“Change isn’t something that happens a week away or a year away. It happens in the present moment,” Atarah said.

But what if the change you needed was not the change you wanted, perhaps a change in your consciousness in order to love yourself again?

Atarah Valentine is a Certified Hypnotherapist and Mindset Coach with specialized training in inner child healing, trauma recovery, mental and emotional release therapy, neuro-linguistic programming, PTSD, cancer, law of attraction, immune disorders, and weight loss. He has developed a very grounded, pragmatic approach to healing leaving his clients feeling empowered and regaining trust in themselves through a process of conscious and subconscious cognitive reframing.

Atarah is Heather’s guest in this episode wherein they talk about change and transformation, the difference between reactive and proactive change, the journey of becoming self-actualized, and so much more.

“People are so quick to get away from who they have been, but who they have been isn’t all bad,” Atarah pointed out. More great quotes are coming your way that’s why don’t miss out on this episode. Pop in your earbuds and dive into it!

Soul Stirring Quotes:

“People are so quick to get away from who they have been, but who they have been isn’t all bad.”

“You’ve spent your whole life in this process of becoming you. You think in a week you’re going to just completely undo that and become someone else?”

“Why is a rock bottom so effective for people when it comes to change? Because our environment is completely pulled from underneath us. So now all of a sudden we don’t have any roots and we have to look at our life and be like… What, now? So we have to create a new vision just completely based on our needs.”

“It’s kind of taking the layers off so we can get back to who we actually are and strengthen that instead of being who we were told we have to be.”

“What if we could get back in touch with the two-year-old who doesn’t care if she falls 50 times off the coffee table?”

“Who do you wanna be for yourself today?”

“I know what I wanna run away from, but I don’t know what I wanna run to.”

”How do we expect to be something if we don’t even have an understanding of it?”

“Change isn’t something that happens a week away or a year away. It happens in the present moment.”

“What if you were able to find yourself every day in a different way?”

eather Alice: Welcome back to another episode of intuitive. I am so excited to dive into this. What I know is going to be a very delicious episode with our guest Atarah Valentine. Atarah is a certified hypnotherapist, through the American board of hypnosis. He has got you guys. If I were to read you. The slew of qualifications that this gentleman has, I, we would be here all day.

So, but his specialty is really in helping you, work with the power of your mind to step into the fullness of, of who you really are. He, has his areas of exce. Expertise involve trauma, recovery, inner child healing, PTSD, mental, and emotional release therapy, body image, neurolinguistic programming, EFT, law of attraction, establishing peace in the middle east inter planetary relations.

You name it. This guy can do it. So, welcome to the show.

Atarah Valentine: Hi, I’m so, so excited to be here and to dive in, especially since we already started before we even started recording, we’re like, we have to jump on now. 

Heather Alice: Yeah. So, so this is the first time I have had a chance to connect, but have you ever met a person where the, literally the second you meet them?

You’re like 50,000 links under the seat already I feel like that was the, the minute that we connected, that’s what we were doing. I said to him, we’ve just gotta hit record because we’re already in, we’re already into this session. So, so let’s just kind of jump right into what we were chatting about before we went live.

And I’m gonna start with a quote that you just said to me, which really blew me away so much so that I had to write it down. And you said people are so quick, to get away from who they have been, but who they have been, isn’t all bad, right? So, talk to us a little bit about your work, in helping people transform. I know you work a lot with like proactive versus reactive change and disrupting patterns. So, talk to us a little bit about what, what sparked that, you know, statement and what you’re seeing in the world of wellness with so many people trying to really, and their, their best foot forward, honestly, doing this inner work and yet.

Still something is missing still something isn’t quite shifting. Can you speak to, what you see going on there? 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. And, and thank you for such a beautiful intro. And it’s so nice to sit across from someone who actually like also does research and understands what I do. 

Heather Alice: Yes.

Atarah Valentine: And that was said so beautifully and, yeah. You know, it’s really interesting because. We’ve all been this person when we’re on our journey, we’re so hungry to change, but we don’t necessarily really understand what that means. And, I really like to frame this as proactive versus reactive change, as you said, right? Cuz most of us come from this perspective of, I don’t wanna be alone, so I need a relationship. I don’t want to be broke, so I need to get money. right? I don’t wanna be this. So I need to do that. I don’t, like how I feel in my body. So I need to lose weight. right? And it’s not a great motivation, because what tends to happen is we’re so quick to abandon everything that we’ve learned and everything we’ve been up to that point, we think we need to do this 180 degree change and we, and we will pick the most extreme option that we think will have the fastest results, right? And will we see a piece of right. Something new, some kind of new potential. Maybe, right? With weight loss is a great example for this, right? When people are like, I feel like this, so I need to do this. So they do a two week juice fast. But, did you lose weight? Yeah, you did. 

Heather Alice: Sure.

Atarah Valentine: But did your relationship to food change? No.

Heather Alice: No. 

Atarah Valentine: Did your consciousness around food change? No. Do you have an understanding of how you food, use food emotionally? No. You don’t, so your consciousness is still back at start, even though you physically pushed yourself forward. So all you can do is slowly make your way back to who you actually are, right? And that is what reactive change is, and that’s why it fails. So even what we were kind of talking about before this, right? The, hallucinogenics are a huge thing, now in the wellness industry, to the point, I, I even have people who have been sober for 20 years, who are like, do I need to do ketamine journey, do I need to do this? And it’s like, no, for what purpose? Like, what is your rush? You’ve spent your whole, life in this process of becoming you, you think in a week, you’re going to just completely undo that and become someone else. Right? You’re still gonna be in the same circumstances. You’re still gonna be in the same environment, no matter how quickly you think you’re getting away from yourself.

Everything around you is remaining the same. Right? And so we really want to grow and understand what is happening as we’re growing, versus trying to escape what our life feels like. Because again, it is not all bad, even the things that seem bad. May not be, if those are our coping mechanisms, they’re coming up for a reason, our numbing behaviors are trying to protect us from something that we have a greater fear of.

So, we want to really raise awareness around these things as to why they’re happening so we can disrupt them, understand what’s emotionally happening underneath, and really take our time to learn how to do something in a different way and begin to reinforce that. 

Heather Alice: Oh, my gosh. That’s so there’s so much there. We could spend two hours unpacking that, as you were speaking, I kept getting an image in my head of a person putting their hand on a stove. The instinctual reaction is to pull it away. I am being burned.

Atarah Valentine: Mm-hmm 

Heather Alice: And I need to get away as quickly as possible. And as far away from possible as possible from this, this thing that’s burning me.

Atarah Valentine: Right.

Heather Alice: So, so, so that just kept like, I’m like, yes, I so resonate because I can see what you’re saying. And I can, in this moment right now, look at my own life in the last 30 days. And look at where I’ve done that. It’s, it’s almost like it’s an instinctual part of us as an organism. Right? So.

Atarah Valentine: Totally.

Heather Alice: So how do we it’s like that old statement, between stimulus and response, there’s a gap and you better get your ass in it, if you wanna figure out how to live a conscious life. But, so, so how do we in that moment? Not throw the baby out with the bath water. Say to ourselves, wait a minute, wait a minute. I know this is uncomfortable, but, I maybe I don’t need to pull it away as quicklier like, everything in our system is saying, this is gonna burn you to death. But in reality, it is not. That’s our trauma response. That’s our, being uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. So, 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah.

Heather Alice: Talk, talk to us about how you can, how we can catch ourselves doing that. Like what’s the next step? So now we’re aware, what do we do from there? And I’m asking for me, not for a friend, not for the listeners, but for me.

Atarah Valentine: So, this is interesting. So, the model that I created and, and what I work with, clients through is all about, self-actualization really, reconnecting to who we actually are, it’s always been there, right? But we, are not being who we are, we are being how we were taught to be. Right? So, in this process, we wanna really learn what works in that, and what doesn’t, what’s authentic, what is inauthentic.

So, I work through this model that I designed goes through three phases, and this is how I, I kind of carry my clients through and I use an acronym “I am” cuz I’m like what, a better acronym for trying to self actualize, right?

Heather Alice: Yeah. Way. Yes, the best.

Atarah Valentine: Right. So, and what that breaks down to is identification, awareness and movement. The problem with changes, people go right to movement, but they don’t necessarily know what the issue is, right? They haven’t identified the problem. They haven’t raised awareness of why this is happening, how they’re showing up, how they want to show up what they actually need, right? And in that awareness piece, that’s also where hypnosis and things like this, or even reflective journaling can be really helpful so that we can really get to the root of what we’re trying to do so that we can start creating that internal belief in our subconscious, right? Almost an internal tension of wait, why am I still in this space?

And then that’s a great time to move because we have the motivation to, to do that. We have the foundation underneath it, right? So, it’s really important to give yourself time patience and grace and understanding why this is a problem, how you keep doing the problem, how the problem showing up how you are involved in it. And we don’t spend enough time there because we get very stuck in our environment for good reason. Our environment is what is exclusively responsible for how we developed as a human being, right? That is where we learned as a child, where while we may have innate qualities that we’re born with. What we actually hold onto, depends on how we are received.

What’s positively reinforced, and what’s negatively reinforced. So we start abandoning pieces of ourselves at a very young age, if they’re not given the proper support and attention, right? So, a lot of times, especially with things like people, pleasing codependency, which is a lot of people that I work with. They’re so quick to try and adjust the environment or adapt to an environment to try and connect, and they have no real sense of self. Because they learned that their environment is what defines them and they’ve never grown past it, so it affects how they behave, it affects what they think is possible, what they think they can do, it affects what they value, it affects what they believe, it affects their sense of identity, right? And so, that sense of identity then directly affects what we think is possible for ourselves. Does that make sense? So there’s a lot of limitations. So, the reason I called my company the seed level is because that’s essentially how we become who we are.

And I thought, okay, what if we flipped this pyramid upside down? And what if for the first time of our life, we first time in our life, we focused on. Who we want to be, how we want to feel, how we wanna feel in our body, how we want to show up and what if it had nothing to do with anybody else? What if it had nothing to do with the stuff we had the job, and this came off the back of working as a, a neural manifestation coach, right?

For one of the leading manifestation companies. And, but I still found when I was working with clients, my particular clients, because they were so rooted in codependency can become codependent with the manifestation process, right?

Heather Alice: Oh sure. 

Atarah Valentine: And codependent with the things and, oh, I don’t have this. So this means I’m this and right. Were kind of missing the point. And it was interesting cuz these people were coming to me more so for self-worth, kind of, without them knowing than manifestation and. So, that’s what made me really understand. How to kind of bridge this gap, because this is naturally what we do when we rock bottom.

Heather Alice: Yeah.

Atarah Valentine: Right? 

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm. 

Atarah Valentine: Why is a rock bottom so effective for people when it comes to change? Because our environment is completely pulled from underneath us. So now all of a sudden we don’t have any roots and we have to look at our life and be like,shit.

Heather Alice: Right.

Atarah Valentine: What, now? So we have to create a new vision just completely based on our needs.

Heather Alice: What I think is so cool about what you’re saying, and I want you to speak to this. And again, this is like, I feel like I’m in church. Like I literally almost went amen! Somebody! Can I get a witness? It’s like, I almost did it. I, I swear to God. I had to hold back. So. Here’s what’s cool about what you’re saying. Like what if so it’s, it’s kind of like, what if, what if we started to understand, that the seed level that you’re talking about this let’s go back to the very beginning, turn the pyramid upside down. It reminds me of being around a toddler. So I have a daughter she’s 18 now, but oh my goodness. When that child was little I’m, I was so struck.

And I have three little brothers, you know, we’ve all been around kids. We’ve got nieces and nephew. 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah.

Heather Alice: You know, but when I had, when I could, I was like living with a little human and it was my job to sort of shape and mold and spend every day with her. I was shocked at the tenacity that these little guys have.

Atarah Valentine: Yeah.

Heather Alice: She just. It was mommy let me do it for maybe, you know, for two, those ages of two to three,

Atarah Valentine: mm-hmm 

Heather Alice: it’s let me do it, let me do it. They have so much, self-confidence young children.

Atarah Valentine: Mm-hmm,

Heather Alice: so much innate drive, so much belief in themselves. And so when you were saying that the seed level, I think you’re onto something here and it, it sparked in me this idea of, what if we already deeply know how to do this?

Atarah Valentine: Mm-hmm. 

Heather Alice: We just forgot. What if we could get back in touch with the, the two year old who doesn’t care if she falls 50 times off the coffee table?

Atarah Valentine: Yeah.

Heather Alice: She’s just, you know, going for it. So, I think that’s a really interesting way to relate to the change process.

It’s not so much that you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s that you’re not in touch with the part of you that has the internal resources that would allow you to be successful in the first place.

Atarah Valentine: Totally. Right. Or, or even, you were told you’re not allowed to be that you were shamed for being that, right? So if you’re shamed for being that, you’re never gonna learn how to make it stronger, right? When people say, oh, I’m so bad with money, and you know, my whole family is, it’s just who we are. And it’s like, well, Did you ever learn how to not be bad with money? Did you ever educate yourself? Did you ever like research? Did you ever, did you ever talk to a financial advisor? Did you ever read a book? Right? Cuz, people who are good with money being good with money is not a natural talent that people just have. It is a learned skill, right? 

Heather Alice: Absolutely. 

Atarah Valentine: And actually coming back to yourself, Is also a learned skill because even the world reinforces, oh, be a good student, so your teacher likes you be a good wife, so your husband’s this be a good this, and it’s like, come on everything’s for everybody else. That’s what we’re taught.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm 

Atarah Valentine: Right? 

Heather Alice: Absolutely.

Atarah Valentine: Very rarely like who do you wanna be for yourself today? Oh, well, you better be nicer, you’re not gonna have friends. You better be this, or, right?

Even though the person, the, the child might actually have very strong boundaries and be like, no, I don’t want to do that. Right? So, does that make sense? So it’s really, it’s kind of taking the layers off so we can get back to who we actually are and strengthen that instead of being who we were told, we have to be.

Heather Alice: Yeah, I love what you’re saying. It’s so wild. As for some reason, I’m like thinking about my mothering as we’re talking, but I have specific memories as a parent of quite literally putting my hand over my own mouth to stop myself from doing what you just said, cuz my kid has boundaries. She, she will tell you if she’s upset and she won’t back down.

She is the most formidable human being I’ve ever met. And, but I, noticed within myself this, well, you know, you need to, you need to modify who you are, change you are. And I had to consciously stop myself from doing, and I’m sure I had many instances when I went there and, you know, repeated the pattern 

Atarah Valentine: mm-hmm 

Heather Alice: But I love how you’re you’re drawing. So that’s it’s I can even witness what you’re saying. Like it, it is almost me jerk again, hand, hand off the stove, right?

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. 

Heather Alice: Running away. So it, it really is a learned skill. And I, I love how you touched on that, that, because that is a very compassionate way to look at what we’re doing, isn’t it?

Because it isn’t our fault. We just don’t know. 

We just don’t know. 

Atarah Valentine: Right.

Heather Alice: Yeah. 

Atarah Valentine: And I think, you know, that’s the thing and people are doing their best, but what do we tend to do with our children? Right? We, we project our own insecurities onto them to protect them from, experiencing them. Right?

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm .

Atarah Valentine: So my friend was telling me a story the other day that she was buying a new pair of glasses. And there was this, this dad with his daughter and he’s like, Jenny, you can pick any pair of glasses that you want in the store, everybody like whatever she wants, she can take. And so she started picking frames and he is like, are you sure you want those ones? Oh, then she’s like, oh, I like these. She’s like, yeah, but those are this.

And, oh, I like these. So every time she made a choice, Even though she could have anything she wanted. And this seems like a very small thing, right? But I guarantee you, this is not an isolated event. This is their relationship. So this person is going to learn one, that they can’t trust their own choices, but two probably that, they don’t know what they want as a female, and they need to be subordinate to a man to please them. Right?

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm. 

Atarah Valentine: Because the man knows more and, and this might seem like an extreme thing to go to, but it is what happens if that is our relationship with our father, our whole life, where they say we have all this freedom, but they still know best.

Right? And so there it’s all of these small moments that really make us, how we are,

Heather Alice: How we are, 

Atarah Valentine: Who we are. right? And I, and I always like to stress that to people because people are like, oh, I’m this. And I’m I procrastinate and I’m blah, blah, blah. And this, and I’m like, I’m like, right, but that’s behavior. And that behavior, is coming from some kind of belief that you were told that is making you hesitate or making you question yourself.

But that is not you. The, you is the person who actually wants to do the thing, right? The, you is the person that does have the idea like, oh, I should be able to have this. Or of course I deserve to be treated like this, my relationship. 

Heather Alice: Right.

Atarah Valentine: Or this is not acceptable. Right? But that voice that comes in that negative self talk, all of the things that effectively work. Right?

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm

Atarah Valentine: I like to really teach my clients that isn’t you. And if you really start slowing down in your day and listening to it, what you’ll find is a lot of times it’s not even your voice, it’s somebody else’s, right?

Heather Alice: Yeah. It’s that internalized the internalized voice, right? Yeah. 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. And so if we can start looking at that voice. Like the spokesperson for subconscious, right? Which isn’t trying to sabotage us. It’s just trying to go like Heather, this doesn’t feel safe. So I’m just gonna say this to you so that you stay here. So I know how to take care of you because that’s the job of the subconscious to keep us safe and to expend as little energy as possible doing so, right?

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm . 

Atarah Valentine: So if we can start understanding that, then we can also understand, we don’t have to listen to it. If we can stay conscious and stay clear and open, then we become the teacher. We get to teach our subconscious that no, no, no. This is safe, I can do better than this, I do know how to take care of myself.

Heather Alice: I love that. And I, I say often that, Carl Young, he’s my favorite clinician. He said, people don’t find God because they don’t look low enough. And that we aren’t, that it, it really is the conversation with that part of ourselves.

Atarah Valentine: Mm-hmm . 

Heather Alice: That we need to have. And they, that, that, that part has the answer. And we need to listen to that part of ourselves, but we, but we need to stop allowing it to set the agenda and make the decision. So it’s the reparenting of self. Right? It’s 

Atarah Valentine: Hundred percent

Heather Alice: parenting. So how can we begin to, to really decipher the difference between, so here I am, I know that this is the step I’m I’m in identification. I’m moving to the a I’m in awareness. How can we begin to tease apart? What is how I am being?

Atarah Valentine: Mm-hmm. 

Heather Alice: Versus who I am, and who I want to become. What, what is, what is some ways a person could, like, I don’t know, qual maybe qualitatively tell the difference between the two states that they are confused about.

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. So first and foremost, understand what it is that you want. And that seems really simple, but it isn’t. And I’m gonna give you an example of how we fuck this up. Mind my language, because 

Heather Alice: yeah,

Atarah Valentine: That’s literaly.

Heather Alice: You can totally, you can totally say, fuck, that’s fine.

Atarah Valentine: I’m originally from New Jersey so that this is what we get here, but , but. So it’s interesting because so many people I know are in some kind of practice, they’re doing a mind, mindfulness meditation transcendental, meditation. They’re doing manifestation work. They’re doing inner child work. They’re doing shadow work. They’re doing all of these things. And they’re really intentional for about 20 minutes a day, right?

30 minutes. But they still have 23 and a half hours to screw everything up. Right? Because, it’s easy to do it though, because we’re so good at doing things the way that we know how to do them, because they’re reinforced, it’s so readily available. It’s easy to fall back into your programming. It’s easy to fall into your automation.

Right? So, we don’t understand again, with that kind of reactive change versus proactive change. I don’t wanna be this. So, but then when I ask people what they do want a lot of times in sessions, they can’t even tell me. 

Heather Alice: I agree. It’s all what I, I know what I wanna run away from, but I don’t know what I wanna run to.

Atarah Valentine: Exactly. And they can’t even describe it or understand why. Right? So great. And, and I’ll, I’ll kind of give an exercise here for this, but what’s important. Is to get very clear because people will come to me, let’s say for hypnosis and say, I have no confidence and I really wanna be able to show up more confidently at work and I’ll say, great. What does confidence mean to you? And they go, 

Heather Alice: yep. , 

Atarah Valentine: I don’t know. Like, I, I, I, I don’t wanna shrink and I don’t wanna feel like what I have to say is important and I don’t this and I don’t that. And I’m like, I didn’t ask you what you don’t want. I asked you what confidence means to you.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm 

Atarah Valentine: How do we expect to be something if we don’t even have an understanding of it. Right? 

Heather Alice: But I think, I think facing that, that we don’t know scares the shit out of people.

Atarah Valentine: Mm-hmm. 

Heather Alice: It’s scary as shit to realize you don’t know what you want.

Atarah Valentine: Yeah.

Heather Alice: It’s scary as shit to realize that you actually have no real notion. Like I’m, I’ve been in this in my life. I’ve, I’ve dealt, you know, we all go through this by the way, and I’m, I’m on a vulnerability kick in case you can’t tell . So, you know, I’m, I’m just like on a steady diet of telling people the shit I’ve been struggling with. But you know, I, it, it is hard like in running my company, I’m like, I’ve, I’ve hit every goal I’ve ever could ever even conceive of. And more, I have no clue, zero none.

Nada zero clue who I am beyond this point in my life, because I had no. Idea that I could ever even get this far to begin with. I I’ve, I’ve. 

Atarah Valentine: Totally.

Heather Alice: I’ve already out. I’ve totally knocked it out of the park. Right? And I can’t find the damn ball, so, you know, and I’m through it now. I got the help I needed and we went there, but I’m intimately, like just recently, I would say within the last month went through that of like, who the hell am I?

Atarah Valentine: Mm-hmm . 

Heather Alice: I have no clue who I am if I am to continue on this trajectory of growth. Right? So, but I bring that up to say. That was like Atarah that scared, that scared me to death. Not that I, not, not knowing it was, it was scary for, it was scarier for me to acknowledge that I didn’t know than it was for me to not know, myself, like ,

Atarah Valentine: Totally.

Heather Alice: I was okay with not knowing what, what was scaring me was having to admit that I didn’t know it does that make sense? 

Atarah Valentine: 100% right. And, and the thing is, and again, because this is literally how we’re wired. We have fight flight, right? The, the pain pleasure principle, we seek pleasure and we avoid pain pain to your subconscious is the unknown. Right?

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm .

Atarah Valentine: So even if happiness is unknown to you, your subconscious will associate that with pain. If you’ve never really experienced happiness, that’s why everything’s not just so easy to be right? If we haven’t been able to be that, or if, when we were happy, it was taken away from us or there’s trauma attached to it, guess what we can access. Right? So we spend so much more time in the reaction. In life, right? Because that’s what most people do. They, oh, this happened to me at work and I hate this person and this and this. And they’re talking about all of these experiences after the fact. Right? Because they didn’t proactively know how to show up within them.

So we spend so much more time not knowing and focusing on not knowing and avoiding what we don’t know, then really trying to get into it , but ,

Heather Alice: mm-hmm,

Atarah Valentine: What I say to people regardless of your political affiliation. Cuz it’s just a great example. When I ask them about confidence and they can’t answer me, I’ll say look, Donald Trump is confident.

Heather Alice: Right.

Atarah Valentine: Oprah. Winfrey’s confident, 

Heather Alice: confident. Mm-hmm . 

Atarah Valentine: Same word, completely different, manifestations of it. Right? And then they start to understand, right? So, look to other people who have the things that you don’t, how do they show up? What is their physiology? How do they navigate through problems? How do they speak?

What kind of things do they talk about? Because that’s a really great roadmap. That’s just modeling an NLP. Right? So that’s one thing. But another thing, if you’re really stuck and really confused and you don’t know. Who you are, or you don’t know who you want to be, make a list of everything you don’t want, because what you do want is just the opposite of that. Right?

Heather Alice: Right.

Atarah Valentine: And then, so cuz people say to me, well, I don’t wanna shrink. And I’m like, great. Well, if you don’t wanna shrink, what do you want? And they’ll be like, 

Heather Alice: What does, what does not shrinking look like? What does not shrinking? That’s really neat. I love that. Okay. So what does not shrinking look like to you? Describe that. 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. Cuz the subconscious doesn’t understand don’t or not, or it understands the reward. The feeling. So that’s what we have to start introducing. Right? You have to be the teacher. If you’re not happy with what your programming is, it is your job to teach yourself something different and to really reinforce it and take the time. Because no one is going to do it for you, right? Not ketamine, not mushrooms, not anything.

Heather Alice: Not your guru, not your, not even your coach. Yeah.

Atarah Valentine: No. Right. And, and this idea in the wellness industry, that someone has the answers and you don’t like, that’s what I’m in this industry to do to completely disrupt that because you do have the answers and whoever you’re working with, should make you feel that way. I don’t want my clients to have to come to me all the time. And they’re like, oh, I wanna see you once a week. That’s not what we’re here for. I’m not your therapist. Right? I’ll see you. If you’re going through something biweekly, if we’re doing really internal work, but I want you to take these tools and integrate them, cuz I don’t want you to need me. I want to teach you how to need yourself and to trust yourself. Right? And it’s so important and that’s the process of, all of this, getting to know yourself, getting to understand, because as we’re raising awareness, you’ve become aware of that voice and what to do with it. You become aware of what your blocks are.

You become aware of what you don’t know. And you become aware of how to change it. 

Heather Alice: mm-hmm. 

Atarah Valentine: Right? And that’s really what we’re trying to do here.

Heather Alice: It’s skill. I think it, you, you know what you’re saying essentially, is we need to make the, we need to make standard. Whether it’s we are the individual going through the change, or we are a facilitator, a coach, a guide, a healer, or a mentor who is invoking that change working on behalf of, you know, form with a person to invoke that change. We need to make standard the notion. That the ground we are playing on here is that the person is learning how to fish. 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah.

Heather Alice: We’re not here to hand him a fish. We’re not here. You know, we’re here. 

Atarah Valentine: We’re not here to be the God of fish.

Heather Alice: Yeah.

Atarah Valentine: Over the lake and making them all rise to the surface and making them feel they could never do that either. Right? 

Heather Alice: Yeah. It’s yeah.

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. 

Heather Alice: It’s like, it’s kind of like realizing that, that you’re not the Luke Skywalker. You’re OB you’re OB one in the background. Like it’s not your heroes journey, man. And you don’t, you don’t have the answers. And I tell you, I learned that the hard way when I was in graduate school, getting my master’s in, mental health counseling. I was dealing with people who truly were mental, like schizophrenia, cutting, like deep, you know, stuff like that. Like you could, everything you do could and could potentially harm a person who is very mentally unstable. And one of the things that I was working on a skill I was working on, is called attentive silence. So, I’m a talker, I’m an extrovert by nature, I’m an external processor. So, it was really hard for me to shut the fuck up. And my, my, my professors were like, you just need to shut up. Okay? We’re gonna do sessions with you shutting up. So, I did. I learned how to shut up, and just listen and let there be that awkward silence and just let the person sit in their shit.

Atarah Valentine: Mm-hmm. 

Heather Alice: One, I recognized I had a massive rescuer complex and two, and it wasn’t even that I was rescuing that person. It was, oh my God, can you please be comfortable? Because I’m uncomfortable that you’re uncomfortable because I still haven’t got over my.

Atarah Valentine: Totally.

Heather Alice: Empathic shit. So, I re I realized, oh, Heather, you still do have a smidge of this left in you. But the second thing I noticed, was often this where I thought the person was gonna go in terms of their awareness. Right?

Atarah Valentine: Mm-hmm.

Heather Alice: Was so not what I was thinking. And I’m glad that I learned to be silent, to not like interject what my inter and lots of times I would be right. I’m highly intuitive, you know, so I can sit in a room and basically nail it. But, but those times that I was wrong, I was wrong. 

Atarah Valentine: Totally.

Heather Alice: And it, and it was good for me to learn, to trust even deeper that person’s internal wisdom. So, you know, but like you said, these are skills. These are skills that we have to learn. 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. And I think just on that point, it’s interesting. Because what, even if you’re right, whatever answer you give, the person will never has have as much impact as the answer they find themselves. Right? And I think as a practitioner, as someone who’s, who works with a lot of people and very early in my coaching, I would want to like show them I was good and show them I could help them. Right? And, I realized like, no, like that takes away from people. This is not about me at all. Right?

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm .

Atarah Valentine: And, and then that’s what people really need to understand when they do work with people. And I spend so much more time asking questions that they don’t ask themselves and even asking a question in response to their answers so they can really understand. Why they value this. Okay, cool. And for what purpose and what does that do? And then how does that make you feel? And then what do you do with that? Right? And we just keep going and going and going. And they’re like, I have never thought about this, but they will know that for the rest of their life. Right? 

Heather Alice: It’s it’s the movie inception with Lee in Leonardo DiCaprio. He said it has to be their idea. You know, it’s it, it can, it, it, I love that you’re highlighting that because it really is the skill of as a healer to help the person excavate their own inner world, such that they do make that discovery, I think. And I’m just going to stand on my soapbox here for a minute. The problem that I see with this, and, and maybe you can speak to this as. A lot of people I think they don’t a lot of aspiring. Well-intentioned beautiful, wonderful, lovely, please God, go out there and get out, get out there and do the work. Right? I’ve never discourage a person from stepping up and claiming, you know, that role, but these are skills, man. You, you don’t just like roll out of bed, knowing how to be an effective says, a, coach you don’t.

Atarah Valentine: Yes. 

Heather Alice: These are skills that you have to master. And man, we teach 33. We teach at the master level. Everything is research supported when I went and I was preparing for this interview, I was like, slow clapping your, your bio, because I’m like this guy has, you have done your, you are highly qualified. To speak. And I can tell that you’ve done the hours, man. You you’ve really done it. And I have so much respect for that. And look, I think a lot of us as healers are naturally talented. I was born. Honestly, I swear, like baseline skill better at this than a lot of the people that I went to graduate school with who had double PhDs. Like I was just past lives in it, you know, like I just was born with a baseline level. However, that does not mean that I don’t know everything. And that doesn’t mean that I can Intuit my way into understanding the science behind something. Instead of the art, my talent is the art. But my skill is thes the silent, the science piece of it. And I think what we’re missing in terms of being healers in the, in the wellness community is that people don’t understand that this is actually a science that you need to learn coaching, especially hypnosis.

Holy cow. I’m so glad that’s regulated. These are skills that you have to learn how to do. Like you’re not just supposed to know how to do it, like you were saying. So. 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah.

Heather Alice: You’ve gotta learn how to do it with yourself. and it’s always a practice, but it goes double. If you’re gonna be a person who raises their hand and says, yes, I am going to be a professional agent of transformation for myself and partnering with other people.

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. 

Heather Alice: So, yeah. So what, what do you think is going on there in terms of. Individuals who, who maybe want to coach or want to step up and, and start helping others, what would you say, is the first thing that they need to do or how to approach that idea? 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. So just a quick note, hypnosis isn’t, completely overlooked and doesn’t have a lot of regulations around it, so people can do a 48 hour hypnosis program and call themselves. Hypnotist or a hypnotherapist. Right? So when you’re working with a hypnotherapist, you wanna have work with someone who’s a certified hypnotherapist like myself, right? Because that means you went through an extensive training program.

Heather Alice: Right.

Atarah Valentine: You did your 300 plus client hours. You’re registered with the union. You’re right? Because, this isn’t, this isn’t something to take lightly, having someone go into your subconscious with you. Right? 

Heather Alice: Thank you.

Atarah Valentine: And yeah, so, but on that front, like kind of what I wanna say, in response to what you said, because one that’s all true. And two, I think some people naturally have a poll cuz we’re on our own journey. Right? So there is definitely a takes one to no one mentality when you’re working with clients, right? We tend to attract the clients who are very similar to us with very similar stories. At least that’s been the case for me.

Heather Alice: Sure. 

Atarah Valentine: I work with a lot of people who’ve dealt with feeling disempowered, they’ve dealt with bad body image, which I dealt with right, had major eating disorders, my whole life, major issues with depression, my whole life major codependency issues my whole life major self-worth issues, my whole life. Right? So that tends to be my, people that come in. Right? Because they see my story. They see me showing up and people don’t believe when I say I used to not be able to talk to people. I would whisper to my manager when I was in the music industry to speak for me because I was so insecure. Right? So, part of while you may have a natural inclination, you may have a natural understanding because let’s face it your life is ,kind of the best school that you can ever get if you’re paying attention, right? Because you get real tried and true tested results through your behaviors and your actions. However, what, why training is important is because through understanding. The processes, the scientific processes through having formulas and understanding how other people have worked and doing the work on yourself, you’re able to do it with the right reasons. That’s how you separate yourself from you being the person who’s doing things to people, right? Versus just being a practitioner because your ego is no longer involved.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Atarah Valentine: You’re not doing it as a form of self validation. You’re doing it because you understand it. Does that make sense? Right?

Heather Alice: Sure, yeah. 

Atarah Valentine: So, it’s so important because that’s really what, what helps widen that gap between us taking responsibility for people’s success is when you understand. Yes, I do have these qualities, but I’ve done enough work on myself to also understand that, you’re doing your own process. I’m just guiding you. And it actually has nothing to do with my, even my natural gift. Right?

Heather Alice: Sure. 

Atarah Valentine: Because your natural gift is being funneled through. You’re noticing things in them so that they can notice them themselves or asking the questions, but you’re not changing people, I don’t heal people with people hear heal themselves. Right?

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm. 

Atarah Valentine: I, I, I teach people to connect with themselves. It has nothing to do with me. Does that make sense? 

Heather Alice: Absolutely. And I, I love that, you’re saying the exact same thing I say like we’re like reading each other’s minds because I always say, look, you’re gonna attract people of like the energy and that vibration is there. You’re probably going to attract people who have had similar lived experience. However, as professionals, what we don’t wanna do is rely on our lived experience as the mean, the means by which we guide another person because that they are not us.

Atarah Valentine: Okay.

Heather Alice: It’s not about us. So we rely on our skills, we rely on our training, we rely on, you know, like you’re saying our intentions, we’re relying on that we remove ourselves. I have a friend who’s a brilliant audit artist. And she always, which I believe like being a Healerist, I swear it’s like a, kind of an art form. But she says I wanna be the hollow bone. Every time I pick up a paintbrush, I am the hollow bone, you know?

Atarah Valentine: Okay.

Heather Alice: I’m going to be the hollow bone. And I love that expression, the hollow bone. And I think that we are hollow bones when we are create it’s really just about creating space. I, I think that 

Atarah Valentine: 100%. 

Heather Alice: If somebody were to say to me like, Heather, what is healing about like as a facilitator? I, I think I would say it is, it is about how, how, lovely and safe and inviting, and beautiful and pure and, and good and filled with all of the, you know, necessary and sufficient conditions. We need to thrive as little beings, right? It’s like the extent to which you can partner with a person and do that, you know? It’s. Yeah. And then however you get there. You know, you get there in terms of skill, so, okay. I want, I want to, I wanna have you tell me what, give me one of your biggest success stories in working with your clients. I love hearing, transformation stories. So can you think of like one of your most, I don’t know, like, you know, you just have sessions and clients that, that leave you kind of stunned and shocked and in awe of this process share, share one of your biggest, wins with us.

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. So obviously I can’t go into details because it’s ,

Heather Alice: sure,

Atarah Valentine: confidential, but, I I’ll just give a general because there seems to be a general theme that comes through. And it’s interesting because when I work with clients, they come in and they’re very environmentally based. This means this, this means this, I need a partner for this, my job means this. This is happening here, and they don’t know how to unplug from it. And literally in the first session, I’ll teach them. What they’re unconsciously doing? That’s really what my, my gift is and how I work with people.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm, 

Atarah Valentine: I’m really good at streamlining information and taking people’s unconscious processes and bringing them into the forefront so they can understand how they do the problem. Right? And people look at me like I have three heads sometimes in my first session, because I’ll say, he’ll be like, oh, well, this and my mom did this. It made me feel I’m like, pause. We will get there cuz I deal with construction and content completely different, like at completely different times because I believe feelings are actually incredibly simple. We tend to complicate them with our intellect because we give them meaning right.? Versus allowing them to process and do what we need to do with them. So, I really like to focus on how people do the problem. So, in one session I can show them. How they do anxiety and teach them how to not do it. And they will come back.

And this is tried and true. Literally every first session I do with somebody and I’ll see them two weeks later and they’re like, I’m sleeping better, my energy levels are better, I know what to do with my thoughts when they come up, because I really teach people how they see the problem. When you have anxiety, what are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are you feeling? And I teach them what, how to basically rearrange or adjust those submodalities of how the issue is being presented, not the emotional content and just changing that alone, distinctly changes your response to it. Right?

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm . 

Atarah Valentine: And that’s, what’s so fascinating with neurolinguistic programming, right? So I always start there because it’s more conscious, and grounded. So people come back and they’re like, oh my God, I’ve been doing this, and, and I don’t feel like this anymore, and I’ve noticed is, this person’s voice and I don’t listen to it anymore. And that’s in two weeks of them doing it on their own after me teaching them. Right? And these are people with major trauma, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, who don’t trust themselves who don’t trust people, right? Who are so tapped into the environment to just see what could possibly go wrong so they could learn how to protect themselves from it. Right? Cause that’s what happens when we have trauma or PTSD, it’s an unconscious process. We’re, we’re constantly projecting our fears around us so that we know what to avoid. So, that’s generally the biggest change that I see with people. And then what’s interesting is as we do start getting into the emotion, again, we know what our trauma is. I’m not interested in sitting and talking about it. Right?

Heather Alice: Right. 

Atarah Valentine: We’ve spent our whole life talking about it, we know how it affects us, we know how it’s holding us back, we know what we want to be doing, but I, in mental and emotional release therapy, I’ll put people in a very light state of hypnosis. And we’ll go back to the moment. Just through following the feeling alone .

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm , mm-hmm .

Atarah Valentine: That we unconsciously made the decision that this limiting belief is true. And I’ve had so many situations with people. I was working with someone who’s self deprecated all the time, and I noticed in session and this isn’t what she came to me for, but I said, how come? Every time I ask you something, or you get a compliment, or you even compliment yourself, you then have to say something to take it away. And we did Mer therapy on it. And we went back to a few moments for her to get the learnings for her, to see knowing everything she knows now and watching it to clear it out. And literally, eight minutes later, I pulled her out of it and I was like, How do you feel about yourself now? If someone gives you a compliment, what’s your response? And she goes, and she was crying the whole time like, really released on, and she goes, I’m fucking awesome. 

Heather Alice: Loved that.

Atarah Valentine: That’s, right. That’s eight minutes. 

Heather Alice: Yeah.

Atarah Valentine: Because we learned in an instance. We weren’t allowed to be something, right? So, when we talk about change, when we actually are doing it correctly, when we take the time to set up the structure, when we take the time to understand how we do something, why we do it, what we’re lacking when we actually get to the emotional piece, which is what I do. In the latter half of working with people, it’s fast. Cuz we already have the information. We already have the awareness and then guess what? Then you go and you do the movement yourself. 

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm mm-hmm and then from that I can see. So you’re basically just on the movement side, you don’t your, I love your, your system is very elegant because it’s everything you need and nothing you don’t. Right?

Atarah Valentine: Totally. 

Heather Alice: So by the time you get to the movement side, you’re ready to, to make that movement. And then what? That, that those behaviors can stick because they’re grounded. It’s almost like you’re planting, like in my head, I’m seeing like somebody plant a little flower. It’s like, you’ve given it roots.

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. 

Heather Alice: You’ve put it in healthy soil, you’re letting it in the, have the sunshine, you’ve watered it? Okay. 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. You’re excavating every anything that’s conflicting with its growth. Yep. 

Heather Alice: So it can grow and truly grow and truly thrive like this time, what you’re doing is gonna work and stick with you and stay with you because it’s the, who you be.

Atarah Valentine: Yeah.

Heather Alice: Not to how, how you be. 

Atarah Valentine: Yep.

Heather Alice: Right.

Atarah Valentine: 100%.

Heather Alice: Is really fascinating. I, I love it. You are a gifted, you are a gifted healer, truly. 

Atarah Valentine: Thank you. And you know, the most rewarding thing has been because I was in a very, cushy role. I was booked out for, you know, months in advance in my last company that I worked with. And when I decided to leave to do my own thing, you don’t really ever know what’s going to happen, but I did all of this work on my own and everything. I mean, like literally 48 hours, I booked out for seven months in advance. Like, it was insane. And now I’m about to launch my workshops, which is so exciting and really taps into all of this again, because what if you could look at every single day that you’re living as an opportunity to connect to, or express a different part of yourself. Right? 

Heather Alice: Mm. 

Atarah Valentine: Regardless if you’re happy in your job, regardless if your relationship is where you want it to be in the moment, right? This is where you are right now change isn’t something that happens a week away, or a year away. It happens in the present moment.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm mm-hmm.

Atarah Valentine: Right? So if you’re regretting the past or being fearful of the future, change doesn’t happen in either of those ways.

Heather Alice: Right.

Atarah Valentine: We have to be here. So ,the first thing that I’m releasing is a three part check in called rehearse for calibrate review. And it ties into your body’s natural biological rhythm. Most people don’t know you are in a state of hypnosis naturally two times a day.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm .

Atarah Valentine: In the morning coming out of sleep and then going from wakefulness to sleep in the evening. It’s called hypnopompic and hypnagogic right?

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm mm-hmm .

Atarah Valentine: So your critical faculty isn’t working in your mind, so you’re so suggestible to, information. So this is a great time to set intentions, it’s a great time to do any kind of internal healing work. Right? But also your afternoon slump from like one to 3:00 PM is natural response to your circadian rhythm. So, again, this is where we tend to knock ourselves through overload into a state of hypnosis. And then what do we do? Most people have another cup of coffee, right? Which creates, fight flight in a lot of people.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 

Atarah Valentine: Cortisol and adrenaline, right? So this is three audios, they’re 15 minutes each. So you can tap into your own potential daily. You set an intention, you live your day through that. You check in to give your nervous system some balance midday, and then you review in the evening. And there’s all alternative options for people too, who cannot necessarily sit and do the three audios. Even though I would say 15 minutes, three times a day, anybody can do that. But cause I, I wanted no excuses with this.

Heather Alice: Yeah. They could, you can do it. You can, you have, what else? What else do you do? Stop scrolling on Instagram. Come on.

Atarah Valentine: Yeah.

Heather Alice: The whole, yeah, the whole, like, I don’t have time. Girl, you have got as much time as every last person.

Atarah Valentine: 100%. Yeah. 

Heather Alice: we all have literally exactly the same amount of time. It’s how you wanna spend it. So is this your workshop? Tell us about your work. Is this the workshop? 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah, this is the workshop it’s going. I it’s gonna be out when, when this is out. Okay. It’s gonna launch next week. And, I’m just really excited because I, I find a lot of stuff, workshops, things like this to be very complicated and people don’t actually understand how to bridge the gap of the work that they’re doing into their daily life.

Heather Alice: Yep.

Atarah Valentine: And this is an opportunity actually to use your daily life as the workshop, right? If you are present and you have intention and every day you get to assign a different, word or intention or motivation. And that’s what you hold onto throughout the day. And you start accessing all of these different pieces of yourself within the environment that already exists. Right? And kind of what we were talking about before we started, I always joke with my clients and I’m like, listen, if you need to go on a retreat to find yourself, you’re kind of missing the point. 

Heather Alice: That’s exactly right.

Atarah Valentine: Right? So what if you were able to find yourself every day in a different way? We just don’t, really have tools to do that, but now we do. 

Heather Alice: Yeah. You’re, you’re, I really love, I was, and I was telling you before we started rolling, like you’re, you’re really gifted. You’re very grounded, and you really do see the heart of what it is actually going to take for us to truly embody this work and ourselves every single day. And I love, I love that you’re saying, look, your workshop, is your life. You know, the room that I’m sat this room I’m in, I sit in this room, right? You go to your desk, you go to like, these are the places we need to be putting in. You know, the awareness and the movement and identifying like that’s where we’re gonna find the gyms, right? Again and again.

Atarah Valentine: 100%.

Heather Alice: It’s in those moments. So, I think it sounds brilliant. We will have links in the, show notes for everyone. If you are interested in at Tara’s workshop, please check, the show notes, for that as well and Atarah any, any, parting words you wanna share with the listeners? 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah, I would say the most important thing in your process is you.

Go slow. There’s no rush everything that you are is not bad. There are so many good things that you already have. There are so many things in your life that are in support of your growth. Start looking at what those are. Start prioritizing those things, those people, those environments, right? It’s also not about setting really harsh boundaries, that’s something I see. A lot with people when they’re in their own personal growth journey. Well, I boundary here and a boundary here and a boundary here, but they’re actually creating walls around themselves.

Heather Alice: Rolling themselves in mm-hmm.

Atarah Valentine: And it’s really easy to be who you are and to be pure and to be spiritual when you’re not interacting with anyone that actually triggers you. Right? So, so it’s kind of missing the point.

Heather Alice: God just like reminded me of like 10 people, that I know. I’m like, oh God. 

Atarah Valentine: Yeah. And they’re like, why can’t my energy’s here? And it’s like, listen, But you shouldn’t have to remove yourself and hide yourself from everything in order to be who you are. This is where we, we wanna be able to be ourselves anywhere. And that’s why integration is so important because if you’re being triggered by something and I don’t mean like a deep, emotional trigger. 

Heather Alice: Sure. 

Atarah Valentine: I mean like an irritation, if someone didn’t see me, it made me feel insecure. It’s highlighting where your work still is. 

Heather Alice: It is. 

Atarah Valentine: And you putting a wall up and avoiding it is just, keeping it there. Right? 

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Atarah Valentine: So don’t be afraid of the things that don’t feel amazing. It doesn’t mean that you’re erasing your progress. It doesn’t mean you’re going backwards. Right? Really lean into it because this is a trigger is literally your emotional GPS saying, Hey, look here, this isn’t, this isn’t working out. I don’t have this yet. Right? And again, and I would say even a deep trigger is trying to show you something, Ooh, this isn’t safe. Right? But you can ask yourself in that moment, is this story really happening in front of me? Or am I projecting my past onto this momment.

Heather Alice: Onto it.

Atarah Valentine: Right? So, regardless it always has value. This is how we learn to trust ourselves. You’re not gonna have all of the answers right out of the gate. Be open to learning, take your time and you will 100% get there. 

Heather Alice: Oh, Atarah I’m gonna have to have you back on the show. 

Atarah Valentine: Yes, please. 

Heather Alice: Amazing. You can find Atarah on Instagram. I’m gonna have his links in the show notes, of course, but you can find him there at, @Atarah, A T A R A H Valentine.

He’s got a gorgeous Instagram feed, filled with stuff that you do have full and free permission to binge as much as you would like until next time. Thank you guys for listening. Together, we rise.