Kristen Brickl - Podcast
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[00:00:00] Hey Augustine. Kristen, how are you? Good. It's nice to meet you. Likewise. Thanks so much for

agreeing to jump on here. [00:01:00] Yeah, so fun. Talk about all the things. I discovered you on Instagram and I

just loved following you, and I thought,

let's just start from the very beginning. Tell me who you are,

where you are, and how

you got started in this.

What do you do? Great. My name is Kristen Brickl and I'm an

intuitive licensed professional counselor

here in Colorado in the United States. And I've been working with people in some

capacity on and off for the last 20 years. And then the last eight really have focused

on women in midlife and helping them move

out of feeling disconnected from themselves

and into a place of reclaiming joy, pleasure,

dreams, vision, embodiment, all of it.

I love that. What a great mission. That's so fun. And I bet you see some really rough stuff

because women growing up and living

in the patriarchy and trying to [00:02:00] explore

themselves and being mothers at the

same times, often times having challenging

careers is a really rough combo of things.

So I bet you see and hear some hard things. I do. I do. My population is generally women

in their mid to late thirties all

the way to their early seventies. So definitely women in their

childbearing years, women raising

families, trying to have careers. Midlife is a time of transition. So much happens to us as

women in midlife, I think.

And it's assumed we have it all figured

out, but, raising children and then

those milestones as kids age out and

they're in the world and women are

having to then look back at themselves

again and go, okay, what do I want? But that, and taking care of sick

parents retirement, career changes

maybe that weren't planned

for health crises, you name it.

Yeah. But all of that sits in our nervous

system and there's an impact[00:03:00]

and somatically in our bodies. It's all of those things. Yeah. That's what we're gonna dig into. And first I just wanna give you a

little context because I know this is

maybe not your normal audience. But when I look at the show demographics

of the people who listen to our

show, they're all in that age range.

Yes. Not all, but it's like a massive proportion. And they are almost all working or

intending to work once they get

through some early baby years. And there vast majority of

our listeners are parents. And so it's a, even though it's like very

tangentially related, I feel like this audience

could benefit so much from your wisdom.

And then there is the second piece,

which I really loved learning about

you as I was following you, is this

real breakdown of how to choose

this parenting pathway consciously. [00:04:00] That what we inherited maybe from boomer

parents is not, did not work for many of us. And then now how do we break free of that?

And specifically in those early years. And one of the reasons that I wanted

to ask you about this is because my listeners

are busy counseling new mothers as the

result of their profession as midwives. And certainly so many of us have been

fascinated by pre and perinatal psychology. APA has been, at some of our work

conferences and things like that, and,

Mary Jackson and Ray Cast when

he was alive, and Wendy McCarthy.

And there's a lot of influences

that we all love and follow. And yet somehow I feel like getting clearer

about the language and how to use that

language to, to influence how we're coaching

and counseling and supporting and how

we're actually maybe even doing it ourselves. So there's a huge spectrum

I wanna talk about today.

But first tell me, how did you get into this? [00:05:00] How did this become your focus? Because there's a lot of therapists out there,

but there's not a lot of therapists who are

focusing on midlife and women's challenges,

and there's not a lot of therapists who

also understand pre perinatal psychology. So tell me how this

became a passion for you.

It honestly goes back to my mother. I shared this story publicly, but she was,

I was 16 when she was first diagnosed

with breast cancer, and that really ignited

this process over the next several years

where she would be in remission and

then it would recur and it would spread. And so I watched her from the

lens of my adolescent self.

This woman I adored and admired

and also had a strained relationship

with because she also had struggled

on enough with depression. And so I watched her, my whole identity

become this warrior, if you will and, figuring

out her relationship with cancer and

thinking of it as a spiritual awakening, right?

There's this [00:06:00] quote that I love that

says, diseases heal us by restoring

our spiritual participation in life. Whoa. That's powerful. I don't know who said it, but it

gives me chills every time I say it. And so I observed this whole experience

that she went through, and then

she did die by the time she was 58.

And I, at the time was I had just gotten

married and then six days later she died. Wow. And then I was pregnant with my

first daughter, my first child, like

two months after I got married. Wow. And so I share this because, I raised my kids. I have two middle schoolers now,

and it occurred to me over the

last several years, oh, it makes me

emotional when I feel into this.

My mission is truly, 'cause my

mom said to me before she died,

Kristen, I never found myself. I don't think I ever found myself. And it was just this reflection that

she had and took with her [00:07:00] and my mission is

to help women wake up and be connected

to their gifts, connected to their vision so

they don't die long before they ever lived.

Because I think I come from a lineage of

women who died long before they ever lived. Chills. Ooh. So that's it. It sits so and deeply in my bone

marrow, my why of serving. Ooh, that me teary. Yeah. So powerful. And so I think unfortunately,

common this story. Yes, it is. I feel it. Yes. Yeah. I often work with women who self-identify

as over-functioning or people pleasing, and

I talk to them about this arc that, yeah, you

were raised as a good girl or to be a good girl.

And that is a nervous system early on that is an absorber and not an [00:08:00] observer. She's taking on, right? Yeah. But that good girl becomes a people pleaser. And that people pleaser becomes

an over-functioning, anxious woman

in midlife, either as a mother or

juggling motherhood and career. And then by the time she hits later

midlife, that's when martyrdom

shows up and the diagnosis.

And it's not to scare women,

but it's to, to call it out, yeah. There's some pattern

recognition here, correct? We can see it, yes. Yeah. I really wanna honor your life's mission. What a powerful pathway. And I also wanna make a big announcement

to those who are listening and say,

I also really wanna honor your life

mission and know that none of you have

chosen to self abandon on purpose.

By calling it out and describing it. We're not like vilifying that process. We're not diagnosing, we're not like,

there's nothing wrong with you. You're just deeply burdened [00:09:00] and we're

talking about how to unburden some of this. That's how I would say it. A hundred percent. I love that you added that.

Yes. Yeah. It's liberation, it's freedom. Yes. It's rec reclamation. It's bringing out of the darkness what's

festered and sat there back into the light. And I really believe in the power of

women serving each other, like that

is the power of our sisterhood as

women and helping each other rise.

Yeah. And that's the spirit in which I bring this. And also I think many of folks who

have followed my journey for a while

know that I'm one of those women. So it's not, it's hi, I am,

totally come by it, honestly. Yeah. I did the extreme personal

development course here in life myself.

I got to hit the ground really crazy

sickness that almost took my life in 21 as

a result of the martyrdom and over giving. I got to the very end of my energy

envelope and was bed bounded on

oxygen for a number of months, and

unable to walk or talk and have slowly

[00:10:00] clawed my way back to functional.

And people will ask me, what did you do? What did you do? And and from many different angles, right? I'm not bedbound, I'm not

in a wheelchair anymore. I'm not walking with a cane. I lost a hundred pounds. I like look better. Like the whole thing, right? Yes. And people would say, what did you do?

What did you do? And I boiled it down to two pretty simple

things, and I'd love to use this as like a

jumping off point for what people can do. As I just say, I stopped eating toxic things

and I stopped hanging out with toxic people. And everyone always follows

up and be like what is toxic?

How do you describe that? So I'm gonna bring that to you as a therapist. I know you don't know my story, but

my thought around the toxicity was

you can't keep poisoning yourself and

expect to get better in any avenue of life. Correct. And so I discovered. What was poisonous to [00:11:00] me. And I feel like that is a huge part of the

getting out from under the Good Girl

umbrella because what you're, what I

feel like what women are doing there is

they're continuing to use the rules of

the game when they were younger and

smaller to survive in their now fun, fully

functioning, sovereign adult space without

realizing that they're someone else's rules.

Yeah. And so getting out from under that. Is the way home to yourself,

but it is also so hard. And I guess I just wanna

name it sounds so simple. Just say, just stop poisoning yourself, but

identifying the poison and identifying

what it does to you, and identifying

the new lifestyle change or the new

thought process or the new mindset.

And then maybe not hanging out

with people because they do the

thing that actually triggers the thing. It's actually quite [00:12:00] hard. So let's start at the beginning and

really talk to people who are in a

place that's super suffering right now. And I think the only people listening to this

would be, who, who have I recognized that?

'cause there are lots of people living

in unconscious suffering, right? Correct. But let's say that somebody

is I can't do this anymore. My life is crazy. I can't do this. What are some of their symptoms? How would they know that

they're in this crazy place? And what are some of the first steps?

Great question. I'm gonna speak it to this through the

lens that I meet women, which is typically

their whole life feels like managing. And it feels like the opposite of

connection in its simplest form now. Now when you talk about toxic people

or toxic foods I hear that through

the lens of old patterning, right?

Or addictive tendencies. And that lives on a spectrum, of course. But I always [00:13:00] say that these behaviors

these toxic patterns that are maladaptive,

but we do them mindlessly anyway, are

literally the opposite of connection. We're reaching for something outside

of ourselves in desperation, in hopes

of changing our state internally.

And so that's where I always start,

is in bringing women into the loving

sphere of love I see you, I feel you. I am you. I've been a version of you. And like you haven't missed

the boat and it's not too late. But we have to always turn towards,

the answer is always in turning

towards slowly and gently, consciously

bringing that self-awareness because

then that creates agency of great.

Now what's the new action? I love that. That's a very good description. And I get pushback when I say something

similar and they're like, but I'm on call. In midwifery we can be called [00:14:00] at 3:00 AM

in the middle of a basketball kids' game, in

the middle of sex, in the middle of dinner. Then you can get called

at any anytime, right?

So they're like, but I'm on call, but I'm a solo

business owner, but the buck stops with me. So help us get through some of the

resistance that someone might have to

face the change that their body is craving. Great. So the other piece I really speak

with women about, 'cause we

miss this constantly, is transitions.

What I mean is you're at the grocery

store you come in and the house is in

chaos, and then you get a call that you

need to go out to a birth, pay attention

to those moments of transition. What's the story? Is it like, great, I just came off

of another birth and now I'm having to

go on another one and I've, I'm working

on three hours of sleep and dah.

Because those thoughts create feelings. Those feelings create a story, and

then in that way we get really stuck. So one of the things, I do this, [00:15:00] even I practice

this, I'm a single mom, I'm running a business,

like there's other things going on in my life. I'll just say, pause. This is my moment to receive.

And I just literally will take a few

deep breaths and close my eyes. But if I don't make it conscious

and I say it out loud, pause. Hey girl, this is your moment. Receive this because the rest of the

day might be chaos and pandemonium. To do that a sprinkle of

throughout the whole day. Otherwise that time never comes.

And that's why women end up

utterly destroyed and depleted. It's because we don't ever

consciously stop and slow down. Yeah. That is a great first step. That's a first step. Pause. Yes, pause. I love that. That's great. Pause. Take a breath. This is your moment. This is my moment to receive.

Okay. Onward. Yeah. And that can be done in the car. Yes. That can be done between prenatals. [00:16:00] That can be done even after

you get that call that says. Please have come. It's, there can be a moment where you

receive from the universe you receive

from your higher self, you receive from just

the breath that you can take whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful there. This, those micro moments because the

capacity to which we can breathe is totally

tied to the capacity to which we're alive

when we are stressed and burdened and

juggling seven things or spinning the plates. We're also, generally, I have found

women are, we're not breathing.

Not deeply. Not consciously. And so to remember, wait, I am, infinite

awareness, having a human experience. Okay. Yeah. And of course somatically, it resets

your vagus nerve and allows you to

be conscious and la all the things, but

that's just such an important first step. That's really beautiful.

Yes. So now I wanna go in a different direction

and I wanna talk about what I think you

and I both really [00:17:00] know in our body about

what happens if you don't make this

change the first or second time that your

body says, Hey, this is unsustainable. We can't keep on at this path of self

forgetting or martyrdom or whatever.

Like what happens if you don't hear it, I

always talk about it like first the universe

kinda whispers and then it'll be like, hey,

and then you'll get the two by four, the

cosmic two by four upside the head,

and then you're down from the count. So what happens? In real terms, what have you seen?

When they've, when you're, when

somebody has missed the call or

the awakening or the invitation. Yeah. My, my tagline is midlife is only a

crisis if we miss the awakening. So I would agree that if we miss the

whispers and then they turn into a

louder voice and until we really wake

up and it feels like a crisis is happening,

this is gonna maybe sound contentious.

And I [00:18:00] know some people oooooh

this, but I do think, I believe

life is always happening for us. And so for me, I look at my life and I

even when it's absolutely incredibly

difficult, even then I can still look out

and I go, I don't know if I'm gonna make it. And for some reason I know

this is happening for me.

And what do I need? Where are the anchor points or the pillars

in my life that I can reach to right now? Sometimes they're tangible and

sometimes they're intangible. I work a lot with women on their spirituality

and really reclaiming that space of a place

of nourishment and support because

sometimes when we've gotten so hooked

into managing and life is so busy, we've

also neglected the relationships that

might have been pillars of support.

Or even the relationship with self, that's

oftentimes hundred percent missing. Yes. Yeah. But I wanna go into the if you really

continue to [00:19:00] ignore the whispers and

then the demands and then the yells. Just if you ignore your kids, mama mom.

Correct. Mom. It gets louder and louder. Yes. Yes. Until at some point someone breaks

something in order to get your attention. And the universe works

the same way and correct. Having almost broken all of myself I feel

and now be, being in women's health

for 25 years, but now having lots of my

colleagues reach out to me and be like, help.

How did you get through it? I would say that I can see the correlation

between over giving and breast cancer. Of course you're gonna get cancer

in the organs of nourishment

when you don't self nourish. I can see the autoimmune connection. Yes, I can. So tell me about what happens if you

don't stop and hear the whispers.

Yeah, and I think you're naming it. I have a lot of women in my practice

that do show up with autoimmune

issues or some kind of health crisis. The body does not. Chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic fatigue. Yeah, there's a book I love, it's an oldie

[00:20:00] but goodie by Bessel VanDerKolk.

It's called The Body Keeps the Score. It's exactly what we're talking about. This is your one vessel. There's literally no other place for the

energy to go if we're not consciously

dispelling it or however we do that

through exercise, our spirituality and

practices, through our sisterhood and

friendships, through our acts of service.

Like I don't care what it is, but if

we're not consciously moving the

energy, it will accumulate in here

and there will at some point be the

crisis that occurs on a physical level. And until I've seen it happen, we're like

women then literally feel beholden to

their career and then suddenly there's

this health crisis and they have no option

but to take a six month sabbatical.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's that's, and one of the

early precursors is burnout. Correct. And so fatigue and so like

the symptoms fatigue. Yeah. Compassion fatigue and burnout. Especially in helping

healthcare professions, right? Yes. And this was one of my biggest wake up

[00:21:00] that is sometimes devastating when you

first get it, which is, I don't wanna go to work.

I don't wanna hear another woman

cry about preparing for birth. I don't wanna help anymore. Oh God, someone just called in labor,

so I just wanna say to those midwives,

like that is a really big wake up call

that's sleep is not gonna fix that. That is your soul calling for rest. That is your body saying

you have to get off this train. Yes. Those are, that's one of the whispers is

I don't wanna do this anymore, correct. I always say I talk to women about

appreciation and gratitude because a lot

of women I work with are entrepreneurial

or are in some kind of health and healing

and caregiving leadership, light leader

roles, midwifery, that type of thing.

And if they lose sight of appreciation and

gratitude for their why, that is a huge red flag. Huge red flag. Yeah. And if you keep on that path, if you [00:22:00] don't

get sick, then one of your clients will. Yes. Because you don't know what you're

doing anymore because you've

got the blinders on of burnout. So it's actually quite dangerous.

It is compassion fatigue skyrocketed

during the pandemic and after the fact. There was a lot of research done

in terms of the even two years out,

four years out, what's happening

for all of those healthcare workers? And the, at least here in the states, the,

it dropped off dramatically in terms of

interest in those professions because

they're often underappreciated professions.

Yeah. Which is part of the martyrdom Correct. So hard. Oh, and so I just wanna Yeah, go ahead. I just need to name that

martyrdom happens right. When we're serving from a place of lack

rather than serving from a place of fullness. That's beautiful. I talk with women about longing and how

we, we have a womb, we have a pelvic

floor and a womb that wants to be [00:23:00] filled.

That is, it's almost never

filled as a woman, right? The longing. But we meet that longing either from

lack and scarcity, and we look outside

of ourselves, and then we get hooked

in this over-functioning business. Versus filling it from the

place of longing or fulfillment. And desire. Of fullness of Ooh, I'm worth it. Gratitude, I love my life. What do I wanna create? What do I wanna receive? Big difference. Oh, feel it my room. Feel it in my room. It's real. It's so good. Yeah. It's so real. And that mindset of

where you're coming from. But if you've only ever come from

self abandonment, I must, there's

not enough time hustle culture.

If you've only ever come from that place,

then it can be really hard to figure out how to

come from a place of enoughness fullness. I don't always love the place abundance,

because you can have abundant pain

and you can have abundant exhaustion

and whatever, but that's fullness,

that enoughness, it's really hard to

cultivate [00:24:00] that concept if you've never.

Ever lived in it? Yes. So give us some ideas, like what's

a great practice to help come to

learning what fullness and being

met by the universe feels like. Yeah. I really believe in going

in and through the body. What I mean is that generally the

over-functioning and the burnout

and the unfulfilled longing are

absolutely tied to a lack of self-worth.

It's undeniable, when they look at how people

change and how we grow, researchers

found it comes down to self-love. The difference between people that are

motivated and go into the action stage

and maybe they fall back and relapse

and they go, oh man, I messed up. But they get right back into the action.

It's self-love. Versus people that don't have that

collapse all the way back into, I'm

not good enough, this is bullshit,

I can't do this, I'm overwhelmed. So [00:25:00] I always invite women that we have to

start with our bodies because this is the

vessel that's housing all of that energy. So something as simple as put on

your favorite song and go shake your

money maker in the kitchen right now.

Or can you go out for a 10 minute walk? You're the only one that can do that. Nobody's gonna come and do that for you. But going in through the body first in that. Love that. Yeah. In that reclamation journey. I would say the practice of self-talk

and reparenting was a huge

part of me figuring that out and

I identified that I had a really mean girl inside

of me who said really mean things that I

would never say out loud to anyone else. And that was an inherited voice. And I need to retrain that inner self

monologue to a place of kindness

and love in order to break free. And so I called that self-talk and

reparenting and basically I would cultivate

the most [00:26:00] mature adult version of myself.

The the earth mother, always like

that loving, abundant bosom. Oh baby, I got you. I would cultivate that brain

and then I would say, it's okay. You spilled that. It's okay. You're late. We'll figure it out. Yes, it doesn't have any

effect on who you are. Everyone makes mistakes, and I would

say the things that I wish that I had

been told yes, so that I could re-parent.

Those little parts of me that were

really hurting and over-functioning

and trying to solve the thing. And I just had to teach self-love

through this inner monologue. Do you have a practice like that? Have you used that? A hundred percent. Yeah. I love parts work 'cause how I call it my

world and I talk a lot with people about

the adaptive child versus the wise adult.

And we know we're in our adaptive

child and stuck in this like burnout over

functioning or in a relationship or wherever

in life [00:27:00] when we've abandoned our values

because we are so insatiable in trying

to get our need met that the values long

let go, went out the window because

I'm desperate to get the need met.

And so I love that what you said about

like mindset and watching those thoughts

and noticing, oh my God, that's totally my

8-year-old right now who's just desperate

and abandoned and overwhelmed. Can I come in and just love up

on her and be like, baby, I got you. I love you. Yeah, and I literally will be

driving, I'll just say it out loud.

I'm like, I care. Yeah, me too actually. Yeah. I don't, I think talking to yourself, underrated

skill, like it's great skill, Taha, it's true. You just have to be really conscious

about the what the word say. Correct. Love that. 'cause we are all talking to

ourselves all the time, right? All the time.

God dammit, I'm such

an idiot, blah, blah, blah. That's the pain. That's the damage right there, right? You have to talk to yourself with love

and it's a [00:28:00] practice that only you can do. It's o only you can make this change. It doesn't matter what mean things

were said to you for husbands or

teachers or parents or whatever.

You have to cultivate that inner voice and Right. Catch it every time It's off. You have to catch it. And it's definitely a practice. I would say not underestimating it was

a practice of a good five years before. Yeah. That inner voice was like always nice to me. Yep. Agreed. It's a devotional practice.

I I think of it as such, like it really is

devotion when we start unlearning

some of these patterns and habits

and identities we've carried. Yeah. Yeah. So powerful. So somebody listening has

been like, oh my God, that's me. I can't do this anymore. I'm super burned out. I'm exhausted, but I'm also the primary

income earner, or I also have this business.

I'm running with employees. I can't just walk away. I [00:29:00] can't just take time for myself. I have to figure out how to build this new

mindset within the life I already have. What can they do? State story and strategy, if the

state meaning their physical body. Is stuck at a certain temperature

in that, it's 68 degrees and they

have to stay at 68 degrees.

'cause that's like the fulcrum

that's holding everything together. And then if there's one more thing

added and they're up at 74 degrees,

the whole hell's gonna break loose. So the only way to uplevel or move

beyond the capacity to expand the

capacity is to first start with your

state everything we're talking about.

What's happening in your physical health? What's happening in your mindset? What's the story you're writing

about the limitations of your current

version, of this version of your life? We have to look in. It's what I said at the beginning,

like it's the only place to go. What I find is when [00:30:00] people get to that

end of the road, flooded place, they're so

focused on looking outside of themselves

because they're feeling so desperate.

The place to start is just to

slow down and go right here. What's happening in my body? What's the honest truth? What's the story attached to it? And then we come up with a new strategy. And I also think, at least for us as women,

we co-create very beautifully together. And so to call upon your community

of sisters and other women of she's

figured something out that I don't

even, I don't know how she's doing

it, but go and talk to that woman.

That's something I do when I see

somebody that's seems to have figured

something out that I'm aspirational about. I wanna pick her brain. And women we're generous. Me too, girl. Yeah. At this conversation right here. I love it. Yeah. Women are so generous and

they have gosh, they, it's not.

That most of the women who you come to

and say, tell me how you figured this out. They'll be so [00:31:00] honored. Yes. They will feel so respected. They'll be like, let me share the bounty. Yes. That's the beauty of us. I know. And so call upon that network, especially

in your darkest hour, like Yeah, it's beautiful.

Yeah. Yeah. And also because this is a

pervasive problem in midwifery. There are very few elders that have done

this, and I'm just naming this because this

was my experience coming up in midwifery,

and now I have done what so many others

have done, and I have left the profession,

which is why there's so few elders.

Yeah. Field evolved. Actual like crone elders, right? Yes. There's old midwives. Yes. But many of them are just in

a functional state of burnout. Correct. It can be hard to find the people that get it,

which is where I love this interprofessional

piece is where we lean in to the other

helping profession than the other

[00:32:00] communities who might not have it.

So pressurized like midwifery is so

pressurized, such a marginalized profession

with so little pay, with so little respect

with, so some other professions like your

chiropractors in your community, like the

massage therapists in your community, like

the counselors in your community therapist,

they might have figured something out

that midwifery hasn't quite adopted yet.

And so having a broader, like envelope or Yes. Yeah. We, I love the birth center here in town. I love it. It's a cohort of midwives that then are

literally surrounded by in the same building

therapists, acupuncturists, it's like all of

these wraparound services, a one-stop shop. Love that. It's it's, I love it.

It's how it should be. Yeah. Everybody collaborating

together, so beautiful. And in fact, even though it will maybe

create more burnout in the beginning,

[00:33:00] one of the strategies that I have

used when I was still functioning

in birth work was, is I created that. There's no reason you can't sublet

space to some other providers.

Bring that rich knowledge and grounding

and body work energy and that that other. Expansive level of knowledge and training

into your birth center, into your clinic space,

into a co-op together, and then barter. Yes. It doesn't even have to cost money, right? It's like you have plenty of knowledge

that you can share or just space

that you can share for people that

have a desire to work with you.

And so I had weekly massage appointments

and reiki appointments with providers

who were so happy to use the extra room

in my clinic for the rest of their clients. So there's ways that you can, without extra

money and without extra time create

the container that you actually need. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. And I love that you're seeing

[00:34:00] that where you are in the world. Yes. Okay. Let's do another scenario. Let's say one of our listeners is yeah. I get all that. I've been doing the things. And I just feel like I have a ceiling

I can't quite get out of the drama. The thing I've been doing mindset

and I've been doing self-talk and

I've been reducing the amount of

yeses so that I can say yes to myself.

The sacred, yes, holy no workshop that I

teach and I'm cultivating this new reality

where I don't self abandon or self forget,

where I'm not only focused on other people. I have the on-call strategies

where my phone, they have to

call twice to get through to me. I don't get the calls about indigestion

at 10:00 PM like I've set up the boundaries.

I'm doing that boundaries work, and

I still just feel like I'm gonna crash. My body is sick, or I'm exhausted,

or I feel compassion fatigue,

and I just can't [00:35:00] break through. Do you have any like hard set reset? Like tools and suggestions for people who are aware but unable to move,

make the traction happen.

Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, I'm gonna use a birth analogy

here, but please, I think I, I think of that

as the moment when a baby's like

literally moving down the birth canal. The water's broke, and the

baby's like in the liminal space. So is the woman who's not yet ready

to push, but god damn she's close.

It's the moment where there's the pause. I don't want to do this, I

can't do this one more. I, it's the liminal and it's the most cringey

and the most uncomfortable space to be in. I find in, when I sit with women and hold

space for them, nobody wants to sit there. 'cause it's tight.

It's uncomfortable. We can't see shit. We don't know what's coming next. And so part of it is. I'm getting curious about [00:36:00] what's so oof,

what's so uncomfortable about that? And then I, what I love to do with

women is let's rely on other senses. Right now you're in the liminal, which

means you've left what you've known

and you don't know where you haven't

quite landed, where you're going.

This isn't quite it great. So I will pull in all kinds of woo, like you name

it, like intuitive oracle cards, drumming,

moving our body, getting outside, changing

the relationship to the liminal is the first step. Can you get curious about that? The only way out is through Yes. We tell women this all the time.

Yes. Yeah. I love that. And so it's that though, it's like

the medicine for the midwife. It's what would you tell your yourself? Just like what you would tell the

woman you're take your own medicine. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. But it's. That is actually that, that hit so

hard and it's so easy because

there's nothing you have to learn.

You've already got this [00:37:00] inside of you. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And there's some piece I have found

in working with women who are in like

very successful, have figured it out that

is a turning point also in terms of their

level of service and their beingness

and that they may be meant to serve

now in a different way adjacent.

What you're doing. But that, that there's so many

ways we can serve creatively. Yeah. You just can't see it when you're in the

liminal space and it's dark as hell and

tight and you know when it's gonna end. Yeah. Yeah, but I think there's like a

faith practice in this as well. Yes.

In that like it does end, even though Exactly. It feels like it goes on forever. It doesn't. Yes. And we get this question all the time, right? You have someone in labor,

they're like, oh, how much longer? That's right. As long as it takes and I'm gonna be with you. And so you just turn that to

yourself and be like, I'm gonna, yes.

I'm gonna take, it's gonna take what

it takes and I'm gonna be with you. I'm not [00:38:00] leaving you small parts. I'm not abandoning you. Again, I'm doing this differently this time. I'm having the faith that I will get through this. That is, God, of all the professions on

the planet, I can think of like midwives.

Carry faith, woven into their very being, right? Yes. For other people even. Yes. You, like grandma's got faith

in you because of your faith. And mama and papa are like, Ooh,

we are trusting this you process

because our midwife trusts it. And so yes. Who are you to abandon

it for yourself now, right?

Yeah. It's about giving ourselves over fully, which is

hard in the darkness, but it's a must because

the breakdown looks and feels like that. And that always happens

right before the breakthrough. It's just how it is. Kristen, I knew you were gonna

be the right one for this. This was so beautiful and juicy.

This is fun. In [00:39:00] my time of counseling this beautiful

profession that I was a part of for

25 years, what oftentimes happens,

like what I experienced, is you go

through the labor of finding yourself. And you come out the other side and you in

fact do not wanna be a midwife any longer.

And so I would love to have you take a

moment and speak to those folks who might

be carrying grief or even guilt about letting

go of an identity that no longer serves them. Yeah. You said it, it's grief. When people get gr have grievance

energy or a lot of judgment or criticism

or naysay and negativity, I always

invite them to slow down and say,

what are you not letting yourself feel?

And what do you need to grieve? And I think preemptively grieving and [00:40:00] giving

yourself permission to recognize, gosh, I just

don't feel the passion for this the way I did

19 years ago when I started, or whatever. That's the starting point. That's the launching off point to

creating what wants to happen next.

Because there's three

energies I often feel like in life. Like life either comes at us or it's

going around us and it feels like

sneaky and we're avoiding and they're

avoiding or whatever the thing is. Versus the ideal is we come along

with it and we have to come

along with the truth of what is and

grief is such a big piece of that.

It is. And unfortunately, I'll probably catch

some flack for this, but unfortunately

midwifery is a little bit like a cult. If you try to leave it, you either usually

people try to convince you not to. [00:41:00] And if you do anyway, then

you're usually cut out. Cut off. And there aren't very many models

for really healthy completion.

There aren't retirement ceremonies in midwifery. And so there's this very complicated

culture which includes the new, maybe

it's not new, but the cancel culture reality. That if you don't get along with the

status quo, then you're cut out, right? And I feel like having gone through the

whole life cycle of midwifery myself, of, that

youthful enthusiasm, we're gonna change

the world, and then the slogging through

the middle, and then the getting canceled

in the end, I've been like, oh, actually,

this is also probably very controversial. But I think that we're all pretty

traumatized to [00:42:00] accept this culture

and to participate in this culture. Yes, that actually all midwives who are

willing to be up all night repeatedly with all

manner of other people's bodily fluids on

them, and then marginalized and treated

like shit and not paid appropriately, means

that we are traumatized to begin with.

So yes, exiting midwifery

might be a sign of health. And I think that is like really

I know it's confronting. I can only say that now because I've, I'm

on the whole other side of the spectrum. But I think that was my turning point, is

being like, oh, I don't feel like I need to

participate in this cult like behavior anymore.

Oh, maybe that's a good thing. Yes. Yeah, I, both of my children were born with

midwives and I'm, just as we're talking today,

and I posted about this recently, it's like

you're speaking to covert trauma, which

accumulates over a lifetime, and it's subtle,

but it's like creeping [00:43:00] ivy and it just grows.

And even though birth is a beautiful

process, my goodness, what you just

said, those are all little, death by a

thousand cuts in the micro covert

traumas that accumulate and stack up. That's why we get burned out. That's why compassion fatigue is real. So if we're not, part of, I think when

women go past that point and then are

like, I can't do this anymore, that is when

the floodgates open and the grief pours

out and the anger pours out and the, self

loathing of why did I let this go on so long? And all of it shows up. Yeah. But that process, that reckoning is

itself potentially a healthy exploration. Totally. It is. Yeah. It is. Yeah. Yeah. And then we can zoom way out from the

personal who the public health lens and be

like, this is a fricking tragedy that so many

qualified, skilled [00:44:00] providers are leaving Yes.

At the height of their career,

because they can't take the toxic

culture environment, low pay. Abusive nature in the hospital. This is the travesty, and I sure

hope it gets fixed, but the healing

piece is I am not responsible for

personally fixing the dysfunction. Yes. Like that's the.

Breaking free from Codependence and

martyrdom is that's actually not my job. Yes. Preach. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Oh, gonna shake that one out a minute. Yeah. So I know I'm feeling it as we're talking. It's so real. Yeah. It's so real. I'm laughing just to keep from crying. Yeah. But I feel so committed to this community,

even though it was canceled last year. I continue to work hard for the betterment

of the profession as a whole, but I have

separated what I can personally [00:45:00] do.

And I feel if I can share that process with

some people, that feels really useful for me. Now, like you said, I'm working

tangent, gently around the edges. Yeah. Yeah, because it is so rough. I saw on my Facebook feed this

week three senior skilled, intelligent,

amazing, hardworking midwives who

are all leaving the profession this week.

And that's just my little circle,

that I don't check very often, so I

know it's happening all the time. Another statistic that I recently read in

preparation for teaching a birth center

incubator class is that every single week a

new birth center opens in the United States,

and every single week a birth center closes.

Huh. We've stayed stagnant for almost

10 years in the mount birth

centers across the us Interesting. And the midwifery numbers are growing,

but not as fast as they're needed. The WHO recommend that we

need a million more midwives

to meet the demand right [00:46:00] now. Wow. Wow. We're a million midwives short and at the

same time, midwives are leaving all the time.

And so I feel like what I did for years is

possibly what other midwives are doing,

which is you see this tremendous need. And you miss mistake, your capacity

to serve as like filling the need. Yeah. I'm not, maybe I'm not saying it but you

know what I like the public health needs

do not match your personal needs, but

you keep going because of the demand.

Correct. And we could say that about

other problems globally. I think that's so true right now. More than ever. Yeah. Yeah. And it's pick one and you could

spend the rest of your life and

still never barely make a dent. Yeah. And so I love that you brought

that up in terms of what is my

capacity and to be so real with

yourself in terms of what that is and to let

that, to temper that or to be able to toggle in

terms of [00:47:00] capacity and it might look different. And to reevaluate that, something

I do with women is quarterly even. It's like we sit down, it's let's really look at

what's the story you're telling yourself?

How is your state and your body, what's working? Let's really be honest about what's

not, and let's get creative about what

needs to shift because that's longevity. With anything, we're gonna be far

more apt to be able to have longevity

in these careers where we're serving. Yeah.

Sustainability is a word that belongs

in our vocabulary more often. To sustain means you can keep going. I saw, I don't know, probably a TikTok the

other day, which means doing your best. The definition of doing your best is

doing your best without exhausting,

harming or otherwise injuring yourself.

Yes, and so I think there are so many of

us, myself included, who thought my

best was the most I could possibly do. [00:48:00] That's it. That's what I thought my best was. It was like, yes. Oh no. When no wonder Burnout came and

found you, is you can't work on all

cylinders at full blast and be sustainable.

You can't continue that. So this is I have that boundaries

for birth workers class, like

defining what is the edge of you? What is capacity? Yes. How much can you do? Yes. And then putting in place these checkpoints

so that you don't cross those boundaries. Yes. And that that being able to

say no, it's pretty critical.

Yes. Yeah. Oh, so much here. We've covered a lot. We have. What do you wanna share now? What are you hoping we wrap up with? Think back to everything we

wanted to talk about today. Ooh, the perinatal psychology. We haven't jumped in. Let's scratch this surface

before we say goodbye. Yes.

What was the, I sorry, I didn't catch that. The perinatal psychology. I saw this post of yours. Yes. That was like really juicy about [00:49:00] what

happens with to the child psychology

with a distracted early experience. Will you uncover this for us a bit? Yes. And go anywhere you wanna go with this.

Yeah. It's one of my favorite

topics for so many reasons. So when a baby is in utero,

it's a perfected environment. They're getting food touch

and movement 24 7. Those needs for food touch

movement are met on demand. The instant a baby is born is the

instant those needs being met is

totally dependent on a caregiver,

and that's typically the mother.

And what I have found, and the people

I've studied with is that babies either

attach to their caregiver and that's

a secure attachment or they don't

and they attach otherwise to the

food, the touch or the movement. And I'm gonna just physically show you

that when a mother picks up her baby [00:50:00] and

she's coing and talking in mother ease and

she's, oh, she's relaxed and she's warm,

and there's empathy and connection, oh,

and there's nurturing and the feeding is

happening, that is a secure attachment.

And if that's happening 80% of the time,

that's called good enough parenting

that will form secure attachment. Now if you imagine the caregiver, again,

typically the mother taking up the

baby to feed, change, rock, whatever

those needs are, but it's met with a

flat affect or disdain or disgust or

overwhelm or burden or anxiety or stress.

And I'm uptight and I have

two other children already. What happens in that little baby's

body is they either go very rigid, and

you can see this in videos that have

been done with babies in terms of the

mother's affect, or they go really flat. And what's fascinating is that instead

of bonding with [00:51:00] the parent or the

caregiver, the mother, the baby then

bonds with food touch or movement.

And so this is where by the time

we're talking now in adulthood I see

it all the time in this culture, right? It's like sugar addiction,

food addiction, serial dating or whatever

it is, any of those connections, like I live in

a community where there's a lot of high

performance athletes and it's like they're

never, they reach one milestone and then

they're immediately reaching for the next.

It's it's never enough is this

experience, it's insatiable in terms

of trying to fill that connection. And so what's happening in the nervous

system of the mother absolutely

matters in terms of the child borrowing

that mother's nervous system up until,

yeah, they're co-regulating, they're

co-regulating up until about the age of 12.

Research has found, and then they

individuate and go off with their friends. But yeah so that matters. That's so important. And I [00:52:00] would say I'm gonna, I will take

it one step further and say during the

incredible process of coming into being. In physical form through the portal, the

mother tree process, the mother, and

oftentimes their entire support network

is co-regulating with the midwife.

Yes. Yes. And so this is why this work is so important

is that the way that you show up, the

way that you hold space, the way that

you hold yourself, can influence your, the

entire bonding process of your new family. And midwives know this intuitively. This is why community-based

birth is so powerful.

Yeah. In the hospital that people are doing a job

and they're oftentimes deeply distracted

by that job and there's no one to attach to. Yes. Midwifery is so different because we

show up with our whole selves and our

whole space, and we're in their homes

oftentimes, or they're in our space and we're,

we've [00:53:00] created this beautiful environment.

Yeah, intimacy. The intimacy, right? So the distractions can drop

away and we can be connected. And as the pressures of midwifery

mount, as your entrepreneurial business

expands, as your burnout increases,

you actually decrease the capacity of

your clients to experience bonding. And I think that is a revolutionary

concept, what you're describing.

Yeah. And so here's how we work with that, right? So that's the pattern. What do we do? And I'm always big on

what's the action point? So it's the difference between, and

especially I'm speaking to your midwives

here, it's like thinking of themselves

as the source, which absolutely will

deplete them, versus I am a channel.

I'm a channel today for this woman, for

this family, and literally visualizing and

seeing yourself as a channel of divine

lights of love, of whatever you need, the

fortitude because you just came off

another birth and now you're [00:54:00] in another one. To see yourself as the

channel and not the source. So important.

Whew. That's how I can do what I've

been doing for almost 20 years is

'cause I don't take my work home. I literally am letting it move through

me, and I'm excited to be here. So it's that, right? Yeah. And so the same as I would

say for new moms who are

anxious and that's heightened. I don't know what I'm doing and

I don't trust themselves or body.

It's ooh, feel that moving through you. It's just moving through. Yeah. Yeah. Self-care and replenishment. Totally. Every time we travel anywhere, we hear

You must put the oxygen mask on yourself. Yes. Before you try to tell others. Yeah. La This is the message. You can't pour from an empty cup.

You cannot actually connect to

source and be a channel of divine

guidance if you are empty yourself. Correct. There's nothing to attach to. You must be self connected. Yes. So it's this great circular. Why is this work so important? It is personally fulfilling

to feel like a whole person. Yes. Not scattered and broken and burdened.

Yes. But it is [00:55:00] also a literal core part of the work. Yes. It's everything. Yeah. Yeah. That's everything. That's a good punctuation point. There we go. Kristen, this has been amazing. It's so powerful. Can you tell people where

they can follow you? Yes, this has been awesome,

and I thank you for having me.

So I'm on different social media platforms. Kristen dot Brickell, B-R-I-C-K-L. That's my website as well, and I work with

women one-on-one all over the world. I love what I get to do. It's my greatest honor. As I said the beginning, I'm so

passionate about helping women wake

up and come home to themselves.

Beautiful. We're gonna post all of that in the show notes

as well as the resources we discussed today. And I hope people can come and

access your support because there is

a way off the crazy conveyor belt Yes. Convey that leads to burnout,

exhaustion, depletion, and

eventual exit from the profession.

There's another way. There always is. I wish I had learned about it [00:56:00] ahead of

time, but now I'm really committed

to bringing the resources to people

who can do it a different way. Kristen, thank you. Yes, thank you. All right. Bye bye.

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