. Does that, does that resonate with your listeners, do you think?
DR. DANIELLE: Absolutely. Yes. I think that there's there's a lot of people who want to utilize social media because it's a free tool. They want to utilize social media to reach more people, to help more people to grow their business, to make more money, and yet they are terrified of having happen to them what you just described. And I don't know that there's a way that we can overcome that fear, unfortunately, without going through the experience and learning how to hold it. Because if you don't ever have the experience, then how do you learn to manage it? How do you learn to not just manage it, how do you learn to be able to experience it again in a healthy way and decide that you're still okay even if people are saying untrue things about you.
MOVING THROUGH ADVERSITY WITH CONSCIOUSNESS
LINDSEY: Yeah. It's extremely dysregulating. My answer for that is adversity - when we go through adversity with consciousness, that's when we have the ability to change how we are able to handle those things. And that's what increases our capacity. And that's why awareness and consciousness is the foundation of my work, because unless you understand how the unconscious that you've had in the past have created the reality you have now, like those unconscious reactions, like it or not, those were still choices. You've always had the choice and how you respond or react to something when your nervous system is really, really dysregulated. And you're not in awareness, first of all, like, Ooh, I'm dysregulated right now. I'm really dysregulated. Like it's being aware of what's going on in your body and how you feel and what dysregulation feels like for you. First, you have awareness, it requires awareness. And then second, the awareness of in the past I've responded this way or reacted, excuse me. In the past, I've reacted this way. That has created a reality that I did not like, I don't want to repeat that. So from a place of awareness and sovereignty, I can choose to respond rather than react. And my conscious choice has the opportunity to create a different reality for me. And I'm saying that in the most, non-spiritual, non-influencer way that I possibly can.
I posted on Instagram this week. Like imagine that the relationship you want with your child is one of trust and that they feel like they can come to you and they can talk to you and you're there for them. And you're not going to shame them or punish them or whatever. Like that's the relationship you want. That is the reality that you want. I think all parents want that reality, but you've got trauma yourself. Right? And like parenting is an opportunity to excavate your own crap and kill it. So when your child does something that you don't like, or that annoys you or irritates you and your unconscious reaction is to yell at them, send them to their room, get passive aggressive with them, that sending them to their room and yelling at them and getting passive aggressive with them is a choice. Even if you're not aware of it, it's still a joy that you're making, because you could choose not to yell at them. You could choose not to send them to their room, but you're reacting because of your own unhealed shit in yourself.
So reacting that way towards your child is not creating the relationship with your child that you want. That is not going to create more trust, more connection, more safety. That is not going to make a relationship where your child feels anything, come to you and talk to you about anything. It's going to create the opposite. But if you keep going in that cycle without awareness, you'll, you're going to keep repeating it. And then from a place of non-awareness, you're going to feel guilty and shitty about yourself, right? And you're going to shame yourself. Like you're not a good enough parent. You don't know what's wrong with you. Why can't you just change? Why can't your child just change? So you'll blame your child as well. Like it's their fault. All of that is coming from a place of unconsciousness. The minute you become conscious of what you're feeling in your body, when your child does something that upsets you like frustration, annoyance, anger, whatever the feeling is, and then you become aware of what you think about it and the unconscious reaction that you have to it, then you can reverse engineer that process and you can be in your body, you can be with that feeling and you can just acknowledge like, oh, okay - they just said something or did something that's like really frustrating me. Like I'm feeling really annoyed right now. However, in the past I have yelled at my child and that is not creating the kind of relationship that I want with my child. So now that I'm aware of my feelings and I'm aware of what I've done in the past, I can choose instead to speak with my child kindly and respectfully. I can ask for their opinion, I can try to gain clarification from my kid. I can try to understand them better. Right?
That conscious choice is going to create the relationship with your child that you want, you do that over and over and over, and pretty soon your child feels like they can trust you more. They feel like they can come to you. They feel more with you, right? That's nervous system work - for sure it is - but it's also consciousness work and you can't have one without the other. And that's what I mean by that in the most non-spiritual non bypassing way. I can possibly explain.
DR. DANIELLE: The beauty of that is that it applies not just to our relationships with our children, but to all relationships.
LINDSEY: Hundred percent - not even just relationships - it applies to how you show up for work. It applies to like we were talking about earlier, like creating the lifestyle that supports your healing. Healing isn't a one and done thing. It's not a linear process. It's not like, oh, I'm just going to go and I'm going to get this one thing healed. And then I'm going to go on with my life. Like healing is not something we check off a to-do list. It is a lifestyle that we have to consciously create for ourselves because capitalism and patriarchy and colonialism are not going to create that lifestyle for us. They are creating the opposite of that lifestyle for us. So we have to become aware of the oppression that we're living under collectively, and then we have to consciously choose as much as we possibly can to divest from those systems and go against those systems and create the life that we want. But that takes focus and intention. And you can't do that if you're nervous system is frazzled, that requires being grounded in yourself.
So you were talking about earlier, those people who they like want to put themselves out there in their business, but they're terrified of saying the wrong thing. Yeah. Like that to me is like, I'm, it's not a judgment on those people. Their nervous systems just don't have the capacity for that yet. Right? But when you start to make other intentional life choices, that deeply honor creating a healing lifestyle. And when I mean healing lifestyle, I don't mean like you're going to the chiropractor all the time and you're like becoming a vegan and you're like going on yoga retreats. That's not what I mean by creating a healing lifestyle. I mean, like for me personally, the fact that every single day in the summer that it's not raining, I go lay on a blanket in my yard for like an hour or two every day. I pull my shirt up, I put my belly in the sun. I connect to the earth. I ground into the earth. I listen to the birds. I listen to my wind chimes. I look at the trees. Like I do that every single day in the summertime. If I was living under the oppression of capitalism and had not intentionally divested from it and chosen to be my own boss to start my own business, to work from home, if I had not made those intentional choices, it's not an accident that I have, the life that I have. I created this life because I didn't want that life where I was working 60 hours a week, and didn't have time to lay on a blanket in my yard, in the sun. I have intentionally made choices to create a life that allows me the time to lay on a blanket in my yard.
That's what I mean, it's hard, And people are like, oh, you're so privileged. Like, yes, I am privileged. You're absolutely right. I am white. I am a woman. I am bisexual, but I am in a monogamous heterosexual marriage. Yes, I am the picture of privilege and I made choices for two decades to create the life that I have now. It did not happen to me overnight. It was not handed to me. My parents are not wealthy. They did not buy my house for me. Like it was a choice. And I'm so glad that I made it because I can't even imagine what state my nervous system would be in if I hadn't. And even when I was making intentional choices and had a great life, I still had a dysregulated nervous system. That's what led me to be being suicidal. You know? So like having a regulated nervous system is not a guarantee that you're not going to experience hard things, but it is a guarantee that when you know how to regulate your nervous system and you live in awareness and consciousness about it, that when you experience hard things it doesn't have to like send you down into a pit and you go off the deep end or whatever. It means that you know what to do about it. And you know how to course correct and make a conscious choice to do something else.
SIGNS YOU’RE READY FOR TRAUMA COACHING
DR. DANIELLE: I want you to share if you will, how do people know that? Who are the people that work with you? What is the thing that brings them to you that you want them to know? You can share stuff on your podcast and help people that way. But for some people they need something else to help them move along and heal and make, to make the changes. Who are those people? How do they know that they need some support with making those changes?
LINDSEY: Well, every coaching client I've ever had because I have an intake form that every single one fills out and I ask them, why do you want to work with me? Why me? There's millions of coaches in the world. You can work with anyone. Why are you choosing me? So I actually do ask them that. So I have a concrete answer that I can give you a hundred percent of the time, their answer is your authenticity. I'm not standing on the roof of my house screaming about authenticity. I just show up in my space as my authentic self. I know what it's like to be canceled. So I don't have to deal with that anymore. So I just show up as if I'm already canceled. Like Africa Brooke says, live as if you're already canceled. Because then that is the most unapologetic, authentic expression of who you are. I also think, and maybe you've experienced this as well, I'll be curious if you have, but I think when you come across, especially on Instagram, when you come across somebody's account, I think that everybody has like an energetic resonance that they send out an energetic vibe on social media. And if you're intuitive and you can pick up on energy like that, then I think you can feel that energy and like, you know, Ooh, I don't know if that's for me or not. Something about this doesn't feel like a yes in my body. So other than your authenticity, which is one answer, the other one is I just came across your stuff and I knew I had to work with you. So they felt that yes, in their body. So I don't have to do anything, but be myself and I come on and I talk about my real life and my real choices and my real struggles and my real nervous system regulation. And I share my own nervous system hygiene practices. And when I'm crying and I'm shaking and processing a hard emotion, I share that.
And I'm not sharing it publicly to like make my journey a commodity that people consume. I'm sharing it because I know that there are people who are healing in complete loneliness and silence and darkness, and they need to see somebody like me so that they have inspiration to keep going, you know? So I'm willing to heal publicly so that those healing privately can. So I don't share everything too. Like I do have boundaries with what I'll share about my life. But that's why people say they work with me. It's my authenticity. And it's because they were like, there's something about your energy. I knew I had to work with you. And I'm very clear. I'm like, you do know I'm not a therapist, right? You do know that I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I don't even have a college degree. Danielle. I didn't finish college because I got married very young and had babies very young and I never finished. So like, I'm very transparent about that. Like I don't have the credentials. If you're looking for someone with credentials, then I'm not the right person to work with. But yeah, I think it's because they see what I have and they want it for themselves. That's what I think. Yeah.
DR. DANIELLE: Lindsey, thank you so much. Like from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much. Like I said, I learned from you a lot when I just follow your social media, you know? And I have a lot of respect for your ability to share vulnerability and authentically and to act as if you've already been canceled. I mean, in this case you have already been canceled.
LINDSEY: Yeah. People are going to make up whatever stories about you they need to make up so that they can feel justified or better about themselves. So that's not my problem. The stories people have about me are not my problem. And they're not really my business either. That's their story. It's not mine.
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. Well, it's a testament though to the work that you have committed to and that is why it's hard for people because they haven't gone through that healing yet. And so I think that's something that's available for most people, if they choose it.
LINDSEY: Yeah. It's available for everyone if they choose it, yeah. Everyone, I think people severely underestimate the power of their own choice.
DR. DANIELLE: Yes.
LINDSEY: And sure, that's why I mentioned this whole time, the systems of oppression, like there are systems of oppression in place and depending on your gender, your age, your weight, your race, there are going to be particular roadblocks or hurdles for you because of these systems of oppression, but you still have choice. We've still seen trans black women become powerhouses, right? We've still seen people who are marginalized and oppressed, they still make something out of themselves. They still help other people. They still heal their trauma, you know? So it's like, I don't want to give the systems of oppression, like too much credit. Like nobody can get out from under them. But I also don't want to minimize the fact that they exist, you know? And then we're all just trying to find our way. I mean, my best friend, she says to me all the time, we're all just doing the best we can under systems of oppression, Some of us are more oppressed than others that's for sure. And I won't lie about that. Some people are going to have it harder and that sucks. It really does, but everyone still has the power of choice.
DR. DANIELLE: If someone wants to learn more about what you do and connect with you, where is the best place for them to go?
LINDSEY: So my website is LindseyLocket.com. My podcast is called the Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast. You can listen to that all the places that you can listen to podcasts, you can also stream it from my website. I have a membership that's called the Trauma Healers Circle. So people who want to connect with other people who are also trying to learn about their nervous systems and heal their nervous systems and excavate their shit and do it in community, I have that. So he can find that LindseyLockett.com/circle, I also have a course called belief beyond the binary. So anyone who is wanting to understand, I call them binary belief systems. Most people would call them cults, but I call them binary belief systems, because I think the word cult is like, people think that has something to do with religion. So I call it a binary belief system because like literally anything has the potential to become this like rigid black, white ideology. So religion is one of those things, but also people with their healthcare, like some people are very black and white about healthcare, right? About masks and vaccines. Education philosophy can be very black and white. Yeah, anything can be black and white. So my course belief beyond the binary is about identifying these binary belief systems, what role they may have had in your life, why your nervous system was attracted to them and how to unplug yourself from that and step back into a place of self-trust and self-sovereignty. So I have that course. And then what else do I have? Oh, Instagram, @IAmLindseyLocket is my handle. And I think that's all and I do one on one trauma coaching, but I accept clients by application only. So I choose my clients. And yeah, so I will be opening up applications for more clients towards the end of this year for 2022. But right now as of November 19th, 2021, I'm not accepting new clients. So depending when this episode goes out, I may be accepting new clients then, but that's where you can find me.
DR. DANIELLE: Awesome. Thank you again, Lindsey.
LINDSEY: Thank you, Danielle.