Blind Spots, Bravery, and Unlocking our Truest Selves with Iona Holloway

Play Video
ABOUT THE EPISODE

Iona Holloway is on the show with me this week for an illuminating conversation about shrinking, shadows, shame, and self-liberation.

The first question we ask is, “Is inner work worth it?” Once we cover that, we dive into why women shrink and the many faces shrinking can have. 

We talk about safety, coping mechanisms, how to be on your own team, what it means to be brave, and the walls strong women put up to protect themselves (and how to take them down).

ABOUT IONA

Iona is the best selling author of Ghost – Why Perfect Women Shrink and founder of Brave Thing. She helps strong women do inner work to find the blindspots holding them back from burning brighter and braver and being more themselves in their lives, work, and relationships.

Never miss an episode.

Alyssa Patmos 0:04
This is Make It Mentionable. I’m Alyssa Patmos and this is the show about being human in a world that encourages us to be robots. I invite you to join me as we journey through the mess, the magic and the mania in between. Because what we can talk about, we can manage. This honest conversation extravaganza includes free flowing conversations and high doses of vulnerability to remind you that you aren’t alone. No topic is off limits, and episodes are designed to leave you smarter, aka more self aware than when you came. I am so glad you’re here.

Hello, hello, and welcome back to Make It Mentionable. Today, I am here with Iona Holloway. And we are talking about something that I feel like often goes unmentioned. And that’s about the cost of personal development and the cost of inner work. And is it worth it? Is it not worth it? And why do we need to normalize around this conversation? So thank you for tuning in. I am so glad you’re here. And I want to thank you for joining me for this conversation.

Iona Holloway 1:24
I’m so happy to be here.

Alyssa Patmos 1:26
And I feel you’re the perfect person to have this conversation with because so much of your work is around personal development. You wrote a book on why women shrink – it’s called Ghost, right?

Iona Holloway 1:37
Correct. Yeah.

Alyssa Patmos 1:38
Yes. So I feel like you’re the perfect person to have this conversation around what I around the benefits of of turning inwards. And a lot of people think that it’s only for, you know, the extreme times when it’s like, Okay, I gotta go to therapy. But there’s so much middle ground between that and I can’t wait to dive into this conversation. But before I get ahead of myself, let’s tell listeners watchers a little bit about you. So what’s what’s the scoop on who you are?

Iona Holloway 2:09
Yeah, sure. Right. Before I say that, I think something that you just said was just so good and want to let it like float down the river? Which was that? Is it worth it thing? And I love this question just in general. And I’m sure we’ll get into it more. But my response to that is, the cheapest way we’re paying for anything is with money. And I feel like often the cost is it can be a life, it can be a lot of time in a life. And then also just emotional costs in general. And so I’m not in any way trying to imply that money goes on trees. But in my experience, and in the experience of pretty much every woman that I’ve got come into contact with in doing in our work, we sort of arrive at the reality and truth of the fact that we have been paying with our lives, which expensive wise, is it doesn’t really hold up. And there’s really no, no comparison between the two of them. But anyway, that’s not to let it flow by with like catching it,

Alyssa Patmos 3:15
That, I love it. I mean, this is a free-flowing conversation extravaganza. Yes. So I love it. And when you said like money is the cheapest ways that I’m changed, I think it’s like so, so, so true. And we can dive into more of what that means. Because I totally agree with you. And that’s really awesome way of putting it.

Iona Holloway 3:35
Yeah, but to answer your question. My name is Iona. I am the founder of Brave Thing. And I do in our work with strong women specifically helping them find the blind spots, the emotional blind spots that are holding them back from be like burning, bright and brave in their life working relationships and being more than in the world. And a lot of this started and really grew out of writing my book, go swipe, graphic women shrink, and which is really centered around the idea of all the different subtle, but very intense ways that women minimize themselves in pursuit of so many things, see that being liked, be that success be that being perceived a particular way. And the way that I write about that in golf specifically related to my own experience, which was how shrinking Yes, there was like a lot of like emotional elements to that and the shrinking of myself, but also manifested physically and I really struggled with what most people would call an eating disorder I prefer to call a coping strategy. And but I struggled with that from pretty much the age of 5. And it wasn’t until I was 29 that I decided that I was done. So a very long time in my life. I was trying to find my way by by shrinking my body. And that being the way that I felt strong, safe, good enough to be in this world. So that’s what brought me into whatever you want to call it, self development, wellness, I tend to call it in our work because I have feelings about either side of the spectrum. But it changed my life. And that’s why I always view inner work not as something that we do when we’re lying on the ground at like our our last sort of tether. But rather, a line item in pretty much every knot pretty much in every human’s life, I believe it’s entirely essential for all of us to know ourselves from the inside out, because that’s all we’re ever experiencing, is our internal world projected on our external reality. And I just love helping people get in here in creative ways, and cool ways and powerful ways. But really being able to do that work from the inside out.

Alyssa Patmos 6:04
I love it so much. And I’m so glad you’re on the show, because we do very similar work. But there are different methodologies, there are different ways of, of unlocking that piece and of tapping into whatever is going on. And so I love meeting people who who are so invested in that, because if, if one way isn’t working for someone, like there are so many ways to get into the inner work that that into find the guy that that works for you that you’re able to trust and then who can help crack that open. There’s so so so so much power in that. So I want to just about a few things you just said thank you for sharing a piece of your story. My my journey was strangely shrinking has been much more on the emotional side. And, and some things with like body dysmorphia, as it relates to OCD. And so as the mental health piece of this conversation is super important for me as well. And then I love what you said where where, you know, so many people are quick to to call things an eating disorder to diagnose or to call it, you know, like, and then all of a sudden have to take on this identity of something that has a freaking crap ton of stigma around it, when in reality, the entire reason that it’s formed in most cases is because we’re trying to cope with something that is going on in our environment that we don’t quite know how to deal with so in love, they call it a quote, a coping strategy for for you. What does I notice it from your perspective? And I want to get a little bit more specific. But what does, what does the concept of shrinking mean to you? And what does it do to people?

Iona Holloway 8:01
Yeah, I love this question. I view it as a minimization of humanity in pursuit of being seen as sort of untouchable or, impenetrable is not quite the right word. But I know, I’ll put it this way, the smaller I got, the stronger I felt, the stronger the smaller I got, the more control, it felt like I had over my body, the stronger I felt, and the more like, in many ways, indestructible I felt. And I like what you said about, I can deeply relate to the idea of emotional shrinking. And I would say by the time I was in my late 20s, and really, really not doing really not in a great place emotionally. Being able to, it felt like any way to control my body also allowed me in many ways to numb out my entire emotional experience. And I think that’s true for many, many high performing women in different capacities. The ways that we become impressive is by the avoidance of our own humanity. And I think that the numbing out of emotions in general is something that is so widespread, so prolific, so insidious, and to your point on different levels, like it’s not that everyone has caught something that would rise to the level of being diagnosed with an eating disorder to be minimizing their emotional experience, or being or trying to find a way to be in the world. And we’re all doing that in some capacity. And I think that’s why it’s not. I’m not in any way anti diagnoses or anti thinking about the mental health model or anything like that. But the way that I view it, and so much of my work is feels deeply trauma-informed is the idea that everything rises out from a deep caring and desire to be safe in the world, we’re never we’re always on our own side, even when we are doing things that ultimately are hurting us, like, by the time I was in my late 20s, like controlling my bodies, the way that I was, was it physically hurt me, it was more, it was emotionally painful. But the coping strategy was born out of many years of trying to feel safe in the world. And I think that when we’re able to get on side with the idea that we haven’t been trying to destroy yourself the whole time, we haven’t been trying to do any of that we’ve actually been on our team the whole time, just with kind of bad tools. It humanizes it, it makes it much easier to relate to yourself, if you’re able to think about it from the perspective of, Oh, my goodness, I actually cared the whole time. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I cared the whole time, I was trying my best to feel safe to control things to manage myself externally, rather than internally. And when you finally arrive at perhaps, perhaps a tipping point, or a leveling point where that’s not working anymore. It’s like, okay, cool. So what are we going to do? What we’re going to do now, how can we do this differently? How can we support ourselves in ways that don’t ask us or destroyers that don’t cause us pain? And I think when you begin to look at it that way, shame can evaporate, it doesn’t evaporate, like, “Shoomp! I feel no shame about anything I’m doing!” Of course not. That’s not real. But –

Alyssa Patmos 11:33
But –

Iona Holloway 11:34
Yeah, yeah.

Alyssa Patmos 11:36
Like, it starts to dissolve, and then it and then it and then all of a sudden, you might go, oh, I’m not limited by this as much, or in the same way. One thing that I really want to touch on that you said, and it was sneaky, I love that you did it. So you’re talking about when you talk about it, you’re talking about like high performers, and in particular high performing women, and you’re talking about them abdicating pieces of their humanity. And the specifics, their use in the work that I see is, is about being able to own your desires, being able to acknowledge that you have needs, being able to set boundaries that don’t just work for other people, but that actually work for you. Those are just like some of the top three, but but in Oh, one emotion, that was the other huge one, like being able to have frequent emotions and knowing that it’s okay, and the world’s not gonna fall apart. And so I love what you said, like, you keep talking about that in this is your humanity. And I think that is almost the first lesson that so many people have to learn is like, no, it’s actually okay for you to have wants and needs. And you’re entitled to your desires. Like last year, he come to have a mantra like it was written on a card like less in front of me, it’s evolved, but but I’d love to have one written down because like I am entitled to my wants and needs. And I am entitled to my preferences and desires. I think that’s one thing that’s so so hard for people to tap into sometimes, because it gets when we develop these coping mechanisms, and it says, Don’t rock the applecart like, like, don’t have knees because that’s going to keep you safer. So that element of safety that I’m bringing in, I mean, it’s just so damn critical. We’re my absolute favorite part of what I do is helping people get in touch with parts of themselves. And so what you were just talking about where it’s like this piece of ourselves, is doing her best. She’s piping up and she’s like, Hey, I have a need and I don’t quite know how to express it but she’s doing the thing that she knows how to do. And when we start being kind to our parts, and I love to name them I don’t know if some of them are Shrek kids. I have a part that is Fiona and the dragon from from Shrek like she’s super cute with Donkey and wants to bat her eyes and then she breathes freaking fun. So when you can start integrating our card so like again, same experience that shame just starts to starts to crumble away. So I have to ask you because I agree with what you were saying on trauma as well and the roots of us trying to find ways for us to feel safe. So I have to know, do you follow Gabor Maté, Dr. Gabor Maté?

Iona Holloway 14:46
No I don’t. I don’t. Am I missing out?

Alyssa Patmos 14:52
I think you will love his stuff. He just came out with documentary The Wisdom Of Trauma, and the way that he talks about trauma is just awesome. I love it. But secretly, I basically started this podcast and wanted to be big enough to be able to have Gabor Maté. Just throw that out to the world.

Iona Holloway 15:11
[Inaudible] to have your desires. Yeah.

Alyssa Patmos 15:16
So the the thing, the word that keeps coming up is control. And I am not anti diagnosis in any way either. I think it can be really, really empowering for some people to finally get a diagnosis because it’s that moment of, I’m not in the same I, I am not, I feel crazy, and I’m not crazy. And there’s so much power in that. For me, the balance has always been walking the line of when it becomes an identity. Having OCD from the time I was, I think 14 or 15. No one ever told me up until I think like me, I don’t know, maybe two, maybe like five years ago, I can figure it out for myself. And then I found the vein of people talking about it in a way that made sense to me. Nobody told me it was about control. Nobody told me that OCD was about trying to control things, and and the tapping and the compulsions are because something feels unsafe in the environment. And I can’t always get in touch with what that is. And then it comes out in this way. And so for you, what’s the journey been with? With control? Because it’s such a powerful force in this world when it’s left in the shadow.

Iona Holloway 16:35
Yeah, I love this question. And it’s funny as well, because I think that from the outside, I didn’t necessarily look like a controlling person, because I didn’t actually… so little of me was outside of myself. I was, I was such an internal lone wolf person. So when you talk about like not having needs or being able to talk about them, it’s because I, well, I didn’t think I was able to have them. And so then in order for me to control my world, I had to control everything that was within me. So the way I would describe it was it felt like a like, it was like a force field. That was all around me. And it felt very locked. It felt very locked down. So control manifested in lots of different ways. Yeah, sure, around like tracking your food, hours of exercise, weight, weigh myself multiple times a day, like all like all that kind of thing. I’m signing up for weightlifting competitions, so that we’d have to make weight, like all that, like I did all that stuff. But also, the way that control manifested for me, and I don’t even think I realize this until I actually wrote until I actually wrote Ghost was how much of that was rooted in perfectionism and how, perfectionism was meeting my need for control, which goes back to, I think what I was chatting about earlier, in terms of like being impenetrable. In order for me to be safe in the world, it would have to be that the forcefield did not have one crack, one pore, one tiny hole that anyone could get anything into, like me, anything that could hurt me that I would be vulnerable by anything like that. And talk about robbing humanity from yourself, if your baseline for living is that it’s impossible to show vulnerability, just thinking about how hard it is to work in order to bypass vulnerability. Because that’s when you that’s when your that’s when you’re operating as a robot.

Alyssa Patmos 18:46
Right.

Iona Holloway 18:47
That’s when you’re trying to rise above the human experience and almost like bypass it entirely. So for me, that’s how control manifested, if I am, if I am perfect, perfect in not having needs, perfect in like being entirely self-sufficient, perfect and not rocking the boat, perfect in my output in my job, and perfect in the way that I control my body. And not only am I safe, but I am also dominant. And I think that’s the other thing that I think a lot of women have to navigate with in terms when, when our standards for ourselves are so high, it’s often allows us to rise above perhaps the other people, the average people and give us an additional feeling of safety by feeling superior. And that was something that I definitely I rolled on that, I fed off that and dismantling that within myself realizing that actually I am safe when I am human and I can meet people eye to eye and not have to rise above them in order for me to feel safe. And I think that what in any in any life experience for all was navigating this kind of paradynamic. But I think when you’re in control, or you’re meeting it, it’s very often your like, tip up and try to find some kind of way to dominate your experience.

Alyssa Patmos 20:10
I remember the first time that I learned that OCD had a perfectionism category, like there are different obsessions that people experience. And it’s not the same for everyone, and different obsessions and different compulsions. And so I learned that perfectionism was one of the ones and, you know, perfectionism is really hard, because we’re, it’s one of the things we’re rewarded for a lot. So it’s like, okay, it just adds to that feeling again, like this dominant feeling is like, okay, but if I can do it, if I can be perfect, then like, so I’m saying, Yes, I had the same experience. Or perhaps experiencing the end result of what that was from a different lens with with OCD. And I eventually had to get to the point where I was like, okay, I’m good with the excellence, but like, perfection is an illusion. What it ended up, I have God the robot thing. Yes, I wanted to go back to that, because I was in a previous relationship, he would call the robot at times. And I, when I was in it, I’m like, No, I’m not a robot like, like, I’m not a robot. But at the same time being outside of that relationship. Afterwards, I realized all the ways that I was a robot. And when he was using, it was interesting, because he was a robot also. And so like, there were definitely some projections that are going on, but he thought he could, he could also recognize it. And we, there’s another episode with a friend of mine I had on we talked about women taking up space. And she talks about feeling like a robot, too. And this is language like it purlins I think conversations with women in a way that we laugh about it, like we laugh about feeling like a robot. And yet, it is so damn damaging.

Iona Holloway 22:09
Oh, yeah, totally. And I think often, we’ll laugh about it, because it’s sort of almost a safe way to be vulnerable. It’s like, let’s bond over our own sort of robot like robotic tendencies, I would actually, I would love to know if this was true for you as well. But the thing that I realized and reflection on my life of being a robot, is I felt so powerful, and dominant. But the longer it got, the stakes got higher, and my world shrunk. To the point where like, there were only certain things that I would allow myself to do. Because if I were if I was, so like, body exercise, and my job, and there wasn’t any real wiggle room to try things, or to practice, or be or to do new things, because when the default is that I have to be perfect at this, it makes the world feel like your world shrinks. So at a certain point, you’re perhaps dominating, but it’s in such a micro way that you lose, like it’s like, like the theme. Like you lose the human experience, you lose the breadth of the experience and the width that life has naturally, because you can only exist in this very sort of specific way, because that’s the only way you’re feeling safe.

Alyssa Patmos 23:32
My experience was a little bit different. I love what you’re sharing that dominance because mine has been a little bit different than I don’t resonate with having to feel dominant in the same way. And my, my perfectionism thing came out in the form of I need to be perfect for this person. Yeah, I will be perfect for all these other people around and so rather than it being like this dominant and some of these other spirits for me, the world streamed because I didn’t have needs in relationships. Well, of course we did. We, we always have needs and your needs are always valid. We don’t, at times, we don’t recognize what those needs are. And that’s what was happening to me. And so the world kept shrinking, intriguing and changing because I was going with the flow and you know, taking on the identity of being the type of person who could go with the flow, while secretly you’re trying to control everything with compulsions and like not wearing blue underwear, because that means your day is gonna be crap. Like, all these other things that my mind could come up with that people have no idea what I’m trying to control wrong of uncertainty. But then being this person who’s like, you pit, I don’t care. I’m picky. But the world shrinks when you don’t get to express your opinions because the entire element of being a human is getting to share how we view the world Yeah, no two of us are ever going to do the world the same.

Iona Holloway 25:03
Yeah, I love that distinction. It’s, it’s reminding me like, for the whole last month in my Brave Thing membership, we were talking about, like energy blueprints and the different ways that people show up in the world and try to get their needs met. And there’s once I always call us more like Hawk lake, so we’re the ones that are a bit more dominant and in isolation and devoid of needs, and we’re getting our needs met that way. And then there’s the octopuses, which are more like, deep feeling highly empathetic, and perhaps a bit more self abandoning in the sense that they’re like, everyone else’s needs Overmind, but important to everyone. And so my identity is somewhat externalized, because I’m dependent on all of you, like validating me. And then there’s the brothers, which are kind of got somewhere in the middle. But yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think there’s, there’s so many different ways that our world can shrink. And just depending on our upbringing, the way we come out, all that kind of stuff, we’re getting, like you said, we’re getting our needs met in some capacity. And also, when we’re abandoning ourselves in the process, life gets small. Or if you start to feel really wrong,

Alyssa Patmos 26:15
I think it’s really important to bring up oh, by the way, I would definitely be the zebra. Probably the, I think it’s really important to bring up the way that it manifests, because one point of this is like it, when we realize it’s not just us, it becomes so much easier to confront. And I think one of the reasons I see people avoiding inner work is because it’s once you get to the point where it feels like oh my god, I’m the only one who’s dealing with this, it’s so much harder to come out of that show. One other way these things came to me and I started to notice, like, how how little I was allowing myself to experience is I had a really hard time expressing joy. And I called it I eventually ended up calling it trapped joy. And I teach on that now to an extent because what happens is is like when you’re not willing to go into the, into the depth of the emotion, you know, we live in this baseline, that’s this freakin big. So what you’re saying like the world shrinks, and we don’t get the, we don’t keep the tops of it either. And so I would be happy about something and find myself biting the inside of my cheek like to not smile, and to not let myself experience like, pure joy of it. And I’m similar. I’m wondering if you had anything similar if you’ve experienced that in your work, too?

Iona Holloway 27:50
Oh, my goodness. Yes. Yeah, totally. I love that. This is one of my favorite things about talking to other people who do this work in their own world, their own community, because we’re always talking about the same things. It’s just different language I always talk about, like relearning, like return like turning your body on submarine like relearning this relearning the language of sensation. And the the metaphor I always use, which resonated with me was when I discovered that babies are born with the capacity to make every single sound that makes up every single language in the world. And then over time, we spend time with like our family, and we lose the ability to make sounds. And that’s why some people who are born native Russian speakers struggle to make the sounds that are in English, for example. And I feel that same way with our bodies language, with the experience of sensation with the expression and the ability to access emotion, especially like coming from my background of restricted eating, like, I had to shut down the language of my body in order for me to get what I needed, which was a small body. And so in turning that language back on, and actually being able to start to, I call it the thought, it’s like the sign out of your emotional body. And there’s so many different ways to relearn your body’s language. I love that description you had of how like narrow the window can feel, and how, even though I know that I still have so much my own work to do around being able to experience the things you described, like Joy trap, Joy, I love that description. Because that’s still that’s that very much still part of my work as well like being able to experience peaks, like peaks in in this direction, not in like the bowels of the earth direction, like peaks in the up direction. And those still feel like perhaps a language that I’ve not quite been able to fully tap into and I’m seeing ever because I’m not really sure I ever had access to But I’m hopeful because I just like, I believe that there’s always capacity to experience more of everything. But yeah, so many, so many women I’ve worked with have come with varying expressions of, like emotional numbness or reduction in being able to access extremes. And then also some people live on the extremes. And actually, we’re sort of wanting to bring them down into the reduction of intensity. But, yeah, I mean, I, I just, I’m such a big believer that we have three brains, like we have intellectual brain by brain, soul, I don’t even want to insult it by calling it a brain. So just don’t even feel like it’s off this earth. But there’s so many different ways we connect with ourselves, and being able to learn your body’s language and emotions and reclaim them is talk about becoming more human.

Alyssa Patmos 30:56
Yes, it’s honoring the pieces of us that are meant to work together. And like that we totally understand my friend Morgan Day Cecil, she, she teaches the feminine wholeness method, that’s kind of like for five for these things. And so she teaches about the head, heart, and honeypot as like the three ways of knowing. And so there, for me, the default. And again, I think we’re rewarded for it is to go into our head and to be super freakin intellectual, and like, solve the problems that way and like, shut off access to the heart, and re opening that was such a freaking painful, hard journey for me. And the thing of it is, is like I, I really try hard not to like sugar post, any sort of inner work, because like, the reality is, is like sometimes it’s really painful. But once you’ve gone through it a few times, once you start to collect that new evidence of the benefits you get from doing it, you know that there’s another second? Is that up, right? It’s freaking life changing. So I want to talk one other way that it manifested for me that some of these things manifested for me, because I want people to know that they’re not alone in the weird things that come up. And I Freestore that you said, like the language of our bodies. So I don’t know if you know this, but I almost got a PhD in communication. My background is psychology and like my undergraduate degrees in psychology, and I debated getting a PhD in that. But I went on, and I got my master’s in communication. And that’s a long description to sell. For me. In undergrad I had studied, like the individual in psychology and sociology, that group. And for me, communication was the bridge. It’s like the bridge between our inner worlds and our outer worlds. And so I have this whole elaborate amount of metaphor that I go into, in all my groups around what that means. But for for us, if we don’t understand what’s happening in our inner world, how the hell are we ever going to be able to communicate it to the outer world to get what we want in life? And so, inner work is paramount to us being able to explore and experience the depth of it the depth of experiments that so many of us crave in this life, for me, and remember, I couldn’t when I first started dating Jeff, um, I couldn’t look him in the eye. So much about eye contact, but I could, I could he called me out on it. Eventually, he was like, this isn’t gonna fly with me like, What are you doing? Like I would just turn up and not be able to look at him. In the eyes, it felt so insanely vulnerable and open person, but that was so deeply uncomfortable for me. So for you, do you remember a point where you were challenged to be vulnerable in a way that was like, way pushed outside your comfort zone?

Iona Holloway 34:19
Yeah, um, I think perhaps the the one that sticks out in my head was like the first I signed up for like a group coaching program to like, figure myself I and and it was like the first call and you basically just to see why you were there. And it was like it was it was an online thing. So it’s like, you know, we’re on Zoom, and you’re just like a we square on the internet with complete strangers. And you’re sort of suddenly owning up to the fact that you will eat pizza at the bottom of the Ben like, like, because I mean, that was the that was The extent to which I was at, like, I felt so broken and just beyond. So I do remember, I remember that experience like very, very vividly. And as a moment of a lot of what you said about you kind of you have to practice in order to get evidence that something lives on the other side of what can feel deeply confronting. Because I’ve realized now, and I mean, I’ve been in these situations, so many times now, where you’re, it’s kind of forced self disclosure, or you’re making yourself a human. And I think, for me, that’s something that I was always, I didn’t want anyone to think I was human. And I really wanted people to see me a particular way. And being in being in any kind of group experience, I think with other people where there is in a controlled way, and in a safe way, an invitation to be open. And it can be a really wonderful first step. And it definitely, it definitely helped me. So that when I was that when I was kind of stands out for, for me just also being being there with other women and kind of seeing your reality reflected in theirs. And realizing that you’re not actually that special, you’re not that unique. In your experience. This is a collective thing. It’s shared in many ways. Sure, like the way it expresses through other humans may be different. But we’re all just here trying to figure it out. And I think that that’s why I was saying at the start about inner work being it’s like a baseline, it’s a line item, it’s required for us if we’re actually ever going to know who we are. And if we’re ever going to really be able to authentically connect to other people. Because when you when you’re able to witness yourself, by default, you’re able to have a lot more just like compassion and awareness for what everyone’s trying to do, which is figure themselves out. We’re deeply selfish that way. We always like to make it I like to laugh about it. We’re deeply selfish. We’re self obsessed, we just we want, we want it to be right for us. And like it, I think it’s kind of funny when you can own that. And then also see that that’s all anyone’s really doing. We’re just obsessed with having like, a better time.

Alyssa Patmos 37:28
Right. Right. And I think I think that’s where I’m curious what your take is on this too. Okay, wait, I want to talk about positive psychology. But I have to backtrack to one other thing really quick. So you had said something about being in group groups. And I think there’s so much power in groups for what you were saying about the language of the body to like, a lot of people focus on one on one. And there is a time and place that I absolutely love one on one work, especially for like the deep healing uncovering things. I have also experienced though, that for rewiring our nervous systems, being able to be yourself in group of people, when they’re when that is guided in the right way, like groups are so freaking powerful for helping your body get back on board with being who you are, and knowing that it’s okay around other people in a way that one on one stuff just doesn’t get to in the same way. So I loved what you said about that, because I don’t think enough people talk about it. So the the other thing I wanted to ask you about so so we talked about, like bringing humanity back and Charlie’s feelings, and we’re constantly seeking and we’re self selfish beings, like trying to figure out what we’re here for and what we need to be doing and how to make things better for us. But I see, you know, a lot of times like in positive thoughts, fool, where that means just to be happy all the time. I think the biggest days of inner work, like when you start going into inner work, it’s like, oh, wait, I am definitely not gonna be happy. But there’s so much beauty in that. So So what are some of your opinions about about this, and like the positivity cult?

Iona Holloway 39:23
Oh, yeah, you can probably guess, like, and it is. The thing is, I’m laughing because I also have learned this along the way of sharing this work. You can’t just talk about pain because it sucks not like just talking about inner work for the sake of inner work sucks. And like at all like I recently wrote something in my newsletter. I was like, we don’t heal to heal, we heal to live like what is the soul that that accompanies? Why the hell you’re doing this thing that is often like deeply uncomfortable, and definitely not a guarantee of health. venous, like what is on the other side of being brave about doing this kind of thing. And that’s why I think it’s really valuable to spend some time reflecting on what is tethering me flight forward into my future life while I’m here, walking through the mud, trying to come out clean, like what like where, where’s the benefit of this because to your point, positivity isn’t it, that’s just just bypassing and a whole, like other way, talk about not feeling things like if your goal is to feel happy, and you’re forcing yourself to try to be positive all the time, what a great way to abandon yourself in a very, like a pastel pink way. So I see it it like everywhere. And of course, I find it like deeply upsetting or just like not realistic. Like it’s not realistic, you’re setting yourself up to people up to fail in a whole other way by implying that they should be happy all the time. The way that I look at it, the way that I see it in my clients is the increased capacity to be with the spectrum of human experiences, while also having like a healthy, I am here on my own side part of it. So like truly the separation between who I am, who I own it is, and all of the experiences that can happen within the context of my life, the fluctuations in emotions, the joy, the pain, the disappointment, the failure, the success, all of that, being able to navigate and write those waves and not personalize it into me being a bad person or me being a failure, or me even being a success. It’s like a healthy detachment from but ability to experience the broad spectrum and still be on your own side. That’s the way and also to be like more expressed, like I always call it burning beta and braver. I like to think of it like we all have one air Ember, like even if life’s feeling weird, like we have some Ember, we’re trying to more of that take up space, wherever you want to, like whatever language you want to use around that. But it’s like positivity, happiness. I mean, it’s like a shiny Penny fake reality that doesn’t actually exist for humans, just in the way that perfectionism doesn’t.

Alyssa Patmos 42:26
And we’ll just end up chasing it, we miss things along the way. I love that you talk about full spectrum, and, and the ember, my version of that, and I love, I love it. Because it’s like, again, we say the same things. But there are different ways that connect with different people. And so I love when we can, when we can be in conversation and share those to help people connect some of these dots more because it can, it can be confusing. So I’ll talk about full spectrum in like the range of full spectrum of colors, like do you want to live in black and white? Or do you want to be able to experience all the colors and all the colors and the all the emotions and and I think might be good is you had said earlier that when you were in the thick of it, when you had to go into the group, when you were in the group coaching her, and you had to introduce yourself, you said that you felt broken. And so I totally agree with you that like I’m constantly in this battle of really, a lot of the stuff I do is completely not sexy. But at the same time, the result of it, the better connection, the authenticity, you get to experience like the cave as relationships, it’s that this stuff is the sexiest of them up. But But talking but at the same time as the work is so like, the work is so important, but you can’t talk about pain all the time. However, I do think that it’s good to acknowledge the different ways we can feel there. So I’m wondering if we can just like list some of those feelings that can be very normal to feel when you’re in that place. And then we can start talking about like, okay, then what, like more than you do around recognizing that so broken is one of them. What else comes up for you? Like, am I crazy is another one that came up for me a lot like wondering, wondering that?

Iona Holloway 44:22
Yeah, I think common things I hear is I don’t even know who I am. And I’ve wasted a lot of time. And I feel very people often I feel like people get through like three months of doing inner work, and suddenly are like trapped in this life, that they’re like, oh my goodness, I don’t fit here anymore. And there’s, so there can be a real grieving of the previous self. So it’s almost like I miss, I miss myself. And even though it was rough, like I miss former versions of me like all the time. Um, let’s see, I love this question. What else… Um, no one understands me, I’m gonna outgrow, like, I’m going to outgrow relationships or friendships.

Alyssa Patmos 45:11
That’s really good. When you start committing to yourself, there is a chance that you transcend certain things that were there before. And that’s really hard. So I think we have to allow ourselves so much compassion to grieve, which I don’t think people talk about. But like, so much of this is being able to allow yourself to grieve certain things, because it adds that unknown in some regard, what I always found myself saying to was, like, I feel invisible, like, I feel like the down wallpaper, like I’m just gonna blend in the wallpaper. And that is a real shitty place to be. Yeah, yeah. So the, the, I struggled with the words personal development at times, like, I, I like inner work, too. But then it’s also like, it was, like, people don’t always know what it is. So it’s like, okay, like, here’s self growth, personal development, there’s like, I have human potential, like, all these things, there’s all these all these words. So I think a lot of the self help, which might be my least favorite in some regards, but a lot of the self help books now, they’re really based on like sheer willpower. A lot of the exercises that are written in there, the approach of delivery, like, it makes it feel like, if I just have the right mindset, like, things are gonna be okay. And I’m getting again, like it goes to prioritizing the mind. And that I know for sure is not my version of inner work. And I can pretty much guarantee it’s not yours, either. So now let’s talk about some of the ways you can feel when it’s like, okay, being robotic, like what, what is the cost of this in real life? And some of the ways it might feel some of the ways and manifest. So now, like, what is inner work to you, and you started, you’ve sort of explained it, but like, let’s just get specific. And now we’re at the point where it’s like, okay, if I’m going to do something about it, like, what is this?

Iona Holloway 47:17
Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, the reason for the record, let the record state, the reason I don’t like self development is the implied journey of like, I’m becoming better by doing this. And I actually really couldn’t care less about anyone being better. I care about people remembering who they are. And

Alyssa Patmos 47:38
Preach!

Iona Holloway 47:38
And so, that’s, that’s the way that I look at inner work, because there’s actually, even I catch myself using the word journey, and I want to kick myself because then it implies that we’re moving towards a better, we’re not going anywhere, we’re remembering who we are, which requires all the answers have always been here, they’re just buried. And so that’s why inner work speaks to me, it’s the turning towards self. And if you want to think about it, like a flower, like, the deepest parts of us, perhaps the parts that are most us, and also perhaps the parts that are most hidden, in order to get there, we have to move through, like the outer levels, petals, like whatever, in order to get to them. And we build trust that way, by by seeing with ourselves and kind of working our way down and through. And I think to your point around, like the mental model, around, whatever you want to call it, like human development, nonsense, and inner work, to me has to be a combination of sure our mind, but also our body, and also our soul, or spirit, or whatever you want to call it. And that’s why I do a lot of like, nervous system work. Breathwork is a huge component of what I do with my clients. Like visualization, maybe you could see that’s mental, I don’t know, somatic experiencing, and all that kind of thing. To me, in our work has to has to touch the spectrum of human experience. And that can’t just be done in the mind because it’s just it’s a muscle, it’ll burn hot and out. And that’s not, that’s not, that’s not change. That’s not like lasting change. So that’s the way that we that I look at it is that we are creatures, and so in the reclaiming actually ourselves, we kind of have to act more creature like and that means like breath, body sound movement, along with sure thought patterns, core beliefs, all that kind of stuff. And yeah, sure, along with perhaps connecting it to intuition and just following the call and all that kind of thing, but it has to be all three, can’t just be one.

Alyssa Patmos 50:02
I com- I completely see agree for me the the piece that you think remembering who you are like, is this so important because I was found myself saying it. Right, like, Who’s Who am I going to feel so destabilizing. And it makes it really freaking hard to trust yourself. And, and there’s so much power in trusting yourself. So I’m talking about, like, when you find your voice, you find your freedom. And to me, that’s a large piece of remembering who you are. And in the deconditioning, we’re born into this world, and all of a sudden, we have all this conditioning on us. And so the journey is this like, and again, I’m with you on the journey, because I’m like, There’s a Senate where there’s a point where the envoy is normally done. Like, it’s always, like, a, it’s a lifestyle to me, honestly, to embrace these things. And, and it’s a, it’s a conscious, for me, it’s like a inner work, it’s like a conscious choice to allow myself to experience the depths. And to just experience it all, there are different tools to get there and to help recondition and, and find a piece that I love focusing on too is, is getting to know the inner world, but then practicing how you translate that to the outer world to to really form those deep and meaningful connections. Because when you have two people who are exploring and remembering who they are, and then they get in a relationship, like, there’s a lot of things that can come up with it within that, and and how do you better support that person? And how do you engage in conflict, and this is, this is something you’re both growing in that way. So, so it’s, for me, like I said, For you said, it’s a line item. And it’s like a required thing. For me, it’s like, like I said, it’s like, the, it’s a lifestyle, like, once you make the choice to go into it, like I could never turn back because it’s not this like thing where I’m gonna go for three months, and then I’m just gonna and I’m healed, like, there’s no point killed. And that’s, that’s just, that’s what it is like, when we get to that point, like, we’re dead, like, project. And our souls will go on who knows what happens then. But I also love what you said about the flower I have, I should put my work in here because I learned so many things from my work. And thinking about going down into the sea, and now you’re talking about the flower itself. But for me, there’s so much in the seed and the slow speed at which nature just does not give a shit about how long it takes. And it’s, it’s going into, like, haven’t seen that is needed for this thing to become this beautiful orchid is housed in the seed. And if we can get back to that in us, and then start living from it more and more and more and more, the entire world changes.

Iona Holloway 53:08
Yeah, yeah. I love your point around how it’s like to the depths, yes, but then also don’t stay, you can’t just stay there. Because that can become like a lonely and isolated and I’m the only one doing that no one understands me thing, like when we deeply understand ourselves. But we’re not bringing that out, like to our external reality, like our new inner world is not yet reflected in our external reality. And that’s when I think we really have to be brave about it. Because it’s like, yeah, sure, if you’ve, if you’re journeying to the depths, so what now sort of be in alignment with what you’ve learned? What does this mean for your world, and how it looks and the choices that you make? And all that kind of thing. And I think that’s so important, because I think that sometimes we can get locked in this whole, like, healing spiral of that feeling like the points are, it’s like, oh, there must be something else. There must be something else. It must be something else. It’s like no, go with what you’ve got, and go live with that. You’ll know, you’ll know when you need to come back and do more. And I love what you said about it being a lifestyle, because I think that for me when I first started, it was this conscious thing that I was working on. And it’s not that I’m not consciously working on understanding who I am, because, but it’s because that has become the default. No. Yeah, it’s a default part of like, awareness, wherever you want to call it. There’s baseline awareness, always that me and the way that I’m operating in the world is not a black and white thing. There’s projections. There is my own stuff. There’s someone else’s stuff. There’s collective stuff, and it’s complex in that way. But it’s also just cool to have that awareness and understanding because I think it depersonalizes everything. You can then own your part in it.

Alyssa Patmos 55:00
Yes, and when we can own our part in it, it makes it so much easier to like take down the defenses and actually get to shared meaning in a conversation because otherwise what happens is we talk back and forth, but like no connection is being made, no shared meaning is actually transpiring because each person is like so in their own shit that you can’t see can’t see what’s going on, and you have compassion for the other person. And, and so for me, it’s, it’s interesting, because you know, when we talk about inner work, self development, all the words like it can make it feel like it’s this huge endeavor. And I just want like, in these conversations, I always want to remind people that like, it’s, it doesn’t have to be a huge endeavor in at every turn, you know, there are definitely times where it is really great to have a guy. And it’s great to have someone to help you, you know, I don’t want to hike Mount Everest, by myself, I would like a guide. And but when I get to the bottom of the mountain, like it’s time for that guide to go live his or her daily life, you know, and so I firmly believe in like, not keeping people around forever, I’m trying to check in with my clients. If they needed to get they, they come back. And truly for me, I think it’s these micro moments of how do I make the decision to allow myself to be human right now. And getting to that uncomfortable place like, and sometimes even for me, like I’ve been doing this for years, I make it a choice, it’s baked into my relationship in our values, like we have relationship values around how we do things. And yet, sometimes it is hard to go and say the thing that feels most vulnerable and say the thing that that might have someone being upset with me, or might leave someone thinking that I’m perfect, and making that choice to allow myself, my humanity, regardless of what other people think.

Iona Holloway 57:04
Yeah, totally. And I think that speaks directly to that idea of being able to tolerate the fluctuation and capacity of, I shouldn’t say capacity, the fluctuation of an intensity of spectrum of emotion. It’s like, if you have a capacity to experience that within yourself, then you have the capacity then if you’re being vulnerable with someone else, to be able to hold their experience and also yours while that’s happening. And then also, yeah, I I was actually having this conversation with a coach who’s in a completely different industry for me. But I was telling him the other day, I was like, I want all my clients to leave me and he was like, What do you mean? And I was like, I want all my clients to leave me because I, like you said, when you do this work with someone you have to remember, you have to have the humility to know that all you are is a guide for a moment in their journey. You are not the answer to their they don’t need you in order to know themselves. Like, I think there’s so much egotistical, non like bullshit around that. And like you said, Yeah, of course, people come back to me all the time. But it’s because I, it’s because I like Go Go fly for a while. And then perhaps you want to come back in a different capacity. That’s great. Like, I’ll be thrilled. But also I’d be so thrilled if all I see is you all I see is you doing your life over there in a more express way, I’ll be like, and overjoyed always for that. Because it goes to that whole, I think just like conditioning experience of clinging or gripping or holding on. If you don’t want to talk about nature, nothing’s clinging and grasping. It’s all just in constant flow. And I think a relationship between a coach and whatever you want to call it student a client where it’s this it’s the same hero guide is the same thing. The point is not to be stuck and welded and dependent on each other. It’s to be together from one of time to get something done, and then go keep living.

Alyssa Patmos 59:16
I love it and I think it’s so freaking important because I don’t see it talk about it. And I see so much of this come out like it on social media and whatnot, right? It makes it feel like the person like has all the answers and and it’s frustrating because at a time when people like for me, this is I’ll just explain it in a personal empezar will be much easier for me when I was gonna stick about when I was struggling. And in a very deep way feeling invisible, feeling like the wallpaper having a hard time trusting myself. I was in place where I was putting people in positions of authority over me Like, you have the answers. And so then if someone comes in stead of acting like God, the fact that the person that the answer it’s feeding, yeah, but deep insecurity that I have, it’s feeding the problem that I haven’t never learned from it that way. And so the most impact, the most impactful experiences that I’ve had is actually ending up shading a program I was in. But that being the exact freaking moment that I was, like, I no longer need to put anyone above myself or above my own opinions, or, or you’re not my authority figure, like, what what the heck? And so that that was just such a, that was a process.

Iona Holloway 1:00:49
Oh yeah, I have been, trust me, I’ve, I have been in the wrong places trying to find not even trying to find the answer. I have had the wrong guides at different points as well. And I, it’s like anything, there’s a learning moment in even the moments where you’re like, seriously, like, what is going on here? Um, but yeah, I think sometimes those moments can be a really wonderful reminder of like, the answers are in here. And so actually, I mean, I was I always say this to clients, like the most, the most valuable thing I could ever, ever teach you, perhaps is that you can trust yourself, that you can trust yourself. So what do we like? What are we going to work on here, in order for you to be able to trust that the voice within you is one that you can like the compasses in there. And there’s so many different ways to do that some people need to regain trust with their body, some people need to regain trust with their intuition. Some people need to regain trust with their mind. And like, most of us need to do all of it. But it’s the returning of autonomy to the individual, so that they can be someone who is like, not only am I on my own side, but I actually trust myself to care so much about I care so much about that I couldn’t care less if people stay with me forever. I don’t want them to.

Alyssa Patmos 1:02:24
I, I agree wholly, I agree wholly. And that that moment happened like it. I wasn’t happy with the program. But like I that became one of the most impactful programs I’ve ever been in because of that switch in me. Yeah, and, and that has nothing to do with the person you let it anyway. And I think sometimes, like we forget that, often, our struggles are designed for us. Our struggles are designed for us to heal if we choose to go that route. And it can be painful attempts, but the rewards are so astounding. And, and just moment to moment. It’s not this huge reward. And like when we do that is everything is fine, is moment to moment, depth and experience that you get out of your life when you no longer feel like you’re hiding. Oh, it’s so powerful. So I love it love when I find people who to want to kick their clients out and like, want to give them all the agency back. Yeah. is so important. I see one of the things so I sometimes find I really, really strongly believe in any guide or coach, I think if you’re like definitely viewing yourself as God that I 100% do the same thing. But I I think the only time you’re in coaching your God and the healing professions, like we have to be working on our own stuff constantly. And like my intention is always to be as clear of a mirror as I can be for our clients. And if I don’t work on my stuff, I show up as a dirty mirror. And that’s gonna help anybody. And so do you have these moments where you feel like you’re talking to yourself with your clients?

Iona Holloway 1:04:21
Oh, my goodness. I mean, yes. And honestly, all the time. And I want to normalize that. I think that’s so incredibly normal, especially if you’re in if you’re someone who you’re part of your business, like I’m running personality lead brand, but I mean, I am so deeply part of my brand, and I write everything and I create everything. And so of course, the people that show up in my worlds are going to feel maybe not identical, but similar, like we’re drawn. That’s a lighthouse that’s working well, when you’re drawing in perhaps people with like, like similar life experiences. But yeah, I have that. all the time. And I also feel very strongly with you about, I have a very strong, like, not practiced, doesn’t get taught, like not filtered through the lens of my own experience doesn’t get taught, I will hold on to something that feels like a great idea. For months, years, until I’ve had the time to actually practice it. I just refuse. And I think that’s, I think that’s what it means to be an embodiment of your work. If you want, if you like, you’d call it your body of work. You can call wherever you want, but like, how could you possibly teach from a place of knowledge, like all people deserve when they come to you? And they like hand over their money and say, Help me, you better be teaching from the wisdom of your own experience? You better be because that like one they’ll know, like, so quickly, if you’re just like, citing knowledge. And also, you know, like, you’d be in experiences where there’s a disconnect between the information being delivered and the person delivering it. And that’s because it hasn’t been a call wisdom being slow cooked. Like, you got to cook that shit. Like, they’re like the rice takes a while to cook and you better be doing yourself. Because yeah, like who are you to not be and then and then to like the whole theme of this call around in a work not being a cakewalk. It’s like, if you’re asking people to be brave, brave about themselves, brave about the work brave about being vulnerable, brave about all that stuff. You better be leading from the front, or else you’ve got no business, no business doing it at all.

Alyssa Patmos 1:06:44
Yes, and then that’s all about the embodied piece is so critical. I, I I think when you’re teaching some I think there are some skills where you’re like regurgitating a textbook that it becomes very easy to just fall into like that line of teaching and that line and delivery of things. But the what is transmitted, what is understood in the amount of impact that I’m able to have in embodied work is just it would not happen if I wasn’t teaching from a place of integration. And so I’m taught i Yes, I freaking in on this training 100% around just like, are we have to do themes that we embody. And it’s hard at times, because there’s so much pressure to be like the next version of ourselves. And it’s like, oh, you have this great idea. And it’s like, Can I pull it off? And like, maybe but but the best question, like the best, like gut check for me has been like, but am I in body fat or not. And by doing that, it’s probably not good for me to do race, or yet. I like to say like, intellectual insight without experience is incomplete understanding, if you only the intellectual knowledge, but you don’t have the experience of it in some way, then you don’t have the full understanding. And, and if he does with it, but we want to say something on it, I think the best thing to do is to own our experience, in the fact that like, we don’t have experience with it, like, just be honest about that. And so many people are so scared to say I don’t know, but I think it’s one of the most powerful things you can do at times.

Iona Holloway 1:08:26
Oh, yeah, totally, I’ve been doing that with recently in my business, specifically around when something when I view something as unprocessed or incomplete within my own experience. And I think that there was a phase early on in my business where that felt like I couldn’t talk about that, because it was like, well, it’s not processing complete. So it’s technically still open. So let’s not share that. But I was recently sort of sitting with that, like, you know, what, actually showing up in the process of working through something could be a beautiful embodiment of everything you’ve talked about, like trading and being perfect for being brave instead. And so like in the last, the last couple of months, a design created and launched a membership, which was a brand new part of my business, but I sort of enrolled everyone who was in my community in it. So I was like, this is the idea I have, but I don’t know how I’m going to do it. Can I have your input? What do you think? And then I would show them designs, and then I would talk about the like, emotional whatever I was experiencing around going from a business that was almost specific, like purely one on one to talking about the fear I had around having the capacity to hold a community and all my goodness people. It was just like another lesson in we’re kinda done. No one actually resonates with anything that’s perfect. We’re desiring vulnerability, we’re desiring honesty. And it’s not that you have to Sell your vulnerability to be relatable. But when you have opportunities to reinforce that everyone, everyone regardless of how well you think they’re doing, or how grounded they are, or how them they are, everyone’s a work in progress. Everyone’s pushing an edge in some way. And it’s cool to be able to grow your capacity to talk about that stuff in whatever context it is within yourself within your business. But then, whatever hobby, you’re working on, all of that, and like, perfectionism is sad, called Dead place. It’s not it’s not actually what people want.

Alyssa Patmos 1:10:41
No, no, and it’s so hard to get over that hurdle sometimes, but the claiming experience and like, for me that you don’t have to have the answers like, like for people who want to make a change, because so much of what we’re talking about is like, changes have to happen. And and change can be really uncomfortable for people. And so you don’t have to have the answer. You just have to have the courage and like for you, I love that you talked about bravery, bravery. For me, it’s like all season like curiosity and connection and change certainty. Yeah, it’s the courage you have, and you have to have just enough courage to cross the threshold of the fear suffocating you versus stepping in to what’s just on your side of that. What’s on the other side of it is, from my experience, always expensive. Always expensive, even if it’s uncertain. It expands in some way. And so just having the enough of the courage and the bravery to say yes to doing something in yourself, I think is one of the most powerful thing that we can do on a on a minute by minute basis.

Iona Holloway 1:11:54
Yeah, agreed. Second emotion.

Alyssa Patmos 1:11:57
Finally, I love this conversation. Loved this so much. I’m so glad we found time to talk about these things. So I know you have a quiz, we both love quizzes, I love it. Yours, the results are like the Hawk, the Octopus, and those help you find your emotional blindspots. Right?

Iona Holloway 1:12:17
Yeah,

Alyssa Patmos 1:12:17
Okay. Your – what is your website? Is it… I know it’s… mm, just say it, I’m gonna butcher it.

Iona Holloway 1:12:22
Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. So I created this quiz, which is based on like 400 hours worth of one on one coaching sessions that I’ve done in the last year and a half, specifically based around like the energy blueprints and patterns that people have, and the associated blind spots. So like an example of me was that I thought I was really strong, but my blind spot was actually behind perfectionism was a deep fear of vulnerability and control. So anyway, I created this quiz, you can find it it’s on https://www.bravething.co/blindspot That’s a really cool way to get a wee taste for the way that I talk about blind spots in relation to inner work. So you can find me find me there. https://www.bravething.co/blindspot

Alyssa Patmos 1:13:08
Okay, and then if they want to find you on Instagram, because I love this design aesthetic, it’s so great, the colors are so fun. Instagram, where’s the best place to go?

Iona Holloway 1:13:17
Yeah, I’m @IonaHolloway on Instagram. And I deeply appreciate your comment about my colors that in and of itself is a whole, like, how do I be the most me? How do I do the Iona version of inner work? I just, my former life, before I got into coaching was as a creative director. So love a love bringing creativity and design and all that stuff into into coaching. It’s, it’s fun.

Alyssa Patmos 1:13:47
Yeah, it’s so pretty, I love it. And then, if you want to take another quiz, because and I feel like they go well together, which is super fun. So find out your blind spots. And then if you want to know the unconscious communication patterns that are influencing your relationships in sneaky ways, go to AlyssaPatmos.com/quiz. And you can find out if they’re running the show, if they’re keeping you from authentic connection, if they’re adding turmoil, or if you’ve really worked to bring them to light, and some tips for dealing with it. So see how the energetic blueprint is coming through and then see how some of those are translating into these unconscious communication patterns that can sabotage relationships. Iona, thank you so, so much for being here.

Iona Holloway 1:14:36
Yeah. Thanks for having me. This was great.

Alyssa Patmos 1:14:38
And thank you for tuning in. Whether you’re watching, watching the show, or whether we are in your headphones, thank you for being here. And if you want to continue the conversation, come head over and join the community at AlyssaPatmos.com/community. See you next time.

You’ve just finished listening to another episode of Make It Mentionable with me, your host, Alyssa Patmos. If you’re looking for more in between episodes, then sign up for The Peel. It’s my free newsletter that gives tips for how to navigate whatever life dishes and it’s also the place where I share the juiciest of stories. To check it out, head on over to Alyssapatmos.com/thepeel. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top