Join me as I share the strategies that helped me work through a recent crisis of confidence and discover different ways to cultivate pattern recognition in your life.
Do you recognize any patterns in your life? As a human being, I’m sure the answer is a resounding yes. When you find yourself defaulting to an unwanted pattern, you can choose to ignore it or do the work to clear it. In this episode, I unpack the deep connection between thoughts, beliefs, and actions, as well as what I do when I start reliving old patterns that don’t serve me.
In the past few months, I found myself believing that no one understands me, I don’t have room in my personal life for my work, and that the people I love the most don’t respect my career. The busy holiday season brought me back to the years when I was raising my children and supporting my husband’s career. It’s been a long time since these thoughts have come up, but it was an important reminder that life is about presence, not perfection.
When I found myself feeling depleted and stagnant, I took an honest look at my sleep, nutrition, movement, and mindset. I leaned into the practices that have supported me in the past, such as doing my sunrise and sunset routines, getting on my Power Plate, and mirror gazing. Most importantly, when I felt resistance or constriction, I became really curious about it and worked to reframe the thoughts that would appear in those moments.
Listen in to hear how you can cultivate space to release unconscious thought patterns and create a strategy to free yourself from the beliefs that hold you back.
If you are enjoying these conversations, please subscribe and spread the love by leaving a review and sharing it with your friends.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Topics Covered:
Resources Mentioned:
Past Episodes Mentioned:
Get in Touch:
Special offers:
Credit:
Dana Frost 00:07
Welcome to Vitally You, a podcast created to introduce you to the tools that will be your roadmap for feeling younger while growing older. I'm your host Dana Frost, a wellness expert, life coach and energy medicine practitioner. Here's what you can expect conversations about vitality from the inside out with guest experts in the field of health, culture and spirituality, and solo episodes along the way from me where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy, medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger, while growing older, this is the place for you.
Dana Frost 00:52
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Vitally Podcast. I'm Dana Frost your host, and I am thrilled to be back for our first episode of 2024. Thank you to all of you who reached out wondering when was I going to have my next episode, my sincere apologies for disappearing over the past month. Now in today's episode, I am coming to you solo to share why I disappeared in January in hopes that what I went through will benefit the Vitally You community and I think it will. But before we get started, I want to share what's happening on the podcast in February in honor of National Heart Awareness Month. Now I'm dedicating February to heart health awareness month. And we are going to be talking about the heart. Obviously, I don't know if you are aware that the number one killer of women in the US is heart disease. So we really need to talk about heart health. And I want to talk about the significance of the heart from an energetic perspective. I'm going to share about HeartMath tools, we've touched on HeartMath tools, I have a radiant Heart Meditation for you. And I want to have a real conversation about statins. Statins are the most prescribed medication in the US. I want to talk about the details about cholesterol and other lab markers. And I'm going to share important information about your heart that your conventional doctor may not be paying attention to. So stay tuned in February for some really important episodes about heart health that you are going to want to know about.
Dana Frost 02:37
Okay, I also want to go direct to reviewer m d k 4040. He or she asked Where can I buy this product? And that was the only comment that was made. So my question is which product because I have had highlighted different products on the podcast. I'm wondering if it was energy bids, or possibly the lifewave patches that sponsor the vital you podcast. I will put both links in the show notes. And if you are an MD k 4040 And you it's not one of these products, please send me an email at Dana at Dana frost.com There's always a link to get in touch with me in the show notes as well.
Dana Frost 03:18
Okay, everybody, let's dive in to today's episode. So I'm curious if you've ever felt like you were reliving an old pattern that you thought you had cleared all the arguments, all the annoyances, old addictions. So patterns start with a belief but their experience through our feelings and then resulting in actions. So let me give you a few examples. I don't belong here. I don't belong anywhere. Leads to isolation, loneliness, martyrdom. No one understands me leads to invisibility feeling alone misunderstood. I'm not smart enough to fill in the blank leads to feeling stupid, dumb, incompetent. I'm not respected, liked or appreciated leads to feeling invisible. I have to do everything myself I have no support leads to feelings of being alone martyrdom and neglected. These beliefs can do numbers on you and during the past month, I experienced patterns of beliefs that I thought I had moved beyond let me share three there doozy is also the belief and the correlating emotion. And you know, it's so interesting now that I'm on the other side of it when I read these it feels and as you're listening to them, you know to an observer, or when you're on the other side that you think it might seem silly but the real lived experience causes a great amount of suffering.
Dana Frost 05:00
Okay, so my first one, no one understands me. I felt invisible and misunderstood. There's no room in my personal life for my work. I felt defeated. My work is not respected by the people I love the most. I felt like a martyr. I will tell you, I felt utterly depleted, and I was trapped in my own beliefs. Now, when you are reliving patterns you thought you had cleared, I'm just going to tell you, you simultaneously feel lost. But the territory is familiar.
Dana Frost 05:35
And I'm just curious if anyone can relate to this. I know I'm not alone, because I actually had two very recent conversations about this one with a former client and another with a colleague, where they were recognizing what's going on in January, like, I'm reliving things that I worked on years ago. And I thought, like, Is there something wrong with me? Did I not do my work with you what's going on? You did your work. If you're reliving a pattern, it these things come back around. So let's talk about it. Let's break it down during our time together. Okay, so do you recognize any patterns in your own life? That's my first question for you. And have you done anything to heal them? And what have you done? That's worked. So through the years, I've done different modalities, and honestly, most of them have worked. But the reality is that these patterns can still pop up again, after you think you've moved beyond them. Because we are human having a human experience, we aren't going for perfection, rather presence. Remember that you and I have a built in operating system that pursues efficiency, your brain recognizes patterns through your energy.
Dana Frost 06:52
So if you remember, in my last episode, the end of December, I did a meditation and I talked a lot about the energy that's pulsing through our body, we are energy beings, and your brain, it's reading your energy through your nervous system through your feelings, and your pulsating, and that those energetic signals, communicate specific information to your brain, and your brain is trying to be efficient. And so when the energy is the same, out of the opportunity for survival, which that's the ancient part of your brain that is always looking out for you, it just sometimes it gets you into a little bit of trouble. But out of the opportunity to survive and be efficient, the brain reinforces the pattern faster than you can self correct, because it's trying to be efficient on your behalf. It's really crazy, right? I'm curious how many of you have experienced this. So years ago, I was in therapy. And I learned I was trying to get out of a pattern with one of my children. And what I learned in therapy, this is when I learned about this ancient part of our brain that I had to see. And know I had to bring the pattern to my conscious experience, I had to recognize the pattern, I had to name it, like give it a name, call it out, I had to feel it, experience it and I had to then invite it to leave, I had to open space to release this pattern. Okay.
Dana Frost 06:52
And the last thing, I had to have a strategy I had to have, you know, create some sort of a strategy that when it showed up, I was going to be faster than the survival part of my brain by bringing that pattern into my consciousness with the strategy. And I will tell you, it's really hard to do. It's harder to do than following an exercise routine because your brain is so efficient and fast. But it is totally possible. I can tell you, I absolutely have knocked out many patterns. Yes, they come back. That's what I've learned. That's okay. You go through these ups and downs or little dips, and then you're on your way again, and then you might dip again. That is the human experience. And we don't need to be alarmed by that I wasn't alarmed by it this January. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on. And then I had to move through it. And the introvert in me moves through these things by going inward. And so that's what makes it really challenging then to have this outward expression like my podcast, because I later in this episode, I'll share I was pretty busy in my home front. Okay.
Dana Frost 09:46
So this pattern recognition in terms of what I learned to do in therapy is more on the cognitive side, but there are so many other modalities that release these energetic patterns. There are energy releasing techniques, I use essential oils, there's so many different modalities EMDR, if you're familiar with that, that's one that I used in therapy. I did one podcast, where I shared a one of my modalities where you invite your guides into a council, like you'll have a gathering a circle around, around the table around your heart with your guides, and your wise inner teacher. And you invite the part of you that wants to come forward to be seen, the pattern that wants to be released, and you gain wisdom and insight from your guides from your wise inner teacher, and then you invite it to leave and you let that play out in your life and you work on that on a day to day basis. I will put the link to that episode in the show notes. So all of this to say it's so important to cultivate pattern recognition in your own life. There's a phrase that I used to say a lot in coaching. And before in coaching, I said it to myself, You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
Dana Frost 11:08
When we get stuck in a depleting pattern, we experienced a crisis of confidence. And that's what happened to me in January. So let me go back and share. Since I haven't done a podcast in such a long time, I feel like I'm a little bit creaky is the word that comes to mind. So be patient with me for today's episode as I get back on the horse and write again. But this you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free this is that bringing a pattern to your consciousness, pulling it up from the unconscious experience and bringing it to light so that you can see it and recognize it. And that's it until you see it. You can't set yourself free from it. Okay, so let me share what happened to me in January. My Miami Beach Nast was very brimming with our kids and the two grandbabies. And I will tell you, I failed to create a strategy so that I could work in the midst of a very full home and lots of movement. Ever since my first grandbaby was born August of 2022. I feel like my personal life has been on a fast track. My husband had a health issue, I gained another grandbaby in October. And life events personal life events were just happening in such quick succession. And I made it to the holidays. And I had no plan for 2024. I had one plan and that was to work on my podcast, and to attend a podcast mastermind in Orlando in January, which I did. And it was amazing. So you'll hopefully you're going to be seeing lots of improvement not on this episode. But going forward.
Dana Frost 12:48
As we move into the year, I'll be implementing some new things. But this situation this dynamic in January, it was an echo from my years of raising my children and having a spouse who traveled all the time for work. So when we returned from being expat, so we were expats many of you know, for 10 years. And during that 10 year period, which is a big bulk of time of raising our family we adopted in South America. So there were a few years before the adoption, and five years after we lived there for eight years. So three years before five years after, we had a lot of support at home. When we returned to the US I had no help at home. And I had to learn to work in the nooks and crannies of managing my home. My husband was traveling all the time and my work internally in the family, it felt like a secondary priority. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. Except I always wanted more time for my work. And I never felt like I had sufficient time. And because I work from home, my family didn't see me coming and going like they did their father. And the perception was I was always available. Regardless if there's evidence. And this is true for you, too. In my mind, I created those beliefs that resurfaced in January. Remember the beliefs that I shared, there's no room of my personal life for my work. No one understands me. And I don't belong. There are so many tentacles to this belief. And you will find this in your own patterns. It never starts when you finally recognize it. The route happened years ago in your life and maybe probably pre memory and pre you know conscious sense of who you are. So beliefs are like that. In reality, none of those beliefs are true. They really not true when I did the inquiry around around them. I realized they're not true. This is stuff that I am concocting. It's a feeling and I'm the one who needs to have this done.
Dana Frost 15:00
Big, but that doesn't mean that I hadn't attached myself to them and allow them to kind of rule over me and cause this unconscious suffering. Because these patterns they actually started in my childhood with different details. But the feeling was the same tone and that's pattern recognition. The details can be different, but the feeling and the energy behind it, the tone is the same. So patterns start as soon as we come out of the womb. Some are healthy and fuel are lifeforce, and others are depleting and cause suffering. So we are always from the beginning, we were being patterned from the beginning, we were in our mother's womb, our belonging, our sense of being wanted and loved was being a pattern into the software of our being. Can we shift it? Yes, we can. But when patterns resurface, that is an obvious invitation, that the pattern is looking to be clearer more for your own sole purpose.
Dana Frost 16:02
So in January, I found myself in this old pattern of not honoring boundaries around my work. I was the person not honoring my work by not having a strategy or a plan. I had a very full condo, and no plan for managing my work. When I was working from home mistake, big, big mistake, my creative energy took a downward spiral, I felt lost. Even when I had the nook and cranny I was totally blocked. I sat down so many times to write a podcast and I really couldn't get anywhere with it. Patterns are like that. You can recognize a pattern that doesn't serve you because you will have depleting emotions. So when you have depleting emotions, be curious. Sometimes it just might be because you're experiencing a loss or you don't feel well or you've had an argument with someone you love. That's normal. But when you're when you feel like this, these depleting emotions are overtaking you day after day, then begin to look for what pattern is in play. Because I entered a full blown crisis of confidence.
Dana Frost 17:15
Have you ever experienced a crisis of confidence and what is a crisis of confidence? So a crisis of confidence is a time when you experience a decline in your belief in your own abilities, your decisions or your overall self worth? You might question your competence, your judgment, your capabilities. This leads to feelings of insecurity and self doubt. That's a really horrible place to be. And that's where I was in January. Expectations were blurry. This was my fault, which makes success elusive. I lacked clear communication. And because of that my family wrongly assumed at one time that I was available to help during the week that I already blocked to be at this podcast masterclass. No one wins if communication is not clear. At one point, I felt totally deflated. And my energy was just like on the ground. I just wasn't available for my family. And I wasn't available. I like felt blocked with my work. So I know you've experienced a crisis of confidence, because I know I'm not alone. So what was it like for you?
Dana Frost 18:26
For me, it feels like a dark cloud. And I remember, sometimes it's helpful to remember the first time you felt a crisis of confidence, which is the indication of a pattern when you're an adult. So the first time I remember feeling this is after my first daughter was born about four to six months after she was born. I just started feeling like this dark cloud came over me every day around 2pm. And I knew I needed support. So I found an excellent counselor. And she helped me understand that I was in postpartum depression. Now we could say, is that a pattern? What is it I think it was moving in to a pattern because I was alone. A lot of the time this is when I first stepped into being a mom. And then I had this dynamic of being alone at home. So what I appreciated about her approach that impacted me continues to impact me is that she did some assessments and figured out okay, you're depressed, this is postpartum. And then she looked at my sleep, my nutrition, my movement and my mindset. All of these areas needed support and reframing. I think that this is part of why I ended up in this work because the times two she was a second time I had significant therapy that made a huge impact. And both times they weren't just looking at they neither time did they look or suggest medication. But both times they looked at my lifestyle. So when you have a crisis of confidence you
Dana Frost 19:59
Really want to return to the basic sleep, nutrition movement mindset, and I like to add connection to your soul, your purpose, your whatever your beliefs are, do you believe in God? Do you have a soul family? Do you have guides, you know, your own inner teacher. So these are the things that I did to move through my month where I was clearing patterns, and experiences crisis of confidence. So the first thing is to observe what's happening. So when I started to feel these emotions, and I was feeling this constriction, I immediately went to what's going on here? And I started looking at, well, what are my thoughts? I've mentioned it before, but I get this from my master life coach training, where we learned about The Work of Byron Katie, and it's called the work I'll put a link to her website in the show notes. So it's the work is inquiry into your thoughts and your beliefs, which requires you to slow down. In order to do this, it's it's tapping into the survival part of your brain, you have to slow down your brain is so fast. So you have to literally slow the brain down so that you can actually tap into what those beliefs are.
Dana Frost 21:18
So I leaned into my morning practice, that's when I get quiet. That's when I you know, dedicate time to listen. If you will remember an episode with Linda Neff, where we talked about quiet time, she said, the quiet in the quiet. It's an excellent podcast episode, I'll put that link in the show notes. But I leaned into this morning practice, the quiet and the quiet listening, being curious about my thoughts. I set myself which is normal for me anyway, so it wasn't new. But it was an important awareness of how vital this is, for my own my own sustenance, I, you know, made sure I was doing my sunrise and sunset practice setting myself to the rhythm of nature, doing my morning walks. And I looked for where I was in resistance. And this is difficult. But when I could feel that something there was resistance in me or constriction, I became really curious about it. And this also isn't easy. But if you slow down and you notice, like where do you start constrict, okay? When you start constricting or your breath gets really shallow, what are the thoughts that you're thinking right before that, you really want to capture those thoughts, because that's where you can do the work. And you bring it to your consciousness, that's where you can unwind it, and then create a strategy to let it go and to ease up and when you're in the middle of feeling constriction, you want to use your breath to relax the body to slow, quiet, deep, regular inhales and exhales, you can bring in essential oils to calm things down, you can put your legs up the wall is a really nice one, just going for a walk, but you want to slow your heart rate down, because you want to move your autonomic nervous system into parasympathetic, which is calming down.
Dana Frost 23:15
So you want to calm everything down. So the constriction you're tightening holding on can be released. And I just surrendered because I was resisting things. Resisting wasn't moving me forward. And I just was like, I'm just going to surrender. And it's really amazing. When you start to surrender to the specifics of things that are happening. That's really when you can start moving forward and experiencing life again and get rid of the crisis of confidence. It's just impossible to be a value or to create something of value from the standpoint of resistant energy. It's impossible, you just can't do it.
Dana Frost 23:57
Another thing I did, I made sure I was moving my body so the energy didn't get stuck and I used I have a power plate. How if you're not familiar with a power plate, I should do an episode on the power plate but I spent nine my power plate is a vibrational plate, it cycles and nine minutes cycle. So anywhere from nine minutes to 28 minutes, I would do a workout and movement and free dance on my power plate that also just you just can tell that energetically that's moving through your system. Sleep I just continued with sleep and nutrition. So that is what was happening for me in January. And there was one unintended bonus I want to share with you. And I'm going to have an episode on this in the future. I'm going to invite the woman who led her business is called Beauty fascia. And so I entered this beauty fascia challenge. It was a 30 day challenge and it was 20 minutes a day but really it was more than 30 minutes a day of a guided fascial release to the chest, the neck and the head in the face.
Dana Frost 25:06
And she says it's a DIY Do It Yourself facelift, where you are manipulating the fascia. So it's the fascia, the connective tissue, you're manipulating the fascia tissue and the muscle tissue to tighten the face to lift the eyes to improve the jaw and neck structure. So the really important thing that happened for me in January, this was this 30 minute period everyday where I actually was doing the practice, I had my phone propped up. So I was watching her on the phone, but I was looking in a mirror. And so I don't know if you've ever done mirror gazing with yourself. It's a tool I've used with clients, but where you gaze in a mirror and you look at your reflection, and you stay there, a lot of people struggle with this and you stay there and you just connect into yourself through your eyes, through looking at your face, your gaze, your countenance, all the ways that your face moves, and ended up being the self mirror gazing ended up being this really powerful tool where I was able to connect with myself, every day, during this time of crisis of confidence. I'll put a link to her website in the show notes. But stay focus because I am continuing with her program. And I will ask her to be a guest this year. I'm not sure you know, she will say yes. And but I don't know when that's going to happen. But it's truly fascinating.
Dana Frost 26:37
Okay, so let's wrap up today's episode with the take home. Pattern Recognition and clearing if an unwanted pattern shows up, don't ignore it. Just move in the direction observe the thoughts and feelings around it and do the work to clear it. Get support if you need to. I've had to get support in January, I was able to handle it on my own. But look, how do you have a lot of support and for releasing patterns along you know, over the past 30 years, there's no shame in asking for help actually, you can get there faster. As you're learning how to clear patterns, especially with EMDR you actually need a practitioner to walk you through that. So you'll just free up so much energy when you commit yourself to free yourself from unconscious patterns. And it's just not that hard. So it's a practice that I encourage you to do. So if you don't do the work, you end up held captive. I mean, I was captive for only a short period of time because I was doing the work around it. But you don't want to be captive. It's like if you're living an unconscious pattern, it's like you have shackles around your ankles and you someone's holding you down from your shoulders and you just have no buoyancy. So if you're in a stage in life, and you don't feel buoyant, and you feel like your feet are shackled to the ground, you can't leap and jump and run and play. There's a pattern at play. So hey, reach out to me, find a practitioner.
Dana Frost 28:09
Feeling younger, while growing older today in this episode feels like starting fresh and accepting the human journey. That is not a straight, upward trajectory. Rather, it's this infinity loop that's weaving my soul's purpose into the human grid into my human experience. So I want to thank you for being patient with me. Honestly, it was kind of hard to come back and do this episode. I haven't done an episode and I think I recorded the last episode in December, like the second week in December. So it's been two months. And for whatever reason, I felt really nervous about recording this episode. So thank you for your patience. You're an amazing community. Thank you for joining me this week on the vital you podcast. I have a big favor now actually would be an excellent time to leave a review. And give me a little boost after my silence because the algorithm is ego centric. And if you don't feed it, it turns away. So the hurdle for me because I've been silent on the podcast is that because I've been silent. The algorithm is not going to like me and it's not going to put my podcast before my people. So if you leave a review or if you like it or engage with the content on Spotify, that's going to help it helped me with get this podcast before other people so thank you so much. And as always, I am streaming love from my heart to yours.