Welcome to the Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder. Our goal is to help you be your most healthy, confident, beautiful and joyful! Our topics focus on health and wellness (physical, emotional/mental and spiritual), holistic nutrition, medicinal plants, natural rhythms and cycles, beauty, meditation, self care and rituals, spirituality and personal empowerment.
Feeling Good means we are healthy, balanced, peaceful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of our perfectly imperfect lives. Feeling Good requires us to tune in and nourish our whole selves, which is made up of the four Solluna Cornerstones: our food, our bodies, our emotional well-being and our spiritual growth. Feeling good naturally leads to also looking good, in a much more powerful way from glowing skin created from within, a beautifully healthy body, radiant energy, and a greater level of overall well-being and personal growth.
Thursday is our community show, where I cover a themed topic and answer four questions that come right from members of our community, just like you! We are here to support you in living your most beautiful, inspired and joyful life.
I’m your host, Kimberly Snyder, founder of Solluna, New York Times best-selling author and nutritionist. I’m so grateful and honored we found each other!
This week’s topic is: Getting Over Emotional Barriers
Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out!
Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/
[Questions Answered]
Karen – El Paso, Texas
I’m not sure if I’m having brain-fog or if I’m having an emotional break-down? How can I know the difference and what can I do to avoid taking medications?
Lynn – Beverly, Massachusetts
At what point can we overcome not feeling worthy? I can’t seem to unblock myself from feeling “less than”. What would you suggest?
Stephanie – Magnolia Springs, Alabama
My attachment to food is out of control. While eating one food, I’m already thinking of the next food I can shove into my mouth. I know it’s emotional but don’t know where to start in eliminating what the cause is.
Beth – Surfside, Florida
Without going into details, I didn’t have the smoothest upbringing. I think this is why I talk to myself poorly – telling myself I’m not good enough. How can I clear these thoughts for good so I can actually start living and get over these blocks?
Inspirational Thought Of The Week
“Before embarking on important undertakings, sit quietly, calm your senses and thoughts, and meditate deeply. You will then be guided by the great creative power of spirit.” – Yogananda
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Want to know what to expect from other episodes of the “Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder”? My passion is to inspire and empower you to be your most authentic and beautiful self. We offer interviews with top experts, my personal philosophies and experiences, as well as answers to community-based questions around topics such as health, beauty, nutrition, yoga, spirituality and personal growth.
The intention of the Feel Good Podcast is to well…help you really Feel Good in your body, mind and spirit! Feeling Good means feeling peaceful, energized, whole, uniquely beautiful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of your perfectly imperfect life. This podcast is as informative and full of practical tips and take-aways as it is inspirational. I am here to support you in being your very best! I have so much love and gratitude for you. Thank you for tuning in and being part of the community :).
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[RESOURCES]
- Do You Really Need Medication?
- Tips for Dealing with Anxiety, Chronic Fatigue and Hormone Issues!
- Meditation Tips & Overcoming Anxiety!
- Holistic Skin Care With Tricia Trimble & Two Scientific Secrets for Happiness
- How to Stop Emotional Eating and Take Control of Your Health
- How To Stop Cravings, Once and For All!
- 10 Ways to Combat Depression and Anxiety Through Your Diet
- Probiotics
- Detoxy
- Digestive Enzymes
- Feel Good Starter Kit
- FREE Gift: 7-Day Meditation Series (DIGITAL COURSE)
- Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
- Be a part of the community Join the Feel Good Circle
- Four Cornerstones FREE PDF: Text the word: feelgood (833) 744-0079
Additional Resources in Transcripts
Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:
- Reducing Stress & Illness!
- A Good Night’s Sleep Is More
- Elevate Your Mood With Charlynn Avery & The Truth About Yoga
- Benefits of Acupuncture With Dr. Pina LoGiudice & How to Give Your Mood a Makeover!
Transcript:
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
Kimberly Snyder: Hi Beauties. Welcome back to our Thursday Q&A podcast, where our topic today is getting over emotional barriers. We’ve been talking about this more and more you guys, but there is incredible research coming out, as well as our own intuition and anecdotal evidence about how much our emotions affect our wellbeing, our health, our weight, our skin, our amount of bloating, inflammation, and simply the quality of our lives and just our day to day experience of feeling joy and peace or lack thereof. So I’m really excited to talk about this topic. Our third Solluna cornerstone for wellness is emotional wellbeing and I have found that if we don’t talk about emotional wellbeing, it’s almost impossible to truly feel good day to day.
Kimberly Snyder: I’m really excited to hear all the amazing questions that have come in around this topic. By the way, happy Halloween. If you have little ones or if you’re a big one that likes to go out for Halloween, I hope you have an amazing one. Bobby is a dinosaur this year. He had a pretty radical transition from being obsessed with trucks only to now being obsessed with trucks and dinosaurs, so that’s where we are in our journey, now that he is over three.
Leave a Review and Subscribe on Itunes
Kimberly Snyder: I also want to give a quick shout out to please leave us a review on iTunes, especially if you have had a moment or a little part of the show, anything that’s really spoken to you. You can feel that we’re all here to support each other and to love each other on this journey, and how amazing to share that with others and to help others find this information. So reviews are a great way to do that. You just go over to iTunes. It’ll take you probably less than four minutes, three minutes. It could be one sentence. Maybe less than two minutes. So thank you so much in advance for supporting our Feel Good podcast, and also to make sure to subscribe. That way you get that steady influx of motivation and inspiration around all these topics which relate to all aspects of wellness and health and beauty and feeling good within yourself.
Kimberly Snyder: All of that being said, we have our amazing Katelyn, who you heard giggling just a moment ago. She is our general manager of Solluna. She is an amazing woman. She lives on the East Coast. Happy Halloween, Kay.
Katelyn Hughes: Yes, happy Halloween to you and to the beauties. Hope everybody has something fun planned, being artsy and creative. I’ve always loved dressing up for Halloween and making my costume and being silly over the years.
Kimberly Snyder: Nice.
Katelyn Hughes: We don’t have kids yet, but we go out with my girlfriend and her son’s dressing up I think as a little shark, so that should be fun.
Kimberly Snyder: Oh, cute.
Katelyn Hughes: Yeah.
Kimberly Snyder: Bobby was a shark the first year.
Katelyn Hughes: Yeah, so it should be fun. I’m really excited to talk about this topic and dive in. As you guys have heard and listened to Kimberly and I talk over the last few years, we’ve really worked on our emotional barriers and getting over things, so we’re looking forward to digging into what you guys are thinking and the advice Kim can give today that’ll hopefully help you on your journey.
Kimberly Snyder: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Question 1: I’m not sure if I’m having brain fog or if I’m having an emotional breakdown. How can I know the difference and what can I do to avoid taking medications?
Katelyn Hughes: Okay. Let’s just dive in. So we have Karen, and she’s living in El Paso, Texas. “I’m not sure if I’m having brain fog or if I’m having an emotional breakdown. How can I know the difference and what can I do to avoid taking medications?”
Kimberly Snyder: Karen, thank you so much for your question, and being very authentic with us and very vulnerable. So first of all, I just want to preface this whole show by saying that there are times, there are situations where professional help is definitely warranted, so if you’re feeling you really need help, there are professionals to go to, counselors. If you’re really on the edge, of course, there’s the National Suicide Hotline, and sometimes medication is warranted. I definitely am not a substitute for a therapist or a doctor, so I just want to make that clear across the board before we go into our discussion here.
Kimberly Snyder: To answer your question Karen, though, about brain frog … Brain frog.
Katelyn Hughes: Speaking of brain fog.
Kimberly Snyder: Brain fog. Yeah, exactly. I will say from personal experience that I used to feel like so little would set me over the edge. I felt like my fuse was very, very short, and this was a combination of number one, having a very unhealthy gut. I was very backed up. I was very constipated, and as a result, remember the gut-brain connection which goes back and forth, if we have congestion in our bodies, we will often feel very tense, very anxious, like we’re about to blow up. It was almost on a daily basis. Something little would happen, like somebody walked in front of me on the sidewalk, and I could feel rage rising up, and that is not my nature. I don’t think that’s any of our true nature. It was just that I was so clogged in my body. So again, the body and the mind are connected.
Kimberly Snyder: The second thing I’ll say is that, and Dr. David Hawkins, who was one of my favorite authors, talks about repression and suppression. We tend to push things down a lot, especially as women. We take it in. We take it in. We don’t want to say anything, we don’t want to make a fuss. We avoid confrontation, and it starts to bubble up and it can start to feel like eventually has to erupt and we start to have outbursts. Your boyfriend or friend may say something that’s pretty innocuous and suddenly you just freak out, and that can often be a result, again not just of the physical clogging but because there’s so much repressed and suppressed in there.
Kimberly Snyder: So the brain fog can be a lot of things. It could be, again, Karen, I don’t know your full lifestyle. Could be are you sleeping well? Are you getting enough quality sleep? Again, are you taking care of your gut? Are you taking SBO probiotics? Are you eating a healthy diet, and so on and so forth. But the emotional breakdown part could be this eruption that happens when there’s so much in there.
Kimberly Snyder: So the book that I always recommend is called Letting Go, by Dr. David Hawkins. I also talk about, I summarize his technique in my new book, called Recipes for your Perfectly Imperfect Life, where it’s about letting the air out little by little, feeling your feelings, not getting caught up in the thoughts, and letting the emotions start to rise up. It’ll feel like a hot … Doesn’t feel good right away. It’ll feel like a heat. That’s how I feel it in my body. When you’re upset about something it can feel like a knife, almost like a heat. But then it doesn’t get stuck in your body and it lasts usually under 10 minutes. So there’s a technique, and as he talks about over time, it’ll start to go down, go down, and go down, so eventually you hit the bottom of the well.
Kimberly Snyder: And even though things will still come into your daily life, you don’t have this backlog of so much repressed inside of you, so much that you’re angry about, so much that you’re resentful about, from your childhood and wounds all along the way, that things set you off, and suddenly you’re at a party and you’re having a good time and somebody says something and boom, it ruins your day. Or you’re out to dinner with your boyfriend and he says something and boom, it ruins the dinner. That used to be how I used to feel, like, “Oh my God.” One thing, even though I didn’t always act out about it, it would sit inside my head. I’d be like, “Oh my gosh, does this person think this about me,” or, “Oh, that was an insulting thing to say,” or whatever. Now that I’ve done a lot of work in letting go, people still say annoying things or something, things still come up, but again, you can deal with that versus everything from the past.
Kimberly Snyder: It’s hard for me to say exactly, Karen, other than I would work on both the physical and really cleansing your gut, taking care of your gut. We have a lot of resources for you and supplements over at MySolluna to check out in that regard, as well as dietary shifts, like giving up gluten and refined sugar and dairy. And then again, practicing this technique of letting things come up and out of you, I think is very powerful. That’s another reason I think shadow work is really very powerful, introspection.
Kimberly Snyder: Part of our Solluna circle, which is our circle, which you can join us online, is about five bucks a month. We talk about journaling. We talk about going deep and looking, because that’s where you can start to understand more of what bothers you and you can write it out on a page or talk about it in the community. We do this in our in-person circles too, and the only rules are is there’s no advice and there’s no judgment. And just having that space held, it’s like having a mirror held up to you and you can really look at things sometimes and start to really let them go. I let go of a lot of stuff from my childhood. It’s been very powerful for me, and I can say from a personal standpoint that I feel 50 pounds lighter just from letting go of all that, so my emotions are a lot more balanced and I can sail through days and weeks just feeling a lot more calm and steady than billion times more than I used to.
Katelyn Hughes: Yeah, there’s so much that goes into emotions and whether you’re feeling brain fog or emotional breakdown. I know for me, I’ve definitely struggled with that in the past, and for me, it’s eating clean, doing my journaling, doing my exercising, helps me stay on track. I’ve been on medication in the past when my doctors felt I needed it and I’m able to now regulate things with doing the lifestyle, so there’s definitely no shame in if you do have to take medication. I’ve been on medication before, so you can always talk like, as Kimberly said, this is a big topic, with your doctor and your medical professionals if you feel like it’s a bigger problem, and then there’s all of these amazing holistic elements that we can apply to our lives that really help elevate and bring us to the next level.
Kimberly Snyder: Thank you, Kay. Thank you for sharing that. I think that’s really beautiful to share, that sometimes it’s a combination of things and it shifts and then we keep going forward and finding what’s best for us, but really looking at it from our own, what’s going on in our lives and then what’s right for one person isn’t necessarily right for you, so that’s important.
Katelyn Hughes: Yeah, it’s so individualized and then it can even vary from what’s going on in your life, like maybe you have a traumatic event or something. Everybody goes through different emotional waves as we know and deals with it differently and it’s really great that we live here in America where there’s all these options and different ways that we can get help, whatever feels good to us.
Kimberly Snyder: Mm-hmm (affirmative), exactly.
Question 2: At what point can we overcome not feeling worthy? I can’t seem to unblock myself from feeling less than. What would you suggest?
Katelyn Hughes: All right, let’s jump into Lynn’s question. Lynn is living in Beverly, Massachusetts. “At what point can we overcome not feeling worthy? I can’t seem to unblock myself from feeling less than. What would you suggest?”
Kimberly Snyder: Oh, Lynn. Thank you so much for your question. I am sighing because I know that feeling. I think that we all, on some level, most all of us suffer from the not enoughness, the feeling of lack, and it manifests in obsessing, I think, or trying to get it from the outside. So I would say for me, when I felt not enough, that’s the deep root of it, it was well, I’ll feel better if people will like me more if I’m skinnier, if I have a so-called perfect body. And so I would focus on that, like something to show, like, “Here, look, I’m worthy. I’m skinny,” and then also having perfect grades. I mean, I used to freak out if I got an A-. I wanted to have the best GPA and such a nerd. But it was beyond that. It was driven by … It wasn’t healthy. It was driven by wanting to feel the attention and the worthiness.
Kimberly Snyder: So that’s what I mean by the outside stuff. It could be achievements at work. It could be looks, especially for a lot of us women, like let me make my skin look better. Let me look younger. Let me lose more weight. Let me have a more toned body. The thing is, feeling not enough will never be fixed from the outside. It doesn’t mean that we can’t improve on the outside. We always want to improve and strive forward and become, take care of ourselves and be healthy, but what you’re talking about, Lynn, which I so intimately relate to, because I was there for a very long time, is that one thing I know is that it cannot come from anything outside. It has to come, this feeling of fullness, this feeling of enoughness, has to come from inside of you.
Kimberly Snyder: This hearkens back to our Solluna cornerstones, where there’s the food part, the body part, emotional wellbeing, which we just talked about at length, and the spiritual growth. This topic is very related, completely immersed, in our fourth cornerstone, which is the spiritual growth. We are perfect and we are imperfect at the same time. We are all living in the world of imperfection most of the time. We’re comparing ourselves to pictures, to other people’s lives on Instagram, to magazines, to websites, to everything. But the perfect part of us is something that we don’t cultivate enough attention with and that is … When we start to feel connected to our perfect part, that’s the only time we start to feel enough, because otherwise, there’s always going to be people that have a better job, they have a more perfect family, quote-unquote, they have more money, they have an easier life, they have better hair. Whatever it is, it is endless.
Kimberly Snyder: So for me, the only way I got passed the not enoughness was breathing into my heart and feeling myself more and being comfortable with myself, and the only way I was comfortable with myself was when I started to spend more time with myself, because I used to just fill my day and my schedule with friends and noise and busyness and running around, and I never really sat with myself, and I really didn’t like myself, because I thought I wasn’t good enough.
Kimberly Snyder: This is where meditation and stillness practices and journaling and spending time in nature, this is the way … This is not what you usually hear probably, popularly here in media, because it’s always trying to sell you something or take you outside of yourself, but actually the only way to feel enough is to go in and realize that the perfect part of you, because you are alive, simply because you are alive and you are a drop of consciousness, can never be added onto. Eckart Tolle talks about this a lot. He’s like, “You’re not going to be more than you are. You may have more information and you can have more knowledge and you can add on more languages and skills, but the essence of who you are is already the most it will ever be. It’s already perfect.” When you mess up, when you gain weight, when you screw up, this and that, it doesn’t get diminished. That’s still all the outside surface stuff.
Kimberly Snyder: So for me, I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off for years. Can I be more skinny? Can I be less bloated? Can I have more styly clothes? Can I do better handstands in yoga? Can I be the best yoga … Sounds ridiculous to say, but it’s true. Can I be this, be that? I mean, it’s endless. The search is over when you realize that there is no search. You have it inside of you and that inner light, that love, that perfection, that fullness, when you get in touch with that, it doesn’t mean that you don’t recognize that maybe you want to lose a couple pounds or you want to make more money or you want to create more in your life, but what it makes you realize is that right here, right now, just as you are, in your messy, chaotic, imperfect life, you are enough, and you are completely worthy of love, and you are beautiful and unique and whole and complete, just as you are.
Kimberly Snyder: It’s not like a button that you switch on. It’s not something that you can just read in a book and it clicks exactly. I think it has to come from that time spent creating that relationship. Led meditations are really powerful for this. There are some books, like the Power of Now, any book by Yogananda, that are powerful in this regard. But ultimately, it comes with knowing ourself and that is the power of meditation. That’s how I was able to heal. I trained myself to meditate. I practice Kriya Yoga. We have led meditations for you guys as well on mysolluna.com, if you’re interested. Go within and start to know that amazing being that is only you. There’s no one else in the world like you. Otherwise, you will always suffer from lack and not enoughness and you don’t have to feel that way. You can be in touch with your wholeness. You can have it now. You don’t have to wait until you get a fancy house or five kids or you start making X amount of money or you lose 10 pounds. I mean, it is right here, right now, and guess what? When you have that connection with yourself, it’s so beautiful and it’s so attractive and magnetic that you will actually attract more of what you want, ironically, right here and right now, without having to do more.
Kimberly Snyder: So that’s the power of it, and that’s what our whole fourth cornerstone is about, and we certainly have a lot of resources for you guys in this regard on the website. That is it. I’m 100% convinced the only way to feel worthy and enough is to go inside and to connect.
Katelyn Hughes: This is such an important topic. I’m glad that Lynn brought it up in her question. I think so many women, myself included, feel that imposter syndrome, feel that less than from time to time, and it comes up, so to have these tips and the insights to incorporate the fourth cornerstone, this might sounds new to people. As we said, it may not be the mainstream way of going about it. Sometimes I think it’s harder to look inside, right, Kay, because everybody wants to push-
Kimberly Snyder: For sure.
Katelyn Hughes: … take this product or do this or do that, but to actually do the work and sit and journal and sit with yourself, it might feel harder at first, but you’re really doing yourself a service because you’ll start to feel so much better so much faster than just taking on all of the outside stuff. That’s definitely what I’ve learned from practicing these principles, because it keeps coming up, and when you have the tools to how to negate the feelings as they come, then that’s a gift to yourself that you can’t get from outside sources.
Kimberly Snyder: It’s true. I wish I could say just take this one supplement or use this one product, but it really … I think about Solluna, I think about the sun and the moon, which is what it means, and the light and the dark, and I was really challenged about two years ago, the darkest time, losing my mom and then that’s when I split with Bobby’s dad and became a single mom. Wow, that brought up a lot of issues, feelings inside of me, and I was forced to look at myself. I was forced to sit with myself and I actually had the time to do it because I was just here by myself for months before I met John, now my soulmate, my now-husband, my love. But sometimes we hit rock bottom and then we grow. We have to go inside, though. This is the challenging part, but I promise you, when you spend more time inside, it just gives us these gifts, these jewels, that we get, we cannot get from anything on the outside, and it is worth everything to have more peace and to have more love in your life.
Kimberly Snyder: So again, we have the community, we have the Solluna circle for this, we have the free guided meditations. Get into whatever form of meditation feels good to you or stillness practice or spirituality practice and I really think that’s where it’s at, because the spirit inside of us is already whole and complete, and if we’re trying to fill that whole with all this outside stuff it just doesn’t fit and so it will never fill that void. It’s inside of us. Our soul is perfect already. We are connected in God, the universe, whatever word you want to use, we are all oneness. There’s truth, there’s a completeness to us that once we feel that, wow, that’s it.
Kimberly Snyder: I dip in and out of it. I feel it. I still have moments of self-esteem issues and things like all of us, but I know where to go. I know when I need to meditate more, to get back to that state. I touched that state, so now I know, “Oh, that exists, and it didn’t come when I was the skinniest. It didn’t come when I was perfect and doing this and this. It came when I was just more in touch with myself.”
Break
Katelyn Hughes: Such a good reminder. So beauties, we are going to have to take a short break, but then Kimberly will be back to answer the last two questions.
Kimberly Snyder: All right beauties. We got back from our little break here and I am so excited to hear what else we have, what other questions came in around our topic today, which is getting over emotional barriers. Big one for all of us, I think.
Katelyn Hughes: Yes, no, today’s show’s definitely emotional for me. There’s a lot of touch points. I think we all struggle on our journey and this is a special show for me for sure, that on my journey, I’ve definitely dug into all of these areas and feels especially connected to the questions, so you’re not alone if you’re relating. We’re all here with you.
Kimberly Snyder: Yeah. I really relate, too, Kay, as I mentioned.
Question 3: My attachment to food is out of control. While I’m eating one food, I’m already thinking of the next food to shove in my mouth. I know it’s emotional, but I don’t know where to start eliminating and what the cause is.
Katelyn Hughes: I was looking at Stephanie‘s question, which I’m about the read, who she’s living in our city, Kay, or your old city, my city, New York, New York.
Kimberly Snyder: Yes.
Katelyn Hughes: Her question definitely relates to me, because I still struggle with food. She’s saying, “My attachment to food is out of control. While I’m eating one food, I’m already thinking of the next food to shove in my mouth. I know it’s emotional, but I don’t know where to start eliminating and what the cause is.
Kimberly Snyder: Well Stephanie, thank you so much for your question. I again, completely relate to this. As I wrote about in the last book, Your Perfectly Imperfect Life, I had eating disorders in high school, and I remember this exact feeling where it was like trying to stuff myself with food. I would come home and then I would eat all this food to get a shift or to feel something and then I would make myself throw up because I was like, “Oh my god, well I just ate so much.”
Kimberly Snyder: So first of all, I will preface this as I did earlier by saying sometimes it sounds like you have serious food cravings, but of course if it’s crossed over into eating disorders or anyone out there that has eating disorders, there are amazing professional therapists out there that you can reach out to for sure that will help you get past this, because we don’t want anyone to live with eating disorders which are debilitating and have a huge toll on your health and of course just create all sorts of misery in your life.
Kimberly Snyder: Food is … The reason we set up the cornerstones the way that we have is it goes food, number one, body, number two, which is everything from exercise to sleep, skin care, so on and so forth. Emotion’s number three, and number four is spiritual. It’s not that one is more important than the other necessarily, but it is that food is number one because it’s the go-to for most of us. It is physical. It is tangible. It is an easy thing to pick up, especially if we are avoiding really nourishing other areas of our life or we are not balanced in our emotions or we’re not spending enough time with ourselves spiritually, as I was talking about with Lynn’s question.
Kimberly Snyder: I will just say, Stephanie, it’s really important, I think, to think about the cornerstones first of all, and to think about what is going on with you emotionally? What’s going on in your body? Are you feeling good? Are you getting enough exercise? Are you walking around? Are you sleeping well? Emotionally, is there a lot of stress in your life? What are you repressing? Are you having a lot of feelings of sadness coming up or anger or what is going on with you emotionally and really identifying that. And then fourth, from a spiritual standpoint, how can we foster more connection? How can you foster more with yourself? Can you spend more time meditating, having more of a morning and evening practice? Can you slow down and journal more? Can you just breathe, have more time, more space?
Kimberly Snyder: Emotionally, when it comes to food, I will say there’s about nine top food cravings, and those are the ones I wrote about in The Beauty Detox Power, which is my third book, which you can check out. There’s some specific information about why you may be craving sugar, for instance. For me, the two things that I used to eat a lot of, binge on, and then purge, were number one, crunchy foods. I would eat a ton of chips, potato chips, pretzels, whatever. And what I learned through research and over time was that I had a lot of repressed anger, and when I identified that, I could see oh, I felt unseen. I felt like nobody was really asking me about my day or really listening to me. I was a latchkey kid, so I would come home and be by myself for a while. And again, this is not … I’m not blaming my parents or anything, because they had to work and we weren’t super wealthy or anything. It’s just the way it was, but I’m just saying I had all this anger and so that was built up in me.
Kimberly Snyder: And once I started to understand that later in life and process that, I started to let go of the crunchy foods. The other thing that I used to binge on was fat. I used to eat toast with tons and tons of butter. I was like, oh I like the taste of toast, but it was really this butter was feeling stabilizing to me, and I didn’t feel stable. I felt a lot of things. I just grew up in this very Caucasian town and I just looked different because I’m half-Asian and again, I didn’t feel like I had a really steady home life, so the fat was a way of stabilizing that. Again, once I understood that what I was going to the food for, I found other ways to stabilize. I found more community. I was able to express these things to my family, who didn’t always understand, but it felt good to express them. I just found friends and people that felt more stable.
Kimberly Snyder: I would encourage you, Stephanie, like I said, to kind of really look at your life and look at what exact foods you are going to over and over again, because I almost guarantee you’ll find a pattern. It may be different things on different days, but maybe it’s like your go-to is trying to shift your mood and you’re going to sugar or maybe it’s the carbs or maybe … For me, it was the fat, was the crunchy. It’s the spicy for some people, and then if you look in that book and it’s not enough time here today. I will spend hours doing it, but there is specifics for each of these nine cravings, and if you go in that book and you start to look and pick it apart, you can sit with that information and how it applies to your life and come up with some short-term, healthy food options. For me, the transition was hummus and very crunchy celery sticks. And then the longer term is working on expressing my emotions without letting anger build up in me. So there’s the short-term and there’s the long-term solutions, and that for me, is the way I was able to break free over time.
Katelyn Hughes: Education’s key, I think, in these types of things, because that is what helped me also when I was struggling with food, was educating myself around the why’s and the how’s and that’s where the journaling and introspection really makes a difference, and that’s why we were such big advocates of it, right, Kay? Because it’s taking that look at ourselves.
Kimberly Snyder: For sure.
Katelyn Hughes: That really makes a difference.
Kimberly Snyder: And I think it is good to talk to somebody. I know, Kay, you have talked to different therapists and I work with, she’s like an intuitive healer person. I talked about her in the last book. Her name’s Laura Pringle. She’s amazing. Sometimes having a therapist or a counselor or a healer, whatever you resonate with is really important.
Katelyn Hughes: Yeah, for sure. I definitely agree with that, and I’ve even done women’s groups. We have our circles that we’re doing as part of a community, but just really being able to connect with people and talk things out I think helps put a perspective on things that sometimes we can’t get out of our head, so having that, I’m a big advocate of therapy in all different ways.
Question 4: Without going into details, I didn’t have the smoothest upbringing. I think this is why I talk to myself poorly, telling myself I’m not enough. How can I clear these thoughts and actually start living and get over these blocks?
Katelyn Hughes: Okay, we’re down to the last question from Beth, living in lovely Surfside, Florida. “Without going into details, I didn’t have the smoothest upbringing. I think this is why I talk to myself poorly, telling myself I’m not enough. How can I clear these thoughts and actually start living and get over these blocks?”
Kimberly Snyder: Beth, thank you so much for your question. That’s the way it goes sometimes, and I’m very sorry to hear that, but I relate. I don’t think I had … A lot of us … Maybe none of us have this perfect childhood. A lot of us can say we didn’t have ideal childhoods in many different ways. I mean, there’s many forms of trauma that builds up. There’s an amazing book called Your Body Keeps the Score, and this researcher is talking about trauma and abuse don’t just happen from isolated events like being sexually molested or being physically hit. It can be from being ignored over time and time again not being listened to that actually resonates in us as trauma.
Kimberly Snyder: In that regard, I think that we all have work to do. I think the way God, universe, whatever word you want to use, I use the word God, creator, I think that everything that’s happened to us has happened for a reason. Sometimes it’s hard to discern right away, but I think growth can really come from these challenging times. I say that with love, Beth, and I say that with compassion, and I can say that here you are asking this question, because I think you’re ready to let go of all that and you know that your parents or caregivers, wherever they were, they were probably doing the very best that they could do with what they knew and how they were raised. And so that’s the first thing is to really shift from victim mindset, which is almost impossible to heal from, into creator mindset. If we’re stuck in blame and we’re stuck in victimhood, then we will always have anger and we will never feel good, because anger and resentment are very low-vibration emotions to store in our body and drag us down.
Kimberly Snyder: Here we are in the present moment. Right now, you’re listening to this and we’re having this conversation. In this moment, Beth, you are a creator and you can choose. I know it’s not as simple as saying, “I choose right now and everything’s completely gone,” but what you can chose is, “I am going to let go of all this and I am going to live a joyful, happy, peaceful life, and I’m going to take the steps to do that.” That was a shift for me, was I’m not going to sit here and feel angry about stuff that happened 20 years ago for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, I have family members that are still in that boat and like to talk about old stuff, and I just think, “Holy crap. You’re an adult. When are you going to let this go?”
Kimberly Snyder: I’m not minimizing trauma, because I think that it’s not necessarily easy to do, but I think that again, we are all powerful. We can heal. I’ll iterate what we said earlier. There can be professional help that’s warranted, especially with traumas and things like that. I know Laura’s helped me work through feelings of not being heard and the trauma that comes from that. I think witnessing each other, and that’s why this Solluna circle, me leading it and writing it every month and being in the circles has been really healing for me, so I think that’s really important. And then everything I was talking about with Lynn, no matter what, these patterns, the parts of ourselves, knowing those patterns through journaling, which Kay and I are both big advocates of, the shadow work, and then also the meditation, the spiritual part.
Kimberly Snyder: Spiritual practice in whatever form it takes for you is the way to, I believe, get over these blocks, because we’re connecting with the whole. We’re connecting to something, an energy that’s so much bigger than us. When we just concentrate on the human part of us, we’re very limited. We’re like, “Oh it’s just me, this little self,” but when we merge with spirit, and our spirit is part of the oneness and the spirit that the creators created everything, then we have unlimited energy and unlimited consciousness behind us, to support us in letting go, and we start to know the truth, which is that we’re so much more than we ever realized.
Kimberly Snyder: So again, I’ll iterate what I said before. We have free meditations, we have the Solluna circle. I encourage you guys to take advantage of these resources that are free. The circle’s five bucks. It’s super low entry. There’s a lot that goes into that and there’s a lot you can pull from it. You can put as much time into it or as little time as you want, but I think these self practices, you guys, are the way to heal. It’s not going to come from getting skinnier. It’s not going to come just from food. It’s not going to come from having the best outfit at the party or having amazingly blowed out hair. It’s really got to come inside and the little steps, like work, spending five minutes a day journaling, spending 10 minutes a day meditating, I promise you, this really starts to add up. It starts to change your breath patterns. It starts to change your presence in your body. It starts to connect yourself to your body more. You start to feel the power of you and that is the way to get past blocks.
Kimberly Snyder: I wish there was like some easy, super quick thing, but there’s not, you guys. This is the way I’ve done it, this is the way Katelyn’s done it. It’s the way all the great masters talk about, Yogananda, Eckart Tolle, I mean, all of them, Wayne Dyer, all the yogis, all the saints and sages. We have to go with it and we have to connect with the spirit within us.
Kimberly Snyder: This isn’t about religion. It’s not about dogmatic stuff, not formal. It’s just the fact that we’re alive and we’re living, breathing souls. There’s a part to us that we really need to get to know, no matter how wounded our childhood is, no matter how many screwed up things have happened to us and it sucks, but you don’t want to get stuck in that. You need to move forward and let go and again, I’ll say it one more time, the Letting Go book was really helpful to me. I think I read it 19 times. By Dr. David Hawkins, and that, too, Beth, can be very helpful in letting go of childhood stuff, because we can get very easily caught in that resentment, “Oh, it should have been this way,” and, “Why wasn’t I loved this way? Why wasn’t I treated this way?” And when we let go and we let go and we let go, that’s when we step into our power as creators.
Kimberly Snyder: We have to step in and shed all of that over time and then happiness, joy, and peace shoot up in your life, which is what I wish for you, sister. I know it’s possible and I send you so much love and so much strength, and please do keep in touch with us, and I hope to see you in the circle and I hope to connect with you more personally.
Katelyn Hughes: Well thank you for holding space for this conversation today, Kay, and for being so vulnerable and sharing your experiences. I found when other people open up and share it’s healing to me to know that somebody else has gone through something similar or somebody else is struggling with something that I’m struggling with and obviously that’s the whole purpose of our community show, to be together and relate and talk about things that are relevant to the communities. I just wanted to say thank you for that. And as always, beauties, we would love if you can go over to mysolluna.com/askkimberly, and put in your idea for the next show and put a question and we will review it and hopefully air your question on an upcoming show.
Thought of the Week
Kimberly Snyder: So I’d like to end the show by sharing a quote by Paramahansa Yogananda, who is my personal guru, and he is everything to me. I practice his Kriya Yoga meditation techniques, and he is … I’ve done the lessons and when I started doing the lessons is when I started writing books and I started manifesting in my life. I feel that I owe Yogananda everything and I want to share a quote with you guys that he wrote, “Before embarking on important undertakings, sit quietly, calm your senses and thoughts, and meditate deeply. You will then be guided by the great creative power of spirit.” This is just a little reminder how the wisdom, the answers, the source for feeling that you’re enough and feeling full instead of feeling in lack, that it’s all inside of you.
Kimberly Snyder: Again, we talked about meditation so much on the show, but it’s that inner cultivation, you guys. It’s the inner getting to know yourself and then Kay, I love what you said about holding space and how that’s really healing in [inaudible 00:42:01] vulnerability, and that is what our Solluna circle is all about. We meditate together in the circle, too, which is why I’m so passionate about this circle and talk about it so much, because I think it’s the way. It’s one of the most important things we offer. We can always eat healthy, we can always have recipes. It’s all great, but wow, that circle is where big, big shifts can happen, and I see it time and time again with our in-person circles, which make sure you guys stay on the list. Just did one in New York. I did one in Dallas. I do them in LA now.
Kimberly Snyder: But whether it’s online or in person, this is where we can really support each other in these shifts and hold space for each other. Just remember to meditate, go within. You have the answers. You have the key, and you can get past the blocks. You can feel how amazing you are, which is everything that I want for you. So we are here. As Kay mentioned, please keep the questions coming. We are listening, we are reading. We love you so much, and we will see you back here in a few days for our next interview podcast. Till then, beauty, remember, you truly are amazing, just as you are, and I love you. We will see you here soon. Take care, and again, lots of love.
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