It’s time to break free from fear and step into the power of your authentic self. Do you constantly read others to see if you’re loved, safe, or seen? Do you feel anxious and emotionally compromised to the point where you feel unimportant, stuck, or chronically dissatisfied? We often settle for situations–and relationships–that work against our mental, spiritual, and physical well-being because we are afraid. Yet, I believe that within each one of us is a voice–an inner flame–that, once embraced, has the power to foster change.
Join me and expert Shauna Brittenham Reiter for an inspiring journey into how you can create a free, fulfilling, and joy-filled life. Topics discussed include attachment, secure attachment, attunement, insecure attachment, avoidant attachment, ambivalent attachment, anxious attachment, preoccupied attachment, emotional health, powerlessness, helplessness, emotions, feelings, financial power, monetary power, self-empowerment, empowerment, trauma, wildfires, LA fires, children, relationships, home, family, triggers, breathing, wellness, emotional regulation, reactivity, nervous system, fight or flight response, intergenerational patterns, and co-regulation.
Special Note: Segments of this podcast delve into the impact of the 2025 wildfires in the Los Angeles area and may be triggering for those who have experienced or been associated with a natural disaster; listener discretion is strongly advised.
Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911,” “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline), or SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). Support/informational links are in the show notes.
Books by Dr. Carla Manly:
Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly
Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend
The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships
Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:
Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr.carlamariemanly8543
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly
Book by Shauna Brittenham Reiter:
You Are the Boss of You: Cultivate the Mindset and Tools to Live Life on Your Terms
Connect with Shauna Brittenham Reiter:
Website: www.helloshauna.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shaunabrittenhamreiter/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shauna-brittenham-reiter-679814246
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Discover Your Strong, Authentic Self with Abundance Expert Shauna Brittenham Reiter
Create Your Best, Abundant Life by Letting Go of Fear
Do you constantly read others to see if you’re loved, safe, or seen? Do you feel anxious and emotionally compromised to the point where you feel unimportant, stuck, or chronically dissatisfied? We often settle for situations and relationships that work against our mental, spiritual, and physical well-being because we are afraid. Yet I believe that within each one of us is a voice, a flame that, once embraced, has the power to foster change.
Join me and expert Shauna Brittenham Reiter for a journey into how you can live a free and fulfilling life. We’ll focus on this audience’s real-life question, “Please help me figure out what to do. I finally realized that I’m in a relationship with someone who is exactly like my dad, who is super rigid, cold, and emotionless. I want to leave but I’m worried that he’ll make my life hell because we have a kid together and he has way more money than I do. Can you give me some suggestions?” That question is the focus of this episode. Please note, as this episode contains sensitive information, audience discretion is advised.
I’m joined by a wonderful guest, Shauna Brittenham Reiter, who will be sharing her expertise on how you can become the boss of you and cultivate the mindset and tools to live life on your terms. Shauna is the Founder of Alaya Naturals Wellness Company. She’s also a singer, songwriter, author, and teacher. Her book is You Are the Boss of You: Cultivate the Mindset and Tools to Live Life on Your Terms. Welcome to the show, Shauna. How are you?
Understanding Powerlessness and True Empowerment
Dr. Carla, I so appreciate you having me. I’m excited to be here and to be in conversation with you and your beautiful audience. I’m also looking forward to providing some insights in regard to that particular question, the question that was posed about what to do in a situation where there’s perceived powerlessness. I wanted to start by saying that a lot of the devastation that occurs internally, anxiety, and depression often stems from a sense of powerlessness and helplessness.
This question of what to do, to me, stood out in a way because it highlights the ways in which we tend to give our power to others. In this case, there’s the perception that money or financial resources have given another person more power, which isn’t true as we know but it’s very confusing when we’re negotiating power dynamics to understand our true power in relation to others.
The first thing that I’m going to suggest to your audience is to understand that her power has nothing to do with the power of any other person. It’s not relative to anyone else. It is what it is intrinsically and inherently because she is 100% valuable and human. This power dynamic between her and her partner is a paradigm in a way that she’s constructed.
The financial resource piece in terms of child sharing is very complicated and real but there are so many other ways that we can consider ourselves to be powerful. If you didn’t mind my stepping in, I wanted to move us in that direction. I was so moved by that question. I wanted to start by talking about this concept of powerlessness, power, and the ways in which we tend to give up our right to feel empowered and our sense of autonomy and ownership over our lives because we’re comparing ourselves to others.
Reconnecting with Your Essence: Finding Your True Energy
What a beautiful introduction. I appreciate how you got straight to the heart of the power dynamic, powerlessness, and helplessness. With that beautiful piece to launch us into the heart of the show, let’s bracket that for a moment. You are a very powerful woman. You have yet very soft, kind, and gentle energy. Before we get deeper into this, could you tell our audiences a little bit about what makes you, you?
What makes me, me is my ability to deeply tune into my energy and connect with the unseen and others. Given the situation I’m coming from with having evacuated my home and my children, I’m realizing that so much of what goes on in our animal bodies is energetic, unseen, invisible, and essence-based. Our intuition and perceptions of things are all incredibly unique. There’s no other you and there’s no other me.
What makes me, me is energetically, the essence that I was born with and that I’ve been cultivating for a lifetime. In the sense that our job, I believe, is to strip away everything that isn’t us in life. We’re born who we are, in this beautiful, light, embodied energy. We then tack on helplessness, trauma, fear, dissociation, logistical considerations, and bills. Little by little, that energetic source disintegrates and is compromised. The work I’ve spent a lifetime doing is to try to get back to that essence, the fundamental being and core of who I am, which I’m still discovering in many ways.
Facing Life’s Challenges with Power and Resilience
I agree so wholeheartedly. For our audiences, you have a little understanding of Shauna’s comment about having been evacuated from her home with her children. She is in the midst of the firestorms in Los Angeles County. With that background, Shauna is still willing to come and be with us. I’m so deeply appreciative of that. You’re in another area of the country where you and your little ones are safe. I’m so grateful for that. We can see, interestingly enough, with that background that you did give us about your essence.
In this place in your life, your husband’s on one coast and you’re on another coast with your kiddos, it could bring up a lot of powerlessness, helplessness, and hopelessness. Yet I’ve sensed that as worrisome, concerning, troublesome, devastating, and all those adjectives and so many more with what you’re facing with fires in areas all around your home and backyard that it could be making you feel powerless as our audience’s question. She’s saying how powerless she feels. I sense that you’re not stepping into powerlessness. Please tell me, who are you with that?
Home is not a physical or geographic location. It is centered within the seat of our souls. Share on XIt’s the opposite of powerlessness. What I’m powerless to control is my life circumstances, nature, what’s going on around me, and the reactions of others but I am completely in charge of my perception of the environment. I am 1,000% equipped to communicate with myself in a way that’s loving, kind, and calm to bring myself to home base and understand that home isn’t a physical or geographic location. It’s centered within the seat of our souls.
I have moved 5 times in 8 days. I still feel at home because I’m anchored to the fundamental truth that I know who I am. Who I am is a person deserving of emotional freedom, grace, and joy. I’m choosing to access and even activate those things in the midst of unimaginable circumstances. When the world around me is completely out of control, so to speak, and when I feel the least powerful in terms of influencing the tides, I feel stronger than ever internally.
I’m left within my internal resources to access and sharpen the parts of me that feel alive in the truest sense of the word. A lot of that relates to understanding how to self-soothe. That’s something I talk a lot about in my book. Our ability to communicate with ourselves kindly and gently as we would, our children, someone else’s child, or the version of ourselves, we wish we had been spoken to when we ourselves were children is perhaps one of the most empowering and powerful tools during times of crisis.
Many of us feel that we’re in crisis all the time because we’ve trained ourselves or we’ve been trained to live in fight or flight. No one taught us how to calm down. Prior to beginning this conversation, you and I spoke a little bit and you gave me some incredible tools also in terms of accessing that deeper, safer place within ourselves that isn’t reliant on what’s happening around us to feel safe. That is never in our control but we always have active ownership of our internal dialogue and the story we’re telling ourselves about our lives, who we are, and what we have access to internally, if nothing else. I don’t have access to my home or my stuff.
That’s okay.
I have access to my mind, imagination, creativity, kindness, and a sense of emotional peace and calm. That’s what truly matters.
It’s so eloquently and beautifully put. Audiences, I’d like to invite you to imagine that Shauna is speaking to us from a different background. Thanks to technology. She’s speaking from an attic, in a space where somebody helped her quickly set up because I gave her the option of not doing the show and she very much wanted to do it.
When we see this backstory, you might be wondering, “How does this apply to the audience’s question?” She wants to leave that home space that’s not safe because the partner does not feel at all emotionally connected. We can see a connection between what Shauna has been laying out for us and the importance of being able to go and find that internal space of home.
Shauna, I, too, agree with you that that internal space of home, if we make it portable, it doesn’t matter where the physical home is. Sure, we like our physical home because it has our stuff and we have a routine but in our fires in Sonoma County, it’s one of life’s big lessons to me when we evacuated three times. I had to learn to have a portable sense of being. Other life events taught me that but that was another dose of that. We look at what’s happening for you and realize that going back to that essence in the self, which I call joy.
The way I came to this was in my first book, Joy from Fear, which was the result of my doctoral dissertation in qualitative and quantitative research. I found these beautiful messages in it from my journey with fear. How do we come to find joy and more joy? It’s not about happiness. Here’s where you and I are very aligned. I believe we are all born with joy. We might come out of the womb crying but if we’re given love and attention, we tend to be pretty happy little creatures.
I see joy as this candle and we put it in glass, the glass is life. The candle burns and soot collects on the glass and more soot. Pretty soon, we won’t see that flickering light of joy anymore. People have been cruel, life can be difficult, and people don’t attend to us, so we forget that joy is always there and accessible. It’s our essence and birthright in a sense.
If we mindfully learn how to wipe off the soot through therapy, self-work, spiritual connection, exercise, good self-care, or whatever it takes us, and we keep mindfully wiping off that soot that occurs from life, which life can be pretty tough, then we keep that joy and essence that you’re talking about. We keep it alive. Sometimes, we’ll get very busy and we forget to wipe off the soot. We can pay a price for that but the more we wipe it off, the more we’re not controlled by fear anymore.
I believe that fear is the result of all that buildup of soot. We get very scared, especially if we don’t have a childhood where things are loving, safe, and predictable. That soot builds up very quickly. We don’t have the resources as little ones or teens to know how to wipe it off. Sometimes in adulthood, we don’t know how to do that.
Exploring Attachment and Finding Your Essence
Going back to using that idea of essence or joy and pivoting back to the audience’s question, here is an individual who grew up with a cold, unemotional, and sounds like a very detached, not attuned father. We don’t know anything about the mother. We can surmise that there’s some insecure attachment here. We don’t know that for sure. She’s unconsciously chosen a partner, which happens to so many people, who are very much like the dad. She’s feeling like she’s trapped. She wants to leave but she’s in fear. What would you say to help her find her essence?
I have three things that I want to say. The first thing is to stop focusing on her partner’s attitude, orientation, personality, or enculturation. Whatever is going on with him, she can’t control. If her energy and focus are being poured into an individual who she cannot change, she is going to become very tired, feel very helpless, and ultimately not mobilize to make a decision that’s in her best interest and the best interest of her child.
The first thing I would do is bring the attention and energy back to herself, to her own joy and manifestation of beauty, and begin to foster the relationship of understanding how to self-soothe and communicate with herself. Her communication with her partner may not yield the results she desires. He may never change. That’s out of her control. If she begins to focus on her essence, way of being, and experience of herself, from that very firm foundation, she can make wiser decisions.
The second thing I want to say is you mentioned fear. In your book, you talk about how fear can bring us to our knees in self-doubt and also help us, and I’m paraphrasing, access the greatest heights of who we are. This is an opportunity because there is a fear element. She’s afraid of jeopardizing access to her son and also her life trials being compounded by staying in a relationship with this person and/or leaving. It’s like she’s in a no-win. She’s not sure what to do. It sounds like she’s more afraid of leaving.
Make decisions from a place of trust. Trust is not and can never be in the outcome of our decisions because those are unknown. Share on XWhat I want to say to this audience is, please don’t allow fear to be your guide. It’s important to make decisions from a place of trust. Trust is not and can never be in the outcome of our decisions because those are unknown. We never know how people are going to react to the choices we make and how the world around us will unfold but we can make decisions from a place of trusting in our resilience and the intuition in this moment in time that’s guiding us.
7 minutes, 1 hour, 1 month, or 1 year from now, she might have information that changes the course of her actions and life. That’s okay. That’s appropriate. Life is dynamic. It’s constantly evolving. She needs to make the best decision she can with the information and resources she has access to at this moment and that requires being very present.
I don’t want to give advice because I don’t feel like I’m in a position to give anyone advice. She’s the master and boss of her own life. My next word of wisdom that I would share is for her to deeply trust herself in this moment and stay present in this moment and this moment alone. Every moment guides us to the next question that leads us to the next answer, moment by moment. At this moment, she has all the information she needs to make the decision that is required of her. In a month, it will. All of the information and understandings will unfold but she needs to make the best decision she can in the moment.
The next thing that I would say is of utmost importance is seeking out community, especially because of the sense of powerlessness in terms of the personality of her partner, which is not being empathetic, compassionate, and warm, and the financial imbalance. If I were the audience, I would be thinking about individuals and community members that she trusts emotionally and mentally and in terms of resources. If she’s in a position where she feels like she needs support of any kind on any level, she has that plan in place.
Think about even 3 or 4 people who she could call and say, “We need a place to stay. Can you be there to pick up the phone if I’m crying late at night after my child is asleep? I need a listening ear or someone to talk to.” That will also stabilize her emotionally and calm her adrenals and nervous system if she feels less alone. From that place of being a little bit more grounded in her body and a little bit more relaxed in her nervous system, she’ll also be able to access the next best decision for this moment in time.
Focusing Inward: Letting Go of Control Over Others
Thank you for all of those tips. There’s one in particular, the first one, that I’d like to dive into. You’re suggesting and advocating that she not focus on the partner or put her energy that way. We can’t control a partner. We can hope that they will be loving and connected but we can’t force that. Could you give some very specific tips on how to create that?
Many people, particularly those who didn’t grow up in healthy, safe environments, learned to read the other person rather than thinking, “What’s going to happen next? Am I going to be safe? Am I going to be loved? Do I need to do more? Do I need to do less?? What would you suggest that this individual can do to take the focus back inward instead of constantly reading the partner?
I do have to say audiences, if this sounds familiar, that comes generally from very young places and childhood experiences where you may have found that in your home environment, you were the peacekeeper, mom was the peacekeeper or somebody was the peacekeeper. Everybody was walking around on eggshells because there was at least one or more volatile person in the household who was unpredictable, whether it was an alcoholic or something happening. If you tend to be reading in the environment, you come by it naturally. It’s not your fault but there are things you can do to learn to not be that invested in what the other person is thinking or doing. Please share, Shauna.
Pause and breathe is the first step. Many of us have a tendency to be reactive. All of us, in a sense, are reacting to other people. That’s survival. It’s community and belonging. The way in which we have been trained culturally and in families and societies to exist and stay alive is to see whether or not we’re safe in relation to others. It’s natural, first of all, but it’s not necessarily appropriate as we move into adulthood and have autonomy.
You need to pause and breathe to take yourself out of fight or flight. This will allow you to move into a place where your nervous system can appropriately assess the situation. Share on XMany of us aren’t even conscious about how frequently we’re tapping into other people’s energy, responding, and reacting to their cues versus initiating and creating from an internal place of truth and authenticity. Step one is to pause and breathe. When you breathe, you take yourself out of fight or flight. You move into a place where your nervous system can appropriately and accurately assess the situation versus thinking, “I got to get out of here. I’m not safe. I have to please this person. Are they going to get mad at me? I’m going to feel helpless.”
Many of us are children walking around in adult bodies, even after we do a lot of adult work trying to heal past wounds. Immediately when there’s someone who reminds us of a parent, for instance, in this case, this audience’s partner reminds her of her father, I wager to guess that a high percentage of moments is she’s 8, 9, or 10 years old when she’s responding to her partner. She’s not her embodied adult rational self who’s able to scan the situation and go, “He’s overreacting. He’s being cold again. I’m going to go do my own thing.”
We’re not necessarily operating from a place of our highest knowing when we revert to being the children who are still trapped inside of our bodies. This is a longer-term healing process our audience needs to engage in or will have the privilege of engaging. Hopefully, there are lots of resources. I would love to gift your audience a copy of my book.
There are lots of ways to heal. It becomes easier to not be reactive when we’ve done the work of separating the people in our current lives from the people from our past. Her partner is not her father but every time she’s interacting with her partner or engaging with him, there’s a sense of, “I’m in trouble. Maybe I’ve done something wrong. I’m bad. My whole being is wrong.” That creates a sense of shame, fear, self-blame, and paralysis maybe at times.
It can create a whole host of reactions that are not even based on reality. They’re based on her experience with her father being dragged into the present moment. This is another longer-term suggestion, which is to heal the father’s wound of where she wasn’t parented in a way that made her feel safe. I have a free workbook I created that can be downloaded through my website.
I created a whole exercise about how to reparent ourselves and give ourselves access to the feelings and experiences we wish we had had with our parents who, in many cases, didn’t love us the way we deserve to be loved. They didn’t know how because their parents didn’t have the tools and resources, and back and back generations of parents were flailing and didn’t know what they were doing.
For some reason in this moment in time, and it’s such a blessing, it feels like people are ready to take their power back and say, “I don’t want to be the person who’s bearing the scars and wounds of my father, his father, and his father before him. I want to be the person who says, ‘This is my life. I’m in control internally of my internal experience. I’m going to decide to tell a different story about who I am in relation to others.’”
To stop reacting to her partner, she needs to bring herself into the present moment and have a very firm sense of identity. It’s something that I have a whole chapter about in my book, which is recreating our self-concept based on who we truly are, not who we’ve been trained to be or who we’ve evolved to be from a place of fear.
The final thing I’ll say about this is that it’s sometimes very important for us to have a single sentence or even a word to which we can bring ourselves back. If we’re in fight or flight and we’re feeling reactive, sometimes I say to myself, “I’m safe. I’m at peace. I have everything I need at this moment in time.” She can create for herself a little tagline, a couple of sentences, a word even, that brings her back to home base. Hopefully, that’s helpful in terms of taking her out of the state of wondering what’s going on around her, if she’s safe, and what she needs to do next to secure herself and her child.
Rewiring the Nervous System for Empowerment and Healing
There is so much richness there, Shauna. There are so many excellent points. I’ll reflect on some of the key ones for our audiences. Using the very sad analogy of the fires and how you and I were talking about the reset after that type of trauma and exposure, it is very parallel. When we were talking beforehand, one of the tips I offered, which I’ve been offering to those in the fires, is the ability to deactivate that fight or flight response.
You take a deep breath in, a deep breath out, and scan the environment. Whether it’s a fire, a perceived fire threat, or a threat from a partner or a family member, if you feel that threat, your system is going to get activated. The goal is to downregulate the nervous system when you’re not in actual threat. We’re not talking about a fire coming to your front door or a partner coming at you to harm you. We’re talking about these situations where there is something from the past creating a threat in the future.
For example, we were talking about post-fire for me. We had firestorms in Northern California. A smell of smoke in the air, a campfire, and a big gust of wind can trigger me. What do you do? Take a deep breath in, deep breath out. You scan the environment and ask yourself, “Am I safe? Am I secure? I can move into my body and nervous system. I don’t need to fight or flee. I’m okay.”
It is that same principle with this individual in her life. She’s giving up her power because she sees him as a threat. He may be crotchety or cold but he’s not a threat. You deep breath in, deep breath out, and scan the environment. Everything’s okay. “I don’t need to react.” Audience, what you would do is engage in self-care. Go for a walk, do an art project, take a rest, sit in the backyard, or whatever it is. Take your kiddo with you and go to a play area or something so that the focus isn’t constantly on the threat or the individual who’s not giving to you.
When we do this, the nervous system learns that you can soothe it. From that place, you become more regulated. You can co-regulate even with your kiddo and do things to take care of yourself so that you are rewiring your nervous system. I love how you brought up the point about childhood, being a child, who was maybe traumatized, wounded, whatever happened. Many adults are running around with this kiddo inside.
That’s not meant to shame or blame anyone. It’s meant to create an image so that we can see sometimes that wounded inner kiddo is the one who’s responding, reacting, and getting triggered and re-triggered. We make a space for that kiddo, whether they’re 5, 8, or 11, however old they are, and say, “It’s okay. I’m the adult here now. I’ll take care of us. Let’s breathe and do some self-care.” I love these steps where, if we keep doing them again and again, we take the focus off the other, off that perceived enemy or threat, a person who never cared, the cold indifferent whomever and bring it back.
This is what I love for our audience. It doesn’t need to be the goal but by doing that, it creates the possibility that if our audience, for example, has an attachment style that’s very preoccupied or anxious and her partner has an attachment style that is very dismissive and aloof, and in this case, maybe very avoided, what sometimes happens in cases like that is as the other individual slows down and pulls inward in a healthy way, not in a passive-aggressive or a shutdown way, the other person sometimes comes around to start reaching toward because they are used to being chased.
Not giving a reaction.
What do you think about that, Shauna?
I’ve been thinking about that. It’s an unknown. Our audience needs to be prepared for either possibility. In my relationship with my husband, the way that change is created in our dynamic. One of us steps up and is the better person and the other one follows suit. We lead not by words but by being genuinely loving and acting from a place of true compassion and care.
My hope for our audience is that her partner follows her example and leads. If she is able to self-soothe and is in a place of calm, nurturing herself and her child, bringing abundance, love, kindness, and compassion to the table and infiltrating their whole home with that sense of wonder and beauty, the cloud will be lifted from her partner. He will rise with her but that is not a guarantee. That is the ideal. It’s unknown.
Sometimes, the trauma is too great for other people or they lack awareness. They’re so comfortable being in the state they’re in that they’re not even willing to do the work to get out of that place because they’ve habituated to feeling grumpy themselves. He’s got his whole host of coping mechanisms that she may or may not influence with her attitude, perceptions, and ways of being in the world.
I also want to say that we perceive threats that sometimes don’t exist, but there is a threat that is very real here, which is the ability to be with her child. Having had my parents divorced when I was three years old, I know how very real it is when there is a child or children in the mix. As a mother of two small children, I can only imagine the very real appropriate concern I would have around anything that would shift my potential participation in my child’s life or my ability to mother them on a consistent basis.
All of our conversations have been beautiful and very theoretical. I also want to say that I understand that this is a very real and appropriate concern. We’re providing the scaffolding for our audience to make decisions that are potentially going to require logistical arrangements and decisions that are deeply real, very important, weighty, big, and true. I wanted to say that because regardless of how we shift our perception and the community we build around us, it’s hard when there’s a child in the mix. My heart is very much with our audience and has a great deal of compassion for the fear in relation to her child.
Breaking Generational Cycles: The Power of Feeling Emotions
Thank you. I love how we are bringing this piece toward the end of the episode, making it big and breathing into it because as she changes that relationship with herself, works on her bond with herself, works on healing this rift or lack of connection inside of herself, she’ll be able to feel more grounded, more aware, full of herself and her energy, true essence, and joy. By doing that, her child will then have a role model that instead of looking outward like, “Who should I be? What should I be,” it’s looking inward. She breaks that inner generational cycle that was so destructive to her.
Instead of reacting, her child will be a person who takes a pause, allows herself to breathe, and says, “What is true for me in this moment? Where am I authentically believing something to be true?” It’s so important that we ourselves be the person we hope our children become. At the end of the day, that grounding is the greatest gift we can give to them.
As we’ve been mentioning the fires and weaving that context for me into this conversation, I want to say again what you and I talked about prior to the episode, which is that I’m myself in my children’s home. They are sleeping on a blow-up mattress with clothes that we bought at Target. They each have a couple of things. I am it. The calm and also the ability to feel my feelings and for them to see me grieve and be deeply crushed by witnessing so many of my closest friends losing their homes, schools, and communities is all part of being internally grounded and connected with yourself.
If you allow yourself to feel all the feelings too, you inadvertently give your children permission to feel theirs. As we’re talking about our audience, be self-aware and break these cycles. I also want to say that maybe one of the most important pieces of accessing our emotional freedom and breaking intergenerational trauma is the ability to feel all of our feelings, cry when necessary, and let our children see us be human, process grief, confusion, questions, and turmoil, and come out the other side.
That’s the gift. The gift isn’t being perfect all the time. It’s not holding it together, being the rock, going, and everything’s organized. It’s, “I break and I piece myself back together.” Things break and we piece it back together. It’s that cycle that children watch. I’m having a revelation. The truest sense of healing is giving them permission to move through all the cycles and know that they have the resilience, internal dialogue, and ability to choose perceptions, all of which will ultimately create that joy that is our essence and at the core of who we are, regardless of the circumstances and emotions.
As I often say, our emotions are messengers when we slow down. For any audience who’s thinking, “I can’t break down, cry in front of my child, or be angry in front of my child. I should be this perfect father, mother, caregiver,” or whomever, we’re not saying to throw things and do things that are scary for children. We are saying there is a way to show grief, tears, and anger by saying, “I am angry. I want to go for a walk. I am sad. I’m going to take a time out on the couch. I’m feeling grief-stricken. I’m going to go journal or draw.”
It’s where we can show all of these beautiful and important emotions and the thousands of feelings that come from them. We can show that they can be processed with grace and authenticity without being cruel, cold, inhuman, or any of these things. We can feel our feelings and be very human. You’re right. It’s never about being perfect. Perfect is not an option.
When we are in a place of fear and it drives the ship, we need to slow it down and talk to ourselves the way we would to a child. Share on XIt’s not even a real thing. It’s this construct that we’ve created that isn’t even a real thing. What is real is naming it and processing it. We name it for our children. “You feel sad. It looks like you’re having a hard time. Are you frustrated?” We talk to ourselves that way. As with so many of us, when we are in a place of fear and fear is driving the ship, we need to slow it down and talk to ourselves the way we would to a child. Name that grief, pain, and confusion in very simple ways for ourselves and others. “I’m feeling scared.” It takes some of the air out of the balloon.
It makes us know that it’s okay to feel these feelings. I’m thinking for the audience. I can only imagine there must be times when they are feeling sad, alone, and so wanting connection because we all want to be loved, safe, and seen. I imagine they feel very unseen and isolated. Those are normal, natural feelings. We don’t know what their future will hold, but we do know that you have given us so many tools, Shauna, to help them get on their way. I mentioned your book and it’s such a wonderful book so could you mention where audiences can find you?
The book, You Are the Boss of You, is available on Amazon. I hope it is a resource that empowers, uplifts, and provides a sense of possibility and hope for the future. The last chapter of my book is about building one’s life and future and manifesting our dreams. I provide the scaffolding beforehand so that when you get to that chapter, you’ve already learned and hopefully internalized these incredible tools.
There’s a workbook that’s available on my personal site. That is also an incredible resource in terms of translating all of the theory into action. It provides so much more in-depth information and so many more actionable and practical tools. Everything that we’re talking about in the book becomes real and part of your everyday life. These exercises are applicable to one’s moment-to-moment existence.
I hope that this conversation has benefited our audience and your greater audience. I feel so privileged to have had this conversation with you. It means a lot that you allowed me to show up in this imperfect space and moment in time where I borrowed my mother-in-law’s mascara. I’m wearing her shirt. I’m here in an attic, hoping to provide some meaning, hope, and peace for others.
Shauna, you have the setting and the story. It’s magical to me. My show is open to imperfection because that’s what’s real. That’s us. That’s life. Somehow, what you’ve brought is magically intertwined with exactly what so many people out there, including the individual who wrote in, can find solace, comfort, and uplift in. Thank you, Shauna, for being with us. Audiences, you can find Shauna at HelloShauna.com. Thank you again, Shauna. It has been a joy and a privilege.
You’re a pleasure. I appreciate you. Thank you so much.
You are welcome. To my audiences, thank you for being with us. It is always such a joy and a pleasure.
Important Links
- Shauna Brittenham Reiter
- Alaya Naturals Wellness Company
- You Are the Boss of You: Cultivate the Mindset and Tools to Live Life on Your Terms
- Joy from Fear
- Workbook
- NAMI Helpline
- Disaster Relief
- Recovering Emotionally After a Disaster
About Shauna Brittenham Reiter
Shauna Brittenham Reiter is an entrepreneur and author dedicated to the empowerment and healing of herself and others. In 2018, she founded the wellness company Alaya Naturals based on the principles of holistic health that led her from a life limited by overwhelming ailments to founding a multi-million-dollar wellness company before the age of forty. Diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, leukopenia, and right bundle branch block, Shauna has cultivated a vast understanding of what the body requires to thrive. And while her focus on natural medicine has made radical healing possible for herself and hundreds of thousands of others, it is Shauna’s exploration of the world within that has cultivated true miracles. Prior to founding Alaya Naturals, Shauna was a Montessori school teacher and singer/songwriter—her album Dreamer’s Dream was released in 2017. Shauna wrote her book, “You Are the Boss of You: Cultivate the Mindset and Tools to Live Life On Your Terms” (2025) to empower others to take control of their lives and claim the emotional freedom that leads to abundance. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.