96: How to Transform the Hidden Beliefs that Hold You Back with Katherine Woodward Thomas

How do you stop repeating the old beliefs and actions that are holding you back? How do you ensure that the core part of your inner guidance is sending you in a positive direction? If you find yourself doing the same old dance again and again - either with your current partner, or in relationship after relationship, then this is the episode for you. Joining us is Katherine Woodward Thomas, author of the NYT Bestseller Conscious Uncoupling, as well as the bestseller Calling in the One, as a guide through a powerful process of self-discovery. We dive deep into a core part of her work, the “secret sauce” that has helped Katherine transform the lives of so many people worldwide. Katherine Woodward Thomas has been on Relationship Alive a couple times previously. If you’re interested in hearing our other episodes together, they are: Ep 21: Healing Pain from Past or Present Breakups Ep 3: Overcoming Your Barriers to Love and Connection Repeating the story: So often we get into relationships that allow us to recreate old and often painful patterns developed in our childhoods. While this duplication process may partly be in search of healing, it is more due to the fact that we lack the skills to do relationship any differently. Luckily this can shift. We can learn the skills and repair the developmental needs in order to navigate our relationships to the highest potential they hold for our happiness and wellbeing. Getting to the center of it all: We generate our lives from what lives at our center. What core belief about love are you carrying at your center? It is from this belief, often formed in childhood, that we generate our entire experience in the world and in relationship. If your core belief is broken (No one will ever love me, I am unworthy of love, I don’t deserve love), no amount of skills will help remedy. Instead an entirely new center must be found - one that is truer and has more room for positive possibility and growth. It is this excavating of old beliefs that allows us to move from post traumatic stress towards post traumatic growth. Beliefs are relational: Our core beliefs were created in relation to another, and are, thus, also able to be healed through relationship. Remember however, that no one can show up for us in a way that we are not showing up for ourselves. We must teach those around us how to love us by the ways in which we love ourselves. Source fracture wounds: Source fracture wounds are the result of our original experiences of being hurt in love. These experiences, often long forgotten by explicit memory, become so entwined with our entire identity that it may take some time and support to be able to unblend enough to identify them. The body holds beliefs: Our implicit beliefs are held more in our bodies than in our brains. Try closing your eyes for a moment and connecting with your painful pattern in love. How does this experience show up in your body? Is it a heaviness in your heart? A tightness in the stomach? An ache in the solar plexus? Stay connected with it and welcome in the feelings while letting this part of your body tell the story “I am...or I am no...or other people…” Listen. Then ask yourself - how old is this part of me? Allow this dialogue to continue between yourself and this young self. Once you feel like you have really listened in, you can begin to update this young belief with a more mature and validating voice: for example, share with it that you are, in fact, deeply loved by all of life and there is evidence around for how all of life loves you. Once we have discovered the old stories we created long ago, we have the opportunity to mentor and usher in a new perspective. Stay in relationship between yourself and your tender parts: The places in our bodies that hold these beliefs often cause us both emotional and physical pain. This tends to make us want to ignore and shun these areas of our bodies, however it is actually these areas that need the most TLC. Continue to build a relationship between yourself and these tender areas. Place a hand on these parts of yourself and let them know you are there. These parts of ourselves are often lonely, stuck, and waiting for us to liberate them from the story they are trapped in. Talk to yourself! You will likely have a sense of immediate relief. Let your parts know “I am enough, I am a treasure”. This dialogue and honoring allows you to course correct the consciousness of long stagnant and painful thought/feeling networks. Start within. Are you ready and desiring of a new love experience? It may be time to wake up from old trance. In order to step into a more authentic, fulfilling, and growth oriented relationship you must 1) be willing to go deeper, 2) stop being a victim, and 3) begin to reflect on yourself as the source of your own experience with your partner. See yourself as the source:  In what ways are you creating situations that provide more...