Finding Your Way Through Therapy
Join Steve Bisson, LMHC as he unravels the complexities of therapy and counseling. Engage in straightforward dialogues, enriched with insights from special guests sharing a like-minded perspective. Each episode presents valuable, easy-to-digest information designed to help you perceive therapy, and those who partake in it, in a grounding, relatable manner.
Finding Your Way Through Therapy
E.173 Transforming Stress and Trauma with Somatic Breathwork: Abbie Westgate's Journey
What if you could transform your life by simply changing the way you breathe? Join us for a compelling conversation with Abbie Westgate, a former UK police sergeant who left behind the high-stress world of law enforcement to embrace the healing power of somatic breathwork. Abbie courageously shares her journey through stress, burnout, and trauma, leading to a serious illness that became the catalyst for her new path. Discover how Abbie's experiences as a first responder have uniquely equipped her to understand the profound connection between mind, body, and spirit, ultimately shaping her business, Healing Blue Hearts.
Explore the transformative potential of somatic breathwork as Abbie explains its ability to reset the nervous system and offer stress relief. We address common skepticism towards somatic practices and delve into the importance of personal experience in forming opinions. Abbie provides insight into how breathwork can help individuals experience a full emotional cycle and achieve clarity of thought, offering benefits like stress release and emotional resilience. This episode emphasizes the need for integrating both cognitive and somatic methods in healing to foster a harmonious mind-body connection.
We also highlight Abbie's passion for creating safe spaces where first responders can express and process their emotions without judgment. Through her work, Abbie encourages personal responsibility and self-empowerment in one's healing journey. As we wrap up, a heartfelt appreciation is shared for the supportive community surrounding somatic breathwork, and Abbie's dedication to making a positive impact in the lives of others, especially those on the front lines.
Go to this website to schedule your breathwork with her here: https://healing-blue-hearts.my.canva.site/
Her Instagram is: https://www.instagram.com/healing_blue_hearts
PEeer Levine's website is: https://www.somaticexperiencing.com/about-peter
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Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. A proud member of the PsychCraft Network, the goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy and the wide array of conversations you can have in and about therapy Through personal experiences. Guests will talk about therapy, their experiences with it and how psychology and therapy are present in many places in their lives, with lots of authenticity and a touch of humor. Here is your host, steve Bisson.
Speaker 2:Merci de continuer à écouter. Thank you for continuing to listen. And hi, and welcome to episode 173 of finding your way through therapy. If you haven't listened to episode 172 yet, go back and listen. There was the mental men. Again, we had a lot of good conversation in regards to mentorship, among other things, and, you know, go listen to it. We talked about the old ways of training. We've came up with a couple of ideas that for the future. I don't know if they're going to come out or not, but certainly we had that. But episode 173 will be with Abby Westgate.
Speaker 2:Abby Westgate is a former UK police sergeant. She served for about six years. She was passionate about her work but fell seriously ill a year from stress, burnout and trauma in both her professional and her personal life. On her road to recovery she discovered a different approach to healing and was working on body semantics as well as the nervous system. This became her new passion. Two years later she walked away from her job and became a somatic breathwork practitioner and she runs her own business. She's going to surely talk about that and it's called Healing Blue Hearts. She has a lot of things to say about her experience in the UK as a police sergeant. So here's the interview.
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Speaker 2:Well, hi and welcome to episode 173. This is an exciting episode for me because Abby Westgate or Abby Westgate just want to make sure I pronounce it properly Abby. Abby is a former United Kingdom police sergeant and has shifted her world into something more interesting to me, not because it's not interesting to talk about first responder stuff, but really somatic breath work, and she wants to share all this with us plus more, I'm sure. And yes, for those of you who listen to this regularly, yeah, breath work is hard. It's a TH and it's not my first language, so please give me a break. So, abby Westgate, welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy, hi Steve.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me. Please give me a break. So, abby Westgate, welcome to Finding your.
Speaker 2:Way Through Therapy. Hi Steve, thank you for having me today. Well, I'm excited to have you on and I know that we talked a little bit before the interview and you know I wanted really this to be a conversation because you know you're fascinating. I have a couple more people I know that are going from the first responder world to the mental health slash, coaching slash, whatever you want to call it world, and I think that's so important because you bring a unique approach, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart, because I think that sometimes therapists, you know they will have some of the life experience, but having that type of life experience really changes how you present things. But I feel like I'm describing you right now. So how about you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3:and thank you, steve. So yes, as you mentioned, I was in the police in the UK and I was in that role for six years, just over six years and when I first joined those six years ago, it was my dream job and I did not see myself doing anything else like. I had just one vision for life and I thought that was going to be it. But just before I was about to join the police, I went through the death of my mum, which was very sudden and unexpected. So it meant that when I was joining the police and starting my training, I also had this big bereavement going on in the background and whilst it was, it was a bit of a double-edged sword because I was starting my dream career, but it was just at a time where there was so much sadness and a lot of difficulty to manage. And then, when you compare that to police training and learning to be a good police officer, that requires you to be at the top of your game and really switched on and I also found that the culture at the time was very much and just get on with it, and if you can't, then maybe you're not up for the job. That's the message, loud and clear that I got.
Speaker 3:So I ended up pushing those feelings of grief down and everything that was happening in my personal life to be able to survive and do well within my career, and for a long time that worked. I was very mindset driven and was getting a lot of achievements in life and within three years I was promoted and I was doing really well in my career, loved it. But all that grief and trauma under the surface that I hadn't dealt with was coming out in other ways and it was starting to really unpick relationships. Just the way I was looking after my health Until I reached this point where I hit this period of burnout and I felt like everything went wrong in life. Everything just came crumbling down.
Speaker 3:And when I was at a period of burnout and had Phil is sorry when I had physically ill health, all that grief and all the trauma came up too. But there was nowhere to run and hide. So I found myself in this really difficult position. I was in a job with a lot of responsibility but I was physically unwell and I was still going to work because I didn't want to let anyone down or show any signs of kind of weakness, given the culture and the environment and probably my own ego as well. I didn't want to seem like I was weak and that I couldn't do my job and then, underneath the surface, I had all these emotions and feelings that were intensified because of how long they'd been suppressed.
Speaker 2:So that was a real kind of crossroads moment for me and that's kind of how I got onto the path of breathwork and, yeah, took a different life path, shall we say well, we'll agree to disagree on that, because I think that helping the community as a police officer or sergeant and working in the breathwork in the mental health field there is helping others in the same. They're the same thing in that way. So we'll agree to disagree that they're a different life path. I think it's similar, it's just a different way of dealing with it. Uh, and I'm very sorry for your loss. That's a young age to lose your mom. I'm sure that that was very difficult. What I'm hearing, too, is someone who's been through therapy, because I'm listening to someone who's describing a lot of different things.
Speaker 3:So, have you ever been in therapy which is a standard question here in finding your way through therapy, so only I've had some talking therapies that's what we call it in the UK Maybe three occasions, for a few sessions each and with varying experiences of them. I think when I was younger it wasn't so great and I had like an online phone call counselling service at work, which was something that I used at the time when I started to feel really quite physically unwell and everything was coming up for me and I had a few sessions and that was a better experience. But overall I haven't had a long run of therapy.
Speaker 2:Nothing wrong with that. I mean, it's not for everyone to get that, but I'm a big fan of it, obviously, and it's called talking therapy in the UK. So thank you for the information. I always learn something. As far as the physical health stuff, is that kind of resolved itself for yourself, for you, or is it kind of like still an ongoing process?
Speaker 3:yeah, so as we speak now, I am in the best, just physical health and mental health and spiritual health, like that 360 health. I'm just in such a good place. It took a long time to get their mind. It wasn't an overnight. I think sometimes we can see the before and the afters and we can really emphasize the after, like look up where I am now and think that we just jumped from here to here, but there was a lot of hard work that went in between those two moments. So yes, as of as of now, I'm really good, but I wasn't very good for a long time.
Speaker 2:I'm happy to hear that you're doing much better, and I think that you pointed out something that I like to remind people is that it's not a linear process. Whether it's mental health, physical health or anything, it's a long process. You see the finished results and everyone's like, oh great, look, you're finished. Result. Yeah, you know how much hell I went through, either physically or mentally, to get to where I'm at. I think it's an important thing to discuss with people.
Speaker 3:And just to be realistic with the starting point, because I think if you can see someone achieving something or in a place that seems so out of reach or just you don't resonate with and think that's nothing I can ever achieve, it's like actually sometimes we do need to see that before, just that we can have that, that connection and that I, that identity between us.
Speaker 2:I mean you know that sometimes the limits we set is only the ones we put in, so to speak, and it's really on us and it's really working through that process. And I hear someone who went through a lot of repression, to the point where it caused physical illness. So when I tell people that you talked about that 360 health, I call it the mind, body, spirit connection. When you repress something mentally, it affects your body and that's why you got to treat everything equally in order to get to be a better human being.
Speaker 3:But I don't know what you think of that, but that's just my view well, I always think back to a quote from the founder of somatic experiencing, peter levine, and he talks about if we don't express and we repress, then we become numb, and numbness is like a living death. So to feel is to be human, essentially. So when we suppress and repress and we become numb, we're essentially just canceling out what it means to be human. So that for me, was a really big part of the journey was reconnecting back to the body, connecting the mind back to the body, so that I could experience life again.
Speaker 2:And I agree, you know, like Levine is just a great person. I saw him live a few times, just a genuine human being and really like him, and I'll probably just try to note that and put it in the show notes because I really like him a lot. One of the things that also, when we talk about the mind-body-spirit connection and 360 health, you know you hear about a top-up, a top-down approach versus a bottom-up approach. I'm wondering if we can talk a little more about the healing journey, and is it top down, is it bottom up, is it sideways? I mean, I really don't know. So just want to have your opinion on that.
Speaker 3:So the top down approach and I'm sure it's like this in many places in the world that we've placed so much emphasis on the brain, the mind, neuroscience, psychology they have a place 100%, and this isn't about saying one's better than the other, because what I'm going to touch on is that those taken independently had caused me to become like disconnected from here down. So when I was at that point of burnout, physical health, trauma, what was really apparent for me was I needed a bit of a different approach, and that's when I started working with the breath work, which works with the body and works on a somatic level. So the word somatic just basically means of the body. So that's things like nervous system regulation, somatic therapies, breath work, and what that does is start connecting the mind back to the body so that they can work in harmony with each other instead of being two opposing parts. And I think that's the real key part.
Speaker 3:It's not one or the other. It's like when you know how to use the bottom-up approach with the top-back-down approach, that's when we become really powerful approach. That's when we become really powerful, and I know that now, if I wanted to go to therapy, I would have a much better experience and get a lot more from it than when my body was speaking a different language and at a different place to where my mind was at. So the key is to use both.
Speaker 2:they're both really, really powerful entities and it's just that connection between the two, that mind, body connection and so if someone in like I'm just going to make it up as I go here so when you talk about someone who maybe injures their foot, for example, and you talk a little bit about breath work and the somatic breath work, and that foot continues to feel bad for several weeks, how would you treat someone like that?
Speaker 2:How would you help them with the somatic breath work? In regards to helping them with that, because sometimes you know I'm from the school that we injure stuff because of where our minds are at, but I don't know where you stand on that. And also want to get a little better idea like an example, because I think when we think about bottom-up versus top-down, I think it's a great idea when two therapists are talking or two people who in this field do talk, therapists are talking, or two people who, in this field, do talk, but sometimes for someone who may not maybe joining in, for something like finding your way through therapy, they might not understand what that means. So you can use that example, any example you want.
Speaker 3:Yeah, great question. So obviously someone with an injury like that that's a physical injury and that the best place for them is to go to the hospital, to the doctor, and get that physical injury dealt with. But with physical injury there might come pain, with that, emotions and like anger. There might be ways that their life has to change because they might be a very active person and all of a sudden they're restricted because they can't move around as they would usually and that can cause stress, anxiety, depression and that would be where the breathwork would start to support them. It's to deal with the physical sensations of our experience. So the foot itself. I wouldn't say come to breathwork and I'll heal your foot. I absolutely not. Please go to the hospital, please go to your doctor. But I can help you deal with, like that, the physical sensations and how that's feeling within your life on that emotional, spiritual level, on that deeper level, and to help you to manage the stress, the tension and the feelings that you have around that you know, I, I agree 100.
Speaker 2:I even go from. I'm old school in the sense that I do believe psychosomatic stuff is true. So, you know, for me, on a different point of view, I would say that someone who injures their feet in any way, shape or form is that they're afraid to stand up for something they believe in, and that's why their foot hurts and maybe more. That's my top-down approach. But yeah, of course I like that you said. You know, go to the doctor, go to your hospital, get it checked. And all I can think of is I'm from the Canadian system too, where we have the socialized hospitals. I'm like, go to the hospital, you'll be there for two days, but you'll be better in a couple of days.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I had to put in that little two cents about socialized medicine, uh, and I'm not saying it's better in the united states, by the way, for the record. So let's, let's discuss a little more about somatic breath work, because I, I mean, I know a little bit about it, but I've never like, kind of like heard that, like I don't know enough about that kind of like togetherness. So breath work. So that means, you know, you call up someone to say, hey, please work on my breath, what does that mean? And the somatic breath work. How would you conceptualize someone and again, you worked with the police, so you know exactly what I'm going to say With skeptical people who would look at you and go, hmm, that's a lot of bullshit what you just said. How would you describe it and how would you maybe address any skepticism that people may have?
Speaker 3:Firstly, I'll just touch on the skepticism point first, before I give you kind of the touching on the definition of somatic breathwork and I'll say that breathwork is experiential because you're working with the nervous system. So essentially, once someone has an experience of the breathwork it will speak for itself. So actually I'm not here to maybe I wouldn't necessarily debate somebody's skepticism. I would give them the experience and let them make their mind up. If after that it's a no from them, then at least they know that this is a no for me. And yeah, if they want to be skeptical about it, then have an experience, see if it works for you. If not, then great, you know that breathwork isn't for you. But if you then have this experience and it's positive, then great. You just then you know change to, had a shift in your mind and you've found something new. And that's kind of how I would say with the skepticism. And I suppose in terms of the way that I would address and talk about what breathwork is, I would change the definition slightly depending on who I was with. So I also work with frontline workers, but I also work with a lot of entrepreneurs who are quite spiritual. So I would use very different language in when I'm speaking to spiritual entrepreneurs or those from a personal development background who are very familiar with breathwork and the kind of deeper connotations with it, as opposed to somebody who I was meeting from the police or the ambulance service for the first time.
Speaker 3:But generally, this is kind of how I like to introduce somatic breathwork.
Speaker 3:So I say the word somatic just basically means of the body, and within a breathwork practice we're using the breath to connect the mind back to the body so that they can work in harmony together again, instead of working as two opposing parts.
Speaker 3:Because they're not working together, they're working kind of against each other. And there's a few benefits to this. The first is that it allows us to go in and release any stress, tension, energy and emotions that are trapped in the body. But it also helps us to think more clearly. It helps us to rebalance our energy levels and our nervous system. So it's like pressing the reset button, and I think a lot of people can resonate with wanting to feel less stressed, wanting to feel more energy and just having a nice reset in the body. And that's just how I would generally talk about it. And then, depending on the person or the context that we're working whether that was a one to one or a group session would then, you know, make that a little bit more personalized to the situation, but that's generally how I like to introduce it, so that people can generally relate and know what they're coming into and I do enjoy the answer you gave that.
Speaker 2:I'm not here to clear your skepticism. Try it if you don't like it. That doesn't work, that's fine with you. Me, I mean, maybe one day you'll get back. I mean, you know, as a reiki practitioner myself, um, it's on my wall and you know, uh, working with first responders and a lot of people, they go well. This stuff doesn't work like all right, I don't really care. You wanted more information, you let me know. But eventually, when they start trusting you and talking about other stuff, they go well again. This is my favorite quote what's this Reiki shit? End quote. And you can open up that stuff.
Speaker 2:And when you talk about semantic breeding, you know breath work, I really talk about you know reconnecting to yourself and especially with people with anxiety, it's a really good approach because they're like trying to resolve their anxiety by just talking to themselves and I'm like that doesn't work. Actually, therapy won't work really. What you need to do is reconnect to something simple and we talk about I talk about neutrality, or even your breathing, um, but like, for an example, if we did talk about anxiety, how would you help someone with somatic breath work? Let's say they're they, they say that I got a lot of anxiety. I I just lost my child, I I just lost my car and my my partner is not happy with me or whatever. How would you kind of help them manage that anxiety through a somatic breath work?
Speaker 3:so, as I was explaining before with um the definition, when I was talking about the definition and when I was talking into skepticism a little, and I mentioned that breathwork is experiential and a quote of one of my mentors is always that the nervous system is show not tell.
Speaker 3:So it's.
Speaker 3:It's basically, if someone is having an experience of anxiety, the first half of the breathwork session is actually designed to stimulate the sympathetic nervous system.
Speaker 3:So that's where stress, anxiety, lives and it's to actually take them into that side of the nervous system.
Speaker 3:So if there's any unexpressed emotions like if we're having anxiety or there's something that's stressing us out in our life but we haven't quite completed the emotional cycle going into that sympathetic nervous system and starting to stimulate it's going to actually allow them to have the expression of that emotion and the release so that they can complete the emotional cycle.
Speaker 3:And when we get to that point, then that helps to tip them back into the parasympathetic, which is the breast and digest part of the nervous system, so that they can come down again and switch their system off. So if there's anxiety and there's stories playing around in their mind and they've got the feelings of stress in their body, what we're doing is helping them to express and release that from the body, turning their system on fully and then, when that's complete, taking them down and showing them how to turn their system on fully and then, when that's complete, taking them down and showing them how to turn their system off fully. So it's that recharge that I'm talking about, it's that feeling of having that expression so that we can think more clearly, because we're going back into that side of the nervous system that lets us rest again.
Speaker 2:And it makes perfect sense to go that. Go that way and the paris. Thank you for the great explanation of parasympathetic versus sympathetic nervous system. I think a lot of people don't know about those two systems and it really is beneficial to do that stuff so that you can reconnect the mind and body and let it be. I think that one of the things that I like about what you just said is that you're letting it express itself, you're not trying to repress it, and I think that that's one of the biggest things I got from that. Is there other things that you would say somatic breathwork can bring to other people other than learning to not suppress it but actually express it?
Speaker 3:I often find that people come with something in mind, find that people come with something in mind and at the start of the session I also get them to focus on a one-word intention for something that they would like to receive. But I also caveat that by saying, the experience that you might have might be different to what you want, but it will be what your body needs, that your body will inherently know what it needs and it knows what to release. So what comes up for you is wanting to come up to be moved through you and I think sometimes people get that first time round. But for some people after maybe one or two sessions then they get that.
Speaker 3:But yes, so you might come in thinking actually I'm really stressed and it it starts to touch on things that I call secondary emotions. So we might feel like tearful and upset. But if we start going into that in the breath, work actually underneath that, it might be anger that we need to express. So there's sometimes these secondary emotions, so we might think I feel upset today, I'd like to release this grief or sadness, but what it might actually need to be doing is to release some anger, so it just really helps us to go into whatever it is and going into the depths of the emotion. And that might not be what we consciously, mentally come in with, because the language of the body? There's a, there's a truth to it. We don't get involved in the language of the body, it's the language of the subconscious. We come in, you know, with our conscious mind.
Speaker 2:Breathwork works with the subconscious mind, so that's, that's the difference you know, all I can think of too is uh, what you just said is interesting, because I talk about emotions, and anyone who has had an opportunity to watch inside out or inside out 2 talks about managing those emotions. I highly recommend those movies. If anyone does have not a chance, do you think that it plays a factor when you know, like you talked about your former job, and I certainly see that a lot you know, crying while you're at whatever scene or whatever situation you are is not acceptable. So you turn to anger is getting so. Is it getting back to that sadness and embracing those emotions? Because I think we repress a lot of emotions too?
Speaker 3:yeah, and what I've seen with emergency responders is that because they're used to maybe suppressing their emotions, so much disconnect being quite disconnected, that can take them a while to actually understand what emotions are coming up and allow themselves to let go. So there's still a lot of kind of defenses and they have to really start to feel safe to let those walls down, because I don't think that they've ever had a safe space to express anger, sadness, whatever they need to express, and also they're after had a safe space to express anger, sadness, whatever they need to express. And also they're often now going from incident to incident to incident to incident. So their nervous systems, you know, all over the place and they're not absolutely able to relate to what emotions are feeling, to what incidents sometimes, so inside just can feel like a bit of a jumble. So yeah, it's, it can be a bit of a journey.
Speaker 3:Start linking back. And I also find there are gender differences as well. So for females, typically they might cry in the session and it's harder for them to express that anger. So when I was talking about those secondary emotions, what we often find, if we dig a bit deeper with some females, that actually it's anger that needs to come out, and for guys it's the opposite, so they might express anger, but that secondary emotion might actually be tears and grief and sadness I'm very happy you brought up the gender differences, because that was my next thing too.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask you if you feel there's a difference between genders. So I really appreciate that. I find that even socially, you know, I don't think that what I remind people is that we're socially taught these things. If I had to cry, by the way, during this podcast, I wouldn't hesitate two seconds If it felt sad. I felt sad, I couldn't care less, and people repress those things and you know it's acceptable. I'm a male but I'm a therapist, so it's okay for me to cry. But I think social norms play a huge factor, because if you're a female, crying is okay, but not if you're working, you know, as an emergency responder, as you said, because you know what, are you weak. So I think that not only that is, we embrace a lot of these social norms versus reality and I think that with getting it back to the somatic breath work, it's really going back to you instead of like what socially is acceptable, I don't know.
Speaker 3:That's my thought yeah, it's like it's that safe haven, that safe bubble to just go in, clear out whatever's there. Although there's emotions and stresses like that, we all carry, firstly from our work, but our lives are so busy too and we all have so much going on. We have our own traumas and losses and challenges and that's a lot to carry, especially when we don't get time to sit and process and we're not taught how to do that now. So something like Breathworkwork is from my personal journey and from what I've seen from my clients is just a really powerful way to have that release into it, to express those emotions that we carry around with us so obviously there's a lot of health benefits to this.
Speaker 2:I think that what we need to realize is our well-being is not nobody else's responsibility but yourself. And while I'm not always a big fan of this statement, but I remind some of my clients, sometimes no one's here to save you. You've got to really work on yourself and you've got to do the work because you know I don't know if you've experienced that too, but even as a therapist, sometimes they're like um well, you're going to save me or you're going to fix me and all that. I'm like I've never fixed a human being in my life. I barely can fix myself, so I can't fix other people. I can give you suggestions as to what to work on, and hopefully that'll be beneficial in the longterm, but I don't fix people. So I don't know if that well-being and putting the power in ourselves is part of it too, or if you see it differently, or I just want to ask you.
Speaker 3:I love that you've touched on that, because actually in the breathwork training we talk about something called the fix-it mentality, where most people are just so used to looking to other people for the answers or being told what to do and looking outside of themselves, and within that there's almost a trust, firstly in that person that I can't help myself, but also from a therapist and practitioner perspective, is that you're looking at them as if you know there's something wrong with them or broken, and then you need to fix them.
Speaker 3:And that's when you can give them the tools and the support. But essentially they're doing it themselves, like their body knows exactly what they need for going through the process. And it's that empowering trust of like you know what you need to do. I'm just going to show you the way you do it and you create your own healing, you create your own well-being, you create your own experience. It's all in your hands. It's quite empowering as opposed to well, you come to me and then you're going to need to come to me every time that you, you know you feel stressed, anxious, etc. It's that person.
Speaker 2:It's putting it in their hands and trusting them to do so as well I like that because even you know, without knowing, you actually touched base on last week's episode where we talked about the healing process and how we got to empower people and look at their positives and you know, not always looking at what's wrong, but what's right two podcasts episodes together.
Speaker 3:so I appreciate that, because I really think the other part too is that if we only see ourselves as faulty, we will meet our expectations there, and I think that that's a biggest big problem too, when you're not like really empowering yourself, and that's what I think you're talking about yeah, I think as a culture, as globally, we've outsourced a lot of our own emotions and our own health in the hands of other people and I think that now it's all about just starting to reclaim those things for ourselves, like, yes, there are some specialists and things we need to go out there for 100 percent, but we can also start to just be empowered within ourselves to do certain things for ourselves and reclaim those parts of ourselves to create that healing journey.
Speaker 2:I so agree, because you talk about the breath work stuff. I remind people that we are such a divided we're starting to see more and more obviously in the United States. We see it on a political level, but I I've again the canadian in me. All follows the canadian stuff. Uh, you see it in france right now, because you know, you know they always call us the cousins up in quebec, so um. And you see it in the uk too, with even, you know, different prime minister being put in and what people are leaning towards left and right, and then it becomes our identity.
Speaker 2:And I think that what I tell people is that that's because you want to give power to other people, because my belief system is not affected, whether Abby agrees with me or not, we can have a nice conversation about it, but it's not like if Abby says, steve, you're wrong about this, that my life ends. I think you say you outsource a lot of our emotions. I think we've outsourced our self-esteem to other people based on who we like versus who we are it's, um, it's also.
Speaker 3:I mean going a little bit into the depths here, if that's okay this is your part I want to like.
Speaker 3:I've enjoyed our conversation so far, so go as deep as you want, because I really enjoy what you're talking about and please go ahead so it just brings to mind a quote from Cooley who states that I am not who I think I am and I'm not who you think I am. I am who you think that I am. So it's essentially like we see ourselves like as a perception of a perception, like we're often looking for our own identity through how we believe others perceive us, and I think that all these different healing modalities and therapies out there are really just trying to bring us back to ourselves and start to just reclaim who we are fundamentally and our own authenticity and the authenticity is so important that you know this is what I strive for, both in my podcast and in my life in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a little bit of showboating in there in in this podcast in some ways, but ultimately what I feel like the breath work. You talk about breath work. I talk about my, my spiritual life. I talk about a lot of different things. I've learned not to fake me and being able to be myself. Sometimes it's painful and maybe it's not myself, maybe it's a reaction to what the other person says, but that authenticity I also remind myself that you know I'm not going to spoil it too much, but you know we're recording this a little in advance. Who I am today may not be the person once this podcast is released and there's nothing wrong with that but once we feel like we got to meet what people think of who we are, oh, that's who they think I am. That's why's why I gotta be. I think it just puts you in a place where you lose your authenticity, you lose yourself and you can't connect to your body because you're like, who the hell is this?
Speaker 3:and I felt like that in the first responder space. I felt like I lost my authenticity because in roles where there's such that sense of belonging, you need to belong because your life depends on it in certain situations. So when you have that need to belong like you lose your authenticity. And it took me a long time. I'm still on that path. You know I'm getting better with it every day. But yeah, I lost my own authenticity for a very long time whilst I was in the police and that was very painful.
Speaker 2:You know like it's something that I've shared, I think, on the podcast and, if I haven't, I certainly shared it with other people when I worked in the first responder world. I was never a first responder, I'm not stealing anyone's game here but I kind of lost myself in that too, because I was in a different position. I started wanting to fit in and you know the tough guy image and this has always been that way. If you think, I shaved my head and I've been like this. I had no hair when I was 15. So this is not a look at, this is who I am.
Speaker 2:But the other part of persona became so much more important and you know, I went from a strong feminist to someone who at times was not very nice. And I think, at the end of the day, I think that that environment does change you, because you feel like you need to be accepted, because you know you're in a shady situation, you need to know that someone's behind you to support you or to do that. And then you got to change a little bit of who you are and I hear that from especially women in general, but I don't know what you think.
Speaker 3:But yeah, I, I think that I see it a lot, but I would say there's not a lot of awareness around that and what I found with I mean, I'm in, I'm in a unique position that I worked for two different police forces and I had actually two very different experiences. So this, you know, the things I talk about mainly about authenticity were in the first force I worked for. But in the second force that was very, very different, like I could be human there and there were some really great people and this wasn't really our play there. So it also comes to show that it is who you're surrounded by and the culture that's deeply embedded, like when you go in it isn't just across the board. So therefore, it doesn't have to be the case.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to and it's got to be something that more places accept it. But I also know that you know you talk about again. If you feel I'm putting down any type of place, I'm not, but sometimes we fit the role that we need to survive in and I think that sometimes when you're not given an opportunity to be yourself and I worked in a jail for a few years too that's definitely a place where I couldn't be myself and my humanity was fucking gone and I don't want to. I treat people who work in the corrections field now and it definitely something they also acknowledge because you got to fit in in order to survive essentially. But I also think that if you have that one or two people that you can be that way, I think it changes the dynamic also. So your second place, being more yourself probably helped your healing process. If you, I'm not doing any therapy, I'm just saying, just observing here?
Speaker 3:yeah, well, I have. I obviously have to say that for me, at the first force that I worked for, I didn't have the tools and skills that I have now. I came to them because of the disconnection I experienced in the first working environment. So therefore it highlighted all my limitations through just going along with it and it.
Speaker 3:When I worked in the second force, I had already, you know, been doing the breath work and you mentioned, at the second force I had already, you know, been doing the breath work and you mentioned at the start whether I'd had therapy before. I have had coaching with a coach who's a trauma specialist, so slightly different. But yeah, so after that point, when I'd gone into the second force, that was almost like the second chance. It was the experience I always thought I would have in the police and the experience I always wanted around, the people I thought I would be around and they were a reflection of who I was at that time. But I maybe wouldn't have got there if I hadn't have had all those limitations exposed in the first force and in this, the first experience, and I maybe wouldn't have appreciated it as well.
Speaker 2:I would have maybe just taken that for granted so you're saying that experience is what we all need in order to grow. Of course, yes, I think that that's the other part too. We talk about somatic breath work. I remind people about also oh, I shouldn't have done this, or I wish I didn't go through this and I tell people that's, that's the worst thing you could ever do for yourself, because that is what is your experience and brought you to this point.
Speaker 2:You know people who work in the first responder world, the first emergency responders, as you call them. What I've always found is that there's something in their past that made them say I want to help other people. And people always laugh at me because, no, they wanted to have a gun. Or in the UK they don't, but no, they wanted to have a gun, or my, you know, in the UK they don't, but no, they wanted to help people. That's essentially what people do in the first responder world.
Speaker 2:And going back to the breath work and all, I don't regret any of my experiences. In fact, losing my best friend at age 12 in a fire is probably what formed me the best. Do I wish my friend was here? Yeah, I could use five minutes of a hug with him. Obviously do. I wish my friend was here. Yeah, I could use five minutes of a hug with him, obviously, but it's not going to happen, right? But it helped me realize that I never want anyone to be alone with any struggles that they have, because blaming no one, I was alone and I will never let anyone be alone in that that's really profound and just so sorry that you went through such a big traumatic bereavement so young.
Speaker 3:Those experiences, as you say, like they do go on to shape us and form oftentimes part of our purpose in life.
Speaker 3:And you're completely right in what you say, that we are drawn to frontline work for a reason, and whether they're open and transparent about that reason or not, some people say, oh, it was just something they fell into or it was a family tradition to be in the police. But I actually know a lot of people, a lot of police officers, who've had really traumatic experiences growing up and they join the police force because they want to use the experiences to help others or also just to touch on you know, something that we were talking about even right at the start of the episode. When we're talking about the foot, do you damage your foot because you're not able to stand up for yourself? Is it you going into the police as some form of reenactment in terms of am I able to protect those parts of me when I was younger that I couldn't stand up for myself at that time? But here I am. I'm feeling empowered. Maybe it's driven from fear sometimes.
Speaker 2:I agree and the quote negative emotions are not negative, they're an indication of something's wrong. And I kind of remind people like, oh, I don't want anxiety. I'm like, well, you'll be dead when you have no anxiety. So that doesn't exist. Or I don't want to feel sad anymore. Well, no, it's normal to feel sad, it's not. You know, if you lose X, y, z I lost my best friend but of course you're going to have some emotions and I think that you know.
Speaker 2:You talk about the breath work and doing that somatic breath work.
Speaker 2:I think that what brought me to my realization of my spiritual life is just sitting with the uncomfortable feeling that I had, and I think that that's a little bit of the essence of what you were saying earlier.
Speaker 2:And I I want to get it back to somatic breath, where I tell my first responders you felt like crap being in that scene, being in this position, good, feel like crap being in that scene, being in this position, good, feel like crap, come in here, feel like crap. And they're like really, and I'm like, yeah, because that's what's going to get it out of you, because if you sit like crap and you repress it, it's going to break your foot and I'm just making up the analogy we talked earlier, but it's going to break you somewhere else. So, going back to the somatic breath work and a little bit of the stuff about negative emotions, I really think it's a good way to even work with first responders to kind of like get them to embrace that hey, it's okay to feel that way. You want to come and cry in my office and you want to leave with a smile? That's great, but don't deny those quote negative emotions.
Speaker 3:Yeah for sure, and I think that comes down to this misconception that we have that resilience is not feeling anything and being able to plow through every experience. And this is really no. That is like the complete opposite to resilience. Is a resilient person somebody who can't feel any emotions and only has like one default emotion, and like they can't express or love anymore or they can't actually feel anger or sadness? Or is it someone who can go into the depth of every single emotion, feel it and be able to move past it and hold it and sit in it? And it's the switch between those two. It isn't an easy path, but I used to take the first one. I used to think, right, well, if I just push this down, I don't think about this grief, I don't know how to deal with it, I'll push it down and plow through. But it came back to bite me years down the line. It took five plus years to deal with that grief.
Speaker 2:And it takes a long time to get out of that mindset. As you said, I didn't feel anything. That's resiliency. I'm proud of that.
Speaker 3:And it's hard to break that because you feel good that you fought through, so to speak. And it was a lot harder to start being able to sit with my emotions. But once I started to learn how to regulate my emotions and my nervous system, I suppose it's maybe not the emotions we fear, it's the reactivity that we fear, because when we take away the, when we have emotions, and we take away the reactivity and the sensitivity and we learn to sit with them and regulate, that's when we have resilience and that's when we have authenticity. But if we again go back to the quote that I shared at the start, if we suppress and repress, we become numb and that's when we're living a living death well, I'm I'm going to quote a little bit of spirituality here before we uh, kind of like getting close to wrapping up here.
Speaker 2:But I go back to a statement. I think it's a thich nhan hang quote what I resist persists, and I remind people of that too, like, oh no, I don't have this, I don't have that, and you know you're resisting it, but that's okay. But you're going to see that it's going to persist even more instead of letting it go.
Speaker 3:But that's a little bit of the breath work stuff that we talked about too yeah, for sure it's that it's wanting to come up and move through you because you don't want to hold on to it anymore. But almost, to do that, you have to go through the lesson and you have to go through the cycle. A cycle has to end for a new one to begin.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that you have a lot to offer with those cycles and that information. I know that you might be doing sharing some stuff with the world in regards to that stuff, Can you tell me more about it?
Speaker 3:So, yes, I am currently offering breathwork sessions. I'm currently offering breathwork sessions, so I offer one-to-one experiences, which are great for those who are maybe new to breathwork or very curious or want to have a very private experience, or that we can do that in groups as well, and it can be done online and that's great if you have a group of friends and you want to have a breathwork session together and have an experience. Sometimes it's it can give us permission, when other people are expressing to, to let go. So there's beauty in both one having that personal private experience or being around other people. It's that co-regulation shared it.
Speaker 2:you know, environment shared expression so you know, I'm just going to mention that I do a group for first responders and you know, a couple of months ago someone really shared a hard experience they went through and then now everyone's sharing their experience and everyone's giving each other space and you know, the comment I get all the time is like, oh, I feel I can let go and just be myself in here. I think that that's what it is, the group experience. I like the breath work stuff for that, because then you can have other people around you having that same experience. But I don't know. That's kind of what I heard you say yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, it sounds like you've created like a safe container and it's yeah. So people know when I'm in this space I'm safe and we need to actually feel safety before anything else comes. So we won't have an expression or release within breathwork until we have the safety. That's fundamental. So sometimes we just need to work on the safety element a little bit longer. But once it's there, once you've got that trust, that's when you can relax and let go.
Speaker 2:It's fundamental well, how are we going to reach you if we want one-on-one sessions or even video sessions and, by the way, I'm going to say it right now, I'm talking to my first responders, who always report listening to this podcast. Look, someone who's been there done that, has a few t-shirts can really really help you. So I want to make sure that you heard me say that. So how do people reach you, abby?
Speaker 3:so at present I am on Instagram. My Instagram is healing underscore sorry, healing underscore blue underscore hearts, so it's healing blue hearts. There is a link within my bio in there which will take you through to book an online session. However, you can reach out to me via dm because if you are a first responder, I will give you a special offer on the price of a breathwork session well, I appreciate that I've been not being a first responder but working with many of them for several years.
Speaker 2:I thank you for that offer. I it is well needed, so I'm gonna I'm making sure I'm gonna put that in the show notes. Healing blue hearts. Make sure to dm you or click on the link in there for it to reach you. Um, anything else you would like to add?
Speaker 3:I know I think we have gone in all corners of all things healing and frontline work and breath work today. So thank you very much for that. It's been a really interesting conversation.
Speaker 2:I can't tell you how much I appreciate you. I appreciate the service that you did for the community. More importantly, I really appreciate the service you're doing right now with the breath work and the somatic breath work, because I think that's something that is not well understood and is absolutely needed. So thank you for that too.
Speaker 3:Thank you, appreciate it, and likewise, likewise for your work supporting those on the front line and creating safe containers.
Speaker 2:Well, I appreciate that and I will talk to you soon, hopefully. Well, this concludes episode 173. Abby Westgate. Thank you so much. This was a great interview. I hope you enjoyed it, because I certainly did, but episode 174 will be with something a little different. We talk a lot about first responder stuff here, but here's someone who's going to tell us how to work. I read her book it's amazing, stephanie Cohen and she's going to talk about how to overcome her fear of dogs, and I hope you join us then.
Speaker 1:Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States and Canada.
