Navigating self sabotage & shadow work with Caitlin Hosking
Welcome back to this week's episode!
Rachael: I am very excited because today we are going to be covering all things regarding self sabotage and shadow work. As an entrepreneur with one of my dear friends, Caitlin. Caitlin is an amazing shadow work coach. She helps ambitious women stop sabotaging their goals so that they can create the life that they desire. I just love her to pieces. And I'm so excited to have her here with us. We're going to be diving into some juicy things. So welcome, Caitlin. How are you?
Caitlin: I thank you so much for having me on. I am feeling pretty good. I'm really excited to be here with you today.
Rachael: Yeah, I'm super, super pumped. So before we get into all the juicy subject matter of today, I would love for you to tell everyone a little bit about yourself and what led you to where you are today.
Caitlin: Sure, what led me here? So many things that everyone can relate to.
Rachael: Tell me your life story!
Caitlin’s past and what led her to the work she does today
Caitlin: How long do we have?! I think the main thing that led me to where I am, and what I do today, started when I was a teenager. I was into drugs and I was drinking all the time and I was smoking, And I was being rebellious and I was doing all these things. And I felt super out of control of everything. I could not control my emotions. I could not control my behavior. I just kept repeating the same cycle, day in, day out. Even though I hated it and I was depressed and anxious, it was just an unstoppable force. It just didn't matter.
I'm very, very grateful for my parents. They were beautiful parents who had a beautiful relationship and marriage, and they supported me the best they could. They did all those things, but for some reason I was just rebellious. So when I started to get older and into my 20s, I wanted to change and as most of us do, I changed from all of the drugs, that whole rebellious behavior, and just completely flipped the pendulum to the other side where I was going to University and getting the highest grades possible. I was a really studious, good academic student. I was just playing that good girl role.
So I thought I had made it because I read a couple of books, and that's how I switched. I was like, “I've made it.” But there were still so many things happening, like toxic relationships and men that weren't treating me very nice and still a lot of codependency. Then I went to this two day workshop and it was for Gym because I used to go to the gym. I used to be a competitive powerlifter. They had a module on mindset, and I was like, “I don't need mindset, I'm good. Look how amazing I am. I get all these high grades, I'm ticking all the societal boxes, as you would probably call it”. Then as we just started to get into it, I just realized, “I'm ticking the boxes, but I'm so unhappy, I have an eating disorder, if I don't achieve something, I would cry and cry and cry.” So I started to listen and learn more. I started understanding my thoughts and my behaviors. As I just kept digging deeper, I just started seeing things clearly like, “wow, I'm really wired into so many things that are not OK. It's not okay for me. And if I keep trying to chase this, even when I get it, it's not enough.”
So I realized something had to change. I had started my business through all of this. As I dug deeper and deeper, I just started saying how this wasn't just me, this was everyone. Everyone was struggling with self sabotage in some way. It was either that I'm not doing anything, so I'm not getting any results I want or I'm getting all the results I want, and I actually still feel really unhappy, and I still feel like at the bottom of it, I am fundamentally flawed.
So when I realized that it wasn't just me who felt that way, I learned how to do shadow work. I learned all of these things in psychology. I was like, I want the rest of the world to know about this, because feeling flawed every day is not a way for people to live. I don't want anyone to live like that. If I can pass this on to as many people as possible, that will become my mission.
Rachael: That's so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that It sounds like you really were able to take these really challenging experiences and alchemize them into medicine for other people. That's such a beautiful gift to not just only have the knowledge and wisdom from learning from, education and trainings and things of that nature, but also having such a personal experience with these things and being able to hold such a deep level of compassion and empathy and understanding when you're working with people is so powerful.
I really resonate with what you're saying, because I think that when you go through really hard times and you've come out on the other side of it, and of course, we're always learning and growing and healing and doing the things, as we do as humans. But when you come out of the other side of that, like a really potent dark period, it's like, "Oh, wow, I just want to help people. I just want to really help people get through their own unique experiences now, too." That's just so powerful. I love that. So I know something that you're super keen on working with people on is self sabotage. I'm sure that there are some people that are like, “I don't really understand what the fuck self sabotage is.” So for those who may not be familiar with the term, could you just explain what self sabotage is and how it can usually show up?
What self-sabotage is and the many ways that shows up for different people
Caitlin: Yeah, it's quite a loaded question, because it looks so different for everyone. For me. As I said, I came from two worlds. I came from a world where I achieved nothing. I couldn't go to the gym, I couldn't eat healthy food, I couldn't stop taking drugs. I couldn't do those things. So, the inability to actually achieve a goal or even want to set a goal was part of that. That's what self sabotage looked like for me then.
On the other hand, for the high achievers in the overachievers and probably the entrepreneurs, it actually starts to look like achieving goals just to achieve a goal. So health might be sacrificed, their relationships might be sacrificed, time with their children, time in nature, time with connection to their body, with their soul, with all of that. I think the easiest way to put it is that self sabotage is when you're disconnected from your essence. You can't seem to find your way back to it. The normal kind of masks come out as people-pleasing, overachieving or underachieving, overeating or undereating, over exercising or under exercising, imagine there's a pendulum of the things that people normally do.
If it's on one extreme or the other, that tends to be sabotage. And maybe even the biggest one is the bypassing and the lack of acknowledgement that people will sabotage every single day. It can be very subtle, and that's OK. But even bypassing the emotion around that and being like, "No, no, no, I like I can't feel that or I can't do the shadow work or I can't focus on that, because if I focus on that, then the whole world is going to implode." All of these things end up not maybe in that moment being sabotaged, but they are, because they grow especially with emotions.
We know that if we don't alchemize and release and work with those that one day they're going to break us. We're just going to end up on the floor crying, just being like, "Oh, my gosh, what is wrong with me?" And so it can be these bigger things that we see. We just ignore the signals that we should not be friends with that person or we should leave that relationship.
Rachael: Yeah, absolutely and I definitely resonate. I know that for me, one of the ways that I was sabotaging my pleasure and my joy for so long was excessively checking my phone right when I woke up in the morning. That's like a prime example of what sabotaging behavior can be. You know consciously that it's not the right thing for you or it harms you in some way but then you're addicted to the stress response.
I know for me, one of the bigger ones that I experienced so much, especially in the early stages of me starting my entrepreneurial journey, was procrastination. So much of our self sabotaging patterns stem from these, like deep wounds of inner child experiences or trauma responses as we've grown as adults. It's really fascinating how they can be either really subtle or it could be this big thing and all of a sudden, you find yourself in a situation where you're constantly in this cycle of shit.
It's really fascinating when you start to become aware of these things and just learn how to actually move through them through the lens of compassion, because I'm sure you can agree. I don't know about you, but I know for me, the more I shamed myself into trying to change, the more prominent these things became, because then I would activate these other parts of me, the rebellious child would start to come up.
I just talked to my partner not that long ago, relative to going to the gym. I'm trying to get back into the habit of going to the gym. My sabotaging pattern is not going, even though I know it feels good for me. Then the pattern that was showing up was me kind of taking on that drill sergeant persona of like "You need to go, you know better." I had this huge epiphany that I was activating this like rebellious inner child that would be like, "Well, fuck you, I'm not going then." And so I was like, oh, whoa, what if I actually, approach this from a lens of compassion? And I'm like, “You deserve to feel good”, and then all of a sudden I was like, “Oh, yeah!” Can you relate to the fact that shaming and blaming yourself into changing these sabotaging patterns actually does more harm than good?
The relationship between self-sabotage, childhood wounds & shame cycles
Caitlin: Yeah, two things came up for me as you were speaking. The first one was why someone doesn't stop binge eating is the exact same reason that someone doesn't stop overworking. Underneath the layers and layers and you get to the root of it. It's always very similar. It always roots back to childhood because people have just learned from their childhood how to cope. The thing that I always want to come back to is that the brain isn't trying to ruin your life.
You're not completely fucked. You're not any of those things. Your brain is just trying to keep you safe in the way that it knows how and that's how it gets a response. When I was working with emotional eaters in particular, shame cycles were very, very strong, because not only are they eating, they have the societal pressure of what it is to be thin, what it is to eat a certain way and what that looks like. So they would start eating uncontrollably, get to the other side, and then their brain kind of explodes on them and they're like, "Oh, my God, now I'm so fat and I'm disgusting. No one's ever going to love me and I'm going to be ostracized from society." As you said, when we're sabotaging, we're sabotaging in response to the avoidance of an uncomfortable emotion.
So if we're shaming ourselves, we are now creating more of that uncomfortable emotion. If we don't have the self-awareness or we haven't built the other skill sets, we're just going to rely on what we do know. We know that procrastinating makes us feel better in the moment. Eating makes us feel better in the moment. Drinking makes us feel better in that moment. And because that's all we're craving, we're going to lean on it because we're human and we're having a human experience. And so one thing that I really work with clients, is that very basic, "What do I actually need in that moment?" And coming back to Tony Robbins' core needs is such an amazing tool, specially the bottom four, which are the connection, certainty, variety and significance.
What I see is that most people, when they're feeling very uncomfortable, is that they're craving connection or they're craving significance because their self-esteem isn't really feeling great. If we go, "How can I make this more resourceful right now?" It will probably start at that moment, to decrease that discomfort, and then we can work on the whole reason why that discomfort is there in the first place.
Rachael: Yes, it's so true. I think the biggest thing that I feel is such an important aspect of when we're working through these things is really coming back to, like I'm doing the best that I know how my brain is literally trying to keep me safe.
So that kind of leads into the conversation around shadow work. It's one of the most important aspects of really getting to where you desire to be. If we're not aware of the actual patterns and behaviours and things that are causing the harm at the root, then it's really hard for us to truly create long lasting transformational change if we're not actually looking at what's going on within us.
Even just in the conversation that we're having right now in regards to self sabotage, all of us have a shadow side. It's not something to be feared. It's something to work with and integrate. I would love for you to explain what the hell shadow work is and why it's so important, because I feel like some people see these words or hear these words, and they don't actually understand what they are!
Caitlin: I think that it's funny because I use the two buzzwords that people kind of shy away from the most, they're “Shadow work... Ahh!" "Self sabotage... Ahh!"
Rachael: You're like, "Let's Fucking Go!" Hahaha!
What shadow work is & why it’s important
Caitlin: When someone's asking, "I'm saying I want one thing, but I keep doing the other thing," that's when we have to pay attention to these two things. Shadow work is at the bottom of self sabotage. Shadow work is essentially looking at all of the different aspects and parts of you that have been disowned.
Just imagine you've got a closet, and in that closet, you're like, "I really don't like this part of me, so I'm just going to put it in there." For example, binge eating, you think “Oh, I shouldn't do that, and so I'm going to put the part of me that wants to do that into the closet.” Or, “I'm going to put the lazy part of me into the closet and I'm going to keep doing that. And I'm going to try really fucking hard to shut that closet and pretend it doesn't exist.” It keeps growing and it gets louder and louder and louder until eventually it just bursts out at the seams.
It comes out as that irrational response of either just ending up staying in bed for a whole week, crying for days on end, lashing out at their partner, or procrastinating for days and days and days on end. It's because there's all of these parts that they're not paying attention to, which have equal energetic value as the ego, or consciousness.
People spend so much energy and it's something we hear a lot and something I hear a lot. I always feel so tired. Even though I'm eating and I'm sleeping and I've got all the right self-care things, I still feel really tired. That's because of the shadow running the show. Generally people are trying to hide it by wearing these different masks and different personas of who I think I should be.
This is what makes me acceptable. This is what I have to do. And deep down, they know that A) Another part of them exists that resents that side. And, B) That's not truly who they are. Shadow work is the work of actually going, “OK, what's in this closet? And what actually needs to be reclaimed so I can have my power back and I don't have to keep being afraid.” If we haven't done the shadow work, that fear of judgment is very heightened. The reason for that is because we know subconsciously and maybe a little bit consciously that we're trying to hide parts of us.
And because of this, we will procrastinate. We won't put out the offering, we won't do the thing, because we have all of these shadow parts that we are trying so freakin hard every day to hide. Because we believe if someone sees us, then they're going to disown or stop loving us, and we're not going to be able to reach our goals.
Rachael: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. That was such a great explanation. You're so right. You know, I think that one of the most healing things is integrating those parts of you as a journey to wholeness. No part is a bad part. They're all serving some purpose. It comes back to security, safety and belonging and love. When we start to view those parts, the jealous part or the part that's afraid of speaking their truth or being angry, we start to see those parts through that lens of compassion and love and knowing that, all those parts are trying to do is just keep us safe.
I think that what you said, it's really about the integration and the acceptance and just learning how to be with those parts and meet your needs in a different way versus continually, like shoving them away. In your opinion, what happens when we don't do this work? How does it affect your potential, as a leader, as a coach, as an entrepreneur, as a human. What happens as a result of the avoidance that can happen in this whole conversation?
What can happen when you don’t do the shadow work
Caitlin: Firstly, I just want to touch on the fact that the reason that we have abandoned or rejected these pods isn't because there's anything wrong with us and it's something that happens in childhood, that happens because of society. We are raised to be the good girls and the quiet girls and the small girls. It's an intergenerational thing. The reclamation that the world is going through right now is really beautiful and very exciting, especially for women. So if anyone is listening, thinking like, "Why am I like this? Why is this happening?" It is a normal part of conditioning and growing.
We have to develop our ego and it's really important. So there's three parts that I just will break this into. So we have the persona and the persona is Latin for mask and the mask is what we wear generally when we go out. So most people go to work or they show up on Instagram and they have a smile and they're like, "hey, guys, how are you doing?”.
They want to look a certain way. Then they take off that mask and the ego is just sort of the normal conditioned version of who you are when you're feeling like "Whatever, I don't care.
The shadow is the part that the ego wants to hide, because it doesn't think they're acceptable. Even though there's times where you don't care, they're still like "I don't care. I still don't want people to know that thing." What we know in being entrepreneurs is we are faced every day with difficult decisions and we are problem solvers. We have to hold space for other people and we have to do all of these things. If we are too worried in our minds about, "Oh, my God, did I do that wrong?
Especially with imposter syndrome, I was like, “People are going to find out that I took drugs and that I have a drinking problem and that I smoked. And they're going to think "This is ridiculous. You can't be a coach, you don't belong here. You should be perfect. You should have all your shit together." And so when I was like. "What would happen if I claimed The Addict? What would happen if I brought her front and center and said, you know what, she's a part of me and she is here and she wants to play sometimes. And so because keeping her down wasn't happening because it was building discomfort and then she would get louder and then I would crack and then I would end up drinking." And so I was like, “You know what, I am going to start to talk about this and I'm going to start talking publicly about my problems I've had with drugs and alcohol.”
And as soon as I did that, 1) I started getting clients because they were like, “Oh, shit, that's someone who is actually like being real. They’re obviously going through similar things and I'm going through and they’re navigating it and I need help navigating it.” And 2) it also stopped me from being afraid to show up because I thought, people can't go dig into my past and say your this, your that, your this, your that. Because I already know all of that. I have accepted that.
Rachael: Whoo! Yes. Goosebumps. Fuck Yeah. Oh, my gosh, that was so beautiful. I resonate so deeply Catlin because I know that for me, impostor syndrome like ruled my fucking life for both the first three years of my business and I know a big thing for me was being terrified that people would find out that I had bad days. When we're conditioned and we're all conditioned in some way, shape or form, and what I was seeing in social media was perfection, perfection, perfection. And so I was like," Oh, I need to portray that or I'm not going to be successful."
I remember starting to actually openly talk about how I had a really fucked up past, and I struggled with my mental health for the majority of my life. And I started talking about how I had mad anxiety. I struggle with panic attacks. I had days where I felt like my trauma was so overbearing that I felt paralyzed. I started actually speaking to these things and reclaiming those parts of me, and I was no longer ashamed. I resonated so deeply with what you said around once you reclaim those parts and you integrate them and you see them and you you give them space and you love them, it's like there's the fear of being, quote unquote, found out is diminished because you're like, “well, find out what because like I already fucking know who I am!”
Learning to recognize when other are projecting their shit on you
Rachael: People can get triggered by us or we get triggered by other people, and we're all just a fucking mirror for each other. Sometimes that mirror is hard to look into, let me tell you. But I'm so appreciative of your transparency. That's something that I've really connected with you over the past year or so. And I know that one of the things that just drew me right to you was the radical transparency and your willingness to show up really embodied in yourself and you take a stand for a lot of parts that people long to have themselves be able to see.
You show up radically in your essence. And it's just been so beautiful to witness your journey and your your process of just being so fucking real. And I think that that's really one of the many reasons why people connect to you so fully is you're fucking real and you're fucking honest and it's fucking awesome. I love it.
Caitlin: Yeah. That has been a journey. And I really relate to that feeling of, “I have to have all perfect days because I'm a coach and I should have my shit together because I'm in college and all these stupid expectations.” I didn't want people to think that anymore, because what I was seeing was, even for me, I would see all these coaches and I would think, “Fuck I'm not going to be successful. I'm not going to be successful, because how are they always so flawless?” There are now many videos of me bawling my eyes out on social media and pictures of me crying and things that I'm not afraid to show because I don't want people to feel alone in that experience anymore.
The human experience is something that we have been gifted and we've been gifted both positive and negative emotions. Imagine we didn't have negative emotion, we would be so stupid and we would just do anything and we would just take the biggest risks possible and probably all end up dead because we have a signal, saying “Hey, can you not be an idiot? That's unsafe.” When we learn to listen, we're like, “Oh, that person actually shouldn't be my field.”
So we can start to learn that this is information for us to move through rather than being like, “I have to be positive and happy and fluffy all of the time.” No, not a chance. And we also get to remember that this experience is about contrast. We can't have happiness without sadness. We can't have day without night. We can't have the hot without the cold. We can't have any of that. We're built for it.
The faster people can see that as leaders, we are showing like we are here for contrast as well. We are here for the whole experience. Then they can start to embrace that. Because my "bad days", or my spells of depression, went on for years. They didn't need to go on for years. I just thought that I had to be happy all the time and not pretend to be happy all the time, which was highlighting how sad I was. And now if I have a moment, I have a day, I have a week or whatever it is. It's usually not even a week. It's usually a few hours of a day. And I move through it so quickly, not because I force myself through it, but because I naturally just go, “Well, I'm just going to fall in a heap now and I'm just going to cry and I'm going to put on sad music and I'm going to wallow in this and I'm just going to let it do its thing.”
How to show up fucking real, and not forcing yourself to be or feel something
Caitlin: And then it does its thing. And then I come out, I'm like, oh. I actually feel like not 100%, that I just kind of go into that weird realm where you kind of feel a little bit of nothingness, I guess. And then a few hours later, you start to like regain that. And so being able to normalize that for other people actually helps them move through it faster, but not in a bypassing way, in a really healthy way, because emotion, emotional response technically is only meant to last 90 seconds in the body. That's the hormone. And it comes through and it flushes out. But we keep triggering ourselves by thinking about it and by trying to force ourselves to be something that we're not. And so when we can go, you know what "I am that, I am sad, I am depressed, I am anxious. Oh, but I'm also the most joyous, expansive, incredible person on the earth as well," and allow those experiences to co-exist. It means that the world just starts moving so much easier and and more flowing for us.
Rachael: Hmm. Yes, I love that. And that's so true. You know, contrast is one of the reasons why our human experience is so potent and so beautiful and polarity exists in all things. And I think that so many of us come to earth to learn, to experience the magnitude of what it is to be human. And that is many, many different things. It's darkness, it's light, it’s ecstatic experiences, it's heartbreak. It's all the things.
And I relate so much to allowing the emotional experiences to happen because I used to suppress my feelings. It was a huge trauma response that I had as a way of coping. And over the past several years, I've done a lot of work of actually just allowing my emotion. And for it to be fluid and to know, like if I'm feeling sad, I could also feel really happy in an hour from now and not identifying with the feelings, because, we aren't our feelings and our thoughts and feelings aren't facts, and they are experiences that are very real.
And so we can allow them to come in and to move through us through breath, sound, or movement in whatever way that looks like. And for me, I love crying. I love a good cry, cried today, feeling better now. It's a beautiful thing, crying is literally your body's physical way of relieving stress or relieving energy. So when we don't allow ourselves to cry, imagine all of that emotion just getting bottled into the cells of your body. And so when we can just be in that fluid motion of, I could feel really fucking great one minute and then be like, oh, I'm feeling a little angry the next and that does not make it mean anything about me and what I’m capable of. It makes life a lot more flowy and I won't say easy, from the perspective of like "everything's always easy," because that's fucking bullshit, but there's an essence of ease that can happen as a result of investing in coaches, and counsellors and therapy and courses and read books.
And I have practices that have helped me mindfully rewire and unlearn programming to now be able to be like, yeah, I'm a human being with a vast amount of experiences that happen on a day to day basis. And the contrast is not something that ever goes away. Like there are different potent experiences that happen depending on where you're at. I'm sure some of the things that I go through now would have been fucking devastating when I was 17. And now we're good in an hour.
So you learn to alchemize things more quickly and you have coping mechanisms and new strategies to help support yourself. And I think that that's why coaching is so powerful, because you learn how to integrate parts of yourself and you learn to support yourself differently and you learn to hold yourself accountable. And it's not about the bypassing of experiences. It's about learning how to actually navigate through them through that lens of compassion for your fucking humanness.
Caitlin: I fully agree with that. Recently, I've just been navigating moving across the country that's having lockdown's left, right and center. And there's times where I have been very nervous, and times I definitely had a panic attack and my whole body felt like it was shutting down and I felt like I just couldn't stop crying. And you know what? I just put my phone down. I got off social media. I was like, “In this moment, I don't need to do anything except be with myself.” And did it make it any less painful? No, but did having no expectation on trying to change it make it that little bit easier? Yes, because I couldn't change it. Even some of my very basic practices I couldn't do. I went to journal, my body said, no, I don't want to think about this. I don't want to talk about this right now. I just want you to be in nature, go for a walk. Put your phone down, that's all you get.
Connecting with your intuition and acting on what it’s telling you
Caitlin: One thing I hear all the time is, How do you follow your intuition? How do you know if it's like fear or intuition or whatever it is? Shadow work actually really helps you with that, because most of the time we know our intuition. And anyone who thinks they don't are literally bullshitting themselves. What happens is that our conditioning creeps in and it's like, yeah, but that doesn't feel safe and here's my logical reasons why or my body's reasons why.
For example, I was in relationships and codependent relationships since I was 12 or 13 years old. And recently I left my partner. And it took me a really long time and a lot of work to be able to undo my abandonment issues, undo my attachment issues, undo all of that stuff, to finally listen to my intuition, that said, Caitlin, you need to be alone. You need to go on your next path and you need to just learn to be with yourself and do all that. But even though I have known that for probably about seven years, I have been so scared that I wouldn't be able to handle it, that I had to do so much work to be able to get to a place where I felt, “OK, yes, I can finally listen to my intuition.” And that is the beauty of this work. That's the beauty of doing the actual deep work and not just trying to manifesting things for the sake of manifesting it, but like going, “wow, I'm alone in a hotel quarantine right now, so I'm technically a in a room 24 hours a day for 14 days of my life, and I have never felt more connected.”
Rachael: That's so beautiful.
Caitlin: And that's because I listened, I finally learned to listen, and I got through so much of my stuff, I got so much of those voices telling me I was unworthy and doing all those things. And I allowed every experience to come up as it needed to come up. And because I stayed with myself and I listened to that intuition and it said, do this. Do that. Make this decision. Drive there, do, blah, blah, blah, blah. I get to sit here today and feel like full-body fuck yes. I did absolutely everything right by me.
Rachael: Thank you so much for sharing all of that. And, it's so true, people sometimes forget that the key ingredient to manifesting what you want is feeling safe to receive it and to move, to take the actions to actually get there. We all are divinely gifted with an intuition, every single human being has the ability to connect to that intuitive aspect. But it does depending on what you've experienced and gone through in your life and your conditioning. It does sometimes get clouded by your logical mind and the lenses in which you have been taught to see things through. And, I know for me, such a huge part of it is creating safety because, it's not just our minds, it's our bodies, our bodies really do keep the score.
And so much of my process of healing my programming and healing from trauma has been on the somatic side of, you know, screaming and hitting pillows, or shaking my body. If I notice I'm having a panic attack. I grab a huge chunk of ice and I'll take deep breaths. I'm not trying to think my way out of these experiences. Sometimes it's really important to remember that your body holds so much from your entire life. And so when we learn to really connect to the body and connect the body to the mind, knowing that they're not actually separate at all, it creates some really potent transformational experiences.
And it's just so beautiful to me. I have been able to witness your journey and to celebrate you and your becoming as you have allowed yourself to really step into this new chapter. And, I think that it really speaks to the importance of prioritizing who we are and how we feel and who we’re being, because the deliciousness and yumminess of life happens as a result of doing this work. People typically avoid these things because it's fucking hard. It's hard to look at yourself in the mirror or even have to explore the things that have caused you a tremendous amount of pain. It's not easy. And that's why it's so important to have a rock solid support system. People that you can lean into that are qualified to help you, that want to love you the whole way through. And I just fucking adore you so much. And it's been so beautiful to connect with you in this way and to hear more about your story and your journey.
But before we go, I just would love for you to, in your own way, let us know what being an embodied leader means to you?
Caitlin: To me it is just bringing all of you and not being afraid of who you are and what people might say. And coming back to that quote, "People will either like you or they won't like you, and it has nothing to do with you." And being able to stand in that and be okay with that and just go, this is what I believe, and if you're along for the ride and if you want to come with me, I am here with open arms. And if you don't, I still have open arms. I'm still sending you love. And that is 100% okay with me. But it doesn't stop you from moving forward just because someone doesn't agree with you.
Rachael: I love that so much. Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm just always so grateful every time we get to connect and I'd love for you to share what you got going on, where people can find you, how they can connect with you, all the things.
Caitlin: Yeah. So you can connect with me on Instagram. It's @complete_bycaitlin and my core program is Ignite. So it runs over four days, but it also has a self-paced portion to it. So the self-paced teaches absolutely everything about shadow work, gives you all of the tools to work with it. Because the one thing I found about shadow work is that you can't just do it in four days. You can't just do it in five weeks, it's a lifelong journey. And I really wanted a place for people to be able to keep coming back to and landing and going, okay, what is this part? What is going on? What tool can I use? And I have it all set out for you. And then the four day is like an initiation into archetype work and shadow work. And there's a portion of both the light and the dark as well. So it's a really fun experience. So that's running on September 12th. All of that information is in my bio. I also take on one on one clients. So if that's something that you're feeling a little bit vulnerable around shadow work, I do work one on one with people as well, to create a little bit more safety until they feel ready to jump into a group thing.
Rachael: It's just been such an honor to have you in this space and for you to share your magic with everyone. For all those of you who are here, please feel free to reach out to either of us. Share your takeaways from today's episode. I will see you all next week. Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of your day.
If you're interested in learning from or working with Caitlin or Rachael, follow the links below:
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