Thrive the Podcast
Thrive the Podcast
Always Done Never Enough
Unlocking Trauma Healing & Nervous System Wisdom: A Conversation with Erica Bonham | Thrive the Podcast
In this empowering episode of Thrive the Podcast, host Rebecca welcomes distinguished guest Erica Bonham—certified somatic and attachment-focused EMDR clinician, ketamine-assisted psychotherapist, licensed professional counselor, and bestselling author of “Always Enough, Never Done.” Erica is respected nationwide for her expertise in trauma recovery, abuse healing, nervous system regulation, and her compassionate support of the LGBTQ+ community. She’s a sought-after speaker, creator of leading online courses, and a pioneer in the fields of somatic therapy and collective healing.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- How somatic EMDR and body-based modalities heal trauma at a deeper level
- The science and wisdom of the vagus nerve and nervous system regulation
- The role of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy in integrating therapeutic breakthroughs
- Strategies for breaking cycles of people-pleasing, perfectionism, and never-enoughness
- Understanding ancestral and intergenerational trauma—and why it matters today
- How collective and community-based healing create lasting change
- Practical exercises for self-worth, embodiment, and transformation
Erica and Rebecca explore the intersection of social justice, ancestral healing, and neuroscience. Drawing from “Always Enough, Never Done,” they discuss how to move from intellectualizing pain to embodied wisdom, why curiosity and self-compassion are crucial for transformation, and how healing is both a personal and collective journey.
Listeners passionate about trauma recovery, nervous system health, LGBTQ+ mental health, ketamine therapy, or breaking cycles of burnout and self-judgment will find actionable insights and deep reassurance here.
About Erica:
In a world that often prioritizes perfectionism and binary thinking, Erica Bonham brings a both/and approach to healing—blending deep clinical insight with joy, nuance, and sometimes difficult truth. She’s passionate about walking folks through the messy, beautiful process of remembering our true nature: that we are always and already enough, lovable, worthy, and interconnected—and, we all have work to do.
Whether leading workshops, delivering keynotes, or working one-on-one, Erica offers a grounded, humorous, and heartfelt style that invites both personal growth and collective evolution.
She is a certified somatic and attachment-focused EMDR clinician and trainer, Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapist, nervous system regulation and wisdom coach, and Licensed Professional Counselor in Colorado. She specializes in serving the LGBTQ+ community, abuse recovery, and trauma rooted in systemic injustice and spiritual harm.
Erica is a nationally sought-after speaker, creator of multiple online courses, and the author of the bestselling book Always Enough, Never Done—a guide to healing your nervous system, transforming wounds into wisdom, and living a bold, empowered life. She’s committed to reimaging a world rooted in beauty, equity, nonviolence, compassion, and collective liberation.
LINKS:
Download Erica's FREE polyvagal handout with links videos of powerful nervous system regulation exercises and a bonus of 6 guided meditations:
https://www.avoscounseling.com/freebie
Check out her book, workbook, and coaching packages here: (If you order from her website, you can still get a free limited-edition signed copy:-)
https://www.avoscounseling.com/coaching-packages
Featured Topics: Trauma-informed therapy, EMDR, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, polyvagal theory, nervous system regulation,
are you ready to thrive as a trauma therapist author yoga instructor and healed human i personally and professionally know what it means to live stuck in survival mode i've learned a few things in my healing journey and my career that can help you transform into your best self Join me, Rebecca Case, as I use neuroscience, psychology, spirituality, and personal experience to help you find the tools and techniques to thrive. Hello there, Thrivers. Today, I have a very special guest, Erica Bonham. Erica is a certified somatic and attachment-focused EMDR clinician and trainer. She's a ketamine-assisted psychotherapist, a nervous system regulation and wisdom coach, and a licensed professional counselor in Colorado. Erica specializes in serving the LGBTQ plus community, working with abuse recovery and trauma rooted in systemic injustice and spiritual harm. She is a nationally sought after speaker, creator of multiple online courses, and the author of the bestselling book, Always Enough, Never Done, which is a fabulous book, which we talk a bit about in our podcast today, and I highly recommend you check it out. It's a guide to healing your nervous system, transforming wounds into wisdom, and living a bold, empowered life. She's committed to reimagining a world rooted in beauty, equity, nonviolence, compassion, and collective liberation. In our podcast today, we talk about all kinds of things from self-worth to nervous system regulation to intergenerational trauma. There's some woo, there's some science, there's a little bit of everything to bring some levity to your day and a dose of wisdom. I hope that you enjoy this podcast as much as I enjoyed my conversation with Erica. And I hope that you take away some new insights to apply to your life and thrive. Are you ready to unlock your body's hidden potential for healing and connection? Discover the power of your nervous system and the incredible role of the vagus nerve in my new book, The Polyvagal Solution, coming May 1st, 2025 from New Harbinger. In The Polyvagal Solution, you'll explore how the vagus nerve, the key player in polyvagal theory, guides your emotional regulation and transforms stress into strength. This isn't just another self-help guide. It's a practical roadmap grounded in cutting-edge science and real-world strategies. Whether you're recovering from trauma or simply seeking balance, this book offers actionable exercises and insights that help you harness the power of your vagus nerve to reclaim your inner calm. Get your copy now wherever you like to buy your books. The Polyvagal Solution, because your body and especially your vagus nerve hold the key to transformation. Welcome back to Thrive the Podcast, everyone. I am so excited to share my friend, colleague, and guest today, Erica Bonham. So let's talk about Erica Bottoms badassery for a moment. So Erica is a licensed professional counselor. So she's a therapist, a speaker, a trainer, and truly an all around badass. She brings heart, wisdom, and a fierce commitment to justice and everything she does. I've known Erica for years and she really embodies everything she talks about. She walks the walk, talks the talk. She's also an EMDR therapist, certified yoga instructor, and a lifelong advocate for change. Her work blends psychology, somatics, and social justice, and she's known for holding space with deep empathy and powerful truth-telling. From HIV and AIDS education overseas, to teaching yoga in women's prisons, to leading trauma-informed healing spaces, To her recently published book, Always Enough, Never Done, Erica's work is rooted in compassion and liberation. She's a proud mom, a nature lover, and a firm believer that everyone deserves a joyful, vibrant life. Erica, welcome to our show. I'm super excited to be here with you.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks, Rebecca. I love that our paths, you know, interweave and come back together. I mean, back in our community mental health days, it's just really fun that we are evolving and Yeah, that our paths are weaving together. It's awesome. I love it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it is. So Erica and I first met years ago. I don't know, this was more than 10 years ago, maybe like 13, 15 years ago, working in community mental health together. And so here we are today getting to just cheerlead and watch each other's journeys and growth and progression. And Erica, I mean, you're doing some amazing stuff these days. Can you tell a little bit about what all you got your hands into in addition to this amazing book that I know has a part two coming as well?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, the book is my, is my baby. It's, it feels, I always, I keep saying, it feels like I've birthed a third, a third baby. But it really felt, you know, for me, whatever this means to folks kind of divinely inspired, right? Like the universe wanted this book to come through me. Um, and sometimes my projects feel forced, feel like I want them to happen and I make them happen. But this one felt like it just wanted to come through. So that felt really lovely. The writing was great. The editing is not my, it's not my jam.
UNKNOWN:Um,
SPEAKER_00:But I've read my book probably 50 times now and I'm like, okay, I like my book. There's some good stuff in here. And I try to bring some wisdom to it. So yeah, I love speaking about the book. I love being in places where I can get to talk about trauma recovery and what it means to go down and in, but also up and create new versions and identities of ourselves. But also I'm really passionate about talking around collective healing, like not just our individual work, not just our individual paths. And I'm really inspired that so many more people are thinking in that way, right? What does it mean to collectively heal? What does it mean to build communities? And I just, even though I feel the heaviness and the darkness right now, I also feel like there's this big turning I don't know if you get that, you know, that there's this big awakening and movement towards collective recovery. And I have hope about that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it is something to feel hopeful about when there's growing awareness of how stress impacts us, what trauma is, and growing desire to find answers and solutions to heal. So can you share just a little bit about what inspired you to write the book? And also maybe this first, what is the book really about for listeners?
SPEAKER_00:I feel like I cover a lot of ground, which is why I ended up having to split it up into two books because I I was writing it in sections, and when I finally put it all together, I realized I had a 600-page book. And that is just too much. It's just too much to digest. Nobody can read a 600-page book about trauma. We'll have to leave that to the fantasy novelists. But it's really about both our individual paths of what it means, what I call descending path work, which is what we might think of as EMDR and going toward and through trauma, down and in, the digestion work, the going toward the pain work, and then the more ascending path. What does it mean to actually move beyond self-affirmationing ourselves to death, just neurotically repeating, I am enough, I am enough? What does it actually mean to embody a more positive view of ourselves that can still hold the brutality of what it means to be human, and really have capacity for joy and beauty, because that really becomes underdeveloped when our systems are organized around trauma, right, as you know. And so I really wanted to provide people with a lot of somatic options. So the whole second section is just tons and tons of somatic work, polyvagal exercises, And then I have a little handout that goes with the book that leads you to YouTube videos of me actually teaching what those look like with your body. So I really wanted to move beyond the cognitive learning, beyond the knowing intellectually, and have people just invite a more somatic embodiment, a deeper knowing, an intuitive knowing, a heart-centered knowing, because I think that's just necessary for our healing, our evolution. We're such a think-heavy society that I really wanted to offer something deeper than that. And then volume two is really gonna be more about how that work translates into relationships and translates into the larger collective. So I touch a little bit on ancestral trauma in volume one, but I'm really gonna dig into that. I was really bummed that I had to split it up into two at first, but now I sort of trust that the universe had a hand in that because we are in a very different place collectively right now than when I wrote the book. And I think there's actually a lot more to dig into and a lot more to say, a lot more that I want to be mindful of in terms of oppression and what that looks like. when it lands on the body and when it lands on our collective nervous system. So I'm actually grateful that it's not out yet because it's an opportunity to get it even more, even more wisdom in there than pre-2020 or pre-2024. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Society politics has given you a lot of material to work with.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. It is fodder, fodder for art. It's a good time for arts, comedy. and writing books about collective trauma. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:So tell us a little bit about your own journey into the world of somatic work and embodiment. And I mean, I fully, completely, you know me, 150% agree. Like we've been such a think your way through it, affirm your way through it, suck it up buttercup. Historically, it comes from white supremacy, patriarchal constructs that have shaped our society, and even the field of counseling, right? I mean, the field of counseling was really born out of kind of white men saying, this is how we should treat people, right? And I'm not saying that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's not that all that stuff is unhelpful, but it's important for us to understand the cultural lineage from which an industry, a profession emerged, right? And who hasn't been at the table. So tell me about your own journey of when you really started leaning into, oh my gosh, there's this whole other space we're not visiting in the counseling field. Because I know at least when you and I went through grad school, like it wasn't talked about a whole lot. It was this little woo woo. And yeah. So tell us about your journey to this place of embodied wisdom.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, I think, you know, I went into it. Let's start with EMDR. I went into an EMDR training. with lots of skepticism. I was at our community mental health center. I had the opportunity to get trained for a discounted rate. And I was like, oh, this, this woo woo crap. And then I had a really powerful experience in the training. And so I was like, okay, there's something to this. And so I, I did a lot of EMDR as a client and that was sort of good, but then I hit a plateau with that. And I, I, And then I became a trainer in somatic and attachment EMDR and that deepened it. But it was, you know, and I was preaching like slow is fast, bring in the body, but I don't know that I really got it. And so I think I was a thinker. One of my parts, right, is the intellectualizing part is that I'm going to figure this out part is that I'm going to be really smart and think my way through this part because that's, You know, it was helpful. And then it took me as far as it could. I kept hitting a wall. I kept hitting a wall. I kept getting stuck. And so, you know, I found an IFS person, an IFS EMDR person, and then a somatic person to work with. And then really what deepened it even more for me was actually ketamine assisted psychotherapy. And that type of work you know, the best that I can say is sometimes the wounding is without words and therefore the healing is without words. And I was able to get to not just parts of my body, but part like that, you know, I'm an adopted kiddo. So, you know, medicine work was able to allow me to actually get her in a way that felt very embodied and, and it, and, I think medicine allowed my thinking, allowed that procedural neurological network that was so fused together of staying in the thinking, staying in the figuring it out, staying in the need to know everything. And it allowed it to soften so that I could actually get to a heart-centered place, that I could actually get to a bones-deep place with it. And then I got it. You know, I was like, oh, this is a game changer to actually get to a bones deep level, to a without words level beyond the cognitive level. And you get the shifts that you have been wanting. You're like, oh, okay. Okay. I've been preaching this for 10 years, but I get it now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Thank you for sharing your journey. And as someone, and I've shared this briefly on the podcast, we'll do a whole deep dive into this, but has also done ketamine-assisted therapy. I personally found it to be like a game changer really quick. And I also, like you, I've done all the things, EMDR, talk therapy, somatic therapy, yoga therapy, Reiki, massage, acupuncture, like you name it. I've probably... tried it and for me like a difference that came after I I mean just my first session of ketamine it was like somebody turned off the news in my head that like you were saying like stuck in my head ruminating can't like I'm using all the skills I've written books on this and I can't totally get my biology to work and it was like for me anyway all of a sudden after just one session the skills just really had a huge effect because I could like downshift in my head. Totally.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it was like, and I don't want to say, oh, you just put this medicine in your body and everything is going to be fine, right? The work that I had done is necessary. It's just that the medicine allowed that to go click, click, click, click, click in a deeper way. And so we don't want to toss the work out. The work is necessary. Um, but I think we get in our own way with the thinking, but it's, you know, it's not all our fault. We are, we're swimming in the soup of it. We're indoctrinated in it. We get, we get reinforced for it. Like, oh, you're so smart. You have blah, blah, blah. You're, you can really figure things out. And it's, it just as with most things, there's a strength to it. There's a light side of it. There's a beauty in it and it becomes a block. And it's still, it's, It's still an unlearning of thinking and trying to figure it out and trying to think our way through things. I think that's going to be a lifelong navigation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. And so I think something so important for our listeners to hear here is that we're not saying that ketamine is just going to fix it all and you can just bypass all the other work. Ketamine can be used as a complementary... Therapy, in addition to the other therapies that you're engaged in and does, I love that analogy you just used of like click, click, click, click, click. It's like all your neural networks kind of sync up and it makes the work that you have already done, that you are doing, that you are immersed in really click. And an important piece, I believe, to ketamine therapy is the integration piece. Right. Not just like, I'm just going to go into a clinic, get infused and like, peace out. I never talked to a therapist to have the insights and pull it all together. Like that, that reflection, that insight work is really where we get the adaptive insights. I think that help us to make lasting, sustainable change.
SPEAKER_00:And I always tell, cause I know I'm a ketamine assisted psychotherapist and I always, I always invite clients, like be very mindful of about what it is that you are doing in the next 24 to 72 hours after a journey, because you have huge neuroplasticity. And if people are just going into a clinic and, you know, and then just doing the same old thing, you're actually reinforcing those same neurological patterns because you've got this huge neuroplasticity online and they're actually going to fuse those patterns together even more. So what I say to people is like, be very mindful of social media, be very mindful of what you're consuming in the next 24 to 72 hours. What do you want to create more of? Do you want to move your body in a loving way more? Do you want to spend more time in nature? What feels important collectively? It doesn't all have to be like fun and easy and bubble bath. So there might be a difficult conversation that you actually have more access to that. that might be important. Or you can go toward a trauma that you haven't actually, you know, been able to get to before. So what do you actually want to create? What neurological patterns do you want to invite? And if people are just reinforcing the same old patterns, then we're actually strengthening the stuff that we want to shift.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Such an important piece, especially when we talk about thriving and we're looking to build new habits, new lifestyle habits that collectively add up to living a good life. And neuroplasticity is such an important piece of that because yeah, in the beginning, when you try and try a new habit, it's work, it's effort. It's easy to forget. Like it's easy to, lose track of or not engage in. But the piece of building new habits is the repetition and sleep is also very important. Two pieces to neuroplasticity is like the repetition, the actual learning, the practice, and then the sleep that kind of helps like dry the cement, right? Like really bake those neural networks in. So, and this is such an important piece of ketamine therapy is that like my practitioner explained, it's like we're sprinkling your brain and neuroplasticity like fertilizer, right? Making it and afterwards be so mindful because you're like as influential as a toddler, your neural network. So don't, I think she actually told me, don't watch anything that you wouldn't want like a four-year-old to see. I love that. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we have to be so mindful. So in your book, Always Enough, Never Done, I know you said this is going to be coming more in part two, but I was curious because you have a section about ancestral trauma and the trauma of systemic oppression. And I was so grateful to see this in here because I feel like generational trauma, ancestral trauma is circulating out there in the social media world. And I think we're all becoming aware of like, oh, we all have intergenerational trauma because we've all been baked in the soup of the past, right? It's all been passed down. to us in like big and small ways. Could you maybe just give a little overview for folks of like, what is ancestral intergenerational trauma and how does it muck us up?
SPEAKER_00:Well, first I want to just give reverence to people like Resmaa Manukam who really brought this into the ether. And he of course stands on, I think indigenous people, people of color have probably had this awareness of uh, much more than us white folks have. Um, and so I think it's important that we name that this has been in indigenous wisdom and, and likely in people of color wisdom to some degree. And now as white folks are starting to like pay attention and catch on. So I think we want to have to just give reverence to the wisdom that, that that stands on. Resmaa talks about like, listen, the white bodied folks that came over here, our ancestors that came over to this country were coming over here from very brutalizing situations, right? They were fleeing. Yeah. Coming over here on the carnival cruise line, like excited and, you know, they were, it was, they were coming from brutalizing, rape, pillaging situations. And that trauma never got dealt with. And then we, you know, in the trauma triangle, he doesn't really talk about this, but I sort of extrapolated his work into this, you know, thinking about the trauma triangle, right? Of like, of persecutor or perpetrator, martyr and victim, right? And in white body, broad brush collective culture, we certainly projected all that trauma in a perpetration way onto bodies of color. Then you see the like white savior shit, of the whole rescuer martyry shit. And then of course, you've got the white fragility victimization, right? And we see that a lot in big ways now. It's like, I'm the victim here, blah, blah, blah. And so if you think about ancestral trauma, that trauma never got dealt with and decontextualized over time. We also see things in the ethos like optics, perfectionism, that whole pull yourself up by the bootstraps thing, productivity at all costs, urgency. uh, you know, busyness hustle. I'll sleep when I'm dead. Exactly. Yeah. Just noticing how, if you were looking at that in an, in a person in an adapt, like through the adaptive lens and you were just to have some curiosity, like, okay, here's this, this person, I can see it in my own body, perfectionism, urgency, et cetera. And what's the wound underneath that. is not enoughness. There's a wound underneath that. And then collectively we haven't dealt with. Now we also have to deal with the trauma related to persecution. And I certainly wanna make it very clear that I'm not saying that white body trauma is the same as, et cetera, as bodies of color, right? That's a very different and it's mixed and it's nuanced, but to understand the root of that as wounding And then to really dig into our own accountability and our own resiliency, then we are into some magical shit, right? Then we can start to really start heal. And that's why it's so important that it's always enough, right? If I had my druthers and if it were marketable, the full title of the book would be, you are always and already enough, lovable, worthy and inextricably connected to every other living thing on this planet, just as you are. And you've got work to do. We've got shadow. We've got shit to deal with. And so when we're thinking about ancestral trauma, we're thinking about, yes, the trauma and the wounding, but also how that manifested in the persecution and where we have caused harm. even if we have not intentionally caused harm, how have, how do we still carry that in our systems? And of course we also want to hold that we have resiliency, that we have ancestral beauty, that we have ancestral, you know, that we have ancestral gifts. And so even, you know, I think for a lot of white folks that I work with, they're like, oh, but my ancestors owned slaves, my ancestors, like, We're part of the problem. My ancestors were super racist. Okay, well, keep going back, right? Like, you know, we all were at some point connected to the earth. And if you really want to get woo, our ancestors are water. Our ancestors are the earth, right? Our ancestors are just life on the planet. And so... you know, go back, keep going back, keep going back. And how do we just feel that that just is a felt sense. It's not like we have content. Now, some of us have family lineage that we can know the stories, right? We can know what we might carry generationally, but we can also just look at culturally, just as you notice, just a felt sense of, When you notice something, when you just notice what has happened in the last 14 generations, because we can carry that much in our system. When you just notice what has happened in 14 generations, what do you notice? And it's not going to be cognitive. It's not going to even have words, most likely. It's just going to be this felt sense in the body, a heaviness, a freneticness. a fear, a rage, a bracing, a constriction. You know, it shows up in that way because it's not in the content. It's like pre-verbal trauma, right? And we don't have the semantic memory. We don't have the cognitive words, but our bodies remember. And it's deep and it's been here a long time.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm. Thank you for that. The word that's coming to my mind that I think is so important in this work is curiosity, right? Like you said, how can I kind of go back and think back and what happens before that and what happens before that and what happened before that collectively, individually? And how can I be curious about, well, how does that shape my present day experience, my lived experience? How does that shape how other people interact with me and how I interact with others. How does that shape my understanding of the world? Because it's so easy for us to get stuck in our bubbles and think that we're just like this individual and we're not easily influenced and the past is the past, the present is the present. But it's like, no, like you are born from this cosmic soup of so, so many things that have happened. And while you don't remember everything this thing that your ancestor went through in 1654, right? Like, how has that been passed down through centuries, right? And how is it shaping your lived experience for better or worse, right? I think that's where we can also reflect on what are the adaptive messages I have gained from my ancestors, from... from this lineage I come from of warriors and people who have persevered and who have overcome, you know, what is adaptive and useful. And then what is maybe really mucking me up. And like you said, like pre-verbal trauma, pre-verbal trauma, we, We don't have words for because it's outside of our declarative memory. So for folks listening, you're like, what are they talking about? Our explicit declarative memory tends to start like around four to seven years old. So when you think back on like what's your earliest childhood memory, it's highly unlikely that you would say my birth. I concretely remember that. I have images. I remember the color of the room and all these things, right? because before four years old, you just have implicit memory. And so implicit memory is felt sense memory. So pre-verbal trauma gets stored pre-verbally implicitly without that. Like I remember when I was one and I was wearing a, I had a blue blanket and my grandma came in and said this to me, like, we don't have that. And so Ancestral, intergenerational trauma can get stored in the same way where we don't have the actual explicit language for it. But like Erica saying, our bodies hold on to it and it shows up and how it shapes our psyche and what we perceive to be dangerous that maybe we actually don't have direct experience with something being dangerous. But back years ago, someone else in our ancestral line did, right? And so it gets so complex and nuanced,
SPEAKER_00:right? Yep. Yep, totally. And I love the curiosity. And I think the reason that that always and already enough is so important is because when we are looking at shadow, we can go very quickly into shame and then we can go very quickly into defensiveness. And so if we can bring curiosity and just the sense of like, hey, you are... still whole ish right you are you are still always and already enough and lovable and from that place we can pull back the veils of the shadowy stuff both collectively what it means to be walking around in a white body right now what it means to be walking around in a body of color right now and just noticing even as i invite you into that question What do you notice in your body, right? Is there a, ooh, like, oh, I don't want to do that. It's this constriction of like, no, you know, and it can bring up rage or it can bring up fear. And so before I, you know, before we even try to talk about content, can you just notice what happens in your nervous system, in your body? your felt sense energy just at the invitation of noticing how that might be showing up in a way that might not be so pretty that the ability to look at our shadow without shame but still with honesty and self-reflection and accountability requires us to have curiosity and compassion and to Dip our toes into the waters of always and already enough, lovable, worthy, and inextricably connected. Because that's going to allow us the spaciousness to know that our shadowy shit is not all of who we are. But it's important to look at.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. If we don't look at it, it'll, it's going to pop out. It's going to permeate and leak all over stuff. And we all have shadowy shit. All of us.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's right. And I say, even the most people pleasing, nicey, nice, polite white lady says yes to every bake sale at the PTA is going to cause harm. If you do not look at yourself because you will, you're in that. I promise you there is resentment starting to percolate. underneath every yes that needs to be a no. You are going to blame. You're going to look for ways to be hurt. You're going to say shit like, oh, are you resting? Isn't that nice for you? It's going to leak out and you're going to cause harm. And I think a lot of people who want to be quote unquote good people looking at the shadow bumps up against that identity. And so we, yes, we can be always and already enough lovable, worthy and connected. And we still need to look at the parts of us that have caused harm. Even if we're the most over-responsibility, people-pleasing, yes, polite, nicey-nice person on the planet, that is a trauma response and there is a wound underneath it and it will come out somewhere.
SPEAKER_01:And when you talk about causing harm, is that, are you specifically talking about causing harm to others or is it also about ways that we harm ourselves? Same, both. Yes, I think that's really important, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Of course, yeah. I mean, a lot of the people pleasers, yeah, of course, that starts with self-criticism, with self-harm, with self-beratement, with perfectionism, with never enoughness, for sure. But even though I tend to work with people that do go in, you know, that go in first to cause harm, it will leak out somewhere. It will leak out somewhere. And that I think for those of us that consider ourselves empaths that don't want to cause harm, you know, that that might actually be more motivation, at least to start like, oh, I don't want to cause harm to my kids. I don't want to cause harm to my partner. I don't want to cause harm to my community. I better look at this shit. Fine. But you're probably causing harm to yourself.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the self-loathing, the self-deprecating, the telling yourself, I mean, the example you gave of like the person who always says yes, right? And starts to develop the sense of resentment. I thought that was just such a great example of how this creates a snowball, right? Of all of a sudden, I'm saying yes to all these things. So where did that message even come from for you of like, you always have to say yes? Was that passed down in your family? Is that a trauma response? Is that a fawning response? Is that, gendered response, right? Is that a culturally based response? Be curious about where did that come from and how is that serving me and how is it helping me? Like, do you truly want to be the person that everybody knows? Oh, you know what? Ask Debbie because she'll always say yes. And then all of a sudden, Debbie starts becoming the scapegoat and the person who gets dealt all the things that Debbie, like, I don't want to do this shit. This does not sound fun. I would like to take a weekend off and not make all those cupcakes for the bake sale, right? It robs you of your time and energy. Then Debbie starts to feel like she's not enough. Debbie starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? And then Debbie passes that on to her children who see like, oh, I'm supposed to always say yes at the sacrifice of my own time and sanity.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And I think you brought up a great point, like not only just curiosity, like how is this serving me? Because I think whenever we want to shift something, so a lot of people, you know, boundaries are a hot topic these days, right? Set the boundaries, just say no, blah, blah, blah. And whenever we're wanting to shift a pattern, I think the tendency is to go at it, you know, like try to effort and effort to go to something different. Just set the boundaries, Debbie, just, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I actually think in order to really shift it, in a bottom up way, you actually have to go toward it with curiosity and rest and spaciousness and compassion. And to really like, like lean back with like an open willing hands and to be like, okay, people, please are part. How were you trying to protect me? What is underneath it? And see how I'm just slowing the cadence of my voice down. Like, I see you, honey. And it's not even just the words. It's not the cognitive way in which you're greeting that. It's a heart-centered like, yep, that was something we had to do. It wasn't even a choice. It was just this procedural thing that society helped us learn, that we got reinforced for. People love that shit when you say yes to the bake sale. It was adaptive. And what's underneath it? And how do we go toward and through that? And then it naturally starts to soften. It might still take some discomfort. But if we come at the parts of us that we want to change, they're only going to get bigger, right? They're only going to like, no, I've kept you safe and alive and connected for all your life. Don't get rid of me. And it's like, yep, you've done a really good job. People please their part. And we're not kicking you off the island, but we are going to shift some patterns for you. Yeah, we're going to find another way. Yeah, we're going to find another way. And I love you. And you're here. And it's not like we want to get rid of our compassionate heart. We want to still attend to our community and our relationships. but in a more reciprocal way. And in a way that is giving and receiving love freely rather than from this place of scarcity. And that's healthier for everyone involved. That's the kindest thing for the community is to pull out of that martyry energy a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So for our listeners who are maybe thinking about, okay, how do I really get curious? And then how do I do these things? Erica just went through that. It's no thing. And Erica is obviously an expert in this. And this is something I think is so awesome about your book is it's full of like, here's how you do the work, right? It's full of specific techniques alongside digestible, relatable education from attachment styles to... understanding your nervous system to understanding core concepts of mindfulness. You have a whole chapter about shame and guilt. I mean, you go really deep here, but I think a beautiful thing that you do is you're not just, you're giving the cognitive information so people's brains can create context, right? And then you're coming in alongside and saying, and here are tools.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Yeah. And I hope an invitation too, to bring that cognitive information down into a deeper level, right? So like, how do we integrate that from a heart centered place, from a bones deep place, from a spiritual place, again, whatever that means to you, from an intuitive place, from a collective place. So yeah, so thank you for those kind words. I hope that that's what I've provided for people for sure is digestible, takeaways.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you definitely have because I think that there are so many books out there self-help related and mindset focused that get really heady and I think in and of themselves can sometimes trigger those feelings of shame and guilt like I'm not enough because they're saying like do this thing like I remember a book I was reading not too long ago and it was like they gave an amazing analogy for kind of a mental toughness approach. Like how do you create like a Teflon mind, which is a component of mindfulness, right? And I thought that the way she described like this concept was great, but it was like, just go do that. It's like, well, it's not that easy. If we could just be like, okay, Teflon minds, like nonstick mind, I don't want anything sticking to my brain that doesn't help me. Like if I could just do that, I would just do it. And so that's what I love about your book is it really gives the tools to to come in alongside the knowledge so people can actually start to experience the shifts and change. Now, if people wanted to check you out, follow you, like work with you deeper, where do they find you, Erica?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So you, I mean, you can follow me on the socials. I'm still on those things, unfortunately. I'm trying to stay in the beauty of it, of connection and offering little tidbits of service. Um, so Instagram is at Avos counseling. Um, AVOS Facebook is the same thing at Avos counseling. And then my website is just Avos counseling.com. And then the book is always enough, never done.com. And that'll actually just lead you to the website as well. Um, Yeah. Do we have time to just talk about mindset just a little bit? Oh, I'd love to. Give us some tips on mindset, please. Yeah. Okay. So I want to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. And I think that a lot of mindset folks are misguided and not trauma-informed. And so I think if we're just saying, just change your mindset, just change your mindset, then we're actually getting at a very cognitive, top-down approach. So I actually think, you know, we have to do some of that digestion descending path work of going toward the parts of us that believe you're not enough or that you're bad or that you're a piece of shit or that you're unworthy. And instead of going, you know, the, you know, neurotically repeating, like I am enough. I am worthy. I am like, I'm just changing my mindset. Am I doing it yet? You know, it's like, okay. What about just some spaciousness, some loving awareness, some curiosity, and some breath for the part of you that believes that you are not enough? Because that was actually also adaptive. If you are not enough, then you could do something to change it. I know, I'll become a therapist and I'll help everybody else and I'll track everybody else and I'll give them what they need and I'll give them what they want. So that actually has its own adaptive qualities. you know, going toward and through using discernment that you're not stewing in your own shit, but you're actually digesting and processing the emotions and the body sensations that are related to that negative belief. And like reclaiming her and like, I love you, baby. I got you. We had to believe that we're going to help you set that burden down. And then maybe we start to be able to have a little bit more room for, hmm, Maybe I am enough as I am. Or maybe you start with some neutrality, right? And you start, rather than neurotically repeating self-affirmations and like just change your mindset, which can really feel kind of gaslighty and spiritually bypassy a little bit. But you can hold a both and practice of like, listen, there's parts of me that don't quite believe this yet. And I can hold a larger wisdom and consciousness of I am a human being and I can point my feet in the direction of wisdom and love and reciprocity and collective healing, even if there are parts of me that haven't caught up to that yet. And it's deeper than mindset, right? It's a bones deep practice. And so I invite mindset coaches and mindset folks to to just widen the lens a little bit and to have more of a both and practice, you know, and as much as I shit talk CBT and mindset, like there's room for it, but it's actually much more powerful if you're doing some digestion work, some deeper work, trauma work first.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Thank you for saying all that. And I completely agree. And kind of my perspective on it is that mindset work is good, but it's not the entry. Mindset work works when you've done the foundational work first, right? Because like you said, you can say all the affirmations until you're blue in the face, but if you haven't worked through the nervous system, sticky points and the somatic sticky points and the trauma that's wrapped up and the part of you that says, I'm not worthy, I'm not enough. just saying those affirmations is not going to create neuroplasticity for that to really change. But if you do that foundational work first, and then you work on maybe affirmations, since we're saying that, it will have a more powerful lasting effect because you worked on the root of the wound. Otherwise, you're just kind of bypassing Right. Like the real issue. And it leaves, I love that you said it's like gaslighting because yeah, I think it people leaves people being like, well, why can't I just do what this coach says? Or why don't the affirmation? It must be something wrong with me. I'm not enough.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. And it's emergent, right? It's not even a linear, like do this first, then this, because you might actually need to do a little thought work or you could actually do the trauma work. Right. And then you do some self-affirmation. You're like, okay, I can believe this a little bit. And then you might hit another layer of the trauma or a layer of the block. And so it is, and this is why the book is like never done. It's an emergent process. It's a kaleidoscope and it is continuously emerging and composting and shifting. And it's not an arriving. There is no arriving at healed land, right? Does not exist. And the second we actually think we are done, whether that be with our racism work or internalized body image shit or whatever, the second we think we are done is the second we cause harm to ourselves or someone else. And so we have to still be willing to be in emergence and to be continuously, not working on ourselves, right? But like just continuously open And in continuous emergence.
SPEAKER_01:Curiosity and practice.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. And compassion
SPEAKER_01:and like a little fun,
SPEAKER_00:right? Like have fun too. Like don't take it all so seriously. We're also here to just experience the chocolate cake and swimming in the ocean as well, right? We are here to also have a good time a
SPEAKER_01:little bit. Yes, absolutely. Well, Erica, thank you so much for all of this wisdom and just for writing this book. Thank you for writing this. So again, everyone, always enough, never done. Check it out. Full of amazing techniques to really help you live a good life and thrive. And just thank you for embodying your work, Erica. I am always just so moved and inspired every time we have a conversation. So
SPEAKER_00:thank you. Thank you for the work that you do. You just are a light in the world, my dear. I appreciate it so much.
SPEAKER_01:Ditto. All right, everyone. Until next time, we'll see you later. Bye-bye. Thank you for joining us on another episode Until next time, this is Rebecca Case signing off. Thrive on!