116: Your Self Healing Questions Answered by Tessa Malcarne

[00:00:00] Chazmith: Welcome to Our Power is within, a weekly podcast to inspire you to take your power back and to realize that you are the healer that you have been looking for All along. We are capable of healing in mind, in body, and in soul. I’m your host, Chazmith. 

Today's episode is sponsored by Autoimmune Resolution, a six month program to help you break the cycle of fear and stop symptoms in their tracks.

With the power of GNM, learning about GNM and understanding our biological reason for symptoms and what they actually mean has literally changed my life and my relationship with symptoms and what symptoms mean about me. To learn more about the founder of Autoimmune Resolution, check out episodes 76 with Katherine House and visit www.autoimmuneresolution.com to learn more now.

If you've been finding value in the content shared on this podcast, please remember to like it, subscribe to it, and share it today! You guys, we are almost through 2022. It's crazy, right? Only a few days left and it's going to already be 2023. Parents were not kidding when they used to say that the older you got, the faster time flew by.

I think it's wild and it truly does feel that way for me. I'm not sure about for you, but I do wish you all the happiest New Year. I hope that you have some really amazing visualizations of yourself and your life for 2023 to manifest. I hope that you can honestly sit here today and recognize that you are not the same person that you were at this time one year ago.

My guess is that if you listen to this podcast and you've been on a journey of change in transformation, a journey of healing and becoming an a journey of connecting, then you have indeed grown. In the last year, and my hope for you is that this journey continues to unfold in the most beautiful ways.

But remember, beautiful does not always mean it's pretty beautiful, can still be messy. Embrace it all. Trust in your healing, trust in your discernment, and trust in your soul's inner voice. Oh, and one announcement. Before we get into today's episode please make sure that you guys tune in next week for the very first podcast episode of 2023.

I have something very special and fun lined up for us in January, and I will be sharing all the details and next week's episode. It's a wonderful, free gift for everyone listening, so you don't wanna miss. Now for today's episode, I wanted to do something fun for the year end, so I partnered up with Tessa Malcarne to have all of your questions answered.

That's right. We sent out a memo on our social media for you to be able to submit your questions and then together we sat down and Tessa answered 10 of the top questions all through her perspective. If you enjoy this type of episode and you have more questions that you would love to have answered, please let me know because I would love to partner with another guest and do this again.

We actually had so much fun and I hope you enjoy it too. 

Tessa, thanks for being here with me today. I'm excited to have this Q&A with ya. 

[00:03:27] Tessa: I'm excited to be here too. 

[00:03:29] Chazmith: Yeah, for anyone who's listening, I know that I have some likely newer listeners to the podcast. Tessa is back! Tessa, is this round three or four?

Tessa: Three. Three. I think it's three. Three? Okay. Three. Yeah. 

Chazmith: So you've been on the show a couple other times and we've done some really good deep dives. And what we did this time, if you missed out, I'm sorry, but we did both Tess and I advertise on the social media platforms that we were gonna do this Q&A and all the questions came from listeners that submitted questions For anyone out there listening, if your question doesn't get answered today, I am sorry.

We had a lot of requests and we only have an hour, so we had to pick the questions that seemed to be the most commonly asked questions and go from there. If there's still a lot of questions out there, maybe we'll do another one. We'll see. But for now, Tessa, I know that before we get into the actual questions and answers, there was a few things that you wanted to preface and say to get started.

Tessa: Yeah. I wanted to start off by saying that my answers to any of these questions are mere suggestions. What I say is not truth. It is my truth and what I believe is best and most effective in general, but it might not be your truth, and that's okay. So my answers to any one question, it's not the way or the only way to address that specific concern or challenge.

There may be many ways, and that's okay. What I believe is best may not be best for you because I use my own criteria for what I believe changes the brain most effectively, and I use that as my guide. But your criteria may be different than mine, and that's okay too. I wanted to begin this way because I see what I believe is a trend in this brain retraining community where people who have rebalanced their nervous systems and are now in this position to help others make it sound as if they know what is best for other people and that what they know is truth.

And while it may be one way, it's not the only way or the way. So I hear this all the time. It was embedded in many of the questions Chaz and I received for this podcast. Can I heal using somatics? Can I heal without using a program? Or can I heal without somatics? Can I heal without using a program?

Everybody is saying I need to do visualizations. I will never change my brain. And this has become a concern of mine because it's something I find myself talking to my clients about often. The idea that there's one correct way to change the brain or to re-regulate the nervous system is unfounded. It's nonsensical.

If you really think about it, it's unreasonable to actually believe that. So there are many reasons why I think this way. Specifically when you look at where we've come from, that we all come from our own place in the world. We come from different family structures, home lives, cities, towns, countries.

We've had varying experiences in life where we went to school, what sports we played, how our parents treated us, the losses we've endured. We've had different insecurities, things that have brought us joy, what friends we've chosen. Even a set of twins who seemingly grew up in the same world are biologically diverse.

When you look at how each twin's individual perceptions of the world impact who that twin has become, our experiences shape us to become the people that we are. And those vastly different experiences end up creating enormously varying belief systems, values, personality traits, passions, behaviors. I could go on and on.

Those specific experiences create different adaptive responses and coping mechanisms. But how does this happen? And I just wanna really quickly say that because I don't believe we spend enough time thinking about this. So how do we all end up different biologically? It's because our biology actually depends on our experienced reality, our individual emotional responses, how we choose or do not choose to react within the world determines our biology because our limbic brains produce very specific chemical reactions based on our specific reactions to life's circumstances and when those chemical reactions occur.

These chemicals bind to our cells and we become our emotional responses. So as a result of our experiences in life and how we relate to those experiences, the biology of our bodies end up being unique to us as individuals. And I hope that doesn't sound daunting because I really don't want it to, I'm trying to elicit the point that every person is going to retrain their brains differently because we are all different biologically and need different approaches to rebalancing our nervous systems, to retraining our brains.

If you did feel that was daunting, we can shift a bit to see that. It's inspiring that if we change our emotional responses to be a little bit healthier and a little more positive, just over a bit of time, even the slightest changes change our biology. And each day, the tiniest bit of a more positive emotional response, just a little bit more patience or capacity for forgiveness or compassion changes our biology.

Okay. So that was my basic idea to start with. And I just wanna say really quickly before we get to questions that if you look at what I said previously, you can hopefully see that I believe a strict structured one size fits all approach to retraining the brain. It just cannot be as effective as a tailored individual approach.

So I also wanna say it can be tremendously helpful to have a lot of different opinions and resources, having a healing community right there at your fingertips, that's incredibly helpful to us. But if everybody else's opinions are presented in a way that cause us to believe we are going to. If we are not doing what others see as being perfect or correct, and if we feel wrong and feel careless that we are being careless about our own journey and how we are rewiring our brains, then that doesn't help us in this whole healing journey.

So I just wanna make sure that going into these questions, that my answers are suggestions, that these are coming from my own belief systems, and that yes, I've collected a lot of information over time through coaching hundreds of people. But ultimately it comes down to what you really believe makes sense for you, what resonates with you, what is best in your own experiences.

And I just wanted to start there. So I'm ready. We can begin with these questions if you are ready. Yay. 

[00:10:42] Chazmith: Okay. Question number one. What really rewires the nervous system? 

[00:10:48] Tessa: Okay, so this question takes me a bit deeper actually into what I was just explaining. What really rebalances the nervous system?

As you can guess, there's no one right way, but there are foundational understandings and concepts that I think we all should understand. If we want to be able to take what we are experiencing in any given moment and find a solution for, so if we know that we are experiencing specific physical symptoms, for example, then we can look at.

Why, where is that coming from? And we use these basic foundational concepts to do so let me use one foundational concept as an example. So a sense of safety, in my opinion, a sense of safety is at the very core of what really rewires the nervous system. Safety is a basic human need. It trumps all other human needs.

So at the very foundation of why a nervous system becomes imbalanced, is that something disturbed. The safety of that person, whether it be when we were younger or not, whether we remember it or not, something disturbed, that sense of safety. Like I said, that can come from many different experiences or circumstances, and we don't need to get into that.

But every part of rewiring the brain is rooted in this need for safety and security. So what we really want to do is look at how the feeling of not being safe is presenting itself within each individual person. If you're doing this for yourself, which most of you listening probably are, observe yourself for a few days.

Notice when you do not feel safe. Notice. And then you can decide how to wire in a sense of safety. So for example, if you may have an attachment wound from childhood, you would notice that you would feel insecure in your relationships. You may feel needy, vulnerable. You would fear people leaving or abandoning you.

You would desire human connection and feel desperate when you do not have it. And what that comes down to is a need for safety. Attachment is safety. So in this instance, we would want to wire in safety to the attachment wound. And how do we do that? We notice and observe our patterns. We see how they're presenting themselves, and we come up with some interruptions to the times we feel these patterns.

You would want to notice that you are feeling abandoned and be able to give yourself that sense of safety that you are missing. So you would want to say to yourself, What are you missing? What can I give you that you feel you do not have? How are you feeling right now? And you would likely feel that answer, or it might come to you in a word.

It would likely be that you feel alone or in need of attention or affection. So you would say to yourself, I hear you. I see you. I love you. I am giving you attention. I'm giving you affection. Do you feel it? I'm giving it to you right now. I can give this to you and you only need it from me. Or something to that effect.

And now you are giving yourself what you currently thought you needed from others and what your nervous system was craving. And it was coming out in the sense of, I am not safe. I'm not safe in the. A lot of retraining. The brain is going to you to require you to go within to self-soothe, to really listen to what you are thinking and feeling and address that instead of running away from it, which I think a lot of us do.

We inherently want to distract or resist discomfort. It's just wired in us that we don't like to feel uncomfortable. Most of the patterns that have been created over time that are tendencies of the imbalanced nervous system are rooted in resistance to feeling pain, resistance, to confronting our feels are fears, resistance to being honest with ourselves or with others.

So what really rewires the nervous system is that we sit with the discomfort, the resistance, the feelings of not being safe, and that we surrender. We notice when we are wanting to run, and instead we lovingly speak to ourselves in a compassionate way with patients in empathy. And we sit there with it and we ask ourselves those questions.

What do you need? What are you lacking? How can I give that to you? Another piece of this is the fear of symptoms. If you have fear of symptoms, then that's creating a fear response in and of itself. So think about this relationship that we have with our nervous systems. When we have a physical symptom, that's the nervous system acting out.

That's the nervous system, that's the nervous system expressing itself. It needs to create that kind of a fear response in the body. To get our attention, to let us know that it is not feeling safe, that the world is not a safe place for us. But we know that's not true. So once we know that these physical symptoms are coming from the nervous system, we can create a conscious response to those symptoms.

And when you feel those symptoms, think of this, think of safety. How can we create a sense of safety when the nervous system's creating these physical sensations in our body that are uncomfortable when we think of this message and then we take a deep breath, we use whatever tools soothe us. I like to tell my clients to use that self soothing talk, to say, it's okay, this is temporary.

We can handle this. And then Chaz, like we've talked about in the past, you and I, all of those different kinds of tools that you, that might. Help your individual experience, whatever that might be, to calm yourself in that moment. To be able to send messages of safety during a time where the nervous system does not feel safe is so important to rewiring the brain.

So in those few ways, I think that is what really rewires the nervous system, a sense of safety, a surrendering. And showing the nervous system that we are safe by having some kind of a neutral or we can try and have a positive response to physical symptoms in the body. Those three things I see as being paramount.

Of course, there's probably a hundred others that I could get into, but I'll cap it there because I'm sure we'll talk about more of of what I could answer that question with in following questions. 

[00:17:44] Chazmith: Yeah, absolutely. I think so too. Okay. Thank you for question number one. We have question number two.

What is a crucial ingredient in why somebody is successful in their brain retraining practice and somebody else is not? 

[00:18:02] Tessa: Yeah, I think I could talk for an hour about this question, but I will start here. I would say that a crucial ingredient of why someone is successful is that person is listening within and trusting what he or she knows is his or her way to rebalancing the nervous system.

Someone who is successful feels intuitively drawn to certain tools or maybe a program this person listens within to what feels like it is soothing them. But I want to say there's a caveat there. I have a lot of clients who come to me who say, I used this tool and it felt good in the moment, but I had no relief in my symptoms.

We're not looking for relief and symptoms. We can't. That takes days and weeks to happen once we are finally sending messages of safety back to the nervous system. So be patient on that and just listen within is do I believe this is addressing what is happening within me right now? Am I surrendering?

Am I allowing, am I sending messages of safety and am I trusting what intuitively feels right to me? So someone who's not successful or who is not feeling successful, feels forced and obligated to use what somebody else or program is stressing that they use and they're not trusting their own instincts, that would lead them to figure out what they need as an individual with his or her own experiences in life and his or own unique nervous system imbalance.

I will say that in the beginning when we are just understanding this whole world of bringing retraining in imbalanced nervous systems, we usually do not feel that trust within. And that's okay. There's particular reasons for that, and I may get into those reasons later in the podcast if we have time.

[00:20:03] Chazmith: I can attest to everything you're saying so far too, just being, a person on the journey, the healing journey. Because I think that when we. Ignore the subtle cues in our body and in our souls that are like calling us into u utilizing a tool or a modality or just leaning into a practice of our own.

There might be something that really we feel called into, but if we ignore that because we have held this very rigid belief that we absolutely have to do something a certain way or we won't get better, that over time I feel like leads to more problems and more importantly, resentment. And it's I've been there, I've been where I've like almost resented some that program or that tool, but then maybe I resented the person or people or coaches who insisted I had to keep doing, said whatever it was, but then it came down to realizing that ultimately I resented myself for not listening to what my soul and my true self was asking of me.

And for not trusting my own my own inner voice. Whoa. 

[00:21:21] Tessa: It was that self abandonment, wasn't it? 

[00:21:24] Chazmith: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think that self abandonment might be quite a common thing. Common issue or amongst the community of people who end up with chronic pain or illness to begin with.

[00:21:40] Tessa: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. It absolutely is. 

[00:21:44] Chazmith: And then in our effort to heal, we continue it, 

[00:21:46] Tessa: yes. It is a very common thread. I think it's actually one of the tendencies that every person who has an imbalanced nervous system has. It's having an imbalanced nervous system begins with self abandoning in some way or another.

I think this might be a topic Yeah. For a future podcast because it's so big and so meaty and it's so 

[00:22:09] Chazmith: important. It's, yeah. Yeah. It's, yeah, and it's I see it happen still. Like I am so clear on what. Is going to support me to, get to my next level of healing. I'm so clear, right?

But then I hear somebody else say something or somebody say, no, you gotta do this. Or, oh, you can't heal without this. I hear it all the time, especially with having the podcast, right? So I still find myself doubting my inner authority or doubting that voice of reason, like within me and still find myself questioning if I'm doing the wrong thing or not doing enough or not doing something good enough.

And I'm glad that I'm able to generally go back into stillness and take a breath and get re-centered and remind myself like no, this is okay. You're doing exactly what you're meant to do. Just trust the process. And like you said, does that mean that symptoms are just gonna instantly be gone?

Heck no. But that's okay because it takes time for that part. That's in my head, that's not to say that some symptoms can't fall to the wayside early, but maybe some other symptoms, it might be like the last step of the journey before those fall to the wayside while I'm, creating changes and shifts in my life in other dynamics.

Yeah, 

[00:23:24] Tessa: I always say the emotions come first. They are what created this imbalanced nervous system. So we need to work through those first before we see resolution in the physical symptoms. And that's just part of trusting the process. And when people say trusting the process, I think what they are really saying is trust the science.

That's way more concrete in my opinion. Trust the science. We know how the brain changes, we know how the brain structurally changes. We've seen it on brain scans. This isn't a my. So maybe we need to change that line from trust, the process to trust the science because it is a much more concrete way of looking at it.

So yes I appreciate all of your feedback. I think you're spot on and I love hearing your comments that are unique to you, that you've experienced in your own journey. So the idea that programs are a great starting point, like we've said, because they're structured and they make it very easy. You don't need to rely on gut instincts.

You do not need to be in touch with your higher self, your genuine self, and what you believe you uniquely need. So it's a great thing when you're in the beginning stages. Once you feel you know enough and you are ready, then you can start looking outside. What program or whatever you are, have been told to use and construct your own ways of rebalancing, because that will always be the quickest pass path to having a balanced nervous system.

The most crucial ingredient of why someone is successful in brain retraining is that they begin to trust within, and they're no longer giving their power away to anybody else. Now, you can make incredible progress with a program in the beginning and maybe all the way through retraining your brain. It's very possible.

There are circumstances where people only use brain retraining, and Chad's, you and I have talked about those specific circumstances where somebody would be able to do that. I don't think we need to get into that right now, unless you want to. No, it's okay. No. Okay. Okay then we can into this. Yeah.

We'll stick to the questions. Okay. I like it. Okay. 

[00:25:44] Chazmith: Okay. Question three. If healing, if my healing is taking longer than what it seems like it takes for most people, can I still heal? 

[00:25:57] Tessa: Yes. Yes. It just means that there's a missing piece. It might not even be something really big and cumbersome. It can be very simple.

Most of the time when somebody comes to me and says, I feel that my healing is delayed, or I've plateaued, or I'm not making the progress that I see other people making around me. Most of the time it is because that person is forcing somewhere they're resisting and there is no element of surrender or accept.

It could mean that there is a past trauma that a person has been ignoring. Now ignoring is resisting. So that comes back to my original point, that if somebody is not making progress, there's usually resistance. It could be that we are fighting against what our nervous system is doing, like the physical symptoms.

That again goes back to resisting. And so what we need to do is look at where we can surrender. Where can we let the nervous system express itself and allow it to do the nervous system believes it is giving you the most important information on earth, doesn't it? It believes it is giving you the most important information on Earth, yet we shut it down.

We say no. We say no. You're not allowed to express yourself in physical symptoms. You're not allowed to make me feel specific ways emotionally, no, I don't like this. I don't want this. This isn't my life. Instead, can we surrender to it and recognize your nervous system is figuring everything out. The nervous system, ultimately it's just collecting information from the environment.

And our emotional selves are part of that emotional envi or are a part of that environment that the nervous system is collecting information from. So think about that. Your emotional responses to the nervous system is going to send a very clear message back to the nervous system, even if it's your emotional response to the physical symptoms that the nervous system is creating.

Your response to those symptoms goes straight back to the nervous system and says, either we are safe or we are not safe. So think about that when you're feeling stuck or if you're ever feeling stuck. Where am I resisting? Where can I let go? Can I let go in my body? Can I let go? In my mind, can I let my fingers, my legs just be limp and relaxed?

Can I loosen my body? Because the body the brain communicates with the body and the body communicates back to the brain, right? Our nerves are ex have extended, have, they are extended through our entire bodies, and they communicate back to the brain, and so does that vagus nerve. That vagus nerve is communicating.

80% of the communication between the brain and body is from the body to the brain through the vagus nerve. And it's saying whether or not we are tense all day long, it's going to tell the nervous system, Hey, there's a threat out there. But if you can loosen, if you can let go, then yeah, you're already on your way.

You've made a huge step forward. So if healing is taking you longer than most people, yes, you can still heal. It just means you're missing a little peace. Maybe you need to let go somewhere. Awesome. Question four. 

[00:29:36] Chazmith: There are many healing tools and different programs out there, and sometimes, and we kinda already talked on this, but you might have a little more to add, but sometimes we hear that one tool or one program is absolutely necessary.

Is it true? 

[00:29:50] Tessa: Yeah. We did answer a lot of this, but I do wanna be clear on this answer. You do not need any one tool. You do not need somatics. You do not need tapping. You do not need meditation. You do not need visualization. Yes, you can still rebalance without these tools. Is it helpful to visualize?

Sure. Is it beneficial to use meditation? Sure, absolutely. But does that fit within what resonates with you as being part of what your nervous system needs right now? And if the answer is no, then don't do it. That's forcing, that's creating more self abandonment like we talked about before. Maybe you don't know, maybe you're not in touch yet, and that's okay too.

So try it. See what it feels like. See if a tool would work for you that you think, oh, I've heard of all these people talking about somatics. Should I try it? Just try it. See how it feels, and trust how it feels. Trust if it resonates with you, because there's a reason for that. It means your nervous system is craving that.

It means your nervous system was re was in the past, not receiving what that tool is now able to provide for you. But if you feel like, no, this is rubbing, actually rubbing a up against what I feel is best for me right now I'm gonna be harsh right now and say Stop. Stop. Because that creates more of that resistance.

So one question I get a lot is about visualization. Do you have to visualize to change your belief systems or can you do it another way, which I think was the second part of this question. Strengthening your belief system is a really important piece of this. Absolutely. Changing our limiting beliefs that have been created over time is one of the most important pieces of changing the brain.

It's fundamental, but it doesn't matter how you go about changing your belief systems. You could use a pause and an interrupt approach. You could stop and sit down and journal and write about your beliefs and how they're coming up. You could distract if you wanted to. I don't love distracting, but it's not wrong if it works for you.

I used it a bunch when I was rewiring my nervous system. Rebalancing my nervous system. You could use self-talk, which is something I teach a lot about, where you would stop and you would say, Hey, I see you're feeling this way. Of course you would feel that way. You have every right to feel that way and then to go into more depth about what's going on?

Let's figure this out. Let's not run away anymore. You could use note cards or a voice memo to yourself, which is something I've been talking a lot to my clients about lately. When you're feeling your best, make a voice memo for yourself when you're feeling stuck, for when you're feeling stuck, so you can coach yourself out.

And I have had such great feedback with that kind of a tool that can change belief systems very effectively To hear yourself saying, Hey, this is what your brain is saying to you. You don't need to believe that and go into much more detail. Of course. So I believe it is much more beneficial to rebalance your nervous system by pausing on something you are currently feeling challenged by.

And asking yourself what you need, instead of just saying I think I should visualize here because I've heard that's the best way to change your belief systems. It's one way, but a lot of people have a hard time visualizing, and I want to give those people a shout out right now and say, you don't need to force.

You don't need to listen to people who are saying, you have to do this. I have spoken to my clients who are in tears because they've been told by somebody else, you have to do that, or you're not healing. That's wrong. And I want you to feel comfortable knowing that if you trust within and if you open up your brain by releasing those expectations and that pressure, what's gonna happen?

Your brain is going to heal a little bit more. Your nervous system is going to rebalance a little bit more, and that opens up your ability to do things like visualize, because over time when we chip away at. Allowing the brain to, to not be protective and to be in one of those trauma responses of flight, fight, freeze, or fun.

When we open up and we allow the brain to be in that rest and digest place of safety, then you're gonna be able to visualize if you want to. I'm not saying you ever even have to, so in short, no more forcing. Listen within what makes sense to you. That is what is going to rebalance your nervous system the quickest.

[00:34:45] Chazmith: I'm gonna ask one extra little question on top of that for people what is, because there's something very real that does happen initially when we're say new at approaching self-healing and we can sometimes butt up against a lot of resistance that we've been taught is like limbic resistance and that can be very real.

And there is a difference between when we're resisting something that actually would be beneficial for us. Versus when we're a little bit more aligned to our inner truth and just and just not leaning into something any longer or leaning into something different and being called into something different.

So how can somebody discern the difference? Because if, because it initially, if they're just feeling that limbic resistance, they could be feeling like they're forcing, but they might not really be forcing, they might still be supporting. 

[00:35:42] Tessa: It can be tricky to recognize where that resistance is coming from, because resistance feels like resistance.

So the way that I think is best to handle that kind of a situation is to go inside when you're feeling that resistance, to take a pause and instead of running away from the resistance, which is something that we intuitively want, we just wanna get away from it because it's so uncomfortable. Sit there and talk to the resistance, have a conversation with it.

We resist the resistance and we need to pause and look at it as if it's not this big scary thing to us. It's actually just, it's our nervous system that's afraid of something. It's our nervous system that's feeling vulnerable or insecure. It's a younger version of ourselves that needs us to stop and have a conversation and.

This younger version to see the truth, which is that we can sit with our discomfort and we can talk to ourselves about it in great detail. So I think the best way to tell if resistance is limbic resistance or if it's true to the higher self that we sit and we go through this three step process. I talk about this three step process in my work with my clients.

It's label your emotions, validate them, and then come around and be able to talk to your nervous system in a different way as a result of moving the resistance of sweeping away that clutter. So the first part, labeling the emotion you would wanna. This feels really uncomfortable. I don't like this tool.

I don't wanna do it. It's, it doesn't feel great to me. Nope, I can't do that. I can't visualize, I don't know how to, it's too much. I just wanna run away. Label all of that. It's okay to say those things. And I know a lot of programs might shy away from or actually say, don't acknowledge your negative emotions.

These aren't negative emotions. This is part of you. This is something that actually we want to be honest about and truthful with ourselves about, because that then removes that resistance. Now, it's not this big thing anymore. It's actually something we're having a conversation with. So speak to that resistance.

Label your emotions around it, exactly what you're feeling. Labeling your emotions, decreases activity in the amygdala. And that immediately sends messages of safety back to your nervous system immediately, because it says, I know what this emotion is, I know where it's coming from, and it's not a lion.

It's not chasing you. So I am a huge. Supporter of anybody labeling what they're feeling and experiencing. And then you can validate yourself because that's something you likely haven't done, maybe ever, is say, of course you're feeling this way. You have every right to feel this way. This tendency to resist came from this thing that happened to you in your life.

You don't have to go into that, but you can. So label your emotions, validate yourself for having them. Of course, you wouldn't want to engage with this tool. This tool's changing your brain. It feels uncomfortable. I don't like it. Of course, you wouldn't want, of course, brain or a nervous system. You would reject this tool.

It's going against everything that you desire right now, which is this deep sense of safety and control. It's not giving you that. I'm not giving you that brain chemistry, that stress chemistry that you're used to. So of course you would feel this way. So once you do those first two steps, then it's a lot easier to say, you know what?

Let's try this tool for 30 seconds, even five seconds. Let's try it for five seconds. Let's see how it feels. And if your nervous system, your brain, or your limbic system, let you use that tool for five seconds for a minute, chances are that's limbic resistance because you are able to move through it.

If it is a true higher self resistance, like this is not meant for me, this is not what I want, this is a self abandonment that would feel still like an injustice to the self. So that's a way that you can discern between those two types of resistance and should lead you to a pretty obvious answer.

I love that. 

[00:39:48] Chazmith: And I think it's important to preface and explain that because I know there's definitely times that I am in a resistance to doing things that are 1000% absolutely great for me, and we could probably get into that over a long time, but not necessarily need to get into it right now.

But we know that sometimes we resist change because sometimes the nervous system or the ego loves to stay in what's known and familiar because it feels safer there. Absolutely. So if we're using a tool that actually does create really positive change, sometimes that can be scary.

[00:40:23] Tessa: Yes. Don't do that.

Chazmith: You might actually change. And that's really scary cuz we don't know what's on the other side. Yeah. But I, so I loved your example because it's true. If I start it and I'm like 30 seconds in and I'm still rolling with it then you know, it's okay, yeah, maybe this is actually good for me. And you mentioned earlier is knowing how you feel on the other side of it.

Thank you for that extra question there. Okay. So funny. The next question, we're not gonna, I don't think it, it's, we need to spend time on it. Cause I think it's been answered multiple times, but maybe you can just one sentence answer it just to, once again, reaffirm for these, for the people out there who, these questions seem to be very popular and it is about giving advice to somebody when it's been, they said, when it's been years, that they're still doing their brain retraining and trying to keep it front and center, while also feeling wary of all the work.

And it's still that, it still takes and having lost enthusiasm for all of it. 

[00:41:23] Tessa: I think we all know what I'm going to say, which is we need to sit with that because that, from my perspective, looks there's something missing, and that's okay. It's actually, it's incredible to sit with yourself and realize, wow, I have this experience from my childhood that still feels very charged, that when I think of it, I still want to cry or I still get very angry.

That's saying something that memory is stuck in the traumatic memory part of your brain and your brain does not want to let go of it. Because when did I say this earlier? That when information is stuck in your brain like that, it means that it had some kind of a charged emotion that was either fear or anger or embarrassment or shame, and that your brain uses that information because it believes it to benefit you in the future.

That's our survival mechanism. That's actually a very important part of our brain. If we didn't have that, we would make a lot of mistakes that are not very helpful to our survival. So we want that. However, the negativity bias takes over and we end up having this really negatively skewed perception. So now I've lost my train of thought.

Great. Oh, trauma being stored in the brain. So when it's stored there and our brain believes that it is important and it's using, our brain will use that information as if it's relevant information today, not 25 years ago today. So yes, we do need to unearth those traumas and move through them, and that doesn't have to be difficult either.

We can remove trauma by you and I did a podcast on this, so maybe we could put the link. Of that podcast, in this podcast and say, if you have trauma that you feel is still stuck in you, it doesn't have to be difficult to re to move through. You can do it in these very simple ways. And really it's about removing the resistance to it.

It's about reframing it and seeing it differently. And once you do that, you're on a whole other level of being able to work with your nervous system, for your nervous system to feel safer and for you to remove one of the pieces that's keeping you stuck. And after that, you might have more enthusiasm for a program or for brain rewiring specifically.

Or maybe you want to go and look into something like, I don't know. Tapping or meditation or the Sedona method or anything, some other forms of healing, which you actually might know more than I would Chaz, because I tend to stay away from those other modalities. I don't think we need them or need to know what they are.

But then you may feel intuitively drawn to something else and you wanna follow that. Okay. 

[00:44:16] Chazmith: Question six. How do we create a balance between saying yes to life, to joy, to going out and living and pursuing our passions while also staying committed to the tools and practices that we are choosing to engage in that support that do truly support our healing?

[00:44:35] Tessa: Such a great question. All of these are great questions, but I love this one because it's taking me into a different area. It's more of. What can we do to enrich and nourish ourselves in a way that's very authentic and organic? And so one thing that I would say to one of my clients if they asked me this question is, what are you passionate about?

What do you love? Think about the brain chemistry that is created when you love something, when you enjoy it, when you find deep purpose in it, when it's something that feels nourishing to your soul, or when it's just something that you plain like doing. Listening to music, being in nature, playing a sport, talking to friends.

I'm sure we could go on and on. Our lives should not be defined by rewiring our brains. I would say that our lives should be defined by the experience of being human. Of finding a deep love for ourselves and for anything. Anything that we can find in life that we can enjoy. And I know some of us are very limited and we can't do the things that we really want to be doing, like being in nature.

And that can be really difficult thing. So what you would say to yourself in that situation is, I have to start somewhere. I have to start somewhere, and I have to start in a place where I am meeting myself, where I am at. So for example, looking at pictures of beautiful animals or scenes in nature, and just living in that experience of looking at that visual, that's an experience that will get you closer to being in nature eventually.

If you are able to do the things that bring you joy, think about how much they actually rewire your brain. You are living in the moment. You are able to elevate your mood. You are changing belief systems because you're enjoying something and you are letting your nervous system see that. Life isn't this big, scary place, and I know going out and doing things can be challenging too.

So there's a balance of I'm out and it feels really stressful and it's really difficult, but I'm also enjoying it at the same time. Then you have to weigh your options. Okay, am I benefiting from this more than it is challenging me, or am I actually feeling challenged now to the point where I think it would be beneficial for me to go and not be doing this thing anymore?

That's okay too. That's where we find that self-forgiveness, that empathy and compassion for the self, and give ourselves that grace to make that decision. But overall, my answer to this question is, Focus more on what you can use your prefrontal cortex to do, your choice, your beliefs, your values, your desires and passions.

Think about what those things are for yourself and if you don't feel that you maybe know yet, and that's okay too because there is one point where I didn't know anymore. Think about maybe what used to spark joy within you, or if that's not available to you, what you want to spark joy within you. What are you drawn to, even just a little bit?

Music I think is such a great place to start. If you love music, listen to it all the time and create that sense of joy with just music that's not, that doesn't need to be seen as rewiring your brain. That doesn't need to see, be seen as this contrived, formulaic process. It's just enjoyment in life, being present and just tr or trying to be present.

Did I answer the question fully? 

[00:48:30] Chazmith: I think that was a really great answer and very supportive, but I think that the person is talking about something a little different. I think when I read the question, I think it's about maybe it's like about balancing the time and the ability to do both. Say it's somebody who, they've experienced some levels of healing now and they are at a place where they can go out and pursue their passions and ex and say yes to life, but they're finding it hard to balance doing both, like still getting their practices in for their healing, but also saying yes to living.

Does that make sense? Yeah. So like when you have to start being like, oh do I say yes to going and doing this, or do I stay home and do my healing? Practices, 

[00:49:21] Tessa: yeah. I say yes to life. That is more going, you are going to embody your true, authentic self more if you say yes to life, and you go and enjoy yourself.

And that goes back to my point of what's creating the most the most amount of feel good chemicals, the greatest feelings of joy and contentment and being in life. Maybe that is being home and doing more of like a contrived kind of a practice. That's great if that's creating the most sense of inner contentment and joy.

Do that. But I tend to think most of you listening are going to say, I wanna live my life. I don't want to feel held back. Because actually that creates resistance to that practice. So once you're at that stage, that to me says, open the cage and set yourself free, that's a sign. You're not feeling that for no reason.

You're feeling that because you're ready and it's okay to let go. I have this conversation with clients all the time. It's okay to let go. You do not need to keep yourself in that cage just because that's where you thought you should be or where you think you should be or where you've been, where you've been told to be.

Everybody is going to rebalance their nervous systems in a different amount of time. And when you're ready, you know it. And when I have that conversation with clients, every single time, I kid you, not every single time they've said, thank you so much for the permission to live my life again. That's all I needed.

And they do it. They go and they live their lives. That doesn't mean they don't ever bump up against a challenge again. That's okay too. But they're opening their world, they're having new experiences, and that brings the nervous system some stuff, some stuff that it's going to have to work through.

Your living life and you're finding deep joy in doing so. And to me that creates more of a beneficial emotional state and more of that brain chemistry and that biology that leads to rebalancing for the long run as well. 

[00:51:24] Chazmith: I think that there's a really good follow up question to that. Yeah, go ahead.

Somebody says how can I do exciting and fun activities without getting so revved up that I'm not able to sleep afterwards? And I, it made me think how you were like, oh, when you're going out and saying yes to life, sometimes it's gonna bring new things up that you're gonna get to Yeah. Rebalance.

And so maybe we can speak on this question next. Yeah. 

[00:51:45] Tessa: I think that's great. Okay. So when you notice that happening to you, that is because excitement, if you look at a grand scale of emotion or like a spectrum of emotion, because we can't group our emotions into good, bad, we can. Group them into positive or negative.

It's just, it really is the spectrum of emotion. And it goes from like this deep contentment and joy and peace and love. I think love on one end of this dis of the spectrum. And then on the other end are those more of the uncomfortable emotions. And so there has to be an area where these two sets of emotions blend together.

And I see excitement as being one of those places, excitement to the brain can feel triggering and can rev us up and can actually blend with a stressful experience and can be misinterpreted by the nervous system as stressful. If you think about it, I haven't talked about the hunters and gatherers much in this podcast, but that's something I do a lot in my own work is when we look at the hunters and gatherers, if you want to re.

Position yourself or reorient yourself to any question you might have about your nervous system. Go back to the hunters and gatherers. What was, what does that mean? Or what would this limbic expression mean as a hunter and gatherer? And we can always reorient ourselves there. So when we were hunting and gathering, let's think about what we did.

We roamed, we collected, we hunted, we kept each other safe, et cetera. And remember that the nervous system really has not evolved much since that time. So that's why we can always reference that, that time in our history. What happened when we were excited, when we were hunters and gatherers? What do you think?

Excitement came in the form of when we were hunters and gatherers. If we look back to that time, it was possibly we were excited because there was maybe something building and that something likely could have impacted our survival. So that's another way that excitement can blend with stress is our nervous system is wired to interpret it.

If, ugh, let me say this, if the nervous system is hyper-sensitized, if it is not, it doesn't really default to those primal pathways. So if your nervous system is completely regulated and one day it will be, you're gonna be able to get excited and it's not going to rev up your nervous system. So like right now, I could get excited for two hours straight, like watching the World Cup game and afterwards I don't feel at all jittery.

My heart isn't beating really fast, I'm calm and I'm cool. I could go right to bed. So that's a little caveat there. So as soon as you notice yourself getting excited, pause. You wanna pause, you wanna catch it, and you wanna say, Okay. I noticed myself getting a bit revved up. I'm going to do a little bit of a reset and resets can look different for everybody.

It might be doing a 32nd meditation or taking some really deep breaths. My favorite reset is to breathe really deep and hold that breath and breathe out really long and hold at the bottom. People call that breathing all different. They refer to it as all different kinds of names. I just say, take a really deep breath and hold and out and hold because that resets your breathing and your heart rate.

It settles your stress chemistry, and you can become a little bit more regulated as you begin to feel more regulated. This is why we wanna catch it pretty early and be aware of this pattern so that we can catch it and we can re-regulate and reset. And then once we feel that we reengage in the activity in a different way with more awareness, with more of I'm going to reengage with this activity in a calmer way, not where I'm feeling jittery and revved up.

I can I can do this in a way where my brain is not, does not need to see it as this stressful event. And eventually you won't have to do this anymore at all, which will be a really beautiful thing. But if you put in the time to pause and reset and do some breathing or whatever resets you, it will benefit you in the long run.

[00:56:15] Chazmith: I love that. Do you, what do you think about also just taking these opportunities to like, just talk to your brain or your nervous system or those parts of yourself and just remind them like, Hey, we are actually excited right now. No, we're not anxious. This doesn't have to be scary anymore.

Yep. This is a great feeling and 

[00:56:38] Tessa: I think that's perfect. I think that can be your reset. You can even do what I was saying earlier with the. Label your emotions, validate them, and then try and create a new story or come in from a different angle. Yeah. You're feeling really revved up right now. Of course you would.

And then, but listen, this is excitement. This is natural. This is wonderful. I actually really enjoy this experience. Yeah. Yeah. I love that idea. Awesome. 

[00:57:06] Chazmith: Okay. I think, let's see. I think we're on question nine. We'll call it, or eight. It's eight. All right. Can you still heal when you are always outside your window of tolerance?

For anyone who's listening, who's not familiar with what that means, it means if you are in a constant state of being triggered, for example, you're working in a job where you're triggered all day, or you're in an environment where you have exposure to a trigger all day long, or you just can't avoid certain triggers, can you still heal?

[00:57:41] Tessa: Okay. Yes, the short answer is yes, but of course, I can't just keep it that short ever. So being outside of your window of tolerance does not mean you're doing something wrong. It does not mean you're damaging yourself. It does not mean that you're further sensitizing your nervous system. It does not mean any of those things, and I think going outside of your window of tolerance is seen as a bad thing and I don't want it to.

I talk to clients a lot about this because it's actually something that I have done quite a bit in my own rebalancing journey is just being outside of my window into of tolerance and being like, you're okay. And of course there is a lot more that goes into that. You're okay. But being outside of that window in to of tolerance just means you're speeding up the process.

Yes, that comes with more discomfort. Of course that's natural, but it comes. A sped up process of rebalancing because it's like a band-aid approach where you're just ripping off the Band-Aid and you're like, okay, nervous system. We're doing this and we're going to work through it. And it's just a desensitization of the nervous system in a quicker way.

So what you wanna do in those kinds of situations, first of all, you need to know you. You do really need to know that your symptoms are your limbic system or your nervous system, and that there's nothing wrong with you. If your symptoms have been around for a long time, they're exacerbated by stress. You know that you have an imbalanced nervous system.

It's okay to say These symptoms are my imbalance, nervous system, and they're okay to be. We need to surrender to the symptoms in these kinds of situations because, like I said earlier in this podcast, that when we communicate when we surrender to the symptoms, we communicate a sense of safety back to the nervous system.

During a time where the nervous system is very triggered, and when the nervous system is very triggered, it's looking for a sense of safety. It's looking for you to say everything's okay. Your nervous system does not want to be dysregulated, wants to find homeostasis so we can help it do so by being in that moment and talking to ourselves.

Be really soothing. Be loving. Give yourself grace. Be patient with the nervous system. When we get upset with the nervous system because it's not acting the way we wish it would. What are we doing? We're setting expectations. Those expectations are going to create resistance and frustration. So be kind to your nervous system.

Let it know that everything is safe by surrendering to what is happening in the body and in the mind. Try and slow your thinking down by choosing one thought at a time and just saying to yourself, we're just choosing one thought at a time. Just one. Well, think about this thought. We're just gonna think about this one thought, cuz it, mine tends to speed up in these ti in these moments.

Try and be present in the moment of whatever, wherever you are. Let's say you're at work. Try and be present at work. Try and be present with the kids you're teaching or the adults that you are with. Try and be present in your work as much as you possibly can. Do lots of that self soothing, that self-talk, whatever else resets you.

If you can do that and if you can. Send messages of safety to the nervous system no matter what the nervous system's doing. That's the thing. It might create symptoms. It might be more symptoms. If you are doing what you scientific, what you know scientifically changes the brain, then you are re-regulating your nervous system.

You are, it is inevitable and it will happen. Have the patience to see it through. Trust the science. And so my answer on that is, yes, you can rebalance your nervous system outside of your window of tolerance. It takes a little bit more patience, some more grace and some more surrendering to the symptoms, but it speeds up the process.

You will be able to do something a lot quicker in that way. Am I saying go out and be outside of your window of tolerance all the time? No, I'm saying do that if you have to and do that sometimes when you want to. There were times where I definitely felt I could not do things. And I did them anyway because I knew I really wanted to, I genuinely, wholeheartedly wanted to do it, and I knew that the payoff as a result or the payout as a result would be immense.

And so I went and I did that eight mile hike when I felt like I couldn't get off the couch. I did that and I coached myself through it the whole time. And I spoke lovingly to my nervous system and I was patient and kind and gentle, and I did it. And then guess what? I could hike again. Now, it doesn't always happen that quickly, but it can be really loving through the process and trust the science are those two, two things that I think will help you the most in those kinds of situations.

[01:02:41] Chazmith: Awesome. Question nine. What would be some signs that we are healing that we would normally not consider to be good signs? 

[01:02:50] Tessa: Physical symptoms. Yeah. 

[01:02:54] Chazmith: New symptoms. New symptoms. Shift in symptoms. 

[01:02:58] Tessa: Yep. Yep. That's typically what we would see. And it's something that I think people probably don't like to hear.

And that's okay. It can come with a lot more symptoms because like you were saying earlier, the nervous system is going to be resistant to something that's new because that means the nervous system doesn't have control where it believes it needs the control. Remember, the nervous system believes it is sending you the most important information in the entire world.

So what I would say in these kinds of situations is assume the best. Assume that you are always healing. What if you always assumed that it was healing, whether it is or not. What if you always assumed that it was, what if you just said when you felt a symptom, oh, this is my nervous system healing, or This is my limbic system healing, or this is my body healing, however you wanna look at it.

What if you did that? You would be sending the best possible messages back to the nervous system, which leads to healing no matter what. Because when our nervous system's getting those messages of safety and the nervous system is only responding to the environment, when it gets those messages of safety as part of its environment that it is reading then it is going to believe that everything is a little bit safer.

So those symptoms can become messages of healing. That's what I would say about that. 

[01:04:29] Chazmith: Yeah. Yep. 

[01:04:31] Tessa: Do you want me to elaborate anywhere? 

[01:04:32] Chazmith: No, I love it. It's, I think it's, I think it's so important to just, it's simple and in cut and dry and so important. I literally have, I have a little song I will share when I have new symptoms or an uptick in symptoms or something shifts.

I just sing myself a little jingle that says that I always go, yay. Hey, new symptoms. And then I always say that they're my friends and that they mean that healing is near the end. I love that rhyme love. Yeah. Cause well, it's if, say you have like pain in your shoulder or something and then all of a sudden you're doing the healing work and then all of a sudden pain's not in your shoulder, but it's in your left knee.

Yeah. It's come on, you didn't just hurt your left knee. Probably didn't do anything. It's means that something's shifting and I trust that it's a positive. And I think it's such an important reframe cuz how many of us go into this work with the mindset of fear. You already talked about this fear of symptoms.

Or now we also say symptoms mean we we get symptoms and we think, oh, I did something wrong. It's always so we're judging ourselves. We think we, it was my fault. I did something wrong. Oh my God. It's be, then we start blaming ourself or blaming the things and situations around us. And that's how we ended up with such a small Like window, like of life, it's like that's how life got smaller and smaller.

And so when we can really reframe how we feel about symptoms and change our entire perspective about it, it's literally a game changer. It's so empowering and liberating and life changing. 

[01:05:56] Tessa: Thank you for bringing that up. That's such an important piece that I didn't touch on. Blaming stimuli for the cause of your symptoms.

Yeah, 

[01:06:05] Chazmith: that's reinforcing, it's, 

[01:06:08] Tessa: yeah. It's reinforcing the idea that something out there is causing you pain and discomfort. And that's disempowering. So disempowering, it makes you feel helpless out of control. Unable to do anything about it, which is helpless. These symptoms never had anything to do with outside stimuli.

They never did. They were always about your internal environment. And I don't think we need to get into how physical symptoms are created unless you want me to. I can. That would probably end the podcast. We can go there. 

[01:06:43] Chazmith: Yeah, let's do that. Okay. Let's make that question 10. 

[01:06:47] Tessa: So think about when we were hunters and gatherers back then, what our stimuli was.

Remember, the nervous system hasn't evolved much since that time. So it understands what it can see, hear, smell, touch, taste. It understands those things very well, and that's how it perceives the environment as being either safe or unsafe for us. So our nervous system is always processing information that is telling us whether or not the environment is safe or not, and.

When we go through periods of stress or we go through trauma in life, we tend to hold onto those stressors and traumas. We tend to make them a part of us. We experience them in a lot of different ways in how we interact with the world. They become our insecurities, part of our insecurities. It's how we relate to ourselves a lot of the time in childhood.

Those of us who ended up with an imbalance nervous system had some form of trauma or prolonged stressors, and that led us to self abandoned, to become people pleasers, to put others in front of ourselves, to become perfectionists and overachievers and all of those kinds of limbic tendencies. We embodied those because that's what the nervous system does when it becomes imbalanced.

It uses these adaptive kinds of patterns and responses. They're coping mechanisms. It's easier to people please than it is to see what's really going on within us, what we're really feeling and thinking, how we feel inadequate, how we don't feel like we are enough. So these patterns occur over time and it causes us deep stress because we are abandoning who we really are and who we want to be.

And who we feel authentically is who we are. We dis we disconnect with ourselves. And in that process we have a lot of emotional discomfort, strife despair, and the nervous system understands what it perceives with the five senses. It understands when it sees a lion, it understands when we have a negative emotional response, when we have any kind of a response that's oh my gosh, or Ooh, that doesn't feel good, or I'm scared, or it understands that.

And it's, that's part of the internal environment that it is always paying attention to. Now, the only part of the emotional response that the nervous system understands is when something scary or or survival related is happening. So if we're walking around constantly angry or upset or fearful, the nervous system is perceiving that as we are in danger, and it's perceiving that all of the time if we're carrying that stress with us.

So think about what the nervous system understands in terms of stimuli. Think of us carrying stress along with us for a long period of time. It's processing the nervous system, processes that stress as there's a threat, but it can't find a threat. Where's the threat? There's no lion. There's nothing that is really out there.

Like I see a wall and a table and oh yeah, there's people moving around and I'm at school, or it's nothing concrete that the nervous system understands the nervous system's. Number one job is to protect you, and it is going to find a way to protect you. It will, so it's going to perceive the environment in two ways.

It is safe or it is not safe. Now the emotional, our emotional environment is saying it's not safe. So the nervous system, and this is going to be different for everyone, this is why everyone has different sensitivities and expressions physically of a nervous, of an impaired nervous system. It's because we all have different experiences and we are all in different places when we have really stressful events.

So my stressful event was around a person. Who did not treat me well, and he wore something that I could smell. So what happened? My brain wired in that smell with danger because he was a danger to me, and my brain really believed that. So my emotional stress was perceived by my nervous system when I was around him.

My nervous system doesn't understand where's the threat. It perceives what it can pick up with. It’s five senses on the outer, in the outer world. Now it creates a hypersensitivity to a smell because it can do anything that it wants to do to protect us. And those are some of those typical ways that the nervous system will express itself in fear.

It will create hypersensitivities. It will become overstimulated in environments where there's lots of movement because it doesn't know where the threat is. And it will create, pain messages in the body because we pay attention. We will pay attention to pain and we won't go back and do that thing.

Let's say you hit your elbow on something and you're having a really stressful event, your brain can bring back that sensation so that you don't go back and do that thing that your brain perceived as being the cause of your stress and trauma. It all comes back to your brain thinking it knew what was happening during the time of immense stress, emotional stress, but it didn't.

It was just picking up sensory information and it was doing its best to protect you. And yes, sometimes people, when I explain this to people, they'll say, yeah, but I did have physical stressors and I had these, this virus or whatever. Yeah. But did that come without an emotional component, right?

No, it did not. If it had not come with an emotional component, your body would've healed. Your body would've figured it out. But it did, and it always does because we have such a sophisticated prefrontal cortex. And when it really comes down to it, the reason why we have imbalanced nervous systems is the juxtaposition between the prefrontal cortex and our archaic limbic system slash nervous systems.

It's that we have sophisticated thought and we can ruminate. We have those abilities now. And so the nervous system's I don't get it. What's going on? I don't see the threat. This is nothing I know, but it's us ruminating because we have the ability to do 

[01:13:35] Chazmith: and I'm gonna ask you one final question, but because I always ask the same question to everybody, and you've been on the show and I've asked it to you before, I'm gonna subtly change the question.

So normally I say, if you could share only, if you were told you could only share one message with the world for the rest of your life, what would that message be? And since I know that you have a child, I'm gonna make it a little different. And I'm gonna say, if you were only allowed to impart one wis, one word of one word of wisdom to your child, if you were only allowed to share one overarching message to your child for the rest of him, is it a boy or girl?

Is a boy? Boy. That's what I thought. For the rest for the for your life, for his life to pass on, like you're imparting wisdom to him, what would you want to share with him? 

[01:14:15] Tessa: Yeah, I would say trust yourself. Listen within. If something does not resonate with you, that means it is not meant for you. I would say.

Listen to your inner guidance instead of what others want of you and honor yourself in that way. And I think I'll keep it there. I 

[01:14:45] Chazmith: love it. Tessa, how old is your son right 

[01:14:47] Tessa: now? He's going to be three in January. 

[01:14:50] Chazmith: Okay, in 10 years I am going to share this episode with him so that when you guys tell him what to do and he says, but that's not what feels right for me.

And you guys say, no, you need to listen to us cuz we're your parents. I'm gonna send this to you and be like, Hey listen, your mom said this. 

[01:15:15] Tessa: That's very clever.

Oh, it's so fun. Good ending. Good ending. I brought me to tears to think about what I wanted to tell him. Now I'm laughing in tears. So thank you 

[01:15:35] Chazmith: indeed. Thanks for doing this with me. This is a really fun way to engage the audience and just have some questions answered that people had out there lingering.

So I appreciate you stepping up and being willing to do this type of episode with me. 

[01:15:49] Tessa: Yeah, absolutely. I hope it was helpful for those listening, and it was so wonderful to be with you. Thanks for having me 

[01:15:55] Chazmith: again. All right, y'all, that's a wrap. Not only is it a wrap for today's episode, but it is a wrap for another epic wonderful year.

I do really hope you found value in the content shared throughout this podcast in this past year of 2022. If you have found. Please remember to like it, subscribe to it, and share it with a friend. Help me to reach my goals of spreading this message of self-healing and possibility to millions worldwide.

Enjoy the last few days of 2022 and kick off the new year being true to you, which is the greatest gift you can give yourself and the world. Don't forget to stay tuned next week for the big surprise details, and make this week great and have the happiest new year.