Navigating Change: From Familiarity to Transformation with Kristen Crabtree
In this enlightening discourse, we delve into the profound and intricate process of self-discovery, as elucidated by our esteemed guest, Kristen Crabtree, a divorce coach and former hypnotherapist. Central to our discussion is the notion that understanding one’s authentic self necessitates a metaphorical excavation, akin to an archaeological dig, wherein layers of adaptation and societal conditioning must be meticulously stripped away. Crabtree posits that each individual's truth is intrinsically personal, asserting that the journey towards self-awareness requires a conscious effort to peel back the masks worn to attain societal acceptance. Through a structured approach that encompasses various dimensions of the self—mental, emotional, physical, and energetic—she provides listeners with tools to engage in this transformative expedition. Ultimately, we explore the imperative of recognizing and transcending the filters through which we perceive our reality, urging a profound shift towards embracing one's true essence.
Takeaways:
- The process of self-discovery is akin to an archaeological excavation, requiring the peeling away of layers to uncover one's true essence.
- Understanding one's truth is paramount, as societal norms often impose external expectations that obscure individual desires and identities.
- Emotional sobriety is crucial in breaking free from familiar but harmful patterns, allowing for genuine transformation and self-realization.
- The metaphor of the onion illustrates the complexity of self-exploration, where deeper layers reveal the true self often hidden beneath adaptive behaviors.
- Manifestation is not about creating anew but recognizing what already exists beyond our cognitive filters, enabling us to access our true potential.
- Engaging in mindful exercises can enhance awareness of one's perceptual filters, leading to a richer experience of reality and self-understanding.
Transcript
I'm Anthony Wright, and I'm your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Deeds.
Speaker B:Thanks for having me here with our.
Speaker A:Guest, Kristen Crabtree, who is a divorce coach and a former hypnotherapist and has a degree in international business, which I'll want to talk with you about after we get done talking on air here.
Speaker A:But one of the things that I saw in your website is that you liken the process that you do with your clients to sort of like an archaeological dig, an excavation.
Speaker A:Can you talk more about that?
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:Nobody knows your truth but you.
Speaker C:And I'm saying that to everybody listening.
Speaker C:You know, the idea of 10 steps to this or seven steps to that, that'll get you wherever the person who wrote the book wants you to go, which is where they think you want to go.
Speaker C:But if you don't know where you want to go, it's kind of like the Alice in Wonderland thing, right?
Speaker C:You know, and actually, I. I quote that in my book, you know, which way do I go?
Speaker C:Well, it depends where you want to go.
Speaker C:Well, I don't really care where.
Speaker C:Well, then you'll get there as long as you just keep walking.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker C:So it's to me, the only way to hear.
Speaker C:To know your truth or know back it up, to, like, know how to be your best self, which is what a lot of people say, is to hear your truth.
Speaker C:The only way to hear your truth is to peel away all those layers of adaptation, all those masks that we wear, all those colors that we put.
Speaker C:Put on, like the chameleon, to blend in and to be accepted and to be loved.
Speaker C:And it's really hard to hear that because of monkey mind.
Speaker C:And so for me, what my process looked like was an excavation.
Speaker C: ourney from a book I wrote in: Speaker C:So after I started having my awareness that I didn't know who I was, but that there was some part of me that was connected to source or the one or whatever you want to call it, I asked myself, hey, what am I supposed to be doing?
Speaker C: go find the book you wrote in: Speaker C:Well, fortunately, I'm a digital hoarder.
Speaker C:So I pulled out the book because I didn't.
Speaker C:I barely remembered writing it.
Speaker C:I did not remember what it was about.
Speaker C:And when I went through the first chapter, I realized.
Speaker C:So it was eight exercises.
Speaker C:And I decided to do the exercises as the reader.
Speaker C:And my first thought was, wow, who wrote these?
Speaker C:They're brilliant.
Speaker C:And then my second thought was, this is Like a process of excavation.
Speaker C:And so I decided to go through the whole book as the reader and experience what it was.
Speaker C:I. I've completely rewritten the book, but the structure and the intent are the same.
Speaker C:So it's based on breaking the excavation down into our four bodies.
Speaker C:Mental body, emotional body, physical body and energy body.
Speaker C:And each body section is broken into three chapters.
Speaker C:The first chapter is the archeologist.
Speaker C:And that gives you information on current science, current philosophy, current current metaphysics, and so forth and so on, which you can then pick and choose from to decide what resonates with you.
Speaker C:I'm not the expert saying you have to follow this method of, you know, methodology in order to get there.
Speaker C:I present a whole bunch of different concepts.
Speaker C:And the second chapter in each section is about hundred questions that correspond to the different topics within the archaeologist chapter and 20 to 40 exercises.
Speaker C:Again, you don't have to do everything the.
Speaker C:There's so many there so that you can pick and choose what resonates with you.
Speaker C:And then the third chapter in each section is called the Web.
Speaker C:And this was in the original book.
Speaker C:The Web is where it's a fictional story that follows somebody choosing, making one tiny little shift in a decision that then ripples not just out into their future life, but also into others lives into the world.
Speaker C:And so this process is really about digging.
Speaker C:So I use the metaphor of archeologist, artifact and architect.
Speaker C:The fifth section of the book is integration, which is where you assume the role of the architect and you build the jig and you put all the pieces together that you discovered.
Speaker C:The artifacts are what you discover in those chapters that have all the questions and exercises.
Speaker C:And those artifacts are little pieces of you.
Speaker C:So the first chapter gives you the knowledge to be able to recognize is this rubble or is this an artifact.
Speaker C:The second chapter is what gives you the excavation tools and process.
Speaker C:The third chapter is what shows you how a little teeny change can ripple out.
Speaker C:And then the fa, the fifth section puts it all together in what I think is a pretty darn cool process and very different from what most people do and very aligned with what source told me to do.
Speaker C:So there's a teaser.
Speaker A:So this sounds a lot like what we know about in Chinese philosophy, that's called self cultivation.
Speaker A:Are you.
Speaker A:Do you find parallels like that, Adam and what Krishna is saying?
Speaker B:Yeah, while.
Speaker B:While you were mentioning that I think about my own process.
Speaker B:It was like, okay, my senior quote was from the books At Hearta by Herman Hess, At Hearta by Herman Hess and about nothing on this earth.
Speaker B:Do I know less than about myself?
Speaker B:And so then you know, that started a little process.
Speaker B:So my process was probably not archaeologists, but like maybe tree growing, sprouting, so a little seed was there and then it grew a little bit in college and masters and PhD and whatnot.
Speaker B:And also, but it also reminds me of a meditation, meditation that we did in, in graduate school with, with the Terravada tradition where we're onion and while you're meditating, you're going deeper and deeper into the onion.
Speaker B:And that also combines with another study that our mentor did, Dr. Yi Wu, about self.
Speaker B:And that the self is a series of like concentric circles.
Speaker B:So you have your physical self, you know, your desires, you have your psychological self, your spiritual self.
Speaker B:And I forget what the others are.
Speaker B:But can you say something about that?
Speaker B:Maybe.
Speaker B:So while two things, while you have the archaeology, maybe want to call it paradigm or, or model model.
Speaker B:Is there something there with my tree model?
Speaker B:That's one, is there other models?
Speaker B:And then two.
Speaker B:Can you say something about this, this concept of onion or layers of the self?
Speaker C:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker C:So first of all, when you said the tree thing, it reminded me of two things.
Speaker C:One is James Redfield and the acorn.
Speaker C:Do you know about.
Speaker C:Yeah, he, I can't remember the name of his book but he likens sort of the development of the self to the acorn that gets planted and you know, how it grows and so forth.
Speaker C:And that, you know, coming back to yourself is coming down to that acorn kind of thing in terms of the peeling of the onion.
Speaker C: st exercise in that book from: Speaker C:I call it Foreplay.
Speaker C:And it's also something I turned into a four part video that is free on my website, Paramore Paradox.
Speaker C:And I also have like a PDF of it.
Speaker C:So it's a big deal to me.
Speaker C:And it's not anything like mind blowing.
Speaker C: t from somewhere else back in: Speaker C:I have no idea.
Speaker C:There's no original ideas on this planet, so I probably got it somewhere else.
Speaker C:But it's called who Am I?
Speaker C:And it is about peeling that onion.
Speaker C:So there's four different ways of doing it, which is why there's four different videos and four different exercises and I have no idea where we're at on time.
Speaker C:So I can describe that or I can just mention that yes, it's about peeling the onion and it's a process, really easy and interesting process to do that.
Speaker A:Well, we've got about at least like three Three, four minutes now before the next break.
Speaker B:So on that note, could I ask, is it a.
Speaker B:Because for.
Speaker B:In my experience, it was a experience of going deeper into yourself, and then the smallest of the onion was like, oh, you know, maybe.
Speaker B:Maybe we would say in the philosophy, true self.
Speaker C:Yep, yep, yep.
Speaker C:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:So the first version of the exercise is partnered, and you would want to pick a partner that you really, really trust safe with.
Speaker C:And you look into the partner's eyes.
Speaker C:The partner acts as your ego voice and says, who am I?
Speaker C:They're only allowed to say that.
Speaker C:They're not asking you to tell them who they are.
Speaker C:They're there so that when you get stuck, which you'll get stuck after about 7 answers, they can say, who am I?
Speaker C:And they can't do anything else.
Speaker C:They can't nod, smile, shake their head, anything.
Speaker C:Just, who am I?
Speaker C:They're just your personal prod.
Speaker C:You do that for three minutes, you set a timer.
Speaker C:The second version, if you either don't want to do that one or want to keep going, is a journaling version where you write 1 to 30 on a piece of paper, and you fill in 30 answers to who am I?
Speaker C:The third version is a mirrored version where you act as both, you know, the ego voice and yourself.
Speaker C:And then the fourth version is what I call the quickie, where you set a Timer for about 45 seconds, and you just rattle off as many as you can.
Speaker C:So that process, the first time somebody does it usually doesn't help them know who they are.
Speaker C:It helps them realize they don't know who they are.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And you can do this, you know, over and over and over.
Speaker C:Even when I do it, you know, now, like, my answers kind of evolve and change and shift and I get a little deeper and a little, you know, I. I now hear my true self pretty darn well.
Speaker C:But you can always know it better, right?
Speaker C:Because I'm not source.
Speaker C:Well, I am.
Speaker C:I am source.
Speaker C:We're all source, but we're also separated from source.
Speaker C:And so that dig, again, there's that term that dig will always reveal new artifacts.
Speaker B:Well, I find.
Speaker B:I found that also at one point, it was like, okay, I knew.
Speaker B:I knew the deepest layers of the onion.
Speaker B:I had more to learn about the outer layers.
Speaker B:Like, I had so much that I just didn't think about my psychology and how that was affecting my relationships and how my childhood was affecting.
Speaker B:I kind of poo pooed that for a while.
Speaker B:That's psychology.
Speaker B:I'm doing philosophy.
Speaker B:I don't need that.
Speaker B:And it's like, whoa, it comes back interesting.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:So, well, one of the things that I wrote down in my questions, and we've got just about two minutes before the break.
Speaker A:How does adapting cover up your true self?
Speaker C:Yeah, so when we adapt, because we're adapting, and that is what is comfortable and familiar.
Speaker C:That is who we think we are.
Speaker C:And it's.
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker C:You know, I'm kind of jumping over to a different version of the question or the answer, and that is around because I think it's really, really important.
Speaker C:There's something I called emotional sobriety.
Speaker C:And I was actually listening to one of your podcasts from.
Speaker C:I don't think it was the last one, but the one before that.
Speaker C:And he talked about not emotional sobriety, but, you know, he was talking about the.
Speaker C:The will or something like that, and about how becoming.
Speaker B:Anyways, Dean Graves.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So to.
Speaker C:To me, we have to become emotionally sober.
Speaker C:And that is because the.
Speaker C:The chemicals that are released, so we have a thought that creates an emotion, the emotion creates a feeling, which create.
Speaker C:Releases chemicals, so that those chemicals.
Speaker C:So if you live in a world of stress, and this is just an example, and you're releasing cortisol and adrenaline all the time, your body becomes literally addicted to it.
Speaker C:And it's not sometimes.
Speaker C:It's always.
Speaker C:I mean, it's.
Speaker C:It's a chemical reaction.
Speaker C:You get used to that.
Speaker C:You get addicted to it.
Speaker C:So you get out of the environment that you're in.
Speaker C:You leave your psychologically abusive marriage, for example, and you still need your fix, right?
Speaker C:So you spin in your head, monkey, monkey brain takes over and reminds you of all those horrible things that were said to you and all that control and all that manipulation, and you have all that anxiety and anger and frustration and guilt and shame, and that gives you your dose of cortisol and adrenaline.
Speaker C:So until you become aware of that and can break that, you continue to feed it.
Speaker C:So you.
Speaker C:Your question was about this, tied in.
Speaker B:With it, the adaptation, how it.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:So even though it's not good, it is familiar.
Speaker C:And familiar is what we want, because that's safe.
Speaker C:Okay, we know what is, you know, familiar.
Speaker C:Like, you know, do I want this.
Speaker C:This evil that I know, or do I want the unknown, which, you know, I don't know what that is.
Speaker C:And so it's kind of the same thing.
Speaker C:So we have to become emotionally sober in order to break that pattern and be truly free.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, we have to take a break from this particular pattern for a moment.
Speaker A:I'm Anthony Wright, and I'm your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Deeds.
Speaker B:Thanks for joining.
Speaker A:We are with our guest, Kristen Crabtree.
Speaker A:And how can people contact you?
Speaker C:I like having conversations.
Speaker C:So you can go to u 2.0 y o u the number two, the word point the number zero dot com and have a free chat with me.
Speaker C:Just kind of like this.
Speaker B:Great.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:We're going to take a short break and be right back.
Speaker A:So stay tuned.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker A:I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam De.
Speaker A:And we're here with our guest, Kristen Crabtree.
Speaker A:And you were talking about before the break the familiarity of the patterns of abuse and that it might be more comfortable because it's more familiar and habituated to stay in those patterns rather than to take the risk to venture into something else.
Speaker A:How do you assist people into taking that risk?
Speaker C:Okay, so one thing to know about change is you can't wait for it to feel comfortable in order to do it.
Speaker C:So, like when I left my marriage, my internal version of what it was was crawling out of the house on my hands and knees and crawling into my car and driving off with one carload of stuff and my pets.
Speaker C:Now, was I really crawling?
Speaker C:No.
Speaker C:But that is, I didn't leave because I had clarity.
Speaker C:I didn't know I was being psychologically abused.
Speaker C:I just knew.
Speaker C:No, I didn't.
Speaker C:I just knew that I was going to totally break if I didn't change something.
Speaker C:And, and my wife wouldn't let me leave.
Speaker C:And people go, what do you mean she wouldn't let you?
Speaker C:Did she have a gun to your head?
Speaker C:No, but it was money control.
Speaker C:And again, I didn't know I had agency.
Speaker C:I didn't know I had power.
Speaker C:So I barely got out in a way in terms of the question that you were asking around, like familiarity and, you know, creating that change, you can't wait for clarity to leave.
Speaker C:You'll never leave the, the thing that.
Speaker C:So this isn't necessarily the advice I can give to somebody who's in that place because they can't hear this.
Speaker C:So the only thing they can really do is survive.
Speaker C:And to survive, it probably means to create a change.
Speaker C:But the reason, in addition to that emotional sobriety thing that I was talking about, our brains are filter machines.
Speaker C:So they are there to give us what we expect.
Speaker C:We only perceive 0.01% of what is actually in reality.
Speaker C: .: Speaker C:But that's like too hard to even Begin to get your head around.
Speaker C:So we only see 0.01% of what's there there.
Speaker C:So where's the rest of it?
Speaker C:Well, our brain creates filters, and it creates these filters so that we don't lose our marbles, because if we could see 100% of what was out there, we wouldn't be able to function in this world.
Speaker C:Now, our brains are amazing, and they're very efficient, and they want to do their job as quickly as possible.
Speaker C:Its job as quickly as possible.
Speaker C:And so it will filter information to give us what we expect to see.
Speaker C:So we see orange, right?
Speaker C:And then we realize, oh, it's a fruit called an orange, right?
Speaker C:So really, what to do to create transformation in your life?
Speaker C:What you, what has to happen is you have to start to see the filter you've been seeing through.
Speaker C:You have to start to see the lens you've been seeing through.
Speaker C:And I have four.
Speaker C:Four I call the mind expanding experiences because people are afraid of the word meditation.
Speaker C:And that's a whole nother topic that we could have.
Speaker C:But my mind expanding experiences, otherwise known as me squared, walk people through three different ways and then a combo way of experiencing that filter for themselves.
Speaker C:So it takes them through a visual opportunity, a auditory opportunity, a physical, like, kinesthetic opportunity, and the one that's advanced, that combines all of them.
Speaker C:It's just 10 to 15 minutes, depending on which one you're listening to.
Speaker C:And they are designed to help you realize, oh, there's so much more.
Speaker C:Because once you realize there's more, you can then tell the filter to give you what you want instead of what it expects.
Speaker C:So people talk about manifestation, and you don't really have to manifest anything because everything's there.
Speaker C:It's just that your brain is filtering out the stuff you want and giving you the stuff you expect.
Speaker C:Oh, you have to shift that filter.
Speaker C:In order to shift the filter, you have to see the filter.
Speaker A:And how does that filter show up?
Speaker C:What do you mean by how does it show up?
Speaker A:I mean, how do you, how do you know that you're dealing with that, that filter?
Speaker A:You start to see things differently or experience things differently.
Speaker C:Or you mean like through my mind expanding experiences?
Speaker C:Is that what you're.
Speaker C:Oh, so like, for the visual one?
Speaker C:Well, let's do the hearing one.
Speaker C:I think that's the easiest one to talk about without experiencing it.
Speaker C:Okay, so the hearing one, the auditory one, and has you pick a sound and really experience that sound.
Speaker C:And then I ask the question, was that sound there before you found it, before you Started listening to it.
Speaker C:And then I tell you to pick another sound.
Speaker C:And I ask the same question.
Speaker C:And then I tell you to hold both sounds together at the same time.
Speaker C:And then I tell you to identify a sound that is a continuous sound.
Speaker C:So like leaves rustling, wind blowing, refrigerator humming, fan sound, something continuous.
Speaker C:So again, was that there before you paid attention to it?
Speaker C:And then I say pick another sound.
Speaker C:And then I point out now when I say pick another sound, your brain searches, finds another sound.
Speaker C:So was that sound there before I told you to find it?
Speaker C:So it's that sort of process that makes you go, oh, oh my God.
Speaker C:Like that sound is always there.
Speaker C:And I filter it out.
Speaker C:That sound is there, that sound is there.
Speaker C:So it starts to give you this really hands on realization that there's so much more going on than what you're taking in.
Speaker C:So if that sound has always been there and you filtered it out, well then what else are you filtering out?
Speaker A:So does the sound create the tree that's in the forest?
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker A:So any thoughts?
Speaker A:Adam?
Speaker B:When you say transformation, it reminds me of Taoist philosophy and the philosopher Chuangzi.
Speaker B:And when you, the way you're describing is like, we have to see our highest self.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker B:And earlier, your universal stuff, he has some really interesting image images about that.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:And when you're talking about the different exercises and he doesn't, he actually says something similar.
Speaker B:Sitting and forgetting and I forgot myself.
Speaker B:So that you forget, you forget the filter.
Speaker B:So he has one, he has one story where he says, I fell asleep in the, in the, in the woods.
Speaker B:I dreamt I was a butterfly.
Speaker B:I woke up, I didn't know if I was Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I was Chuang Zi.
Speaker B:This is like an example of forget yourself.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:So I love that because actually my belief, my philosophy is that we come here intentionally forgetting and our whole job here is to remember.
Speaker C:That's what our job is, it's to remember.
Speaker C:And I help people remember the past, but I also help people remember the future because there's no such thing as time.
Speaker C:So we are our future self right now.
Speaker C:And that's what my integration section gets into.
Speaker C:It's the concept of retro causality and the artificial construct of time and consciousness and that your story is probably not serving your future self.
Speaker C:The best way to transform is to ask yourself, is are, are you?
Speaker C:What is your future self doing today?
Speaker C:And then do that, like be that.
Speaker C:And if you're that, then you're already your future self.
Speaker C:So you don't have to wait 10 years to do whatever it is your true self tells you you're supposed to do.
Speaker C:You can do that today.
Speaker C:You can be that now.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:While you were talking about.
Speaker B:It's almost like you, you forget to remember and you have to remember to forget.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:But then you could see, you could see yourself from different perspectives, right.
Speaker B:And you could see your past self, your current self, your feelings, emotions, your, Your ego, your future self, all from a higher perspective.
Speaker B:And then you have time and space to kind of process and pick and choose.
Speaker B:Earlier you're talking about, you can.
Speaker B:You go and you put on a mask.
Speaker B:But you.
Speaker B:But this time you're mindful of putting on your mask.
Speaker B:You know, you're putting on a mask.
Speaker B:This is like.
Speaker B:We cultivate a self for a purpose.
Speaker B:And so in Confucian philosophy, they also have, like, you cultivate yourself for this world.
Speaker B:You make a.
Speaker B:You make an ego, you make a life for this world.
Speaker B:You want to help this world.
Speaker B:I know I've, I've heard from you that you have a strong sense of that, that you're called to do this work and you're cultivating a self for doing this work.
Speaker B:Is that right?
Speaker C:Yes, yes, 100%.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, I'm sorry to say that we're running out of time.
Speaker C:Darn it.
Speaker A:But that's the other thing, is that you do have a website where you can chat with people.
Speaker A:I'm Anthony Wright and I've been your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.
Speaker B:Thanks for joining the conversation.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And how can people contact you and have a good conversation?
Speaker C:Well, I, I love chatting.
Speaker C:I love talking.
Speaker C:And you can go to u20.com y o u the number two, the word point the number zero dot com and we can chat and it's free.
Speaker C:It's just time to get to know each other and explore the world.
Speaker A:And take all the time we need in the next moment.
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker A:All right, thank you guys so much for listening and we'll see you next time.
