Ep #195: Fear of Change with Monique Derouen

 

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Full Episode Transcript:

#195: Fear of Change with Monique Derouen

Welcome to More Than Mindset, the only podcast that bridges the gap between spirituality and success. Go beyond the mind with clarity and confidence Coach, Kim Guillory, and learn how to integrate your passion to serve with your skills and experience to create a business you love. Let’s get started.

Kim: Hey, and welcome back to the show. It has been awhile since I’ve had a guest, but that is what you are going to get this week. Monique is The Mind Body Coach as she calls herself, she is one of my first batch of coaches I trained back in the day.

She’s been around awhile. Let’s just say Monique and I met in massage. And became friends and were both interested in helping people heal from chronic pain. We had a lot in common. You may have heard her on previous episodes. She was also a hairdresser, massage therapist, yoga, all of the things.

And she packed her stuff and hauled it to Colorado and is now living a whole other life, another version of herself. And we have partnered for Self-Healing Masters and wanted to bring light, the fear of change. Exactly what happens once our clients start changing, once they no longer have the chronic pain and the severed relationship with themselves, once they have done the self-healing work, what happens then?

So, Monique, would you like to introduce yourself?

Monique: Yeah, hi. Thanks for having me. I’m thrilled to be here as always, and to talk about this work because it is so important. And, you know, with my own personal journey, going through this transition myself, I have a deeper understanding of how to relate to people where they are when they’re experiencing this.

And it’s hard work, Kim. It’s hard work and it’s deep, and I’m so grateful that we have such accessible tools and techniques at our fingertips that we can use in the moment anytime to change the way we’re experiencing life, you know, in our favor, to where it’s not going to work against us and hurt us, but truly finding the rhythm in a different way.

And it was a little bit like a hurricane at first, and now it’s kind of like the river. And every once in a while, we get a flood, and we get a little bit of movement. Sometimes the rocks come down and make the river dirty again. I live off the Colorado River right here next to us, and I’m, I witnessing this in real time all the time.

It’s, it’s kind of what my journey has felt like. It’s like this crazy. Storm and all this mess comes in, and then we get it all cleared up and then life happens, and it dumps back in, and it makes a big mess, and we clean it all up, but it’s easier and it’s quicker and it’s not as aggressive anymore, and it’s so different to be in this state of mind after the change and open to more change ready and willing to welcome the change.

I’m like, yes, let’s change. Let’s change all the time. It’s so fun because the experience itself has been so moving in a positive direction. For me personally, I just want to share this with everybody.

Kim: Hmm. Yeah. Couple of things came to mind when you said that. Number one, we’re so used to hurricanes, both being from Louisiana, we know how to hunker down and ride it out. And the second thing was the Mississippi River, the muddy Mississippi that is going off into all kinds of, what do you call those? Coves? Just kind of ventures out everywhere, so the Mississippi is not straight. It’s not straight and narrow by any means, and it kind of collects everything from above, brings it, brings it down.

But for those who are just joining, and maybe this is your first episode, what Monique and I are talking about is self-healing for chronic pain, broken relationships, and all of those things, but specifically how chronic pain shows up in your life when you have unresolved trauma or issues from the past.

So, whenever I first started doing this work, my clients were blown away because in minutes, literally in minutes, they could transform years of trauma. Yesterday alone, over a hundred years of trauma was resolved in client sessions. And they were the ones who asked, “could you teach me how to do this? I want to share it.”

I want everyone to know. I don’t ever want to stop talking about it, but it’s uncomfortable because they often look at us like we are weird. We fell off the roof of the house and hit our head.

So, we were just talking about this on a masterclass that I was doing, how it’s actually uncomfortable not being uncomfortable because we’ve gotten used to change, and we know how to deal mentally and emotionally with anything because we know that the answer is within ourselves, and people say it’s within you, but then they don’t teach us how to access it, and it’s very annoying.

And through years of that together, if you added our years, it’s almost unbelievable of hearing the same thing from practitioners, from doctors, from diagnosis and medications and us trying to fix something in the physical body that was actually broken on the mental and emotional level, and that’s why we’re so passionate about sharing it.

But what we want to talk about today specifically is, we now have a lot of clients who have gotten amazing results. So, we’ve got a huge pool of people, and then there’s the next problem. And that next problem is, they’ve made the change, they’ve healed, and they’re now a whole person. They’re now themselves.

And that’s uncomfortable and hard because people in their environment, their loved ones, their friends, their coworkers, their peers no longer relate at the same capacity that they used to.

And so, Monique and I were deciding what we’re going to do this on, and both agreed that this is the hardest thing for our clients is when they finally come to the realization, the defense drops, and we’re able to go in on a subconscious level and release the problem, or transform the problem, and now they got it all together. And what are they telling you, Monique? What’s happening when they get home or when they try to maintain the healing?

Monique: Yeah, yeah. You know, we’ve seen this time and again with different clients and when they go home and they are just so excited, they’re so pumped up. They just had a realization, an aha, and they want to share it with someone, and the person next to them doesn’t know what they’re talking about or can’t relate because they weren’t there in that physical energy in that space. They didn’t receive the same transmission download, the information that maybe the other person had. We have this happen a lot at our retreats, you know?

We have these amazing retreats and they’re beautiful, and I remember the first retreat I came home, I was so excited. I just swore like, “I’m going to come inside. My husband’s going to be amazing. My house is going to be clean. Like, everything’s going to be good,” because I was on fire, man like I was pumped up. And I got home and he’s sitting in the same chair watching the same Netflix show, not caring about anything that I did, and he’s just like, “Oh, you’re home, the cats are hungry.” And I’m just like, “Oh my God, I had a life changing experience. Don’t you want to know?” No concern, and this triggered me for a long time.

So, I get where they’re coming from when we don’t relate, and we can’t have that same dialogue. Likewise, there are other situations, right where we maybe change and grow and alter, and we don’t relate to our family or our friends anymore because maybe we don’t want to go sit at the hair salon and gossip anymore and talk smack and do happy hour every day after lunch anymore and things like that.

And I know for me, that was one of the things that was really hard for me, is that when I changed, I thought, “are my friends still going to love me if I don’t want to do the things that we used to do? And will they still accept me and, and welcome me into their homes?” I’ve been fortunate enough to have the majority of them still love me, truly, deeply the way I am and the others that maybe the connection wasn’t there anymore.

I wish them well and it’s safe for me to go on and safe for them to go on. You know, we can both be in our own spaces. We don’t have to be best friends anymore. We don’t have to be together. But the fear of that is so painful, and I think that was something that kept me stuck for a long time. Because if I really evolve and become who I am, what will they think?

Will they still love me? Will they still want to come around? Will they want to play? You know, and I love people. I love connection. I want safety. I want to hang out with all the humans. And I understood that maybe that wasn’t the best space for me at the time, so it was really uncomfortable to be in that.

Kim: Yeah, in my personal experience and with my clients, it’s grief. Last week’s show I talk about the sadness, we had a vision and dreams, we had plans for a future, and then you have this separation where you’re no longer on the same frequency for whatever reason. It’s just that the forever ended.

I’ll speak for myself because my husband doesn’t feel this way. He almost feels like it’s a weakness because I need people so badly, you know, because I’m so attached, and I feel empty without having those discussions. I’m just like, eh, it’s all right. That’s all right. But like, the mountains aren’t quite as fun, or the road trips aren’t as fascinating, or it’s not as interesting, you know, without someone to share with.

And so, then we negotiate, or I know I’ve negotiated, like I negotiated my growth, of what else I wanted to do to settle for what they wanted to do, because they didn’t want to go any further, and I didn’t want the loss of relationship and they didn’t want it, and we keep each other stuck.

Monique: Yeah, I mean, it was just last year that I had all of these travel plans, or the year before that they all went south, right? Every person that I was supposed to connect with to travel from one space to the next or share a ride with, or share a room with, it’s kind of life just happened, and it moved out of my way, and I had the opportunity to either trust myself or do what was correct for me, even if it was alone, or go home and stay stagnant.

And I came out of my skin, like I was so uncomfortable that I got on flights alone. And I went to concerts alone. And I went to conferences alone and retreats alone, and business events alone. And you’re right, I just wanted someone to come with me. I just wanted to have a partner, somebody to have fun to share this work with because it’s so deep, it’s so good, and I know that I really needed it myself more than anybody else, and I wanted people to come so that they could share in what I was experiencing because it’s so amazing. But maybe that wasn’t their path yet, or maybe that wasn’t the right connection to bring there, you know, and life has shown me this through several experiences, and even in the last several weeks we’ve had, you know, some big eye-opening awarenesses about what’s really going on, and why do we need the connection?

What’s happening, in the, I don’t want to go too deep, conscious, unconscious stuff, but you know, there’s something else there. The need to be with somebody.

Kim: When you just said, it’s so amazing. We could end that. Wait, are we really in it alone? That’s a hard awakening to recognize that, but we really are, and I know even with talking with you, because two years ago today, by the way Peggy and I were at your place, and it came up on my Facebook memories, some of the stuff that we had done that we posted, and it’s like there is a fear to go too deep and intimate now, that I didn’t have before. I went all in. I trusted every relationship. And now I remember a few years ago, probably about four years ago, I was talking to a friend, and I said, “I thought we were going to have more friends as we got older because we meet more people.

Monique: Yeah.

Kim: And it was an older woman and she said, “Oh no hun, you’re going to get less,” because you tolerate less as you get older, because you have so much experience, you already know how that’s going to turn out, and so, and I noticed this with people that have worked with me.

It used to take two, three years before I’d let them go, or before they’d quit. And now it’s weeks, sometimes days before we realize, That’s obviously not going to work for both of us, you know, and being open to that. I can’t say that I’m comfortable yet. I still don’t like it, but I respect it. You know what I’m saying? Like I respect it.

We know the thing with chronic pain, they lose a whole identity. Life with pain and then there’s life without pain. It’s two different people. You’re not the same. I’m not the same who I was with my illness, disease, and diagnosis, and who I am today is not the same person.

So, what would you tell someone who has this new awareness and awakening and empowerment that they’re actually the creator of their life? They’re actually the storyteller, and their friends or their people are no longer relatable, or they’re actually at risk being in that environment because it brings that conditioning back. So, what could you offer our audience?

Monique: There’s a moment where you learn to trust yourself differently and you will create the agreements with the people that are meant to be in those spaces with you, because when you do declutter all of the conditioning and the confusion and the chaos that has created these pain points in our lives, there’s now space.

And when we evolve into that next version of ourselves and we let go of the old identity and the blocks and the pain, there’s now momentum in us naturally, because we feel different to be different.

And the mind will come in and it will try to distract you, and tell you why it’s wrong, and you should feel guilty, and you should have shame, and these are your obligations, and this is your blood, and you start score keeping. And this is where I say thank you Kim Guillory for the tools that we have in that freaking memorable container. The techniques, the modules, the lessons, the things that we have access at our fingertips.

Anybody in the entire world, 24 hours a day can access this, and there have been moments where I have been in my bed crying, falling apart at the store, not wanting to get out of the car, whatever. And I literally opened this page up and I’m like, “Oh, right there. That’s all I need.”

But if I didn’t take those steps before to get to that version, I wouldn’t have access to stuff like that. So, it’s part of the process to pull back all this stuff and have these things hurt almost to come through, to be able to get on the other side and be able to do it. So, I hate to say easy, but with ease.

I mean, it’s, it’s truly an easier route. The hours that I spent weeks, months in some situations, just like beating my brain, wanting to run away, wanting to hurt things, blow people up, like I was so distorted and in pain and was not this version that I am now, and because of all of these different steps that I’ve taken, and I let go of those things that were pulling me back, the dead weight, the things hanging on, right?
 

And I evolved. I now had an awareness that I didn’t have before, had tools in my bucket that I thought I knew, but I didn’t really know, like in my being.

There’s book knowledge. I had all that, so having that and then having these tools, when this stuff comes up to where you don’t stay in that pain or that drama is such a treat, it’s such a gift.

Kim: Yeah. It’s, when you say, “easy or easier,” what came to mind is, it’s “not necessarily that this is so easy. You feel it. It’s that the ease is in the amount of time that it takes compared to what it used to take, and it’s knowledge compared to practiced knowledge. So, there’s knowing and then there’s doing it until you become it,

And from my perspective, that’s what I see is missing. What about you? Because you’re like, it’s so easy. Everything is there. They could grab it at any time. And I do the same thing. I just like boom, go through a podcast, and pick and I am inspired by myself. I laugh at myself, I’m like, “what the hell? Who says that?” You know?

And I will laugh at especially the earlier ones, because I mean, I was really just picking up a mic and downloading, so I’m like, whoever was being channeled at that point in time, I really said that. You know, kind of thing, but I laugh at myself because I was transparent. It’s what I was experiencing in my own transformation and I’m so thankful today to be able to go back to that, and new clients will come in and they’re telling me about one of the old podcasts and I’m like, “I got to go hear that. Like I got to listen to that.” And I was like, “is it different than what I said?” They’re like, “no, you’re still you, but I could tell you were thinking when you were talking, you were trying to figure it out.” And so I hear you on the part that you have resources and accessibility and letting the individuals know that they’re actually not alone. They’re different, it’s different. The environment’s different, but they’re not. They’re far from being alone. It’s just that there’s a distance from them and what was.

I know one of your favorite podcasts is the Transition of Transformation. That’s episode 48 that you share all the time. I learned that from you, and I guess I’m thinking from the perspective of (and we can get really deep guys and so we’re going to try not to go there and we’re keeping skim in the surface) so you need to come into Self-Healing Masters if you want to know more about this work because the coach calls, the modules, Monique is doing a challenge this week, and the More Than Mindset Group, that’s another reason to get into the Facebook Group and invite people to come. It’s free. This is going to help strengthen your environment.

So many clients come in alone and they feel isolated, and because they believe they’re isolated, they continue being isolated, and in the meantime, your friends are researching somewhere else. Everyone is looking for ease and joy and peace. Share with them and bring them into the community with you.

That’s what we did. We created our own environment. I remember the day I looked up and was talking to God, and I was like, “I’m not doing anything else that ain’t fun, if I got to stay here.” And my friend was just diagnosed with cancer, and she was dying, and I was like, “she gets to die. I have to stay.” Done with this shit.

“If I got to stay, I’m not doing anything else that’s not fun. You are going to send the resources. If I’m doing your work and I’m helping the people, like I expect to be compensated for this, right?”

I mean, I just went into this demand mode, which is kind of weird. People might send me to hell for it.

And you know, I was like, and my final note, it was almost a PS. was, “and I want a conscious community to do it with. I don’t want to do this by myself. I don’t want to be alone.”

And we’ve been through a lot of ups and downs in our group. You know, people have come and gone. But it is what helps us keep that binding, changing the culture and creating a community. That’s years in process, you know because there’s the, the inability to communicate properly. We hurt each other, hurt people.

Monique: I was just going to say like, once you transition in yourself and you begin to speak differently and there’s things that you, like you said earlier, you don’t have the tolerance for anymore.

You don’t have the capacity to do certain things anymore, so you don’t want to be a part of certain situations anymore, you know, and in that space, we talk very matter of factly, we talk very transparently. We go really deep with our conversations, and we can sit and talk about the weather too, and have dinner and not be crazy, right?

So, it’s very interesting to be able to have connection with people and it be safe and fun and enjoyable. And so, I found it was hard to go out and have connections with people. When once I’ve changed the way that I do things and, what I will or won’t necessarily be a part of anymore, you know, and, it’s finding that space for myself and then having a community of other people that were welcoming to me and saying, “hey, we get it. We want to do this kind of stuff too. And you do have a place here.”

It’s kind of like the church that opens the doors and says, “come as you are, we’ll take you in. We’ll love you.” You know? So, I was welcomed into a community where nobody cared about my past. They were super transparent and honest with me.

We worked through what pain points I had personally in my life that I was struggling with, and the relationships evolved in a really deep, rich level. And so, I didn’t need thousands of people anymore to be in my pocket because I got fed at this table with these really deep conversations whenever I was able to connect with anybody.

So, we have a community that’s just open to letting you evolve in your own way and keeping it safe and having the guides and the techniques and the tools there the whole time. We can be in a community where it’s safe to do that. And so, I appreciate that we have created this, and we have all of these like-minded people on the same mission.

You know, the movements that we’re talking about, the missions that we have, it’s so fun to be there.

Kim: Yeah. So, would you say that as painful as it is for some of the loss, that you get something greater back?

Monique: Yes.

Kim: That’s more rich, that loves and accepts you unconditionally without judgment, allows you to be yourself, so that’s where the richness is.

And I’m just going to mention this because it happened with both of us, is some of those friends, (especially if you are a creator and you think big and dream) they actually watch you do a bunch of things then and not finish a bunch of things.

So, they’re just watching from experience, knowing how long she’s going to do this, how long is she going to stay there, you know, we hear this a lot and it’s like, “oh yeah, it’s her next thing. It’ll be over in a couple of years.” That kind of stuff. And so, I think it’s that sustainability to truly change and, and stay with the change and actually embody it long enough that the people who love you come back around.

You have friends from high school and childhood, and I do too, that came back around, because they saw whether it was inspiration or motivation or sustainability or a calmness, or they saw something, there was a change that was undeniable, and they got curious. And so, for those of you who are changing and you’re feeling alone and isolated, whether you’re in our community or not, and really wondering if you did the right thing, if you become more of yourself, you did the right thing.

Sometimes we’re born (I think about the birds who drop seeds, and you got this oak tree in the middle of a pine valley) in places that actually don’t align with us. I don’t align with where I live. I’m here because I love my family and my family loves it here, but I don’t love the culture.

I am not satisfied. I want freaking coffee. I want organic food and restaurants that are farm-to-table. I don’t have that, and it just so happens I need to eat several times a day. So, it’s important to me, there are some things, you know?

I don’t love that we don’t get new industry here and that our schools suck and no one’s going to come here as long as the schools suck, because they’re not going to want to build anything here and our businesses don’t survive.

So, there’s so many reasons, but the richness that I have gotten from being myself and attracting people who can accept that aspect or that version of myself. Stick it out, hold it out. Don’t just like, “I might as well just throw in the towel,” or “it’s no use.”

As a matter of fact, you can look at everything in your life and see if you’ve done it, I guarantee you’ll do it here too. So, if you give up on the diet, if you give up on what was helping the pain, but then you quit. Whatever it is, when it gets really tough, you’re going to want to quit here too.

But I promise you, there is nothing richer or grander than the individuality that is within yourself and you taking personal responsibility for bringing that on board a hundred percent. To stop hiding yourself. That’s where the pain’s coming from. That’s where the separation is coming from because you have judgment about yourself and then you’re reflecting that in your relationships.

Monique: That personal responsibility, that was a game changer for me, and this is fairly new for me to really step into that and just own every part that I had in everything, and that was a beautiful awareness to have to move through some of this hard stuff, this life stuff. Life could be hard some days, you know?

Kim: It’s hard and liberating, so the hard part is what the mind’s occupied with, but when you have the liberation, because when you take personal responsibility, it’s not just about “shit, I got to take it all on myself.” It’s about them having to take theirs on themself.

But you can’t see it because you can’t be a reflection of it. You’re a hypocrite if you’re saying and not doing it, right? And it’s just out of habit.

You had this recently, it was not easy to be called out on it. I even went to look up the word enable, and it actually has a positive spin to it.

So, yeah, I’m going to pull this up and tell you guys because I did contemplation on it. So enabling is to give someone or something the authority or means to do something. It’s like empowerment. I’m like, “what’s the problem with enabling?” That’s a good thing. Like I sat here and dissected this and I was like, “what is the problem?”

Enable to give someone or something the authority or means to do something. That is what we do. I would want you to be enabled to take care of yourself, right? Yes. Enable you to come onboard. But are you doing it at the expense and cost of them not doing it themself?

That was the part where I kept slipping that I was so married to the potential that I was seeing, and so it’s like the kids who want to play first base and they’re grumpy, because the coach didn’t let them play. And that’s how they’re trying to solve the problem by eating Doritos on the sofa instead of getting out there and practicing and getting better at it.

That’s the enablement is when you give them the authority and the means. The means is the keyword. We give the means to personally develop, to self-heal. We give the means.

You said there’s a module, there’s coaching there. I mean we do healing sessions. We do so much that gives them the means, but then when they don’t take the incentive to utilize those means and we continue, that is the problem.

And it’s the same thing with when someone is personally changing or is claiming their health and they have the means, but then the habit is the other person having the authority and the responsibility.

That was my lesson of the week I was going to do a podcast on, because I was like, “I am confused.”

Which, what do you see? Because do you think it’s a part of our southern culture?

Monique: You know, I asked the other day about people pleasing and over-giving and stuff, and people that were from the north were like, “no, this is all over. This is everywhere.” And I was like, “thank y’all for letting me know.”

I had some westerners and other people, I asked that in my group the other day for the challenge, like, you know, “are y’all people-pleasers? Is that just a southern thing? If it’s in other places let me know because I need to know, I need awareness because I only grew up in the south.” I don’t know any different, you know? It’s a pretty common thing.

Kim: They are humans?

Monique: Yes, we’re conditioned. Humans are conditioned to believe what’s told to us.

Kim: I believe it’s us trying to compensate or overcompensate for what we didn’t receive that we felt we were worthy and deserving of and didn’t get, and then we pass it over to there, so it is a human thing, but Southern Hospitality does have a big impact.

From the Christian perspective, which I’m not anti-Christian guys, but the unhealthy Christian perspective of being the martyr to earn the grace and the rights to the thing, like you must suffer to get that is bull.

Monique: Well, it’s this obligation to everything. You know, like I’m supposed to fill in the blank, like I’m supposed to. That’s what I was told to do. I should have known.

Kim: Alright, we are heading to the top of the hour, and I think hopefully you got at the takeaway from this, which we understand the wanting to give up the grief, the change, the discomfort, and it feels like you’re alone and you don’t have support, and that you’ve given up the support that you did have.

So, you’ve been negotiating in order not to be alone, and I hope we’ve inspired you through our years of endurance and sticking it out, that it’s totally worth it. There are times we thought it was not going to be worth it for sure, but I would like to think that we are now sitting in a position where we can handle anything because we’ve handled a lot of stuff, you know, using these tools.

If you do feel alone and isolated, I would love to invite you to Self-Healing Masters. You can reach out to Monique or myself. Monique has a bonus going on right now. You definitely want to reach out to her, but the challenge is going to end on Friday and that is in the More Than Mindset Facebook Group.

So, if you’re catching this after, then you can go and catch the replay. They’re all in there.

Is there anything, any final note of encouragement or inspiration that you would like to leave clients with who are self-healing, who are kind of winning, but are facing resistance in their household or in their relationships?

Monique: Yeah. I would say reach out to us, get some support, connect with us, ask questions because we definitely understand what it’s like to be there. We both experienced it and there are tools available to put you personally into the position that you need to be so, that you can personally handle and address whatever’s going on in your environmental space, your situation personally. Everybody’s going to have a different circumstance going on.

Kim: What’s one thing they can tell themselves if, when they’re facing adversity? They don’t want to lose. They’ve been listening to the podcast and getting coaching. What’s one thing they can think or ask themselves?

Monique: I always like to flip and play devil’s advocate in my brain because, you know, I’m an investigator in there and I say, “what if this doesn’t have to be a problem?” That’s one of the things that I’ve learned.

Kim: Or, “this is not a problem that they think different than me … what if this is not a problem, that they don’t believe me?”

Monique: What if this is not what if this is a problem all?

Well, thank you for coming on the show. I’m sure you’ll be back. It’s been a while though. I haven’t done any interviews in quite a while.

Alright, my friends. Have a beautiful week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than Mindset.