(00:03) [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 today I would like to talk about meaning and purpose and specifically The purpos Driven perspective on emotions and Associated struggles so this is referred
(01:28) to as a te ol logical approach which is the unearthing of the reason for being of a given phenomenon so what has led me here is the initial exploration that started for me years ago into the meaning behind suffering so you could call it the design and I have written and said many times that in my experience suffering ends where meaning begins when you can zoom out enough to develop a perspective that offers you the kind of Buddha smile of ah I see I could not have designed it this way and I see that it had to be exactly this way
(02:18) in order to deliver me to this expanded place of Amplified enriched awareness for me to play in right so when I think about my own journey I don’t think about it as a meritocracy that I’m necessarily getting to be better and better and more awakened and more enlightened I think about the possibility that I have become more and more aware and that has allowed for the neutralization of a lot of conflicts and struggles that caused me pain and I can therefore feel more connected to others I can feel more of a sense of of
(03:01) belonging and slowly and steadily begin to ease The Angst associated with having incarnated in this atomized way separate and divided from all that I am intrinsically connected to so in my exploration of the ways in which suffering ends where meaning begins I have come to see that pretty much all of our problems are meeting needs and when you get into the perspective that we are multitudes that we have many many different parts that are all in service of us within us the circus within you can explore those parts from the perspective that every
(03:49) single one has benevolent intent okay so this means that there’s no such thing as an ego that needs to be transcended or fear that needs to be squashed or some kind of inner critic that needs to be put in its place there are only different parts that are arrested in stages of childhood development that don’t see each other and that have not come to a consensus so the inner war is what in my understanding drives shame and I remember saying to my daughter once years ago that every single thing that is ever done by a human has a good
(04:30) reason for being done right so that there is at the core innocence behind every motivation and in neutral it’s neutral it’s chargeless it’s you know without a moral veillance that drives all human behavior including the most horrific that can happen what’s driving it at its core is the desire to feel better and perhaps to feel acceptance or Worth or safety and so if we look at the innocent motivation behind every single thing we have the opportunity to suspend shame to suspend the social regulator that is the most expensive energy we can
(05:22) possibly hold in our systems and we get to look with curiosity Upon Our struggles right and to see why is it that a part of us thought this was a good idea because the intent of that part was likely to protect our safety protect our sense of Worth or to generate some security so when I first looked into this I examined my patients and I would perceive that as we came to the end of our time together because my goal was always to begin and and complete treatment as rapidly as possible I was never interested in
(06:05) lifelong patients or any sort of ongoing Revenue business model in my private practice because I knew that my role was to Simply pass the Baton right and the primary way that I did that was to offer my patients The Knowing gaze that said there’s nothing wrong with you actually that’s the good news and the bad news is there’s nothing wrong with you so now what and I would perceive that in the taking of responsibility for their experience there were losses right so there are ways in which illness and particularly identification with a
(06:45) chronic unremitting illness meets needs so you could say that illness is actually purposeful on some subconscious level right if I am chronically ill then I don’t have to move into the vulnerable spaces of expansion right and most of us at this point are familiar with the fact that our deeper fears rest in the spaces of our bold audacious if I might say so expression and for women I believe that this is often a product of the mother wound right so how important it is to maintain connection with your mother by
(07:27) making sure that you are attenuated you are smaller than her so that she doesn’t have to look at her unlived life and feel the pain of that right so there’s a caretaking there’s a parentification there regardless this fear that has been associated with expansion and our biggest wildest expression is well-kept right we don’t have to really feel that fear when we are too sick and we can’t right I can’t because we also have a protected boundary right because if I don’t feel validated in my not if I don’t feel like I can just
(08:08) simply say no that doesn’t work for me or I’m not available not interested whatever it is then I have to come up with a reason here’s why my know is valid and a very effective and ready reason is because I’m sick right because not only you get a boundary but you also get some side benefits including compassion pity softness disarming you know whomever it might be because it’s not your fault so they’re not going to contend with your rejection in any personal way and so it’s possible that until we get to the maturational place
(08:53) where we can own our know and claim and be with with the vulnerability of our yes we might subconsciously manifest an illness identity a sick identity and it works right same as any addiction it works to meet needs until it doesn’t and that’s usually when I encounter folks who are ready to shed that story and to move into the wild unknown of their individuation Journey so there is a comfort in constraint there is a comfort in complaint and if you are like so many there is a currency of connection through commiseration when you can
(09:45) connect with somebody through your problems you are safely small and you’re in the familiar victim triangle that most of us grew up in the blaming and finger pointing of something over there Sanctified in the victim space where nothing is wrong with you because it’s all projected out unto the bad other well I’m in a moment of my personal Journey where I have as I discussed in an earlier episode on maturing food boundaries I am looking to neutralize rejection and to recollect all of my projections which means if I finger
(10:25) point anywhere to a circumstance to a person to an in institution I am interacting with a dimension of myself that I have not yet embraced and explored I have not called back my demons so to speak in service of my Divine Purpose here so if I am to recognize that I can get surrogate hits of satisfaction pleasure safety security from my complaints from my Victim story I might just start to titrate into what it is to wonder about how my needs are being met through my complaint and struggle and if there’s another way to
(11:11) meet them right so this is an exploration of what it is that you get when you get what you want right so what becomes available when you get the thing that you say that you want and when you get that thing what becomes available through that thing right so if you want the wonderful husband what becomes available through the wonderful husband maybe it is that you will feel like you can exhale because you have found your person and now you can go play and enjoy life and what does that exhale and that play and enjoyment bring to your
(11:53) existence right what do you get from that well maybe I have a sense of belonging I have a sense of of being in this female body the way that I’m supposed to be and then is there another way that I could achieve that that’s what I was able to see when I put on audition embodiment my live iners event because I felt so expressed as a woman and so embodied as a woman specifically embodied in ways that I had otherwise imagined would only be available through erotic partnership right so here I might have been telling
(12:32) myself that I needed a partner so that I could feel in my feminine body expressed in play and sensuality and I just gathered with 100 women and had that exact experience so it turns out that there are other ways to meet the needs that are met by the desire right so if there is an upside to your struggle and there is a downside to the resolution of your struggle and if what it is that you want can be achieved in many different ways then the most powerful thing we can do is to understand what you get when that’s the phrase I like to remember so
(13:24) when I am sick what I get is blank right when I have a disappointing employee what I get is blank and it could be behavioral it could be rhetorical right there might be things that I get to say that I like to say that I enjoy saying to others in terms of complaint or it might be a constraint that actually feels safer like I get a good excuse why not to be bolder more audacious more expanded so that’s relating to my no right so relating to the ways in which things are not going how I say I want them to go but then there’s also relating to my yes
(14:09) so what is it that I get when I have the thing and what is it that that gives me what do I get from that what do I get from that it’s a ladder you can keep ascending until you get to these Universal desires that you can meet in many different ways for you know pleasure and safety and connection an experience of your own worth and significance so what is it that you get from the know that you have with regard to your life and what is it that you get from the yes from the desire that you feel is just Out Of Reach how can you
(14:51) understand how to resolve what my coach Whitney Lowry calls if then living resolving if then living resolving the illusion that something is awaiting you on the other side of something that you don’t currently have so we’re in a moment of radical healing and personal transformation things are so much more accelerated than when I first got into this game 15 years ago my dear friend and founder of lotus way Katie hus has illuminated the path forward for all of us I believe she is a mega Visionary and something of a witch
(15:30) Lotus way is a living Marketplace for energetic healing that supports you and shows us that personal alignment can actually be pleasurable can smell and taste and feel so good I personally love luscious embodiment it’s been my companion on my feminine embodiment Journey these past three years and if you’re ready to embody your wild and become more fiercely magnetic this is is your daily Elixir so head to lotus.
(16:02) com and use the code kelly5 for 15% off the link is in show notes so there is a book that I read called the courage to be disliked and it’s by two folks if I pronounce this correctly kashimi and Koga and they discuss and refer to adarian psychology as distinct from fian which is about the ideology is the word the early causes of your struggles right so many of us are enculturated around this idea that our traumas are behind our modern-day struggles and that’s a powerful Insight right that it’s not your genes it’s not
(16:47) something that you know you were necessarily born with although a lot of what I have explored through family constellation is about lineage level burdens it is your response to experiences that you had and your adaptation to that trauma is what explains anything from your personality to constructs of illness that you have dealt with the shadow of that is that you can be left feeling like you are as damaged and broken as if you were told that you have a chemical imbalance and you can get on this hamster wheel of how
(17:22) do I fix my trauma how do I fix my trauma how do I fix my trauma and it never ends you never can get off it the recent that I appreciate these more tiic approaches is because it puts you in the driver’s seat of your experience and assigns responsibility to the part of you of yourself capital s that is aware the part that’s watching the part that is curious and arranging all of the potentials for your lifescape so when you see that there is meaning when you see that there is is a reason when you see that there’s a purpose to your
(18:04) struggles your challenges your adversity you can interact with it differently even just as an observer which confers a different neurophysiology to your system right to gaze upon your life with the perspective that this is interesting look at why I might be doing that right look at what I might be getting out of this it’s a different posture than life of course is happening to me poor me uh victim story so the book has a couple of great examples that I’ll share just to illustrate this notion of purposeful struggles right so let’s say that you
(18:43) shout at a waiter right you get really upset about how your order was delivered and something just takes over you and you end up shouting at your waiter right so you can look at the anger as being something that was imprinted you were triggered and it’s because of your early traumas or you can look at the end goal of the behavior what is the end goal of the behavior and Associated emotion right why might the anger have been summoned up so that you could shout what does the shouting get you well it might get you an experience of the waiter
(19:22) submitting and listening to you and so you fabricated the anger subconsciously so that you could have that experience H good to know right good to know because otherwise you’re just trapped in your own triggers forever more and until you can assure yourself that your triggers will be received like some you know ever responsive and resilient plasma and they will never be wires that are you know constituting some kind of a Minefield again can live in fear of your triggers and you can live feeling like life is
(20:04) just like a slalom around your triggers versus the exploration that says there’s something I’m getting out of this what might that be that frees you up to look at with compassion why a part of you might want that what might want to take advantage of this opportunity to get that thing and how can I offer to myself that thing right how can I feel Within Myself between my own parts that sense of significance and really being listened to because that’s sort of the punchline of all of the inner work that I have witnessed actually delivers you
(20:45) to a different Human Experience is there is the microcosm that allows you to offer to yourself that which you imagine you need on the outside another good news and bad news situation another example is if you have a a really shitty boss right you’re working and you have this really shitty boss you might say well I can’t do I just can’t do my work well you know it’s because of my boss and you could see yourself as helpless and Powerless in that situation right because you have externalized the villain or you can see that the boss is
(21:27) an excuse for not working well right for not experiencing the Exquisite vulnerability of your efforts your intention your focus your investment of energy into something and it might be that you need this shitty boss because you don’t actually want to work and put that effort in and perhaps for a very good reason right it could also be that in having this shitty boss you don’t have to acknowledge the possibility that you have a dimension of yourself that is incompetent or even incapable so you don’t have to touch that tender Exile
(22:05) right that tender part that says I I’m not good enough you know I am broken I’m damaged I’m messed up when you can have an experience of the exasperation and disappointment and frustration and bitterness that attends having this shitty authority figure who makes your life very difficult right so if you actually don’t want a relationship let’s say to get better for very valid reasons you might focus on negative memories associated with the relationship you might focus on negative patterns in the relationship rather than focusing on
(22:43) what you can appreciate another example if there is a delinquent teenager right who’s causing all the problems and who is by all objective measure just like out of control what might that Behavior allow this teen to experience well maybe it’s revenge against the parents versus it being the product of a traumatic upbringing that is now being made manifest in this unruly Behavior right maybe the purpose lies in the expressed Behavior it is allowing very specific goals to be met right so do you see how it shifts out of the past into the
(23:30) present moment the locus of control right another example from the book is if you you know if there’s a young woman and she has this rosacea issue she’s got like a blushing problem right where every time she approaches a man that she’s interested in she gets so flushed that she can’t even speak well she could say if only I didn’t have this blushing problem then I would you know ask this person out or ask somebody out so you can feel how the blushing problem constrains effectively so that she does not need to risk
(24:13) rejection right it actually serves a purpose and rather than it being some random problem and she’s the hapless victim of this problem and if only it wasn’t here then she could experience what it is that she wants there is a resistance a valid resistance that one of her parts that she’s blended with one of her Parts feels is protective it’s protective to resist getting this thing that she thinks that she wants and so she developed a way not to have to risk getting it and not to have to risk failing to get it through the
(24:55) vulnerability of exposing the desire to the light of day so when we look at this purpose-based perspective we become investigators into our own experience and we naturally develop compassion and curiosity that wasn’t otherwise there and that wouldn’t otherwise be available because we’re put into an almost anthropological awareness of what it is that’s happening and the locus of power and control is restored inside of the individual and the projected parts of a problem of a struggle of a conflict of tension are recollected so that you can
(25:50) recognize these inner conflicts right so the part that wants the thing the part that doesn’t want the thing the part that says the thing needs to stop and the part that says no it absolutely must say and for most of us the part that says this conflict absolutely must be here and also the part that says You must absolutely not have this thing you want those parts are covert they’re undercover agents they are working beneath the veil of awareness but they are just as much you as the parts that you are aware of so this dimension of
(26:30) Shadow work allows us to exit the blame game it allows us to exit the Kink of repeated patterns of struggle and suffering and it allows us to hold our inner victim part with compassion and Care without blending with that part and recruiting the commiseration of others arresting us in a state of development that is a kind of copian Hell of revisiting over and over again the horrible things that keep happening to us rather than engaging in the creative and imaginal Realms of holding the Perfection of our experience
(27:15) understanding its deep purpose and meaning its design so that we can begin to take our seat as co-creators with the mystery and we can begin to work with our fear and our desire in intentional ways all right so I dive more into this in my new book The reclaimed woman and of course you’ll be hearing more from me as I continue to walk this path of self- reclamation
