Disclosure: I receive compensation if you click on the link to purchase Jennifer’s book.

Transcript

Jessica: And welcome back, listeners. Today we have Jennifer Elizabeth Moore here to talk with us about healing. In other words, everything that we learned about healing is wrong. So, Hi Jennifer. How are you doing today?

Jennifer: I'm doing well, Jess, or do you go by Jessica or Jess? Sorry, I just immediately thought, Jess, Jessica. Great. Okay.

Jessica: How about you on this one? Do you go by Jennifer?

Jennifer: I go by all of the above. Everybody calls me Jen, but my pen name is Jennifer, and then my nephews call me Jenny, my brother and my sister, and my nephews call me Jenny. So I have, I go by many things. Yeah.

Jessica: All right. Awesome. So my audience is curious. Tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Jennifer: My name is Jennifer Elizabeth Moore, and I am an author. I'm the author of the award-winning Amazon Bestseller Empathic Mastery, a Five-Step System to Go From an Emotional Hot Mess to Thriving Success. And I am also. So an EFT Master trainer for EFT International, and if you're unfamiliar with the words, EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques, and EFT International is the only nonprofit organization and certifying body on the entire planet for EFT practitioners.

It's a fantastic organization, so I am honored to be one of the master trainers for EFTI. I am also a mentor, healer, and intuitive guide for highly sensitive empaths. And so that's kind of the medium-length version of who I am and what I do.

What We Know About Healing Is Wrong

Jessica: Awesome. All right, great. Thanks for sharing. So when we talked before we recorded this, we talked about this whole concept of healing and the myth versus reality of that. I wanna share a little bit more of your thoughts on that topic.

Jennifer: I would love to. So, you know, I've been having this conversation recently with one of my mentees about feeling like we're broken, you know? The core idea that so many of us seem to carry around and especially like when we go into healing with this idea that there's something wrong with us that needs to be fixed.

And I think that one of the things is when we are always looking at ourselves as the problem when we're always looking at ourselves as being wrong, being broken, needing to do something, that really does kind of drive that sort of, do, do, do, do, do hustle culture of healing that you and I were talking about.

And the idea that we have a goal, like we're trying to get somewhere with our healing and what I have personally found so often is that the irony is that acceptance and love is the key to transforming ourselves, not looking at it and being like, that is wrong and it needs to be fixed. And so what I've noticed is that there's this almost irony that when we can accept ourselves exactly where we are, warts and all, and be present with compassion and kindness towards ourselves and other people about our pain, miracles happen.

Whereas when we scrutinize the pain and sort of try to dig it out by the root or go in deep, I think a lot of times what we end up doing is reinforcing the idea that we're not absolutely divine and perfect exactly as we are. So that's kind of my, my first sort of round of, in this lightning round of conversation about healing, that's kind of my first, first sort of thought about it.

Problems with "Healing" Culture

Jessica: So when you mentioned like someone trying to like, dig it out at the root or, or cut out that, that pain and that issue as a process of healing, so our listeners have that point of reference so that they can go, oh my gosh, that's me. or maybe not, hopefully not. what does that look like if someone is trying to like, do, that heavy work, but it's not really helping them in the process?

Jennifer: So I'll talk about my own experience because you know I am white-haired to prove it. I've been on the healing journey and on a healing path at this point for like four decades, and I started training back as a breath worker in the early nineties, and at that point in time, the idea was you had to go big or go home.

It's like if it wasn't dramatic, it wasn't it like you weren't, if you didn't have some major epiphany, it somehow you weren't doing it the right way. And so it wasn't uncommon for me to go and spend two to three or four days at these healing retreats, lying in a room with like big amplifiers and speakers, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom going and just doing this like deep, intense breath work with like periods of just like screaming, like screaming.

And I would come away from it feeling like a, a baby duck, you know, or a baby chick that had just hatched, like feeling very exhausted from the effort, but also sort of like, I've done this amazing work, and also hoarse, like I would be like, I wouldn't be able to talk, , but the thing about it was that it was this quality of, "I have to go after the deepest, darkest, gnarliest, worst thing, and that's the only way that I'm gonna be able to heal myself, and I have to look for the thing."

And also this idea that, if I'm not ready to do the work, that I have resistance to doing the work; that there is something wrong with me if I'm feeling like, yeah, I'm not ready to go into that, that would be like, oh, that's just because, you're being a coward, instead of maybe your subconscious or your instincts are telling you this is not the right place to go, that this would cause more harm than good.

And so for me, What would often happen would be that I would have these breakthrough moments at these events and these weekends, but then I would come back, and within a few days to a few weeks, I would be struggling with the same issues. I would be struggling with the same level of anxiety. I would be struggling with the same sense of I'm not good enough. I'm not okay. I'm not doing this the right way. I'm broken, and I need to be fixed. I need to be better.

One of the ideas that a lot of us used to have was that we would always go for what's called the first or worst. You know, like looking for the first event that really likes the, you know, the traumatizing, seminal event that started the whole mess or the worst thing, and like having that courage to just be like, just suck it up buttercup and go there and do the dark profound thing, like go into the gnarliest stuff.

And what I have found is that a lot of times if we are not really ready to do that work, and also if we have not done work to calm and settle and soothe our nervous system, what happens when we go into that stuff prematurely, and as the first thing, we have a tendency to stir up the muck at the bottom of the pool, and overstimulate an already dysregulated nervous system.

And so what I have found for myself is that the most effective healing is ironic, the gentlest. Not the "let's go for the jugular, and if you're not willing to go after the darkest, gnarliest, worst memory or share the hard story that somehow, that's a sign you just don't have the cajones to do it".

Jessica: Mm.

Jennifer: Yeah. So does that make sense? Does that,

Jessica: Yeah, that does; on being able to show that. So what would that gentle healing process look like?

Jennifer: Part of that delicate healing process looks like the willingness to be willing to be uncomfortable, the willingness to be willing to sit with ourselves and to have mercy, like fierce compassion for ourselves when we are going through a hard time, and to hold that space for the difficult stuff.

One of the things about the hustle culture and healing culture, and also just kind of the whole sort of way that the wellness world and especially the New Age world has kind of progressed, is that there seems to be this misunderstanding, I don't know, I believe a misconception that if you are doing it right, you're happy all the time.

Human beings are complex, and we are not –  like happiness is one emotion, but we also experience grief. We also experience fear. We also experience anger. We also experience doubt. We also experience curiosity. There are so many different emotions that we as human beings experience, and yet we have this tendency, I think, many of us, to make emotions wrong if they are ones that we are not comfortable with or ones that we've never learned to sit with.

Jessica: Mm.

Jennifer: The very beginning of this is just the willingness to be present with feelings and accept that some days are harder than others. Some days we feel lonely. Some days we feel grief. Some days we feel concerned or worried, and that's okay. So I really see for me just that fundamental shift in our philosophy about how we treat ourselves around our feelings is part of the key. And then obviously, as an Emotional Freedom Technique practitioner and trainer, I really believe very strongly in the power of using EFT, which is also known, the broader term is tapping. But EFT, specifically through EFT International, uses very, very gentle techniques that are really about being able to sit with ourselves and sit with other people in the depth of whatever, or in the presence, let's not say depth, but in the presence of whatever is going on for us, and to be able to sit with those feelings and let it be okay. The irony in my experience is that when we accept things, they shift. When we reject things or resist things or try to make them wrong, they have this horrible tendency to just get worse and worse and worse, like they double down.

It's almost like, you know, when you were a little kid, every one of us at some point got stung by a mosquito, and there's the thing where it's like your mom is like, "Don't scratch it. Don't scratch it. You're gonna make it worse if you scratch it."

And of course, you're a kid, you scratch it.

And what happens? It provokes the histamine reaction. It causes the system to just go like cuckoo nuts, and suddenly what had been maybe a tiny little red welt is suddenly this big, bump on your arm or your leg or wherever, and it's like all you can think about is how uncomfortable you are because you've got this mosquito bite that's not going away.

And yet, ironically, then maybe something happens. Your cousin comes over, and you're like, Hey, let's go ride bikes. Let's go do this other thing, and you forget about the mosquito bite, and all of a sudden it's like, you just let it go. There's a sort of acceptance that it just is what it is, and suddenly it's like somebody's like, Hey, how's that mosquito bite?

And you're kind of like, mosquito bite. What? Mosquito bite?

There's that quality of when we direct our attention towards the problem in this way that's about, "this is wrong, and I want it to be better, so often we exacerbate it, whereas when we're like, "yep, it is what it is, it is uncomfortable. This is happening," there's, this way that it has more of an opportunity to shift.

Jessica: Got it.

And yeah, as soon as you mention the whole issue once you accept your situation, it's a lot better. I've seen in more contemporary spiritual writers, thank goodness, that it's like they're bringing up the whole, it's like when you resist things, you're actually making it worse on yourself. So that's an important tidbit of wisdom on there.

Now, you mentioned the whole hustle culture, healing culture, and the intersection of New Age spirituality and how there's like this almost implied pressure to be happy all the time.

Jennifer: Yes.

Jessica: Do you feel that the way that a lot of New Age people or spiritual people show up online might be contributing to that? Especially if we're marketing ourselves, we end up curating the positive that's going on in our life, and then much like body image issues coming up with models, now you have spiritual people who are like, okay, all I see are happy people. Something is wrong with me.

Jennifer: There are a couple of things that are coming to my mind. One is Glennon Doyle, who I really admire because she is not afraid to be a hot mess. And I really love her for her honesty and her sincerity, and she has a remarkable podcast called We Can Do Hard Things.

And Glennon recently has come out about her recent diagnosis of anorexia, and she's talking about how she's dealing with this mental health diagnosis. And she's been talking about this idea of how so many people wait for the "ta-da" that they wait for that opportunity to be able to talk about being another side of the mess, like "I was this train wreck, but now because of this five-step system or because of this modality that I learned from shamans on the top of Mount Everest, that I now am perfect and I can teach you how to be perfect too."

We, as a culture, tend to hold off on sharing our mess and hold off on talking about the messy middle and the intensity.

I also have noticed, though, that, because I've been in the healing world for over four decades, I've been around the scene, I've watched it go from a place where the focus was much more on modality, was much more on technique, was much more on mastery to a period where about maybe 10, 15 years ago, all of a sudden it became about marketing.

I was taught when working with a couple of different people, but especially one business coach; her niche was working with transformational entrepreneurs and healers.

What she said was, "People do not care about your credentials. People do not care about what your experience or your skillset is, or your level of experience or skill. All people wanna know is that you get what they're going through, that you understand what they need, and that you can speak to their pain and you can offer them lightly at the end of the tunnel that suggests that you have a solution for them."

What I was taught was in terms of marketing, you don't talk about your skills. You don't talk about the modality. You don't talk about your accredited, certified degree and know what the ever-loving F they are doing versus people who are slick marketers.

You know, as you were speaking, you were talking about the challenge of this curated happiness that we're seeing everywhere. I also think that part of it is all of the things that people are being told they shouldn't be included, so it is this idea of, like, look at her. She's got it totally together.

I will say though, that there's also that other weird quality of performative vulnerability where you get the people who are like doing, they're like crying on the reel in the middle of their, you know, and, and like boundarylessness of like y like, I'm just like, oh no, you didn't like, did you just really say that?

And so there is also this kind of weird manipulation of sharing your mess but sharing it as a marketing strategy. As Ram Das says, We're all just walking each other home."

And there is another part of it that is like this idea of gurus. This idea of hierarchy. This idea of this person is somehow more evolved, more advanced, more, you know, further along than I am. They have something I don't have, and I'm gonna give my money. I'm gonna give my power. I'm gonna give my energy over to this person because they are telling me that they have figured it out.

We could go off on a whole tangent about these people who are all into the whole like, "Well, you're just so 3D, but I'm really 5D." These people who, who like have this idea that like somehow, even though they're in a human body...

Jessica: I'm like, oh my gosh. It's like, okay, 3D versus 5D. What is this? That's its episode we're; we're not gonna go into…

Jennifer: Okay. Yeah, let's not go into that. Yeah. 3D versus 5D, but like O M G. It's like the last time I looked you still needed to sleep. The last time I looked, you still needed to eat. Last time I looked, you still needed to take a bath, and you still needed to poop. Like, come on people, you know, let, let's drop the pretension.

Yeah.

Performative Vulnerability

Jessica: That hits home a lot on it. The performative vulnerability across the board. Is it not just spiritual people who are marketers? It's something I've noticed a lot in internet culture in general, and I was guilty of it too, of overly emoting to a large audience.

I have since pulled way back on that cause I realized that a lot of that was drawn from my need for affirmation and have been like, oh no, no. It's like, okay, give this to my small circle of friends to actually bounce ideas off of. And other than that, I don't need to show that off in order to get sympathy.

We're seeing a lot of that, of people thinking that in order to feel like their pain is valid, they have to cry on TikTok.

Looking at their responses to that. You have people who are being sympathetic, and then you have others who are looking at that and going, "That's not healthy, and that's not normal." Not to put the marker on what is or isn't healthy. It's a maladaptive coping mechanism. It's not going to get them closer to where they may even wanna be. So there's that issue.

And then when we're talking about like the gurus and mastery, my mind immediately went to -not to knock on Reiki practitioners. A lot of them are great, amazing people, but this whole Reiki degree in a weekend or Reiki zero to master in a weekend, and you have people out there who, and I know some people are going to be offended, but whatever, who are hot messes

in.

Jennifer: Yes,

Jessica: And They have all these issues that are going on, and they come in, and they're like, I'm a Reiki master from like of either a weekend or maybe a couple of short things, versus understanding like the concept of Reiki.

This is legit a mastery. It's you have to cultivate that energy within yourself in order to be able to provide it to other people. It's not just your kind of being this little human straw, as it were, for energy. You gotta take care of your life there.

And anyone who is. providing that safe space for others, whether it's divination, whether it's tapping, whether it's energy work or all of those, you have to have your house at least a little bit clean or be able to admit that you're

Jennifer: Well, in terms of having your house a little bit cleaner, your house a little bit in order, being able to recognize what are your skill sets, what are you good at, and what are you not good at? And I am actually a reiki master. I've been a Reiki practitioner and a reiki master since the nineties.

I have been on this path for a long time. And what I will say is that even though you can do Reiki training in a weekend, you are not fully integrated with the energy of being a master for a couple of years. And my personal experience was that I received the download, and then it was about what I had to do to integrate, and step to expand into that consciousness, that awareness.

Part of this is that because we have been in a culture where the idea of sharing credentials is no longer considered necessary, I think that there are a number of people who actually honestly believe that if they were a high priestess in a previous life, and they can remember being a healer in another life, they don't need to get any credibility or any kind of training or any kind of accountability or supervision or mentoring in this life to become who they are.

remember other lives. I've been on this healing path and this spiritual path for multiple lives. I recall these things. Your mileage may vary. You may or may not believe in past lives. You This is my reality.

But the thing is that just because I, the high priestess, ground in another life or ran a nunnery in another life does not mean I am qualified to claim those credentials in this lifetime.

think a lot of people do not understand the need for education; that there is a certain dumbing down that, unfortunately, I think we have in our culture that has spread not only just across the mainstream, but even within the healing world where you people are like, "Well, I channeled this modality, and it's just as legitimate."

And part of me is like, I hear that you channeled this modality.

My personal feeling is any time somebody is not willing to put themselves to the scrutiny of checks and balances and being in a community where they are in dialogue with other people about the work that they are doing. I believe that ego is involved.

I am fallible, and I am capable of making a mistake because I am human. And as long as I'm in a human body, there's a margin of error. And so as a result, I believe very strongly that no matter how far down the road I go, I mean I am a master trainer for EFT International. I am a Reiki Master. am a Wiccan, high priestess. Like, I have the credentials.

I will never stop getting mentoring. I will never stop getting supervision because I will always have blind spots where I may be missing something because of my own growing edges.

This value of apprenticeship, this value of mentoring, this value of accreditation, this value of needing to jump through hoops in order to be impeccable with the work that we do, has kind of gotten thrown under the bus with this idea of good enough just the way you are.

And it's like, yes, we are good enough just the way we are, but if we want to step into arenas where we are helping other people with really deep, intense, traumatic stuff, we need more than a past life memory of the work we've done. I mean, this is, I mean, I don't know if you can hear my, I mean, I'm so passionate about

Jessica: Yeah, I can hear, and I feel, I know we've gone off tangent, but I feel this is a significant tangent because I think that a lot of what we're seeing, especially when it comes to healers and other spiritual practitioners, is another form of woundedness. Another form of injury that we're trying to heal.

Like we're simultaneously telling people, okay, you have to accept yourself. Come at things where you are. But at the same time, we're so afraid of admitting where we are ourselves that we either, like, downplay the importance of actual expertise or the need for community as you shared.

I am all for peer review when it comes to practitioners or anyone who's sharing their knowledge or wisdom there, even if it's channeled, even if it comes from a source that personal to them. Others can either confirm it, or they can provide other guidance, which may be more helpful as well.

It is part of the whole conundrum when it comes to healing is our acceptance of our limitations.

Challenges That Healers Face

Jennifer: Yes, yes. And, you know, having the humility to recognize where our wheelhouse is, what we are good at, and what we are not. One of the things that I've also noticed is that with many of us when we come onto the healing journey, and especially if we've been struggling, we've been suffering for a long time. We find a modality or have an experience where we get some relief so frequently, and we are so grateful for that, that we want to share it with the world. It's like, "Oh my God, I finally have this tool."

But what I think often happens is we want to jump the gun. We want to rush ahead, and we want to offer these things before we are thoroughly grounded in it and before we are fully prepared. And a saying, know, God protects drunk fools and children.

And, you know, when I was younger, would say, I mean, not necessarily a drunk, but I was definitely a fool and a child. I look at some of the things that I did as a young healer, and I look at some of the ways that where I was just like, oh yeah, you know, you have this history of abuse and, and you know, trauma and this thing that happened to you.

Let's just go in and deal with it. And I look at some of the things and some of the ways that I approached things, and I was so naive, and I was so innocent that, you know, I'm just beyond grateful that I did not cause more harm or do more damage to some of the people that first entrusted me with their journey than I did because I do think that a lot of times we don't know what we don't know.

Baby healers especially bring so much exuberance and so much enthusiasm and so much excitement, but what they often do is bite off more than they can chew, but they're also very afraid to say, "This is not my wheelhouse, this is not my skill set. This is not what I am good at."

So like, for example, I do not work with veterans. I am not part of military culture. I have never been part of military culture. I am, you know, an airy fairy tree hugging, you know, peacenik. And while I have mad respect for our military. like I've known many people in the military.

I have a lot of respect for them. I also really understand that I don't understand their culture. I'm not part of their culture. And while in a pinch, maybe if there were a situation where I was the only person there, I'd be more than willing to see if I could help somebody get some temporary relief to regulate their nervous system. I am obvious that this is not my job. are people who are more equipped. Better suited to work.

This also brings me to another part of it, which is that I think sometimes there's a little bit of ego in this idea that we're the only ones who will ever be able to meet this person's needs.

And you know, you were talking about that idea of validation, that we go to other people for validation. that there's a certain kind of need for being recognized, being affirmed, being validated. I think that as healers, sometimes the need to be needed is part of that wound inside of us that feels like this is what makes us worthy in the world.

And we will attract clients who say things like, "Oh my God, you're the only person I could ever have do this with me. You're the only person I trust. I don't know what I would do without you."

And the truth is, they would. They would figure it out. Like, I could die tomorrow. And I would have a lot of people who would be very, very sad to lose their teacher and lose their mentor and their healer.

But they would survive like they would keep going. think we get into this sense of we buy into the other, we buy into our sense of urgency, and we buy into the other person's sense of urgency, you know?

Jessica: That's a big thing. It's like recognizing the paradox that we are both great, and then in the grand scheme of things, we are also tiny. Both are true simultaneously, and it's hard to reconcile that within us. So it's like, am I one, or am I other? I'm like. You're both.

This simply is the way the world is. So we've talked about humility, we've talked about, or ego, we've talked about that needs to be needed. What other obstacles do people put in their own way when it comes to healing, whether a practitioner or someone who may not even be a practitioner?

Jennifer: The immediate word that comes to my mind is agenda. of the things that I work really hard with my EFT students to help them to break free of is an agenda. The idea that this is the way it should look at the end of the session is what we are going for.

And, I think that a lot of times when we have expectations about what the healing will look like, what the result will look like, either as the practitioner or as the client, or when we're doing self-healing work. A lot of times, what that means is that we are, we're blocking the flow and the process because when something comes up that doesn't look like what we think it should look like, we ignore it when it is actually the solution, when it is actually the glue. When it's actually the piece, and so letting go of the agenda.

know, In the broader world of tapping, there is a very, very wide spectrum of people who call themselves tapping professionals or EFT practitioners, there's a very, very, very broad range of training, like a very broad range of training.

You can take a course on Udemi and call yourself an EFT practitioner.  Whereas I run a level one and two training that takes 11 weeks, and that's the very beginning. It's the tip of the iceberg. And then there's a rigorous process of You doing clinical sessions, writing case studies, taking tests, and getting supervision before becoming certified and accredited.

Within the world, say I'm speaking to my modality because this is one I know well. What I've noticed is you'll have people where instead of. Somebody is feeling sad; somebody is feeling lonely. Somebody is having or is going through a challenging time even instead of just, even though I feel so lonely and there's this depth, there's this, it feels like this bottomless pit in my gut.

They are like, even though I feel so lonely, I am truly lovable and wonderful. I am truly lovable and wonderful.

I've noticed that there's a lot of wanting to jump to the solution or the way we want to feel, but often not even the person who's feeling it. It's like the practitioner rushing into rescue and offering their idea of what the solution looks like.

And so one of the things that I'm always. I always find it interesting when I'm talking with somebody if they say, oh, so-and-so said these things to me, so-and-so said to me that like my issue is in, my issue is in my root chakra, and. I don't feel safe. So she gave me, you know, the, so, so we, we did this thing to fix it, and she, you know, and, and we implanted this affirmation, and while these things can work, when it is not coming from within our inner wisdom, it doesn't usually take purchase in the same way that it will actually integrate if we are the ones who are coming to it.

There's a thing within EFT that talks about the concept of cognitive shift versus reframing. A cognitive shift is when somebody is like, so you know, somebody has gone through a horrendous experience at the age of five, and they had parents who blamed them for everything. And you know, we use energy healing; we do some tapping on it.

And suddenly, they realize, oh my God, I was five years old. I was completely innocent. I didn't know any better. It wasn't mine. I didn't cause this. Those were the adults who were behaving like absolute idiots. Those were the adults who were being mean and abusive. It's not my fault.

There's a huge difference between that person finding that answer and the practitioner going, even though I was only five like I was only five, it's not my fault.

Like the person has not had that cognitive shift internally, it does not matter how many times the practitioner says you are not broken. You are perfect, exactly as you are. not your fault. You were naive. you were innocent; you were exactly as you are.

That's not going to land because they have not gotten there themselves.

A lot of times, agenda, the idea of, I know what's better for you than you do.

All I can do is sit with you, be present with you, and be present with myself in the places where it's still messy. It's still challenging, and instead of being like, well, I know what's better for me, maybe we just sit with it and find out, okay, what happens if we just sit here?

What happens if we just acknowledge it? What happens if we just examine it for a minute? What happens if we just give it room to breathe?

Jessica: Excellent points there.

Working on Our Healing Process

Jessica: Can we do anything else to help in that process?

Jennifer: There are two things I want to hold up.

One thing. I have been getting into gravity lately, and I know that may sound like a bizarre thing to say, but I've been tuning into my awareness of my body's connection to gravity and the fact that no matter where I am, no matter what I'm doing while I'm on the earth unless I'm at, were, was in like a, uh, gravity-less chamber.  I've never been in and probably never will be in; I am constantly feeling the impact or the effect of how gravity holds me to the earth.

And there is something about knowing that I am held here. That the earth rises to meet me, that it's holding me and supporting me, that allows me, when I tune into it, to give my weight, to give my burdens, and to let myself be held.

is one of the very first places where I've been going is just allowing myself not just to be held but to feel held. Because I am always held. You are always held. Everyone on this planet is always held by the earth, but we don't feel it because we are so disconnected.

For me, one of the very first steps is grounding, which is reconnecting to the fundamental truth that we are cells in the body of this earth. That we are part of this earth, are of this earth. That this earth holds us, we are on this earth. That this is our home and that it supports us; it rises to meet and support us.

So that's the first piece of it. And then the second piece of it is you simply acknowledging where we're at. I love putting my hands over my heart and just doing three breaths, breathing in calmness, breathing in love and compassion, and then breathing out the static, breathing out the worry, breathing out the stress, and just permitting myself just to be and allowing again, my nervous system to settle down.

But something I learned a while ago is that sometimes even breathing is more than we can handle. If we are dysregulated, if we are spinning out, that is sometimes the first thing; just getting back online and on the body. So what I like to do is like a sensory inventory. Sound and smell are like two of the most primitive, primeval, instinctive lizard brain parts of us.

So what I will usually do is just start by tuning into, "What am I smelling? If I breathe in, what do I smell? What can I sense in my environment?

And then, " What am I hearing? What do I hear right here? What do I hear a little bit past me? What am I hearing beyond me? What do I hear in my neighborhood? What am I hearing way off in the distance?

What am I seeing? Like, what colors are around me? What am I seeing on either side of me? What am I seeing below me? Above me, behind me?

What am I noticing? What am I feeling?

What am I feeling beneath me? What is the temperature in the room? What is the sensation of air against my skin?

What am I feeling in my own body? Do I feel a sense of heaviness or lead and weight in my stomach? What am I feeling? And what am I tasting?

And interestingly, taste. A sip of water can be a compelling way to get ourselves back online and into our bodies. So just like grabbing a glass of water, or in my case, a big thing of decaf, you know, and just taking a sip, but instead of just like doing it unconsciously the way we usually do, like being like, I'm going to pay attention to the experience of this drink.

I will pay attention to what it's like for it to go into my mouth. I will pay attention to what it's like for it to go down my throat. I'm going to follow it as far into my body as I can notice.

That is alone a spectacular exercise at bringing us back.

In my years of healing and my travels, what we need more than anything else is the calming of our nervous systems and the reregulating of dysregulated nervous systems, and especially in the last three years with the pandemic, people have been spinning out.

We've been through an oxymoron. We've been experiencing chronic trauma. Chronic and trauma should not be lumped together, and yet we're coming up on three years of life-threatening illness, cognitive dissonance, and great division between people in the country that's affecting many of us.

And so more and more people are dysregulated. More and more people are more overwhelmed than they've ever been before. More and more people are coming up with or recognizing that they have ADHD. How many women do you see online where they're like, "Oh my God, I have had ADHD!"

While some of it is misdiagnosis or non-diagnosis, like never getting a diagnosis beforehand, in many cases, it's that we as a species have run out of spoons. We've run out of bandwidth; the first thing to go is clarity and focus.

An Introduction to EFT

Jennifer: One of the most important things we can do is find ways to regulate our nervous system. This leads me to EFT as a spectacularly good tool for regulating the nervous system. I'll give you the cliff notes version of this.

EFT is one of the simplest ways to describe it that it is a form of mental and emotional acupuncture without needles. And what we do is we use our hands, or sometimes even let somebody else tap on their body for us or tap on a photograph of ourselves or use it. I have a stuffed. Bear called Tappy Bear you could tap on the bear.

 Or like that, you even imagine that you're tapping on the points in yourself, but usually, you're going to be tapping on parts of your body or applying light pressure. And so it's like tapping on the side, on the side of the hand, sometimes on finger points, sometimes on the top of the hand, and then the top of the head, and then places on your face.

The, um, you know, the right at the eyebrows, the side of the eyes on the temples, under the eyes, under the nose, under the lip collarbone, under the arm. There are some other points, but those are the main points and the back of the top of the head.

And as we gently either apply pressure or gently tap, what we do is we use very simple words. A few words. We don't have to overcomplicate it.

When you overcomplicate it and you try to tap with the laundry list, a lot of times that actually you might feel a little bit better temporarily. But a lot of times, what that does is it stirs up the pool, but it only partially cleans it.

And so if people are like, "Oh, I've tried tapping, it didn't work," if you are doing the kind of what's called tap and rant, or you're just going like airing everything, like pulling all the clown, all the clowns out of the car. The problem with that is that it tends to stir more up than it settles down.

The way EFT works is that there are three parts to it.

First, we acknowledge what's going on, and we evaluate and rate it on a scale of zero to 10. How intense is it, with zero being nothing and ten being the worst it could ever be? Then from that, we say do what's called a setup statement, which is usually the classic version "Even though I have this issue." We get as very specific as possible, "Even though I have this shooting pain in the back of the left side of the back of my head, that you know this, this sharp shooting red pain in the back, you know the back of my left, the left side of my head."

Which, you guys, I do not have that; I'm just using it as an example.

And then we use what's called the balance statement, "I love and accept myself," or "it is what it is," or I'm open to the possibility that this can shift." So that's called the setup.

And then what we do, what's called going through a round of tapping, where we move through the points, and we use what we do is just called the reminder phrase.

So we would just say like, "this shooting pain in the back of my head, this shooting pain in the back of my head." amazingly, just moving through these acupuncture points, allows us to loosen the energy in our body and release places where stuff has gotten congested, we can reprogram our nervous system.

So, it also will reset the part of our brain called the amygdala that is in charge of our fight or flight mechanism, and it settles it back down. So tapping will allow us to reregulate. Or regulate in some cases. If you were born into a very high-strung, high-drama, intense family system, you've never had a regulated nervous system.

I did not experience what it was like to be utterly calm until I was in my mid-fifties. I grew up in a very anxious household. I had grown up with a mother who was very high-strung and very anxious. I experienced her anxiety in utero, and I had been experiencing and feeling anxiety and was basically in a state of hyper-vigilant red alert my entire life. I could get moments of relief, but I could never reset.

And it wasn't until I was in my mid-fifties that I experienced what it is like to have a regulated nervous system. That's about as short as I can get it.

Book Promotion and Wrap-Up

Jessica: Well, the shorter version is to get the books.

Jennifer: So Empathic Mastery, A Five-Step System to Go for an Emotional Hot Mess to Thriving Success. Chapter five is Released, and it goes into depth about how to tap. Also, if you want to learn a lot more about tapping, you can go over to my website, EFT instruction, which is specifically my master trainer website, where it will take you to places where you can learn about topping, as well as learn about training with me. If you're like, oh my God, this is the next best thing since sliced bread. I want to learn how to do this.

Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Anything else that you wanna share with us since we're wrapping?

Jennifer: No matter where you are or where we are on the journey right now, it's okay.

And I will tell you because I've been around the healing world for a while, some of these people who look like they got their shit together, if you knew the stories that are going on the back end of this, you would know that they don't have their shit together.

That there are a lot of people who are—absolute hot messes. And even though they might be running multi-million dollar companies and that they might be curating their appearance as having their shit together does not mean that they necessarily do.

Wherever you are in the journey is where you are supposed to be, and you are perfect exactly as you are. You are worthy of love exactly as you are. Your body is a miracle precisely as it is, regardless of whether you need to gain ten or lose a hundred pounds. You are a miracle, and you are worthy of taking up space. You are worthy of pleasure. You are worthy of compassion. You are worthy of connection.

For those of us who are highly sensitive and empathic, don't judge your rainbow by colorblind standards. Don't let somebody who is denying their feelings, pushing things down, or is not doing the work, tell you that you're being crazy or that you're being too sensitive or that you're overreacting, or that you haven't figured it out.

It's like they probably haven't, either. If somebody doesn't have compassion, if somebody can't meet you where you are and love you for your pain, that's their problem.

Jessica: Yeah, that's their problem.

Jennifer: That's their problem. It's like anybody who implies that there is something wrong with you if you are in pain,, there's something wrong with them for implying anybody else is wrong instead of meeting somebody with compassion.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: Thank you so much for sharing that. And that's A lot of nuggets. of wisdom right there. Yes. So you already mentioned one of your websites. , How else could others connect with you online?

Where to find Jennifer online

Jennifer: The easiest way to reach me is empathicmastery.com. My handle is consistently on all social channels at Empathic Mastery. So you can find me at empathicmastery on Instagram, Facebook, I kind of do TikTok, but not really like, the idea of like doing silly dances and pointing at shit is just like, not my idea of fun, um, And, uh, you know, or do performative crying.

I'm a Capricorn with Virgo Rising. I, I don't do performative crying.

Empathicmasterybook.com will lead you to all the books I'm part of or have written.

if you want to listen to my podcast, that's empathicmasteryshow.com.

And if you wanna learn more about how to really work the five steps within a community within a group, that is empathicmasteryacademy.com.

Jessica: Nice.

Jennifer: Jess, thank you. So, Jessica, it's funny.

I have a friend named Jess. I know I keep on. I have an old, zero-old friend who's my reiki master, whose name is Jess. And so it's like, I'm so used to calling her Jess.

So Jessica, thank you so much for having me here tonight. This is my passion project. This is one of the hills I will die on. Talking especially about the value of credentials is a soapbox. I will get on, and I will shout from the rooftops about. So I appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation about healing because I think it's meaningful.

Jessica: Thank you for being willing to be a guest and for willing to, uh, be on the soapbox for our listeners here.

Jennifer: You are so welcome. It has just been such a delight. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah.