S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman on today's show. Therapist and author Katherine Woodward Thomas is featured at this year's San Diego Writers Festival. We'll hear about her latest book. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. What does it take to heal from the past and build the life you actually want ? Well , licensed therapist and author Katherine Woodward Thomas tackles that in her latest book titled What's True About You ? Seven Steps to move Beyond Your Painful Past and Manifest Your Brightest Future. You might also know her as other other for her other bestselling books like calling in the One and Conscious Uncoupling. While she'll be a featured author at the San Diego Writers Festival later this month on March 28th. And Catherine joins me now. Catherine , welcome to Midday Edition.
S2: Oh , nice to be with you. Jade , thank you for having me.
S1: So glad to have you on. So. You've written a lot about personal transformation and helped many people over the years.
S2: And what I mean by that is that many of the things that we want to create in our lives that keep eluding us , that somehow the goal keeps moving , or we just find ourselves kind of repeating old patterns , no matter how much we've gone back and done our healing work. Um , I , I'm a person who was in therapy for many years. I am a psychotherapist , and so I'm kind of in a perfect position to begin to poke holes in some of our assumptions. So what motivated me was I actually discovered a process really first for myself. And then I started sharing it with my students and my clients because I also teach online. So I have that privileged position of working with a lot of people. And I saw that there's really a difference between healing the past and transforming your future. And what I mean by that is that when we do our healing work , we are kind of reclaiming lost parts of ourselves. We're owning our own story. We're starting to see what happened in a way that validates the pain we've been in or where we've gotten stuck , but it hasn't necessarily access the power to create a whole different experience. What happens when you actually go into the future and set an intention for kind of a wild ride , like , you know , if you had all bad relationships and suddenly you're going to have a great relationship , you just claim that future. This is what's going to happen by my birthday. I'm engaged by my , you know , 50th birthday. And it's going to be this amazing person who is the great love of my life , even though you've never had that before. What opens up in that moment is you suddenly see the gap between who you are now and who you would need to be to actually manifest and sustain that future. So it's the future that we claim that begins to initiate the growth and the development in the direction of that dream that would make actualization possible. So I'm motivated by love because I love people. I love personal development work. When I discovered this myself , actually graduated from old toxic patterns , I thought , okay , I need to share this with other people.
S1:
S2: I do think so. I think that , you know , when you have things that happen in your youth and a lot of people don't recognize the word trauma. You know , we're very trauma informed in our therapy now , which is wonderful. But some people who had a good enough childhood might not understand that. But I will say that the task of childhood is to form a sense of yourself and where you fit into this world , who you are for other people , who others are for you. So if you had a parent who was overwhelmed and negligent , that could have lodged. As you know , I'm in a I'm alone fall center. I'm alone. No one's really here for me. I can never get my needs met. Is that matrix ? And I have found that there's about 22 main ones that we all tend to kind of adopt to some degree or another , but it really does get in the way of being able to take the kind of risks that one would need to take in order to actualize their potentials. You know , we don't actualize our potentials when we're in our comfort zone. We really have to take risks. We have to try new things. And a lot of the reason why we keep getting stuck in old patterns and that we're not moving forward into our higher potentials , is what I call missing development. Mhm. What I mean. Yeah. Go ahead Jake.
S1: Well and I know. Do they. Does that missing development fit into the core beliefs that you've mentioned of sort of feeling like , you know , I'm not good enough or I'm not enough. Absolutely.
S2: Absolutely. Because this is the mechanism if when I'm four years old , I have all these siblings , they can be on the monkey bars , they can do all sorts of ballet and stuff. And I'm just trying to , you know , run after them and keep up. But they're making fun of me. That could actually then form and I'm not enough story because , you know , a four year old doesn't understand. Well , in three years I'll be able to do that. So it goes into the identity care category. And if you're operating from that center and that's an emotional center. It's like I just feel inferior. I feel not good enough. So if you're operating from that center , you're going to start to do things to compensate , over function , over give , uh , say yes to every opportunity because you're constantly trying to prove yourself worthy of love and belonging. And what that actually communicates to other people is that you're less valuable than them. Their time is more valuable. Uh , their gifts are more valuable. You almost put yourself in this situation where then you're pulling on people to validate the beliefs that you're in , to validate that identity. So there's a whole set of ways that we're relating to ourselves , others in life that goes with each source fracture story. That's very specific to that. So for example , like the I'm alone story inside of that matrix , you'll project onto other people that they could leave you. And that's a scary thing. And sometimes leaving just means disagreeing with you or disapproving you. If you have a lot of anxiety about being left and inside of that , maybe you never learn conflict resolution. And so you just kind of go along with things , which means you're self abandoning , you're leaving yourself , you know , out in the cold , but you're also only having kind of one person in the relationship because the other person's always right. You don't really challenge their opinion and you get this inauthenticity. And studies show that when we do not engage conflict , the relationship fails to bond deeply. So it's easy for people to leave us then because there's kind of no there there. So that's what we're looking at is how we're the source of our own experience , you know ? And one of the things I really emphasize is we're never responsible for what happened to us when we were young and forming those original identities. But we are responsible for how we're showing up as adults now in a way that's perpetuating that. And I don't think we've emphasized this enough in psychotherapy , this personal responsibility about how I'm the source of my own experience. But it is the liberation to begin to do things differently.
S1: So how can people break out of those those negative self stories and realities , really that that people experience and even the the negative self-talk ? Absolutely.
S2: You're going right to the heart of it , because it's in our relationship with ourselves that we really do have the key to evolve beyond us. So the seven step process that the book is laying out begins with the unlikely future , where I encourage people like , what do you really like if your life really worked out , if it if if it all became golden , like , what would you have ? And some people you know might say , I finally got my money act together or I got my career , my contribution. You know , I'm an artist , you know , working in a beautiful , uh , artist community , doing great work and selling my pieces for lots of money. You know , whatever your big dream is , I say start there and let's work backwards from that self and start to to try on to self of that future. The next step , though goes right into okay , but what has the pattern been in this area and where do you feel that in your body when it happens again that kind of collapse into oh see I'm not good enough or see I am bad or see I'm not safe to dream big. And each of us has kind of a , a main default in each area that we've struggled with. And it basically means that our identity is not yet aligned with the having of what it is we desire. I'm a big believer in the desires of our heart are the roadmap of our lives , and so we want to really allow ourselves to feel those desires. But if you're discouraged and you're resigned and you don't think you can ever have that because you're so overly identified with the I'm not good enough story or whatever , one of those 22 has you in its grip , then you're going to really stumble and not be able to create that future. So the true you. And on the name of the book , I have to you in all caps , because it's really about waking up from the trance of old trauma , and it's about really claiming what's actually true about this idea that I'm not safe in the world and I'm not right. And you. And from the adult part you can say , well , I am the source of safety for myself and others , and I can learn how to pace relationships or ask the right questions or do whatever I need to do to create safety. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Is some of that where , like imposter syndrome comes from ? I hear that term , um , thrown around in circles. What is that exactly ? And and does that fit into what we're talking about here ? Absolutely.
S2: it does. I mean , I think that the imposter syndrome is the feeling where you're trying to act as if and I'm a big believer in acting as if. By the way , let's try on this here and start acting as if. But if you don't actually then identify the ways that you've been the source of your experience , you're always kind of pretending and you're always striving because you haven't yet matched your identity to where you're going. And the key to that , Jade , is that beliefs are actually relational. And a lot of times if we're in , you know , a personal development workshop or we're in therapy , we're in coaching , you know , we'll say something like , I know I have this belief I'm not good enough. And I know it's really holding me back , but we're not necessarily looking at the relational dimension of that belief , which is that other people are better than me. And we want to look at how we're showing up with other people. Then in a way that's convincing them that they're better. Uh , you know , if you again , if you go back to the. I'm not safe. The projection onto others is that others are going to hurt me. They want something from me they're going to take from me. And and if you walk into , you know , a meeting with somebody or you're on a date with somebody and she's getting to know somebody , and that's what you're projecting. You might not say anything , but they feel it from you. And guess what ? It brings out the worst in them. And then they do behave badly. So that's how we're the source. We're actually pulling on people and enrolling them in our stories and all of this down in the book so we can see it clearly.
S1: Well , also , I must know and moving beyond that , you know , we hear about the concept of manifestation and wishing for something better.
S2: Well , manifestation is actually the , the , the promise of the book is that you'll get unencumbered and clear out your past from your present so that you actually have the ability to stay generative of the future that you're co-creating. I think sometimes with manifestation , we get very woo woo about it , and we forget that we are the ones who are , you know , partnering with the energies of life to bring things into fruition. So all of the teaching is about we have the power to create the future. The future is not fixed. And really , I'm offering it to the world at this point also because of how discouraging our collective future looks. And I think it's time for us to really start to wake up to our own agency and efficacy and being able to cause a future that might not exist unless we take a stand for it.
S1: All right. I have been speaking with licensed marriage and family therapist Catherine Woodward. Thomas , her latest book is What's True About You Seven Steps to Move Beyond Your Painful Past and Manifest Your Brightest Future. And of course , you'll be at the San Diego Writers Festival on Saturday , March 28th will include details on our website at KPBS. Catherine , thank you so very much.
S2: Thank you. Jade.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
