Why You Keep Repeating the Same Patterns | Shadow Work, Nervous System & Identity

What if the biggest thing standing between you and the life you want… isn’t your circumstances, but the parts of yourself you’ve never learned to understand?

In this episode of Relentlessly Authentic, Rachael Roykovich and Gab dive into one of the most transformative conversations you can have with yourself: meeting your shadow.

Your shadow isn’t something to fear. It’s the younger, protective version of you that learned how to survive through people-pleasing, perfectionism, hyper-independence, overworking, or playing small. Those patterns may have kept you safe once—but they could also be the very things keeping you stuck today.

Together, we explore what shadow work really is, why your triggers are invitations instead of inconveniences, and how your nervous system, beliefs, emotions, and identity shape the energy you bring into every area of your life.

We also unpack what people often call your “frequency”—not as something mystical, but as the sum of your beliefs, emotional state, nervous system, thoughts, and self-concept. When you change your internal world, you naturally begin making different decisions, noticing different opportunities, and creating a different reality.

If you’ve ever wondered why you keep attracting the same relationships, repeating the same patterns, or feeling like you’re doing all the “right” things but still not moving forward, this conversation is for you.

Because healing isn’t about becoming someone new.

It’s about remembering who you were before fear convinced you to hide.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What the shadow self really is and how it develops
• Why your triggers are powerful invitations for healing
• The connection between your nervous system, identity, and emotional patterns
• Why your past doesn’t have to become your future
• How beliefs shape your self-concept and influence your reality
• The difference between surviving and truly thriving
• Why healing isn’t about fixing yourself—it’s about integrating every part of yourself
• How presence, mindfulness, and self-awareness create lasting transformation
• The role of vulnerability, compassion, and safety in personal growth
• Reflective questions to help you uncover the unconscious patterns running your life

Whether you’re beginning your healing journey or have been doing the inner work for years, this episode will help you understand yourself with more compassion, create safety within your body, and reconnect with the most authentic version of who you are.

Because the life you’re longing for doesn’t begin when everything around you changes.

It begins the moment you stop abandoning yourself.

Find Rachael on Instagram @highvibeyogii

Find Gaby on Instagram @rising.monarca and @gabrielafverdusco on Tik Tok 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:22

Good morning. Sun rising, grand rising. Good morning. Welcome back to a relentlessly authentic. I don't think we've done this in a while, Gab. Do you want to take a few breaths?

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 0:36

Yeah. It's early for you. It's a rainy, dreary day here in North Carolina. It's been raining for like a week straight. Oh my gosh, it's been 105 here. Yesterday was 107.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Oh my god. Very, very hot. Damn. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Well, maybe start to close down the eyes, maybe placing a hand on your heart. If you're driving, obviously do not close your eyes and stay safe, but maybe take a few deep breaths with us. Option to kind of hook your thumbs together, creating like a butterfly's wings with your hands. Some bilateral stimulation can be nice for toning your vagus nerve. So you can start to tap right to left, left to right.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Maybe just bring some awareness to how you're feeling in this moment. The thoughts that are passing by your mind.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

Noticing if your breathing is in your chest or in your belly. Elongating your spine. Sitting up a little straighter, a little truer. Let's take a big breath together, co-regulate, inhale through your big nose, inflate your belly. And then exhale out the mouth and let it all go. This time let's inhale for a count of four, three, two, one, hold at the top for four, three, two, one, exhale for six, five, four, three, two, one, inhale for four, three, two, one, hold for four, three, two one, exhale for six, five, four, three, two, one, one more round. Inhale for four, three, two one, hold for four, three, two, one, exhale for six, five, four, two, three, two, and one. So just sit in some energy, some relaxation you just cultivated for yourself. Feel whatever shifts might have happened right on the surface, the tingles on your skin.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

The coherence with your heart. The calmness in your brain.

SPEAKER_03 3:33

In your mind. And can we keep this awareness as we roll into this conversation? This presence, this clarity, this calm, this flow. And hopefully this will serve in the highest good of all of everything for the listener and for you and I, Gab. Maybe with a smile on your face, find something that you're really fucking grateful for. Allow that feeling to expand in your heart. Maybe you feel that heart beat against your hand. Allow that bit of gratitude then to emanate all around you into a feeling of abundance. Into a feeling of love, of joy, of gratitude, of thanks, for waking up this morning, for being healthy, for being here, for being able to show up and even listen to a podcast. Because to someone else with less, that's a lot. So if we can train our brain, our mind to realize that we're already an abundant being, we'll attract more blessings and magic and miracles into our life.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

But we have to train our mind to see it, to know it, and to feel it. Thus we get to embody it. Take an inhale through the nose.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

A new uh routine.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Yeah. Trying to find my way for sure.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

Well, um, today's topic, kind of going off of what we kind of started to talk about last week, in terms of like your explaining your family and the shadow self and operating more from fear or operating from past trauma or past experiences that are now being projected onto like this current experience that you're having with you and your family. And so I think describing or talking about like what the shadow self is, I think would be helpful for maybe listeners to kind of understand what the shadow self is. I like to think of the shadow self as kind of that part of our unconscious, like the things that we are not aware of, the part of yourself that you've kind of rejected, hidden, or learned wasn't acceptable. Thus, we can think of that as like childhood experience is unmet needs, emotional wounds, beliefs about yourself that aren't necessarily true, protective coping mechanisms. I think it's painful to look at a lot of these. So we reject it and we avoid it at all fucking costs. But these things aren't necessarily bad or evil or yeah, they're just adaptive that we've learned to do to cope and to get love and to try to mold ourselves into a version that is acceptable, right? And um to get us the things that we essentially we want. But they're not necessarily, I think, well, I think they can be personality traits until we rewire them to be different, to like go into our subconscious and to go into our pain and our past and our trauma and rework those shadow parts, accept them and integrate them in. Cause I that's essentially what they're asking for is to actually to be loved and we've deemed them as wrong or not good enough, or uh the pieces of ourselves that we have felt to kind of hide against the world. And I don't think I do think they can become a part of our personality, but our personality also can change. So they're actually personality protection strategies. So things that you can think of in this is like people pleasing, perfectionism, overworking, control, hyperindependence, avoidance, procrastination, self-sabotage, anxiety, always staying busy, needing external validation, difficulty receiving, fear of being seen. And so these aren't necessarily flaws, that they're nervous system adaptations. So I also like to think of like your nervous system remembers what your mind forgets, because these are all subconscious and you're not really aware of them. So, Gab, with that being said, where what do you think of shadow self? What do you necessarily categorize that as? And what has been a doorway into your sh personal sh shadows? What have you found there? And do you relate to any of those kind of perfectionism, people pleasing, avoidance, procrastination, self-sabotage, anxiety? You know, do you feel like your shadow self or behaviors come up or are shown in those traits?

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Oh, most certainly. I mean, I think you named a whole bunch, and I was like, yep, yep, yep, yep. I think a big one for me is busying myself. Busying myself, disassociation often, you know. Um, I think I I think I'm at a point in my life now where I it's a bit harder for me to disassociate myself because I don't have my kids around me. So I'm kind of forced to like sit. And because I'm a person that doesn't watch TV, like I don't ever really watch TV at all. I have a lot of moments where I'm just sitting with myself. And uh I find myself those moments at times can be scary or like I'm avoiding it, right? I'm like, hmm, what else can I do? What else can I do? Right? What else can I do? Because I don't want to sit with myself. But I think that I've learned to use that almost like as an invitation, right?

unknown 10:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

An invitation to do the work. I think shadows self sometimes can show up. I mean, in order to like help identify them, is like anytime you get jealous, somebody makes you somebody kind of uh makes you feel jealous. Um, that's an invitation for you to look at that and be like, why am I feeling jealous? What is it about this person that makes me envy them or envy their energy or what is it, right? Somebody that triggers you, right? Somebody that comes into your life and is triggering you oftentimes, whatever they are triggering us in is something that we probably need to take a harder look at. But also I think a lot of things are learned, like we have a lot of learned behaviors from whether it's society, like for me, it's a lot of my family dynamics, you know, learned behaviors and then it's the programming, right? The conditioning that we've grown up with, that a lot of times our shadows lie in there because we were told we had to be this way, but that's not who we are. So there's been shadows that have accumulated over the course of the last few years that have caused us, you know, to kind of morph into this person. And uh then we've we've learned to put on performances rather than live our lives, right?

unknown 11:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

We feel we have to put on these performances in order for us to go on in life. So I think there's so many different ways. I mean, anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, anything that, you know, triggers you, anything that scares you, I would invite you to sit with it, you know, to sit with it because nine out of ten times it's gonna be a shadow.

SPEAKER_03 11:51

Yeah, I like how you said it's like an invitation. Because I think a lot of the time it's a we use it as a signal, right? Like as a pulse to run away, but it's actually the opposite. You actually want to move towards it and you want to go into it. And I like to think of like the shadow selves of the as these parts of the psyche almost that we've exiled, right? It's like the parts of the psyche that have been cut off or like stashed away for further processing in the subconscious mind. And we've kind of like exiled them off the island. And I think healing essentially is taking those parts of your shadow self and again integrating them back in. So I really like too what you said there, Gab, of like being triggered or being jealous. Ultimately, I think that's an invitation that there's a part of yourself you actually need to love more, right? So there's something about someone else that's triggering your envy, your jealousy because you feel like you have a lack of it in your life, right? So they're bringing out that feeling in you because you feel like you're lacking it yourself, so that you're separate from it. And that's a lot to uncover and like dig deep about. And I know most people maybe don't have all of that self-awareness in the moment, but these are things that we can start to grow the capacity to understand about ourselves. And I think ultimately that's the healing journey, right? And it's taking those piece pieces of the shadow self and doing some work around them, loving them, and then integrating them back into wholeness, right? Of like, I felt that way probably because I was told at a certain time, or I had a certain event in my childhood where I, you know, I didn't feel that way, or I got the opposite, or I learned the opposite, or whatever. I think we think of like trauma of having to be like these huge, really big traumatic events. And that doesn't necessarily that it can be, absolutely, but it's also the parts of us, like when we did get as a child, our needs weren't met, that we weren't seen, that we weren't validated, that we didn't get the actual love, care, and needs met that we needed to. That is also traumatic for a child. And those times where we wanted our parent to show up for us, or yeah, our parent to show up and they didn't show up for us, or we didn't get validated, right? We kind of take that memory, that moment, that story, cut it off from our psyche. It gets stored into our subconscious mind. Then that a belief and a story gets molded from that experience of I wasn't good enough, this wasn't good enough, I'm unlovable, I'm X, Y, or Z. And then we start to come and formulate all these different parts of self. And I think we probably have like thousands of different parts of self that we've kind of done this to. And again, this is survival. We're not conscious of it. We're not doing it with malintent. It is how our nervous system and brain have coped in order to protect ourselves. And we're ultimately also dealing with programming, I think, which is wild gab of like prehistoric, like man being like mauled by and being run by, like running from a bear, right? And so a lot of that ways our nervous system hasn't changed over thousands of years. And now we associate like paying bills with like anxiety and being put into that same similar survival state. And these shadow selves are really kind of like running the program of your mind in the background, and you don't even really understand that's happening. And so, Gab, what on your kind of healing journey? What what kind of shadow work do you feel like helped you the most?

SPEAKER_01 15:45

I think that honestly, like I wasn't really like there were so many. I don't think Yeah, supply really spoke about shadow work very much.

SPEAKER_03 15:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

I think I was introduced to that after I became part of Mystic Flora, or right, I joined that community where I actually got a shadow work coach. And I was like, what is shadow work? Like, I don't know what this is. You know, we were not, we were not really taught about that. And I remember sitting down with them the first time, and I was like, Well, I'm here because this person does this to me, that person does that, this person does this, you know, and I'm like, and they make me feel like this and they make me feel like that. And she was like, Okay, she wrote everything down and she was like, So everything these people make you feel, I'm gonna ask you to like go deep. What do you feel when this person does this? What about that? Do you feel? And and I kind of learned, right, through that, because she didn't tell me anything that session. It was not until the next session that she had me do all this writing and stuff. And uh, she's like, it kind of like connects, right? She's like, when when is the first time you remember feeling jealous? When is the first time you remember feeling like this person triggered you? Right. And then when I started to really sit with those feelings and think about it, like these were feelings that I felt way, way, way, way, way, way before when I was very young, right? And so we revisited that and was like, why did I feel this way? Why didn't kind of I started to unpack it?

SPEAKER_03 17:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

And then I started to really connect the dots and be like, oh my gosh, all those times I felt jealous, all those times I was such a bitch in high school, you know, to these girls that I was just really mean to. It was all because I just didn't like myself. I wasn't happy with who I was, right? And it was a projection, like I wanted to be more like them, or I maybe like their hair or whatever it was. And so that's kind of how I learned to do shadow work. And now as an adult doing shadow work, I'm able, obviously, it gets easier, right? You're able to identify like when you're out in the street and you're like, oh, why is you know, could I catch myself? I'm like, oh, why is that person like doing that? You know, like that's kind of weird. And I've kind of taught my daughter too. So she's like, why is it weird? Is it weird just because you wouldn't do it or because like it would make you uncomfortable to do it, or like you're not couldn't you're not uh secure enough to like walk around like that or whatever, you know? And I'm like, yeah, maybe, you know. So we have these conversations where I'm like, okay, but yeah, I think that everybody should do shadow work. I think everybody should do shadow work. I think it's not easy to do. It really isn't. No, because it does make you put yourself on the spot, you know, and realize that again, like Will said, like I've said, everything that happens to us is our fault at some point. Like we kind of our actions we which we don't notice at times, kind of can trigger others and we have to take responsibility for our own stuff and not walk around thinking there's something wrong with the entire world, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:06

Well, that's kind of victim mentality, right? Like it's not why is this happening to me?

SPEAKER_01 19:11

It's uh this But why are these people victims? These people are victims because they have they're not in a place where they can have the capacity to be able to identify shadows, you know. And so they're it's hard, right? It's hard to do that. So it's easier to be like, no, this is your fault and your fault.

SPEAKER_03 19:27

Yeah, because you don't have to take any responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Yeah, even though the common denominator is giving you.

SPEAKER_03 19:33

Right. Right. And I think most like self-development or personal growth is kind of like fix yourself, discipline yourself. And I do think, or like push harder, which I do think there is a time and a place for certain things, but I also do think that's one side of like growth. But I also think there is a side of healing that is realizing that you have to give yourself grace and compassion because there is this part that's trying to protect you and trying to tell you something. And so it's more, I think, becoming getting in dialogue with those parts of self instead of like asking, why am I like this or like what's wrong with me? It's kind of like why, like, when did this become necessary for me to like embody this part of self, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Or protect this part of self. It's a coping mechanism, right? Like this is what we do in order to continue to live our life is choose to blame others or not look at ourselves just because it's that's a way of us coping through life, right? Yeah. And what I wanted to say too is like, you're right, Rach. There's a season for everything. And I've learned that the hard way. It's not just learning, learning, learning, learning, learning, learning, learning. It's learning and integrating, learning and integrating. And then also having moments where, because I've done this where like I love the spiritual woo-woo stuff, but also having moments where I kind of completely remove myself from that for a little bit and just have solidarity, you know, have solitude and sit with myself and just really like try to ground myself and really, really kind of lean on Mama Gaia, you know, to just sit in the with the earth and live that, right? And endure that and absorb that, right, and be present. And it's interesting because a lot of this work, what we don't realize is that even with shadow work, a lot of the work, a lot of the answers are very delayed. So you're not gonna do the work, you're not gonna do breath work, you're not gonna do EFT, you're not gonna do hypnosis, you're not gonna do all these energetic encoding and all this stuff and have your answers tomorrow, right? It really takes you integrating these things and sitting for a couple weeks in quiet, you know. With yourself for things to begin to rise, right? And then you're like, wow, like this is bad. And, you know, and you'll start remembering things. So I really, I mean, I can't emphasize that enough because I did go through a phase where I was like, oh, and I want to get this certificate, and I want to get that certificate, and I want to learn this, and I want to learn that, and I want to learn this, and I want to read this book and that. And I was reading so much that nothing was really being retained.

SPEAKER_03 22:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

And then I was like, why is nothing working? Why, you know, it's just like I've learned all this stuff and nothing's working. And I found that like I was moving so fast to the next thing that I wasn't able to integrate any of it.

SPEAKER_03 22:41

Yeah. And I I think that's so true, Gab. I think it it really is like these things take time. And I think in a world where we want instant gratification, right? And we want the result really quickly, which I do think for some people, results can come faster maybe than others, depending on how much baggage you're kind of holding and how many issues you have. But like you said, I think it's over time where you things become revealed to you, where over it takes constant practice. It takes constant showing up. It takes that's why you have the practices because you're not gonna get the complete fucking 10-step, you know, 10-step follow the journey. You're gonna get a little piece here and you're gonna get a little bit of information there, and you're gonna keep walking the path one step at a time. And I think the compassion piece creates enough safety, and I think we all need safety in order to make lasting change. I'm interrupting this episode for something really exciting because I'm officially opening the applications for the abundance activation retreat in Greece. And honestly, this is gonna be such a fucking vibe. I'm so excited. I'm so excited about the women who are already joining. Uh, so if you are a soul who has been craving expansion, softness, adventure, sisterhood, healing, abundance, and a deeper connection to your feminine energy, this is your sign to join the vibe tribe in Greece. This is a seven-day yoga, Pilates, feminine embodiment retreat through the Greek islands for the woman who's tired of holding her entire life together through stress, pressure, overthinking, and survival mode, and is ready to step into a completely different energy. Because abundance isn't something you hustle for, it's something you open yourself up to receive. We'll move our bodies overlooking the sea, regulate our nervous system, dance under the stars, and have bougie boat days, deep conversations, incredible freaking Greek food, beach clubs, sunsets, healing, laughter, and the kind of experiences that generally change you forever. Because sometimes you don't need another tool, technique, or strategy. You need a new environment, you need a moment to pause, a new frequency, a new energy to help remind you of who you really are. After my first time in Greece, everything really shifted for me, not just externally, but internally. I trusted myself more, I trusted the universe more, I stopped forcing life so hard. I felt supported, guided, and deeply connected to creation, possibility, and magic. And that's exactly the energy, the vibe of this retreat. So you've been waiting for a sign to stop playing small, to start going after what you truly want, to start saying yes to your next big level, then this is it. You can apply or reach out to me via Instagram for more information. I seriously cannot wait for this experience and to experience this magic with you. And so when I think when we're not feeling safe, right, to sit with the stuff, to go into what's painful, then we do have all of the I need to be perfect or I'm gonna over become over busy or do all of that because it we don't feel safe enough to go into the stuff that's hard. We don't feel safe enough to sit with the things that are painful, we don't feel safe enough to admit some of the truths that we need to take responsibility for. But the reality is, is the more we actually accept those truths, forgive ourselves, accept, forgive, and love ourselves despite them, the more you actually go through it, not around it, not over here, not try to avoid it, not fuck, sleep, drink, drug, spend our way out of it, the more you actually just go through it, accept it, forgive yourself, forgive others, love yourself, love that piece of you who was just trying to get through at the time, the more you're gonna go through that process much faster. The more that transformation is gonna become quicker. And we do all the things to avoid it. And obviously, like the shadow part, the pain part isn't the sexy part. The afterwards is the sexy part, right? After you go through the transformation, that is the sexy part. But in the midst of it, it isn't always sexy. And I think when you're in the midst of it, you feel kind of weak for for, and that I think that weakness is what keeps us from going into the pain, from going into the shadow, from actually seeing those parts of self, admitting some of those things. It's like we don't want to admit where we feel weak, where we feel vulnerable. And it's understandable. We've been taught like all of the things about what success is and what being a human is, but also becoming a wholer human and a freer human, you can't avoid, I think, some of this work. And I truly believe that like if you're trying to live a bigger life and live a life from heart center and from soul, you have to do work on yourself. Because when you do, all of the other dreams become much more easier and accessible because you have a mind and a nervous system that can become in alignment with the things that you actually say that you want. And so when we think of manifestation or again, a bigger life, it's like we can say we want that from the prefrontal cortex of our mind. But if our habits, our behaviors, our beliefs, our thoughts are not in alignment with the things that we say that we want, there's no way we're gonna be able to behave as that person who just naturally has them in order to become them. And so it's like you're trying to skip all these steps, but you have to do the work on yourself in order to get there. And again, I think some people, everyone's on a different journey and it's gonna look a little bit different. But I don't know about you, Gab, but like I would not be able to hold or you would not be in this life right now without having done some of the work already to be able to take the steps and make the steps and not be pulled back into the people pleasing and that I'm just gonna do what everyone else wants me to do. The inner work is what gets you to be able to have the behaviors of the version of yourself who has everything that you want.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Yeah. And I think I just think there's no way around it. At one point or another, you are going to have to deal with this. So why not have control over it? Why not you take the wheels rather than get to a place where you are it gets to a because it can get to a place where you are like it completely debilitates you, right? I don't know. I just truly believe like that this is why there's so much anxiety. This is why there's so much depression in this world, because we really don't teach this what in areas that we need to be teaching these things, you know. That again, I'll say it, I've said it so many times, that I think these things need to be taught in school to elementary age kids so that they can grow knowing and practicing these techniques, these modalities, these somatics to help them cope when they're in a in a really scary situation or they find themselves kind of uh well, it's like your mental and emotional health, like right.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

It's like we don't, I don't really I think there's a reason, not to be a conspiracy theory, why we don't teach real health, or right? I know that too. You know, why do we feed kids in schools like shit? You know what I mean? Like there's a design, yeah. Yeah, I think design. There's a reason why. But it's like these parts are a part we we think of like toning our body, right? Because we like the results. And I I think you can do both, right? I think you can want to look good and also be a healthy human. But we also need to tone like our mind and our emotions. Like that's also a part of your health. And like you said, Gab, there comes a point where you can no longer ignore it, right? Because when we think of why we keep attracting the same type of partner, why we keep um going and getting the same type same amount of money. We never like up-level to a different, a different bracket. We have the same type of fears. We have we find ourselves in the same situations, right? We're in the same patterns over and over and over again. We self-sabotage when something good happens. You know, there's a reason why you're doing that. And you can either look into it, right, and do some internal work, or you can stay in whatever loop that you're in. But, you know, it also keeps you really small. It also keeps you stuck, it also keeps you stagnant. And I don't think unhappy. I mean, you are not that is like thus the depression, thus the anxiety, thus the thus all of that, because you are unhappy.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

What I'm trying to get across to this world is like if you just work on your mental health, on your emotional health, your physical health right, will follow. Right. The work is inside out, right? Your physical, the reason you are sick, the reason you have disease, the reason I mean, why is it that the United States is like the one country where cancer rates are like through the roof? If you know, I've spoken to people in Europe, I've spoken to people in India. India is one of the count, like the it's a third world world country, you know, like there, they should have lots of cancer. No, like their cancer rates are so small compared to ours because the health crisis that is in the United States is nuts.

unknown 33:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:01

If something you notice, like as soon as you get off of the plane from Europe, there's no obese people. There, there's no unlike no one looks like they want to fucking that they hate their lives, right? You get off the plane from York back into the United States, and every single time, the first thing I notice is everyone looks unhappy and unhealthy. That is not the same. So it's kind of like we're living in this matrix, right? Of in this consciousness, in this energy that's so fucking thick of like everyone's stressed, everyone's burnt out, we have to do things by the the order. And I think a lot of it has to do with everyone living in fear, survival mode, and that the like you said, these methods are not taught in order to be healthy and happy. And I, it's then again, once you get older and you're I don't want to hate my life, and I want to be a happy, healthy human, and I want to be able to raise a family in that kind of environment, right? It's like this work becomes so much more in your face. And it's hard because I I it's like the the science. I I really like this moment in time because I feel like we're really connecting the neuroscience and the spirituality right now that gives people more awareness that this stuff isn't just, oh, this is just like a hippie woo-woo thing. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Your energy is a real fucking thing, and you can either, you know, decide not just our energy, like everything is energy. You know, I was watching a video yesterday of this girl, she's from Mexico, and she walks around like all like the Amazon and like she goes on hikes to like Machu Picchu and like all these places, and she has this little thing that she puts on the trees, on the plants, and she's like, let's listen to the energy of the strawberries, let's listen to the frequency of the trees, of the music, like the music that it plays, you know? And it is just so amazing to see how diverse it is, just how we are, right? Our energies are so diverse, but they are all energy, like all of these things are have energy. And that just blows my mind. Because again, these are not things that we are told in school. The plants have energy. You connect them, they'll play music, like their frequency, their vibration. No, we don't, we're not taught this. So it just blows my mind how there's so much still out there that we have to learn. Yeah, you know, but we but we get satisfied with the bare minimum because that's just what we're taught, right? That's just what we're taught. We're taught to just survive. That's it.

SPEAKER_03 35:46

And not to thrive.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Right. And I believe you're just yeah, what we are here to say is that we are here to thrive.

SPEAKER_03 35:54

And to me, thriving means abundance. Thriving is abundance, you know, we're not here just to survive.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Abundance in money, correct abundance in everything, in health, in happiness, in peace, in vitality, in energy in all of these things. And you can have it all. You can have it all. You just have to, you have to do the work, you know. And I and I know, I know the work is so, so hard. You know, there there are there has been moments when I'm just like, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to keep, you know, digging deep. I don't want to keep because it's it is, it's never ending. It's never ending. But those moments that you get that you are just like, like I said, like those moments that I saw, the plants and the the music, and I'm just like, present. Whoa, or today the sunrise, you know, the sunrise that I saw today. And I mean, I was sitting there waiting for the sun, supposedly it was gonna rise at 556. And I was sitting there and it was like 6.05, and I was like, okay, did I miss it? Where did it go? Did it want to go the other way? Like, where is it, you know? And I sat there for I think 10 more minutes. And I saw it, you know, I saw it pop up. And I was like, you know, I I popped up and I got so excited and I was like, oh, I see it, I see it, you know. I even got emotional and I just thought, like, after driving back from there, I thought, and then it's over. And then it's over. But it's those moments that we thrive for, right? It's those moments that we are that I realize that I'm thriving. If I can get excited over a sunrise or a sunset or a full moon and just really like soak in the beauty of it, in like what it represents, that's what I'm excited about, is the representation of the divine masculine of the sun. And if and like what it represents to me is if the sun can rise every fucking day, doesn't matter if it's storming outside, doesn't matter if there's an earthquake outside, doesn't matter if there is a war outside, if the sun can rise every day, so can we, right? If the sun can rise and be bright and big and beautiful and provide warmth to all of us, you know, give us the love, the warmth. Why can't we do the same, even in our darkest moment, you know? We can. We just have to choose to. Yeah. We just have to choose to do that, you know? And the magic really does live in the shadow work. It really does. I always say the magic lives in the in-betweens. And the in-betweens to me is the really hard shit from the really great moments. The magic lives right in the middle. That's where the that's where the the answers are. You can't get there any other way. You gotta get through it.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

Yeah. Because I essentially we create from who we believe we are, right? And that it consists of our identity, who we believe ourselves to be, you know, our thoughts, our emotions, our behaviors, our results, our evidence, you know, healing, I just think changes everything because your self-concept begins to change. And I think we think of when we have this, like when I have money, I'll do X and then I'll be Y, right? But really it becomes you have to be first, then you do because you're being it, right? Then you're doing it, then you have it. And I think we have it backwards. So like it's not like, oh, when I have money, I'm gonna do this. When I lose weight, I'm gonna do this. No, you need to start being the person you want to be now. And then, I mean, then you're gonna have what you want to have. And that's how it works, right? You attract from who you're being. So we put everything I think on hold it for this moment that's never gonna fucking come. So to me, like you saying, you know, I get excited about the fucking sunset and the sunrise and the moon and this and that, is that the version of yourself you're creating and you're identifying with as like bigger than just like ego self of Gabby, right? It's like your soul is being mirrored to you in those pres, those moments of presence. And so that energy, right, that you are co-creating, you're in co-regulation with, you're in coherence with, is like that's the reality of who I am. That's the abundance of who I am. I'm noticing my abundance, I'm noticing the abundance of nature because that abundance lives within me. That moment lives within me. To me, that helps shift your frequency, shifts your brainwave state into more of a higher state where you're more aware of the magic and miracles because you are it.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

And because the reality is we are all one. We are all like we are no less than that. You know, we are big cosmic beings for crying out loud, you know? But we've been programmed to believe that we're not, that we need to shrink ourselves, right? We need to constantly be shrinking ourselves to meet other people's satisfactions or comfort zones or whatever it is, you know, to fit in, to fit in, right? Because if I'm too big, if I'm too loud, if I'm too pretty, if I'm too, you know, I shine too bright, if I'm yeah, they're not gonna like me. So let me dim my light, let me dim myself. Does the fucking dump sun dim itself? No, she doesn't. Does the moon? No, she doesn't. She comes out big sometimes bright, sometimes big, bold, sometimes she's only like she's small, sometimes, but she still comes out and shines. It doesn't matter. Like our that's what I think we we really miss in this world is like we are not this body. We are we should shine bright, like our soul, right? That is who we are. Yeah, it doesn't matter what we're wearing, it doesn't matter if our makeup is done, it doesn't matter what our hair looks like. Right. Your energy is your greatest outfit. Right, right. Like we've said before, sexy is an energy, you know. Sexy is an energy, is who we are, how we are magnetic, how people like being around us. That is or just that is right, or don't, because we make them uncomfortable, you know.

SPEAKER_03 42:43

Because it's it, but again, like that you are like you're talking about with the woman who uh was putting the I've seen that it's like sound wave, right? So you put this little machine on the plant and you can hear the frequency, right? Because it's music. So just like the plant has a frequency, you have a frequency because energy is always buzzing. So our frequency is what is what we're made up of. It's what we attract in, it's what we're able to hold, it's what we're able to fucking receive because you're operating from a frequency for a certain frequency. And then if we think of the consciousness scale, where certain emotions have a certain energy frequency, what that means is that your frequency is made up of your emotional state that you repeatedly live in. So, what is your emotional state that you repeatedly live in? Your beliefs, your expectations, your nervous system, your habits, your conversations, your attention, your baseline, your scarcity. You know, if you're operating from a very low frequency, that's what's going to be put out into the world and that's what your brain is gonna filter coming back into you and what you believe is possible and there for you. And I don't think like we fully comprehend that what we're actually made of and what our potential. Potential is and what are what we can expand into and the magic and the miracles that we are and that are always surrounding us because we live in a state of fear and scarcity and survival. Again, I feel like it's so heavy and so apparent in the United States. And I don't know, maybe this is why I love travel so much, because it is very different in other places. Doesn't mean that they don't experience the same things, but I do think there is a lighter frequency and energy, and it's just very apparent that. Yeah. And again, I think again, that is a lot of the travel. Yeah, I do. Because it's the frequency. It's different. It's higher.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

I mean, that's I'm always trying to run to the woods. Can I go to Joshua Tree? Can I go to Sequoia National Park? Can I go to Antelope Canyon? Can I go? Like, I'm always trying to run to these like national parks. Because nature has a higher frequency. Yeah. Yeah. Because I just want to go away from like all of this. Away from all the like busyness and craziness and horns and trains and lights. And no. Because it's just exhausting. It's exhausting.

SPEAKER_02 45:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

You know, and it doesn't allow us, it doesn't allow it's constant work, right? To live in the city, like it's constant work that you have to be doing on yourself, right? To regulate your nervous system. Yeah. You don't walk around with your nervous system just regulated. You do. And then somebody fucking cuts you off and you're like, what the fuck? Okay. Okay. Like breathe. Yeah, breathe, breathe. So of course we want to run off to other areas that it's why you're attracted to it.

SPEAKER_03 45:38

I was, Gab, I know you need to go. I was listening. There's a new girl I found. Her podcast is called Em on the Brain, I think. And she's all she's a neuroscientist. And so like I really like a lot of her stuff because she's also a little spiritual. She was like, you know, I think I'm like a dolphin dolphin mermaid princess from a different world. And I was, I literally had the thought yesterday, the aha moment of like, I think I'm like from like a fairy world because I fairy for me is is like wings. Or I like really am like attracted to wings and like think of wings. My mom used to make these little fairies for me and hang them like in my bedroom at night. And I was like, I and so when you talk about the woods, I feel like you might have a little bit of like that fairy type of You know what?

SPEAKER_01 46:25

I'm always I read um what is it called? The people that supposedly live in the mountain of Shasta. There's because Shasta, you know, is like Shasta Mountain is like the biggest energy vortex there. And they're like Is it the US? Yeah. It's by going towards Oregon. Okay. There's people that supposedly like a whole little city inside the mountain that live in the supposedly the Shasta Mountain. I forget what it's called. Okay. And when I saw that, I was like, maybe I'm from there. I'm trying to see what it is that they're called. Because I saw that and they were like anyways, I don't know. I'm not gonna be able to pull it up right now, probab probably. But uh yeah, they're like they're like made of like stardust and they just like live there in in the mountains, and I could totally live in the mountains.

SPEAKER_03 47:31

But I feel like you're our soul reincarnates because it's you're looking for growth, right? So it's like maybe that was a past life that that's what you were, and now you're so something else before I I wanted to say before so something else I learned when I was doing shadow work was like I remember being like, gosh, like why is my life so hard all the time?

SPEAKER_01 47:50

Like, why am I constantly struggling my entire life, just financially struggles all the time? Like even with my parents, my parents financially struggled, you know. I've financially struggled constantly. And and something that I learned was like, because maybe in my past life I had it all. I had it all and I didn't appreciate it. So this time I had to struggle so that the next time, right, I will be more like humble. I'm like in a sense, I had to be humbled, right? Yeah in order to be able to appreciate having it all.

SPEAKER_03 48:27

Yeah. So oh my gosh, that's amazing, Gav. So, you know, I just want to like kind of leave with this of like, if you're interested in shadow work, right, I would consider shadow work to be breath work 100%. You know, I would consider probably plant medicine ceremonies to be shadow work, journaling to be shadow work, you know, getting things, activities that get you into the subconscious would be what I would consider to be shadow work, you know, journaling, but inner child work, but I would consider breath work to be all of those things, to be inner child work, shadow work. I really do think breath work is the thing that kind of pulls out the shadow. And, you know, when you're doing more exposure therapy, breath work. Okay, there's activation and deactivation breath work. When we're doing more activation, we are activating more of that part of our subconscious mind where our emotional limbic brain, right? Reptilian brain lives. But though any other kind of tools that you would consider to be shadow work, Gab?

SPEAKER_01 49:28

I think I think breath work is good. And I yeah, I would say plant medicine, I would say mushrooms. Like mushrooms have really for me personally, mushrooms and breath work have been the thing that have definitely gotten me that have been kind of like the catalyst, you know, for me to like move a little faster, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:48

Yeah, to quantum leap. Yeah, but I will say that like you do have to be ready. You do have to be ready and open.

SPEAKER_03 49:57

It's a it's you're going into pain and grief, and I think you want to set yourself up with a coach and a therapist and people who can hold you in that because it's intense, especially when the world is just keeps running around you, right? And you're not really, you know, you're moving through a dark night of the soul, essentially, which is heavy. And so having a support system when you're doing that work is really important. So I also just to leave the listener, you know, with questions to kind of ask yourself if you're interested in shadow work or things like what emotional state do I spend most of my life in? Okay. So when we're feeling really stuck, I think that's a good question to ask ourselves. So that way we can start to shift it. What story do I consistently tell myself about myself? Right. So what's your internal dialogue? What do you talk? How do you talk to yourself? What feels unsafe to receive or what makes you feel uncomfortable? And what part of me is trying to keep me small and keep me safe. Then the last one, which I really love is if I truly believed I was worthy, how would I show up differently today? So I think those are all things and some patterns that you can start to think into when you think of your sense of self and what work you can start to do. And ultimately, I think that's where, you know, like coaching comes into play is that you get to do that work not alone by yourself and you get someone to hold you in that space because you will quantum ship fat quantum leap faster when you do have someone else to hold space for you. But listeners, if you have any questions about this, you want us to talk and dive into one thing more specifically, leave us a comment, shoot us a message on Instagram and Gab, have a great Saturday. We'll talk soon. Thanks, you too. And love you, babe, and bye. Love you. Bye. What up, y'all? We are so thankful and excited that you're here. If you're loving the show, feeling the show, please think about sharing it with a friend who could also get something out of it. We're also asking for your help. If you could rate the show or write a review, that way we can grow and expand together. Reach the right people who need and are meant to hear this message. I know it's super easy not to do it, but every single rating and review helps this show grow so much. We appreciate it more than you know. Thanks so much for supporting Relentlessly Authentic. This is raw unfiltered conversations on healing, identity shifts, nervous system regulation, and the messy middles that crack you open and change everything. New episodes every Wednesday.