This Is Why You Feel Lonely, Anxious, & Emotionally Stuck w/ Dr. Margaret Paul

[00:00:00] How transformational it is over getting love outside themselves and shifting into the intention to learn about loving themselves and sharing their love with others. Dr. Margaret Paul is a best-selling author, relationship expert. She holds a PhD in psychology and she has spent more than five decades helping thousands of individuals and couples heal emotional pain.

[00:00:27] Dr. When people become aware of how controlling they've been and the problems that that's caused and they shift that to learning to love themselves and others, it's like so amazingly transformational. How do you tie identity into all of this? Dr. Too many people believe that who they are is what they've absorbed. They don't realize that who they are is their true soul self. Do you believe there always has to be a protagonist?

[00:00:54] Dr. I don't believe that anybody grows up in this society without it. Dr. Today, Margaret, I'm super excited to kind of take this to the next level. Dr. Well, thank you. I'm looking forward to it. Dr. So I really want to start because what I really like to know is we've discussed, you know, these life relaunches and the moments that kind of change everything.

[00:01:23] Dr. But let's go back and what are you seeing in life now for people in today's world around the most significant relaunches? I usually find that when I'm asking the question, they're like, oh my God, which one should I even start with? What are you feeling about the relaunches that you're going through? Dr. Well, so I had a major relaunch when we discovered interbonding.

[00:01:52] And when Erica and I, Dr. Erica Czopich and I created interbonding, that was a major, major relaunch for me because I went from being a caretaker, people pleaser and being very sick to learning to love myself and get physically and emotionally healed. And my work just started to take off really at that point.

[00:02:14] So it was a huge relaunch to shift from trying to get love to learning to love myself. That's that was the major relaunch in my life.

[00:02:27] And I see this over and over again with people, how transformational it is for them to shift their intention from trying to have control over getting love outside themselves and trying to control that in so many ways that brings about anxiety and depression and shifting into the intention to learn about loving themselves and sharing their love with others.

[00:02:55] You know, as you already know, in interbonding, there's just two intentions to control getting love, avoiding pain and to learn about loving yourself and the other. And that's a huge relaunch when people become aware of how controlling they've been and the problems that that's caused in their relationships and their families and their work and with their kids and with their friends.

[00:03:20] When they really become aware of their intention and they shift that to loving themselves and learning to love themselves and others. It's like so amazingly transformational. So we talk often about identity shifts. And when you were going through this, you know, really heavy time in your life with many different seasons we go through.

[00:03:45] What do you, how do you, how do you tie in that future identity, understanding how important loving yourself, nurturing yourself is with people that are just like grinding it. We're going so fast that we put ourselves last. How do you tie identity into all of this?

[00:04:11] Well, so this is, this is a very interesting question because too many people believe that who they are is what we call the wounded self, the wounded child, the wounded adolescent. They believe that that who they are is what they've absorbed from media, from parents, from teachers, from peers. They don't realize that who they are is their true soul self, which is what we call the inner child. There's the wounded child, which has all the false beliefs.

[00:04:40] But what we call the inner child is our soul. That's our true identity. And unfortunately, most people were not mirrored by the people they grew up with. Their parents didn't mirror what a beautiful soul they have. They didn't mirror their laughter, their creativity, their kindness, their expressions of joy. So many things that weren't mirrored.

[00:05:09] What was mirrored was that they weren't good enough, that they were, that they made too many mistakes, that they didn't do well enough in school. And so then they think that's who they are. And so their identity is that they're not good enough. But as they learn and practice inner bonding and learn to see who they are in their soul through the eyes of their higher self,

[00:05:33] which is the only way we can really see who we are is through our higher self, not through our wounded self. Then their whole identity shifts to who they really are. And in that is a blueprint for what we came to the planet to offer. And so, so often when people do this work, they find themselves shifting in what they want to do in the world, shifting their work. If they're happy with their work, then it's not a problem.

[00:06:02] But if they're not, then learning who they really are and what they came to offer is a huge launch for them, a relaunch. So, Margaret, this is so critical because I think people are probably like, okay, it's a huge shift. You mentioned at the very beginning people pleasers. And I think many of our audience grew up with trying to please one parent, both parents, people at work.

[00:06:31] We try to do everything. And it's difficult to allow yourself to just say, okay, I'm now going to start to take down those walls. But you have a process to help do that. Can you share with us? Well, interbonding is a six-step process. It's a six-step pathway that if you follow these steps, you will heal.

[00:07:00] You will heal the false beliefs. You will connect to your higher guidance. You will become what we call a loving adult. You will learn to define your true soul self. That is what these six steps offer. And that is very different from any other form of work. We developed these six steps 42 years ago. And sometimes people try and copy them. I even had to go to court because somebody put it in a book without even giving us permission.

[00:07:28] But these are very, very powerful steps. They're not hard to learn. But like anything worth learning, they take practice. Like learning to play an instrument takes practice. This takes practice. But when people follow this path, they will heal. So, Margaret, can we go through high level what these six steps are? Yeah. Okay. So the first step is learning to get present in your body with your feelings.

[00:07:58] This was a very hard step for me because I was brought up to be very tuned into other people's feelings, but not at all aware of my own. I was told that my feelings didn't count. They were ridiculous. They didn't matter at all. And so when I started to practice inner body, it took me time to learn to not just be in my head, but also in my heart and soul. And so step one is learning to be present in your body with your feelings because you can't learn from them.

[00:08:27] You can't take responsibility for them if you don't even know you have them. So that's step one. Before we move on, don't you think that there is something – and I can say that throughout my life, there's been times that to go too deep felt almost like, oh, God, if I go there, the walls that I built up, everything that I've built to this day could come crashing down.

[00:08:55] Are more people starting to say, you know what, I'm tired of living a lie. I'm tired of trying to be something I'm not. And they're willing to now do the work to understand learning to get present in the body with yourself. Well, they're tired. They're tired of anxiety. They're tired of depression and guilt and shame and conflict, relationship conflict. They're tired of feeling alone inside. They're tired of feeling lonely. They're tired of numbing out.

[00:09:24] They want to live their life with peace and joy and fullness. And so when they reach a point where they're just miserable, they're willing to do something about it. Now, you brought up a good point like, well, what if I go into these feelings and I can't handle them? That's a big issue. That's a big false belief. One of the interesting things is when I work with people is that the wounded part of us, which can be any age, it can be pre-birth.

[00:09:52] It can be a toddler, an infant. It can be an adolescent, depending upon when we absorb a false belief or when we turn to a particular addiction. Like if you learn to smoke when you're 12, when you're smoking, there's a 12-year-old in charge. This wounded part of us seems to not know that we've grown up.

[00:10:12] And so very often when I'm working with somebody and I say, I want you to ask your wounded self how old that wounded self thinks you are, they'll start laughing and say, oh, they think I'm seven years old. They don't know I'm an adult. And as a seven-year-old, you can't handle your feelings. You had to numb out. You had to turn to various ways of not feeling them. But as an adult, you can learn to manage your feelings.

[00:10:42] And so it's really important for that wounded part of us to know that we're grown up. We were in a completely different state than we were when we were three or five or seven or ten. And that's very helpful for people in recognizing that, yes, they can learn to manage their feelings. They can learn to learn from their feelings. All of our feelings have vital information for us. They tell us whether we're loving ourselves or abandoning ourselves.

[00:11:11] They tell us whether other people are safe or dangerous or situations are safe or dangerous. We have this intuition inside. And if we're not aware of what's going on in our body with our feelings, we're bypassing all of that vital information. And so as people do go into inner body and learn it and practice it, they discover that it's a joy to learn from their feelings. They're not overwhelmed. They're rarely overwhelmed by them as an adult.

[00:11:42] That's so true. So going into step number two, what would that be? So step two is breathing into your heart and opening to learning rather than trying to control. We consciously open to learning about loving ourselves. We have to start with ourselves. And then I ask people to imagine an older, wiser part of themselves, like 500 years older than they are right now. Very loving, very wise, very powerful, higher self.

[00:12:12] Because a lot of people, I mean, they might try to imagine God or a master, but a lot of people have had spiritual abuse. So when they imagine that, they imagine something that wants to control them, whereas if they imagine an older, wiser part of themselves, it's part of them. And it makes it easier to tap into that information because it's always there. It's here for us. And whatever people use to access it is fine.

[00:12:41] But if people don't have any kind of image that they've turned to or any kind of belief system, visualizing an older, wiser aspect of them can be very helpful. I like that because I often talk about the wise woman inside of every one of us and the highest self. And I like, you're like, forget about just 20, 30, 40 years from now. It's like 500. Yeah. Really old. Really old. Yeah. Our soul is old.

[00:13:10] Our soul is ancient. Yeah. So then, okay. Step three. Okay. Then step three is we go back down into the feeling and we ask our inner child, what are we telling ourselves and how are we treating ourselves from our wounded self? That's creating anxiety or depression or guilt or shame or anger or aloneness or emptiness or bitterness or resentment, any of these feelings.

[00:13:35] And we go inside and if you've been showing up at all for your feelings, your inner child will trust you and tell you. Your inner child might say, you're putting all this pressure on me. You're telling me I better be perfect. I can't make a mistake. I have to get other people's approval to be okay. These are some of the kinds of things that the wounded self does over and over again, puts pressure on ourselves to do it right, be right, say the right thing.

[00:14:04] Don't make mistakes. Don't fall on your face. And it creates a lot of stress. And so we want to tune into that. What are we telling ourselves? How are we treating ourselves from that wounded part? And once we become aware of that, we go into that wounded part and say, well, there must be a good reason you're saying that. What are you trying to control?

[00:14:26] What are you trying to avoid by telling the inner child not to be who you are, but to be perfect, whatever that is. Don't make mistakes. Don't be human. What are you trying to control by doing that? And that's where we become aware of our false beliefs. And it's so important to become aware of them. Do you believe there always has to be a protagonist? Is there always like a spot where you're like, it's rooted here?

[00:14:55] Or is that actually like, you know, yeah, we're learning more and more each day about what the inner child and the wounded child and where it comes from? You know, I don't believe that anybody grows up in this society without a protagonist or many. It could be parents. It could be peers. Yeah, it could be religious, you know, teachers. It could be teachers in school. I mean, it could be media. It could be social media.

[00:15:26] There's so many ways that we can get hurt and so many ways that we can absorb false beliefs. And so I don't think it's possible to grow up without that. It doesn't mean we blame them because, you know, like our parents are usually doing the best they could. But I don't think I've had a client who knew that their parents gave birth to them and said, I'm going to do all I can to mess this kid up. Right. Yeah, they don't. They don't think that way.

[00:15:55] They do the best they can. And blaming other people or blaming the media or blaming our parents just keeps us stuck in being victims. We do need to understand where we got our beliefs so that we can understand why we're behaving the way that we are and move into truth about them. But it doesn't mean blaming anybody. Inner bonding is never about blaming anybody, no matter what they did.

[00:16:21] I mean, I've worked with I have specialized training in dealing with trauma and I've worked with people with extreme trauma. But what's the point of blaming? I mean, where does that? It just keeps you stuck. And so people really do heal their trauma, their pain when they learn to develop their loving adult, when they learn to open to learning with their inner child, which is their soul, the guidance within.

[00:16:48] And they learn to open to learning with their higher guidance rather than listen to their wounded selves, because that's what gets them into trouble. Well, I remember the first time I heard the concept from you that it does not necessarily need to be an actual physical person. It could be social media. It could be, I mean, there's so much, the religions that, you know, kind of have infused what we believe, our belief system.

[00:17:17] That was really eye-opening because when you start to think about that you don't need to completely nail it down to that specific mom, dad, you know, who it was. And then there was no judgment, which I'm a huge believer in because as soon as you can let go of judging and blaming,

[00:17:39] and you're looking at it from this is your journey, this is your path, and being able to say, like, I can't change the past. Can't. That's like who you are. Cellular level, this has all happened to you. But that approach, I felt, Margaret, was just like, wow. And it just keeps going. There's just more and more that you can start to realize, like, wow, and this impacted me. And that was really powerful. So what would be step four?

[00:18:08] So step four is opening to learning with your higher guidance. I ask people to imagine being in a beautiful place in nature with their higher self or whatever else that there's teachers, spiritual teachers, bring them all in and ask two questions. One is, what's the truth about any false beliefs I've uncovered? And what would be loving to me? Either right now, if I can do it right now, or in an hour or whatever.

[00:18:36] It may be just holding my inner child, holding a doll or stuffed animal or a pillow. It may be speaking up with somebody. It may be looking into changing jobs. It may be getting more exercise. I may be eating better. It could be so many different things. But we want to tune in to what is loving to ourselves in any given moment. This is a question I ask throughout the day. What's loving to me right now? What's loving regarding my time if I'm not working?

[00:19:05] What's loving regarding what I put into my body? Whether I need time alone or with somebody else. I'm asking all the time, what's loving to me? And when you ask that enough, you start to access really powerful information about what's loving to you. And once you understand that, then you move to step five, which is you take the loving action. You do it. You don't just think about it. You actually do it.

[00:19:33] And then step six is you evaluate again by tuning into your feelings. And if you feel relief from what you were feeling, then you know you've taken a loving action. And how long does this whole system take once you get good at it? Is this something you can do very quickly? Yes. I mean, at the beginning, it takes practice. But once you really have practice for quite a while, it becomes natural and very easy.

[00:20:03] I mean, I can tune into a feeling. I can know what I'm telling myself. I can go to my guidance for the truth and loving action, like within a minute. So when you start to have, and what you said, which I do want to go back to, loving, what is loving to me right now? Yeah. I mean, that in itself, if you just ask, but then you got to act on it too. Right. Right.

[00:20:30] So I'm sure you have, and you've been doing this, as you said, for decades, you've seen, you know, I'm sure people go through this. What are some of the breakthroughs that you've seen? Oh my God. There's so, there's so many breakthroughs. Somebody might say, oh my God, the reason I've been so upset my whole life is I'm trying to control everything. And that's why I'm sick.

[00:20:58] And they realize they're controlling behavior. And when they shift that, they start to feel full inside. They start to feel peaceful inside. When they realize that all they've been doing is trying to control everybody to get love and avoid pain and feel safe, when they can actually bring that through to themselves. And then when they are able to bring love into themselves and get full of love, then they have the greatest experience in life, which is the sharing of love.

[00:21:27] That is the greatest experience in life is to share love. Unfortunately, so many people never have that experience because they're always trying to get love because they're abandoning themselves. They don't have love to share. But what I see over and over with people is the joy of being able to share love, the joy of feeling full and peaceful inside, the joy of finding their passion and purpose. Because that passion and purpose is in their soul.

[00:21:56] There's a blueprint in there. It's in their inner child. And as they learn to take loving care of themselves, they are able to tune into why they're actually on the planet. What are they here to offer? Because I believe that our greatest joy is in what we offer and in the service we do. But we can't do that if we're abandoning ourselves.

[00:22:19] And so what I see happening with people is so much joy and so much sense of freedom as they learn and practice interbonding. So you have been doing this for so many years, self-development. Right. You have seen that there's a lot of charlatans out there. A lot of people saying and professing, do this quick fix. It can change everything for you. Right. Your program is habit creation.

[00:22:49] Yeah. You literally, how do you provide somebody the ability? Is it through a course? Is it through like what's involved to really take you through the six steps? Okay. We provide a lot. We have a free seven-day course to give people the overview of interbonding. I have a fabulous 30-day video and email course called Love Yourself, which teaches interbonding.

[00:23:19] I teach a bi-monthly master circle where I bring people through interbonding. I speak on a topic and then I do what I call laser sessions, short sessions with people to see interbonding at work and see how powerful it is. And of course, I work individually with clients. I have a group and maybe a second group starting. These are all very, very powerful experiences for people.

[00:23:46] We have many courses, many 30-day courses, many, many ways. I have 15 books where most of them are on interbonding, where people can learn through books. We have many free offerings on the way. Okay. You just said 15 books and I just was like, oh my goodness. That is incredible. If there were one book out of all 15 that you're like, start here, what would that be?

[00:24:12] I would say with one of the latest, which is Lonely No More. Lonely No More, The Astonishing Power of Interbonding really goes very deeply. But the other one is the Interbonding Workbook. Because if people like to do it, that is a very inexpensive and profound way of learning interbonding, the Interbonding Workbook.

[00:24:34] So do you feel, as we're wrapping up right now, I read an article the other day on loneliness, that it is at the highest of literally epidemic right now. It is an epidemic. Right. And it's getting more and more serious amongst not only women, but men and children. Why do you think that is? What is happening in our world?

[00:25:05] Well, you know, there's so much people getting together over text or over social media rather than in person. You know, when I was growing up, everything was in person. Oh, you know, I got together with all my friends in person. I dated in person. I mean, everything was in person. But today, so often it's over text. I mean, even people who are looking for a partner.

[00:25:30] I said to one of my clients who was talking to somebody over text, I said, at least meet them over Zoom or, you know, or online before getting together. Because just over text, you know, that's not connecting. It's not connecting. It's a very lonely way of being with people. And even online can be lonely, although I like online a lot.

[00:25:59] But people don't seem to get together all that much anymore. And it's being, you know, like I said, it's the sharing of love. That's the greatest experience in life. And I think that's why people are so lonely. One, they're abandoning themselves so they don't have love to share. And then when they are with people, they're trying to get love and they're going to feel very lonely. If they're, if they're, if they feel alone inside because they're abandoning themselves, they're going to feel lonely with the people they're with. And so.

[00:26:27] Well, and we're out of, we're out of practice being with each other. Right. It used to be, you know, oh, come to this experience. In fact, I talked to somebody this morning and she said, I only do one event where I go to an actual event a year. You need to be coming to relaunch to a rich life live in September. And she started laughing and she's like, you know what? I think I need to come.

[00:26:52] I think I need to be part of that because there's something that just gets fueled within us when you are there physically, energetically. And that's why when I first met you, I was just like, oh, the wisdom that you carry with you at, you know, this, this incredible level is, is powerful.

[00:27:16] And the process you've walked me through numerous times now, um, you know, the things that really work continue to really work. So Margaret, I got to say huge. Thank you for being here, for kind of walking us through this. And we will have everything in the show notes. We'll have the ability. If you're sitting out there and you're just like, you know what? Something's got to shift here. Something's got to change. Definitely reach out.

[00:27:42] Definitely take one of the free options that Margaret talked about. And also share this episode with somebody else because there is always somebody that you know this could impact. So Margaret, as we always say, it's, it's like live now, love now, relaunch now into that next best version. And until you do the work, it's very difficult to have the results. All right.

[00:28:12] Your next level is waiting. Thanks for tuning in. This is amazing what we're doing right now. Relaunch into a rich life. If today's episode sparks something in you, don't keep it to yourself. Please share it. I'll tell you more later about how that actually helps you have more success yourself. Subscribe so you don't miss one episode.

[00:28:40] Let's create unstoppable momentum together. So until next time, keep relaunching, keep rising. And remember, it's go time.