Where you can find Carolyn:
https://www.carolynbarnes.com
https://www2.heart.org/goto/CarolynBarnes

Transcript:

[Jon Dabach] 00:00
Today on the relationship Revival Show, we have Carolyn Barnes joining us Clinical Hypnotherapist she has been a leading health and fitness coach with over a decade experience in the field. She is also a highly sought after speaker having appeared on national television on shows such as the doctors Good Morning America and Fox News. And she was also featured on the cover of The Wall Street Journal.

[Jon Dabach] 00:21
Her path to becoming a leader in the mind body connection was not an easy one. As you’re going to find out from listening to this episode, Carolyn nearly lost her life to chronic stress and severe hypertension, leading her to become a clinical hypnotherapist and dedicate her career to helping others self-regulate and overcome stress and anxiety.

[Jon Dabach] 00:42
She’s recently partnered with the American Heart Association, where she continues to promote mental and physical health and awareness. You’re listening to the relationship revival podcast with Jon Dabach, also known as Mr. Spirituality.

[Jon Dabach] 00:55
That’s me. I’m your host giving you insights and guidance from over 10 years in the field of this amazing journey we call romance on this show, I go over everything you need to know about how to get into a relationship, how to get the most out of a relationship, and sometimes even how to gracefully end a relationship without pulling your hair out and going crazy.

[Jon Dabach] 01:16
And occasionally, I’m even joined by new and old friends who are also relationship experts to bring you guidance and wisdom with new perspectives. Thanks for stopping by talking with Carolyn Barnes. And you are our first hypnotherapist on the show, which is really exciting.

[Jon Dabach] 01:33
Yeah, I will be honest, I know very, very little about hypnotherapy. So I kind of was excited when you were interested in being on the show, because it’s an opportunity for me to learn more about how it works, who it’s for what it can help with, and kind of dispel any myths that people have about hypnotherapy. So first question is, how did you get into it?

[Carolyn Barnes] 01:57
Well, that’s, that’s interesting, because when, when I was going through, you know, life in our own, you know, craft. As a woman, we put everybody else before ourselves, which is how I really learned how to reverse that. But my kids were acting out, I got, you know, as you know, divorced, but my kids were in therapy.

[Carolyn Barnes] 02:31
And I sat in on their sessions, and the therapists basically said to me, nothing will ever change, unless you address the unconscious mind. And what most people don’t realize is that 95% of the day, we’re on autopilot and they’re not programmed. And so I just started to really pay attention to what she said. And it scared me a little bit. And one day I you know, on the one on one, there’s that college of hypnosis.

[Carolyn Barnes] 03:10
On the Ventura freeway, HMI Yeah. And I just pulled over Zana, right. Yeah. And I had tried to session before and it was really interesting. But I pulled over and instead of, you know, getting a pro bono session from some of the, you know, the students there because we need to get our hours. I just went in and I just said, I’m doing this full throttle, you just committed.

[Jon Dabach] 03:36
It was like something like that out of nowhere. You’re just like, I’m in

[Carolyn Barnes] 03:39
Almost like divine interception. It’s just like, No, I’m in. I’m doing this. And I made a decision. I never looked back. And it’s been the best decision I’ve ever made. It’s been the most healing. Most people don’t realize, you know, that you’re, you’re in hypnosis, a lot of the day you’re going in and out.

[Carolyn Barnes] 03:56
Have you ever driven to the supermarket and went, Oh, God, how did I get here? Can’t believe I parked my car. You’re in. But hypnotherapy and what’s really cool is that well, driving over there, your thoughts are being hijacked from you. But with hypnosis, you’re in control.

[Carolyn Barnes] 04:23
And you are creating the learning state where you get to rewire neuro pathways in a very relaxed control, safe environment. And you know, most people have this idea that hypnosis is like, Ooh, you know, I’m going to make you quack. I can bark like a chicken, or whatever. Yeah. And it’s

[Jon Dabach] 04:45
What stage hypnosis done for like a comedy shows.

[Carolyn Barnes] 04:48
Yeah. And the bottom line is, you’re never going to do anything you don’t want to do so the people who get up on the stage and stage hypnosis are those people who would do an ordinary airily and have a desire. Yeah, that’s why well

[Jon Dabach] 05:03
Who’s even volunteering, right? I mean that just by wanting to be on stage, they’re kind of saying that they want to be

[Carolyn Barnes] 05:08
Suggestible. And so everyone is hypnotizable every single person, and it’s just about understanding and learning how you take in information, and how you process information.

[Jon Dabach] 05:25
So what exactly when you say it creates new neural pathways, what it what’s going on, when you’re doing hypnotherapy? What’s walk us through what a session looks like,

[Carolyn Barnes] 05:37
Before I do that, John, let me let me share with you have you ever had an argument with someone where you know for certain that you’re right, and they’re

[Jon Dabach] 05:47
Wrong, I’ve been married for over 10 years. So the certainty of being right is totally gone at this point.

[Carolyn Barnes] 05:56
Just not go your right hand. And you know, you’re right, and your sides and they get upset and they prove their side, you go back and forth. It’s a tug of war. It’s exhausting.

[Carolyn Barnes] 06:08
Which is why you and I both know, you’re right, as far. Right? Okay. The same thing happens between you and you between your conscious mind and your unconscious programming. And what people don’t realize. And I’ll draw you something that that’s fascinating to me. But you can’t really hear it, or see it on the podcast, but hopefully this

[Jon Dabach] 06:30
I can describe what it is. Imagine this circle,

[Carolyn Barnes] 06:33
Okay, is your mind, okay? And everybody comes into the world a clean slate. But we have something hardwired into each and every one of us called the primitive mind, this is so fascinating. When I really understood like, this is your

[Jon Dabach] 06:49
Barrel. And for those of you who can’t see, she’s kind of sectioned off like 5% of the bottom of a circle and is written primitive mind inside of it. Yeah.

[Carolyn Barnes] 06:59
And the primitive mind is responsible for your survival response, your fight flight and freeze response. So imagine during the caveman days, you had lions chasing you, and you have that adrenaline and cortisol pumping in your system.

[Carolyn Barnes] 07:14
So you had the energy to run as fast as you can away from the lion or fight the lion or you freeze and play dead, right? But today, we don’t have lions chasing us. Instead, we have our spouses who have to be my thoughts. Right?

[Carolyn Barnes] 07:33
And so instead of calling it Fight, Flight freeze, let’s call this anxiety, depression, or procrastination, or overthinking, right analysis, paralysis. In psychotherapy, we call this the formative years in a hypnosis from zero to eight years old. I’m sectioning off this, you can describe this, but we call this the knowns and unknowns than knowns, known experiences, life experiences.

[Carolyn Barnes] 08:03
So because children, we look to our parents or to authority, you know, rabbis, priests, whomever, teachers, or doctors to know how to be in the world. And so we have positive and negative experiences. And let’s say, for example, you grew up with a dog.

[Carolyn Barnes] 08:26
Well, if you had a good experience, that’s a positive association as an adult, you may get a dog and have a positive association with dogs, or a kid and you got bit by your neighbor’s dog. Well, now, as an adult, you may have the sense of fear in dogs will be afraid of you. So that negative association let’s take it a step further. Let’s say let’s take my childhood, for example. I’m doing my math homework and my mom. She’s loud. She’s Jewish, and she’s from New York. And she shouts to me, Karen trifecta.

[Jon Dabach] 09:02
Yeah.

[Carolyn Barnes] 09:05
In the car, Carolyn. I with the loudness, I freeze, because my stress response gets activated. Yeah, I guess society. So she takes that as a cue as I’m not paying attention. So she needs to be louder. Right, so associate even more, your attention even louder, right?

[Carolyn Barnes] 09:30
So much so that she gets so frustrated, it creates such an emotional impact in me. It gets trapped in my nervous system. And now I made the belief. Something’s wrong with me. Why else would this crazy lady be shouting? Something’s wrong with me.

[Carolyn Barnes] 09:46
This is my fault. Sure. Nobody ever corrects the child and says, hey, your mom has a problem with patience. She doesn’t have the skills and tools to communicate with you in the way a you need. So we’re going to create a belief. And this lens.

 

[Carolyn Barnes] 10:06
Now let’s take on the flip side, my sister who’s very competent, incredibly resourceful. That’s a positive, she has a belief that she’s capable in the world. On the flip side, she made the belief that in order to receive approval, I need to be perfect.

[Carolyn Barnes] 10:27
So now she stopped perfectionism. So we create these beliefs about ourselves, I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not thin enough, I’m not pretty enough. I’m not this, that whatever. Sure. This becomes our belief system. And here’s where it gets really interesting.

[Carolyn Barnes] 10:44
Okay, when you’re nine and 10, we develop the frontal lobes, critical mind, and our logic, or reasoning or willpower, our desire, the analysis, and so let’s say you make a decision.

[Carolyn Barnes] 11:02
And let’s say you rationalize with yourself that I’m going to give up sweets, or I’m going to go do whatever it is, logically, it makes sense, you reason with yourself, you exercise your willpower, but what people don’t recognize is this is 5% of your thinking. And this is 95% of your thinking. 24/7. So the moment you’re stressed, 5% is conscious. So 5%

[Jon Dabach] 11:35
Is conscious, and 95% are the beliefs that you’ve made? Unconsciously? Yes, okay,

[Carolyn Barnes] 11:41
That those are not your fault. And some of them are good. I mean, and this becomes automatic. Some of them are great. I mean, you made a belief that you are humorous and funny, because of whatever circumstances has happened in your life, you know, as a child, and therefore you are and you believe in, there’s this sense of certainty.

[Carolyn Barnes] 12:03
And so these beliefs serve us and then they don’t serve us. And so we want to be your beliefs that are really serving us. And we want to let go of the ones that aren’t. And that’s really hard to do. And that’s where the hypnosis where I come into play, you know, talk therapy and, and talking to you, I’m talking to 5% of your thinking.

[Carolyn Barnes] 12:24
But with hypnosis, or NLP, neuro linguistic programming, we create the gateway, from the conscious mind your wishes and desires to bypass the critical mind that goes, nope. I don’t know anything about that, that’s uncomfortable to believe that I’m capable, we bypass that we go into the unknown, we go into the knowns.

[Carolyn Barnes] 12:46
And we basically update the computer software of your thinking and behavior to make it more congruent with what it is that you actually desire and want to move towards. See most people are moving away from and that’s fear, right? That’s our stress response. Most people are in survival mode, which is where I lived a long time. And it caused a lot of health issues for me.

[Jon Dabach] 13:17
The fear mode, the survival mode,

[Carolyn Barnes] 13:19
Yeah. When you’re in survival mode, you know, we normalize stress, and our baseline becomes here. And in order for us to recognize that we’re stressed out, we really need to feel triggered.

[Jon Dabach] 13:33
Yeah. So you kind of build up this fake tolerance, and you’re doing damage in the background. And then, you know, for you to kind of wake up you need to, you need to get a heart attack or some kind of crazy serious issue that has come up, right? Yes, yes. So what is the session look like?

[Jon Dabach] 13:52
What is hypnosis, that’s, it’s great background, for those of you who can’t see the circle, you know, the, the 5%, at the top of kind of what we know from zero to eight, and there’s your tiny, primitive brain at the bottom of the circle, taking up, you know, 2%.

[Jon Dabach] 14:06
And then the rest of it are these beliefs in the middle that we’ve kind of unconsciously made. That’s kind of how she drew it out. It was really kind of interesting to kind of look at the mind that way. And I think a lot of people when I’m doing sessions with couples would see this to be true.

[Jon Dabach] 14:20
I mean, when you are having an argument with your husband, or your wife or boyfriend or girlfriend, that kind of knee jerk reactions of you not being able to contain your temper, or you know, feeling like you have to defend yourself instead of, you know, or that you have to win an argument as opposed to kind of coming together to come to a resolution, all those things are these beliefs and survival tactics that that you’ve grown over time and I have to I have to break through those on a cognitive level when I’m doing kind of these counseling sessions.

[Jon Dabach] 14:51
And then I use similar tools. I use meditation as a tool to kind of try and get that into the heart but I’m curious how hypnotherapy and how it works to kind of reprogram that part of your brain. So if you can walk us through what a session looks like and what’s going on. Yeah, you know, behind the scenes that would be super interesting.

[Carolyn Barnes] 15:10
Well, I’ll share a little story about how the benefits of what we’re talking about here are from a perspective of a couple. So let’s take my, my husband, for example, okay, or my partner.

[Carolyn Barnes] 15:24
And I got this incredible news. I was so excited, so enthusiastic, and I wanted to share it with him, and we’re driving, we’re on our way to yoga, and I’m sharing, I’m driving and I’m sharing this enthusiasm. And he’s nodding and texting at the same time.

[Carolyn Barnes] 15:43
And I’m thinking, oh, my God, are you kidding me? You’re, you’re texting and can’t you see how enthusiastic and so my brain started to narrow in its focus. And I started to think of all the other ways, I felt unsupported by him. And I started to pinch off and close off in my chest. And it got into my old belief system, I’m not worthy, I’m not important and whatever, whatever. And I stopped it. And a little voice came out on this side. And it said, I noticed you Karolina, and I’m very excited for you.

[Carolyn Barnes] 16:20
And it started to praise me. And it started to acknowledge me, and I felt seen, heard and understood, so that in less than a couple of minutes, internally, my not only stress response was deactivated, but the flow of energy went back in my heart started to open back up.

[Carolyn Barnes] 16:42
And I didn’t even need to have a conversation with him. In fact, the conversation with myself was so valuable, validating myself. That was all I really needed. And what’s interesting is, when we come from a place of having our needs met, we’re not in the emotion so that it’s from that place, I could then communicate with my partner, hey, I’d really appreciate if I’m telling you something that’s important that you’d share the importance with me, so I feel supported.

[Carolyn Barnes] 17:21
But we’re in the place of the emotion, doing the talking, we’re in our distorted limiting beliefs. And it prevents us from seeing all the other ways he’s truly supportive and amazing. Because it narrows it. And so how this, how this would happen, if I were, you know, doing this, I did a session on myself a while ago. But in a session with a client, if they were to have the issue, it would be to recognize when your stress response is activated.

[Carolyn Barnes] 17:55
Because you’ll notice tightening in the chest or rumination of thoughts or, you know, there’s specific cues that tell us. And when those cues are activated, that is the time to pause and take space. So the neuro pathway may have a knee jerk reaction to defend or to retreat, you know, fight flight freeze.

[Carolyn Barnes] 18:25
So we either want to fight for our point of view, we want to run away and not in avoid it and shut down. Or we just give up and say you’re right. And it’s not worth fighting, we become apathetic, right?

[Carolyn Barnes] 18:41
And that discounts the self. But if we can give that perspective, in the end, and we can hold space for our self to recalibrate the emotion, then we return back to a place of wholeness. I know I’m going kind of down a rabbit hole here, but it’s from this whole place. It’s from a place of wholeness that the conversation can then be had with a partner.

[Jon Dabach] 19:14
It sounds great. Yeah. So how does how does hypnotherapy get you? There is the question.

[Carolyn Barnes] 19:21
So now what that looks like in a session is after we do the cognitive portion, the talking and the reframing and understanding with a goal and the intention is with the client. What we then do is create a very relaxed state where the client is in complete control over how relaxed they’d like to become their navigating this and I just helped facilitate and it’s in this relaxed state that we enter into that slower brainwave frequency.

[Carolyn Barnes] 19:55
From zero to eight children are already there. They’re like sponges. They’re in a To think of brainwave state, so we recreate it through a state of relaxation. And we go into the belief system. And if there was a belief, I’m not good enough, or my my point of view doesn’t matter, or whatever the belief is, we identify that we release the energy around it. Emotion is energy in motion. Yeah.

[Carolyn Barnes] 20:23
And when a person can appreciate that emotion is not good, bad, right or wrong, it’s just the body’s response to something, then it sort of like goes of the shame around the emotion. Because it’s just energy that we think we need to keep to protect ourselves, but it hurts the body.

[Carolyn Barnes] 20:45
And if we can appreciate that are going off on a tangent, but stay with me our heartbeats by itself, we don’t have to do any work, we can relax, knowing that work is done for us, our breathing happens all by itself, we don’t have to do any work there. In our body processes, emotions all by themselves, we can let go of the judgment, or having to do any work than the body can process the emotion we allow the body in the session to process this.

[Carolyn Barnes] 21:15
And then we formed the new neuro pathway, and the new way of behaving in the past, you may have had a knee jerk reaction and behaved a certain way, what would you like to do instead, and imagine and through the imagination, that we begin cultivating a new road, a new neural pathway, in response during the time in future events. And this really builds self-esteem from an internal place. Because when we can recognize that nobody can make us feel a certain way that’s within our control.

[Carolyn Barnes] 21:57
And it’s through the acknowledgement and the realization that we’re safe to let go of their repressed emotion and trust the process, the body can process emotions, get out of the way of it, then you start validating the self in a whole new way. And that’s the deepest form of self-acceptance.

[Carolyn Barnes] 22:18
That’s he’s that’s really accepting and you don’t have to like what you’re accepting to be true. Nobody says you have to like it. But do you need the tension? Yet? Can you still breathe? Not liking something? Yes. And it’s that letting go, yeah.

[Jon Dabach] 22:36
And so people when they come to you with hypnotherapy? Do they often need help kind of figuring out the goal? First, they just think their symptom might be I have a lot of anxiety, or I’m fighting a lot with my partner, but they don’t even know exactly what they need. So is there a discovery process of finding that goal? Is that like step one?

[Carolyn Barnes] 22:58
Well, step one is really feeling like you have a handle over your stress response. Because until you feel safe with self-regulation, and really, truly understand how to self-regulate, the deeper work is going to feel overwhelming.

[Carolyn Barnes] 23:22
And so handling the anxiety, and really understanding it’s it, what anxiety really is, it’s a signaling system, and how to manage that is just the first part. And so that in and of itself, creates a sense of confidence when you feel more in control over that. And then we can graduate to know what you want in till you are. So if you think about your anxiety, or the stress response being activated, you’re in survival mode.

[Carolyn Barnes] 24:02
That’s not the time to create, or to be tuned in to what it is you desire. You’re protecting your lights. It’s black and white, when the stress responses. So we teach how to control the stress response, let go of the fear and let go of the emotion without the judgment.

[Carolyn Barnes] 24:23
And once there’s more management in there, and there’s a place of wholeness, then you’re in more of a receptive mode to that are tuned in. And when we can go and we could do this all, you know, some clients, I can get to this in one session. Sometimes it takes multiple sessions. It depends on how it’s very personal.

[Carolyn Barnes] 24:48
And so it’s from that quiet still place that we can better tune in to our truth and what it is Is that we truly want and desire and gain clarity. And so there’s lots of different ways I go about doing that for a person. And if you think about stress and tension or anxiety is who we think we should be.

[Carolyn Barnes] 25:19
Relaxation is who we really are. And if we can appreciate that, the most important thing is to relax, especially not liking what’s around you or what’s happening. But that you can relax knowing that no clowns with machetes are coming after you, you’re safe to relax and not liking something,

[Carolyn Barnes] 25:43
Then the answers will present themselves. See, most people are trying to figure it out. Because they’re figuring it out. They’re up against roadblocks of who they think they should be in figuring it out.

[Carolyn Barnes] 26:01
But when we relax, we reconnect to that whole part of ourselves. So that sooner or later, what we really desire and want are like little whispers that we start paying attention to.

[Jon Dabach] 26:15
Interesting, really interesting. So how long does a session usually last? And, you know, how long it takes to get into that relaxed state before you start kind of unpacking stuff.

[Carolyn Barnes] 26:29
Um, it’s very dependent on the person if somebody is, you know, needs to really be in control. I need people where they’re at. And so I’m good at what I do. And so, you know, I can get a person to relax, because I understand how the brain works.

[Carolyn Barnes] 26:52
And so if you meet them where they’re at, and they’re in there already, they’re in a narrow focus, then it’s about meeting them narrow, focused, and then expanding their awareness at the rate and speed that’s appropriate. So it’s very, its hard question to, to answer.

[Carolyn Barnes] 27:08
But I usually am able to bring people to a relaxed state very quickly, within 510 minutes. And and only when there’s rapport and a feeling of safety, will somebody feel safe to do the deeper part of the work? So So I honor that, you know,

[Jon Dabach] 27:31
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, for sure. You have to build that. Yeah, for sure. Trust our sessions, usually, like an hour, hour and a half. What’s the typical?

[Carolyn Barnes] 27:40
You know, the first session is usually longer, but I say an hour. And sometimes if time permits, and somebody’s really making on the verge of a breakthrough, then I’ll go over the time, and we’ll break through. Because breakthrough. If we can appreciate, we’ve made our beliefs at some point in life. They’re not true. The child made in order to survive in the environment, or sense of the world.

[Jon Dabach] 28:18
I mean, I’m thinking about it in terms of my own life. Now, I probably have, I might book a session with you, I have some pretty unhealthy relationships with food and comfort, that need to be broken for my own health and exercise. I gotten a great kick for like a good year where I was eating healthy and exercising.

[Jon Dabach] 28:36
And I lost a tremendous amount of weight and felt great, but I just it collapsed with COVID and right before COVID. And, you know, and now when I eat something I know, I’m like, I’m really eating it because I feel loved when I eat and it’s like it’s not a healthy.

[Jon Dabach] 28:53
And I feel like hypnosis, or hypnotherapy will probably be a good thing to kind of rewire the brain is that is that? Is that a correct assumption? Things like smoking, or eating healthy, like you can kind of tap into those things, right? Well

[Carolyn Barnes] 29:06
Look at if you think about it, as a kid, you may have made the belief that this is comfort, this is how to soothe yourself. So that strategy to comforting yourself works. You are successful at that strategy. Right? Do you want to keep that strategy? Is that the only way to comfort yourself?

[Carolyn Barnes] 29:28
No. But it’s the way that surefire way in the heat of the moment. It’s about creating a new neural pathway of other ways to soothe and comfort yourself and go, what do you really want? Well, to feel comforted and soothed. You’ve just put a meaning to food that that does it for you.

[Carolyn Barnes] 29:50
But if what you really want is to feel comforted and soothed. Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody can just Notice that you need attention and need to feel comforted and soothed right now. And I wonder which part of you can give that part of you the attention that you really need, because that’s what’s needed, and how you want relief. We just are calling it food. Now, you may find there’s a natural resistance in there.

[Carolyn Barnes] 30:23
Yeah, that’s the energy in charge. So in the hypnosis, we go in there, and we, it’s like, extracting a tooth having a root canal. But we release, you know, at the root, and put in a new tooth, unless you clean out the root. Right, right. Right. And that’s, we try to do new behavior. But until the belief is changed.

[Jon Dabach] 31:01
So bringing this back down to relationships, that people who listen to the podcast kind of, you know, are always looking to relate, what would you say is the most important takeaway for maintaining a healthy relationship? Now that you’ve gone through this hypnotherapy process so many times and you see it, you know, what, what’s the glue,

[Carolyn Barnes] 31:23
Here, this is what it is. In the past, I would have thought, he needs to go to counseling, I’ve done my work, I know what it is. But when we can appreciate that trigger show up, to teach us something, really about ourselves.

[Carolyn Barnes] 31:49
And it’s the relationship that we have, between our conscious awareness and the part of us that needs support in our program self, the relationship between you and you that needs the approval to support the it is, when you can learn how to unconditionally love, and appreciate and respect the self. For all the good bad, see, we are not good, bad, and right or wrong. Behavior, you know, need shaping.

[Carolyn Barnes] 32:32
How can we unconditionally love the person ourselves? If we can get to that place? Everything else will fix itself in a relationship you’ll have more compassion for them being an asshole when they’re just triggered. They’re in their own limitations. And we don’t take things personally. Yeah, before we clear out these beliefs, they feel we feel like a victim and wounded.

[Jon Dabach] 33:01
Right. Right. I couldn’t agree with you more. That’s kind of that’s kind of the step one, whenever I deal with people is how do you fill yourself up with love you because if you’re depending on another person for it, guess what they’re going to fail. I mean, that’s just you know, people are people and there, they have flaws, and they have a bad day. And so you have to figure out how to do it on your own.

[Jon Dabach] 33:25
Whether it’s through hypnotherapy, or meditation or spiritual, I mean, I don’t really care how people do it. I just, you know, that’s step one, that’s if you can’t find it in your own in your own body, in your own mind, then you’re kind of at the mercy of what’s happening around you, which is essentially calling yourself powerless, which is not a good place to be

[Carolyn Barnes] 33:45
Correct. So it’s about really going into the internal control panel and recognizing you hold all the power, and its all perception. I mean, without going down too many rabbit holes, it’s unconditionally loving yourself. Seems like an idea, or thought to a lot of people in hypnosis and through the process, you’re really reconnecting to the part of you that needed it.

[Carolyn Barnes] 34:21
So it’s like going in there and holding space for the Kid, Part child self, who needed the love and support and can you imagine re parenting yourself in a way that lets you feel courageous, confident, proud, accepted, loved, unconditionally, capable, ready to learn how to do this with ourselves first, because it’ll make us better parents and better partners.

[Jon Dabach] 34:55
That’s great, great message. I wanted to kind of shift a little bit I know you’ve, you’ve done some work with the American Heart Association. Tell me how you got connected with them?

[Carolyn Barnes] 35:05
Sure. Well, you know, before I became a hypnotherapist I was a health coach for well over a decade, and I did a lot of television shows on Good Morning America at the doctor’s. And when I was starting on television series for ABC, my my blood pressure had style. As I said, weight loss and fitness coach, my blood pressure skyrocketed to 210 over 180, which meant I was on the verge of a heart attack or stroke. Yeah. And the paramedics

[Jon Dabach] 35:37
Were there very seriously. Hi.

[Carolyn Barnes] 35:40
Came rushing over to me. And I’m in the ambulance on my way over to the hospital and freaking out not about if I’m going to die. But really, what are they going to think are they going to fire me in my head used to be a whole lot of a mess, which really was leading to a lot of hypertension.

[Carolyn Barnes] 36:01
And it took me a lot of hospital visits, in almost nearly losing my life, for me to wake up. And so, you know, we don’t need to wait for some extreme event for us to wake up and start paying attention to our health. So I partnered with the American Heart Association, in in hopes to spread awareness to really teach people that your body is the only place Jim Rohn says, as your body’s the only place you have to live in.

 

[Carolyn Barnes] 36:34
So how can you respect your body? And it recognize it’s the vehicle that we’re using to experience the world around us.

[Carolyn Barnes] 36:45
And so, you know, having overcome severe hypertension, and premature heart disease, they asked me to partner with them. And yeah, so we’re raising funds for the American Heart Association. And I’m just trying to share awareness about how to start listening to your body in the cues because especially as a woman, you know, I’m paying attention to everybody else’s cues around me and meeting everyone else’s needs, and not paying attention that this rapid heartbeat or like, Oh, I think I’m going to pass out.

[Carolyn Barnes] 37:23
I normalized that, you know, when we have a glass of wine, let me distract myself. And that’s what we do. We avoid we numb ourselves, whether it’s food, whether it’s wine, shopping, whatever, right? We’re, it’s, it’s a coping mechanism for our survival. But when we instead, push through the discomfort and recognize the discomfort has a right to exist.

[Carolyn Barnes] 37:51
It’s that’s just simply in motion. And it’s I’ve learned how to train myself, how to just accept that these feelings are uncomfortable, and my body has a right to process them. So that’s the real message that I want to get out there.

[Jon Dabach] 38:09
Well, thank you so much. If you’re interested in working with Carolyn, you can find her at Carolyn barnes.com ca R O L y n var. NES Carolyn barnes.com. I’ll also put the link for her fundraising for the American Heart Association in the show notes and on the website, so you can go and contribute and help out that very, very worthy cause.

[Jon Dabach] 38:36
Thank you so much for being with me and sharing everything. I’m probably going to be interested in booking a session myself. I was so swayed there. So thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Carolyn.

[Carolyn Barnes] 38:50
Thank you.

[Jon Dabach] 38:51
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