Are You Doing The Spaghetti Approach To Healing?

I call it: the spaghetti-healing approach

This is where you try out a series of random tools in hopes something sticks (or works).  

I did this for nearly 8 years of my healing journey, causing myself deep pain, anguish, fear, and frustration.  

I often wondered if something was wrong with me because these tools weren't doing anything for the pain, anxiety, shame, guilt, or trauma I was living with.

But a part of me was sensing that it wasn't me, and it wasn't the tools.  

This is when I learned about having the right tools in the right order at the right time. 

You see, emotional healing requires certain conditions to exist within the person's mental and somatic/body realms to work.

First priority is always safety, specifically, feeling safe enough to actually access, process, and integrate the energy and sensations of what one has lived through. 

When I introduced this into my own healing work, I experienced a sudden reduction in resistance to healing and changing, and started noticing my pain was reducing and staying in that reduced state as I used other tools in combination with nurturing that sense of safety.

The second priority is curiosity, namely, curiosity about what you're discovering during and after processing.  This step helped me eliminate the habit of outcome seeking and, instead, connect with what was really happening for me as I processed. 

The third priority is inquiry. Generally, we are made up of an internal family of selves, often called "parts".  I refer to them as Aspects Of Self, as they comprise our sense of self.  Actual healing depends on knowing what the aspects of self-involved need and want.  Learning how to ask them, hear them, and communicate with them is key to long-lasting reduction and resolution of any persistent emotional pain.

Fourth is care (sounds strange, right?)  Care comes in play here because you'll know what is needed and what is happening.  This way, your care has precision, meaning it creates the impact that you actually need. 

These four priorities create the structure that I use in all of my work to facilitate safe, resilient healing and change for students.

This is what you'll master in the Actually Heal Trainings that start July 9th!

Ready to experience real healing for yourself?

Come join us for eight weeks of training and practice in nurturing your healing, and then ongoing practice support beyond the classes themselves.  This is all happening in the Actually Heal Trainings.

We start July 9th.  Enrollment closes July 7th.

Enroll by getting your membership for the special Eggs-Are-Expensive Rate of $75 a month, $797 a year, or $1500 Lifetime Access (Rates return to the normal $125 a month, $997 a year, $2000 lifetime July 10th, 2023).

Only 50 people will be admitted this round (next round is in December for this course).  45 seats remain as of today, June 27th. 

Get the details and enroll here: https://membership.freetheself.com

#bluntcake 

This is one that took me a good while to embrace.  Go gently.

You are not entitled to anyone's acceptance.  And you are not entitled to people's lack of disappointment with you.

Accepting this was very difficult.  It brought up a lot of anger, hurt, and fear.

"But then what happens to me? I'll be alone!"

This statement from within myself speaks to the trauma of being stuck in transactional relationships.  I had never known being liked, chosen, or valued for who I am.  My relationship experience was mostly being useful to others.

Through the processing of this pain, I gained enough embodied safety and capacity to actually embrace and understand that I could be chosen, valued, and loved for who I am.  My work was to start doing that with myself, and then bring closer those that showed me that kind of love and acceptance, too.

Creating this embodied safety and healing is the work we'll be starting in the Actually Heal Trainings that begin July 9th.  Join us and create a happier tomorrow for you.  

Details here: https://membership.freetheself.com

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Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experiments, practices, and support in your healing journey: https://community.freetheself.com

***

Connect with me on YouTube, Instagram, my Podcast, and via email: https://links.freetheself.com

***

Submit questions for the YouTube Live Friday Question Sessions.  Submit them here: https://ask.freetheself.com

Isn't it healthy to have certain expectations?

In healing your codependency, your understanding of what expectations really are and how we use them to foster well-being and happiness must shift.

For most, expectations seem like a logical, normal, healthy factor in relationships.  In my work, expectations are the center of a lot of conflict, misunderstanding, and unnecessary pain.  

This stops when you shift from expectations to desires and standards.

Learn what this means and how to do it in today's episode!

***

Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experiments, practices, and support in your healing journey: https://community.freetheself.com

***

Connect with me on YouTube, Instagram, my Podcast, and via email: https://links.freetheself.com

***

Submit questions for the YouTube Live Friday Question Sessions.  Submit them here: https://ask.freetheself.com


***

[The Actually Heal Trainings Are Open For Enrollment]

Discover how to stop fixing your pain and actually heal instead.  

This means feeling a noticible reduction in pain, and even resolution of hurts and traumas.  

This also means feeling more peace, more emotional and mental space, more confidence in yourself, more clarity about what you want and desire, more ease in taking action towards your desires, facing risk, and actually enjoying your life.

I teach you how to do reduce and resolve the pain that's been in the way of your peace and happiness in my 8-week Actually Heal Trainings.  Specifically, you will learn:

- How to regulate and soothe the body to increase safety for healing
- How to build warm capacity and space for your pain to be witnessed and cared for while feeling safer and within your window of capacity using the C.I.C. Framework
- How to start believing that your feelings and lived experiences actually matter so you're able to actually heal
- How to recognize, connect with, and understand your inner parts of yourself so they can get the healing and care they need
- How to escape the fixing trap and stay clear of trying to control the outcomes of your healing efforts
- How to master being your own warm witness to your pain and hurts
- How to build safety through resourcing people, places, and things that contribute to your sense of safety
- How to bring resolution to pain by fulfilling the action impulse the body has for that pain

You will be supported throughout this process with:

- Twice-a-month live group processing practices with Marshall and other students
- Twice-a-week support calls for both the homework and life in general with Marshall and other students
- Twice-a-month practice sessions where you can practice live with Marshall and other students the tools you're learning in the trainings

This will be taught via eight trainings:

Module One: Fixing Vs Actual Healing

Module Two: Capacity-directed Healing

Module Three: Believing Yourself Again

Module Four: Aspects of Self

Module Five: Inquiry & Resourcing

Module Six: Warm Witness & Care

Module Seven: Untangling Your Pain From Meaning

Module Eight: Impulse Processing and Next Steps

And you'll be supported through ongoing practice and processing sessions.

These eight trainings give you the framework for actually healing your pain and hurts, and can be used with any toolset or modality you prefer (like EFT, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, etc).

Students that have learned these skills report:

- Feeling big relief and peace
- Relief from shame, guilt, and a sense of being broken
- A greater sense of resolution to their pain and traumas
- More resiliency and confidence as they know how to care of the pain the

"How Do You Manage Escapism, Marshall?"

Firstly, what is escapism?

It is the tendency to seek distraction and releif from painful realities.  

In codependency, escapism shows up as:

1) Being hyperfocused on the realities of others, their feelings, and their lives (so you can escape your own emptiness, loneliness, or pain)

2) Medicating emotional pain through food, sex, needlessness, work, productivity, and avoiding conflict

3) Fantasies about finding "the one", being made complete in a relationship, or being rescued and finally loved a specific way

4) Actively denying and ignoring your pain and your emptiness. Everything is "fine"

5) Seeking to regulate and rescue others in hopes they'll rescue you

What ways has escapism showed up for you?

Now, what do we do to manage this? Escapism signals that you are low on resources to help you navigate pain and create more nurturing patterns in your daily life.  

Specifically, you will need to:

1) Learn How To Sooth Pain: Learn how to bring soothing and care to pain and to distress in the body through nervous system care and emotional processing

2) Build Connections:  With support communities, play communities, friendships, and nurturing bonds

3) Reconnection with Reality:  Confront your fantasies, deconstruct them, and reconnect with what is reality through soberly acknowledging to the facts of your reality and acting appropriately from that information

4) Build, practice, and master well-being skills: This involves creating new, lasting skills that soothe and care for your pain, nurture your needs and wants, and foster your well-being through community, purpose, and self-loyalty

I help you make this a reality in the Heal Your Codependency Membership.

Our first training series starts July 9th:  The Actually Heal Trainings.

Care for and bring peace to your pain and hurts using the Curiosity-Inquiry-Care Framework.  

Enrollment opens June 26th.  Get on the waitlist here: https://www.actuallyheal.com

***

Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experiments, practices, and support in your healing journey: https://community.freetheself.com

***

Submit questions for the YouTube Live Friday Question Sessions.  Submit them here: https://ask.freetheself.com


***

Connect with me on YouTube, Instagram, my Podcast, and via email: https://links.freetheself.com

#Reinforcement Episodes: The Two Commitments You Must Make With Yourself

COMMITMENT ONE: Honesty with yourself and safe others.  This involves being willing to acknowledge what you feel, what you are experiencing, and what is actually happening. This involves the end of fantasy making and toxic hope.

This means acknowledging the pain you're feeling, their abusive and neglectful behavior, and any habits of denying the patterns of behavior and impact in the relationship.

This also includes confronting fantasies of changing them, of their potential, and it means being honest with what is actually happening.


COMMITMENT TWO:  Loyalty to your well-being and safety first.  Relationships do not require the loss of your Self, your well-being, your sanity.  The real work in healthy relationships is building connection and understanding.   This starts with loyalty to yourself. 

Put your well-being first, respect your pain, choose according to what adds to your well-being, say no to what doesn't, and stay loyal to your boundaries and values.


***

Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experiments, practices, and support in your healing journey: https://community.freetheself.com

***

Submit questions for the YouTube Live Friday Question Sessions.  Submit them here: https://ask.freetheself.com


***

Connect with me on YouTube, Instagram, my Podcast, and via email: https://links.freetheself.com

***

COURSES & MEMBERSHIPS

Your first step: The Essential Codependency Healing Trainings.  This 8-week course teaches you the 8 fundamental practices and concepts necessary for achieving real, lasting well-being and happiness after codependency and toxic relationships. It is available in self-study format and live-class format.  Start today: https://echt.freetheself.com

Into Self-study?  Get the Self-Study Library and heal your trauma bond, nurture your needs, end loneliness, build healthy relationships, build real self-trust, and know, love, and be who you are.  The Self-study Library gives you deeply affordable access to my 6 primary healing courses that you can take 24/7 at your leisure.   Learn more here: https://solo.freetheself.com

Seeking Live-taught classes, live support groups, and deep healing with Marshall and your follow codependents?  Get the Heal Your Codependency Membership.  Learn more here: https://membership.freetheself.com

How To Empathize Without Violating Your Well-being

Many of us struggle with a sense of conflict between caring for ourselves and caring for the other person.  This is especially pronounced when the other person is also the person who harmed us.  One's trauma bond with a harmful person along with one's natural care and empathy can create a divide within the codependent that is trying to navigate feeling empathy and concern for the other person while also trying to prioritize and care for themselves.

The solution to this conflict I call, "Boundaried Empathy".

What is Boundaried Empathy?

It is the practice of acknowledging the care we feel towards the other person while staying clear of their yard and any responsibility to regulate or fix that person's pain, problems, or consequences.

Put another way, it is learning how to empathize without fixing. 

Learn how in today's episode!

***

Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experiments, practices, and support in your healing journey: https://community.freetheself.com

Submit questions for the YouTube Live Friday Question Sessions.  Submit them here: https://ask.freetheself.com


***

Connect with me on social media and via email, and learn more about how I heal codependency permanently even when therapy and self-help efforts have failed you: https://links.freetheself.com

***

Ready to finally end your dependency on codependency and start living from your power, wholeness, and innate worth?  Check out my courses here: https://courses.freetheself.com

Is Being "Too Much" A Real Thing?

Have you been told you're "too much" by someone?

Have you questioned your own level of needs, desires, and wants due to that?

Have you felt shame, confusion, doubt, or guilt for what you want or need, and how much of it you want or need?

This is a very, very common impact we feel from others.  It can be especially painful if we're repeatedly told we're "too much" and shamed for it.  Conversely, you may also be told you're "not enough", too, creating a mass of confusion and inner conflict.

Learn how to navigate this in today's episode!


***

Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experiments, practices, and support in your healing journey: https://community.freetheself.com

Submit questions for the YouTube Live Friday Question Sessions starting Friday, June 2nd, 2023.  Submit them here: https://ask.freetheself.com


***

Connect with me on social media and via email, and learn more about how I heal codependency permanently even when therapy and self-help efforts have failed you: https://links.freetheself.com

***

Ready to finally end your dependency on codependency and start living from your power, wholeness, and innate worth?  Check out my courses here: https://courses.freetheself.com

Consequences are key to learning, to growing, and to maturing.  When we interfere with a consequence someone chose through their behaviors, we are interfering with their ability to grow and mature.

Learn more about how consequences are actually love in action.

***

Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experiments, practices, and support in your healing journey: https://community.freetheself.com

Submit questions for the YouTube Live Friday Question Sessions starting Friday, June 2nd, 2023.  Submit them here: https://ask.freetheself.com


***

Connect with me on social media and via email, and learn more about how I heal codependency permanently even when therapy and self-help efforts have failed you: https://links.freetheself.com

***

Ready to finally end your dependency on codependency and start living from your power, wholeness, and innate worth?  Check out my courses here: https://courses.freetheself.com

Are You Being Selfish?  Or Is Your Self-Interest Being Weaponized?

"You're selfish" or "Stop being so selfish" or "You have to share!" 

These are phrases I heard a lot in response to me saying no, to having a boundary, or wanting to keep something of mine, mine. 

I was also raised to believe that sharing was the ideal and that having boundaries or saying no meant I was doing something "selfish" or mean because it "deprived someone else of something they wanted".

This kind of treatment of our autonomy and boundaries taught us to feel shame and to discount and ignore our self-interest, boundaries, and desires.

Learn how to start freeing yourself from this trap of inverted power and begin to occupy your sovereign space and autonomy in today's episode!


***

Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experiments, practices, and support in your healing journey: https://community.freetheself.com

Submit questions for the YouTube Live Friday Question Sessions starting Friday, June 2nd, 2023.  Submit them here: https://ask.freetheself.com


***

Connect with me on social media and via email, and learn more about how I heal codependency permanently even when therapy and self-help efforts have failed you: https://links.freetheself.com

***

[The Essential Codependency Healing Trainings Starts May 14, 2023]

This LIVE 8-week training is for codependents, people-pleasers, and perfectionists that:

- Feel like there's something crucial they're missing in their healing work
- Are stuck in a circle of relapse and "trying to not be codependent"
- Feel lost and frustrated not knowing what to do to get real peace and healing

There are 8 necessary factors that create lasting healing and freedom from codependency:

- Safety
- Sanity
- Personal Sovereignty
- Trust Yourself
- Know Yourself
- Love Yourself
- Be Yourself
- Share Yourself

I will be teaching the essential skills and knowledge in each of these factors starting May 14, 2023 in my 8-week course, "The Essential Codependency Healing Trainings".

This includes:

- Origin of Codependency & Nervous System Care
- Capacity & Emotional Care
- Foundations of Personal Power
- Foundations of Self-Trust
- Fantasy and Reality
- Foundations of Worth
- Foundations of Knowing Yourself
- Detecting Safe People & Building Resources

These eight trainings give you the crucial knowledge, tools, and practices needed to transition your codependent habits into healthy relating habits that create well-being, peace, and happiness FOR YOU.

You'll be empowered to create these results because:

- You'll be able to identify and neutralize your codependent fantasies and connect with reality
- You'll be able to soothe and care for your anxiety, pain, grief, and other emotions
- You'll be cultivating trust in yourself
- You'll be discovering your real worth
- You'll be starting to really know and distinguish yourself from others
- You'll be able to detect and build connection with safe people

Students that have learned these skills report:

- Feeling big relief from trying so hard to fix themselves
- More confidence in being able to acknowledge what they feel, what is happening, and act from that knowledge
- More peace because they can see what is really happening
- Relief because they know what to do instead of their codependency!

Course Details:

Here's the Class Details:

Class start date: Sunday, May 14, 2023 @ 12pm Mountain Time

Class times:  Sundays @ 12pm Mountain Time

Where: Via zoom

End date: July 2nd, 2023

Recordings of each class available the evening of class day.

Comes with 2

The One Question That Reveals Compatibility Fast

"How would you define compatibility in relationships? What could I look for to determine if he is compatible with me?"

This question comes to me a lot, especially in Focus 6 of the Codependency Healing System where I teach students the fundamentals of healthy relating.

Much of what is taught about compatibility centers around mutual values, interests, and even lifestyles.  Yet, I've learned personally these are poor guages of actual, real-life compatibility.  

Learn how I define compatibility and the one question that helps me determine compatibility in all my relationships in today's episode!


***

Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experiments, practices, and support in your healing journey: https://community.freetheself.com

Submit questions for the YouTube Live Friday Question Sessions starting Friday, June 2nd, 2023.  Submit them here: https://ask.freetheself.com


***

Connect with me on social media and via email, and learn more about how I heal codependency permanently even when therapy and self-help efforts have failed you: https://links.freetheself.com

***

[The Essential Codependency Healing Trainings Starts May 14, 2023]

This LIVE 8-week training is for codependents, people-pleasers, and perfectionists that:

- Feel like there's something crucial they're missing in their healing work
- Are stuck in a circle of relapse and "trying to not be codependent"
- Feel lost and frustrated not knowing what to do to get real peace and healing

There are 8 necessary factors that create lasting healing and freedom from codependency:

- Safety
- Sanity
- Personal Sovereignty
- Trust Yourself
- Know Yourself
- Love Yourself
- Be Yourself
- Share Yourself

I will be teaching the essential skills and knowledge in each of these factors starting May 14, 2023 in my 8-week course, "The Essential Codependency Healing Trainings".

This includes:

- Origin of Codependency & Nervous System Care
- Capacity & Emotional Care
- Foundations of Personal Power
- Foundations of Self-Trust
- Fantasy and Reality
- Foundations of Worth
- Foundations of Knowing Yourself
- Detecting Safe People & Building Resources

These eight trainings give you the crucial knowledge, tools, and practices needed to transition your codependent habits into healthy relating habits that create well-being, peace, and happiness FOR YOU.

You'll be empowered to create these results because:

- You'll be able to identify and neutralize your codependent fantasies and connect with reality
- You'll be able to soothe and care for your anxiety, pain, grief, and other emotions
- You'll be cultivating trust in yourself
- You'll be discovering your real worth
- You'll be starting to really know and distinguish yourself from others
- You'll be able to detect and build connection with safe people

Students that have learned these skills report:

- Feeling big relief from trying so hard to fix themselves
- More confidence in being able to acknowledge what they feel, what is happening, and act from that knowledge
- More peace because they can see what is really happening
- Relief because they know what to do instead of their codependency!

Course Details:

Here's the Class Details:

Class start date: Sunday, May 14, 2023 @ 12pm Mountain Time

Class times:  Sundays @ 12pm Mountain Time

Where: Via zoom

End date: July 2nd, 2023

Recordings of each class available the evening of class day.

Comes with 24/7, unlimited access to the recordings and all current and future live classes.

You get UNLIMITED ACCESS TO: