It may seem like an unlikely partnership, and yet, your brain’s health and well-being are directly connected to returning to the wholeness of who you are, your Soul. Fortunately, 100,000’s of thousands of years of evolution have fine-tuned systems that can be accessed and optimized.
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“Look deeply and with kind curiosity into these mirrors of your own Soul. Embrace and appreciate the wisdom they hold. Listen from that still place in the center of your being. Hear the call of the Love that lies beneath beckoning you to come home.”

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My book, Love Lies Beneath: How Reclaiming My Soul Through Story Became The Secret To Healing My Heart is available in paperback and as a Kindle at Amazon.
Transcript
Transcripts are approximations
Welcome to Love Lies Beneath. I’m Zette Harbour.
I’m glad to have you here. Do you feel like stress, fear, or pain take up way too much of your energy? Have you wondered if you’ll ever be free of that heaviness of your past? Do you long to feel as good on the inside as your life looks on the outside? In this podcast, you’ll discover the story of who you really are and how to set yourself free together.
We’re going to travel into those wild spaces of our inner landscapes and dive deeply into the rich soil of our lives. Reclaiming soul through story and healing. Our hearts. My book Love Lies Beneath is the. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast. So you don’t miss any of this enriching journey. And now let the adventure begin.
In episode 35, I share a section of my book called Reclaim Your Soul, Heal Your Brain. At first glance, it might seem like an unlikely partnership, the Soul and the brain. And yet, each plays a beautiful and powerful role in allowing you to really experience who it is you’re here to be and have the freedom and confidence to shine that beautiful light that is yours and yours alone, out into the world.
Reclaim Your Soul, Heal Your Brain
It may surprise you to learn that the process of reclaiming your Soul through Story to heal your Heart has some strong physiological foundations.
As you reclaim your Soul, you not only heal your Heart, you also heal your brain. Every story you carry within you, whether conscious or unconscious, affects how you think, feel, and act. Your brain is the hub of all of those operations. It takes in all the available information and filters it through your story about yourself, the world, and your place in it. What matches gets to stay and leads the way.
Anything that disrupts the status quo of belief will be held up, measured, and jettisoned. It is as if the brain were putting together pieces of a puzzle. The stories you have are the picture on the outside of the box. Your brain will only look for and lock in on the pieces to create that image. So, if your picture on the outside of the box of your life includes unconscious and unhealed wounds, your brain will sort for the puzzle pieces that keep those stories intact.
Give your brain a clearer picture and it will find what you need to make your life richer and more fulfilling.
Reclaiming your Soul through Story will also change how your brain processes negative experiences. This is because trauma stimulates certain parts of the brain to be overactive such as the basal ganglia/insula, the limbic system, and the anterior cingulate gyrus. In fact, there is a particular pattern of overactivity in these three areas specifically associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Using Single-Photon Emission Computerized Topography, or SPECT for short, Dr. Daniel Amen identifies a consistent display of overactivity that shows up as a diamond plus pattern in these scans.
Chronic trauma and the emotional wounding that it creates keeps that negative stimulation going until it becomes habitual. At that point, your brain will no longer understand why and how to turn it off. The process of healing through Story can allow those triggering mechanisms to be reset. This will not be an overnight, magic bean type of solution, and it is important to give yourself support. No matter how you choose to address and heal your painful, rejected parts of yourself, it will take time.
Just the act of thinking about your stories will not be enough to give you the kind of brain health support you need. While your brain is not who you are, it definitely affects how you are. Every thought, emotion, and action either originates or is processed through the brain. Even the things you feel in your gut will be sent up to the brain for your conscious mind to make some sense of it. That is why it is vital to make sure your brain has everything it needs to function at its best.
Alternate Perspectives
“Every human being has a true, genuine, authentic self and that trauma is that disconnection from it, and the healing is the reconnection with it.”
Dr Gabor Maté
You have the power to heal your connection to your true, genuine, authentic self. While the traumas from your Original Self-Betrayals and Original Woundings seem to be in your way, they are, in fact, lighting your path. They contain all of the wisdom of how to find your way home to your Original Self. Your Soul has always known what you need for this restorative work. Listen to her as you consider what to choose to support you in reconnecting to the Love that lies beneath.
Working with unhealed wounds and the stories created in response to them can take many forms. There are a variety of tools out there that are pointing in this same direction. Each one is aimed at healing the thoughts and feelings you have about yourself. The most effective modalities will be centered around compassion and mindfulness, along with intentional self-care. Follow the links below to learn more about any of the ones that call to you.
Neuro Linguistic Programming
‘NLP training is like learning how to become fluent in the language of your mind so that the ever-so-helpful “server” that is your unconscious will finally understand what you actually want out of life.
NLP is the study of excellent communication–both with yourself and with others. It was developed by modeling excellent communicators and therapists who got results with their clients. NLP is a set of tools and techniques, but it is so much more than that. It is an attitude and a methodology of knowing how to achieve your goals and get results.’
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
‘EMDR is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress resulting from disturbing life experiences. Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy, people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal. EMDR therapy shows that the mind can, in fact, heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma.
A study found that 100% of the single-trauma victims and 77% of multiple trauma victims no longer were diagnosed with PTSD after only six 50-minute sessions.’
Archetypal Psychology – James Hillman
‘Archetypal psychology bases its therapeutic proposal on the exploration of images rather than on their explanation. It talks about being aware and attentive to these images until they’re as clear as they can be and contemplating them carefully until our observation creates a meaning. All of this gives place to a therapeutic process that Hillman called “the creation of the soul.
Metaphoric images are its first unlearned language, which provides the poetic basis of mind, making possible communication between all people and all things by means of metaphors.’
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
‘CBT places an emphasis on helping individuals learn to be their own therapists. Through exercises in the session as well as “homework” exercises outside of sessions, patients/clients are helped to develop coping skills, whereby they can learn to change their own thinking, problematic emotions, and behavior.
CBT is based on several core principles, including:
Psychological problems are based, in part, on faulty or unhelpful ways of thinking and on learned patterns of unhelpful behavior. People suffering from psychological problems can learn better ways of coping with them, thereby relieving their symptoms and becoming more effective in their lives.’
Tapping or Emotional Freedom Technique
‘EFT is a practical self-help method that involves using the fingers to gently tap on the body’s acupuncture points along the meridian lines of Chinese medicine. It is often referred to as ‘EFT Tapping’ or simply as ‘Tapping.’ The therapeutic effects of this technique are recognized around the world. One can use EFT tapping for anxiety, weight loss issues, pain, stress, and many other issues.
EFT Tapping helps us tune in to the negative patterns that we form around our uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, or troubling memories. We ‘tap’ on the correct pressure points while bringing the thoughts or emotions into consciousness.’ https://eftinternational.org/discover-eft-tapping/what-is-eft-tapping/
Positive Psychology
‘Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living. It is a scientific approach to studying human thoughts, feelings, and behavior, with a focus on strengths instead of weaknesses, building the good in life instead of repairing the bad, and taking the lives of average people up to “great” instead of focusing solely on moving those who are struggling up to “normal.”
Positive psychology focuses on the positive events and influences in life, including:
Positive experiences (like happiness, joy, inspiration, and love).
Positive states and traits (like gratitude, resilience, and compassion).
Positive institutions (applying positive principles within entire organizations and institutions).
As a field, positive psychology spends much of its time thinking about topics like character strengths, optimism, life satisfaction, happiness, well-being, gratitude, compassion (as well as self-compassion), self-esteem and self-confidence, hope, and elevation.’
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
‘In its most basic form, ACT helps people accept their difficulties and move on, leaving the negativities behind.
Acceptance – of miseries, failures, and ailments.
Commitment – to changing for the better and following the right chain of actions.
ACT accepts so-called ‘abnormality’ as part of the human psyche and lays more emphasis on change through acceptance. The myriad of ACT techniques and interventions develop ‘psychological flexibility’ or ‘mental plasticity,’ resulting in positive actions and life choices.’
In this section, I share some of the practices and processes I have found personally valuable and helpful. There are many more, and you may have experienced a number of them yourself when it comes to reclaiming your soul through story and healing your brain. The most important practice is the one that gives you the greatest results.
And it isn’t even important that it be just one or that there be the one. It’s really more like having a balanced diet. There are so many different doorways into the soul and there are so many different systems that our body has evolved with and holds within us that can support the brain in shifting how it processes, thoughts, feelings, and actions.
And so it’s really important to allow yourself to consider receiving the nourishment from a rainbow of processes and practices. The one thing about all practices that support the restoration of the self is when you can identify how as a being, we have evolved for those systems to increase our wellbeing.
And when you can optimize a system, that’s been in place for hundreds of thousands of years, and that was designed to enhance your experience of life from the very beginning, that’s when you’re going to find that it’s, it’s going to be a little easier. You’re going to have fewer obstacles. It’s not going to require as much effort.
So particularly something like EFT, which draws upon this extraordinary system of power points and energy lines in the body and opens up the doors to this energy that your body already contains within it. This is, this is the part that I think thrills me the most about these different things is all these rich gifts are inside just waiting for us to, pardon the pun, tap into them. And so the more fluent we are in the gifts and richness of the systems that our body already contains, like the ability to create imagery, that is a natural human gift. We can all experience imagery in our minds. Now I understand there’s probably some folks who have a harder time seeing imagery in their mind, and that is related to either brain functioning or conditioning.
It’s In Your Design
But essentially the human brain is designed to be able to imagine things. In fact, in the book Homo sapiens, the author puts forth this theory that the reason that homo sapiens thrived when other species did not, for instance, Neanderthals or the other types of hominids that were on the planet at close to, or the same time, his theory is that.
As homo sapiens, it was our ability to create a fiction that enabled them to really bring groups together, focused on the same vision and it’s, and he really goes into detail pointing out the difference between being able to transmit information, which he believes that all the hominids were capable of doing, you know, sharing, you know, information about how tools were used or how, you know, food was gathered or prepared or all, all kinds of information that would have been necessary for survival.
And so that was valuable and important and helpful. And yet what made sapiens sort of breakthrough to become this highly successful species was this capacity to engage others in believing in, and wanting to put personal energy toward a story. And so our ability, our capacity to create story is truly this extraordinary gift.
And it’s one that is, is so ordinary. This is just like the ability to breathe, right. Or the ability to digest food. It’s easy to overlook and it’s easy to assume that it’s just going to happen on its own, but just like digestion. If you don’t pay attention to what you put into your digestion or how you care for your digestion, you’re not going to have great nutrition or feel nourished or have a happy body. And so your story diet is the same in the sense that you have the capacity to give your mind, to engage your brain in the creation of stories that expand your sense of who you are. You know, this reminds me of, uh, often when I’m talking to a client, we’ll talk about listening to their intuition, as opposed to fear, you know, we’ve all had that experience of hearing a voice inside and it says, either things are bad, don’t do that or go this way or stop.
Or it says, here is the way follow that. And. When we’re first learning to tap into this powerful wisdom that is within us, it can be a little confusing, which voice is, right? Is it the voice that tells me to not do it? Or is it the voice that tells me to do it? And so what I encourage them to do is to check inside and feel which voice creates a sense of expansion within them, which voice increases their possibilities and the feeling of satisfaction and which voice shrinks and constricts, their possibilities and the voice that shrinks and constricts their possibilities, that is the voice of fear, the voice that expands that beautiful power to experience and express in life. That is your intuition. That’s how you can put these biological systems to work, to support you in evolving into who you’re here to be. And all of these practices that I share in the section of the book, they all support that restoration of that connection to your really beautifully powerful, intuitive, wise self.
We all have her. And in response to external conditions that felt threatening, we shut down our connection to her little by little, sometimes, sometimes all at once. Right? Sometimes it was just a matter of letting it be unused and get rusty. So bringing these processes, you know, allowing your images to reveal their wisdom to you, tapping on these energy lines and points that enrich the flow in your own body, using eye movements, which is another evolutionary biological powerhouse for us, and many more, they all are ways for you to add variety to your soul’s diet, to your mind’s diet. Allow yourself to be nourished by all of the things you were born with. All of the things you were born to be. So over this next few days, this week, I invite you to choose one practice. I’ll include a link to a download to a handbook on EFT and something called a vagus nerve reset, which I don’t mention in the book, but it’s using eye movements to restore tone, which is another way of saying calmness and health, to your vagus nerve system. Another extraordinary evolutionary biological support for living your most rich full life. So you can download that guidebook and use those for yourself or choose any of the others that I’ve listed or that you know of. And as you do any of those practices, be observant of any stories or images that arise within you, memories, songs, things you used to enjoy doing, whatever emerges, even if it’s just colors and textures or smells. It can be incredibly valuable to write this down, to allow it to flow from you without judgment.
Again, kind curiosity. What wisdom does this have for me? Allow it to reveal itself because it is here to love you. And it is here to support you in. Restoring your connection to this brilliance and beauty, that is who you are. I’m Zette Harbour. This is Love Lies Beneath. I hope you subscribe to this podcast.
I hope that you visit LoveLiesBeneath.com because there you’ll find other episodes, show notes, links to guests who have had on the show before and also links to downloadable resources. One of the resources available is for you to reach out and set up a virtual coffee date with me. It’s 20 minutes where you can share some of your story.
I love to hear story and I would be delighted to hear what’s been revealed to you as a result of listening to this podcast. I look forward to sharing more time with you.
Go raibh míle maith agat!