EP 167 | Hidden Barriers to Your Financial Success

Welcome to episode 167 of The Retirement Years on Profit Boss® Radio! In this episode, we’re talking about overcoming inner barriers.

If you “get in our own way” or self-sabotage, it’s not always on you. For centuries, women have been put into positions that force us to play it small and fail to get in touch with our true desires. When it comes to money, having our own income or a life of financial independence was out of the question until just decades ago. We’ve made huge strides, but we still have so much to work through. 

Today, I’m joined by Dr. Valerie Rein. Valerie has worked with hundreds of high-achieving women and discovered that the issues they struggle with aren’t just personal. They’re rooted in ancestral and collective trauma experienced for millennia, and she calls the results of this trauma, which affects both men and women, Patriarchy Stress Disorder (PSD). Since her own stress experience, which you’ll hear about in today’s episode, she’s dedicated her career to helping her clients resolve their traumas and live the lives they desire and deserve. 

So, if you’re wondering what’s holding you back and how to start making changes in your personal and financial life, today’s episode of Profit Boss® Radio is for you.

Here’s what you’ll find out in this week’s episode of Profit Boss® Radio

• How professional success – and extreme stress – helped Valerie discover the barriers holding her back and triggered her “PSD awakening.” 
• Why Valerie’s definition of patriarchy doesn’t refer to “men,” but to a system of inequality and oppression – and how PSD affects men as well. 
• How our bodies’ survival programming kicks in and goes into overdrive to stop us from taking risks – and why so many women are biologically afraid that wealth and power will be seen as unsexy. 
• Stories from Valerie’s work about how unraveling PSD in her patients naturally leads them to increased revenue.

Resources and Related Profit Boss® Content

• DrValerie.com
• FREE 3-Day Virtual Retreat – begin healing PSD with a community of women – August 14-16
• Patriarchy Stress Disorder: The Invisible Inner Barrier to Women’s Happiness and Fulfillment
• TheThrivingExperience.com
• The Dr. Valerie Podcast

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Transcript

Hilary Hendershott: Dr. Valerie, welcome to Profit Boss Radio. 

Dr. Valerie Rein: I am so happy to be here, Hilary. Thank you for having me.

Hilary Hendershott: Absolutely. Tell me, I am very curious about I don’t normally ask what’s your story at the beginning of an interview. It’s a little overdone, but I want to know how did you discover these barriers to women’s fullest expression? How did you discover that this was happening in your own life? 

Dr. Valerie Rein: I was living the life of my dreams. So, I thought I had a thriving psychology practice in New York, two graduate degrees in psychology. I had a family and home I adored. And one day I was on the phone with a client when I noticed I was smiling with only the right side of my face and the left side of my face just hung in there, and so did my left arm. And I ended up in the ER with symptoms of a stroke. After scanning me up and down for a day, I spent this lovely spa day in the ER in the hospital in town, the verdict was my official diagnosis was “just stress” which relieved and also puzzled me to no end because I actually did not feel stressed. I was doing the work I loved. My life was good, really good. And so, having that time to think, I wasn’t answering phones, I wasn’t taking care of everybody there in the ER, I started looking underneath that security blanket of workaholism and stress, and underneath there was a very, very disturbing and very uncomfortable realization that actually, underneath it all, I wasn’t as happy and fulfilled as I looked on paper. It was really devastating to get in touch with that because I literally have done everything I knew how to do. I succeeded professionally and personally.

Hilary Hendershott: Certainly, educationally. You’ve got lots of letters after your name.

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yeah. I was on that achievement track for many years. And I also have read all self-help books I could get my hands on and personal development workshops and retreats and trainings, more in inner work and inner shifts. And so, there I was having done it all, and still not feeling happy and fulfilled and it was a really despairing moment, and I started looking at what was I doing for my clients? Because my clients were actually shifting. They were shifting out of that numbness and into the fullness of their lives, overcoming those invisible inner barriers. What was I doing for them that I wasn’t doing for myself? And I saw that with all of my clients. I was using mind-body energy trauma healing tools even though most of my clients didn’t have any big traumatic experiences. They had pretty normal, whatever that is, childhood. 

Hilary Hendershott: No child abuse, no witness of violent crime. It wasn’t like that.

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yeah. They didn’t survive like combat and life-threatening experiences of other kinds but they were all showing this telltale symptom of trauma, which is disconnection from the fullest authentic expression of who they are. Disconnection from their deep desires, disconnection from their bodies from the fullest experience of being alive and expressing themselves in all areas of their lives. And of course, that disconnection is a symptom of trauma and I started to wonder, well, what kind of trauma could we all share? What kind of trauma is there that we’re not seeing? And research at the time was coming out in the field of epigenetics, that was showing that traumatic experiences are genetically transmitted. And that was my light bulb moment. Women have been oppressed for a millennia. Oppression is traumatic. Trauma is genetically transmitted. And that was the moment of the download of patriarchy stress disorder. 

Understanding that it is a traumatic experience that we have inherited. It is generational and collective trauma of oppression that is now forming these invisible inner barriers to our happiness and fulfillment in every area of our lives. Because all areas of our lives where we have these bigger desires now financial, love, our relationship with our bodies, our mission, and voice in the world, these have been completely prohibited and punishable for women over millennia. So, that trauma is a very visceral embodied experience that sits in our subconscious. It lives in our bodies and even though we think all the progressive thoughts, empowered thoughts, our subconscious doesn’t care what we think. It is there to keep us safe. And safety has been for women on the patriarchy in playing it small and not being in touch with our desires, in not using our voices, in not having our own money and being financially independent. That was never on the menu. So, this is all very, very new for us. 

And this discovery has changed everything because now we can see clearly there’s nothing wrong with us if we’re “getting in our own way” or self-sabotaging in any area, it’s not you. It is PSD and like any other trauma, it can be healed and we’re doing it very successfully with mind-body energy healing tools.

Hilary Hendershott: So, I want to pull this apart for my listeners just a little bit before we move on in the conversation. So, you say the name for the hidden barriers to our, I’m going to read exactly what you said, our authentic expression of ourselves and what we want, our wealth building, our success in life, our experience of being a fulfilled human being as a woman could be that the symptoms of the trauma of patriarchy.

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yes.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. So, can you, not to mince the details, but what’s your definition of patriarchy?

Dr. Valerie Rein: That’s a great question, actually. And it gives me an opportunity to clarify that when I say patriarchy, I don’t mean men. I don’t mean men in your life. I don’t mean men in general. And when I say, men, I don’t mean patriarchy either. Patriarchy is a system of inequality and oppression that has over 10,000 years of its existence. It has robbed the women of our voices, of our ownership, of our bodies, of our resources such as finances.

Hilary Hendershott: It’s worth noting you say in the book, it’s also robbed men of the ability to express any way of being that isn’t traditionally male that isn’t domineering, that isn’t strong, or in some cases violent. And so, there’s patriarchy stress disorder for men too.

Dr. Valerie Rein: 100%, Hilary. Thank you for pointing that out. Thank you for reading the book. I appreciate that. 100%. And we actually now, as we’re working with women in our programs, women bring their men into the conversation. They give them the book. And a part of our mission now is elevating relationships, evolving relationships out of those patriarchal models into true, authentic partnerships. And we are inviting men who are partners, who are partners, of women we’re working with, we’re actually starting a beta version of a program where we all together I actually work with my partner as well who is my life partner and who is my partner in doing this work and it was Jeffrey and he will be leading this beta program. At this point, it’s a give to women and their partners who are already working with us, and then there’ll be a separate freestanding offering. 

But absolutely this is the next frontier of helping men also heal because no man actually fits into that caricature two-dimensional patriarchal cutout of what’s understood as being a patriarchal man, aggressive, non-feeling.

Hilary Hendershott: The warrior. 

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yeah, like cut off from his nurturing and emotional sides like no human is like that and it has cost us collectively a great deal. It has cost us like what we are experiencing now, all the issues in society that are coming up now to the degree where it’s not sustainable, it’s not tolerable anymore, including racism, including all other systems of inequality and oppression have only been made possible because we have all been disconnected from our full humanity, men, white men, specifically, because they’ve been holding the power, right? So, that’s the deeper wounding of patriarchy that it’s very urgent for us to heal.

Hilary Hendershott: It is and one of the things I really saw for myself and I want to make sure to articulate for listeners today is and this isn’t to discredit or disempower any of the massive accomplishments that you all are making right now in the world of business and education, and competition, but that essentially what we’ve been trained to do is to run the man’s race, to try to succeed inside a system that is fundamentally patriarchal. We’re trying to win their game calling it empowerment. And I want to read this quote from the book. I think I’ve read this 15 times. “Women’s empowerment has gotten hijacked by the patriarchal over culture and became about giving a woman the opportunity to burn herself out by working harder and doing more while playing by the patriarchal rules. They used to burn us at the stake. Now, they just hand us the torches.”

Dr. Valerie Rein: Amen, sister. 

Hilary Hendershott: Dr. Valerie! I hope everyone is blown back. Hope no one’s driving as they’re reading this. Wow. Can you comment on that? They hand us the torches.

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yeah, that’s powerful, right? 

Hilary Hendershott: We’re all burning each other at the stake. We’re all burning our own sense of peace of mind and ability to love. I mean, what’s happening, Dr. Valerie? What’s the problem and what’s the solution? 

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yeah. The problem is that now, it’s both the problem and the solution in one. So, we have the first generation who has the opportunity to play big in the world, to love who we love, to use our voices in this culture, in the US specifically, and where I live now, not from the US. Originally, I’m from Russia and I’m very aware that it’s not everywhere in the world where women have this privilege, the privileges that we here enjoy. And so, understanding that privilege, understanding this opportunity that we have now to play big, to show up without the fear of being burned at the stake or other kinds of punishment, and earn our own money and be financially independent, that’s all very new. A woman in the US could not open her own bank account until 1960s.

Hilary Hendershott: 1970s, yeah. 

Dr. Valerie Rein: Oh, 70s even.

Hilary Hendershott: The date depending on which piece you read, the date varies, but the point is it used to be you had to have a man on your application. 

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yeah. And that’s very recent. It’s very recent. Oh, a lot of us were already alive when that happened. And in 1988, the law passed after a lot of advocacy through now a law specifically allowing women, enabling women to take out a business loan without a male relative cosigner. 1988, it’s all very new. We’re the first generation who has these opportunities and our biology has not caught up with the current time reality. It has not caught up with a current time reality to our biological wiring, to our subconscious. Having money equals mortal danger, unsafe, not allowed, loving who we love, same, having pleasure, joy, happiness. “You’re going to get yourself killed. You’re not here for that. You are here to serve and sacrifice as a woman.” That’s the programming in our subconscious. So, that is both the problem and it is an opportunity. The problem is because it feels unsafe. 

So, here we are. We are showing up. We’re playing big and our nervous system is running the survival programming and it goes, “Unsafe, unsafe, unsafe,” and that’s why we see these women who are playing big with adrenal fatigue with autoimmune conditions, can’t sleep, can’t relax without a glass of wine or a pill, can’t have intimacy, either being single or being in a relationship where things could be better. And it’s not our fault. It’s not our fault. It’s our nervous system in hypervigilance. 

Hilary Hendershott: Massive overload.

Dr. Valerie Rein: In massive overload, because it’s unsafe, it’s unsafe, and it’s unsafe. We’re hypervigilant, we go into fight, flight, or freeze. And then there are women who are in freeze and can’t, just can’t get in touch with what I authentically want. Don’t have the clarity, can’t move forward, can’t make the money, can’t find a partner, can’t, can’t, can’t. And again, it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s the nervous system signaling it’s unsafe and it’s doing a heck of a job keeping you safe. And the opportunity is in rewiring the nervous system. We teach specific protocols that are science-based. They based in neuroscience in biology, and epigenetics and psychology. For the mind and the body to work together, instead of trying to override our biology actually use it organically to our advantage simply rewiring what was unsafe then and what’s unsafe now, because what was unsafe then, for example, is for a woman to be earning her own money. That was unsafe. That wasn’t even on the menu. 

Now, it’s unsafe not to have money. It’s unsafe. It has changed. It has flipped 180 but our biology and our subconscious, they don’t know that. And according to neuroscience, our actions are decided in our subconscious. Our actions are decided in our subconscious. So, it doesn’t matter what you think how confident you are, if you’re experiencing some self-sabotage, if you’re alive, if your outer reality doesn’t exactly reflect your deepest authentic desires, well, perhaps it’s not you. Maybe it’s PSD.

Hilary Hendershott: And two points to make on that. First, I want to circle back to this rewiring the nervous system because I really feel like that’s the period at the end of the sentence today. But I also want to address your statement that it has historically been unsafe for us to build money, for us to build wealth. And I was interviewed on a show, most of my listeners probably haven’t heard of this person. He’s a man and he’s prolific in my industry and I said, “I’m just really committed to women building wealth in their own names.” And he just couldn’t get it. He said, “What do you mean? You actually take money out of their husband’s accounts and put them…?” And I said, “No, you don’t. It’s energetic. It’s a commitment.” He just couldn’t. He’s like, “What do you mean wealth in their own names?” and I said, “You know, well, let me ask you about your wife. Given how the accounts are balanced in your marriage, is most of the wealth actually titled to you?” And he said, “Well, yeah, but that’s how it has to be.” And I said, “No, it’s not how it has to be.” And so, that’s one of the things I really, I really get committed to with women. 

And one of the resistance points I hear from women about building wealth is, while I’m afraid I’m dating and I’m in my mid to late 30s and there’s women here in Silicon Valley, whose tech companies are helping them pay to freeze their eggs so they can work more into their later 30s. I mean, that’s a choice each woman has to make. But so now they’re coming into a dating relationship with more wealth, with more income, and they’re afraid it’s not sexy. And I feel like that’s us being crushed by this male expectation of dominance. And yet in a world where we’re staying single longer and longer and have to support ourselves in higher cost living environments, so it’s a catch 22.

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yep. I’m still like processing your interview with this man. Good for you.

Hilary Hendershott: “What do you mean wealth in your own name? Why would that matter?” Well, only a man would say that.

Dr. Valerie Rein: That goes to show like you asked me earlier, what is patriarchy, right? That is patriarchy. It’s everywhere.

Hilary Hendershott: I know. And it’s sort of behind the scenes. I just can’t get it kind of comments about racism that we’re hearing in the current news now. It’s like, what do you mean racism? 

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yeah. I’m not a racist. And the fact is that there is so much overlap, of course, with racism and patriarchy. Because it’s water we’ve been swimming in for such a long time and, of course, we all think of ourselves as like progressive and aware. And when we start looking at those things, like what’s in the subconscious? Okay. Forget what you’re thinking because we’re all thinking like “the right things.” What’s in the subconscious because that’s actually what’s showing up in your outer reality. How is your outer reality set up? How’s your wealth? How’s your love life? How’s your happiness and satisfaction? And that’s how we see within the subconscious because that’s what’s driving the boss. That’s what’s deciding the game. And regarding that it’s not, yeah, back to your point about it “not being sexy” when you are financially empowered, grinding into patriarchy internally and externally. In our programs, that’s one of the huge discoveries that women make from their own subconscious that always surprises them. 

When we go to investigate what’s getting in the way of them going to the next level of income, revenue in their business, for example, they discover that, oh, in my subconscious and we have specific like techniques for getting there. Again, it’s not something you think about and then just comes up. We go through the body, specifically, to give us hands because that’s where trauma lives. And they discover that, oh my gosh, there is this deep-seated fear that, “If I make more than my husband, wait, he’s going to leave. He’s going to reject me. It’s not going to work.” And then, of course, they…

Hilary Hendershott: Or he won’t have sex with me.

Dr. Valerie Rein: Because it’s not sexy, right? Whatever that patriarchal conditioning sits there and, of course, they can do a reality check with their husband and the husbands laugh and like, “Please, please, outdo me, like do whatever you want.” 

Hilary Hendershott: Bring home the bacon, lady. 

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yes, they’re all like, “Yes, I’m 100% on board,” and we begin to heal what’s actually a red? What’s that sabotaging down in the subconscious? But that’s a fascinating discovery, like none of us would think, “Oh my gosh, like, oh yeah, I’m scared of making more like that’s laughable.” But in the subconscious, that’s what’s holding us back. And you only know from what is actually what is in your bank account? How is kind of the ledger of your life’s satisfaction and happiness looks? Yeah, fascinating.

Hilary Hendershott: It is fascinating. And at this point, I’ve had the privilege of being able to financially coach women for so long that I can literally look at the income and the assets and kind of the mix of it all and I have a really good idea of what’s actually happening. And I think money happens to be a very object that you can measure it objectively. So, in my practice, that empowers me as a coach but it really does tell a story and I want to talk about. You talk a lot about reading self-help books and this message to women that this sort of individualistic self-empowerment message and particularly you rail against stop holding yourself back. There’s this message to just go for it. And so, give us your reaction to that.

Dr. Valerie Rein: Money tells the story. I love this so much. Yeah. Stop holding yourself back. That’s where that patriarchal hijack happens also in self-help industry. It all becomes like kind of a tool of oppression and making women feel guilty and ashamed and bad about themselves. Here you’re failing. You’re failing in personal growth. You are holding yourself back. And the truth of the matter is that we are not consciously able to override what’s in our subconscious, what’s in our body, and it wouldn’t be a good idea anyway because these are survival mechanisms. We’re not here to override them. It’s a horrible idea. Without them, we would just like be killed crossing the street.

We’re here to work with them, to help them evolve. And disregarding that, that those slogans like really disregard that stop getting in your own way, get out of your own way, stop holding yourself back. That’s really, really dangerous. Because just it creates that further disempowerment. A woman feels that, “Oh my gosh, like here I am failing again.” It creates that false confirmation loop. Well, see, I can’t even make this work. I’ve read all the books, and I was in that place too when my PSD awakening happened. I’ve read all the books. I could get my hands on in workshops, etcetera, etcetera. So, with what we see, when we actually start working with the subconscious, we see that and we have a process of a five-step system. And we identify what’s holding us back as I call them prison guards referring to PSD and other traumas as the invisible inner prison. And those prison guards are protective mechanisms that are there in our minds, in our bodies, in our actions, to keep us safe and then we evolve them to our bodyguards. So, instead of staying safe in prison, we can move toward our desires. 

And what we see happen with that, we have women who you can like that who have quadrupled 5X to their revenue within just a few weeks of doing this work in our program. They tell these in jailbreak stories in the testimonials on my website, DrValerie.com/Testimonials. And this was actually an unexpected outcome because specifically, we didn’t. We do now. We didn’t when we recorded those testimonials. We didn’t specifically teach to restoring our relationship with money. We taught to recognizing and shifting those defense mechanisms from PSD. And then we saw, oh my gosh, most women in our programs we have a mixed bag. Most women are business owners and they’re able to just show up bigger, use their voices, be more authentic and then, boom, like 4X, 5X their revenue very quickly. Like, oh my gosh, now we’re going to actually include an element of psychological and energetic and physical, biological reclamation of our relationship with money where it actually feels safe to build wealth. I see this beautiful overlap or going hand-in-hand of what you do and what we do with that, because it’s a big work. It’s a big reclamation. 

And we held our first virtual retreat and we’re going to be doing them on a seasonal basis so the next one is coming up. And listeners can learn more at TheThrivingExperience.com and it’s an amazing experience. We’ve had big shifts happen from that and it’s free. What we saw, what I heard loud and clear was all the women, they’re brilliant, brilliant committed to their transformation, and pretty much all of them were struggling financially and I went on such a rant, inspired rant, which I didn’t plan. I didn’t plan on going there but it came in as very urgent during the event. But why? Why the F don’t you have money? Not as a judgment but as a really big question. Why don’t you have money? Why? Don’t you have talents? Don’t you have value? Yes, you do, tons. And in this day and age, everybody has a phone, everybody has access to the internet. We can offer our talents to anyone on the planet at any time and enter into this value exchange. But there is an issue. 

First of all, PSD blocks us from even recognizing our value, let alone receiving money for it. And that’s a big block. And that I feel in conjunction with financial education and asking these big questions is really urgent for us to heal. Because unless women have their own financial resources, wealth in their own name, thank you very much, Hilary, for that, in their name, we cannot, we don’t have access to the levers to moving the levers in society that we need to move. We don’t have access.

Hilary Hendershott: You don’t have power. If you’re broke, you have to find someone with purse strings to fund you or you just have to yell louder than the crowd which actually leads to resources coming into your accounts, but it’s like, yeah, you have to be in a powerful relationship with wealth to exert power, loving power, influential power on the world. And that’s what we so much want right now.

Dr. Valerie Rein: I love this so much. Yeah, it’s not the time to be barefoot in the kitchen. Anyway, I mean, if it’s in your pleasure, by all means, be barefoot in the kitchen while accumulating wealth at the same time. Please, please, please the world depends on it. It’s not even a matter of personal choice. It’s a matter of collective urgency right now.

Hilary Hendershott: And specifically, and by the way, I’m not shocked at all that unraveling patriarchy stress disorder in your clients leads to increased revenue. In fact, I’d be shocked if it didn’t. Because money isn’t a thing to be weighed and measured or kept or lost. Money is energy. Money is a conversation and as soon as you can accept abundance in your life, and I would bet, I just have a hypothesis that a woman who can accept a compliment also has money in her bank accounts.

Dr. Valerie Rein: There is a correlation. That would be a fun study. 

Hilary Hendershott: It really would.

Dr. Valerie Rein: Let’s do this study, Hilary. That will be so fun.

Hilary Hendershott: That is the correlation here.

Dr. Valerie Rein: There is a correlation. I have that hypothesis. So, it will be fun to test.

Hilary Hendershott: And I hope this isn’t putting you on the spot but I do want to talk about Leslie who’s on page 35 of your book, who was deaf so to speak to a very lucrative offer. Do you remember this story? 

Dr. Valerie Rein: Oh, yeah. 

Hilary Hendershott: Would you tell her story so my listeners can hear?

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yeah. Leslie is an unforgettable story. Indeed. She was interested in doing this work and uncovering and healing PSD. So, we got on the phone. It was our first meeting and she was telling me about herself and she is a professional, who she’s been in her career for many years, and she was transitioning into entrepreneurship as well. And she invested a lot in this transition. She was confident and she invested in being in this very high-level mastermind with somebody whose name everybody knows. And so, she was at this table and after hearing what she had to share at the mastermind, one of the participants came up to her and said, “You know what, what you have to offer so aligns with what I need in my business right now, I would so appreciate the opportunity to work with you and benefit from your expertise. So, I have this consulting opportunity. I would compensate you,” and he offered over $350,000 for that consulting package. And when she was sharing the story with me, she then quickly moved on to other things and, of course, I was very curious like what happened?

She’s like, “What do you mean?” “Well, what happened with the consulting offer?” “What offer?” 

And it became very clear to me that although obviously part of her brain registered exactly what happened but another part of her brain where those prison guards are nested, rejected it, so they made her, as you noted, made her deaf and blind just like it never happened. She actually didn’t process it as, okay, it was a real thing for me. It was an offer for me to consider. It was my value that he was seeing and offering this translation of my value into this lucrative sum of money. And after working through that, again, one meeting, one phone call, we had a Zoom call, she was able to see that as PSD at play, and she went back to this other entrepreneur. The offer was still on the table and then her prison guards went into high gear and she shrilled back to me. She said no, she doesn’t want to work on that. She doesn’t want to work on healing PSD, and she doesn’t want to work on that consulting gig. 

And there were a million justifications to that because that’s how prison guards operate. They always have like a grain of truth to everything they say. But the outcome is the outcome, it doesn’t move you’re closer to your desires or away. In her case, it was pretty clear what was going on. And so, I wish I could have told you a story with this happy ending, right? And Leslie like her bank accounts were overflowing and her impact in the world and she like lived happily ever after. Unfortunately, that’s not the story I can tell and exactly what happened is exactly what happened and it illustrates how PSD populates so, so clearly. And the question is how much money are you leaving on the table every day by not seeing the opportunities around you? And we all have those million and billion-dollar opportunities. Again, money, it tells the story, right? It’s not the whole story but it’s a very fun metric to go by in my world as well. 

How many opportunities are there that we’re just blind to because of PSD because prison guards keep us safe from owning our value, and receiving compliments, receiving money, receiving reflections of our value? And that to me, is a huge tragedy, a huge crisis, a huge pandemic going in the world right now that it’s urgent. It’s urgent for us to heal. Thank you so much for asking about Leslie, Hilary. I appreciate it. 

Hilary Hendershott: Yes, this is my nightmare when I coach people is how many opportunities are they being presented with that I never hear about because they’re completely deaf to it, right? So, I thought that was really poignant what you shared about Leslie and I’m hoping women can hear themselves in that. So, let’s talk about rewiring the nervous system. What is the solution? And can you describe this in detail? It is a little woo for me now. I’m willing to consider anything and, in fact, I’m probably going to participate but when you talk about mind and body and nervous system, I just think, well, explain that. Help me understand. 

Dr. Valerie Rein: Of course, yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And these are my favorite stories, actually, again, like we have a lot of these stories in the testimonials where a woman starts by saying, “I was very skeptical.” I’m like, okay, I don’t know about that. And then what happened? So, the five-step system that I use, I’ve been refining it or distilling it over 20 years of my work in the field that started out as a more traditional psychological approach and figuring oh, okay, from my own experiences that talking about it really doesn’t work. It doesn’t lead to big profound changes but working as somehow, working with the body and the mind together, and the energetics of it creates shifts. So, the five-step system goes from what we’re doing now. It’s waking up in prison. It’s seeing that, oh my gosh, maybe it’s not me, maybe it’s PSD. Maybe it’s the layers of ancestral collective personal traumas and really beginning to see how they play out, what opportunities we’re not seeing because of them, what steps we’re not taking because of them, how we are dispersing our energy, our energy, time, and money because no access to our power is granted by this invisible inner prison or very little. 

So, then we move on to meet our prison guards. These are trauma defenses that live in our minds and our bodies and in actions and they range from stories, always rational by the way, rational stories. No, this is not going to work or who wants to hear from me or it’s not possible. It’s not possible for me to get a raise or it’s not possible for me to start a business or whatever the story is. In the body, they show up as oftentimes anxious energy or depressive energy, or different inflammations and imbalances in the body, migraines, other chronic pains, and in that inflammation is an expression of unprocessed trauma, unprocessed emotions, and we see a lot of that happening right now, and adrenal fatigue as I already mentioned from nervous system being constantly in overdrive. So, in actions they show up in going to fight, flight, freeze types of actions, either going into distractions, mode, or going to addictive behaviors or being in a freeze when we actually want to move towards creating something in the world that we will be in alignment with our desires. 

So, we help by doing this rewiring of the nervous system. We help them evolve from prison guards to bodyguards, and how we do it is by creating safety first, safety first, always. That’s why the prison guards are holding us back. So, instead of using that route, we use specific practices that create the experience of safety in the body and the nervous system and we stabilize it. So, it becomes our normal and from safety, we can then open up to expansion, to pleasure, to greater visibility, and greater wealth, more amazing relationships, because all of that pushes on the safety buttons from the old traumas and healing that creating safety creates expansion. 

And then in the fourth stage, we go into tunnel digging. We dig, excavate, and heal deeper layers of trauma. And then the fifth one, I call it the savoring freedom. That’s my favorite one but the work there is kind of only just beginning just in a different way. The speed limit on how much money, how much pleasure, how much goodness we can experience in our lives, that speed limit is set very low by the patriarchy. And with that, our capacity to have that is also limited. Our energetic physical capacity to receive and work with that and give is compromised because it hasn’t been practiced. And then there’s a lot of trauma around for a millennia. So, we actually use the tools then to expand our receiving capacity and keep on raising that speed limit on all the good things we get to have. And that’s kind of in a nutshell how we move through and there are some examples of all the techniques that we use that are in the book. And in the thriving experience that free virtual retreat that we’re having seasonally, we actually take women through the experience of that shift from survival to thriving so that they can actually feel it in their body. And that’s very exciting because it’s something that’s really hard to explain in words. That’s part of the reason why like talk therapy cannot take us there and just like changing the way we think. Yeah. 

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. Give me a sense for the analyticals who are listening, I wouldn’t ask you to give your special sauce and no one’s going to sign an NDA before hearing you but how do you actually accomplish that?

Dr. Valerie Rein: So, let me see if I can get closer to the answer without the actual experience. So, the nervous system goes into fight, flight, freeze, the sympathetic response triggered by the sense of being unsafe. The nervous system goes into parasympathetic response, which is relaxation, receptivity, growth, pleasure, all if possible, and rest are only possible in parasympathetic response. Our nervous systems are hanging out in sympathetic pretty much all the time by default. And so, a part of what happens with this work, a part of the shift is that we retrain the nervous system to hang out more in parasympathetic. And that kind of slows. It kind of slows down the whirling of the mind that the anxiety goes down. There is more presence and connection that women experience. There’s clarity and they make decisions much faster in their intuitive decisions and their decisions that they are grateful for going forward versus like going to this over-analysis for a long time and then looking back like [inaudible – 44:02]. That woman was not a good [inaudible – 44:05] after all.” 

Hilary Hendershott: Yes, too much. You can’t run the marathon 24/7.

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yeah. So, that’s a big part of the shift that way of creating. Does this begin to answer your question?

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. And I too struggle to tell some stories because you can describe what it’s like to get balanced on a bicycle. You certainly can’t give someone the experience of it. I get it. So, it sounds like the answer is in part, Hilary, it’s experiential. And so, one of my last questions is, is it a meditation? Is it physical touch? You’ve said it’s not talk therapy. Is it reliving the trauma? How is it actually?

Dr. Valerie Rein: Great. I’m so glad you’re asking me that. I’ll start from the last thing you said. We have a lot of women who have been searching for a trauma therapist, have been going after like EMDR, for example, those who have been on this journey now with what that is, one of the trauma healing modalities and have been actually rejected by EMDR therapists who have said to them, “Cannot work with you because you either don’t have the exact memory of the traumatic experience, or you’re not willing to tell it or whatever.” In our work, there is no telling or even remembering of the traumatic experience. Most of them we don’t even know because we have inherited them or some happened preverbally. Like I released trauma, for example, of feeling my mother’s anxiety when I was in her womb, and that communicating to my body that the world was unsafe and creating that high charge in my nervous system even before I was born, things like that. 

So, we don’t tell stories necessarily. You’re welcome to share. We hold a safe space for that, but it’s not a part of what creates the transformation. We go directly into the body and how this works is we train women to track the sensations. Again, it’s part of it, right? It’s one aspect of the work. We track the sensations in the body that come up, for example, when you’re faced with this new big opportunity, right? We notice what thoughts are present, what prison guards show up on the level of thoughts, and which ones show up on the level of sensation. How does your body actually experience that? Is there a contraction? Is there some tension in the stomach? Is there like twitching in the left eye? I don’t know. I’m making this up. Whatever that is, right? And then we go and we engage in this dialogue with a sensation. What is this about? What is it protecting you from? We release tension there by using specific techniques and making and creating an experience of safety right here and now. And that experience of safety allows the story that’s holding us back to release. So, instead of changing the story, and then seeing what happens, we release what’s driving the story, which is feeling unsafe in the body by working with the body directly. Does that paint more of a picture?

Hilary Hendershott: It absolutely does. Thank you. 

Dr. Valerie Rein: Thank you, Hilary. I appreciate that. 

Hilary Hendershott: That is tangible for me. I can get it. I can get it. And I’ll give you an example. I have always said to my team, first of all, I don’t want to manage a big team and the first time we have an HR issue, I quit. So, I have lived in fear of my team. I mean, essentially having a sexual harassment. I’m not sexually harassing my team, but that it would happen amongst the team so I have said I will never own a big organization, and yet I have a massive vision. And so, when you said what are the prison guards, what comes up when you think about expansion, that was right there and I thought, okay, so that’s actually maybe a prison guard.

Dr. Valerie Rein: Beautiful. Thank you for getting on this journey. I’m gangling. You see beyond reading the book. Woohoo!

Hilary Hendershott: Very good. Okay. And so, then the answer is the keys to getting involved with you and your trauma healing are to attend one of the quarterly workshops that you can access at TheThrivingExperience.com. Is that correct?

Dr. Valerie Rein: Yes, that is correct, of course, and reading the book would be the first step before you commit to a three-day experience. That’s important. And yeah, and once you have that experience, then it’s very easy for you to know whether or not you want to continue this journey we have, and we have two levels of programs that we offer. There is a two-month program called The Thriving Solution that walks through the first three steps of the system. And then we have a year-long program, The Thriving Circle, where we go in more in-depth over all the five steps. There are in-person retreats that are a part of the program. There’s one-on-one work that’s also involved as a part of the program. It’s more intimate and it goes deeper into healing. And so, yeah, the first step would be, I guess, downloading the first chapter of the book. It’s at DrValerie.com/Book and there are some book resources there also. And I also have a podcast that you can see if that’s one of your preferred learning media. You can see what resonates from there. So, it’s the Dr. Valerie Podcast. DrValerie.com/Podcast.

Hilary Hendershott: Perfect. And we will be linking to all of those resources in the show notes for today’s episode at HilaryHendershot.com/167.

Dr. Valerie Rein: I like that number.

Hilary Hendershott: Do you? 

Dr. Valerie Rein: I do.

Hilary Hendershott: Good for you, woman. Okay, Dr. Valerie, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate you. It’s profound to hear what women are doing to heal other women from these what you call traumas. I haven’t used that word much, but absolutely it fits and I love listening to your voice. And so, thanks for being here.

Dr. Valerie Rein: Thank you so much, Hilary.

Disclaimer

Hendershott Wealth Management, LLC and Profit Boss® Radio do not make specific investment recommendations on Profit Boss® Radio or in any public media. Any specific mentions of funds or investments are strictly for illustrative purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice or acted upon by individual investors. The opinions expressed in this episode are those of Hilary Hendershott, CFP®, MBA.