How To Stop Self Sabotaging In Relationships

Kevin Anthony 0:05
Welcome to the Love Lab podcast, a safe and fun place to get real and learn about sex. Whether you’re a man or woman, single or couple, this is the show for you. I am your host, Kevin Anthony. And I am here to guide you to go from good to amazing in the bedroom, and your relationships.

All right, welcome back to the Love Lab podcast. This is episode 297 and it is titled, how to stop self-sabotaging in relationships. This is a subject I am so looking forward to talking about as a coach, and even long before I did coaching work, I would just repeatedly see these patterns of people just self-sabotaging over and over and over again. One of my as my wife used to say, one of my superpowers in this lifetime is the ability to recognize patterns. And so even before I was doing this work, I would just like watch my friends through relationship after relationship after relationship or job after job after job or you name it. And it would just be the same pattern of getting in their own way and sabotaging themselves. And it used to drive me crazy because I really didn’t understand it. I’m like, Come on, don’t you see them, you know. But I have since learned that there are some real reasons why people do it and why they can’t see it. And there are things that can be done. And so we’re going to talk about all of that today, I have a guest with me, who you can see if you’re watching on YouTube right now. And we’re gonna unpack this, we’re gonna really talk about it. So I think it’s gonna be a fascinating discussion.

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Okay, my guest today Junie Moon CEO of midlifeloveoutloud, a global love mentor, Best Selling Author, women’s empowerment leader, and certified Shadow Work coach has supported 1000s of women over the past 30 years to claim what is their birthright, the freedom to be and love themselves without apology. When women experience this freedom to love themselves without apology, they attract lifelong next-level love and experience an extraordinary second half of life. So welcome to the show Junie.

Junie Moon 3:23
Hi, that was great. My God, that course sounds amazing. And I love there’s kind of that pun of take it into your own hands, sort of like take it into your own hands. So you don’t have to take it into your own hands. But anyway.

Kevin Anthony 3:35
Absolutely.

Junie Moon 3:38
Anyway, it’s so good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Kevin Anthony 3:40
Thanks for coming on the show. And I just I want to make one thing clear at the beginning of this episode because when you hear the bio, you can obviously hear that Jr. Spent a lot of time working with women. But she does also work with men. And this show is not going to be specific necessarily to men or women, everybody self-sabotages. I see it across the board. You know, there are a lot of patterns that I see that I can say that I tend to see women do this pattern more, or I tend to see men do this pattern more. The self-sabotage thing is equal across the board. Everybody’s self-sabotaging.

Junie Moon 4:16
Absolutely. Absolutely. And we all self-sabotage. And we do it in different ways. There are different patterns men and women might have different reasons for self-sabotaging, however, yeah, this message is for everyone. And I love working with men. So it’s nice to be able to speak to both.

Kevin Anthony 4:35
All right. So let’s just dive right in. Yeah, the first question is, what do we mean by self-sabotage? What are we talking about when we say that people tend to self-sabotage?

Junie Moon 4:49
That’s a great question. Because yeah, what does that mean? I think it’s simple. It’s we get in our own way, in some way we win. We might have desires and dreams, we there are things that we want to experience to explore to have in our life. And then there are these patterns or these behaviors or these thoughts or these experiences that we seem to keep creating, that either slow us down or have us going the other direction. And we go, why did I do that? How? Why did I say that? How did I sabotage or blow up something that mattered to me? And it doesn’t have to be this huge blow-up. It’s just that something happens. And it gets in our way. And if we’re responsible for self-sabotage.

Kevin Anthony 5:42
Yeah, you know, one of the things that I see when it comes to this, because you made an interesting point there when you’re talking about what it is, which is, you know, we go, Ah, why did I do this? Why did I do that? And what I see is, if you can even get to the point where you can say, Why did I you’re already a step ahead of most people. Oh, my God, it’s so true. Yeah. Because most people are completely unaware that they’re actually doing these things. So I’m curious if you have some examples from your work of common sort of self-sabotaging patterns that you see?

Junie Moon 6:20
Well, I want to just piggyback on what you just said, because I think that’s like so true. If we can actually at least acknowledge and be aware that there’s actually something happening that we’re doing. That’s a really great first step. So you can kind of go okay, let’s do that again. Or how do we stop doing that? And sometimes it’s not as easy as just going, oh, I want to stop it. Well, wouldn’t it be great if we could just go? Boom, let’s stop it. However, you know, there are ways to stop and we’re gonna talk about that today. I don’t remember your question. Can you repeat?

Kevin Anthony 6:58
I was just curious if there were some common self-sabotage patterns that you see in the work that you do.

Junie Moon 7:04
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Oh, well, I primarily work with women, like I’ve said, and women that are single, or in a relationship, and they, they want to have a deeper connection, a deeper intimacy. So it can be anything as you shared, it could be honestly, anything that we desire. And so one of the biggest patterns I see because primarily, it’s women that are starting over in love is that they may not put themselves online on dating, they want the partner, they want to meet somebody, and they keep coming up with excuses. I’m not, I’m too fat, I need to, you know, to lose some weight before I put myself out there, that’s a big deal with women, especially in the second half of life, not the fat part, but the, you know, I’m not comfortable in my body, I need to, I need to be in a better place in my life. There’s that I’m not ready to believe, there’s that I’m not good enough to believe. I mean, that’s really at the core of I’m afraid that if I do put myself out there, I might be rejected, or I might get hurt. So we come up with different strategies, everybody has different strategies.

However, the biggest strategy or pattern I see is people just stay stuck and keep saying they want something but they don’t take action. And the actions that they take are the complete opposite of what they really need to do to be able to move forward to create that partnership, the depth of the partner they have with the partner they have or to really open to a new partner. And I’m just going to share real quickly I had this one client that came to me, and she had been single for maybe two, or three years. Yes, it was a very tough marriage that she let go of there was there was abuse, there were there were things. But she was ready. She had done a lot of therapy, and she was ready to put herself out there. But every time she was online, but every time it was time to go out for that date, she would overeat. And then she’d feel bloated. And then she’d feel ugly. And then she was like, I can’t go out. And she would cancel the date. And so we had to unpack it. And it’s not just awareness of the pattern. It’s like then what, right?

So she was aware of I don’t know why I’m doing that when I really want to go out there. But this is in control of me, and I’m not in control of it. And so that’s where this work that I do is so helpful. It’s like well, what is what what is having her do that, and why is she not in control? And we regressed it. We looked at it and she realized that there was something that happened in her childhood with her father, where she was going out with boys and he shamed her and called her some names and had her feeling like the slot or the whatever he called her and she felt so horrible about herself and not loved by her dad, which every little girl wants to feel that love and So we did the inner work to help her heal that relationship with him and everything shifted.

And now she’s been this amazing guy for a couple of years. But the funny thing was, she looked at me, I’ll never forget that she looked at me with these big eyes. And she was like, I’m sabotaging my relationships and going out with guys now in my 60s, because of what happened when I was 15. And I said I don’t know. However, that is, what happens is, you know, we have these experiences that hurt us, that have us in our fear. And it’s in our unconscious mind. We don’t realize it, and then we sabotage it because we’re afraid of experiencing that pain again. So yeah, yeah.

Kevin Anthony 10:39
We’ll talk more about the whys. Right. Yeah. As we go a little further. Yeah. But I just thought, you know, you said something that is absolutely so true. And so it’s one thing to say that people self-sabotage, right? So because that can mean a lot of different things. It can mean, yeah, you did a subtle little thing here or there. But what you actually said in answering that question was, that people end up doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing to get to where they want to go. And I have to tell you, that literally has been my experience as well, in the coaching world, I literally watched them do not just, you know, the wrong thing. But the absolute opposite thing, the thing that will take them the furthest away from where they want to be.

Junie Moon 11:27
Yeah, yeah. And it’s like, Why? Why are you doing that? Why are you hitting your head against the wall? And God, why is my head hurting? It’s like, let me hit it even more. Yeah, it’s so painful to watch and painful to experience for sure.

Kevin Anthony 11:40
And what that tells us is, it tells us that there is definitely something much deeper there than whatever the surface-level issue is, right? So for instance, with your client, the surface level thing was I want to go out, you know, and meet some new men. But there was obviously something much deeper that kept causing her to do the opposite thing. Like what’s the opposite of going out on a date with somebody canceling and not going? Exactly. It’s likely it’s one thing to show up to the date, and then in sort of sabotage that way by being maybe argumentative, or, or criticizing nitpicking and just basically turning the other person off. So they don’t want to have a second date with you. It’s a whole other thing to just figure out an excuse and not go all together.

Junie Moon 12:24
Yeah, yeah. And so self-sabotage tends to have lots of excuses, excuses that lead to self-sabotage. Well, maybe this maybe that, maybe this, maybe that, and then boom, the complete opposite.

Kevin Anthony 12:39
Yeah, you know, I’ll give you a couple of patterns I see men doing when it comes to sex and love in relationships. Since you know, you were given some examples from your work with women. And one of the ones that I see with men all the time is they basically won’t commit to the woman early on. And their excuse for not committing to the woman early on, is that, you know, well, how do I know she’s really in or, or whatever? And it’s like, no, no, you don’t understand this. That’s not the way it works. This is like, I use this example all the time. You know, being an entrepreneur and running my own business.

You know, you see entrepreneurs starting out all the time. And they’re like, Well, I don’t want to put a lot of time and money into my business until it’s generating some income, you know? And it’s like, no, that’s the opposite way of how it works. You got to put the time and money in you’ve got to invest in it, for it to create some return. And it’s the same thing with the relationship. I see all these guys staying on the outside not investing in the relationship, because well, you know, either. I don’t know she’s not invested in me or whatever. It’s like she will be once she feels that you’re invested in her.

Junie Moon 13:49
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Kevin Anthony 13:54
So that’s one example. I see. Another example. I see. This happens a lot with men who are in relationships already and they’re complaining all the time that their partners don’t want to have sex. And it’s like, okay, and then we explore you know, what’s going on with you know, your sex life. So tell me what does it look like when you have sex? Right? How long does it last? How you know, how do you show up for that encounter? Right? And then you hear what they’re doing and it’s like, Well no wonder she’s not interested in sex look what you’re giving her.

Junie Moon 14:26
Oh my god, we are our worst enemies until we befriend ourselves. You know, you know when we start to really love ourselves and really honor ourselves then everything changes until then, boy Wow, it is quite a shitshow crazy journey.

Kevin Anthony 14:43
It unfortunately does become a big shit show. You know, as a coach or even just as a friend who’s holding space for you know, your friends if you’re not in the coaching space. You know how frustrating it is? As to watching somebody repeat the pattern over and over and over again, I actually was just having this conversation recently, I’ve had a couple of close friends who’ve been repeating some pretty obvious patterns. But the beautiful thing is, is that they’ve actually asked for help. They’ve asked for my opinion on you know, okay, how do I fix this? But my frustration over this most recent weekend was like, I’ve been telling them exactly what they need to do, here’s the pattern, here’s how you fix it. And no change is happening.

Junie Moon 15:39
I know, I know. It’s, we could No, we can have the most brilliant people give us the blueprint of what to do. But until we address the real reason for the self-sabotage, it’s great to know it, it’s great to understand it. But we’re still at the mercy of the stuff we don’t know. And that stuff, we don’t know, the blind spots, the shadows, wherever you want to call it. That’s what’s tripping us up. And we have to I have blind spots. And that’s why I reach out to mentors, and friends and say, Okay, what do you see? Am I missing anything? Or, Hey, have I fallen down the rabbit hole here? I think I’m on this because I’m just a human being too.

Kevin Anthony 16:18
So this is a perfect segue because we already alluded to it in the beginning about how there’s something deeper underneath the surface that’s often causing these patterns. So you will, how do we how do we get at that? How do we dig down there and figure out what the underlying patterns are?

Junie Moon 16:38
Yeah, so first, I want to just say that we’ve been kind of set up, we’ve been kind of set up to not really understand or be able to see these patterns as a human journey, it just kind of the way it is, you know, they are blind spots for a reason. And it’s about survival. You know, this is about not getting killed or kicked out of the tribe. I mean, we have 1000s and 1000s of years of programming in our DNA saying, Stay in the tribe, because if you get kicked out and sent out into the wilderness, you’re gonna die. We’re born with that, you know, that negative bias. Be careful, nothing bad happens. So when we just start our life, we’re already in survival mode. To some extent, we don’t know that. And then we also have experiences in our life that shape us.

You know, when we’re born, even though we have that kind of wiring, so to speak, what we’re also not necessarily censoring what we say what we do, we’re babies, you know, we cry, we poop, we, you know, we laugh, there’s nobody, we’re not going, Oh, I better not poop right now. It’s inconvenient for mom, you know. So, you know, we’re just, you know, who we are. But then we start to become more conscious. And we get these messages from well, meaning parents because they want us to stay safe. They want us to fit in, they don’t want us to get hurt. They want us to be okay. So they give us all the rules, societal rules, family rules, be a good little girl, be quiet, don’t don’t make waves don’t stand out. Little boys suck it up, don’t be too vulnerable, that’s weak, we get all these messages. And some of them are straight out. And a lot of them. We’re just sponges as kids, we just notice things and we take on these beliefs. And all of that is in our unconscious mind, you know, and 25% of our brain is unconscious.

So going back to it’s not our fault. And we’re kind of set up, we don’t see that we don’t know that no one’s telling us that we have this wiring or this conditioning. Until we get older and wiser and go, This isn’t working. I’m following all the rules, and I’m still getting in my own way. And I still don’t have deep love and I still can’t, you know, get naked with somebody and relax and enjoy pleasure or feel comfortable, you know, sharing my truth, whatever it is. So what is it? It’s all the conditioning. And sadly, most of the personal growth work that’s out there just is like the neck up good stuff like therapy and lots of great self-help books, we understand the territory, like you were saying, You tell them I see this pattern, this is what’s going on. So we understand it. But that’s just a piece of the puzzle. The huge puzzle is the living bee in the background in the Shadow Lands. And we’re not aware of it until we are and so there are great tools out there.

And one of the greatest tools is getting somebody to actually be outside of you. Like you just shared you’re like, Hey, dude, I’m seeing this pattern here. You know, just just do this. You know, this will change. We don’t necessarily see it with our own eyes. We don’t know what we don’t know until someone goes here. And then when you do the deeper transformational work like Shadow Work, which is what I do You, then you can start to heal it. And there is that saying feel it to heal it. And it’s just so true. Because we can’t think our way through we can. It’s a good start. However, we’re sabotaging because at the core of it, we’re terrified of being kicked out of the tribe, or disappointing Mom and dad, or not having love or not feeling safe. Ultimately, it’s it’s all about that.

Kevin Anthony 20:24
Yeah, that is some big stuff that you shared there. So I want to dive a little bit deeper into the shadow work part. So that is a modality that you use. And I personally think that the shadow work is great stuff, I want to obviously dive into what it is, so people understand it. But I also want to cover a little bit about what it isn’t, because one of the things that I’ve seen when it comes to shadow work, is a misunderstanding of what shadow work actually is. So what I want you to do first is just explain what is Shadow Work. And how does it kind of work? And then if you don’t happen to hit the one point that I want to make a distinction on, I’ll bring that in at the end.

Junie Moon 21:10
Okay, that sounds great. Well, first, let’s just say what shadow is. So as Shadow coined by Carl Jung is the part of us that we feel is bad or shameful, or we need to hide, hence, let’s throw it behind us. So we don’t have to look at it and we can make believe it’s not there, it’s in the dark. And so I better not be like that I better not show that aspect of myself, or bad stuff might happen. And again, this is usually in the unconscious realm, though, we could say, well, you know, I really didn’t like how my you know, my, my mom was when I was growing up, so I’m going to be the complete opposite of her. So we throw away these aspects of who we are.

However, we don’t throw away anything. It’s all inside of its energy, it’s just energy. So we can label it as I’m going to throw away aggression or laziness or even good stuff like our, you know, creativity or being childlike and playful. If we’ve had an experience that had us take on a message that said, that’s dangerous to be like, people can get hurt, you can get hurt, don’t be like that. We try not to be like that. And the challenge with that is it’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because there’s gold and everything that you think you shouldn’t be like with aggression, being able to stand your ground in a healthy way. Laziness, the ability to slow down and enjoy yourself, and have a day off. But if you’re judging those parts, there’s a really good chance that you’re acting the complete opposite, like a workaholic, if you think lazy is bad, are a people pleaser. If you think standing up and speaking up and expressing yourself is dangerous. So that’s the shadow.

So we have these patterns, we have pain, we’re not having the depth of communication, communication, the depth of intimacy, and the way we want our lives to be whatever, you know, fill in the blank. And we don’t know why we’re doing what we’re doing. Why are we sabotaging and so Shadow Work it. And let me just say there are a lot of people saying they do shadow work. And there are different ways of doing shadow work. I’m trained in the traditional Shadow Work model, by Cliff Berry and Mary Ellen Wall. And this is the trademark body of shadow work. And what they did, which was brilliant, was they took on different modalities and created these very specialized processes, where we start by what it is you want, what’s getting in your way, and then we drill down using part work to kind of figure out the landscape of, oh, there’s a part that really is telling me, you know, no one’s gonna ever love you, you’re too old, you know. And then there’s that part that’s going oh my god, I’m gonna be alone forever. And I’m so scared, let me just hide.

We look at maybe where that message came from. When I was a child, I was criticized or, you know, I had a really bad marriage. And now I’m terrified of opening up my heart again. So again, all of that is great information. It’s helping you get beyond the conscious mind by seeing patterns with certain tools. But where we we go to the next level, is that then we do these special processes to really feel that confidence, they the deservingness, they the ability to drop into our heart and go, Okay, I deserve to feel this love, I can receive this love. And we shift and rewire and heal those old patterns with a very new experience. So Shadow Work is shining a light on the stuff that’s not working, figuring out why it’s not working, where you might have gotten that wounding or that message to begin with. And then we take back our power consciously embodying it and owning it in a very different way.

Kevin Anthony 25:00
That was a beautiful explanation of what Shadow Work is, or at least should be, in my opinion, really easy to understand. And I love the way that you said, what we do is we shine a light on the stuff that’s hidden. So this is where I want to bring in the distinction because this is one of those little things that just irks me.

Junie Moon 25:26
What irks you?

Kevin Anthony 25:28
I know a lot of people who are really into shadow work, however, their version of shadow work is I need to dive into the shadows into the pits of hell, and swim around in there until I figure out how to fix all of this. And the problem with that, that I see is that they spend a lot of time reliving and rehashing these traumatic experiences and this pain over and over and over again, they’re at the bottom of the hole, and they stay there until they till they figure out that there’s somehow they fit filled in the hole, right. But for many of them, they just stay down there for extended periods of time. And I think that honestly does more trauma than it actually heals.

Junie Moon 26:16
I totally agree. I totally agree. And I will also say that it irks me too. And it irks me in a couple of ways. Well, one is it, you know, it pains me that people are going into the painful, traumatic laugh and kind of just revisiting it and round and round around, they go and they go well, I’ve done shadow work. I know now, you know, and again, we’ll great and then in my opinion to give Shadow Work a bad name, because it’s anything really changing the other way it really irks me and I will own that it really irks me is that people when you know, they reach out to talk to me and you know, I I have often people say, Oh, I’ve done so much shadow work. And I have to gracefully, you know, ask them what kind of shadow or because there’s 5060 of us in this country that are certified in facilitating this type of shadow work.

There aren’t that many of us because we have to do some deep diving of how to do these processes in a safe way. And we don’t keep the people in the pain that long. Once you know, once you can tap into it once you can kind of see. Oh, yeah. Ouch. My dad told me that when I was 15, boo, let’s change it. Let’s heal it. Let’s move it. And so it’s you know, I love that people are talking more and more about the shadow and their shadow work. However, I don’t see there’s most people don’t know this body of shadow work. And it’s like, then you know, and then I just share, hey, it’s different. There’s an opportunity to take what you’ve learned and take it to the next level. But inside I’m like, Ah.

Kevin Anthony 28:00
Yeah, and you know, you say this body of shadow work, but I’m not a shadow work expert. The term was coined from Carl Jung, right? Yes. So the reality is, when we’re talking about shadow work, that’s really what we’re talking about, regardless of you know, who you know, created their own system around it. It’s trip. But the reason I say that is just because I think a lot of people use the term incorrectly. Right? They’re calling something shadow work that isn’t really shadow work.

Junie Moon 28:32
Yeah, they’re just going into that depth and getting stuck there. And wounds. Yeah, exactly.

Kevin Anthony 28:37
And the whole point is to just look into the shadows to see what you can’t see. But once you find it, you’re supposed to bring it into the light.

Junie Moon 28:47
So for the good and love it and be with it and transform it and yeah.

Kevin Anthony 28:53
And so what I see is just too many people getting stuck down and they get they’re feeling this pain of being in the shadow. And what I hear from them is, well, this is just what I have to do in order for me to get to the other side, I have to suffer through this pain. And I’m like, no, no, you don’t. That’s not the point. The point is not to just live through the trauma and so you suddenly become numb to the trauma. That’s not the point of Shadow Work.

Junie Moon 29:21
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And when people work with me, it’s like, you know, grief will come up and anger will come up. And it’s that’s again, where a lot of the therapies or the modalities out there can be very cathartic but they don’t bring them to the next place. They just end with that Harrar or the other and that people will feel like they’re doing all this great work with their emotions, but really, they’re just kind of deepening those neural pathways of the pain and they’re not changing you got if you want to blow up the the old neural pathway bridge you got to build a new bridge and people aren’t building the new bridge.

Kevin Anthony 30:00
You just hit the nail on the head with a sledgehammer. Bae, Bae Bae sound effects I need my truth bomb and I usually have, Yeah, you totally hit it on the head because what people are doing when they get stuck in that shadow realm, and reliving the trauma over and over again, is literally reinforcing the pattern digging the groove deeper and deeper under the guise of I’m somehow erasing the groove. No, you’re actually making the groove deeper and stronger and harder to get rid of.

Junie Moon 30:34
Yeah, exactly. And before we came on, I was telling you that I just did a week-long Dr. Joe Dispenza. Workshop. And what I love about Dr. Joe and I saw him many, many, many years ago, I fact, it’s a funny story, I was at the Hay House, a big convention, you can do it, or I can do it or whatever it’s called. And there were, you know, one presenter after another, I was so full of like, wow. And I’m like, oh, some guy named Dr. Joe Dispenza is coming on, this is a perfect time to go to the bathroom. I don’t know who he is. And as I’m opening the door to get out of the conference room, he starts to talk. And I went, Oh, my God, he’s speaking my language, which is you got to shine your light on the conditioning on the programming, but you don’t want to stay there.

If to change the way you are. You need to acknowledge it and see it. I’m totally like, keeping it so simple with what he talks about because he’s so brilliant. And move it into the present time, don’t reinforce it, don’t get stuck there. And what’s interesting, since I’ve been to this week-long, because I am such a, I’m so committed to my growth, that it’s been challenging these last few weeks really challenging for me, because once again, I dug deeper into Oh, I’m seeing even more of these patterns in even a different way. And so now that part of me that’s so used to the excuses or the way I was doing things it’s bucking, it’s like, no, no, this I want to stand like this. This is, you know, I know this territory. I you know, I’m used to this. And then there’s this part of me that’s like, Well, wait a second. i That’s painful. And you know, let’s keep meditating. Keep doing this. You know, I’ve, I’ve been on the floor screaming crying, and like doing my own shadow work to get me to this place of peace and what’s possible. And it is it is. Yeah, it’s it’s a journey. It’s a journey. It’s a journey. So yeah, we got to shine a light on it, and then do something about it, not just stay there. Oh,

Kevin Anthony 32:40
Yes, indeed, which we’re going to talk about in a moment. Dr. Joe was great. I’ve never actually been to a live event of Dr. Joe’s, but I have read several of his books. And my wife Céline was huge into Dr. Joe’s work. And we have so many of his recordings of the workshops, he’s done, I’ve listened to quite a few of them. We have a ton of his meditations that he’s put out, I do think that the work he’s doing is really great. And one of the things that I really love about Dr. Joe, not that this is a whole Dr. Joe thing, but since you brought him up, if people are looking for him if they’re interested, one of the things that I really appreciate is that he has been using modern technology to really document how this works, and to prove that it actually does work. So using, you know, brain waves, you know, monitoring to show that these techniques can actually shift the way your brain thinks so it’s pretty cool.

Junie Moon 33:40
Yeah, for sure. Actually, that’s the piece I forgot to say, which was as I’m leaving the conference, and he started to talk, my first thought was, oh, my God, he’s proving why Shadow Work Works. He’s doing the science. And this was like 10 years ago, yeah, about that 10 years ago. And I was blown away because he was literally showing the brain mapping the neural pathways that he was talking about. I mean, he’s always like, and I measured it, that’s his thing. And I measured it, and we did the studies. And he Yeah, yeah. He’s literally showing why we are the way we are and why these techniques actually do work.

Kevin Anthony 34:21
Indeed, great stuff. So we are about halfway through, I need to take a short break for a second sponsored ad. But when we come back, I want to talk a little bit more about, you know, what do we do once we’ve gotten in and recognize that and how do we move past it and that sort of stuff? Well, all right, man. Are you tired of falling short in both the bedroom and your relationship? Do you want your woman to respect you and crave you? Do you want to be the man she secretly brags about to all her friends? What if you could become this man? What if you could not only master your masculine sexuality but also be the dream man who shows up for his woman in all the ways she desires? What if you could become so irresistible that she becomes addicted to you? If you’re ready to become that man, then check out my Become the man of your and her dreams coaching program. That’s at KevinandCéline.com/go/manofherdreams. That link is in the description. That’s KevinandCéline.com/go/manofherdreams. It’s also the man of your dreams. It’s the guy you want to be. It’s the guy you look at in the movies and go, I want to be that guy. Yeah, that’s the guy.

All right, so we’ve been talking about shadow work, and people repeating negative patterns over and over again. So once somebody goes in, and finds one of these patterns, what can they do about it? How does Shadow Work? Help them remove it or not necessarily even shadow work? If you have any other tools? You know, how does somebody go about getting rid of these deeply ingrained patterns?

Junie Moon 36:10
That is the million dollar question is, you know, there’s a spectrum here, I mean, you know, there are people that will come and do a process with me, and it’s like this huge, pull out the dandelion to the root, and boom, it’s gone. And then there are those that there are just layers and layers, and it just takes time. So again, I want to take the shame off of the journey, because depending on what the wounding is, or what the circumstances are, to be gentle with ourselves that sometimes it does take time to shift and heal. So how to, like change the pattern again, you know, first know what you want, or at least have an idea of where you’re going and see what’s going on. And, and then it really depends on what it is I have to be honest with you.

It’s layered, you know, it’s it’s like an onion, we peel off layers and, and in this body of work that I’ve been trained in, there’s there are four main pathways, if you will, to helping somebody break through a pattern. So what you know, different roads to Rome, so to speak. And so what somebody might come in and say, you know, I’m really having some low self-esteem, I’m feeling really, really scared to open up my heart, I’m afraid of getting hurt. And that can stem from lots of different things. But let’s just say it came from abusive parents or, yeah, let’s just say an abusive parent. And depending on the kind of abuse and how they received it, again, it really depends on the person. And so they start, to see the landscape. And then as a shadow worker, we then go, Well, we have some options here.

There’s this road, where maybe there’s a part of you that needs to have a support a message, a new way of believing around this scenario. And we might set up a support piece where they can bring in an ideal parent, maybe the parent they never had, that can hold them and tell them they’re so worthy of love, maybe things that they were just dying and craving to hear. But they didn’t have that as a child. And yes, it’s a little make-believe because they didn’t have as a child. But isn’t everything an illusion isn’t everything kind of like what we imagine it to be? And so by taking in this experience, they can feel with their eyes closed and breathe in, they can then experience a shift around receiving love receiving being seen, and knowing that they have value. Or maybe that person’s like, you know, I was abused, and I wasn’t able to take a stand and I wasn’t able to, you know, voice my opinion because I was so little.

And maybe we set up a scenario where they get to for the first time in their life, maybe stand up and go stop, that is not acceptable. I will not stand for that. I will not listen to that one more moment and embody it. This is not just okay, let me just say stop, or let me do some journaling. This is full of embodying the energy of a boundary setting. And then there’s so there’s all these different ways to get to that core, depending on what it is that’s going on. So again, sometimes you might just have boom, they have that boundary, and they shift that belief and they’re off to the races. Most of the time, it’s layers and so maybe they have to set the boundary and the next time they’re like, I’m just feeling so vulnerable and I just can’t feel like I can do anything and it’s like well what do you need?

And that might be it might be the divine they might need to do an experience with their higher power of some sort. So how do you change it? There are different ways. It depends on what’s going on inside of you and what you desire. And one of the things we do is make sure that we follow the clients’ lead, we’re not going to just impose, okay, we’re going to just have you do this experience, you know, you better than I’ll ever know you. And we need to make sure that this is on your terms, and you’re ready to go, even if there’s some resistance. And I always say, if there’s resistance, let’s go to the resistance, what’s the fear there? What might happen if you actually do this process, because a lot of times, that’s the breakthrough. So to change, it’s, you know, step by step, getting to know yourself, trusting yourself, and that’s a biggie.

And over time, and I’m going to talk about years and years, even though there are layers, and I’m still working until I die, you know, there are layers, however, we just get better and better. And I just want to say one more thing, which is, the time of recovery gets shorter. So years ago, when I might have had a trigger or the pattern was appearing. It might have been weeks, years, I used to be 200 pounds miserable, I would, you know, I would be off to the races that I would be triggered. And it was crazy. And now there might be moments where I’m like, oh, there’s that trigger, there’s that pattern, and you know, it’s I spot it so much more quickly. So it’s moments or maybe an hour versus the, you know, the rabbit hole. So everybody has to find their way and with mentorship and step-by-step, honoring and loving yourself throughout. That’s how we change the patterns.

Kevin Anthony 41:43
Yeah. And that’s an important point to make. I know it was a rough question.

Junie Moon 41:49
I told you, you could ask me anything, we’ll figure it out as we go.

Kevin Anthony 41:53
But the point didn’t need to be made that there are so many different things that could be underlying these patterns that we do that there is no one single quick fix, right? There’s no like, I just do this thing. And it’s all good. All I have to do is go to a doctor Joe, or do a couple of sessions with Junie or Kevin and all will be you know, fixed. It’s never that simple. But what is the upside to that is that there are a lot of different modalities that you can potentially use. So for instance, when you were talking about, you know, getting the love from their family member that they never had, you know, that’s, that’s, you’ll hear people refer to that as Family Constellation therapy. Right. Yeah, that is a tool in the toolbox. Right. You know, I heard you say some stuff earlier about, you know, well, one part of me wants to do this, and one part wants to do that, as a trained NLP practitioner, we do something called parts integration, right, where we take the different parts and try to get them all to be congruent. Right. Yeah. So there’s just there’s a lot of tools in the toolbox that you could potentially use, depending on what it is that’s in your shadow and how it got there.

Junie Moon 43:13
Yes.

Kevin Anthony 43:16
But what’s, what’s great about that, and what’s important to point out about that, is that you know, people might hear this and go, Oh, that shadow work thing that’s not for me. Right? And they need to understand that the Shadow Work thing is, is big, right? It could there are a lot of possibilities within that work that you could potentially do. So don’t just judge it by what you think you know about, you know, Shadow Work, just like anything else. Don’t Don’t judge neurolinguistic programming by what you think about that. It’s a collection of tools that you can use to try to figure out how these patterns were created and how you can move past them.

Junie Moon 43:56
Absolutely, absolutely. And when we’re looking at these things, and judging that’s a good time to stop and go what’s here for me, and what don’t I know, because that’s just another piece of the puzzle of how we get in our own way. We know so much. Well, I know what this is, well, do you do really know? Have you experienced it navy? What’s it? And there’s a saying that we often use what’s at risk? We call it the war process, why or what’s at risk? What’s at risk for you to actually try it? What’s at risk, to actually be curious about what’s there for you? And usually, the answer is, I might learn something that’s really scary and I might have to change.

Kevin Anthony 44:39
What’s at risk, I might have to change I might have to confront that ego or that wounding or I like my comfort zone. I know this territory. You made a very valid point that if you if you haven’t experienced a particular modality of healing, and you’re instantly judging it, unless it’s some wacky thing that you know, but if it’s there are some crazy things out there. But if you’re judging it right away, it’s probably that self-sabotaging pattern, literally self-sabotaging you from being able to get past this thing that you want to get past.

Junie Moon 45:21
Yeah. 100% Yeah. 100%

Kevin Anthony 45:25
Okay, so I think we did a pretty good job of, you know, going through, you know, the fact that, you know, people are repeating these patterns, these patterns are often very deeply ingrained from, you know, often past things that could be childhood things or whatnot, we’ve gone over some of the ways in which they can start to tackle those. I’m wondering if there is a pattern or a way that you in your life have self-sabotage that you’ve identified and worked through in this process. And if you could, maybe just give us a little a little glimpse into what that process looked like.

Junie Moon 46:05
Oh, wow, okay. Yeah. Well, since I mentioned food, and me having weight issues, I was 200 pounds, I went up and down the scale, 4050 pounds at a time, multiple times in my life. And I’ve been in the same size body for over 20 years now. And if you had said that, I would have figured that out and, and could be in this healthy size body for all this time. I you know, way back when? No? Did I find a diet? No. Did I you know, did I take any pills? No. What I did was the shadow work. So I used whenever I was uncomfortable. Whenever I was, I was married to someone who was a bully, and he was very scary to me. And my dad had died. I don’t want to get too deep into my story. But when my dad died when I was 14, I took on a very big belief that men don’t stay, and that I had to be on my own. And he was also my rock and my go to so when I was in a marriage that was very tumultuous, I walked on eggshells, because I didn’t want to lose another man, so to speak, unconscious, didn’t know it.

But I would not speak up, I would not share my truth. I really, I micromanage everything. And I know a lot of women will relate to this. And it’s, you know, it’s also cultural. But for me, I ate food to soothe myself. It was something I had control over when I was uncomfortable or scared. And I didn’t know that I thought I had a food problem. But I had a self-esteem problem. And I didn’t realize what was going on until I started doing the shadow work. So I happened to be in a workshop before I became a shadow worker I was I was in this particular weekend workshop that wasn’t even called Shadow Work. And suddenly, I was seeing that my past with the beliefs I had around my dad and my terror, the terror of being left and alone had me acting in the ways that I was acting, walking on eggshells and not being me. And so I threw away my ability to speak up. And I handled it by self-soothing with food, and not sharing my truth.

And when I got to the core of it, where I was able to really see, oh, there’s this little girl inside of me, that is just so scared of being alone. And trust me, I still have to be conscious of this because that little girl got really, really hurt. However, once I started, and I hit it from different angles as I said, there are different roads to it, we have different ways of doing it, I then was able to feel, you know, it’s like, it’s like 12 steps, quit down the drug, put down the alcohol, and you’re gonna have to have life and you’re going to have to feel I was terrified of feeling it was scary for me. And so I got new tools on how to be with my fear, how to feel the anxiousness and know that I was going to live through it. But it wasn’t even just the feeling of because that doesn’t sound so great. What happened was not only was I able to feel it, but I was also able to then shift into, I can take care of myself in a healthy way, in a conscious way. By feeding myself good food. I’m taking care of myself my body and my mind. And that’s something my dad would want.

And it is just the reframe of what I lost and the beliefs I had around the loss of my dad. And what I was actually given. Um, trust me when I say I did processes with my dad as a part in fact, Cliff, you know, the guy that I was trained with, he played my dad at one point. I then got to be blessed and learn that I could. I could be just the way I am lovable and safe. And that allowed me to feel what I need to feel and be proactive and not just be unconscious, not want and avoiding the emotions by micromanaging and then eating because I’m not being true. I suddenly was like, oh, boom, something just happened. Oh, I’m feeling some anxiety and trust me there are times when I’m driving down the road and I’m like, Oh 711 It’d be great to have a Coke. And I would, and I’m like, what just happened? Where did I go? What was moving through me just now? And, and I spot it? And I’m like, oh, okay, yeah, I was just on this phone call or an A pulled up my fear, it pulls up my insecurities.

So I don’t know if I kind of feel like I went all over the place. But at the end of the day, it’s seeing the pattern going in allowing getting new tools around our emotions, honoring our emotions, we’ve been told not to feel, you know, fear is bad. No fear is not bad. It gives us information. When it runs us. It’s bad, you know, anger, not bad. It’s good when we need to have good communication and stand our ground if you want to hurt somebody or scream at them. So once we know how to be with our emotions, and we can take the reins back from the shadows, and we can really own these consciously, then when we do get triggered, or that that pattern kind of pokes us, we can go oh, wait a second. I have a I have a different way of being now. And the more we build that muscle, the new bridges are built and the old bridge gets to be dismantled. Was that clear? I kind of felt like I was all over the place.

Kevin Anthony 51:42
No, that was great. And, you know, it made it personal. And one of the things that I really appreciate is when somebody you know who’s doing work, as you do, can show up and say, you know, I’m not some perfect, you know, you know, I don’t live in an ivory tower. You know, this is real. I went through it to here’s been my journey. And I think that I just think that’s really relatable for people to hear that. You know, it’s not just well, you know, I was in school and it didn’t know what to do. So I decided to get a degree in psychology and help people even though I’ve never really dove into any of my own shit, right.

Junie Moon 52:19
Yeah, totally. Yeah, absolutely. And I and that’s why I wrote the book because I, you know, I will you were going to share about the book. That’s why I wrote the book because I wanted to let people know that it wasn’t okay, here’s some information. I share in the book, how I used these tools and got to this place. But before the book, you might think you know, that I did a short film on body image and body shame, where I got naked and body painted by a well-known body painter. And it went viral. Well, obviously, naked goes viral, often, but it was a documentary on stealing body image and body shame. And I used my story as an example. But why did I do the documentary because it was just a heartbeat before the documentary years before that, where I wouldn’t even leave the house no matter what size I was.

Because I felt so ugly and so shameful around my body. And when I had the opportunity to do this film, with the body painting, and I knew I could do it, I realized I was onto something that this work really did change. So am I uncomfortable sometimes, of course, but compared to where I was before, oh, my goodness. So it is a journey. It’s unfolding this, this body of work is a piece of the puzzle. And it just starts with starting literally starts with what’s not working for you. What do you want and what’s not working for you? Let’s figure it out. Because underneath it, it’s just we’re scared. We’re just scared little boys and girls, we’re just scared. We don’t want to get hurt. We’re scared.

Kevin Anthony 53:52
I know. It sounds a little silly to say that. But there’s a lot of truth in that statement. Yeah. Okay. So now would be a great time to tell people where they can find more from you to tell them where they can find your book here, which I did read your book. And I thought it was great. I know that you originally sort of wrote it with women in mind, but you’ve noticed that a lot of men have been reading it also and getting value from it. And so I was like, Yeah, I read it. And I thought it was great. I you know, you’re reminding me, however, that I wanted to go watch your documentary and you haven’t seen it yet. I have not seen it yet. Because when I was reading about it in the book, I was like oh yeah, cuz I think you have to go to your list and sign up and get access to it but it wasn’t on a device and I’m like, Oh, I have to go and then I totally forgot. I need to go look that up. I want to check it out.

Junie Moon 54:42
Yeah, I know in the book it says want to see me naked. Yeah, it you know, I could say that the book is the thing I’m most proud of, but it really is the film. However, the reason I love it so much. It’s not about me. It’s about healing. And that healing is possible. And if I can do it, you can do it. And, and so yeah, the film definitely shares how far I’ve come. But the book, I got permission from Cliff because it’s his intellectual property, he wrote the foreword and, and he oversaw me taking his body of work and putting my, my, you know, fun stuff to it. And so it is about shadow work. And I and I lay down what these four archetypes are these, you know, magician, lover, Warrior, and sovereign energies that are inside of us and running us, supporting us or not supporting us the wounding and how it shows up and why we are the way we are. And I give some really practical tools in the book, as well as exercises and experiences. There’s a lot in there. And of course, I’m sharing my journey so you can understand how I use some of these pieces. So the first part of the book is about shadow work and the modality itself and you will learn so much about yourself. And then you could actually apply it from the things that are in the book. And then of course, I share my story. Yeah.

Kevin Anthony 56:08
So where can they find the book and where can they find more about you?

Junie Moon 56:12
Yeah, so midlife love out loud. That’s my name everywhere across all platforms. So midlife love out loud. It’s my you know.com. It’s my podcast because I have a podcast as well. And I believe you’re going to be released very soon on my podcast. It was a great interview. You were amazing. And so yeah, you could find out about the book and my podcasts and everything really on my website. Midlifeloveoutloud.com

Kevin Anthony 56:41
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show talking.

Junie Moon 56:46
Oh, oh. Welcome Back, Kotter. I don’t know. Maybe you’re too young for that. Did you ever watch Welcome Back Kotter? I don’t know. Yeah, right. Right. Right, right. Anyway, I just wanted to offer a gift to your watchers, and listeners. So yes, definitely go to midlife love out loud. But if you put a slash after midlife love out loud, and you write breakthrough after I’m offering 30-minute, what I’m calling relationship breakthrough sessions, where if you really want to know about this work, and how it can help you, it would be my total honor to sit down with you on Zoom. Get a sense of what you’re struggling with and what it is that you really want. I’ll give you a mini plan. And we could explore working together looks like there are different ways to work. So if you’re curious, and you really want to shift, I open up about 15 spots a month to be able to, to help people and support people. And if that’s you go grab a spot.

Kevin Anthony 57:39
That link is in the description. So check that out. All right, Jr. Again, thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing your wisdom being vulnerable about your own story. I hope that that was helpful for the people who are listening.

Junie Moon 57:52
Thank you so much. You had amazing questions, and I love what you’re up to. Thank you so much.

Kevin Anthony 57:58
Thank you. All right, everybody. That’s all the time I have for this episode. And I will see you next week.

I hope you liked this episode of the Love Lab podcast. If you enjoy this show, subscribe. Leave us a review and share it with your friends. And for more free exclusive content. Join me in the passion hole at Kevin and Céline dot com forward slash full. That’s Kevin and Céline dot com forward slash fault. Thanks for listening. And remember, as Céline used to say you’re amazing!