(00:01) [Music] I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as a New York Times bestselling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist pul dancer or honorary member of the disinformation Dozen what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my her victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your health your sexuality your power and your expression so that you can finally truly
(00:43) own yourself I want to ignite in you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of Who You Are this is Reclamation radio hi and welcome back to Reclamation radio I am Dr Kelly Brogan and what I love about my containers is that the women I attract always have some audacious questions to ask me so it’s my intention for the musings that I share on these topics to
(01:21) grow the permission field of what’s possible and also to offer relatable reframes that can Jailbreak you from your victim story so you might notice that I’m a bit more familiar and free when I’m answering these questions in our private spaces so take a listen and I hope you’ll take the opportunity to submit your questions to me in my membership vital life project I got this question from Ruth and she’s asking yesterday at a work event an acquaintance older in age than me was sitting near me and shared some judgmental remarks about another woman
(02:02) that I don’t know something like how can that woman allow herself to wear tight thongs visible through her pants I found myself nodding in my head but I also didn’t know what was the right action in the moment recognizing and holding This Woman’s Shadow as her own excusing myself from the conversation right away I would have said something to a friend but I’m curious to know your thoughts when interacting with people we don’t know well okay so obviously a lot of the work that I have supported in um the past you
(02:35) know couple years is resolving the sense that we ever know better how somebody else should be living right and I think this specifically applies to women woman-on-woman hate um and specifically applies to the way that we many of us in our feminist programming as women imagine that the aders AR is the misogynist man and in my experience as a career feminist that is absolutely not the case the vitriol the attack the the admonishment the energy of no you cannot be that in my experience has come from other women specifically and
(03:27) honestly this has been way before I was prancing around a in a bikini this started with my first home birth article in 2016 that I put out and Jezebel which is a Pharma at least then was a Pharma uh funded supposed feminist uh media Outlet Unleashed thousands of bots and trolls on my then uh Facebook page and it was like in including aerial shots of my home and death threats and all the all the things and it was like a deluge of women who insisted that I was the ultimate danger to other women right and that’s when I saw wait hold on a
(04:11) minute like I thought we were all here to fight for women right but a lot of the programming for women is in support of the agenda I mean obviously we know that right like you deserve to take your meds you know no one should micro aggress your mental illness right and so it’s been fascinating a to watch as somebody who who has always imagined that that’s one of my core dharmic responsibilities is to um hold this space for for for women so I’ve really seen this so how do we how do we work with this if we intend
(04:46) to end the war with men and end the war with women how do we proceed when we are bearing witness to a woman who is um being judged let’s say for her choices be they Behavioral or otherwise fashion choices whatever it is and I think this is where embodiment is always going to be the answer to activism right because there there is a caretaking impulse right there is like oh a virtuous impulse like oh there’s a right thing for me to do here there is a way that I can come to the rest you there’s a way that I cannot stand by in
(05:33) the courtyard gazing upon the woman being raped and imagining somebody else you know the bystander effect imagine somebody else is going to handle it right so there is such a thing as right action here what is it and it’s not programmatic that’s the thing it is determined by you and your body how do you read that if you don’t have a relationship to your body you know the feedback that I’ve been getting is like I don’t know how to talk about what happened like I literally don’t have there’s like probably 10 posts that
(06:13) are that say some version of like I don’t have words for this and at first I was like come on there’s got to be a better testimonial than that until I realized oh this is what happens when women are in their bodies they don’t have narrative right like obviously I’m the space shoulder that’s always going to be part of what I deliver however a woman in her body doesn’t necessarily have The Punchy thing to say doesn’t have the clever summary and may not especially in that moment if she is picking up you know some of the this is
(06:49) a um this is an offense to All Humans right like kind of a thing you might freeze right you might even Fawn right you might even find yourself agreeing with in your core this is like a violation to participate in so the answer is not necessarily to plan ahead what you would do the answer is to meet your body where you’re at meet your body where you’re at if you are in a freeze you’re going to go ahead and you’re going to stay quiet and you’re going to make that okay and if you are in a fawn and you do a regrettable thing or you say a
(07:31) regrettable thing you’re going to relate to the part that has always known that was a decent strategy right and you’re going to not try to convert that part into seeing how bad and wrong it is right and if you get all nasty and you get in your fight right or you run out the room in your flight that’s where you’re at I’ll tell a quick example I was at music and sky and uh there was a presentation and it was extraordinarily triggering for me this presentation and the specific way that the presenter seemed to like single me out with eye
(08:12) contact in the audience and make proclamations about like flat earth round earth stuff and I went through my whole like somatic sequence like literally like flushes of heat up my throat my heart was like pounding and and I stay it was you know if you’ve been to music Sky it was like in this little room little room and I was like probably third row right so it would have been a whole thing for me to get up and go out leave right um and so I stayed and I was like this is a spiritual somatic practice for me and I’m gonna I’m gonna breathe through
(08:48) this and I’m gonna use all of my tools I’m G to track the sensation right so I did all that stuff and then I like left the room and I talked to my coach about it later and she said you know what you did in that moment was to reject the part of you that needed to leave in favor of the spiritual Warrior part right and so she suggested something that just made so much sense to me which is what I’m telling you now which is that there is a a window of time where meeting yourself where you are is showing your body that you can be
(09:29) trusted not to override the system in service of like whatever it is that your mind thinks is the right thing to do so if I were to meet my body where I was I needed to leave the room didn’t feel good to be there anymore right I didn’t have the ready self-containment at that moment at that time to feel comfortable and to offer myself rapid Alchemy of whatever was happening inside I wanted to leave so meeting myself where I was showing myself that I could be trusted right would be listening to what I needed in that moment and I would have
(10:14) gotten up and left and then I would have held the part of me that said oh my God that’s so rude can’t believe you did that right but instead right I um it held the part of me that wanted to leave and that part had much much stronger charge to metabolize so letting it be okay letting your stress physiology be okay right is an important phase if you will maybe it never ends I don’t know and then as you find yourself again right like as you come back into regulation that’s when you might find that declaring your I
(11:00) am feels healing feels important to you telling somebody who thinks they know how this woman should woman how they should man right is not the antidote right like you did the wrong thing how dare you say that about it you don’t even know about you know what women’s lib really looks like right now it looks like sexual expression right or whatever the that is becoming the monster we’re fighting maybe maybe it’s exactly what needs to be happening maybe this woman needs to hear that feedback do you know how much I have grown from and
(11:36) integrated from hearing people’s shitty critical feedback it’s been the the most powerful spiritual practice of my life okay so so you don’t know what that woman needs you know how these people should be acting you only know your felt experience and sharing your felt experience it felt blank when you blank might be really amazing for you especially if you’re someone who doesn’t run their mouth like I do right if you’re someone who’s more seized up it might feel like an important opportunity to titrate into hey I’m in the room too
(12:17) right which you may not have a lot of experience with from your childhood and so you might go and sit with it and send an email or come back and tap the guy on the shoulder and be like hey like I imagine you meant you know no harm and you were just making an innocent comment you know but it felt like really bad for me when you said that about her that’s it Drop It Like It’s that offer that there you know or I like to work with ready phrases right like so or you could have a ready phrase if it feels like let’s say you you you work in an
(12:54) environment where these things come up often you know you might have something in your pocket so that when you’re in freeze you if you are you have something to say so Kazi arbania who is um I’ve I’ve shared her work a lot a big fan and she wrote a book called Unbound and she teaches that the way you break the freeze is to ask a question and so you might say like do you always talk about co-workers underwear in the office right it could be related or she says it doesn’t even have to be related like hey anybody know what time
(13:36) lunch is because when you ask the question you’re in the dominant pole again and you get out of that prey energy get out of that submissive energy where you can’t access your faculties and you can’t make decisions and you can’t possibly know what is Right action from that place right so you know that’s a little strategy you could Lock and Load and it’s also completely perfect if it takes you time to figure out how to represent yourself in these kinds of Dynamics and if you need to get up and leave that’s exactly
(14:15) what you’re going to [Music] do also on the topic of judgment Anna asked I would love to hear your thoughts about what we get out of judging others especially when it’s total strangers we don’t even know I’ve been looking at this in myself and asking what am I getting out of this I still have no answer I don’t share my judgment with anyone but I’m still thinking it okay so you are describing a scenario that’s very different than my adaptive situation so mine is like I feel judged I feel judged right and when that lands
(15:01) meaning it triggers me I will raise my sword right so like I what I’ve noted uncomfortably is that in that sword is the right is the mirror reflection that’s the metaphor it’s like I can see myself and the way that I am then judging back is exactly the same as what I am judging somebody else for right so if I say I can’t believe how much you lack nuance right in that moment um I am lacking Nuance probably right so we enact exactly that which we judge when we judge so the rubric I like to invoke for this is like the villain Crown stuff
(15:44) right there is the experience of being judged right and so when you are which is not what you’re asking about but I’m just going to include this when you are being judged you have this opportunity to try it on right to wear that villain crown and just allow somebody else to think that you are bad and wrong and when you do that you can assess whether or not it fits so I was kicked out of a group recently for their their bylaw what is it called like bylaws their Community like sort of whatevers uh included that members were in some way not able to
(16:33) express themselves immodestly profanely um or promiscuously or something like that and so apparently I I violated that just I don’t know like with my public brand and whatever and this was like hugely triggering for me on many levels um you know because I’m used to being judged for my like scientific and and intellectual perspectives and I’m new to being judged for for the way that I comport myself as a woman and um publicly anyway so when I tried that on I tried on the immodesty and I was like yeah kind of fits right I mean look
(17:16) at what I’m wearing now like a skin tight crop top okay so like that’s arguable if we’re gonna like default to the conventional social definitions the profanity yeah I have like an absolute like trucker mouth and I grew up in New Jersey it’s just kind of in in the water there I don’t know and I haven’t really um expressed so much of that publicly until recently as I integrate this right and just sort of play with like will I um experience like terminal cancellation if I am actually who I am right the promiscuity thing I was like that
(17:50) doesn’t fit right like that that doesn’t this is just not accurate right and so that just kind of like slid off so there I have this opportunity to really like see and then make a choice and assess my choices with a sober mind and a clear heart right so when we judge others and I argue this is like a very adaptive thing for us to do it’s part of our assessment and the only difference between uh of reality and the only difference between judgment and discernment is that with discernment you retain your power of choice and you do
(18:33) not need somebody to be bad and wrong so you don’t need to be the litigator and get up on your damn Podium and make sure that you educate the ignorant person about how bad and wrong they are so that you can make your choice but you’re describing you know that you don’t even raise your sort of off you’re just in this state of being like oh why is she I don’t know I don’t know what you’re really in a state of doing but like let’s say like oh why is she wearing that like I can’t believe she keeps touching her hair like that or like why
(19:01) is he like walking on my lawn or whatever it is right like in those judgments there’s a lot of gold because you are interacting with someone who’s holding a part of you and like the more sensation you have about the Judgment like the more that part is like just like ripe for Reclamation right so usually these judgments of others like fall into two categories but I’m sure there there’s infinite categories but let’s say one of them is some way of being that you do not feel you have permission to be because of the rules
(19:43) you were raised in right so like I have a long history of judging women that I that I experience as being like easily overwhelmed and like incapable of managing their lives and like basically like incompetent right so those are all masculine qualities interestingly right so so those women right like whose lives are just like a show and they’re like you know kept women by their you know the alimony from their ex or whatever and they’re just sitting there not doing anything it’s just overwhelmed right so I would feel judgmental of
(20:17) women who can’t get their together because the way that I was raised that is not allowed and you you would lose you lose love right for being I would say particularly from my father I would lose love for being like incapable or like slow or stupid or whatever the things right so and I and I got love when I performed in this like predictable achievement oriented way productivity oriented way right so I don’t have permission to be that woman and guess what I bet I would like to know what it’s like to be that woman
(20:51) who’s just like it all right like who’s just sort of like I’m going to live on the Dole and I’m going to sit here and and smoke cigarettes and and watch TV and and drink and then complain about it there’s absolutely a part of me that is curious about like what it would be like to have the permission to inhabit that archetype so it’s either something you don’t feel you have permission to be and the more restrictive our permission field is the more we are going to be in this dance right so I might judge a woman who is has an only
(21:31) fans account or something like that and is making her money off of like pictures of her feet or whatever and the more that bothers me the more it’s possible that I have it’s a Taboo it’s holding erotic tension with me because I want to be that bad I want to and in only until I am that bad will I actually reclaim that erotic energy like back into my actual lives life right or this person represents a part of you that you know you already are and you’re in like this almost like denial right so you stuff that part in
(22:10) the shadow right so like when I lived in New York and practiced as a psychiatrist I was never late never late first of all I would charge by the minute overage of the 45 minute session and I would start right to the minute and I would show up everywhere on time and I was just never late but that’s probably not true right and so when I was late I would have a really good excuse and it would be circumstantial and it wouldn’t confer any like implications about my character right when I moved to Miami everyone of
(22:48) course not always so absolute but most people like take a lot of liberties with like punctuality here okay and I remember over and over and over again whether it was like the pool guy or my girlfriend for dinner just witnessing people like show up when they like Island time right like show up when they feel like it and these days I have embraced that I’m actually like usually late to things so I was already the person who was late I was just like projecting and judging that person I already was in somebody else like right if I was like
(23:31) bothered by somebody who was late when I was up in New York it’s because I was projecting this dimension of myself I was unwilling to see is already here so there’s a lot of room with this experience of judgment to basically ask like how am I this person or how do I want to be this person what if I secretly want to be this person and that really flips it on his head because no longer is it about how you’re good and they’re bad how you get it and they don’t and how imperative it is on some level that they get it so that you feel
(24:12) more comfortable in the world and they’re not reminding you of the you that didn’t get it before that you are yourself actually judging still and in rejection of so of circle back around to the rejection theme how is it that we can take the opportunity when we are judging ourselves or somebody else to interact with whatever it is that we imagine we’re judging with more lightness more curiosity more softness just inside yourself and play with the possibility that we can’t actually be so sure that we’ figured it out that we know the
(24:50) thing that is wrong and bad to be and the thing that is right to be whether we are on that side of the fence or this one so you know I like to keep it pretty pretty simple and to remember that whenever it is I imagine I’m in a position to educate somebody about how ignorant they are about how they’re wrong uh that my my shadow is operative and I do it I still do it and I have compassion for why I do it and it makes sense that I do it uh and if I can really begin to feel into the that little invitation right that little part
(25:27) that’s like hey there’s something here for you right it’s me that ultimately I will be far more able to bring the lightness of a little smile to those moments where I feel the devastation of rejection or the disappointment and resentment of rejecting somebody [Music] else and finally here’s a question from Carla which I can definitely relate to I I have two parts at War one wants me to be more public with my work for my own expansion and abundance and another feels like it will die from exposure so to stay safe I spin in confusion inde
(26:11) decisiveness and in action which turns into a profound depression the Ultimate Defense I’ve seen an internal family systems therapist for six months with no real movement the more I hide the bigger this monster becomes how would you handle this okay first of all I relate to this very intimately and I bet a lot of people do this is why I mean I don’t know let me reread if this is about yeah public work okay so this is why business is such a maybe it’s not business that you’re talking about but I’ll just say business
(26:43) is such a fundamentally spiritual practice because we have an opportunity to work specifically with our relationship to feeling seen right so most would describe love an experience of being loved as feeling seen and heard and understood so in the modern moment of Big Brother AI there’s like nowhere to hide don’t even pretend that there’s anywhere to hide so how are you going to relate to exposing yourself and being you know out there in the public eye a lot of what I’ve worked on with my coach is the Spectrum from
(27:34) invisibility which feels terrible right because we feel unseen unheard not understood alone right that we don’t belong all the things from invisibility all the way to fame right to like fullon attention and I actually shared this in Inner Circle recently the small group container that I my run that there is this photo I saw in a gallery maybe last year and it’s a woman gorgeous woman I think she’s smoking a cigarette it’s like a 1950s Style thing and she’s like smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper and she’s sitting on a beach chair and she’s
(28:15) surrounded by like 50 men right who are all on beach chairs next to her and they’re all like staring at her like like hungry energy right and when I saw that I was like imagine iming how if I were that woman I would like implode right like I like absolutely could not handle that I don’t have the system capacity to handle attention like that and you might think like oh well I of course I have this capacity I have a public platform right but there there’s a reason I have I believe semiconscious kept my notoriety or fame at like a
(28:52) certain level my whole career right and it’s part of whatever my capacity is to hold that right so if I was that woman surrounded by all those men I would feel responsible for them and their experience of me right which would be really unpleasant and invoke a trauma field of like you know all of my stuff right so we only ever as you well know have the amount of attention that we can handle and on the other side is right that the the cloak keeper if you will right like the the part you called it the hiding part
(29:34) right and hiding is a very effective strategy It’s very effective right so it’s like you don’t even really have to be an intimate conversation with the hiding part to know why it works right if you’re if you’re not putting yourself out there you don’t have to experience all of those parts that you don’t want to know right so when we are in full attention we not only open ourselves up to judgment from others but we also open ourselves and our caretaker like I said up to the experience of managing others experiences of
(30:16) us so all of these parts that are really taxing come online and if you don’t actually want to know that part and those parts then you’re not going to take steps in that direction and the protector that is The Hider is safer like you said like it just feels more neutral Parts work is amazing to me because when it is true to its intention of there being no bad parts it is the resolution of inner fragmentation however I imagine that there are many practitioners and again I don’t I know almost none um there are many practitioners who are so
(31:04) conditioned themselves that they subtly create a field with you where there is a problem part like if the hiding part is not talking it’s because there’s a part in front of the hiding part right so like like a mother who is judging one of her kids like when we are imagining that one part is a problematic part we’re already not in the self because the the self with a capital S is like I’m here for all of it right I love all of you I’m I’m committed I’m present I’m attending I’m compassionate like I’m here for all of you and I’m going to
(31:41) organize like who gets time uh when and I am actually the one who’s making the decisions so share away right so if that is not occurring it’s because there’s still another part that has not come into your awareness right so if that awareness is the offering that is being provided to all of these different parts uh the experience of belonging the experience of being welcome is the result right so growing your capacity for attention is a practice um there are many ways to you know what’s called in sematic experiencing like titrate into
(32:27) it like I remember one of the exercises that I did was I wore more I the word that’s coming to me as provocative but like I don’t even remember honestly what I wore but like let’s say I wore like a a crop top and Loud leggings or something like that to the gun range right to like practice shooting and so there’s like usually a lot of men there and I would have the experience of like drawing attention to myself instead of going in like black sweatpants and like a sweatshirt right so so just for example like and you
(33:00) would want to find like small instances in your lived experience where you can bring a little bit of attention to yourself and just breathe through the experience right and then be with the parts that come up because they all deserve to be there and they all have very good reasons for being there so the titration into attention um honestly I find one of the most powerful crucibles to be social media I was social media as many of you know uh for like over a year in the early pandemic days and that was good you know that was
(33:37) great actually felt good you know other than for like business posting like I didn’t have like a personal relationship to Instagram or whatever for that time period and about a year and a half ago I started to work with it as like literally a higher order spiritual practice and it has grown me immensely um because when there is commentary which inevitably there is that is critical or judgmental and it bothers me I’ll find the part of me that agrees and I’ll only do this as much as feels comfortable in a Day quote unquote
(34:14) comfortable in a day right so like there will be days where I have no idea what you know my haters are saying and then there will be days where I ritualistically will sit down and feel what comes up in my body like as I read these different things and I’ll usually pick one thing that is particularly triggering like for example somebody made a comment about my nails and I you know I’ve grown my nail I had a dream you know maybe six months ago and I decided for the first time in my life to grow and paint my nails I’ve
(34:46) never done that literally as a little girl nothing never and I’m I love them I was so delightful for me you know I like look at my hands I’m like so pretty all day long and since I started pole dancing like I can’t wear any of the Rings that I wore like they’ve almost like become like manly in a way so I was like in this Kink with my own hands and now I’ve like turn them into something I I love to look at okay so somebody was like shitalking my nails they’re like oh like I’m gonna listen to somebody with like you know me metallic presson on
(35:17) nails or something I was like those are first of all real and second of all beautiful right so like I got all triggered and I was able to meet that part of me that is like still in judgment that I am doing this right like it’s like I can’t just like have the nails like I I need to tell all of you that I didn’t have them before and now I have them and they feel good right so there it’s alive in there right so even that right so I meet this part that is still saying you’re so superficial like pick a lane like what kind of a woman
(35:54) are you like this kind or that right so I’m still in that and I am still I still have the opportunity to develop deeper intimacy with the part of me that thinks it’s a problem that I have the nails looking how I do okay so all that whole long story is just to say post something post something make a ritual out of sitting down light a freaking candle and read the comments and see what comes up in you and every single time a comment bothers you you’re meeting a part of course every single time a comment you love a comment you
(36:29) know you’re also meeting a part but the work is usually in developing intimacy with the part of you that agrees with your critics it’s very it’s very deep and I think that’s you know one of the more powerful ways to begin to expand your capacity to hold you know attention eyes on you eyes on you [Music] so people love to ask me questions and I love to ask questions of others because inquiry is play but some of my interviews and answers are too hot to handle for Reclamation radio so in my membership vital life project I have
(37:14) created a private podcast that gets delivered to wherever you listen to podcasts where I answer your questions that arise because of my provocative subject matter and I also share interviews that might otherwise be censored that I call the sovereignty Series so you’ll get access to these private podcasts and a private chat by joining my membership by life project I’ll see you in there [Music] [Music] la
