#452 Why anxiety is impacting your emotional well-being, and how to transform worry into empowerment, with Natalie Bedard.

Agi Keramidas 0:00
In this episode, you will discover how to transform the anxiety that is impacting your emotional well being into empowerment. Welcome to personal development mastery, the podcast that equips you with the simple and consistent actions that will help you create a fulfilling, purposeful life. I'm your host, Agi Keramidas, and this is episode 452 by the end of this episode, you are going to discover practical steps to create a safe space for feeling and processing your emotions. You will also learn how to transform anxiety into empowerment through mindfulness and self awareness, and you will gain insights into somatic release and how it can help you release stored trauma and energy. And before we dive in, remember mastery seekers, if you want to go deeper into the episode, join us at mastery seekers tribe.com, for more.

Agi Keramidas 1:13
Today, I am excited to speak with Natalie Bedard, affectionately known as NatNat. Natalie, you are an energy healing specialist, and you have been transforming life since 2019 by offering tools to regulate the nervous system and transform anxiety into empowerment. You are passionate about guiding others on their journey of self discovery and emotional well being, not not. It's a real pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank

Natalie Bedard 1:46
you so much for having me, and I don't take it lightly. The most important and valuable thing that we can give to others is our time. So I'm thankful to be here with you, and that you're sharing the platform with me, with your audience, so it's a real honor to be here.

Agi Keramidas 2:04
Thank you very much, and that will allow me to share now what we what we said just before we started recording, about the intention for this conversation, and you had said that you would allow people to feel safety, to feel their emotions. So I'm sharing that as a preface. And actually, since we're talking about a preface, you were telling me that you would like to start by a small meditation, a mindful moment, as you said, to set the tone for what we're going to talk about afterwards. So shall we start with this? Then? Yes,

Natalie Bedard 2:44
please. Thank you for allowing the space for it and for the listeners. A lot of times you listen to a podcast while driving or needing your visual, so when I ask Agi and myself to close our eyes, please don't do that safety first. So keep your eyes open, yet the other prompts you're able to follow with me so Agi, when you are comfortable in your seating, I'm going to ask you to gently close your eyes, and you're going to begin breathing in and out through your nose. You're going to bring your awareness watching your breath go in and out. You're not going to try and control your breath. You're just going to be aware of its rhythm, allowing it to guide you into your body.

Natalie Bedard 3:29
There may be some sensations or feelings coming up, and that's okay. Let them come up. You're safe to feel you're safe to let go, surrender the need to control, release, the need to resist and just be. Be with your breath. Drop deeper into your body. By now, you may have noticed some thoughts or to do lists, and that's okay. Gently bring your awareness back to your breath, creating space between the awareness and the thoughts and dropping deeper into your body. Be with your breath again, more thoughts may have pop up, bring your awareness back to your breath, beginning again, creating even more space between the awareness and the thoughts and dropping even deeper into The body, allowing yourself to just be with the breath

Natalie Bedard 4:47
now at your own time and at your own pace, you're going to gently open your eyes while still staying with the breath you're.

Agi Keramidas 5:03
Thank you for this so beautiful and so grounding. That's the word that came to me, and this is what a beautiful way to begin this conversation. You know, we often talk about mindfulness and meditation and actually taking a minute to practice it. That's that's when it really matters, rather than talking about it. Natalie, shall we start about talking about energy healing. I would like to start the conversation and learning a little bit about that. But actually, before we go there, I would like to hear about your personal experience from your story. How did your personal experiences with, I know the illnesses and single parenthood shaped this approach to energy healing, and then we will go into that. Yeah.

Natalie Bedard 6:10
So you know, about almost 11 years ago, I was close to death. I was admitted into the hospital and told that I had six months to live because I had lesions in my brain stem and my cerebellum, and my body was shutting down at a rapid rate. And so I was admitted in the hospital for almost 40 days. And when they don't know what's causing things, you go through some very painful testing like biopsies and spinal taps, and even I had radiation put in me to the amount that they said if I went by any border, I would be detained, wondering if I was a terrorist or not, which I was like I thought we're supposed to stay away from radiation. Why are you putting it in me? Yet, as I said, science is kind of funny, like that, and so with the testing, they came back like atypical, that there was something there, but they couldn't get to a diagnosis, so I was discharged without a diagnosis. So that means no plan. And as you said, I was a solo parent, and the twins were four years old, so I have three boys at the time. One was 18, the others were four, and they were twins. So that caused me to really do a shift in my lifestyle, because my energy was so depleted and so low, and I still had to manage in the day to day life. And thankfully, a year later, that's when I discovered meditation. A friend of mine, Diane, had asked if I was willing to go here about meditation or find out more about and I said, Sure, and that is where I really got a front seat of understanding the nervous system. And when you learn meditation, they tell you to cultivate a quiet space in your house. And as I said, solo parent with twin boys, there was no quiet space in the house, so I brought meditation on the couch. And while I was meditating, I would hear them fighting, and I would feel the part that wants to stop the fight, the part that wants to pick, who is the abuser, who's the victim? I felt the disruption of the TV. I felt the disrupt, disruption of outside noises. And seeing how you get disturbed a lot, and the brain goes, you know, a little spirally. So it was, come back to the breath, come back to the breath, and when you let it pass through, you came back into a stillness, a calmness, and that you didn't have to interfere and be reactive. So I really got to understand the reaction and response of the nervous system, and I engaged with that more and more. I started doing, you know, silent days when the twins were older, letting them know I wasn't going to speak today, yet they could still communicate with me. So I could see where we use our words to kind of shut down our own emotions and not hear another person and listen to another, especially our children. We tend to interrupt and overpower with things. So I really just engaged with it all. And I also, you know, engaged in a year of not spending money a year, all in one year, not drinking alcohol, not having sex, came off as social media. So I was really engaging with my emotions and not using all the things that would have me avoid and run away from it. And so by doing that, I did a lot of a somatic release, because I had a lot of trauma as a child, and I had a lot of grief. There were a lot of deaths in my life since a young age. And. So that allowed me to have a better relationship with myself, because I was outside of myself, seeking safety outside of myself, seeking safety outside of my body. And it was the journey to come back into my body and be one with the nervous system, understand it, use its power, and also go deeper into that vulnerability, that oneself that guides us all the our life force.

Agi Keramidas 10:30
Thank you. And tell me, tell me a bit more. You mentioned a somatic release. I would like to hear a little bit more about that.

Natalie Bedard 10:40
Yeah,

Natalie Bedard 10:41
when I started meditation, the teacher said that most times when people start meditating at a certain point, they drop off and they leave, and then several years later they'll come back and want to pick it back up. And I told her, I totally understand why people quit all this stuff that's coming up in my body. I don't want to feel this stuff yet, because I had that death and no diagnosis, no plan. There was nowhere else for me to go. It was you have to go through this. You have to feel it. So in that of being able to meditate, you know, there were memories coming up, and in that there were emotional charges, energy, where there could be shivers, crying, being able to have to sleep. So the body holds on. Our emotions are energy. Charges their thoughts that turn to energy. And if you suppress them, they just get stored into the body, and they get pushed down. And, you know, my definition of ego is the defense mechanisms of the nervous system that guards your vulnerability, because vulnerability was harmed at a certain point you started building these defense mechanisms, or this identity or narrative. So releasing those defense mechanisms, all the stuff floods up, and then your body has to release it in some kind of way. So it could be shaking, it could be like, you know, having, I use dancing a lot, so that people can engage with that energy and let it move out of their body. Tears are another one. Laughter is another one. And so there's different ways for that somatic release of your body, releasing that energy.

Agi Keramidas 12:27
I'm curious to find out what happened. You know what? After you have done that, what was the doctor's reaction? Because it is weird when they can't give a diagnosis, and then I suppose they were surprised. Oh, very Agi,

Natalie Bedard 12:45
the neurologists and their neuroscientists. I'm sorry. Neurosurgeon was like, I don't know how you got the lesions, and I don't know how the lesions have repaired themselves, like it left scarring in my brain stem and in my cerebellum. So, you know, I still have challenges that when there's too much stress, too much cortisol coming into my body, it shuts down the system and everything else, and that's why I had to change my lifestyle. Yet they told me I wouldn't be walking, I would need devices, I wouldn't be able to drive, I wouldn't be able to dance, and I'm doing all those things, and when I would explain what I was doing internally, they would be like, Oh, it sounds like some mindfulness you're using. So continue using that, and it's working for you. And I thought they would want to know a little more of this to help other people understand what possibly they're doing internally, without them, you know, consciously knowing and how to navigate with this nervous system. Yet, yeah, they were very profound, like, very shocked, and they're like, whoa, okay, I don't know how you got here. And it's, you know, it's in a way that functions for me, for my life. If other people saw my life, they might be like, Oh, that wouldn't fit for me, yet it fits for me in the way that I navigate my life.

Agi Keramidas 14:06
That's, yeah, let's go back to energy healing, which I wanted to ask about earlier. And you know the first thing that comes to my mind to ask you, because sometimes we assume that anyone listening knows very well what energy healing is. So let's let's not make that assumption for a moment. And I want to ask you, what is your definition? How do you define energy healing, and who is it for? Let's start with something very basic, then we'll build it up from there. Yeah,

Natalie Bedard 14:44
so every human being has a nervous system, and that nervous system has an intelligence, and every human being has emotions. Yet a lot of us have shut down our authentic emotions, and we've only used our. Secondary emotions, or the emotions that protect our vulnerability, so the energy healing is being able to feel safe, to be honest and feel your authentic emotions, so that you can actually hear the guidance from within, not the narratives and the stories that other people have placed onto you, or part of the negative bias of that nervous system, because the nervous system has one function, don't die. So it's always looking for problems, and a lot of times it sees you as a problem, because the authentic emotions are trying to come up, yet, you know, the defense mechanisms are like, oh, you can't handle that, so let's push it back down. So there's conflict that goes on. So the healing aspect is a lot of people think that they need to become somebody new, when in actuality, it's to remove the layers of pain so you can go to the greatness that's already inside of you, where a lot of people don't see that part of themselves. They're not in their worth, they're not in their existence, they're not in their value, they don't even know how to validate and trust themselves. So that's all part of that energy healing.

Agi Keramidas 16:18
You said. We've already mentioned it probably more than twice. So far, you said the phrase feel safe, to feel your emotions. And what I wanted to ask in particular is, how So can you give us something? Because it's you know, one thing to say about this, but we all know, and we have experienced, that when emotions come, they have this power to take over. You know what my our rational mind might do under other circumstances and so on. So can you give us something, some tool, something practical, that one can use at least to begin feeling safe, to feel the emotion

Natalie Bedard 17:11
that mindful moment I just did at the beginning of the podcast is the most powerful tool, and if you keep using that, it will open up more, and it will expand your self awareness. It will allow safety to come that you're creating safety in your body, to feel that you're not looking for other people to find that safety, to feel that you can actually hold that space for yourself. But at the beginning of your journey, it is, you know, empowering when somebody else can witness you feel your emotions, and they don't pull away. So it sends a signal within yourself that, oh, I'm safe with this messiness, that you're not going to push me away or tell me to get kind of dressed in my nakedness and raw truth. It's like, No, you're accepted the way you are right now, as long as your behavior isn't violent and harming other people, which our emotions can hijack our behavior. Because, like I said, there's protective emotions. Anger. It like, I tell people to be friend anger, and they're like, what I have anger issues. I'm like, it's not an issue. Anger is protecting. So what is it actually protecting that you're not able to feel, and most times it's helplessness. It's you feel violated. You are in fear, yet you don't know how to articulate that sensitivity. Because especially for men, men are told to be strong in their demeanor and be, you know, physique, and push back and show people that you can't harm me where it's like, Well, why do you think the suicide rate and depression is so high in men right now? They're not accessing their vulnerability and sensitivity, and when they do, they're weaponized. They're either, you know, criticized about their sexuality, or women are demeaning them, because that's not the image that they want in strength, but then they complain that you're not emotionally available yet you're not giving me a safe space to be emotionally available because you're using it as a weapon towards me. So it's these different things that go on in relationships and humaning, and when you better understand what's going on internally for yourself, then you're not taking things so personally about other people, because you're like just like me, you're trying to figure it out, and you don't even realize what you're doing to somebody else. You haven't done your own internal work,

Agi Keramidas 19:38
internal work. How? Precise description of, you know, everything that it all involves, I very much appreciate what you said about the tool of mindful moment. And coming back to that, I also liked use the phrase hijack. I was describing in a different way earlier, but the word hijack that you used, I think it is spot on to exactly what what happens in that. There is one other thing that when I was reading about you, it caught my attention. I think it is very useful to discuss about it, and it is what you say about transforming anxiety into empowerment. So tell us a few things about this, and obviously some way that one can begin to utilize to do that.

Natalie Bedard 20:45
Yeah, anxiety is very intense when we feel it, because it's right away alerting you that there's something wrong. Yet a lot of times when we have tried to access this when we were young, we were shut down, and so it looped into worry, and it looped into something even bigger, without being able to interact with what am I feeling? And a lot of times it's your intuition guiding you with something that you want to you know, be able to listen to, but other people have told you you don't know what you're talking about. So anxiety even got more bigger, and the overwhelm that goes on in the body, and then the flooding of thoughts and also your physical shutting down. So the work with anxiety is, a lot of people want to get rid of it. It's like, no, no. It's an emotion and it has value. Are you actually listening to it? Are you asking it what it's trying to protect? What is it trying to tell you? And it might be, you know, I'm always trying to control the unknown and uncertainty. So then your work has to be to recognize you're always in unknown and uncertainty. There's no such thing as controlling things. You can barely even control yourself and your impulses and be aware of things. So it's like, okay, what is this anxiety that is trying to find safety? Because safety is always signaling something's unsafe. So let's go find the safety. Yet a lot of times we don't realize, oh, come to our breath. It might be helplessness that you're feeling, that you haven't been able to hold a space to feel that so anxiety is just ringing the alarm, ringing the alarm. Yet, if you validate what you're feeling and feel the helplessness, that charge passes away eventually, yet you're going on the outside trying to grasp at things to make it better, but in actuality, all it wants is for you to hold space to listen to it at first. If you have debilitating anxiety, this isn't going to be fun. It's not going to be it's going to be a challenge. I call it warrior work, because you're having to face parts of yourself that you have suppressed so deep down, and nobody's giving you a space to really better relate to it, understand it, to validate it for yourself, and the biggest thing is to be able to ask for help. A lot of people with anxiety don't even know how to ask for help, because I don't want to let you see what's going on internally, because it's such a mess.

Agi Keramidas 23:22
I uh, you said, listen to it. You you use that term a couple of times, and that's interesting, because when you say listen to it, in my mind, it comes as something that will be spoken, so you will actually listen. So it's not sense it or feel it. You You said, listen to it. So. And you also said, what is it that it's trying to tell you? You were referring to anxiety. But I suppose it is the same with any emotion that we hold the space for to listen to it, as you said. So is there some kind of

Natalie Bedard 24:05
way to

Agi Keramidas 24:07
understand the message that it's coming for us to hear it? In other words, because you use the word Listen, Is it some kind of I hope my question makes sense. Otherwise, I will clarify.

Natalie Bedard 24:23
I'm gonna, I'm gonna clarify something. When I say, Listen, it requires you to feel okay. If you're not feeling you're not able to listen to the messenger, and what most people do, they don't want to feel the anxiety. So it just ramps up more and more and more. And I'm gonna avoid, I'm gonna avoid, I'm gonna avoid it. And I'm just giving kind of a visual of it builds up. It builds up because you're not willing to feel it. Acknowledge.

Agi Keramidas 24:44
First you feel, then you feel, you listen. You start to

Natalie Bedard 24:48
feel. You start to identify physical traits. All of a sudden you get you're getting tense, or you feel your heart beating, or you're starting to get sweaty. That's to let you know the. Nervous System has been activated. Something just occurred that gave it a sense and understand. The nervous system doesn't know the difference between past, present or future. All it does is it keeps recording experiences. It keeps recording theory of possibilities of problems. So anything that kind of jobs with that computer programming, it's going to send an alert for you. Okay, so say, for instance, you have, you know, a lot of anxiety that you feel. First, it's to acknowledge, okay. Let's pause. Let me take a breath. Let me feel then let me acknowledge and accept what I'm actually feeling, not be something other than what you're feeling. That's what people try to do. I'm going to put on the brave face of courage. You can have anxiety, feel anxiety, and be courageous at the same time. It's not one or the other. It's about having a space of end in both and more. But people think they're just one dimensional. They're multi dimensional. You have to hold this space. That's why I love the movie. I don't know if you saw inside out that cartoon about the emotion, yes, and the second part depicted anxiety beautifully, and it depicted Joy very beautifully, too, because people think they're always going to be in bliss. And it's like, spoiler alert, that's not how being human is. So it's being able to feel. So it's the pause, breathe a for acknowledge and accept the you is, understand, listen with curiosity. What are you trying to signal? It could be a simple, I know this might sound, you know, childish or simple. Say, for instance, you had an ex and they drove a certain car, and all of a sudden, that same car passed by. All the emotions flooded into you and you're like, This doesn't make sense. Why do I feel like say, for instance, their name is Rob. Why do I feel like Rob's here and Rob's not even here, yet, that image of that car signaled, and what people don't realize, if it came up, that's your work. What have you not gone through to release that keeps being activated because you keep pushing it back down. Yet, people are like, I don't want to deal with that. Yet. If you don't deal with it, it's going to build up like a junk drawer, and it's going to break open at a certain point. And when it breaks open, it will be like a pressure cooker where the lid fell off and it doesn't feel good, and like you said, with those protective emotions, it hijacks our behavior. And then we do some things that we're like,

Natalie Bedard 27:50
Oh my gosh.

Natalie Bedard 27:51
How could I have done that? Not giving understanding that you weren't being able to access what you were really feeling in real time, and when you've suppressed for decades like I did, it's going to take time to be able to feel those authentic emotions, to hold the space for yourself. So, you know, I did the pause, the P, you know, is pause, breathe a, acknowledge, accept what you're feeling. You is understanding what curiosity. S is, by accessing what how are you going to show up? What choice are you going to select in this moment? And that might be some tools of, how do I regulate myself to come back into this present moment and still do what I need to do in the real time and not be stuck in the feelings of the past or trying to control the future, and then E is being able to execute. And also, you know, take that small step. Take that small step of changing the pattern, being able to acknowledge what it is that you actually need in this moment, of what is the change going to look like? And it may be, you know, your children activate you, and you're always yelling, yet you feel the build up. You're like, pause, I'm going to breathe. I can feel that the disrespect, or I'm feeling whatever. And then it's like, Okay, wait. How do I want to show up with this? So it's like, Okay, let me settle down into myself and remember that I want connection before I do correction. So how am I going to connect into this? How am I going to be accountable for my emotions and not projected on them because I'm feeling something that I don't know how to, you know, engage with does that make more sense with it? Yes,

Agi Keramidas 29:45
thank you. That was a beautiful answer, and very there were so many things one can pick from that and utilize. So thank you for that, not not before I start. Comp. Including this wonderful conversation. Where will you direct our listener, the mastery seeker that has enjoyed this and wants to find out more about you? Yeah,

Natalie Bedard 30:12
so at any time, if there's anything that intrigued you, that's your limbic system signaling you that there's some information that would be a value to you. So my website is lift oneself.com, that's L, I, F, T, O, N, E, S, E, L, F, dot, C, O, M. I also have a podcast, which is lift oneself. And you can also find me on the social medias under lift oneself, where I leave mindful moments or meditations or little tools for people to be able to access. I wanted to do my part of as you said, what's the intention? When I came back on social media, my intention was to put tools of inner healing and inner work so that people can start doing the change within themselves, so that they can actually see it out into the world. So and if they want to do one on one, I have clients around the world, and they're done through zoom, so they're able to do a 15 minute discovery call with me to see if we can work together and create some magic for them.

Agi Keramidas 31:16
That's great. And I do have also two final quick questions I always ask. And the first one is, what does personal development mean to you

Natalie Bedard 31:29
being honest and having intention in your actions,

Agi Keramidas 31:36
and hypothetically speaking, if you could go back in time and meet your 18 year old self. What's one piece of advice you would give her?

Natalie Bedard 31:52
Believe in yourself. Believe and trust in yourself.

Agi Keramidas 32:00
Natalie, I want to thank you so much for this conversation. There were so many useful and beautiful and practical things in there. I know I got different ones, and I'm sure that different people will find what resonated. I want to wish you all the very best with your work and with your life. I will leave it to you for some part in wisdom. You know, we talked about our emotions and feeling safe to feel our emotion based on all that, how could you conclude this conversation? What would you say to the mastery seeker listening

Natalie Bedard 32:43
the simple phrase that I leave with everybody is to remember to be kind and gentle with themselves, because you matter.

Agi Keramidas 32:55
And before I leave you for now, I have one last question for you. Do you seek to master your life and live with purpose and fulfillment? I'm sure that by now you have realized that personal development is a lifelong journey, and it's great to be able to share this journey with like minded people to support and to be supported. Join our free community, the mastery seekers tribe, and be a part of a growing group of people who value personal development, like you go to mastery seekers tribe.com. Until next time. Stand Out. Don't fit in!