When Your Patterns Are Trying to Keep You Safe
Christina Woods
(YouTube Transcript)
Aneta (00:03): Christina, welcome to the Live the With of Your Life podcast.
Christina (00:07): Thanks for having me, Aneta. I'm so happy to be here.
Aneta (00:10): So excited that you're here. You and I, I think, have so many things in common and similarities in our journey. So I always love how we find ourselves having these conversations in life. So, for those who aren't as familiar with you, tell me a little more about your journey through corporate and then finding your passion for the work you're doing today.
Christina (00:35): Yeah. So I grew up in the 80s. My journey started in the hustle and bustle of the 90s: the working nine-to-five, proving yourself. And that's what I did. So my journey became about being a perfectionist, and my achievements and life had to look pretty good. And so that's how I lived my life. And I wore those achievements as proof that I was doing well. And boy, I got a lot of approval that way. All of my external validation came from that corporate life and my entire identity, 30 years of it. And I truly did love what I did. I was in higher education. I was very fueled by helping young people in their future. But there was definitely that part of me that just had an endless well of what was next, what was next.
So my journey was a lot of burnout, people-pleasing, and perfectionism. And it really started my whole life of "I'll be a good girl, I'll be a good student, I'll be the good corporate person who goes above and beyond." And so when it was time for me to realize that there was a point where this didn't feel right anymore was when I started learning things about myself that weren't true, and they were things that I had just sort of thought about myself my entire life. And I started doing some deeper work and realized, wow, that thing I thought about myself isn't even true. And it sort of flipped my entire life.
And I realized, wow, if that's not true, then that thing that fuels me and makes me so good- I'm actually already good on the inside. And I realized that's so important for me to help other women identify the things they think are true about them. They might not even be true. What does that do? That changes your whole world. That changes the lens that you look through life. So we can dissect that. But that was really a big flip-flop for me. It's like that all those things I was doing were to make myself feel good. And they were all external validation and appraisal. Yeah.
Aneta (02:42): Where do you think that comes from? I'm a Gen Xer. Are you a Gen X? Yeah.
Christina (02:46): I am, I am, yes.
Aneta (02:48): I'm sure every generation has their own sets of challenges, but I feel like with Gen Xers, I remember also just putting on the suit, putting on pumps, and cutting the hair. And there's just this assumption that this is what you do, this is what professional looks like. You don't ask for more; just be grateful. There were just these sets of assumptions, and I've spoken to other women like you and many of my clients, I'm like, who told us these things? Where do you think that we all sort of had the same handbook? I don't know if it
Christina (03:22): Yeah, we did.
Aneta (03:22): Was explicit.
Christina (03:24): Yeah, the actions were all this underlying belief that, and I work with all those same women, and we have the friends and the Gen X generation, but there is this underlying belief that we're on our own. You're on your own. And we wore it with a lot of pride. You're on your own; you're independent. That's amazing. But with that comes this mentality: no one's coming; you're on your own. And if no one's coming, you're on your own. I can't depend on anyone. It comes from a deep survival mentality, which, for everyone, is their own journey, rooted in something else.
Because the only thing that matters is all of our behaviors rooted in what is going to keep us safe and help us survive, not how much money's in the bank, what promotion, what bonus trip do we get to Hawaii? That's not really what's driving our deepest behavior. It's what helps us feel safe. And many things were supported and praised. The more you think you're on your own and independent, the better, back then. But if you really peel that back, it's not that great to feel like you're on your own and you can't ask for support. When you really feel that back, it's like, wait a second, support's not that bad. being independent's not bad either.
Aneta (04:38): I think it's so much of it too. I don't know about you, but our generation of women too; sometimes our moms worked outside the office, maybe, or outside of the home. Sometimes they maybe did part-time, but it wasn't necessarily the way we work. At least my mom didn't. So there wasn't really evidence of what this could look like in a healthy, balanced way. Many of us either looked at what our fathers were doing or what other people in authority were doing.
And so I feel like our generation of women didn't actually we were told to be independent, and you want to be able to have your own money and be independent and make these decisions. But there wasn't necessarily any hands-on coaching, maybe because the people that were close to us didn't know how to do that for us. We had to figure it out.
Christina (05:26): You're right. Yeah, you're right. And again, the motivation is: how can we do that and stay safe? And the way that we can do that and stay safe is by driving all of that. So you're right, there was no handbook and no balance. And I can even remember saying, and hearing from guidance, as long as you put yourself last and all these other things first, you're good. As if that was a good manual back then. I was like, okay, as long as I just get it done and don't sleep, I'm good. That was the roadmap then.
But that's such a survival mentality. And now, you kind of have that awakening, but if you look back, what was the goal? The goal was to make those things happen and survive. And that identity of that fierceness and that make it happen. And that generation did break through some walls, but they did it in a way that caused a lot of burnout, a lot of perfectionism, and a lot of things. So luckily we've swung the other way now. We can look and say, let's heal some of those patterns and that identity, and let's have a different identity now.
Aneta (06:30): Yeah. What were some of the things that you started recognizing weren't true? What were some of those assumptions you said that you had about yourself, and then you suddenly had these moments of like, wait, is that even true?
Christina (06:42): Yeah, well, one of them was, and this might actually shock because it's fairly extreme, but I find a lot of women I work with, even though I didn't necessarily live my life thinking this all the time, but a little bit of, I was, I'm bad. So there was a lot of shame in things. For example, spending too much money, then getting a lot of money, and then spending a lot of money. And this yo-yo, I'm not good with money. Food, yo-yoing up and down. I'm bad with that. I'm not good at that.
So, not that I'm a bad person and I hurt people, but I'm bad at that. I'm not good at that. I speak up too; I'm too loud; I'm too much. Not disciplined enough in certain things. I procrastinate a lot. Why do I wait until the last minute, stay up till three in the morning, and then get things done?
And what I realized, and I remember the day that I said, I'm not bad, which was like a paradigm shift where you look at everything and you wait, wait a second, I'm not bad, was such a shift that I realized there are so many women, men, people that have these beliefs- that belief that I heard that had me spend money or do these other things that was really motivated by a belief of shame, or a belief that I wasn't good at something or was too much in the room- was just fueled by something else, another place, another identity. And I wasn't bad. I actually was trying to protect myself and just stay in the room.
And so once I changed that, and I realized, no, actually I'm pretty good at money, but I'm shopping because I'm actually trying to feel better. I'm actually eating right now to try to soothe myself, and I can soothe myself a different way. actually I can ask for space in this room a different way. I don't have to shout and be the bossy pants in the room. I can actually ask for space and speak up in a different way. I don't have to do it that way. But the intention was good.
Aneta (08:49): It's so good. I think that all of those are judgments that we have of ourselves, and we live sometimes with such extreme judgments and the thoughts and actually these beliefs that you say sometimes are so deep-rooted around behaviors. They're not necessarily character flaws, but we somehow let them grow heavier and take up more space in our minds. So how did you start doing the work around that, when you said, "I can change how I'm thinking about this, but I can also shift into a different identity of who I am"? So how did you start that work?
Christina (09:27): Well, I say to some clients, you'll get to that point where you bang your hands on the wall and say, I don't want to do that anymore. That level of I want to change. You get up to here. I'm Italian, so we go, get up to here. We're sick of this. That's a good place to go. But I'm getting really curious. And I did deep subconscious work. So what I mean by that: I did hypnosis, I did EMDR, I did beyond talk therapy, and I love that, but I went even deeper. Like, what are the beliefs I have about myself that are almost invisible to me, that are so automatic- my autopilot- that I can't even see them.
And so through hypnotherapy, through EMDR, I was able to get really curious and say, why do I do that? Why do I say that? Why do I feel that way when I sort of logically know it's not true? I know I shouldn't say yes to every project, but I still do it because I want to please everyone. Or why do I say, let's get really curious? Those methods let me go deeper, peel the onion back, and see things I couldn't see otherwise. And it was from there that I was able to see, because once you can see, you can't unsee. Right. And those tools, because when you look at the subconscious, I knew that I had a little anxiety.
I knew I had stress and more tension. We look at our habits; we look at our life. I knew I snapped; we all snap. We do things, right? That, gosh, why do I do that? I have a lot of clients who will say, "Beat myself up because I know better," and insight and understanding don't create change. Insight and understanding is insight. But it's when we go deeper, like you're saying here, how do we do that? And so sometimes we need tools to go to that level that is somewhat invisible, but it's the biggest part where change is made.
Aneta (11:24): Yeah. What was it that gave you the courage to leave your corporate role and to say, Maybe there's something bigger that I could be doing in the world or different.
Christina (11:34): Yeah. Well, it was the profound joy that I had when I had these epiphany moments that I'm not- let's say- like, I'm not bad; I can do this, I can do that. And I remember sitting there at a cafe watching women walk by, and people walk by saying, She might not think something nice about herself, and it's not even true. And he
Aneta (11:56): Wow.
Christina (11:56): might think that, and he might think that. I've always been a role model and a mentor. And I just knew that that was my calling to go out and help other people say, Hold on a second. I know you think really bad things about yourself sometimes. And there's just this deeper level. The truth about you is this: those thoughts are doing a really good job of keeping you small, creating anxiety, or creating procrastination.
So you don't go out there and speak your truth, or go into that board meeting and knock it out of the park, or snap at your kids when you really just need to take a bath and do something for yourself. But someone's taught you otherwise. And so that was really my moment. I also had a moment with my higher self, my higher power. I was pulling weeds in the backyard, and it wasn't a great moment.
I was kind of having an emotional moment. I was going through a divorce. I was realizing I needed to leave corporate. And I heard a voice say to me, " When are you going to stop doing what makes everyone else happy and do what makes you happy? And I knew then that I had to prioritize me and not everyone else. And that's really scary when you've always prioritized and put everyone else first.
Aneta (13:13): Yeah, especially when we have the belief that by doing so, we're doing something wrong, or that we're doing something bad, or we're not doing it the right way. And that is, I think, such a struggle for so many high-achieving women. I've seen this with friends sometimes where I will say, because there's a fine line between being a coach and still being someone's friend, and saying, you don't actually have to do that.
But the response sometimes that I get is, " But I can, though. And it's like almost a, " But I am strong enough. If I choose not to do something, even if they don't want to, whether it's at work or in their personal relationships or whatever it is, or weeding the yard, it's almost like a weakness. Somehow we've equated or confused things that we're asked to do, things that are expected of us, and if we choose not to do it, like a weakness that we can't possibly take it on. Has that been your experience as well with high achievers?
Christina (14:14): Yeah. And also it creeps in right behind that: if I don't, who else? Who else? Who else? Nobody will.
Aneta (14:19): Who will? Nobody will. Yep.
Christina (14:22): And it's just an energetic responsibility that I mean, let's just face it, like we're better at it. I can do that. It's easier for me. I'm more of a multitasker. I'm the one in the family. I'm the one that can just do it with my eyes closed type of energy. What we really do is rob the people around us of the energetic accountability, the energetic lesson that they're meant to learn from it. I think that was really the biggest evolution for me when I started taking back less.
Taking back my own sovereignty and ability to put myself first, and not have to do everything for everyone, was the amount of accountability I allowed; even my children and everyone else had it as their growth. And boy, is it uncomfortable to do that when you're used to being the overachiever, the one who does pretty much everything. One, it's just exhausting, and then all of a sudden you feel like this feels very odd. It feels very different. But watching their growth and having that different energetic dynamic with people is wonderful.
Aneta (15:33): Yeah, I love that you said we rob other people of the opportunity because the control is really a fear response. I mean, part of it is we feel like we should do these things, but part of it is also that we're controlling in certain ways, and we have a belief that others can't necessarily do it as well as we can.
Christina (15:52): It is. And, I think when we go in with compassion, we go in with a big, big heart toward that control. I think we respond much faster when we look for the why behind the control. It's when we get angry at the control, or why do I do that, or that I need to stop this, or we push back, and we get a lot of resistance. But the first thing I always say is, thank you so much, control. You helped me get through most of the parts of my life; I needed you. And now, thank you. How are you helping to enlighten me and awaken me to where I'm going next?
Aneta (16:31): Yeah. When you do identity work with your clients, and you really help them shift from maybe an outdated identity, one that doesn't serve any longer, and they start building a new one, what does that process look like?
Christina (16:45): Well, I use hypnosis as the biggest tool for me to find out what identity they're currently in. So that's the biggest process. Would you like me to dive into that a little bit? Or Okay.
Aneta (16:54): I would love that. Yes, please.
Christina (16:57): Great. So, hypnosis is such a natural place. I don't know if you've had a lot of guests about hypnosis or okay. Okay.
Aneta (17:05): I've had some, and I've experienced it, yeah.
Christina (17:08): Great. So then, for those that don't know, it's a natural process and feels like a meditation, but we're just going to that part of our mind, our subconscious mind, that's the most suggestible. That way, we can ask some really great questions. So if someone's dealing with procrastination, anger, or control, we get to ask the mind, "What is the root cause and reason for this control?" in the most suggestible state.
Not the state you and I are in right now, but the most suggestible state. And we can ask and find out. And we'll go back to moments in life that contributed and were the root cause of why it originally started. And it might make no sense. You might be having cereal with your sister at age five, and a teacher made a comment, or something happened at work. We put it all together, and it creates a story that gives us insight. And then from there.
We can flip the script, but we do it when you're in the most suggestible state. So it's like you're in that sponge state. From there, I'll find the root. We've got to get to the root first. I'm not going to guess why the control is there. We get this really great insight. Then I make custom audio recordings for clients with very descriptive, powerful words and tools. They listen to that. It's about 20 minutes. They'll listen to that every day, or on average, for about 60 days. And during that process, I'll be working with them. When you're changing a belief that has kept you safe and surviving for 30, 40, 50 years, resistance will come up. A lot of angst; your nervous system sometimes goes into lots of different places. Like, why am I not sleeping? Why am I agitated? Why am I annoyed? You're supposed to be helping me feel better, Christina.
Those things can happen. So I'll meet with them during that process. And then the beautiful part is that it just becomes who you are at the very root. And you don't have to think about it or try. All of a sudden, you start noticing. I think one of the best ways a client said it to me: it's like you just cleaned the windshield off my car that was really dirty. Now I see better. I feel better, and I see better.
Aneta (19:18): I love that. Is that the wise woods method that you've created?
Christina (19:23): That's part of it. I'm an energy healer too, so I'll use Reiki and energy healing to clear energy, move it faster, and support each unique client.
Aneta (19:35): Wonderful. And do you work with clients in person and virtually as well?
Christina (19:40): I do. They're all over the world. So most of it is virtually, and all of it is the same, whether it's virtually or in person. It's the same. The energy is the same whether we're on Zoom or not.
Aneta (19:50): Yeah. Do you find that most of your clients are women, or do you also work with men?
Christina (19:57): Most of my clients are women, but I have the lovely pleasure of, because they'll say, Can you work with my kids or my husband? So yeah, I'll work with their children, their teens, their husbands, spouses, brothers, and so on, but mostly women.
Aneta (20:10): And if there's someone listening and maybe they're still in the old patterns, they know maybe they're not aware of all their subconscious beliefs, but they know that they've got some patterns that don't necessarily serve them, some behavior or some beliefs. What would you want them to know?
Christina (20:28): Don't rack your brain worrying about how or why I have this. Where did this come from? I think many clients will call and say, " My parents got divorced here. This happened to me here. I kind of know why I have this. And don't go in with any assumptions. I think that's really important. So don't think you have to have it all figured out.
You have a right? It's your birthright to feel at ease and flow in life. And all you have to know is that however you're feeling in life, if you have some resistance, if you feel heavy about something, or I feel like I get angry too much, or I have this or I have that going on in life. Trust me, we all have an area that we want to feel lighter in. And that's
All you need to say is, like, I want to feel a little lighter in this area. I want to feel less heavy in this area. I don't know why. You don't have to know why. I don't even have to know why. Your beautiful subconscious mind; your body is full of beautiful answers. The wisdom is in the wound. We go knock. We find out why, and all these answers come out. And it's such a journey that shares with us and enlightens you as you go. It's natural and beautiful, and it happens. All these answers are within you.
Aneta (21:45): Yeah. I've had amazing experiences doing this type of, like, having someone facilitate with me. I don't do that work. But have you ever worked with anyone where it didn't work, where they just couldn't allow themselves to relax enough to go deeper?
Christina (22:00): No, I've had people where we've taken a little bit longer. I will chat with them before a session. So if someone has a lot of anxiety or has a hard time trusting or relaxing. I mean, that was me for many, many years. So I completely can connect with that. Then I'll work with them beforehand, give them special things to listen to, do some somatic work, and have them listen to my voice beforehand. So, I think it's not, hi, how are you? Let's do some hypnosis. I think it's, let's build a rapport and get comfortable. Let me learn about you, your body, your nervous system, and find out exactly the best way to make this the ideal situation for everyone. But yeah, there have been a couple of times- not that it hasn't worked; it's just worked differently for everyone.
Aneta (22:47): Yeah. I ask for folks that maybe have never done this type of work or have any sort of doubts or anxiety about it. But I love that you also do the follow-ups where you do the recordings because we were running tapes all the time. Our thoughts are running amok anyway. So it's like, why not focus for 20 minutes on what you want, create a sense of safety, and be able to create a vision- maybe one that then becomes so familiar that it's real.
I do this a lot with clients who have fear of speaking, and it's just visualizing, putting them in a situation to be able to visualize what they actually want, not what they don't want, which is where we sometimes naturally go. So, do you have any protecting confidentiality- but any client cases or anything like that that came through, like success stories, that you wanna share in terms of maybe what someone was struggling with in the past and then, after working with you, what the result was?
Christina (23:48): Yeah, I have many. So let's see, well, I have two; they're a little bit different. So I had a client that was trying to quit; when she would stress out, she would grab cigarettes, and she would grab a little bit of wine. It wasn't too bad, but she wanted to stop that as a comfort. And in hypnosis, we went back.
So many times you can buy a hypnosis audio, like a stop-smoking type of audio. And the reason I'm not a fan of those is that, to begin with, it doesn't go to the root of what is the cause of that behavior for that person. And this is a perfect example. We went back to the fact that when she was young, she had a swimming teacher, a swimming instructor, when she was three years old, who was the most loving, kind woman.
Her mother wasn't particularly nurturing or loving, but this swimming instructor was. And she had smoker's breath. She smelled like smoke. And so she's back in the pool, three years old. I love this teacher, and she smells like smoke. And so to her, that was like love and comfort and this beautiful comfort feeling. So when you're stressed, what does she want to go back to? Of course, we know the mouth connection.
Aneta (25:01): Yes.
Christina (25:02): But to her, it was like a warm blanket of grandma love. And as soon as we disconnected that and associated it with something else, but left the love, she hasn't smoked since. And that, to me, was one of those, like
Aneta (25:13): Wow.
Christina (25:15): I could make her a generic audio, don't smoke, don't smoke, but
Aneta (25:17): Yeah, yeah.
Christina (25:19): I wasn't gonna ever nail that until her mind showed me exactly what was there, what was connecting it. Because her mind wanted to keep her safe.
Aneta (25:24): That is incredible. Yeah.
Christina (25:28): Yeah, another one was an entrepreneur, very successful. Her business was growing, and she wanted to take it to the next level and create a video series of coaching-type videos. And she had booked the videographer and the makeup artist. Everybody was out and had to cancel maybe three or four times because she couldn't speak in front of the camera. And this is a woman who'd done a lot of public speaking, was very articulate, 25 years old, and had her own business. And so she says, what is the deal? I don't know. I'm not afraid of speaking. I don't know what the deal is. And we went back after a couple of sessions. So sometimes it's not just one session; it might be two or three, but it's not every Friday at three o'clock for five years. It's just a couple.
And we went back to how she was raised: as a perfectionist. She had military background family and it was you know every spoon and fork was aligned family you know did things a very a certain way and if in her mind things were not incredibly predictable then don't do it don't do it it's not safe and these videos were her with only tiny little cue cards the videographer did not want her to be scripted he wanted her to add lib and that was a no-go in her mind. Her nervous system said, absolutely not gonna happen. That is not safe. And so we rewired that.
I gave her audios; I had to rewire what safety meant. Then she went away, and on her way, she was able to make the videos. But familiar to her was that she had always controlled, like, speech, everything else. But this was different. And I had to make that familiar to her.
Aneta (27:15): Those are such great examples. And it just pinpoints, like you said, why we can't just listen to the generic or bypass the important work because those beliefs, whether we're aware of them or not, many times we're not, they drive the behaviors. So if you're not focused on the right one, it can keep lingering. Is that why patterns- why it's so difficult to get out of patterns if we don't do this type of work?
Christina (27:40): That's exactly why. And it's exactly why we got to stop beating ourselves up because we're programmed to keep going toward what's familiar, that's why it's not sabotage, it's protection, it's protecting us. And so we might say, I'm terrible; I do all these sabotaging things. It's like, no, your subconscious only cares if you're alive; it doesn't care if you're the perfect weight or have this or that. It doesn't care at all. It only cares that you're alive.
So, give yourself a break. And yeah, those patterns are familiar. We can make a new pattern familiar. We have neuroplasticity. It's incredible. We can make anything familiar. Let's just make what you want familiar. Make a healthy thing familiar. Make your truth familiar. Marissa Peer, a great hypnotherapist, trained me, and she wrote a book called Tell Yourself a Better Lie. It's like if you're gonna tell yourself
Aneta (28:30): No, no, no.
Christina (28:31): A lie, tell yourself a better lie.
Aneta (28:33): Yeah, she's amazing. This is such important work that you're doing, Christina. What else would you like the audience to know if there's some woman listening right now who knows that there might be something that's holding her back? What would you like for her to know?
Christina (28:46): I'd like her to know that if she's doubting her intuition, to find moments of quietness to tap into her intuition, because especially for a woman, or anyone, her intuition is her power. And her intuition is not controlling or full of fear. Her intuition is calm and quiet, and it's such a knowing; it's her inner compass, and it's a guiding force. Her intuition is so powerful.
Aneta (29:15): So amazing. And yet it's the one thing that many people have trouble with: the self-doubt and knowing if it
Christina (29:22): The second one.
Aneta (29:23): really is their intuition or if it's someone else's voice.
Christina (29:26): Yeah. My priority is just to let us tap into that beautiful intuition.
Aneta (29:32): Yeah, it's such great advice. If folks wanna work with you, they wanna learn more about ways that they can work with you. What are the best ways to find you?
Christina (29:41): The best way is my website is christinalwoods.com and slash the reset room. I do a free weekly hypnosis and energy healing experience every Thursday at four. So you can go to the reset room and sign up, and it's free. And there are a few other goodies in there too. Yeah.
Aneta (29:59): That's wonderful. Is that Eastern Standard Time?
Christina (30:02): It's actually Pacific time. So Thursday at four PM Pacific time. There are replays in there. Yeah.
Aneta (30:05): Okay. Okay. So seven. Yeah. Seven Eastern time. That's wonderful. And I'm just so excited. I definitely want to come to one of those sessions. It sounds amazing.
Christina (30:14): Thank you. Thank you.
Aneta (30:16): I ask everyone a final question, which is: what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
Christina (30:23): Being present, and what I said earlier, is being accountable to my energy and my intuition brought so much depth to my life because as I do that, I get to receive. I get to receive so much more love and support and watch my children grow, the people around me grow, my relationships get stronger. So being more present and more in tune with my own power and my high power.
Aneta (30:56): Beautiful. Christina, thank you for all the amazing work that you are doing in the world.
Christina (31:00): Yeah.
Aneta (31:01): I am so grateful we had an opportunity to connect.
Christina (31:03): Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.