The Courage to Trust Again with Amanda McKoy Flanagan

Jennifer Norman:
Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast, your source for hope, healing, happiness, and humanity. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. This podcast is here to guide you on your journey of self-love, empowerment, soul alignment, and joy. With each episode, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they are doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad you're here, joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
Now, I love hearing about people who have faced the unthinkable, but somehow found a way to rise up out of it, to transmute their pain into purpose. My guest today is an award-winning author, motivational speaker, and podcaster, Amanda McCoy Flanagan. After years of battling alcohol addiction, intergenerational trauma, marital strife, and the loss of her brother to an overdose, Amanda dove into various forms of healing and now helps guide others on their journeys of love and loss. She recently released her debut book, Trust Yourself To Be All In — Safe To Love And Let Go. And she's here to tell us her story. Welcome, Amanda.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Hi Jennifer. How are you?

Jennifer Norman:
I am doing great. First, I just want to congratulate you on being sober. You've been sober since 2006, right?

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Yes. Yes.

Jennifer Norman:
That is huge. That is huge and not easy. It is such a difficult road. So I would love to talk about what it was like. What were you like? The cycle of addiction is something that is so hard to break. And I think that you might have a lot of inspiration for those that are going through it right now.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Thank you for acknowledging it. There is a bit of a common misconception out there that when you're living or you're recovering from addiction, that there's this constant struggle and that it's like waking up every day and like, oh, another day. And I can do this, I can do this, right? And I guess for some people, it's like that. For me, in the process that I went through, I went through the twelve steps of alcoholics Anonymous and my obsession, because that's what addiction is. It's an obsession of the mind that sets up an allergy in the body of compulsion that was lifted, that was lifted from me very early on. So although I came to recovery with a whole host of problems, mainly feelings of inadequacy, low self esteem, no respect, no self respect for my body, or I thought I respected other people, I always felt like I was a good person. But when, after doing the work, I kind of found out that, yes, I did, I was a good person in my heart, but my addiction forced me to do some things that I wasn't proud of. Right.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
And then there's a whole process that I went through of acknowledging that stuff, getting completely honest with myself, completely vulnerable to the extent that I could in my early days. I've done this process a few times at the twelve steps.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
And each time I can see a little bit more. But I went through the process and saw those parts of myself, really, that needed healing. It wasn't that I was a bad person. Addicts and alcoholics are not bad people. We suffer from a disease and it's really a mental illness. It's actually classified in the DSM-IV, which is what doctors used to...psychologists, social workers...use to diagnose people as a mental illness. So it was addressing myself, getting very honestly, very honest with myself.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
They have a phrase, character defects. I don't like that word, defects. I don't think I'm defective, really. Survival traits is what it was. It was stuff that I had to. You talked about generational trauma. I guess trauma is different for everybody, and everybody gets to decide what's traumatic for them. My trauma sort of manifests in this way of not being able to trust myself or anybody else.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
And I had this sort of false narrative implanted in my head that love is painful, life is painful, do not trust anybody because they're going to leave or they're going to hurt you. And then I had various other traumas in my life that were not necessarily. Well, my father, I guess, he cheated on my mother. He left her. And that was very. That affected me a lot. Other traumas, like sexual traumas when I was young, nothing too like, invasive, but just enough to affect me, kind of compounded that story I was telling myself. And then when my brother died, that story became true.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Now, my brother died when I was twelve years sober. So I was already in a process of self-reflection therapy. In addition to the twelve steps. I was in and out of therapy for a long time. Meditating at that point. I had only been meditating consistently for about three years, but I was kind of open enough and I was self-aware enough at that point to realize that I had a lot more work to do. So I essentially pushed my husband away and we went to counseling and I kind of uncovered this false narrative I just told you about, that everybody leaves, everybody hurts me. And recovery, it's just a process of continuing to peel the layers.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
It's really a journey towards self-love. That's really what the whole thing is about. It's about self-worth. It's about self-love. It's about peeling the layers of basically the lies that are either put on us, typically put on us at a young age, and then we kind of live out. We believe and we harden these ideas. And a lot of them keep us safe. A lot of them serve to protect us emotionally and recovery.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
It's really the ability to feel emotional pain. It's spiritual growth and those things together. Eventually healing that pain. Having that spiritual journey leads to unconditional self love, unconditional compassion, this radical self acceptance and self love that nothing can take that away. Nothing can take that away. And as you keep growing in recovery, you want to just keep getting better. You want to remove this, add this. Right? Like, the same week I stopped drinking, I started running and I went to therapy.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Right about a year sober, I quit smoking cigarettes. I think now I'm like, I can't even believe that, that I ever smoked. But I did for, like, ten years.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Then I started figuring out, what do I like? Who am I? Do I? Yeah. I started reading. I started gardening. I started living. I started. I was just existing for so long, no idea who I was, no idea what my favorite color was, no idea what my favorite food was. I just. It was a whole beautiful, like, exploration of who am I? And then, like I said, as the years go on, something, another layer is peeled, another part of you is revealed, and then you have to kind of grapple with that.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Okay, well, that's not serving me, right. It's not even a matter of bad or good.

Jennifer Norman:
No, it's not. Right.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
What is serving me and what is not.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. When you're a child and you're just stepping into the world and you've got all of this experience that is happening before you, happening to you, those are formative years. Those are how you are ingrained into your beliefs. Like, does this action that I'm seeing, my father leaving my mother, caused me to believe that relationships are going to be kind of futile? And how do I protect myself, therefore, from being hurt in that way? Because I saw my mom get hurt in that way. Of course, that is something that gets buried into your subconscious. It's not like you're making that choice to say you're just going to arm her up today because I don't trust anyone. There's never really that full awareness until you do that work to say, oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
That's what was going on. I see it now. And to the point of not knowing who you are. Like, so many of us are really just inundated by all of these messages of what we're supposed to be. Like, what we're supposed to do, how we're supposed to behave, what is cool, what's not cool, how to be accepted socially, what's in, what's out, all of those things. And so there is almost like, this epidemic of people running around not knowing who the heck they are, not understanding that there is this opportunity to peel all of that back to, as you did, to find yourself, to really fall in love and see what really lights you up and brings you joy, who you really are.

Jennifer Norman:
And so I congratulate you for understanding and getting to that point where you were like, okay, I'm working on the physical. Me first. It's like, okay, I'm getting myself clean, I'm getting myself sober. I'm getting myself healthy. I'm working out, I'm quitting smokes and all. Like, all of those things are amazing. And it was almost like, it seems like a doorway for you to then step into, okay, now, from a therapy perspective, from a mindset perspective, what more can I do? What can I do? How more can I fall in love with myself? Which is really a wonderful way in. It's not everybody's way in, but it definitely is a wonderful opportunity to do that little gut check and that soul check to say, am I living a life that I really want to? How can I do that? And how can I feel that I can empower myself to make the choice to live this way, rather than feeling like, oh, I need to do this because somebody else feels like I should? I want to make sure that I'm keeping up an appearance of portraying something that is really not me. It's more of a veneer or a shell.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Exactly. Exactly. And it's one step at a time. One thing has to happen, right? That physical piece has to happen. And then my mind becomes more clear because I'm not ingesting substances. And then my eyes are open, and I start seeing things, and I start feeling things that I had never felt ever in my life. Or some things, not for a very long time, until I started drinking alcoholically when I was probably 13, 14, 15. And when I say alcoholically, I wasn't, like, under a bridge with a bottle at 13 years old.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
But I was...when I started, I couldn't stop. That's my definition of my alcoholism. So, yes, I had to get clean in that way and clear out physically so that I could start to heal emotionally and then spiritually when those two things are very much intertwined for me. But, yeah, I remember being in therapy at like 14 years sober, and saying to my therapist, I cannot believe I'm here. Like, I can't believe, like, I haven't seen this, like, how did I do all this work and not be able to see this last major breakthrough that I had, right, this addressing, this generational stuff? And she said it, you had to clear up certain things, make peace with certain things in order for then something else to be exposed, basically for you to be able to handle it. And I don't always believe, like, where they say, oh, yeah, God doesn't give you more than you can handle. I actually think God gives you just a little bit more so that you need him, so that you need to turn to something to become humble, and then, yes, you can handle it.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
But in the early days, if I could handle it all myself, I wouldn't need any help, I wouldn't need recovery, I wouldn't need therapy, I wouldn't need my spirituality. And I call it God. I'm not. It's not religious. It's not a religious God for me. It's just spiritual God. It's just a loving force and energy, whatever you want to call it, universe. He, she, they, I say all the time, whatever you want to call that energy, that's all that it really is for me.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Yeah. And that. That really has been my path to my healing is kind of seeking some kind of. Really. It's also my higher self. It's my higher self. It's all one. Right?

Jennifer Norman:
We're all, It's all one.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
It's all one. If there's no separation, it's all the same. But seeking that oneness is what has brought me the best, the greatest healing.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. You're speaking language that I believe that my listeners will understand because I am certainly, this is not a religious podcast. It's very much a spiritual podcast. And whatever that means to you, whatever that means in terms of your understanding that you are much more than the physical being, the human flesh and blood and bone, that you are here, that your presence and that everyone's presence really has an impact on everybody else, and that there are influences and there are inspirations in spirit, inspirations that come to you and help guide you, help you to lead the way. Some people call it their higher selves, their inner beings, their God, Allah, whatever you decide to call it, the universe. Sometimes I call it all of the above, too.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
But it really helps to create a sense of consciousness, that you are able to separate yourselves and have awareness for the fact that you have more power than you think. A lot of times it's hard when you're in the middle of pain, when you're suffering, when you're really not feeling well. It's hard to see because there's so much distracting you and there's so much force in terms of this matter. What is the matter on planet Earth here? To be able to elevate yourself and say, okay, I see it from a different perspective. I see it from. For what it really is. I see it for the fact that I had always had the choice, but I didn't know it. I was too blinded to see it.

Jennifer Norman:
And now, with my eyes fully open, without substances, without the things that I was doing in order to feel like I was just getting by, I can now get over it. I can now be above it and be able to say, oh, I'm planning my next stage. This is how I envision my life to be from here on out. And, Amanda, you touched on something. Yeah, you touched on something very interesting, which was the idea of, I wasn't under a bridge with a bottle, but I couldn't stop. And I hear so many people say that it's like, I don't think I'm alcoholic, but if I have a beer, like, I have to have ten, or I just can't stop myself. That's a cue. That's a real cue.

Jennifer Norman:
If you feel that you have a compulsion like that, that is something to listen to, for sure. And not saying it's a full-blown mental illness, because I know that there's stigma around the word mental illness, but it is just something that if you feel that you are at a loss of control for your actions, then please, please, please do take a look at that. Say, hey, you know, why could this be? Do I really think that this is serving my best, healthiest, well, self in the grand scheme of things? There are a whole lot of coping mechanisms, aren't there, that we run to either for protection or solace or comfort, all of those things. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, some people will say, oh, this is what I need to do for self-care. This is the way that I cope. I'm going to eat the chocolate, I'll eat the cake, I'll go for the glass of wine. And that's how I'm getting through the day. Can you say a little bit about that? From what you know?

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Sure. Yes. So when you use the word consciousness before and becoming one with basically something greater, that is how I get my solace. That is how I get my comfort today is tapping into this thing that not only loves me and fills me up and makes me feel like I am valuable, like I am worthy, like I am loved. Right? Because through all of those vices, that's what we're seeking. We're seeking a sense of I'm okay. It's okay. I can handle my life.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
I can ease my stress. Right. It's an escape. So I don't need those things. I actually stopped drinking coffee, I don't know, six months ago. I drink, like, matcha or I drink tea, usually herbal tea. Or I will have, like, some decaf coffee when I want the taste, because I like the taste. But I don't need to escape with any, any, in any way today.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
I can sit with my pain. I could sit with my joy, right? We talk a lot about pain. We talk about a lot of escaping pain. Sometimes we're also escaping the feeling of joy, because Brene Brown talks about this a lot. She uses the phrase foreboding joy. And foreboding joy is that feeling that I cannot let myself get too happy or too joyful and let things be okay because it's going to be.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Yes.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
I lived like that. I mean, it's no surprise. I think a lot of people live like that. So we keep ourselves out of the joy, but we're also trying to escape the pain. So maybe that's where, like, the confusion comes in with, like, the stress and the anxiety and the depression, because we're not really in any. Not subscribing to any real feeling because we're either afraid of it or we don't want to feel it because it doesn't feel good. So for me, it's all about getting to this place of comfort and emotional security and a feeling of safety by tapping into my higher power, something greater than me that gives me a purpose. It makes me feel purposeful.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
I sit. I meditate a lot. I mean, meditation also sounds, like difficult to a lot of people who don't know about meditation. I actually just put out my own podcast about it. The fact that, like, you don't have to be, like, a spiritual guru or you don't have to be, like, sitting in this stillness. Like, there's all these different ways to meditate that just tapping in and listening and getting some kind of inspiration, some kind of message coming in, intuition to say, okay, this is what I need to do. It's how my book was born. It's how my podcast was born.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
It's how all of the work that I'm doing in the world was born. And I'm sure the same thing for you. And by the way, just before I forget, I want to say thank you for your show and for doing this podcast, because not enough people. People are waking up. It's great. And they're waking up because of people like you who are out there talking about this stuff.

Jennifer Norman:
Likewise.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Thank you. That's how I get to my peace and comfort today is it's not about me, right? I mean, our ego gets us into a lot of trouble. Into a lot of trouble, right? It creates resentment. It creates. Under that is anger, under that is fear, right? And we kind of are addicted to that. We. We're addicted to the chemicals. We're addicted to how that feels.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
And when I kind of dropped that ego, and I'm actually working right now on ego death, I'm working very, very hard on the whole ego death concept. And not even so, it's not about me. It's more like just thinking about myself less and thinking about how I can serve others because I'm finally in a place where I can do that. At one point, I wasn't. This is a process. At one point, I needed to stay there because I had to protect myself. I had to survive. Now that I'm in a place of safety, I can now turn my thoughts and my views into the world to how can I best be of service to paying attention to how my words affect others, by being responsible with my actions, by really becoming aware, conscious and awake of how I am just living on a day to day basis, right? And it's not even so, I'm into climate change.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
I'm into solar panels on my roof. I carry my own plastic utensils with me. When I eat out. I'm very conscious. I don't use straws, that kind of stuff, which I know probably is not going to save the world. But it's more for me to feel like a good person that I'm at least doing, having a small part in this, trying to make things better, it elevating my own self worth. It's not necessarily because, listen, we could get rid of every plastic bag and every good. Stop eating cows.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
We could. We could get rid of all of that. It's manufacturing, which is a major issue. But that's a whole different podcast. It's for me to feel like I am making a difference in the world and have that brings that self love that I like myself today. That's what it's all about. I actually like myself. We talk a lot about self love, but we don't talk a lot about self like.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
And I think that it's right. I think it's important to, like, say, I actually do like myself. Like, I would hang out with me. If I could pick my friends, I would hang out with me, which is.

Jennifer Norman:
A good thing, because you're hanging out with yourself 24/7 you hang out more than anybody else hangs out with you. You brought up this notion. There's a quote. I was just looking to see if I could find the source of the quote, and I'll probably find it and I'll put it in the show notes, but "There is nothing that I can do for you but work on myself. There is nothing that you can do for me but work on yourself."

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
I just saw that. I just saw that recently. Exactly.

Jennifer Norman:
I'm like, who the heck was that? And I thought that I saved it in my photos, but I thought that that was such a beautiful phrase. And it's so true because people are like, you know what? I want to go out and change the world. I've actually heard people say, raise your hand if you want to change the world. And everybody raises their hand and they're like, that's the problem. It's like, what we want to do is not go out and say, you need fixing. You need fixing, you need fixing. It's not that at all. It's like, what can I do to fix myself? And therefore, when I am at my best, then I ripple.

Jennifer Norman:
And I have this complete ability to be an inspiration to other people, but also to just by my energy resonance, by raising my vibration, by getting myself to a place of nothing but love. If we can exude more love, rather than hate or resentment or bitterness or anger or fear, all of those vibrations that keep us small and keep us separate, you're talking about ego death. Those are the things that create separation and divide between people. It's the reason why we feel offended and triggered and all of those things. And if we can just. I am filled with so much love that I can't really get offended anymore. I can't really. There's nothing to forgive there.

Jennifer Norman:
You know, you didn't say, I get it. I understand and empathize from where you're coming from. I know that what you said, you didn't really mean in that way. And it's totally fine. I get it. We're compadre cool. Move on. Have a happy life and let's live in joy.

Jennifer Norman:
It's kind of like that's what my hope is for myself, that I can continue working on and having conversations like this, where maybe there's a nugget of wisdom and there's a negative insight, where somebody can be like, oh, my God. Yeah, I see that in myself. I see that that's a better way to live. I don't want to feel this shitty anymore. I don't want. I feel like I have to like that I'm blaming somebody else for the way that my life is. I need to have a cigarette every time I get anxious or you need to decompress or that I need to rely on anything, but the fact that I know I'm just, like, so at peace with myself. I'm so, like, happy that I'm able to do this work that I'm doing.

Jennifer Norman:
And I think that that would be great. Like in meditation you were talking about, some people say it's difficult to meditate. I find that, like, I do my best meditation when I'm driving in my car, sitting and just doing. My mind gets distracted. I'm talking, I'm thinking about what emails I need to answer and stuff. But if I'm in my car, there's just something that happens to my brain waves. They kick into theta, and then all of a sudden, like, ideas pop in. And so for other people, it's like if they're in the shower or during their dream state, get a notebook so that they can write down their dreams.

Jennifer Norman:
There's so many different ways to meditate. There's not one single way, but it's really just that attunement to being in the present moment so that you can listen and you can hear those inner voices and those higher callings saying and guiding you to what's the best way forward for you.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
That's exactly it. I always say you can meditate online at the checkout at Target. You could be going through the supermarket. It's. Yes, it's about attuning. That's the perfect word that you're just tapping into. You're just jumping wave lengths, basically. You're tapping into a higher frequency to where you're just elevated.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
You're just at this different. And I don't say elevated as in better than, it's just a different frequency. If you measured your frequency, it scientifically. Right. And that's what we're trying to do. Thank you so much for bringing that up. Because most of my work is about, I say, healing personal pain holds the power to heal the collective. And it's like the law of attraction, right? Like, if I want to get something good back, right, I want to manifest something good, I'm going to put out those positive vibes.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
It works the same way with negative. Or the chaos out there is because there's chaos in here. It's just this spiritual wisdom that we've been passed down, we've been talking about for thousands of years, we've been talking about this stuff, and we have these masters who have already figured it out for us. It's just a matter of now putting it into play, actually doing it. So teaching people how. Right? Like, it's all. It's great. It's all well and good.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
We could sit here and say this, this, this and that. But I think what you're doing and what I'm doing and what a lot of people like us, we're actually trying to give people the tools to say this is actually how you do it. Yes. So when you have this thought, right, it's a shift in mindset, which then shifts your energy, brings you some healing, raises your vibration, and then it echoes out into the world, and then it's going to come back as peace. And that is our only, only hope here that you said early on you have more power than you think. I actually have that sign hanging in my meditation room. It's right. Literally right in front of me.

Jennifer Norman:
I have trust.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Trust. And then right next to that is, you have more power than you think. And it's so true. It is so true. Like, they don't want us to know that. Why do you think this stuff isn't taught in schools, right? And here in the western world, this stuff is not taught. It's not like in headlines, it's not on the news, right? Because then if we become too powerful, then the whole structure kind of falls and keeps those certain people in power and rich and all that kind of stuff. But again, I digress a little bit.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
But, like, that's the whole point. That's the whole point. You used the word transmute earlier. You said, transmute pain into purpose or something along those lines. That was actually one of the first titles of my book before I changed it. It was like transmuting personal pain into collective healing or something like that. Like, it's transmuting. So it's not like getting rid of.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Right? And I like that. It's like, it sounds easier to me than plucking all this stuff just out of me. It's seeing the parts that need the healing, transmuting that energy into healing energy. And you said ripples. That's the word.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
It just goes. So. I love knowing that. I feel very empowered thinking that way.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Your pain is not in vain. It's another way of saying it. It's like we go through these challenges, and the challenges that I went through in my life, the trauma that I went through, look very different from yours. And there's no comparing pain. There's no, oh, my God. Well, that person went through that. It's not like I have to worry about anything or the way that you wish to improve.

Jennifer Norman:
It's always just starting from where you are. Your life could be amazing, which is great. Continue. Let's, like, you know, continue building, continue rippling out, continue, like, let's keep going. Momentum, momentum, momentum. And so, for those who are in this place where they just haven't been able to kick into that positive momentum yet, this podcast episode is really perfect for that, because it's like we get it all been and sat in the wallow of pain and agony and suffering and have been through it, whether it be from relationships, a death of a loved one, a loss, a feeling of not being seen or heard. Like, all of those things feel a certain way in your body. You can sense it.

Jennifer Norman:
And then there are so many interesting and fascinating healing modalities that can help you to just lift out of that without burying it. Because a lot of what we're doing with alcohol or substances or eating or whatever, it could be any kind of habit that you're coming across, that's not really helping you to resolve the pain and transmute that pain into purpose. It's just burying it. And so, Amanda, I would love for it, because I know that in your amazing book that you just wrote, which is Trust Yourself To Be All In — Safe To Love And Let Go. In your book, you talk about some of the healing aspects that you had gone through and some of the things that you've learned along the way. Can you share a little bit of that with our listeners?

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Sure. Sure. So there's many different healing modalities out there, and specifically for trauma. So what we learned, my husband and I learned. So after my brother died, my husband, my marriage took a major hit. I thought I didn't love my husband. We go through this process like I touched on before. I was afraid of future loss, and that's what was happening.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
I didn't know that he was saying.

Jennifer Norman:
That he had chronic ailments because he was a 911 responder, right?

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
My husband, he's a 911 1st responder. He was a cop and a fireman in New York City for 25 years. He is twelve years older than me as well. So when all this happened, I was 38 and he was 50, I guess, is about right. And my brain, my defense mechanism, which is so helpful sometimes denial is very healthy, sometimes saves us from going insane. But what it did for me, it tried to protect me by basically ravaging me. Like, basically just taking, just, it took me down because there was no protection in this. Like, like pulling away, like, not, it opened my eyes is really what it did, because it put me in so much pain that I was able to, because I was disconnected, right? We talked about there's no separation.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
I was disconnected from everybody around me and then especially my husband, because of fear of this future loss. So we went into really intense therapy. So what we did was. So that was in 2018, we started marriage counseling together. And I was in individual counseling. I was in counseling since March when my brother died. Everything kind of hit the skids with me and my husband in September.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
So I'd already been with my counselor, and she was amazing, totally amazing. So we're in marriage counseling, and I'm on my own. And my husband's doing talk therapy at this point. And he had been doing talk therapy for his PTSD for a long time at that point. And I kept telling him, before all this, I kept saying, I don't think it's working. I don't. I think it's, you're getting worse. Like, it's not getting better.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
And we realized with every child we had and with every other life stage we entered, he felt there was more to lose. And so he became more overbearing, and he became more controlling, and we're starting to affect the kids and all that. So we're in therapy one day, and after a few months, and I didn't feel like we were making any progress. And I said, you have to do something more. And our therapist said, you could try EMDR. You probably have heard of eye movement desensitization reprocessing therapy. So. And it moves the eyes, and it does re rewires neural pathways, basically.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
And he did that for about a year, and it definitely helped. And we were planning a trip back to New York, where we're from. Every vacation we had there kind of always turns and went south because of his, that's where this hub of his trauma is. And it would set him off somehow. And I didn't want to take this trip with him. I said, no, New York is. This is a year now into therapy. And I said, no, New York's like your hotspot.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
I really. I don't think it's not really fair to do to any of us, especially yourself, as our family. Like, why are we going to put ourselves through that? We just kind of know it doesn't work. He said, no, no, no, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. I said, okay, come. And something happened, and we come back home. And I said, okay. You really.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
You need to really do something else. Because the EMDR worked, but it didn't get all of it for him. So he found something called Rapid Resolution Therapy. It's a form of hypnotherapy, but it's not a, like, you're completely conscious. It's not like a 'you're getting sleepy' one where you're out. You're completely conscious.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
It's just like a very deep, deep meditation is really kind of what it is, and it's called Rapid Resolution, because typically it happens in three sessions. And it...she rewired his neural pathways. He is a different person. Like, I can say, like, when I talk about his PTSD, I usually use past tense language. I say he had PTSD because it doesn't feel like it's just completely different. He's just a new man. That's the only way.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, my gosh.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
I did it as well for some of my traumatic loss. I did it around some things like that, and it helped lower my anxiety. But for him, we just talked about it last night. I said, the pump was kind of primed for you for that. And I think that's why it works so well, because he had that year of EMDR, and he had been. He's also in recovery, so. But he maintains it. So it's not like he did this therapy, and then he was all better, and that's it.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
And he can just go on with his life and do whatever. He meditates, so he's retired, he's home, and he meditates as often as he can, and he takes care of his physical. He just kind of takes care of himself all day long because he's sick in different ways. The meditation was huge, and then I got deep into meditation as well. This all kind of happened. So 2018, then COVID hit in 2020, and we didn't take it seriously because of his illness. And that was probably one of the best years of my life. And I know that there are a lot of people who suffered out there, and I'm very sorry for your suffering.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
I feel pain. For me, it was. I met myself that year, and then I started. Wrote my book in 2021. 2020 was the year that I spent a lot of time alone. I spent a lot of time in nature. I'm actually planning a silent retreat for myself. Two days, 48 hours in a spiritual vortex town in Colorado.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
It's called Crestone. It's known to be a spiritual vortex. And I'm doing that because I'm going to be taking a vow of silence. I'm going to just be completely, just trying to meditate the whole time. I might write, I'm not sure yet, but it's in that quiet, and it's in the nature, is where I meet myself, because it's where I, God, or Spirit, or whatever you want to call it. So it was the meditation, it was the different therapies.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
And then when 2020 hit, we didn't. We weren't in person anymore. My husband didn't want to do the zoom therapy, so we did something called Imago Therapy, which we're really, if you're out there and you're suffering in your relationship or in your marriage, and you think maybe you made a wrong decision, or this person has changed so much, and thinking about leaving. My path to emotional freedom was saved through my marriage. But the book, my book is not about saving marriages. Not all marriages should be saved. And it takes two to tango. Like, it's just you need both parties completely involved and invested.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
We did this thing on our own called Imago, and what that is a book. It's called Getting The Love You Want. And then there's a workbook. And we sat once a week, Thursday nights. We would, after the kids went to bed, we would meet and we would read and we would go through this workbook, and we would do the questions and we would talk. And it brought us to this place of vulnerability, where we were able to identify the parts of our parents, or caretakers, that lacked what we learned. What we realized is psychologically what we do when we meet people and we think that we get those butterflies, you get that euphoria, it's a sensing that this person's going to make you whole. And it's not that they're going to make you whole through, they're going to give you.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
It's actually. They can't give you what you actually need. What your caretakers lacked, what your parents lacked, that person actually has those same traits. And you become whole because through trying to heal what you cannot give that other person. You're healing yourself. Right?

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
For example, quick, my fear was emotional intimacy, right? My husband would say, I need you to be more emotionally intimate with me. And I would say, well, I don't know how to do that. And he would say, well, can you try? Can you learn? Can you try for the sake of our marriage, the family, whatever? And I say, okay, so on the onset, it's for that, right? It's for the family, it's for something else. But what happens is when I learn to become more emotionally intimate, I'm healing that place in me that fears emotional intimacy, and I'm filling that void.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
That's what relationships are for. That's a partnership. That's what we're drawn into. Partnership. It's to heal ourselves.

Jennifer Norman:
That's right.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
So we just took advantage of. We were desperate. We were just desperate. We took advantage of all the techniques that were available. Our children were sort of the driving motivation until it became more about our own healing and then our connection and our partnership and, yeah, so we just, we did it all, basically. We did it all. We started eating, eating healthier. We started really being dedicated to, like, exercising.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
We stayed in our twelve step programs. I did the steps, specifically around my marriage. Specifically, ran through the steps. And how does this relate to my marriage? So we pulled out all the stops and it worked for now. Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
Well, you know, and I think that the key message is, is that you did recognize that you were not happy in the way that your relationship was going. It wasn't making you feel fulfilled. And you explored a number of different avenues. And perhaps it was, to your earlier point, the cumulative effect or that positive momentum and exploring different avenues until the ones were almost puzzle pieces where it's like, oh, this one fits. This one's actually connecting with me. I get this, and it's really serving me. And in doing that, I am healing myself, and then I'm healing the relationship because I feel better about myself. And I'm unlocking these aspects of myself that I feel were not necessarily organized in the right way or connecting in the right way to contribute to my happiness.

Jennifer Norman:
I was able to discover that about myself. And I would have never have known it if I didn't try this. And so you brought up some really great resources, some great tools that some people may want to explore for themselves. If they're interested in EMDR, if they're interested in Imago, I'll put those links in the show notes so that people can learn a little bit more about them. But it's truly about, I think the net takeaway is relate what health, wealth and relationships. Those are the three biggies. It's like all of those are reflections of your inner self, to your point. Outer chaos, inner chaos.

Jennifer Norman:
Heal thyself. Like, work on yourself continuously. Get yourself to a place where you are fulfilling yourself. You are leaning into your own personal joy, and you are really living from a place of bliss and fulfillment. Find what that is. Get those quiet moments. Go on those retreats, go into nature. Put on the head, like, try to get time for yourself, even if it's just a couple minutes a day for everybody who's got crazy busy, busy lives.

Jennifer Norman:
Get those quiet moments so that you can be with yourself and focus on nurturing your inner being. And then let the light just kind of gradually bloom outward, and take it easy. Be gentle with yourself. It's always like guilt ourselves into not doing enough and not things not happening quickly enough. And it's really not about that. Every single day, every single moment is an opportunity to make it better than the last.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
You are a beautiful soul, Jennifer. You really, the way you speak, thank you. You just really, you emanate light. You are that light. You said let the light out. That's what you're doing.

Jennifer Norman:
It's only because we've seen the darkness that we can be the light. Really, I think that way. Amanda McCoy Flanagan, thank you so much for being my guest on The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. And you are a beautiful human, if may I say myself. Many, many blessings to you and your beautiful family.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan:
Thank you so much. Same to you. Thanks for having me.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate, and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community-based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.