Breaking Free from Self-Imposed Limits

How can Acceptance, Compassion, and Empowerment transform your life? Join us for an insightful conversation with Dr. Michelle Maidenberg, who shares her compelling journey of overcoming intergenerational trauma and finding purpose. Through her personal story and the ACE model, Dr. Michelle offers profound insights into recognizing the self-imposed barriers that often hinder our personal growth and fulfillment. Her journey from trauma to empowerment serves as a beacon of hope and inspiration, urging us to confront our own obstacles and embrace the path toward healing and personal development.

Explore the intricate world of emotional avoidance with Dr. Michelle as we unpack how our brains are wired to shield us from discomfort, often leading to unproductive habits. With expert guidance, we delve into the importance of confronting these deeply rooted emotions to regain control and empowerment. Using compelling examples, Dr. Michelle illustrates how the ACE framework can lead to a life aligned with core values, helping us navigate emotional challenges and break free from patterns that hold us back.

In our final exploration, we turn our focus to the power of mindfulness and habit formation for personal empowerment. Hear how Dr. Michelle's practices, from teaching mindfulness at NYU to creating guided meditations, have impacted countless lives, including a heartfelt story from a college student. Her actionable strategies highlight the importance of persistence and dedication in achieving goals, encouraging us all to live more present and value-driven lives. This episode is a rich resource for anyone eager to embrace discomfort, foster new habits, and unleash their best self.

Get ready to break free from obstacles and live life on your terms!

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Chapters

• 0:00 Overcoming Barriers to Pursuing Purpose
• 7:32 Understanding Emotional Avoidance and Empowerment
• 20:58 Building Habits for Personal Empowerment
• 27:40 Embracing Mindfulness for Living Fully

Transcript

Cassandra: 0:25

Good day out there to all my listeners. I'd like to welcome you to Is your Way In your Way podcast and many of you know that's the title of my book and for thse new listeners out here, let me kind of share with you what this podcast is all about. It's actually about us being in our way. You know you have goals and you have dreams, you have passions. You have so many things that you'd like to accomplish that you've not been able to. There's some things that you have, but there's some things that you're stuck.

Cassandra: 0:55

It could be wanting a promotion, could be having a talk show, could be writing a book, could be speaking on a stage. It could be a number of things that I believe, whatever it is, that has you stuck, that you are blocking pursuing your purpose. And so today, well, first of all, many of you are aware that we talk about topics related to personal and business development, and today our topic is going to be how could you live your best life using the ACE model, your Best Life Using the ACE Model, and who better to share this with us is Dr Michelle Maidenberg. Good day, doctor. I'm going to call you Dr Michelle.

Dr. Michelle: 1:41

Nice to meet, you, nice to meet everybody.

Cassandra: 1:44

Yeah, I'm so glad that you're here. Before we get started delving into what we're going to talk about, I just want to read your bio so my listeners will get a better understanding of what Dr Michelle is all about Today. On Is your Way In your Way. I'm going to welcome you, Michelle Maidenberg, a highly accomplished therapist and author. She maintains a private practice in Harrison, New York, and co-founded Through my Eyes, which I found so interesting. It's a nonprofit offering video legacies for the chronically ill. As an adjunct faculty member at New York University, she teaches mindfulness practice and her extensive training includes CBT, ACT and EMDR.

Cassandra: 2:29

Now, those are some acronyms that we may get to before we end our show today, but anyway, she is an award-winning book Free your Child from Overeating and Ace your Life, providing valuable insights into mental health and personal growth. She's a prolific writer and speaker, and she has been featured in major media outlets and delivered a powerful TED talk on on numerous roles and contributions in the field. Join, join me everyone, and as Michelle shares her expertise and actionable strategies to help us overcome barriers and I say us because I'm included in it. Although I wrote the book Is your Way In your Way, I am a work in progress, so it takes time, but yet she's going to share some tools that's going to help us overcome some of those barriers that has her stuck. So Your Way, In Your, welcome to Is Way. Dr Michelle, Could you share with us your backstory before you got into the clinical field?

Dr. Michelle: 3:33

sure, yeah, there's a long backstory, okay. So I think we all have backstories, right? Um, it's the reason we do what we're doing and we're so passionate about it so you know, I came from intergenerational trauma. I'll'll call it Okay. You know, and my parents married when they were very, extremely young. You know, my mother was 18. My father was 19.

Dr. Michelle: 3:58

And they had me a year later and then I had a brother who was born about, you know, 13 months after I was, but you know, they divorced when I was three, which is, you know, fairly young and you know, fast forward. I went to five different elementary schools. I was constantly back and forth. There was a lot of turbulence, let's call it, you know, and instability, you know. There was also some, you know, substance use and abuse, I would call it.

Dr. Michelle: 4:28

Over the years, you know my family and you know a lot, like I said, a lot of instability, a lot of instability. And I always, I always, I felt like an old soul, if you want to call it, the wherewithal and the understanding that, like, something wasn't quite right and I, but I did feel very alone, I did feel very isolated in my thoughts and feelings. I didn't really feel attended to or heard, Um, and it really led me to be a healer. Quite honestly, I found myself in that role. I found myself always in that role, you know, listening to people, helping people, guiding people, Um, I, naturally, and I'm an empath by nature, I'm an empath by nature, so I feel feelings on a really intense level and when somebody goes through an experience. I feel as if I'm going through it myself.

Dr. Michelle: 5:21

That's how intensely I feel feelings. So I was in tune with that, since I was really young and, like I said, I felt like an old soul, like I almost was observing the world and saying like something's not right here.

Dr. Michelle: 5:33

What's going on, why? I remember when I was little. I remember really being little. I remember hugging my teddy bear and saying like this too shall pass and I'm going to have my own life. So I remember really tapping into my resilience when I was really young and I remember having the wherewithal with recognizing that things will be different for me in the future and I was also very resourceful. That was the other thing. I always gravitated towards older women and I always had mentors and people who took an interest in me and paid attention to me, and you know that was really important. You know it made me feel understood, it made me feel loved, it made me feel likable. You know all those lovely things contributed to my self-confidence for sure.

Cassandra: 6:20

Right, that's very interesting because I used to. I felt the same way in many instances, being that old soul and being attracted to older women. So it's just great to connect with someone that felt the same way. So I really, really get it.

Cassandra: 6:38

And you already answered the question I was curious to what triggered you to do this work. But now I see, because a lot of our past has to do with our future. You know and I always say from pain to purpose, you know, we can actually use those what I call testimonies to be a blessing and to help other people in the world. So that's how I see you and I think that's great because we're going to talk about going to talk about and I hear you an expert in emotional avoidance, and we all have emotions and I think a lot of the emotions that we have enables us to get in our way. So this is just a great opportunity for you to talk about this and I'm certain that you're going to provide some practical tips to help us all get out of our way and start pursuing our purpose. How does one define emotional avoidance?

Dr. Michelle: 7:36

So you know, our brains are wired to protect us from danger and discomfort, and it's literally wired that way. Our neurophysiology, and you know, keep in mind when I say danger's perceived danger, okay, okay. So I'll give you an example, because I just had somebody leave my office, okay, and he's getting ready to have a procedure, um, and it has, you know, to do with fertility and other things, um, and you know she has to do a couple of rounds of this particular procedure and you know this, last time she did it and she has to go through a couple of more rounds, right, the last time she did it, and she's going to do it again. A lot of what helps her to feel very grounded and present is when she gets hurt and she gets her needs met, because being in control and having control over her body is really important because of her own history.

Dr. Michelle: 8:32

So this last procedure that she had, you know they basically did something without her consent when she made it very explicitly clear to them what she wanted, and so she's having a lot of anxiety, which you could imagine, and residual resistance, right, because of fear of it happening again, even though she did assert herself. It's not as if she didn't assert herself. , but she still needed did, she actually did, her needs met. So now she's going into these additional procedures with a lot of trepidation, which is completely understandable. Yeah, so when we were doing a little bit of you know what I call a flow back, what it really kind of hit up against was when she was a kid. She was constantly forced to do things she didn't want to do.

Dr. Michelle: 9:20

Had memory places that she was forced to go to things she needed to participate in as a kid, that her parents forced her to, and she was so incredibly distressed you know and suffered in these moments, yeah, you know, and again, our brain remembers, right, cause I had her tap into what was going on for her viscerally, what was going for her somatically, and she kind of actually described feeling her body very constricted right now here, and I said, you know, bring back a memory when your body felt similarly. And it went back to what I'm talking about and you know, again, as we proceeded, it was perfectly clear that her body was remembering all the time when she felt so helpless and she couldn't, she didn't have choices and she couldn't do anything about it. Well, guess what? She's an adult now.

Dr. Michelle: 10:08

Now, and even though, even though she actually and I validated this for her even though she did express herself, did advocate for herself and the outcome was still negative, she still has choices going forward. Yeah, right, whether it's you know. I said, what choices do you have? And she said, well, I could micromanage the doctor. She happens to be in the medical profession herself, so she's aware of procedure, what needs to happen.

Dr. Michelle: 10:37

She's like I could micromanage. You know the doctor and I was like, okay, that's a choice. She said I could go to another place to get the procedure done. I mean, there's options you know why she's not that kid.

Cassandra: 10:49

Right, yes.

Dr. Michelle: 10:52

She's not that kid anymore. So, anyway, our brain, we avoid emotions, right, and things and being part of things, because our brain gets in the way, like you said, and we avoid the negative emotions. So, instead of kind of recognizing that she was avoiding the fear, the hopelessness, the helplessness, whatever was coming up, she was just being resistant, right. And once she was able to tap into the actual underlying feelings that was impacting her behavior Right, she was able to see and feel empowered and feel self-efficacy so that you can actually move forward in an empowered way.

Cassandra: 11:34

And I remember reading that you said we should not try to avoid it, avoid our emotions.

Dr. Michelle: 11:42

Yeah, and it's so easy to do that because the brain also has all these lovely strategies like distracting, denying, right so many different things the brain does in order, right, to avoid the discomfort, and we fall a little bit into this pit because it becomes this habit also, right?

Cassandra: 12:04

Right, you know.

Dr. Michelle: 12:06

I mean, I speak to so many people and I say to them well, you're in a lot of distress, do you want to keep on doing the same behavior? Right, and you say, or you say to yourself why do people continue the same patterns of behavior when it's not working for them? That makes no sense, Right. Right, there's a reason for it because our brain takes the path of least resistance and it really just gravitates to what's familiar and comfortable and towards those neural pathways, and it avoids the discomfort. It avoids anger, sadness, frustration, disappointment, like all of the things that just make us feel so uncomfortable in our bodies.

Cassandra: 12:45

Right, exactly so. Do you have like? Well, let me, let me ask you this, because I think it's going to come into this I'm very. I want to talk about your ACE method, and that's actually part of the title, and how we could live our best life using that, that model. Explain that to us.

Dr. Michelle: 13:10

Okay, so I wrote a book called Ace your Life Unleash your Best Self and Live the Life you Want, and it's predicated under ACE, which is acceptance, compassion and empowerment. The way that I constructed the book, which is the way that I teach people and guide people to live their best life, is really predicated. One is understanding their neurobiology. It's very, very important for us to understand neurobiology and I spend like a chapter reviewing what our brain does and how it functions, because that's really critical. It's really really critical because we could catch it when it's happening in the moment. There it goes right. Um, also connecting to our core values. So that's the second chapter. We really need to be grounded in what is truly important to us so that we sustain behavior and we also move and align with our values. And people tell me they can try to convince me oh, I know what my values are, you know. And then, when we get to the root of it, most people actually don't know what their core values are exactly yeah and then you know the acceptance, compassion, empowerment.

Dr. Michelle: 14:19

You know, again, that sounds very flowery and people like, oh, how am I supposed to do that? But I do spend a lot of time in each parts of the first parts of each chapters talking about the barriers, because I cannot stress how many barriers they are. There are in terms of our being our best self. There were barriers social, social, culturally. There were barriers socioculturally, you know, based on our, again, our race, religion, how we were raised, our genetics, our physiology and us having self-compassion and empowering ourselves to actually take action on behalf of our values. So there is barriers to acceptance, there's barriers to compassion, there's barriers to empowerment. We really need to know what they are so we can actually call ourselves out on it. And then how?

Dr. Michelle: 15:19

to integrate the skills. And then I end each chapter with a guided meditation, a QR scan, which you could, you know, download and integrate the information, but there are skills all along the way. The nice thing about it, I feel, is that you could kind of weave in and out of kind of the skills. So people have a little bit more challenge with self-compassion than they do with self-acceptance. You know, you know, and again along our path, depending on what adversity we're going through, right, or challenge are always changing, so you know.

Dr. Michelle: 16:04

Just another example. You know like, listen, the time that we struggle socially, let's say, or to kind of find ourselves, is usually about middle school. I would say, you know, when I ask people like would you ever want to go back to middle school, they're like no way.

Dr. Michelle: 16:14

You know like you kind of wanted to be like everybody else. But you wanted to be, you know, like nobody else and you just feel insecure and uncomfortable, trying to really weave yourself in and out of your own like confidence. But I feel like you know for and this happened to me just the other week where I had to really sit down and think about what's important to me and how I'm spending my time, because right now my time is so precious and it's so limited yeah that you know my relationships.

Dr. Michelle: 16:48

I and I believe in putting in a lot of effort um into my relationships the ones that are formative and important to me right, I don't have the time to put it into all relationships, I just don't, so I have to be selective and I have to be very cognizant of really where I want to put my attention and effort and time, and I had to have a like a real sit down with myself and really think about that because as I'm aging and as I'm developing, I'm maturing. That's changed Right. It's really changed because things that were important to me 10 years ago are very different than what's important to me today Very different.

Cassandra: 17:44

That's true. Yeah, you talked about core values and how a lot of people don't know what they are. Why do you think that is?

Dr. Michelle: 17:54

Because when I ask, if I asked you like, what's important to you, okay, you could rattle off. You know my family, my friends, you know whatever. But then if I ask you like, what action are you willing to take on a daily basis to lean into that value? That's a whole different ball of wax.

Cassandra: 18:10

Okay.

Dr. Michelle: 18:11

Yeah, and you know I was doing a workshop and one of the audience members they're like oh. I know what my core values are, you know whatever. And then she started talking and she thought it was something and I said, well, let's go a little deeper. Why is that important to you? And she gave me a very superficial answer and I said, no, no, why is that important to you? And when it came down to it, what it came down to was her dignity and self-respect.

Dr. Michelle: 18:44

But she wasn't thinking about it that way. She was thinking about something she needs to do, you know, in order to feel happy, you know. And I was like, but that's not really what it is, because once you do that thing, then what? Then? What happens? Then how do you decide what you're going to do next? But when you understand that it's dignity and self-respect, okay, then we have, then we have a set of values by which right to guide your actions.

Cassandra: 19:12

Right, and do you find that a lot of this definitely comes from childhood?

Dr. Michelle: 19:20

Our child. I mean, I can't even say I mean. I know you asked me before why I'm doing what I'm doing and you know I I came from a very, very traumatized family legacy. Yeah, you know, and I heard stories about wars, concentration camps, murder and atrocity since I was a little tiny child. Okay, now, as a child, I thought it was just a story, right, I didn't. I didn't understand, like, the significance of it. I didn't understand what trauma was. I didn't understand, you know any of it Right.

Dr. Michelle: 19:55

But I realized now as an adult that that hearing those stories especially being an empath that I am, I must have been so incredibly impacted emotionally by hearing those stories, more than I could ever even imagine. And it had to have led and I believe I owe it to my grandmother one particular grandmother, because she was the only one that was open enough, and you know, to share those stories, because the others were so traumatized they couldn't speak of it. You know what I mean. She did, she did, and she would tell me explicitly, you know, stories about the war and all of that, and I know that I felt the need to embrace her and to show her compassion and to want to help her and I felt so deeply for her pain and for her suffering, yeah, that I didn't even realize I had no clue.

Dr. Michelle: 20:55

Yeah.

Cassandra: 20:56

Yeah, that's interesting. I'm thinking, when I think that, about my listeners and how many of them want to pursue their passion but they just don't have that commitment. They have this desire but yet they're not committed to it. It made me think about my book, for example. It took me years to write a book. That was something that I always wanted to do, because I used to write all the time as a little girl.

Cassandra: 21:24

And as I started writing the book, it took me longer because I was exposing myself and I didn't want to expose myself because back then my mom said no, don't tell the family secrets, don't do this. And I've really struggled with that, and the way that I got over it was this I know, will bless other people. So this made me put things in the book. I didn't put everything, but I put enough in there for it to resonate. And how many people have said, wow, this sounds just like me, so. So I'm just saying that because that enabled me to pivot. It took a while, but I remember it's not just about me, it's about serving other people, and so that was a pivotal moment for me, understanding and, I think, for my listeners. There's certain things they want to do. There's some that want to be promoted. Forgiveness is another one. They know they should be forgiving somebody, but they just can't do it. Yeah, yeah, it's just a lot of things like that.

Dr. Michelle: 22:32

I'll give you an example, because I came up with a list, just to piggyback what you're saying, of people who live empowered lives, because there are characteristics we need to have in order to commit to living empowering lives. And what does it mean to living? You know what does it mean to be empowered? It means doing the things you want to be doing in order to live your best life. That's what it is to is being comfortable with being uncomfortable, right, like the moments that you were kind of maybe tapping into these family secrets, or your vulnerability or the rawness of exposing yourself to others, or whatever. The case is right. You did it incrementally, you did it compassionately.

Dr. Michelle: 23:19

it sounds like but, you also did it mindfully right.

Cassandra: 23:24

Right yeah.

Dr. Michelle: 23:25

So you know, sort of what we have to do and I made a list. I have like a list of 10 different characteristics, right? But these are the things that I share with others. In order to have that mindset, like, you need to accept and face adversity, right? No matter how challenging it is Right, and you have to commit to that.

Cassandra: 23:44

Right.

Dr. Michelle: 23:45

Not just give up and say, oh, I can't do this anymore, it's too hard. Okay, then what do I need to do in order to accomplish? Do I need to take it in increments? Do I need to slow down?

Cassandra: 23:57

Do I need?

Dr. Michelle: 23:58

to partner up with somebody, do I? If A is not working, go to B, c, d, e, e. Keep on going down the alphabet, don't give up right that's like, if you want to exercise you can't say to me oh, I tried this and this and I didn't like it.

Dr. Michelle: 24:14

No, no, like, find the thing you like yes and even if you have to go through like 50 iterations, find the thing you like right, you know, you know. So there's again, there's, you know. That's just like one skill that I teach in terms of mindset around empowering yourself, how to keep a habit. So like also to just you know, like when I ask people how many of you have changed behavior, I have it. And like everybody's hands go up. When I do a workshop and I'll say to them how many of you have sustained it over time, Hands go down. So I find, because there's so many resources out there, we know how to do things, we don't know how to sustain it, because that's when the psychological, emotional kind of kicks in.

Cassandra: 25:04

Right, and sabotages us. Exactly, exactly, exactly Right. Do you share ways to sustain it, or is it that you have to really want to sustain it, you know, is it that commitment? Or or it reminds me of New Year's. New Year's Day, everybody makes a resolution I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that and they don't do it, like 80 percent of the people don't even do it.

Dr. Michelle: 25:35

That's true so again um, I came up when and this is all in my empowerment chapter, by the way, okay, because this is about like this, you know, kind of the behavior sticking, but you know, I'll just, I'll show you a piece of paper because I have it just in front of me, sure, whoops. Like, right, I came up with like this list on what you need to do to work on habits, okay, and there's all like, if you see here, right, there's three, two, three, four, five, six. You know, there's 18 different little tidbits I give on how to sustain this kind of habit. Right, it's not. You know, like we we'd like to believe oh, I want to change my habit, yeah, it's gonna just happen.

Dr. Michelle: 26:18

No, it doesn't work that way, right, like Like if that were the case, everyone would be doing it Right, and not everyone's doing it because it's hard work. Now, I don't know about you, but anything that I really wanted in life that was important to me, I had to put a lot of time, effort and persistence into, right, I don't care if it was my education, my parenting, my relationships whatever, it is nothing comes just because, so you know, I literally listed here 18 different things that one needs to be doing in order to create habits and to sustain habits, and that's in your book.

Dr. Michelle: 26:58

Yeah, all of these things Again, I have so many skills Okay. Yeah, it's, it's a chock full Right, there's so many different yeah, different ways to cultivate it significantly.

Cassandra: 27:13

Yeah, ok, we could talk. I could talk to you for hours. In your profession people talk to you for hours. So but, but I have one last question that I think this could help my my listeners Any practical tips for my listeners on tangible strategies and skills they can use every day?

Dr. Michelle: 27:40

You know, the whole book is about strategies you could use every day. I'm going to say I'm going to. I'll just give one Cause. You know the one that sticks out for me right now. You know there's all this hype about mindfulness and meditative practice lovely stuff, and I actually I'm um, I have a YouTube channel and I publish a new guided meditation every Thursday morning at 11 AM Okay time because I am a big proponent of mindfulness practice and I also teach a mindfulness practice class at NYU and it's really about being in the present moment. You know, our minds are chronically and consistently in the past, where there's regret and guilt and shame, or in the future, which is worry.

Cassandra: 28:24

Yes, we're never really here.

Dr. Michelle: 28:27

Like I, I know what's happening right here in the moment as I'm talking to you. I don't know what's going to happen in five minutes from now Exactly I don't know what's going to happen in an hour from now. I could tell you from being in my practice talking to people you know, and my lifelong you know a dedication, a mission towards, like, helping people. Things happen unexpectedly, things happen that are out of our control.

Dr. Michelle: 28:55

Yeah, we could plan from today until tomorrow, but it doesn't always work out the way we planned and sometimes it has nothing to do with what we did or what we didn't do, and we really have to take every moment of our lives seriously and really be our best self, because we don't have time to waste, not even a moment. I mean, I was just talking to somebody because I see sometimes people are like just talking to somebody, because I see sometimes people are like, oh, I'm going to travel, I'm going to do this, you know, when I'm so-and-so age and and I, I, I can't tell you, and it's sad to say this, I've had in my practice a number of people who've waited and then it never happened because their partner got sick or they were injured or even worse than that you could imagine? Right, exactly.

Cassandra: 29:46

That's right.

Dr. Michelle: 29:47

And I sit there and I'm not saying that. You know, like, live each moment. You know, yes, live each moment as your last, but you also have to be kind of mindful about, like again, finances and other things that are important in life. Right, you have to think about your future, but living your best life means satisfaction and contentment. Okay, it means really living according to your values every single day, and there's nothing more satisfying than that. I could tell you. There's nothing. Yesterday I shared, I got this incredible email from somebody because they've been doing my guided meditations and they were, unfortunately, it was a college student who was a wrestler, who was injured of like meditation. I'm getting to the practice. Oh, and, if I tell you, I sat in my chair for literally and I gave that gift to myself.

Dr. Michelle: 30:49

yeah, I sat in my chair for five minutes, I closed my eyes and I meditated on that, on gratitude for helping others and how appreciative I am that the higher power gave me that skill and how much I love going into work every day and doing the work that I do, that I have the ability to do, that Like. I appreciate that so much.

Cassandra: 31:16

It's like a healing, yeah, yeah, yeah, not just a boast, but just a healing. They're helping you heal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, both, but just the healing they're helping you heal. Yeah, yeah, um, I'd like to know how?

Dr. Michelle: 31:28

um please share with us how they could get in touch with you, sure, so I'm going to just show my book, which is that it's okay, unleash your best self. And it's my color, so I love it. Um, the best place is my website. It's my full name, it's Michelle with two L's Maidenberg M-A-I-D-E-N-B-E-R-G. It's one strand it has, you know. It has my blogs. I also write for psychology. Today I'm a blogger for them. So monthly I write an article and it's always on, you know again, self-help or parenting or something that's going on currently, you know, in the media or whatever, but so people and they usually have a lot of tips and skills also in them. So, on, my website has all the information about me, okay.

Cassandra: 32:17

Okay, well, I have enjoyed this conversation and to me it's just too short, but that's how it is and and I see you as a member of my tribe, because that's my passion is to empower individuals to start living their best life, because there's so many people that have gone on their way. They just have so many regrets, and I just don't want them to have those regrets.

Dr. Michelle: 32:40

Yeah, yeah, I agree, I'm with you on that. Yeah, we are simpatico.

Cassandra: 32:47

Exactly so. Thanks again, my listeners, as I say, bye for now, and I'd like to thank Dr Michelle for her support with this issue, and please subscribe to this channel and if there's this particular episode that has really resonated with you, please share it with that individual. Thanks so much. Bye for now and thank you, dr Michelle.