The Paradox of Help: Safety, Shame & Belonging (S18E04)

Why do we sometimes refuse help even when it might be just what we need? And what is it that happens when we're feeling sensitised, sensitive, activated or triggered that makes us refuse help? Even if it's simply someone offering us a pen when we need something to write with. That's what I'd love to explore today. Welcome to the Henny Flynn podcast, the space for deepening self awareness with profound self compassion.

I'm Henny. I write, coach and speak about how exploring our inner world can transform how we experience our outer world, all founded on a bedrock of self love. Settle in and listen and see where the episode takes you. So the flip side of this behaviour of refusing help even when it might be just what we need is that if we want someone to trust us one of the most powerful things we can do is hand something to them and if you've ever watched that series, Hustle used to be on the BBC or people exploring, reading and using our innate understanding of body language then you might have seen this in action. You know and actually salespeople use it and, I was taught it way, way, way back in the day as a leadership technique when I was working in publishing.

So we, most of us, I suspect have an innate sort of understanding of this, either this refusal of help or the fact that when we offer help and it's received, it makes us feel good, makes the other person feel good. So I'd really love to dive into some of the neuroscience and the psychology of trust and the giving and receiving of support, especially in that context of when we're activated or triggered. And for me, I'm also fascinated by how we can perhaps find ourselves influenced by others' behavior when they're feeling sensitised, activated or triggered. And when they're feeling potentially mistrustful of others, like how does that affect us as the recipient of that? Or how does our behavior, when we're the ones in that sensitized state, potentially affecting those around us by refusing help?

So let's just sort of leave that to kind of drift around us as I dive into a little bit of what I've gathered around what the neuroscience tells us and then also we'll look at what modern psychology tells us too. So when we're triggered, the amygdala, which is the brain's threat detection center essentially, becomes hyperactive and its job is to keep us safe. So it might end up interpreting any kind of intervention, even a benign one, like being handed a pen when you clearly need one as a potential threat or a kind of intrusion into your space. And this is especially true if we're already flooded with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. And Daniel Goleman actually, explored this imbalance in his book Emotional Intelligence.

It came out in the 90s. Was, I think it was kind of one of the first works really that looked at the amygdala hijack, which has become such kind of common parlance now, you know, we're all familiar with this concept of when we get hijacked by our amygdala, we react to things rather than being mindful and kindful. We have a much more kind of emotional response. So when we're feeling activated, someone offering us help can actually increase the activation of our amygdala and make us feel threatened and as though we have to defend ourselves. We also potentially experience a loss of the prefrontal, regulation that experience when our prefrontal cortex is active.

And it's the part of our brain right at the, front of our head, just behind the, forehead, which usually helps us assess social cues and regulate our response to the world. It also governs our creativity and our empathy. You know, it's the part when that part of our brain is switched on, it's when we're, you know, pretty grounded and measured. When our nervous system is dysregulated, I. E.

The amygdala is kind of leading the way, it's much harder for us to access that mindful, kindful part of our brain. And that means that our ability to pause and to really assess what's going on or perhaps recognise, realise that this person is just being kind can be much harder to reach. Instead our body defaults to those defensive postures or reflexes fight, flight, freeze and fawn. And, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you might have heard me talk about, I think it's Dan Siegel, I'm pretty sure it is, who, came up with the concept of the hand brain. So if you, make a fist with your hand, but you tuck your thumb inside behind your fingers, so fold your fingers over your thumb, then effectively you've got a model of the brain and your thumb is your limbic system, which is where the amygdala sits.

So this is like the old part of the brain where that fight flight freeze fawn response lives. It's the part that really its job is to keep us safe. And then when you wrap your fingers over the top of it, it's like you're bringing the prefrontal cortex into play. Now, of the challenge is that when we're highly activated, we literally flip our lid, so literally, metaphorically flip our lid. So if you lift your fingers up your amygdala, that limbic area, your thumb is revealed and exposed and vulnerable and you don't have access to that, prefrontal cortex.

So I love this model. It's really great for teaching kids who are feeling dysregulated and don't really understand why, they're getting upset about things. And that's actually why Dan Siegel, created it, was for children and for their parents, but I think it's really interesting for anybody to understand that we have this kind of off on relationship between our kind of fear response and our, you know, sort of more kind of mindful way of responding to the world. So, the third aspect of what neuroscience tells us, I think that's really interesting in relation to this particular challenge, this particular sort of thing that we observe, is that neuroscience research also shows that the striatum, I'm not actually sure whereabouts that is in the brain, but anyway, the striatum and its related circuits, they light up when we feel a sense of control and they dampen down when we feel disempowered. So when we're in an activated state or you know, maybe sort of there are like some old triggers, activating us, Refusing help can be the nervous system's way of regaining a sense of autonomy, however small that might be.

So if I'm highly activated, something has happened, and someone offers me some help, I might bite their hand off. You know, we even use that language, don't we? Don't bite my hand off. Don't, don't react like that. Don't be so defensive.

Because the only way that I can keep myself feeling safe is by establishing a sense of control. Whereas if I accept help, might be sort of unconsciously, you know, sort of promoting a feeling of not being in control. And so, you know, as I'm sort of sharing all of this, I just wonder whether, you know, your, any thoughts about times when you might have, refused help even when it was something that would have been really, really useful for you. Or maybe there's someone you know, someone you love, someone you work with who goes through sort of stages, or maybe it's their kind of default is to refuse help. And it may be that some of this stuff that I'm sharing with you helps shine a light on what might be going on for them.

Obviously we can never know what's going on for somebody else, but I just find it really interesting to be aware of these things so that we can maybe respond more compassionately both to others, but also to ourselves as well. So, in psychological terms, it kind of matches the stuff that we see in the mechanics of our brain, of course, it'd be surprising if it didn't. But in psychological terms, being offered help can really highlight our vulnerability. I mean, oh man, I have experienced that, you know, at the very moment that we most want to appear competent or self sufficient or in control. And that might happen if you're delivering a presentation at work and someone says, oh, know, do you want me to lead it?

And you just go, no, because part of you would love them to lead it. But another part is feeling so vulnerable that you have to reject their support. And in that situation, refusing help, it kind of acts as a defense against the discomfort of being seen in that raw state. Like we, you know, like a, yeah, the last thing that we want is for people to see how vulnerable that we actually are. And so we reject them.

And there was a study in 2010 that found that when support is perceived as controlling, so that example I just gave at work might be seen as, perceived as controlling, rather than you know a kind of adult to adult supportive, know sort of really generous rather than patronizing support. If we find, if it feels like it's being controlling, people will push back defensively and you know, and so we start to see, oh yeah, that really, really makes sense. And so the way that we offer support is really important here. Another aspect which, know, no surprise here, but of course, you know, if we've learned through our family dynamics, through the culture that we've grown up in, through past experiences, past trauma, you know big T, small t, that accepting help is in some way linked to shame or being indebted to somebody else. Know, so maybe it's come with a kind of caveat or it's come with some sort of baggage, you know accepting help has then meant that we've had to do something else, or maybe a loss of dignity and you know as humans dignity is very important for us, then we might automatically refuse help even when the help is neutral or kind and I think this is often seen in many walks of life actually, where people, on the outside may even be, you know, living what we consider to be a huge inverted commas here, very successful lives and yet automatically refuse help because something in their past has meant that accepting help isn't safe.

And so this sort of idea of like, building on this sort of sense of, you know, our sense of self, you know, if we feel that accepting help is a loss of dignity or, you know, for some of us, our self worth is really tied to independence or to a sense of our own capability. And so in moments when, you know, heightened sensitivity to the world, know, and oh gosh, I mean, even as I say that my skin tingles, that concept of heightened sensitivity where anything around me, might, feel jarring or, uncomfortable in some way or unsafe in some way. Protecting our self-concept, you know, our idea of who we are, the ego, can override the very practical need that we might have in the moment for help. And so we say no, because it preserves this fragile sense of self and, you know, for very understandable reasons as well, because in that moment is the only way we know how to keep ourselves safe. And it's building on stories now that we have been carrying with us for a long time.

And so, and so it can feel very ingrained, very embedded. And then the last sort of point that I wanted to make around what might be happening when you observe this in yourself or you observe this in someone around you. And as I say that we are operating, we are living in a highly activated world right now and dysregulation of emotion is being experienced by an awful lot of us or you know, if not ourselves personally, people we love, people we work with, people we live near. And so it feels like having this sense of awareness could be a really useful tool in our toolkit. And yeah, think it's, you know, maybe this is one of those episodes that actually is really useful to share with others, because this is about knowledge and knowledge as we know is power.

So, and I think this really relates to this next point, which is about when we're dysregulated, we can misread intentions. You know, we get it wrong. You know, when you're like frightened and someone approaches you, it doesn't matter who they are, what they're doing, we're going to react in a way that is sole purpose is to keep ourselves safe. And so regardless of who that person is or what their intentions are, we will reject. And, you know, and this sort of ties in with this idea of like, you know, whatever our state of dysregulation is, we might misread intention.

So an offer of help can be perceived as, patronising or pitying or maybe implying inadequacy in some way. And that then triggers defensiveness. And there was a study in 2003 that showed that social rejection, I love this by the way, social rejection and shame activate the same neural pathways as physical pain. So isn't that amazing? So you break your arm and you get a rush of pain in your body.

You experience social rejection and shame. You get the same rush in your brain. So the pain that you feel in your body is sent through the same neural pathway as the sense of social rejection and shame. It is literally painful. And an offer of help, if it's interpreted as pity, can evoke this same pain response.

So of course we refuse it because who wants to be in pain? Now, like me, you might have, wondered why someone was being so defensive. You may have even asked them that, you know, justifying the question because from your perspective, they're being irrational. You know you're not threatening. So, why on earth are they acting as if you are?

And I've definitely had the thought go through my head of, you know, I'm not the enemy because sometimes when someone is reacting in a very defensive manner, it's like they're believing something about us that we know isn't true. And so then that makes us react to them. And, you know, that can result in a unhelpful outcome. So, so many years ago, I was having quite a hard time at work and I didn't, I can't really remember what the context was, but I remember this sort of sense of not really knowing what my place was anymore. I couldn't quite find how to belong.

And you know, I now recognize that I was experiencing a major dose of imposter complex and the only tool I had available aside from endlessly trying to prove myself by working ridiculously hard was to refuse all offers of help and you know, from my work colleagues and you know, just sort of having this, yeah, this this insistence that I was okay and that I could do it. And it resulted in a senior colleague asking like, why are you being so defensive? And it absolutely floored me. I felt utterly vulnerable. I mean the fact that I'm telling you this story and it's twenty years on tells you like it it stuck in me.

It's one of those thorns, which I'm now gently removing as I share this with you. You know, I felt utterly vulnerable. I was angry, I was really upset and, I've got a memory of it making me cry. I'm not sure if it was in front of that person or not, but it really floored me. And at the same time, I thought I must be doing a terrible job because I interpreted why are you being so defensive as a whole number of things, which really I'm pretty sure they didn't intend.

And actually the impact, of my behavior, my refusal of support from this person, Now, standing in my 56 year old shoes, my shoes aren't 56, my body is, I'm able to see, oh gosh, that must have been really hard for that person because what I was actually doing was just endlessly rejecting them. And my sense is that really they were genuinely trying to offer to help me with something, a period of time at work that was really challenging. So, you know, so we can see that, you know, it can become a habit as well, of course, refusing help can just become something that's very ingrained. This either this habitual response or this, circumstantial, response to offers of help, you know, be as a result of stress, can be as a result of being brought up in a culture or a family system where maintaining independence is strongly valued. And there are a number of studies that show that we are therefore more likely to decline support to maintain a sense of competence.

Now you might already know all of this, but I think it's one of those things that really warrants our attention, because when we're in the thick of life, know, when we're sort of deep in the doing of life, it can be really hard to remember these things that like, oh, that person might be feeling a bit activated right now, that might be why they're rejecting my offer of help, it's actually not personally targeted against me, it's something that they're feeling. That can be a really useful thing, like when we're really in the thick of it. So, you know, and of course, you know, for, you know, in a very human way, the cause of our reaction to the world with a, you know, sort of, you know, rejecting our office of support can be because of a whole number of things colliding. And, you know, that's really normal. Sometimes often we, you know, it's very hard for us even to understand like what it is that sits behind it, but I think understanding some of the psychology and some of the neuroscience can help us just at least allow and be with what we're noticing.

So you know, when someone offers you a pen or any small kindness when you're sensitised and we refuse it, it's not about the pen at all. It is a nervous system reflex to defend safety, dignity, autonomy in a moment when we feel under threat and the refusal is protective, and that makes a lot of sense, even if from the outside it doesn't look like it makes sense at all. And one of my favorite psychologists, Carl Rogers, once said, 'When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mould you, it feels damn good. I mean, isn't that just so lovely? And he, you know, sort of in that light, you know, sometimes the most helpful help is simply being present.

It's actually not taking action. It's listening. And if you're familiar with the drama triangle, you'll recognize that. If we're endlessly trying to rescue someone, what we're actually doing is putting them into the place of victim and then they might end up seeing us as the persecutor. So whatever, help and support we do offer someone who's in the activated or triggered or sensitized state, we need to be really, really mindful of what it is they actually most need and that we don't do it, from a place of a kind of hierarchy like, oh, I'm actually thinking I'm slightly better than you and therefore I'm gonna, offer help.

We do it as two equals, adult to adult. So, you know, we can see there's a lot of rationale as to why we might refuse help, even if it's exactly the thing that we most need in the moment. But if you are on the receiving end of this kind of defensive behaviour, what happens to you? You know, it can be incredibly hard not to react, you know, just as that senior colleague did to me. They didn't know the stress that I'd put myself under, or maybe they did, maybe they had some sense of it, hence the offer for help, but they hadn't realized was the impact that stress was having on my whole system.

And they possibly thought I was rejecting them rather than blanket rejecting any kind of support from anyone. And when we're rejected, it makes us question our own place in the world. You know, going back to that, the, you know, the neural pathway for pain and shame, they're the same, so it feels painful when we're rejected. It makes us question our place in the world and so the feeling of discomfort gets amplified, you know, it's not just one person feeling activated and defensive. You then have the person on the receiving end potentially feeling activated and uncomfortable too.

And if you've got high empathy, that can make it even trickier. And of course, even the most, you know, because we pick up on what the other person is feeling sometimes without knowing whether it's ours or theirs, that's a very, classic, response for highly empathetic people who haven't yet learned how to establish really, really profoundly strong boundaries, and even the most naturally compassionate person can feel as though they've been really worn down when someone they love or someone they work with is, you know, again inverted commas like always triggered or hypersensitive. And like I said, if you experience high empathy, if you don't have a strong sense of, your own space and where that meets other people's space with a clear boundary in between the two, you might end up feeling the same way as the person, you're in contact with without even understanding why. And you know, this can happen to all of us. We've all got mirror neurons in our brain.

We all pick up on other people's behaviors. You know, some of us might feel it more intensely than others, but it can happen to all of us. And I've definitely watched myself do it. You know, I've watched myself reject people's, help, when I've needed it. I've watched loved ones reject my help when, you know, a wiser part of me really does understand it would be what they, you know, would most benefit from and I've heard coaching clients talk about themselves doing it, know, like why do I always reject help?

Like why can't I ask for help? Why can't I accept help? So at times we all reject support, even of the most mundane kind, know, sometimes coming across as, you know, we're in that toddler like stance of me do it! You know, I definitely recognize that part of me, you know, the part that likes to likes to work things out on my own. I like to, I like, I enjoy problem solving.

I enjoy finding my way through things and that's a real strength, but it can become a hindrance when I am stressed and continue with that, no, no, no, I'll do it. I'll work it out. I'll get it done. I'll fix it. I, I, I and we're back to the ego again, of course.

So before sort of diving into like how we can support ourselves when we're faced with someone we work with or someone we love, reacting to us or to the world around them in this kind of more defensive way, it could be lovely I think just to look at some of the neuroscience and the psychology of why it's so useful for us to accept help, so we can see, you know, we understand, what's going on, inside us when we're rejecting help and we can start to see why it can really transform things when we actually do accept help. Oxytocin, you know, the caregiving hormone. I've talked a lot here about the power of oxytocin and if you've ever, come along to one of my events or the small group coaching or we've had one to one coaching, you'll know I spend a lot of time with my hand on my heart because placing our hand on our heart can activate oxytocin in our system and what that does is it helps calm the amygdala and it strengthens our sense of trust and connection, as can acts of receiving support. So when we receive support, receive help from someone else, it can trigger an oxytocin release.

I mean isn't that beautiful? And really that goes back to what I was saying earlier about, you know, if we want someone to trust us, hand them something because it's an act of trust. They accept our help, releases oxytocin. They feel good. We feel good.

It's all good. And it creates this neurochemical feedback loop safety, openness, more connection. More connection, a greater sense of safety, greater openness, which leads to even deeper connection. It's so beautiful. And then there's also something which is a study, a more recent study actually in 2016, showed that receiving social support, so support from your group, your family system, but I think it's sort of the actual study, if I'm remembering it correctly, was actually more about your kind of social support network, so friendship, community.

What it does is it activates the part of the brain, that's responsible for reward and that is also linked to feelings of warmth and belonging. And when we're feeling like we belong, then the amygdala is going to be way less activated because we feel safe. Know, it's a core fundamental human need to belong, you know, it's the reason why, you know, way way way back in the day, as in hundreds of years ago, one of the worst things that could happen a person in a community was to be ostracized, was to be, you know, sent out, sent away from the tribe or from the communities that they lived in, because a human being on their own is not as safe as a human being with other human beings. So it's really beautiful that accepting social support helps us build this sense of belonging. And then, Polyvagal Theory, which was, you know, something that Stephen Porges has, really championed, is all about how we can help to move our nervous system out of the sympathetic arousal, so fight, flight, freeze, fawn, into the parasympathetic or as Stephen Porges puts it, ventral vagal safety.

And you know what we see here is that accepting help is literally a physiological way to sort of downshift that stress level in our system. So whether that's in your home, someone offering to help with the washing up and you're really, you're irritated, you're busy, you're, sort of crashing the plates around and you know, offers to help, saying no might make you briefly feel safer, but saying yes will help you actually downshift the level of stress in your body. It will give you a much more, beneficial longer term, result. And I've actually, I've been really fascinated by this work on the vagus nerve since I first heard about it, when his book, came out in 2011. And I didn't really know back then like why it was so interesting to me.

Maybe it was one of the breadcrumbs on my trail to doing the work that I do. And I've seen firsthand the impact that humming can have on activating our parasympathetic nervous system when we're stressed. It's a technique that I teach in to clients, in order to help re regulate their system. And it's because when we we're vibrating the vagus nerve, which runs from the groin all the way up into our brain. And it's sending a message up into our brain to say, well, we're safe, because you can't run and so if you're humming, it must mean that you don't need to be running.

That's my very simplistic analysis of why it works. And actually I'm really delighted, I'm gonna share more about this in the email list, so if you're part of the email then you'll hear about this, but I'm actually about to start training for a certificate in integrative somatic trauma therapy and Stephen Porges is one of the lecturers which is really exciting, as is Bessel van der Kolk, who wrote, The Body Holds a Score. So I mean in fact there are a whole load of teachers that just looks so interesting. It actually begins this weekend, so I'm very excited about that. So I think the sort of last thing about why accepting help can be so important is holding a belief that we must be independent in order not to be dependent or codependent can dramatically limit our ability to connect with others, especially when what we really benefit from as humans is to find the space of interdependence.

And there's actually lots has been written about this around how different cultures value independence or value interdependence and the impact of those two kind of mindsets on the way that those cultures treat the people within their community, you know, and we are tribal creatures at heart, know, as human beings we are group beings and we naturally depend on other humans from birth all the way through to death and we need the support of others to fulfill our sense of love, sense of purpose, our sense of service, our sense of connection. And I think, you know, the massive gigantic headline above all of this is that it is not weakness to be helped and it is not patronizing to help others, despite what some people may intimate or, imply. So when we see each other in our adult selves, you know, fully in our like highest self and we meet each other in a place of shared respect and love and humanity, then we're able to offer and receive help with equanimity. Psychologically accepting help affirms our relatedness to others And there's a lovely, bit of research that showed, you know, allows this, self-concept to expand from, I must do this alone to I am part of a web of care.

And you know, just those two sentences, which one makes your body feel safer? One tightens us up. It might feel like strength, but you know, as Brenna Brown said, vulnerability actually is our strength and in fact actually she, I've got a quote from her here where she describes how receiving help actually dismantles shame because it reinforces our sense of worthiness and she says, 'until we can receive with an open heart, we're never really giving with an open heart'. And in a way I think that speaks to the compassion work that, you know, is so important and sits at the heart of everything that I offer. It's extremely hard to be fully, truly, openly without agenda, compassionate to others, and until we can extend the same degree of compassion toward ourselves.

So I suppose the sort of like the two really kind of big points here is that, you know, refusing help is a completely understandable, very human response as a short term protection strategy when we're activated. Whereas accepting help is a long term regulation strategy that we can employ at all times. And I suppose this is sort of one of those moments where getting that muscle working, you know, getting the muscle working of allowing others to fill your own cup, you know, allowing others to fill your cup rather than feeling like you always have to fill your own cup. You know, getting that muscle moving, that is something that builds safety, soothes the nervous system and it reinforces a sense of belonging and it's something that we can practice, you know, at any time. So someone offers you something, even if in the moment your automatic response is no, maybe take a beat, take a pause, take a breath and just ask, or would I rather say yes?

So, there we go. That's, that's my, response today. Oh, I think the other thing I was going to say is like, so how how do we, you know, when we're noticing, I suppose this is just sort of wrap it all up with a big bow. You know, if you're experiencing this either with a colleague or a loved one or, you know, a friend or whatever, and you're noticing that you are getting activated. Again, take a pause, some large bit of machinery going past that.

Have a listen to my podcast on tonic, which is a really useful mnemonic for what to do when you find yourself getting activated. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. And essentially what it does is it teaches you a practice for creating a bit of space for yourself right in the moment, it's first aid, first aid tonic. And that can be so useful because when you create a little bit of space then maybe some of the stuff that I've shared today might sort of kick in and you might go oh yeah okay I can sort of see what's happening here And part of that can be to to literally, you know, take a break from from sort of whatever you're noticing, so maybe, you know, nipping off to the loo or something like that, something that feels like non threatening, gives you a little bit of space, gives you a space where you can go and just have a few grounding, nourishing breaths and remind yourself that what they're experiencing is not yours. And then from there you can start to work out what actually do I need to do in this situation.

And if that's something that you need some sort of deeper support with, I, because you're maybe in a relationship or a working environment where that's a kind of constant experience for you, then I would absolutely reach out for more support to help guide you through how to navigate that. You can connect with me, connect with a therapist, whatever might be useful for you. This has been a very rich episode. I have really enjoyed, diving into all of these ideas. I think it's, I think it's something that we all benefit from understanding and certainly I feel as though I've benefited from pulling this all together and forming my thoughts around it.

And you know if it's something that you're feeling drawn to, if you're curious about understanding, this deep inner work, understanding how you operate, understanding, more about what it is that informs the way that you show up in the world and therefore understanding more about, how others around you, might be experiencing you know, their lives, then there are two places left on IMMERSE, which is, you know, IMMERSE in the Heart of Change small group coaching program. We begin on Friday October 10. There will be another cohort next year, maybe around kind of March time, I haven't fixed on the date, but, the group that has formed is really lovely and if it is calling to you then let me know. Two spaces remaining. Basically it's a year long programme, we meet once a month, there is a book that accompanies the coaching so you can do work yourself at home and then we come together once a month just for an hour and a quarter as a small group and we will go through our flow.

During that time, we're going to be looking at understanding your relationship with change, how to create greater balance across all the different roles that you play, ways in which you can build compassionate resilience, how you can allow beautiful disruption, it's one of my favorite phrases that's come to me, how you can allow beautiful disruption to shift what no longer serves you and then seeing what can emerge to support you as you move forward. So this is a process of revelation rather than transformation. This is about really allowing yourself, your whole self to show up in a safe space. And we work with the clear understanding that you do not need fixing or changing. We recognize we are each perfect in our imperfections and we see the opportunities of compassionate self inquiry in order to continue to grow and that there really are kind of foundational principles.

So, you know, if there are aspects of your life that feel like they're no longer serving you or you've noticed that you've been using some old strategies to help you cope but those strategies aren't working anymore or, you know, stories, beliefs that you've been carrying could now be rewritten. You know, all of this offers up a potential to, you know, bring into this program because your journey through IMMERSE, through the Heart of Change will be very unique to you. This is a very explorative and it's designed to allow each individual to take their own steps, but with the support of the container that the group offers and you know all of the short small group coaching programmes that I run earlier this year were so beautiful and I just can't wait to get started. So again, I'll put a link in the show notes or you can always just email me and I'm happy to have a chat if you'd like to find, you know, to sort of work out whether this is the right next step for you. It's a really rare opportunity to be able to do this kind of deep work with me and, know, and obviously at a much lower cost than, you know, working together one to one.

And I suppose on that basis really, if working together one to one is what's calling you, then, you know, reach out to me for that too. I feel so strongly that this is such powerful, useful work and you know, if that's where you're at in your life right now, then I would be so honored to walk beside you. All right, my darling, and, much a longer episode, this week. I'll let you in I actually recorded part of it yesterday, but, I had such terrible technology challenges yesterday. I even Googled to see if Mercury was retrograde because it was so bad and I managed to delete what I'd recorded.

So, there were some great ideas in there, which I'm pretty sure I haven't managed to recapture and share here, but hey, that's just how it is. Anyway, alright my loves, if the course is calling you, join and you know drop me a line and if it's not you know quite where you're at that's absolutely okay you know we are all where we are meant to be and I'm sending you a an enormous hug and a lovely wave. Take care my darlings.