What If Triggers Are An Ally, Not An Enemy?

Triggers speak for the trapped parts of ourselves that are reliving a terror in the past. 

They give us moments to lean in, acknowledge, and legitimize our past lived reality. 

They invite us to add sanity to our reality through our listening and validation of what is there. 
And as we love and care for them through warmth, curiosity, and inquiry, their trapped energy begins to cycle into completion bit by bit. 

They're not signals something is wrong with us or that we're crazy. 

They're the voice of unprocessed, unacknowledged, unmet parts of ourselves. 

Meet them. Care for them. Love them. And the terror they carry will ease.

***

Join my email community to get access to more episodes, tools, my writings, and more here: https://connect.freetheself.com

Join my Facebook community for more guidance, tools, and my insights: https://community.freetheself.com

Follow me on Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, and my podcast here: https://links.freetheself.com

***

[The Essential Codependency Healing Trainings Start September 24, 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
- Inner Awareness
- Capacity & Emotional Care
- Differentiation and Knowing Yourself
- Fantasy and Reality
- Real Worth
- Being Sovereign
- Boundaries 101
- Pre-recorded Bonus One: Safe-People and Resourcing
- Pre-recorded Bonus Two: Self-Trust Foundation

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 build real boundaries
- You'll be able to detect and disengage your people-pleasing and fawning behaviors

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, September 24, 2023 @ 12pm Mountain Time

Class times:  Sundays @ 12pm Mountain Time

Where: Via zoom

End date: November 12, 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:

- Live attendance (includes all future

Blunt Cake: Are You Trying To Heal By Getting Rid Of Your Emotions?

I touch on this topic frequently, as it is that important to healing and well-being.

Often we're taught that we have to purge, get rid of, or fix our emotions.  We're taught to see our emotions as a problem, the enemy, or something to fix.

This leads us to reject our emotions, fight them, deny them, and attempt to make them behave a certain way.  We end up feeling stuck, deeper in pain, and lost as to how to find peace.

Real healing, real peace, and real emotional freedom depends on us being warm and available to our emotions.  

This means that when an emotion comes up in our awareness, we respond with warmth and welcome. "Hello, I see you. I feel you. I notice you.  I am grateful you are here."

This is done with all emotions - painful or pleasurable - as all are valid and important expressions from within ourselves.

This reduces resistance, judgment, rejection, and denial of our emotions and helps faciliate real care for them.  This allows the emotion to move through its cycle into completion so rest and peace can be found.

This is NOT an easy habit to master.  I start students off with a gentle practice of acknowledging what they feel and endorsing it.  This helps build a habit of receiving and accepting the emotion.

Another way to do this is to respond to any emotion that shows up with, "And I love you..."  


***

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 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 On-demand How To Heal Your Codependency Workshop is open!

This 1-day training is for codependents, perfectionists, and people-pleasers who have struggled to find healing in their private therapy or self-help efforts.  

I will show you why your efforts to heal from codependency haven't worked, why that is NOT your fault, and I will give you my proven strategy that makes ends your needs for codependency permanently.

Specifically, you will learn:

1) What the actual cause of codependent behaviors is and how that unlocks permanent healing

2) The 3 Necessities that drive your well-being and happiness

3) The 8 factors that end codependency permanently while creating a life you enjoy

You will also receive your opportunities to enroll in my 8-week foundation Live training, The Essential Codependency Healing Trainings.  These trainings guide through implementing the essential practices and concepts that nurture the 8 Factors of Well-being in your daily life.

Here are the workshop details:

Available 24/7

Class Length: 1hr 39 minutes

Investment: Free

Star today: https://workshop.freetheself.com

To Stop Pleasing & Appeasing Others, Focus On These 3 Things

Wonder why you automatically people-please, rush to fix things when there's a problem, panic at the idea of someone being upset with you, or feel an internal pressure to avoid disappointing others?

This is the fawn response in action, and it is happening because your body is perceiving a threat or anticipating a threat.

The body will react to the present based on your past, re-living that past experience through the feelings, sensations, reactions, and thoughts that flood you.  When you've been threatened or harmed and your body has used the fawn response to survive it, it will do that again in the future because it worked.

Disengaging this response involves:

1) Restoring a sense of safety by nurturing capacity for those reactions, connecting with safe community and persons, and learning to regulate back into a window of tolerance through titrated experiencing of the sensations that show up

2) Processing the pain, fear, and hurt that is stuck in a loop that was created in the previous threatening events.  This will involve feeling the sensations in short, bit-by-bit moments over time. 

As the body begins to experience a reduction in the intensity, duration, and frequency of the intense sensations that come with fawning, it will start engaging in other responses to it, including inquiry, indifference, advocacy, and even fight or flight.

3) Discovering safety and who you are without the fawning response.  This will likely feel uncomfortable, confusing, liberating, and even empowering. You'll find yourself experiencing more rest, more confidence, more peace, and more clarity about what you want, what you feel, and your intuitive senses will arise.

This is a core feature of the Codependency Healing System.  Over 35 live-taught classes, you are nurtured through each of these phases of healing through live support, effective tools, and community.

Your codependency developed in relationship.  Your healing and freedom develops in relationship.  

We heal together.  We thrive together.

[Annual Enrollment in The Codependency Healing System Closes Saturday Till 2024]

New payment options available!  Check below!

This is an invitation to codependents, people-pleasers, and perfectionists who've been doing therapy or self-help, are struggling to get lasting, consistent results, and are seeking greater self-worth, peace, and freedom in being who they are without trying to figure it all out or do it on their own.

You will work along with me and 74 other students over a gentle 9 months as we increase your sense of safety, connection, and self-worth through:

1) Increasing your emotional safety.  

2) Connecting with reality and using it to build real connection. 

3) Taking back and becoming your power. 

4) Discovering and embodying who you really are through knowing your innate worth. 

5) Reclaim your natural ability to create connection with others and build healthy, safe, playful bonds with your fellow humans. 

This is achieved through The Codependency Healing System 9-month, 36-module journey.

To succeed in these areas, all you will need to do is:

1) Watch the recorded trainings or show up to the live versions

2) Do the practices 2 - 3 times a week

3) Get support when you need it.

The program supports you in doing that through:

- Weekly live trainings hosted and taught by Marshall
- Unrivaled live support facilitated by Marshall that includes:

- Twice-a-week support calls to help you as you learn these concepts and master them in your daily life
- Twice-a-week homework calls to help you do the homework, get help with tools, or have a space to do the work 
- Twice-a-month practice sessions to help you

The Four Sabotages, Part Four: The Wrong Support Leads To Feeling Lost And Helpless

There are four factors I see that sabotage a student's healing efforts.

These four factors sabotaged me and my efforts for over a decade, leaving me feeling discouraged, frustrated, and even hopeless.  I didn't believe I could heal because nothing was working.

Today, we focus on Factor Four:The Wrong Support Leads To Feeling Lost And Helpless

Wrong support shows up when we're seeking solutions that the support container cannot provide.

This happens when:

- We seek support about a problem that is outside the lane of expertise for the therapist, coach, mentor, or group
- A coach, mentor, therapist, or support group tries to be "everything" for a persn
- We do not know what we really need help in (this stems from wrong knowledge)
- We try to do it on our own and avoid having support all together

This leads us to feel crazy, isolated, and even helpless.  We're not able to find community that understands us, professionals that comprehend the situation and the journey ahead, and that cuts us off from right knowledge, right practices, and the right order that we need for our healing.

In my work, support is a central pillar of the work.  It is specific, too.  My support is directed specifically at:

1) Helping codependents reduce pain, increase peace and heal
2) Helping codependents identify their successes and celebrate them
3) Helping codependents identify challenges and work through them
4) Reduce codependent behaviors and increase healthy, interdependent behaviors

As well as:

1) Helping codependents recognize and see themselves and become real to themselves
2) Navigate and care for their emotions
3) Connect with each other, feel seen, and feel supported
4) Apply the tools and practices effectively to their daily life
5) Gain direction and referral to resources that address challenges outside the scope of codependency and healing

This kind of support is life-altering.  This helps students take what they are learning and make it real, build trust in their discoveries, trust in how they use the tools and trust the results they get.

They feel seen, heard, and supported. This is crucial for making healing sustainable and permanent.

This is the biggest focus and feature of the Codependency Healing System.

I provide this kind of support in four ways:

1) Twice-a-week live support calls

2) Twice-a-week homework and practice calls

3) Twice-a-month Practice sessions

4) Teach the class curriculum live once a week

And you get online community support via facebook or the learning system, along with email support with me when you need it.

So, how do you know if you've got the right support in your healing work?

Learn what these are in today's episode!

***

The Annual Enrollment for the Codependency Healing System is OPEN.  We're accepting 75 individuals on this 9-month live training journey in nurturing and increasing our individual and communal safety, connection, and individual worth.

Students will leave this journey knowing how to:

- Create and nurture emotional safety, relationship safety, and physical safety
- Identify and connect with compatible, safe, healthy people
- Recognize, understand, trust, and follow their own voice
- Identify, connect to, and embody their real worth
- Recognize and embody their personal power
- Heal their pain through reduction and resolution practices
- Increase their confidence and worth through orienting to their innate value
- Communicate clearly and understand others more deeply
- Create and execute boundaries that foster connection and well-being
- Soothe pain and anxiety
- Increase peace, rest, and safety

 The Four Sabotages, Part Three: The Wrong Tools = You Thinking You're A Failure 

There are four factors I see that sabotage a student's healing efforts.

These four factors sabotaged me and my efforts for over a decade, leaving me feeling discouraged, frustrated, and even hopeless.  I didn't believe I could heal because nothing was working.

Today, we focus on Factor Three: The Wrong Tools Create The Wrong Results

Have you done this?

- Found a tool and tried to use it to address everything you encounter?
- Tried a tool once and if it didn't work, stopped using it?
- Sought out a "magic bullet" tool that would solve all your pain and problems?
- Tried a tool over and over even though it wasn't working, thinking you were the problem?

This is the impact of not having the right structure, support, or knowledge to guide you to the correct tools for you as a person and your particular situation.

In my work, the student does not adapt to the tools.  The tools adapt to the student and their needs.

This was a crucial shift in my own healing when I started learning what tools I needed and didn't have.  It wasn't that straight forward, however.  

Usually I'd be using a tool and keep encountering a place where I felt blocked or things wouldn't quite work right.  So I began experimenting with asking what I needed at that point, and my body would guide me.  

This is how I create the toolsets I teach today and this is what I teach my students: when tools don't work, there is a need involved and we need to find out what that is.  So we do.

This is where right knowledge and right support are absolutely crucial components in your success (this is why they're core parts of the Codependency Healing System).  

This is where students start to feel seen, known, cared about, and start seeing changes for themselves.  

So, how do you know if you've got the right tools in your healing work?

Learn what these are in today's episode!

***

The Annual Enrollment for the Codependency Healing System is OPEN.  We're accepting 75 individuals on this 9-month live training journey in nurturing and increasing our individual and communal safety, connection, and individual worth.

Students will leave this journey knowing how to:

- Create and nurture emotional safety, relationship safety, and physical safety
- Identify and connect with compatible, safe, healthy people
- Recognize, understand, trust, and follow their own voice
- Identify, connect to, and embody their real worth
- Recognize and embody their personal power
- Heal their pain through reduction and resolution practices
- Increase their confidence and worth through orienting to their innate value
- Communicate clearly and understand others more deeply
- Create and execute boundaries that foster connection and well-being
- Soothe pain and anxiety
- Increase peace, rest, and safety

Here are the details:

Enrollment closes August 12, 2023.  THIS IS THE LAST DAY YOU CAN ENROLL FOR 2023.

Class starts Monday, August 14, 2023.

Class ends Monday, May 20, 2024

Live Class Time: 11am Mountain Time

Recordings: Released at 6pm Mountain Time

Support Calls: Tuesdays at 5-7pm and Thursdays 10-12pm Mountain Time

Practice Calls: Sundays 7pm Mountain Time two times a month

Investment:

You must have a membership to attend these classes. 

Lifetime Membership with 6 Months Personal, Private Support from Marshall: $2000 (comes with 6 months private support access to Marshall, along with the Self-trust Course, Indomitable Worth System, and the Breakthrough Sessions - $3500 value)

Lifetime Membership $1500 (includes the Self-trust Course, Indomitable Worth System, and the Breakthrough Sessions - $2500 value)

The Four Sabotages, Part Two: The Wrong Understanding = Failure & You Believing You Cannot Heal

I was taught a lot of false ideas about codependency throughout my therapeutic and self-help experience.

I was taught:

- It was a disease I had to live with
- It was an addiction
- It was an identity
- I would never heal from it

This came from out-dated understanding of codependent behaviors and narrow understanding of addiction and trauma.  

Yet, these views deeply harmed my healing and led me to:

- Feel flawed, shameful, and disgusting
- Hopeless and unlovable
- Highly stressed and fearful of myself
- Stop trying to heal

When I learned about the freeze response, and then later, the fawn response, I quickly started seeing how codependency was a result of these two biological responses being stuck in a loop.

I was able to begin disengaging my fawn response and discovering my own inborn confidence, worth, and abilities to create safety and connection with others and myself with this right knowledge.

This is when life went from frequently feeling empty, lonely, and fearful, to enjoying more curiosity, playfulness, and peace in my daily life.  

My friends, to heal, you must have the right knowledge, the right tools, the right support, in the right order.

So, how can you determine if you are getting the right knowledge?

Learn what these are in today's episode or read below!

***

The Annual Enrollment for the Codependency Healing System is OPEN.  We're accepting 75 individuals on this 9-month live training journey in nurturing and increasing our individual and communal safety, connection, and individual worth.

Students will leave this journey knowing how to:

- Create and nurture emotional safety, relationship safety, and physical safety
- Identify and connect with compatible, safe, healthy people
- Recognize, understand, trust, and follow their own voice
- Identify, connect to, and embody their real worth
- Recognize and embody their personal power
- Heal their pain through reduction and resolution practices
- Increase their confidence and worth through orienting to their innate value
- Communicate clearly and understand others more deeply
- Create and execute boundaries that foster connection and well-being
- Soothe pain and anxiety
- Increase peace, rest, and safety

Here are the details:

Enrollment closes August 12, 2023.  THIS IS THE LAST DAY YOU CAN ENROLL FOR 2023.

Class starts Monday, August 14, 2023.

Class ends Monday, May 20, 2024

Live Class Time: 11am Mountain Time

Recordings: Released at 6pm Mountain Time

Support Calls: Tuesdays at 5-7pm and Thursdays 10-12pm Mountain Time

Practice Calls: Sundays 7pm Mountain Time two times a month

Investment:

You must have a membership to attend these classes. 

Lifetime Membership with 6 Months Personal, Private Support from Marshall: $2000 (comes with 6 months private support access to Marshall, along with the Self-trust Course, Indomitable Worth System, and the Breakthrough Sessions - $3500 value)

Lifetime Membership $1500 (includes the Self-trust Course, Indomitable Worth System, and the Breakthrough Sessions - $2500 value)

Annual Membership: $997 (includes the Self-Trust Course - $997 value)

Monthly Membership: $125 (hardship/income aware pricing is available for this.  Contact us with your situation and we'll get you options)

75 students total for 2023 will be admitted.

Where you can sign up: https://chs.freetheself.com

Seeing this in the future? Get on the wait list: https://chs.freetheself.com

The Four Sabotages, Part One: Do It On Your Own = No Structure = No Success

There are four factors I see that sabotage a student's healing efforts.

These four factors sabotaged me and my efforts for over a decade, leaving me feeling discouraged, frustrated, and even hopeless.  I didn't believe I could heal because nothing was working.

Today, we focus on Factor One: Lack Of Right Order in Knowledge and Practices

Have you done this?

- Watched a lot of youtubes by various coaches and therapists trying to piece together what is happening and what to do about it, only to feel more confused, flooded, and unsure what to do?
- Read alot of books with various perspectives and takes on things in hopes of trying to find a magic solution to your pain, only to find you're still feeling lost and overwhelmed?
- Try to piece together a collage of knowledge in hopes it will paint a path forward (aka try to do it on your own), only to keep failing?

This is the impact of having no guided structure in your knowledge and practices.

This leads to burn out, confusion, and giving up (that's what I did. I gave up for a long time).

Right order of knowledge and practices is crucial to helping your body and mind evolve out of codependency (or make any advanced change in your life). 

How do you know you have your knowledge and practices in the right order? 

Learn what these are in today's episode!

***

The Annual Enrollment for the Codependency Healing System is OPEN.  We're accepting 75 individuals on this 9-month live training journey in nurturing and increasing our individual and communal safety, connection, and individual worth.

Students will leave this journey knowing how to:

- Create and nurture emotional safety, relationship safety, and physical safety
- Identify and connect with compatible, safe, healthy people
- Recognize, understand, trust, and follow their own voice
- Identify, connect to, and embody their real worth
- Recognize and embody their personal power
- Heal their pain through reduction and resolution practices
- Increase their confidence and worth through orienting to their innate value
- Communicate clearly and understand others more deeply
- Create and execute boundaries that foster connection and well-being
- Soothe pain and anxiety
- Increase peace, rest, and safety

Here are the details:

Enrollment closes August 12, 2023.  THIS IS THE LAST DAY YOU CAN ENROLL FOR 2023.

Class starts Monday, August 14, 2023.

Class ends Monday, May 20, 2024

Live Class Time: 11am Mountain Time

Recordings: Released at 6pm Mountain Time

Support Calls: Tuesdays at 5-7pm and Thursdays 10-12pm Mountain Time

Practice Calls: Sundays 7pm Mountain Time two times a month

Investment:

You must have a membership to attend these classes. 

Lifetime Membership with 6 Months Personal, Private Support from Marshall: $2000 (comes with 6 months private support access to Marshall, along with the Self-trust Course, Indomitable Worth System, and the Breakthrough Sessions - $3500 value)

Lifetime Membership $1500 (includes the Self-trust Course, Indomitable Worth System, and the Breakthrough Sessions - $2500 value)

Annual Membership: $997 (includes the Self-Trust Course - $997 value)

Monthly Membership: $125 (hardship/income aware pricing is available for this.  Contact us with your situation and we'll get you options)

75 students total for 2023 will be admitted.

Where you can sign up: https://chs.freetheself.com

Seeing this in the future? Get on the wait list: https://chs.freetheself.com

It's been called "idealizing others" or "putting them on a pedastal". This is where a person perceives another to be much better than they are, including being perfect, being "the one", or having some kind of special meaning.  These are positive illusions

This habit comes from the young parts of ourselves that idealized parents, peers, and authorities.  This happens as a way to try to create safety and comfort anxiety, as well as eliminate doubt or uncertainty the child doesn't know how to navigate.  

In trauma bonding, this is doing excessively about a person's partner, creating massive illusions and disillusions in the relationship.

This is how we learned to navigate the lack of safe people in our lives - we created illusions of them.

This also leads us to giving them a lot of influence, power, and responsibility over us.  Often, we tend to look to people we've idealized for all the solutions and answers to our personal problems and challenges.  We look to be rescued.  And when they show up as the human being they are, we feel betrayed, dismayed, shocked, and disillusioned.

Often, that person hasn't done anything actually harmful or abusive.  In one experience from my life, the person had said no to me.  And that shocked me deeply.  Another person turned out they didn't like what I did.  

So, what do we do when this is happening?

1) Recognize and acknowledge to yourself that you may be idealizing someone, especially if you make them out to be perfect, flawless, or ignore their humanity in some way

2) Notice how your body feels around them.  Is there euphoria?  Do you feel swamped with admiration or affection?  Do you find yourself pushing away things that bother you or feel uncomfortable?  

3) Notice what expectations you are putting on them.  Are you expecting them to act a certain way?  Are you imagining them being or doing things a certain way?

4) Notice what fantasies are present.  Do this person bring you some kind of rescue?  Are they "the one" you've been looking for?  Are you finally going to get or have a specific result because they're in your life?

5) Notice if you're seeing them as a human being with limits, challenges, and a life of their own.  Often in idealization, we do not acknowledge that the other person is literally just a human being like ourselves.  

6) Begin to normalize the person by identifying with them as a fellow human being. See their limits.  Acknowledge things you may not like about them.  Acknowledge that they have no responsibility to your expectations or fantasies about them.  Start to visualize them as an equal to you.  You two are both human beings.  No more, no less.

7) Process your feelings of disappointment or hurt with a therapist or qualified mentor.  This will help you to start seeing others and yourself more objectively and realistically.

This starts the process of becoming more sober and connected with reality. Doing so empowers your ability to heal, to choose better relationships, and discover your own well-being and fulfillment.

***

The Annual Enrollment for the Codependency Healing System is OPEN.  We're accepting 75 individuals on this 9-month live training journey in nurturing and increasing our individual and communal safety, connection, and individual worth.

Students will leave this journey knowing how to:

- Create and nurture emotional safety, relationship safety, and physical safety
- Identify and connect with compatible, safe, healthy people
- Recognize, understand, trust, and follow their own voice
- Identify, connect to, and embody their real worth
- Recognize and embody their personal power
- Heal their pain through reduction and resolution practices
- Increase their confidence and worth

 These two commitments assist you in staying free of codependency impulses and help you orient back to your well-being. 
*** 
Workshop link: https://workshop.freetheself.com 

Codependency Healing System: https://chs.freetheself.com