Be the Boss of Your Own Life with Shauna Brittenham Reiter [Ep. #977]

This Week’s Episode: 

Kimberly speaks with Shauna Brittenham Reiter, author of ‘You Are the Boss of You.’ They discuss the journey to wholeness, overcoming trauma, and the importance of self-soothing and emotional awareness. Shauna shares her personal experiences with anxiety and perfectionism, emphasizing the significance of understanding the true self versus the ego. The discussion also touches on parenting and the power of presence and pausing in daily life.

About Shauna Brittenham Reiter

Shauna Brittenham Reiter is a Bestselling Author, and the founder of Alaya Naturals wellness brand born from her personal journey of overcoming Crohn’s disease, congenital neutropenia, and a heart condition. She passionately advocates holistic healing and natural health, combining science and nature to empower others on their wellness journeys. Prior to founding Alaya Naturals, Shauna shared her voice as a singer and songwriter—her album Dreamer’s Dream was released in 2017. Shauna is a frequent podcast guest and coveted mentor to many. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

Episode Sponsors:

 

LMNT

OFFER: Right now, for my listeners LMNT is offering a free sample pack with any LMNT drink mix purchase at DrinkLMNT.com/FEELGOOD. That’s 8 single serving packets FREE with any LMNT any LMNT drink mix purchase. Get yours at DrinkLMNT.com/FEELGOOD . This deal is only available through my link so. Also try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water.

USE LINK: DrinkLMNT.com/FEELGOOD

FATTY15

OFFER: Fatty15 is on a mission to replenish your C15 levels and restore your long-term health. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to fatty15.com/KIMBERLY and using code KIMBERLY at checkout.

 

USE LINK: fatty15.com/KIMBERLY

 

Guest Resources

Book: You Are the Boss of You: Cultivate the Mindset and Tools to Live Life on Your Terms

Website: https://www.helloshauna.com/

Website: Alaya Naturals 

Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Shauna Brittenham Reiter
01:51 Journey to Wholeness: Overcoming Trauma
06:05 Understanding the True Self vs. Ego
10:15 Somatic Awareness and Emotional Processing
15:13 Hypervigilance and Its Impact on Relationships
19:10 Self-Soothing and Inner Child Work
24:03 The Power of Presence and Pausing
29:01 Centering Through Breath and Compassion
32:18 The Power of Pausing and Self-Care
35:47 Tuning Your Instrument: The Art of Patience
39:58 Creating Space for Creativity and Reflection
43:40 Owning Your Time and Choices
49:54 Establishing Boundaries and Self-Trust
54:54 Tools for Living Life on Your Terms

 

[RESOURCES / INFORMATION]

SOLLUNA PRODUCT LINKS

• Glowing Greens Powder™
• Feel Good SBO Probiotics
• Feel Good Detoxy
• Feel Good Digestive Enzymes
• Feel Good Starter Kit
• Feel Good Skincare

KIMBERLY’S BOOKS

• Chilla Gorilla & Lanky Lemur Journey to the Heart
• The Beauty Detox Solution
• Beauty Detox Foods
• Beauty Detox Power
• Radical Beauty
• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
• You Are More Than You Think You Are 

OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY!

• Wellness Insights: How to Listen to Your Body for Nutritional Guidance [Episode 878]
• How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard EP. 877
• How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger [Episode #873]
• How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo [Episode #867]

 

Powered and Distributed by: PodcastOne

Transcript:

Kimberly Snyder (00:00.731)
Hi everyone and welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited for my very special guest today, who is the author of the new book, You Are the Boss of You, Cultivate the Mindset and Tools to Live Life on Your Own Terms. Shauna Brittenham-Reiter is also the founder of the wellness company, Alea Naturals, and she’s an entrepreneur. She’s dedicated to empowering others.

And she, her first album, actually, Dreamers was released in 2017. She’s an artist. She was a Montessori school teacher. She’s the mother of two. Shauna, so many amazing parts of your bio. I’m so excited to chat with you as well about your new book. Congratulations. Thank you for being here.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (00:47.822)
Thank you so much for having me on. I love your podcast and I feel really honored to be your guest.

Kimberly Snyder (00:55.607)
it’s so lovely to speak to you. And I went through your book and I loved hearing so much about your story and really your, your true, you can really feel your intention to share and to support others and so many different areas that I’m excited to chat with today. Before we go further though, I want to mention that the show notes for today’s show, our interview with Shana will be at mysolluna.com.

where you can find links to other articles and podcasts and many other things that I think you will enjoy. So Shauna, let’s dive right in here. And there’s so many different parts and so many different tools. You talk about trauma, you talk about sleep, which I loved the very practical elements that you brought in. And as a busy working mama, I really relate to that as well. And it just feels like when I was reading your book, you know, we’re all on this journey back to wholeness.

Right? And there’s so many different aspects, trauma, things that happen in our childhood, these patterns that we learn, it sort of, you know, create this opposite of wholeness. creates this fragmentation. So it’s almost this, you know, bringing things back together. Can you share with us a little bit about, you you shared in the book, you know, some of the trauma you’ve been through and your amazing experiences that brought you to where you are today. Can you share a little bit about

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (02:15.534)
Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (02:21.871)
how you feel now versus let’s say before you had all these tools, right? Because sometimes I think we’d, we’re healed, we’ve arrived, we don’t have negative feelings or triggers anymore, which I don’t think is really true. It’s more that we’ve evolved and we do have tools and we do have a higher understanding. So can you explain a little bit how your experience is now from these tools and I imagine how you would want others to feel after

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (02:46.446)
Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (02:51.14)
reading your book.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (02:52.946)
Mm Thank you so much for asking this beautiful question. Yeah, I agree. It’s a continuum. We never arrive at a place of permanent emotional freedom or expansion. Not every day feels like it’s as full of ease. Life is confusing. There are many moving parts and as we evolve, I think for me, at least personally, my hope is to feel more and more resilient as I encounter whatever it is that life’s going to throw my way. So

Kimberly Snyder (03:05.008)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (03:22.722)
The things I talk about in the book in terms of self-advocacy and creating boundaries and learning to self-soothe and learning to sleep, all of these things I wrote about because I’ve struggled so immensely with them and continue to be faced with new opportunities to grow and learn more. So there was a point in my life in which I would say anxiety was paramount.

Anxiety can be almost deceiving because it’s just such a deep internal experience that what you present to the outside world doesn’t always reflect what’s going on internally. So for me, I was like very high achieving at a certain point. You know, I’ve pursued a lot of different careers with varying degrees of quantifiable success. But I always felt like I was able to sort of achieve what I wanted to.

Kimberly Snyder (03:54.104)
Yes.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (04:16.91)
but never had the feeling I hoped to have when I technically arrived at where I thought I wanted to be. And so I think the most sort of poignant part of my life now is feeling like wherever I am and whatever I’m doing, I feel pretty good. And by good, I think what I mean is I feel unencumbered by the things that keep me from being my true self. And so, you know, at our core, we’re all sort of ultimately

Kimberly Snyder (04:34.234)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (04:41.787)
Mmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (04:46.582)
I believe full of joy and possibility and a sense of hope and a sense of abundance and a sense of freedom and peace. And trauma is what strips us of access to that truth. But at our core, that is who we fundamentally remain, regardless of what we’ve been through or how we’re experiencing ourselves.

And so today, based on the tools that I’ve learned and created and worked tirelessly to internalize, I was gonna say master, but that’s just not true. To internalize, I would say like, I feel a level of resilience that I’ve never felt before in the sense that I know that whatever is going on internally or externally, I can navigate.

with a certain level of grace and ease that I just didn’t have before. So what would happen previously is I would just break physically. And that would be the clue that I was overwhelmed and didn’t know how to manage my stress or emotions. And now I’m cognizant of what’s going on. I’m aware and introspective and I pause consistently to assess and to sort of, you

Kimberly Snyder (05:47.075)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (06:02.501)
Hmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (06:05.064)
gain access to my physiological experience, which is usually indicative of what’s going on emotionally, and then readjust and reframe constantly over and over minute by minute so that my experience, you know, in terms of what I’m projecting is actually reflecting my internal world, which again was not always the case.

Kimberly Snyder (06:26.477)
Yeah, I love that, Chana. When I was reading your book, there was a lot in your story that I also really related to, that idea of the seeking, the perfectionism, the trying to get the worthiness. And when you talk about the core, and I love that you use the term true self, which is something I also use, and it’s a very yogic concept, this pseudo self, the ego, it takes us away from our truth in so many ways. And a lot of us

don’t really learn growing up that the core is not this identification with feelings. And for me, a lot of it’s accessing it through the heart, not just listening to the head. So the part where in the book we talk about the I am, I am, the I am that I am, like this essence, the true self, the heart energy, not I am these feelings is so powerful. When you talk about the tools of

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (07:07.758)
Hmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (07:13.454)
Mm-hmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (07:23.758)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (07:24.283)
First of all, allowing the feelings to come through. For me, it’s staying stable in the heart, in the heart coherence, but allowing ourselves to feel and not repress, but at the same time, not identify with the feelings.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (07:38.888)
Yes, being aware and acknowledging feelings doesn’t mean that we have to necessarily believe the experience is reflective of who we are fundamentally. So we can believe the experience itself because it’s real. What you’re feeling at any given moment in time is valid because it’s actually happening. But what it isn’t is necessarily a reflection of who you are as a person fundamentally. We tend to conflate those two things.

Kimberly Snyder (07:46.411)
Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (08:06.005)
So let’s, yeah. So let’s be specific, Shana. Let’s say you have a trauma or, you know, I’ll use it, I’ll use myself, a trauma of, you know, I’ll get, I used to get really agitated if someone interrupted me or didn’t seem like they understood me, right? So this old trauma around not being seen or heard as a child. And then I would start to, you know, be aware that this agitation was being projected on

this story, right? I’m not being seen and heard. So now to your point, when I feel that energy, I can pause and say, wait, this is an old trauma living in me. It’s in me. So I kind of bring it back here.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (08:49.878)
Yes, exactly. And in addition to that, I think it’s important to differentiate the experience from your identity. So you are not an irritable person. You’re not a person who’s prone to agitation. You’re a person who hasn’t metabolized trauma and it’s causing a certain reaction. There’s reactivity in your mind and body because of this process of

Kimberly Snyder (08:58.117)
Yeah.

Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (09:10.083)
Yes, it’s true a lot.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (09:17.13)
integrating trauma that has been overlooked, but it doesn’t necessarily, you know, have in any way represent who you are at your core. So if we begin to process and, and really work on why it is we’re reacting a certain way, hopefully our behavior over time begins to evolve. but regardless of how reactive you are, you’re still the same person fundamentally.

Kimberly Snyder (09:38.361)
Yes.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (09:46.703)
and you’re not the ways that you’re behaving.

Kimberly Snyder (09:49.547)
Exactly. It’s again, away from the heart away from the true self away from the loving wholeness. So Shana, when we talk about metabolizing the trauma, one of the things that you talk about is somatic awareness, like what’s going on in our body and releasing. So for me, even when I understood the trauma, like this happened, was neglect or whatever, like I felt at certain points.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (09:52.931)
Mm.

Kimberly Snyder (10:15.291)
When I would be in those experiences, I would breathe through and I would let myself feel and kind of release. And these are tools and ways that aren’t just in words, right? Like it’s not just talk therapy, there’s energetic ways to process. Can you talk a little bit about, you talk about all sorts of modalities. You talk about tapping and emotional, you know, just so many different.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (10:39.382)
I love emotional freedom technique, I mean, but just to sort of reflect back to you, own physical gestures, multiple times since we logged on to this conversation, you’ve touched your heart. And that’s just something that’s intuitive to you now because it’s a tool that you’ve learned to reconnect to your heart and to sort of get out of your mind. I think physicalizing things is so important. I mean, I tend to get in my head a lot.

Kimberly Snyder (10:52.823)
Yes. Yes.

Kimberly Snyder (11:05.477)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (11:08.2)
And at a period of time in my life where I was very high anxiety and hypervigilance was prevalent, I would say I lived primarily in my mind and never really felt totally embodied. I felt a little bit removed from my physical experience. And so even just touching your body the way you do so beautifully and so intuitively is a way to reconnect and understand that we’re more than our minds.

Kimberly Snyder (11:19.951)
Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (11:33.851)
Hmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (11:34.49)
when I was learning to sing, had a wonderful singing coach named Steven Mammal. He’s still around teaching. and I would get so trapped in my mind because of that perfectionistic piece. wondering how I sounded, sort of anticipating potential feedback or judgment. And so preemptively editing myself or holding back and restraining my true voice because I wasn’t sure what would come out and how people would perceive it.

Kimberly Snyder (11:53.999)
Right.

Kimberly Snyder (12:03.81)
here.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (12:05.082)
Fear, totally fear, fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough, fear of hoping I’m something I’m not. know, Steven would have me do these really outrageous movements physically. So when he saw I was getting too trapped in my head, so for instance, I would be hopping on one foot and rubbing my, you know, using my hand clockwise to make a circle above my head.

Kimberly Snyder (12:09.498)
Hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (12:25.819)
you

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (12:32.725)
And then as soon as he saw that I had assimilated that move and was still able to think through it, he would then change the choreography so that I wasn’t able to focus on my voice. So in other words, allowing our bodies to have a place in the scene. We’re not floating heads, but many of us kind of walk around trying to think and overanalyze because there’s protection and feeling safe. Like we’ve accounted for all of our options or.

Kimberly Snyder (12:44.357)
Hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (12:51.227)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (13:02.264)
problem solved by thinking through every potential scenario.

Kimberly Snyder (13:04.763)
Is that the hyper focus that you talked about at one point, this hyper vigilance, hyper focus, that’s almost a trauma response, right? Like we don’t feel safe. So if we clamp down, we can control more of our experience.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (13:19.958)
Absolutely, and if we predict everything that could possibly go wrong, then there’s no way we can get hurt or that someone can hurt us. So that’s still a theme that’s really big in my life that I’m trying very hard not to pass down to my children with varying levels of success depending on the thing. But like, for instance, my son is very aware of whether or not he’s cold and he will respond to his physical cues by putting on a coat.

Kimberly Snyder (13:27.183)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (13:44.388)
Shauna Brittenham Reiter (13:48.706)
But I preemptively want to put a coat on him to prevent him from feeling cold, to make sure he’s not uncomfortable. So when we trust ourselves and when we trust our bodies and when we slow down and have enough awareness to realize what’s going on and how to respond to it, when we have the confidence of believing we’re able to respond to what’s happening in real time, we don’t put the coat on before we’re cold. We don’t eat the snack before we’re hungry, right? And so,

Kimberly Snyder (14:13.753)
Great.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (14:17.816)
Similarly, like we wouldn’t think through every single potential unknown variable in regard to a decision that’s, you know, that is relating to our future because we’re not there in that moment yet. That’s fiction. Right. By being present every moment, we get the information we need to make the next best decision at the right time versus thinking 50 steps ahead.

you know, in a world of imagination that is purely fiction and has nothing to do with what may or may not happen in real time, right? So it’s this kind of trusting ourselves. Go ahead.

Kimberly Snyder (14:58.299)
Do you think this trauma, this hypervigilance can make us more, like we can create even more stories and narratives about other people’s motives or look too deeply into what do they mean or what’s going on here? Do you think there’s a lot of energy?

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (15:13.326)
Well, it has for me. mean, I’ve been hyper. Yeah, I mean, I would call it like my husband bluntly calls it paranoia. I call it fear. You know, it’s all levels of pain around not wanting to be judged, rejected, isolated and lonely. So in order to stay in people’s good graces subconsciously or consciously, many of us who felt

Kimberly Snyder (15:21.604)
Mmm.

Kimberly Snyder (15:34.692)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (15:41.236)
isolated and alone as children are misunderstood, or like we weren’t fully seen or heard, do everything in our power to ensure that that experience doesn’t happen again as adults. And so we’re sort of, absolutely.

Kimberly Snyder (15:54.508)
in a variety of people pleasing or keeping a distance from people.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (16:01.614)
not letting people fully access your true self, you know, and not presenting your whole emotional experience to people so that they’re not in a position to judge you or creating an image that you feel like people will receive, you know, versus maybe just being your authentic self in a moment that is really raw.

Kimberly Snyder (16:24.283)
Well, I’m laughing, Shana, because when you think about social media, right, and how much, how many masks there are, and it’s just, you know, a whole way in which people can hide behind identities.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (16:40.364)
Yeah, I mean, so I just believe or not, I just joined Insta. Well, you can’t believe it, because if you go on my page, you’ll see that I have like, three followers and maybe two of them are dogs. don’t know. Like I think one of the followers recently was actually a dog. I just joined social media in October of this past year. so I am very new and not because any, there’s nothing evil, like innately, right? Like there’s, there’s nothing on

Kimberly Snyder (16:59.961)
Yeah, it just didn’t resonate with me.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (17:08.844)
the planet that I believe is inherently good or bad, really. It’s just what we make of it and how we choose, the lenses through which we choose to interpret things. I didn’t feel like I knew how to be authentic using that particular channel of communication, nor do I fully receive that way. I love conversation, which is why I listen to podcasts religiously. I wasn’t sure in how, in sound bites, how to represent myself. And I’m still not.

Kimberly Snyder (17:27.788)
Right.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (17:38.438)
I mean, I still haven’t made like, I think I made one video that my seven year old at the time made for me to promote the book. Otherwise I don’t do impromptu videos or things of that nature. And so sort of understanding that we’re all just trying to present what we feel will ensure and guarantee love and a sense of safety is a great starting point, you know, anytime you log on to social media.

Like, we’re all wanting the same things. We’re all wanting to belong in community and feel a part of something.

Kimberly Snyder (18:14.779)
Yeah, and I feel like, you know, when we’re talking about these feelings or being triggered by trauma or not feeling sure, one of the things that you talk about that has been a big learning experience for me these last few years is self-soothing. Because often we’re led to believe that if I get this achievement or this validation, like that’s how I’m gonna feel good, or I can rely on this person to

making me feel okay. Can you share a little bit about some of these tools and how you’ve self-soothed yourself? And I also thought it was really interesting because we hear about this term inner child a lot, but there was a term that I had never heard of. I wrote it down here, shadow parents. Because I’ve said, Shauna, the way I parent my children is how I wish I was parented many ways. I constantly tell them,

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (19:10.648)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (19:13.179)
I love you because of you. You need to do nothing for love. Like I’m almost talking to myself. You know, it’s really interesting.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (19:21.021)
1000%. That’s how I learned to talk to myself, Kimberly. Like that 1000%, I mean, it became so simplified when I had my son. A, because I do love him unconditioned. My son is 10 right now, he just turned 10 and my daughter is eight, she just turned eight. And when they were born, it was like, oh my gosh, now I really do understand this piece of.

Kimberly Snyder (19:24.601)
was your children.

Kimberly Snyder (19:32.59)
in the older.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (19:46.41)
love that was so elusive to me in the past, which is that does it really matter what you do? I’m still going to love you a hundred percent. What I say to my son all the time is you are a hundred percent valuable at birth, which I write about in the book. There’s nothing that can subtract from or add to your value as a human. So you don’t need to impress me. Like you can’t change the way I feel about you.

Kimberly Snyder (19:49.455)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (20:05.883)
It’s beautiful.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (20:09.91)
The other day there was something he wanted to tell me. It was actually so cute and so benign, but like in his mind it was this really big deal, this secret that he was hoarding and he was afraid to come clean and like share it with It was like about, you know, fantasy about a dinosaur, whatever. It was so benign, but for him it was this big thing. And what I said to him was, there’s nothing you could say to scare me. There’s nothing you could say to drive me away.

Kimberly Snyder (20:36.091)
Mmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (20:36.576)
There is nothing you could say to make me love you less. And there’s nothing you could say to make me love you more. In other words, like you’re safe completely. So in learning to talk to my children, and actually I didn’t have to learn, like it’s the first intuitive thing maybe I’ve ever done is communicating with them. you know, I then was able to give that same grace to myself. So.

Kimberly Snyder (20:43.641)
Well.

Kimberly Snyder (20:54.81)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (21:05.293)
you know, gosh, you’re really sad. You seem really down right now. What’s going on? And okay, right now I understand that you feel really rejected by your friend group. Like, doesn’t mean that you’re any less lovable. They’re just not your people or they’re not treating you kindly right now. It’s not a reflection on who you are. All these things that we tell, you know, whether or not you have children, you know, I’m sure you’re telling this to your girlfriend as well or your neighbor or your coworker, like.

Kimberly Snyder (21:21.263)
Right.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (21:32.34)
we all want to be talked to the way we would talk to someone we love. And so if we can just empower ourselves to have that conversation internally instead of waiting for the outside to validate us, it’s incredibly liberating. It’s a huge time saver. And it also makes your relationships a lot more fluid because you’re not sucking the life force out of the people you love and are reliant on for support.

Kimberly Snyder (21:49.179)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (21:58.132)
Now that I’m learning to self-sue, it’s been like, you know, a very long, long process and I’m still very much in the trenches of it daily. But I’ve noticed a huge shift even in terms of how I interact with my husband, because I’m not like racing to him to tell me, okay, you know, I’m, I’m offering myself that affirmation. Yeah. yeah. yeah. And I mean, when I was an insomniac, I was still coming out of the throes of many decades of insomnia when I my husband.

Kimberly Snyder (22:13.741)
right? Did you use to? Did you use

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (22:25.44)
I would sometimes just wake him up. Like the way a child wakes up a parent in the middle of the night and saying, like, I can’t sleep. You know, I have anxiety, I can’t sleep. And in solidarity, he would just stay awake with me because he’s that kind of guy. you know, the point being that I for sure was looking to him for affirmation and just to basically say, you’re okay. Ultimately, the message I always want to hear is,

you’re lovable, you’re enough, and you’re okay exactly as you are in this moment. Like you don’t have to do anything or become anything more to be the person who I love. And we say that in theory, but then we don’t necessarily feel it, just like how you were saying, we can understand maybe what happened to us as children, but our bodies still feel like they’re not integrating this awareness in a way that

Kimberly Snyder (23:03.589)
Mmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (23:21.314)
brings calm and a sense of safety on a cellular level. You know, I think it’s a long, it’s been for me a long time of understanding that that is actually true, that I am enough, that it’s more than just words, that I’m speaking to myself. And that, and part of how I’ve proven that to myself is that I’m doing a lot of the things I set out to do that I thought would make me feel enough and I don’t feel any different.

Kimberly Snyder (23:25.157)
Yes.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (23:51.106)
Like I feel exactly the same. And so it’s like, okay, I mean, this is all beautiful and the things that we’re creating and accomplishing and whatnot, but like fundamentally I’m the same person. And so those messages that we tell our children, again, like if we can just very simply return the favor to ourselves, can help us stay really clear and grounded.

Kimberly Snyder (23:51.267)
Yeah, exactly.

Kimberly Snyder (24:03.365)
Hold it.

Kimberly Snyder (24:15.675)
clear, grounded, and again, this word present, right Shana? Because, you know, my husband, I didn’t know that I had some of these deeper traumas and triggers until we were married and then things would come up. And then because of that love, and this is where I think the relationship can be such a powerful mirror, it made me really see. And then I really got deeply into this heart work and heart coherence and it was

to your point about being in your head and disconnected from the body. I could have all sorts of stories that weren’t really present. It was all that had happened. But when I got here and I would breathe and then I could actually feel what was happening and know I wasn’t it, it started to metabolize. As you said, things are really stored in the nervous system. They’re stored in patterns, the neural circuitry between the heart and the brain. And the brain itself, there’s so much going on in our bodies.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (24:50.87)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (25:13.615)
But in that moment, these are opportunities to really heal when we’re in it.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (25:19.274)
Absolutely, and to just instead of judging ourselves for not being where we want to be, like that’s an invitation for more grace and more compassion and more patience. I mean, it’s so sad what we do to ourselves in terms of shaming, you know, our emotional bodies for having a certain reaction. But if we can use, if we can sort of non-judgmentally step back and go, wow, I’m struggling. I feel like a little girl right now. I feel very vulnerable.

Kimberly Snyder (25:29.093)
Definitely.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (25:47.662)
and very unsafe and so I’m creating this drama or I’m reacting in a way that is making me feel uncomfortable or the people around me uncomfortable. If we can just pause and go out, it seems like what you need right now is a little more love, a little more TLC, not more judgment and shame, which is also very relevant to the conversation about perfectionism. It’s like we don’t relieve ourselves from perfectionistic.

Kimberly Snyder (26:11.225)
Yes, very much.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (26:15.726)
by being harder on ourselves and more in judgment. How could you be so perfectionist and rigid and you’re not flexible? Those kinds of shaming thoughts only drag us deeper into the ways that we don’t want to be. And so I think the freedom is in accessing the grace and the compassion in the moments we feel like the least fit for consumption publicly or internally.

Kimberly Snyder (26:31.791)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (26:45.421)
And so some of these really important tools that are simple and fundamental that we’ve talked about even a few times here are awareness. Sometimes we don’t even know we’re in trigger until we can start to be aware, hey, I’m really clenching up or I’m tightening or knowing what kind of thoughts are starting to come up and pausing. Would you say that’s true, Shana?

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (27:07.63)
Yes. Yeah, think pausing is just key to everything in life. I when you take the pause, I think they say it’s like 90 seconds. If you can just wait 90 seconds to say, to blurt out the thing that you impulsively want to say when you feel like you’ve been wronged by someone or whatever. Yeah, the pause is huge. mean, the pause I think is also where we give ourselves freedom just to be us.

Kimberly Snyder (27:13.723)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (27:27.939)
He would have sucked.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (27:37.13)
and to not feel like we have to go and go and do and do in order to be validated. just being, I mean, actually a friend said this to me and I really didn’t believe him at the time, but I remembered the words and they’ve haunted me for years as I’ve tried to believe them. And I think actually I’m starting to the past few years, but a friend said to me 20 years ago, just you being on this planet is enough.

Kimberly Snyder (28:02.969)
Hmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (28:03.746)
The fact that you’re here, that you’ve arrived at this moment in history and that you’re going to be in the presence of whoever needs your light. Like you’ve done your job just by being here. And it was so counterintuitive to me at the time. And still I’ve spent years trying to prove my, place here. but often in the pause, that’s where I get my ideas. That’s where the song melody emerges. That’s where.

Kimberly Snyder (28:14.33)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (28:27.983)
Yep.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (28:31.382)
I feel like the line of the book just kind of presents itself to me versus me having to strive for it and to chase it. And so there’s a lot of beauty in the pause. Of course, if you’re plagued by anxiety, pauses can feel very scary, which is why we often distract ourselves and go on hyper speed and hyper drive because yeah. Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (28:53.435)
filling the gaps, scrolling. So how would we transition Shauna, let’s say, you know, coming from a background of anxiety to be more comfortable in pauses and to learn maybe, you know, for many of us the first time, how to self-soothe, how to move from, you know, an agitated state with some of the tools that you present in the.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (29:01.986)
Mm-hmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (29:18.22)
Yeah, I mean, think, of course, it’s so basic, but it all like all of the most beautiful and effective modalities are just starting with a pause and a breath so that we can center our nervous systems, having that awareness to understand, okay, we’re I’m now eight years old, I’m now 10 years old. Right? This is from the past.

Kimberly Snyder (29:26.683)
Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (29:38.255)
Yeah, exactly. This is for the past.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (29:43.776)
And then bringing the grace and compassion of that really kind, positive, supportive, internal narrative that says, you’re enough exactly as you are right now, who you are in this moment in time and what you’re presenting isn’t ugly. Like there’s no shame in being human. It’s just, it’s what you are. It’s what we all are all the time. And there’s, there’s absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about, you know, and if you can let yourself tune into the anxiety.

and then breathe love into the parts of you that feel tight. Like, you know, for me, for many years, I had a lot of stomach issues in my youth. That was just where I stored my voicelessness, my anxiety, my stress, my sense of helplessness, real or perceived, it was all kind of in my gut. And so now I very consciously, if I feel like there’s tension in my shoulders and my chest and my stomach, I actually focus on the…

Kimberly Snyder (30:29.904)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (30:41.29)
channeling the breath and sort of delivering the breath to that specific part of my body and feeling it expand and feeling it widen and giving it that spaciousness to breathe and relaxing for a moment in the pause and then telling that part of myself what it needs to hear whatever it is like you’re safe right now you have everything you need or everything is going to work out as you go you’ll discover the tools and the answers that you’re looking for.

or exactly the right people are going to enter your life at exactly the right time to lead you to where you want to be and where you’re going next. Or you were born to feel peaceful and it’s your right to access peace. Even in this moment when things feel unresolved and there’s a great deal of unknown, you deserve and are allowed to feel peaceful in this very moment exactly as you are with what you know and what you don’t know. know, so bringing, just generating that

Kimberly Snyder (31:15.131)
Kimberly Snyder (31:20.729)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (31:35.578)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (31:38.648)
kind of soothing dialogue so that it becomes more instinctual to pause, breathe, send spaciousness and love to the parts of you that are clenching or bracing or in survival mode, and then tell yourself the thing that you would hope someone else would tell you.

Kimberly Snyder (31:57.495)
Mm. I love that. I also say, Shana, when I’m, if I’m in conversation with someone and something like this happens, what’s also been helpful for me, that’s a newer tool, though, is actually giving myself permission to say, hold on a second, I just need a moment.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (32:16.59)
Absolutely.

Kimberly Snyder (32:18.607)
I just, I just, I just, hold on, I just need a moment or I just gotta, you know, I’m gonna go to the bathroom really quick or get water just to actually in that moment, take care. When I’m feeling that, like something really major, which doesn’t always happen, but when it does, you know.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (32:30.278)
yes!

And you will.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (32:37.678)
Well, it’s such a gift to the other person. Like in the moment, it might feel kind of indulgent, but it’s actually a gift to you and to the other person because you’re going to be approaching the conversation with a perspective that’s more informed and less reactive if you give yourself that pause. I’ll never forget, Kimberly, actually in college, I went to a concert. was like this.

old school bluesy, I went to school in South Carolina and it was like this blue grassy kind of festival. there was this kind of John Fogerty-esque musician on stage and he took so much time tuning his guitar. And he was like, it was a huge audience, he was up there like, just taking his, just like he was on his front porch with no one waiting or watching.

Kimberly Snyder (33:25.733)
Right

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (33:30.06)
And I just kept going like, this just keeps going on and on. And this was at the beginning of the show. He was tuning his guitar and it was just like the silence under this tent and we’re all watching. And I remember just thinking to myself, this man is embodied. This man has such high self esteem that he’s not in a rush because we’re waiting for him.

Kimberly Snyder (33:32.923)
Like at the beginning of the show or in between songs.

Kimberly Snyder (33:52.303)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (33:56.29)
He is giving himself, and the reason he was doing that was because the humidity and the tent and everything kept kind of shifting. If you’re a musician, understand, you have to sort of retune your instrument in real time. And so he just wanted to get it right so he could perform his ass off, which he did. And he gave us his all at that moment of birthing his voice, but goodness, the labor was long. And I remember thinking, I remember thinking I would have been so agitated and nervous.

about what people in the audience were expecting. And I would have felt rushed and that would have created a certain level of anxiety. And this man was just like, this is what I gotta do right now. I gotta tune my instrument so I can be present and perform. And he did not, there was not a nervous bone in his body. And I was literally 19 when I saw the show and I could, it felt like it happened yesterday, the way it imprinted.

on my, on my soul, my nervous system, because there was this ownership over his craft and his decision making, which at the time I really didn’t feel like I had, you know, this, like you were saying, this sort of impulse to please others and this instinct to always be sort of scanning for

a dangerous situation, which might include like people’s responses to you or feelings about you or thoughts about you. Like that’s perceived danger for those of us with anxiety. And he just didn’t have that. And so I think giving yourself permission to give your body and your mind and your soul and your heart, whatever it needs in the moment to tune, to get in tune, you know, to like, to get your instrument.

Kimberly Snyder (35:24.303)
Right?

Kimberly Snyder (35:45.348)
my god.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (35:47.182)
like where it needs to be. It’s such a valuable lesson and that may be a sip of water, it may be a nap, it might be time alone, more sleep.

Kimberly Snyder (35:52.325)
Yes, not rushing, not packing. Wow.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (35:58.538)
Absolutely, there are many ways in which we need to pause to tune our instrument. And that allowance really benefits all of our relationships because we don’t want to ultimately show up and then bring a version of ourselves that’s resentful because we want to be in our loungewear, like watching Ali McBeal re-reads. I recently started watching Ali McBeal from the 90s. I never saw it in the 90s. So it’s like my reference now for everything.

Kimberly Snyder (36:04.325)
This.

Kimberly Snyder (36:09.305)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (36:27.862)
Like all I talk about is watching how I make feel for your ass because I’m watching it for the first time and it’s so exciting. anyways, the point is, there are times now where I will just call a girlfriend and say, I was so looking forward to seeing you and actually what I need to do today is nothing. Do you mind if we reschedule? And it creates so much freedom and liberation and relationships where you can be honest with people, but it starts with being honest with yourself.

Kimberly Snyder (36:45.977)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (36:56.212)
And then when you give yourself what you need and you model to others that you’re responding in real time to what’s actually happening, it gives them permission to do the same. Just like you sharing your story. Like, you know, I was listening to one of your podcasts recently and you talking about, you know, your relationship with food and the complexity of that. It’s like you’re giving other people a hall pass to not only acknowledge, but to openly share what they’ve been through. So.

Kimberly Snyder (37:07.067)
Wow.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (37:25.536)
in such a vulnerable, powerful way that could unlock freedom for so many people. So when we own and value our own truth, like we’re giving people a service that’s unimaginable. We don’t even know how canceling a lunch because we want to watch an Ally McBeal rerun might empower someone or inspire someone to quit their job. know, quit a relationship that isn’t working.

Kimberly Snyder (37:30.082)
Mm. Mm.

Kimberly Snyder (37:50.259)
it’s isn’t that amazing just to be it like you use the word embody to not just talk about something but to actually live it. And you and I were chatting Shauna just before we got on about Hawaii and I was sharing how we spend a lot of time there and we just got back yesterday. And I could just feel that this trip in particular I really needed to reset my nervous system from the fires.

There’s a lot going on with Solluna with my company. We’re about to launch a new website and we’re just so much happening with the rebrand and everything. But as soon as I got there, I said to my team, I said, I’m going to be offline this week. It wasn’t something I had planned for, but then with my kids, just, we have this porch that just looks out over the jungle basically. And we have the cacao fields.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (38:29.879)
Hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (38:40.547)
And we really didn’t plan Shauna. We were just in the forest for hours and just did the waterfall. And we just stare at the water and kind of look around. And it was very healing to not be in scheduled energy. And I know we don’t always have that freedom to take, you know, time to do that, but I think even in everyday life, it is really soothing to just be and to carve out more space. And to your point, not say yes to everything, to let ourselves take a really long bath.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (38:55.31)
Mm-hmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (39:07.438)
Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (39:10.107)
just to take that Saturday morning to paddle around in first, yeah, just not always this pace of on, right? The perfectionist, where we get burned out is like, always have to fill this time. And then our life is, we’re giving away our life constantly.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (39:13.464)
Pudder.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (39:31.314)
And it’s also just sort of this reframing of societal expectations that are so like, I don’t even know. I mean, I do know Industrial Revolution and blah, blah. Okay, so we can look at history as to why we have this manic pace. But I feel like my most productive, beautiful offerings to others and to myself have largely been born out of space and out of

Kimberly Snyder (39:58.692)
Yes.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (39:59.628)
the moments between the moments where I’m technically being productive. Like for me, nothing is more productive than rifling through a kitchen drawer and disposing of like, you know, whatever the plastic fork that doesn’t need to be there. in that moment, like I was saying before the melody is born or like the line of the poem, I just wrote a book of poetry, which I’m now like completely convinced that I just want to spend my whole life puttering and writing poetry and not like.

Kimberly Snyder (40:17.935)
Mmm.

Kimberly Snyder (40:23.343)
Amen.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (40:29.77)
running a business, but anyway, that’s for a different conversation. But I feel like so much of my organic wisdom and my innate knowing and the ease and flow of adaptivity and creativity and birth and just the juicy deliciousness of everything we’re meant to feel and experience and create comes from doing absolutely nothing so much of the time. And I’m saying this as a working mother.

Kimberly Snyder (40:58.479)
Yes.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (40:58.958)
You know, I wrote a book, I have a business, I have no childcare for my children. I am not suggesting that people have the luxury of just kind of floating around in their jammies all the time. I certainly don’t. But I will say the moments I give myself permission to when I’m able to, and to not over schedule myself, so much more happens. So much more.

Kimberly Snyder (41:20.697)
I agree. And it’s almost, it seems counterintuitive. It’s like the first time I read the Tao and it’s, you know, there’s a line that says do nothing and then nothing gets undone or everything gets, I’m modeling the words, but it’s basically in the not doing everything that you want actually happen, right? I’ll have to read the exact wording. I read it over and over again and now it has more meaning.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (41:39.758)
Mmm.

Kimberly Snyder (41:46.693)
to your point of this like pace and constricting and pushing actually constricts our creativity and our energy and our wellness. And then the spaciousness is abundance, right?

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (41:56.076)
Right.

Right, because it’s so much of it’s in us. It’s like we’re looking to the outside for tools and answers. And I hope and pray that my book provides wisdom and modalities that support people. my book is called, Are the Boss of You, because you are the boss of you. Like I’m only pointing people ultimately to their own innate knowing anyway. I’m helping people hopefully deconstruct the things that keep them from having access.

Kimberly Snyder (42:21.296)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (42:28.216)
to that internal wisdom that we’re born with and that we die with. so, similarly, it’s like everything that we are going to create is in us already. And we just need to give ourselves time and space to breathe through it like that old timey blues guitarist on the stage who just took his time. He took his time and then this beautiful thing happened because he wasn’t in a rush. Yeah, permission.

Kimberly Snyder (42:28.239)
Yeah.

Kimberly Snyder (42:59.063)
And if anyone listening to this, Shauna, because I think of myself 10, 12 years ago, hustling around New York and teaching yoga clients and having nutrition clients and just always on writing my books at night, I’d listen and probably say, right, ladies, easy for you to say. But I can’t do that. I would challenge myself back then and even look at the times where I was just sort of, you

adding in extra. Because I think if we really look, there are these moments, no matter how busy we are, we’re both working mothers, and still I find a lot of spaciousness.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (43:30.264)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (43:40.748)
Yes, and it is a decision. It really is. I think if you’d make the decision, then you can start to consciously curate your life in small, very small, but monumental ways. Change doesn’t have to be huge to be amazingly impactful and to change your life in ways that are profound. So tiny, tiny moments that you take for yourself might amount to huge opportunities in your future.

Kimberly Snyder (43:43.385)
Yes.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (44:08.088)
But it’s also like a question to me of like, why? So if I choose to move quickly through a day, cause that’s my chosen rhythm or cause I want to agree to five things that feel exciting to me and I’m energized and pumped about it and it gives me life and makes me feel activated, then that is an amazing choice for that day, right? But if I’m going and going and doing just because either that’s what I’ve habituated to,

or because I feel lonely in the gaps in between, or I’m not being useful or productive, then our motivation for being busy changes. So it’s like, think just having agency in your life, a huge part of ownership is just acknowledging why. Why are you making the choices you’re making about your time or your sleep or your schedule? Is it coming from a place of fear that you’re gonna be missing out on something?

Kimberly Snyder (45:01.167)
insurance.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (45:07.214)
Do you have FOMO about not getting to the next level in your career or not being invited to the dinner party? Or is it because you genuinely want to be agreeing to certain things?

Kimberly Snyder (45:18.139)
Exactly. And to your point, Shana, these small steps, and I love how it relates to being the boss of me. One thing that just came to mind that’s really been impactful is not answering everybody the moment they text me or they email. And then just sort of, it just sort of throws me off my rhythm. I need the spaciousness. So maybe in a few hours or at the end of the day, I’ll, I’ll text back, you know.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (45:45.358)
Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (45:46.009)
related to work or whatever it is, you know, just a bunch of people at once. And I said this to my husband, because I noticed he’s like always on there and he’s like, I’m always burned out. And I said, you don’t have to answer everybody back. Like that’s their schedule. And then we can start to create our

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (45:53.43)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (46:01.454)
Right, and this is one of the biggest things. So for me, texting is very similar to social media where it’s like, I want to play by my rules. I don’t want to fall into a trap of doing things that people expect me to do in any area of my life. I want to do what I feel authentically is going to motivate me to feel the most myself and the most empowered and the most alive. So for me, technology and being on my phone all the time is not that.

Kimberly Snyder (46:10.81)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (46:30.394)
And it’s interesting, like we teach people how to treat us. And so, and that’s true as well in terms of our communication styles and patterns and the rhythm that we establish for our lives. So for instance, my girlfriends know that I’m not gonna show up to every dinner I’m invited to, even if everyone else is there and I still want the invite. So they will invite me and they’ll say this like.

Kimberly Snyder (46:51.524)
Bye.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (46:55.032)
Shauna, we know you’re gonna say no because it’s a nine o’clock reservation, but we’re going to dinner Thursday night. My friends also know I will not text back right away if it’s not part of the rhythm and they no longer personalize it. So I think part of the problem in life in general is that we attach meaning to things, right? And we start projecting the why onto other people. And it’s like,

Kimberly Snyder (47:09.947)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (47:20.814)
I tend to think everyone’s mad at me for no reason because of my childhood trauma. like, if someone doesn’t respond back away, right away, I too will have that response. Like, oh, did I say something in a previous conversation? I’m not aware of, they mad at me? And like, you know, I’ll go to drop off my kids at school and I’ll come home and say to my husband, I feel like so-and-so’s mad at me, like this mom. And he’ll go, maybe she just like is constipated. Like that face might have nothing to do with you. Like, why are you making it?

Kimberly Snyder (47:32.571)
Why didn’t you first remind us?

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (47:49.738)
about you, that’s such a sort of self-absorbed way to internalize other people’s response or just like how they’re being in the world. So, and by the way, it’s like, and I know that when I ignore other people on social media or on my phone, it’s not because I’m upset with them. It’s because I’m just taking time to do other things. has nothing to do with my feelings about that person. In fact, I love the people in my life so much that when I show up,

Kimberly Snyder (47:58.267)
Hyper. Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (48:17.942)
I want it to be with my whole heart and my whole self. And I can’t do that if I’m spread too thin and if I’m responding quickly right away to everything that comes in. So in other words, we do teach people how to treat us. So if you just say to people, look, I am like in this rhythm now in my life where it might take a couple of days for me to get back to you and I want you to know it’s not about you at all. This is just what my body needs to stay calibrated and integrate.

Kimberly Snyder (48:40.804)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (48:46.464)
everything else that’s going on in my world right now. And if we just all stop personalizing it, we will be able to honor ourselves and also just create sort of comfort and mutual support in relationships.

Kimberly Snyder (49:00.155)
So Shana, was this colleague, like this woman that I email with, and she would email me and then I wouldn’t respond right away, because that’s my pace. And then by the next day, she’d be texting me, hey, did you see my email? Did you see my email? And at first I found it very jarring. And a little bit, I would get annoyed and like, I felt very invasive. But you know, this chapter.

that you wrote about boundaries and just being really clear and you could be loving and kind and firm. So I just said to her, know, I don’t write back right away. I’ve got a lot of things going on sometimes and I will get back to you. And then she stopped being so, cause that’s her pace, right? And I didn’t, I don’t want to align to it. And so, and I also can feel safe even when people try to intrude on boundaries that,

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (49:29.838)
Mm-hmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (49:44.398)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (49:52.654)
Mm-hmm.

Kimberly Snyder (49:54.809)
You know, we just have to be clear because that used to not feel my trauma and my nervous system when people would try to overstep because we live in a world where people are, they can try to overstep and it’s still okay. We can be here for us.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (49:58.389)
Yeah, exactly.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (50:10.188)
Yeah, it takes a lot to develop that self trust. what I get, like, I think the ultimate goal in life is to trust yourself enough to take care of yourself, right? To be your own parent, to be honest. And you can do it in the most loving and kind way and set the expectations early on and be very clear. Like, thank you so much for getting in touch. I really value the communication, however.

Kimberly Snyder (50:21.561)
Be honest, you can be honest.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (50:37.184)
my rhythm is it sometimes takes me a few days to respond to people. I appreciate your patience as I handle life’s demands and we’ll circle back around soon. And some people then will respond again, right? Like even though you’ve created that boundary and then you just don’t email back. Cause you’ve already said your piece, right? And so if people…

Kimberly Snyder (50:47.269)
Yeah.

Beautiful.

Kimberly Snyder (50:59.331)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (51:03.776)
If friends text multiple times, say, you know, I’m in the middle of writing an essay or I’m in the middle of something, and then they’re continuing to text, I just don’t respond back. And then I have to be comfortable with the fact that they might be annoyed because they’re in their own story about what they need for their own, you know, satisfaction, right? So everyone’s just trying to get their own needs met.

And so they might override your boundaries in order to feel safe themselves or heard or seen. And that’s okay. in the words of, I’m going to butcher her, is it Mel something, Mel Robbins wrote a book recently and I haven’t read it, but my understanding is that it’s basically about letting people have whatever experience they’re having. You can’t control them anyway is the reality, right? Like you can’t control what people are going to think of you. just.

do you and allow other people to be in their own world of reactivity.

Kimberly Snyder (52:05.019)
Yes, it’s true. It’s so beautiful. When we are clear, really clear with our own boundaries and what we own. And then we say, you know, this isn’t mine. Because that was a big problem for me. It could feel messy and like, oh, now they’re annoyed or bending the boundary because you don’t want to create friction between you and another person, you know?

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (52:17.888)
Absolutely.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (52:30.382)
Which is where the self-soothing becomes so paramount, Kimberly, right? Because I avoided creating boundaries for many years because I didn’t want to deal with how I would feel if people responded negatively to that boundary, just like you were saying. So if, you know, I didn’t want people to be disappointed with me, ashamed of their own behavior. I mean, I was even protecting people from their own shame about how they were being in the world. I didn’t want people to be disappointed or angry, like.

Kimberly Snyder (52:44.665)
Yeah.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (52:58.39)
There’s just a million things that I was trying to buffer because I didn’t trust myself to work through the discomfort of another person having their experience. You know, and now it’s like, just stay in your lane. just tell myself it is none of your business what someone thinks of you right now or how they’re feeling about you. That’s their own projection, attitude, perception. Maybe it’s legitimate. Maybe it’s not. Maybe there’s some validity to how they’re responding and mute. There’s

something you can take a deeper look at. Maybe it’s all about that their needs not getting met as children. Like right now, my sole concern is taking care of myself. And if there’s something for me to reflect on, I will do so at exactly the right time. You know, I will input that feedback. I will filter it through my own lenses of what feels true and accurate and right to me. And I will either use it

Kimberly Snyder (53:38.405)
Hmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (53:55.858)
evolve and grow or I’ll set it aside and say, that’s your story. It’s not mine.

Kimberly Snyder (54:01.575)
Mm, beautifully said and really feels empowering as you describe it, which I feel like through all these tools, so many tools and so much you explain in the book, Sean, and share. And I also like that it’s not, hey, do you know, this is, you really say that this is my journey, here are some of the things that have helped me, but everybody is on their own healing journey back to wholeness. So some of the tools may resonate more than others.

It may open us up to explore other ones, but what a beautiful way to share and really support others through this book, Shauna, once again called You Are the Boss of You, Cultivate the Mindset and Tools to Live Life on Your Terms. Is there anything that we didn’t talk about with the book that you’d like to share with everyone now?

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (54:54.38)
I just wanted to share the chapter breakdown briefly so that people kind of understand the scope of what’s being covered. So it’s defining boundaries, soothing yourself, softening perfectionism, redefining yourself concept, honoring sleep, healing trauma, feeling it all, which is basically permission to feel, feeling all of your feelings, creating your rhythm, advocating for yourself and building your future. So it’s these 10 sort of core themes that will hopefully help you.

Kimberly Snyder (54:58.117)
Yes.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (55:23.522)
build your life from the inside out. And also there’s a workbook I created for it, Kimberly, that can be found on my personal website, helloshana.com. And the workbook can be just easily downloaded. It’s front and center on the landing page. And it’s all of these very actionable tools. have exercises sort of woven throughout the book, but the workbook is, you know, many, many, many, many, many pages of exercises and tools that are

Kimberly Snyder (55:44.847)
Mm-hmm.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (55:52.394)
super easy to implement, don’t require more than a pen and paper or nothing at all, to really kind of integrate and make more actionable some of what we’re discussing in the book.

Kimberly Snyder (56:02.919)
thank you so much for offering these tools and we will link directly to that in our show notes at mysaluna.com as well as your book, Shauna. Thank you so much for being here with us today and sharing your heart, your really authentic intentions to support others and your journey. Appreciate it so much.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (56:19.758)
Thank you.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (56:27.33)
I appreciate you too. really appreciate your vulnerability and your transparency. And just want to say again that when you speak your truth, you give other people permission to share theirs. And even in listening to your podcast, I feel your heart come through on every level. So thank you so much for what you’ve given to me personally and to the world. Your offering is ultimately your heart and it’s huge.

Kimberly Snyder (56:38.267)
you

Kimberly Snyder (56:42.0)
No.

Kimberly Snyder (56:52.677)
Thank you so much, Shana. It’s so wonderful to connect. And these are the type of heartfelt conversations that I really just appreciate so deeply. once again, everyone, please check out our show notes. Please check out Shana’s wonderful book, The Lost View. And we will be back here Thursday, as always, for our next Q &A show. Remember, on our website, you can submit any questions.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (56:54.392)
Thank you, Kimberly.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (57:03.692)
Me too.

Shauna Brittenham Reiter (57:10.625)
Hahaha

Kimberly Snyder (57:21.039)
that you have and hopefully I will answer them on an upcoming show. So take great care, sending you so much love and see you back here soon.