Raederle

I feel really disappointed and unsatisfied by Teal’s answers to the man who asked, “What is the role of primary partners in our life? Is it detrimental for me to keep pursuing a romantic primary partnership?” I related tremendously to him saying, “But if one person doesn’t see all of me then I feel like a tree falling in a forest that nobody is hearing.” It’s all well and good to know what healthy societies and healthy people do, but that has little relationship to where I am in my journey and my trauma around this. I learned about tribe and healthy relationships nearly fifteen years ago and I discovered Teal a decade ago. I’m a certified completion process practitioner myself. That doesn’t magically unroot my core traumas around connection, and for me, the sense that I must have a go-to person is so incredibly central. I have found that I can rotate between multiple people being my go-to person in the context of polyamory, but it’s difficult and painful and feels weirdly unnatural to my inner sense of “I want one person.” Why *is* it the case that I desperately need one person to see all of me? I’ve been asking this question for over a decade and I have many answers to it, but I still don’t have the whole picture. My husband of fifteen years has been with me through this journey. We invented our own method of hypnotic inductions, exploration of the subconscious, and soul retrieval before TCP book came out. But despite all that, this all-consuming need is brighter than ever. In fact, all my healing work has actually made this need increasingly obvious and important in my life. The idea of “healing it away” actually makes me cringe. Of course, it is related to developmental trauma. My infant self is looking for Mom. She’s hurt easily and doesn’t understand most verbal explanations. She hears tonality, feels caresses and sees expressions on faces. This part of me attaches to one person at a time and only feels safe when one person is seeing all of me. (Yes, there’s that concept of “security” again.) Teal touched on security, safety, and reliability. But a group of less-close friends CAN’T be safe. I’ve built up networks of friends over years, learning how to be a better friend, how to follow-up better, listen more, validate extensively, and be supportive rather than trying to fix people. I’ve always been radically accepting of difficult truths, but over time I’ve learned how to project that acceptance increasingly effectively so that people regularly tell me that they feel safer with me than they have with anyone else. AND YET *I* DON’T FEEL SAFE. Not like I’m edge-of-my-seat-anxious with friends or anything. I’m not. I just find that spreading my time around a bunch of social excursions or hosting friends at my house a lot doesn’t make it so that I fail to cry at night. Only my interactions with a partner can make me fall asleep feeling fulfilled. Maybe I’m just not emotionally close enough to my friends? But how could I be? There already aren’t enough hours in a day or days in a week to manage mundane life stuff, have a social life, and have inspirations! I’m a very needy person, and this has taught me how to make other people feel safe. I can look at my own vast array of needs and it allows me to relate to virtually anyone else’s needy aspects, whether it’s around special foods, sensory sensitivities, anxiety, fear, needing space, needing closeness, needing sexual acceptance, needing a certain environment. I work so hard to make others feel safe AND to clearly express my own needs, but nothing less than taking on leadership positions makes me safe. I have to create my own safety by choosing the location, timing, and structure of how things go. I have to be the lead organizer of everything, host events, follow-up with people. I do so much of the leg work in every friendship and every partnership, and this work has won me many talented, brilliant people in my life. This work has won me acceptance for my neediness. It has won me a certain level of understanding. And despite all of that – despite having literally too many people in my life to make time for them all – I still feel lonely regularly (sometimes daily), and I still desperately want it all to come from one person. My developmental trauma still demands MOM. But it demands MOM and HUSBAND and FRIEND and PEER and COLLEAGUE and PROVIDER to literally all be the same person. Someone to be there for me emotionally all the time, but also have money to support me, and yet more energy to fulfill me sexually. I know this is impossible. I don’t intellectually expect this from anyone. That would be literally impossible! Yet my heart hurts whenever I’m reminded of the parts of me that are not seen, understood, validated, or supported by a given person. I feel a sense of vertigo and loss that can’t be repaired. I grieve and grieve, trying to let go, trying to express my emotion in journaling or talking or processing to get it all out. I’ve gone through so many processes around this central theme over the years, and little pieces heal or integrate. I’ve learned to appreciate more “shallow” contact and feel some connection and joy from it (which never happened prior to six years ago). Much progress *has* happened. The work is worthwhile, from dream recall, to meditation, to parts work. It all leads to greater understanding and better choices. But the gap between me and feeling like I could do without a central *it* person is the grand canyon and I don’t see any way to cross it in this lifetime. I feel like pelting me with the idea that I could somehow cross that canyon is actually invalidating and painful. I’ve actually helped many clients see that trying to heal themselves out of needing a serious relationship was self-rejection and detrimental. So when this man said that statement that resonated with me so much I was really hoping for something profound and useful to me personally in response and didn’t find such. I’m just disappointed because I want more ways to better caretake this baby self that I carry inside who gets hurt so easily. It’s scary because I’m entirely at the behest of others on this healing journey. If my partner is having a rough time on a given day and unthinkingly says or does something to reject me when I’m feeling vulnerable, I feel like nothing I do to try to counteract the damage is enough. I talk to myself lovingly and try to explain what happened. I cry it out. I collect apologies and better experiences later on, but I feel like my infant self is still stuck being an infant because of a mass of scar tissue on the emotional body. Hiding this part of myself completely to keep it safe makes me feel dead, smothered, and depressed, but exposing this part makes me have unreasonable desires that nobody can fulfill. If you read all of this then I assume you found it interesting and maybe you relate. Looking forward to you sharing your thoughts too.

I feel like I have almost an opposite experience as the first man which makes me wonder what my life path is from a spiritual perspective. I'm 34 and I still have yet to lose somebody emotionally crucial to me to death. All the most important people in my life are still with the living. But I have a lot of anxiety about death and about loss. I do have a lot of emotional abandonment trauma and I have had bad breakups in the past, and thus I've had nightmares about the death of loved ones that have really shaken me. I do feel like I have struggled with my own sense of identity, which is ironic for someone who definitely is not a people pleaser. I have always gone to the beat of my own drum and have had a really hard time figuring out what it even means to sync up with a crowd and harmonize other people. Despite all that, I feel like I am so fiercely not a follower specifically because I feel a sense of my identity becoming consumed so easily. And it scares me. Even getting sucked into a book or a movie can feel like a violation of my consciousness, depending on what it is. About a decade ago, during a really good meditation, I had the epiphany that part of what my soul group is working on is understanding temperature. What does warmth mean at every level? There is the warmth associated with being a social mammal, and then there is abandonment and the cold that is associated with that. There is the heat of a fever – I seem to have fevers at the drop of a hat, always have since I was a baby. But I have noticed that my insights are always peak during fevers. It's like the fever burns away the boundaries in my brain that prevents me from seeing the universe as it is. So I know at a very broad level, I'm part of a soul group that it's working on understanding temperature in all of its nuance. But I have much more specific intentions for myself. I wonder if Teal has a meditation on this. If she does I probably already own it but I have been slacking off on actually doing guided meditations for the last few years. 😅 But, back to the idea of living every moment. I feel like what makes me appreciate every moment is all of the health problems I've had throughout my life. Maybe I didn't need anyone to die, because I had to face the possibility of being an invalid, being incapable of taking care of myself, potentially not being able to do the things I love most. These have been very real possibilities and I have lived periods of my life without being able to walk, periods without being able to use my hands, and even spans of time where my eyes were so sensitive that I couldn't tolerate light for days at a time and had to be blindfolded in a dark room to prevent a stinging pain from being continuous and unbearable. I've had many health complications since birth, and spent so much of my life being sick, that when I do have energy I feel this pressing need to apply it to something that I really want. Unfortunately, as I get older I find it harder to justify just relaxing and having fun and often tie myself in knots trying to figure out what the best use of my time is. Obviously, this time spent trying to figure out what I want doesn't feel like I'm really living my moments truly. Spending time feeling guilty about wasted time is probably one of the biggest wastes of time of all. I often feel extremely jealous of people who don't have health problems like I do. People who can just get up and do things and live life to the fullest. I sometimes get extremely angry at people (and hide it) when they don't understand what they are asking me – when they think I can just easily do the things that most people can do. But, aside from my struggles with my own physical body, I often am astonished at how much easier my life has been in other ways relative to many people around me. But I've often reasoned that it absolutely had to be that way. If everything else wasn't easier for me, living in this body with all of these challenges would be absolutely impossible. So I guess the trade-off is that I don't have to lose a couple twins to appreciate my life, but I do have to reside in a vessel that gives me new challenges all the time. 😅 There's some off the cuff reflections. I hope you enjoyed reading this long message.

This was one of the best workshops in a while. The couple on stage was full of examples I related to from both sides! I also was brought to tears by the cheering of the crowd to the woman who wanted to find her people and stop being lonely. Beautiful.

We have many relationships beyond human relationships. Even if we live a very secluded life at home, we still encounter insects, animals, plants, and even inanimate objects. Even the media we choose to engage with will reflect parts of ourselves to us. I realize that a lot of people underestimate how isolated you can be. I have spent years of my life where I was neither in school nor work and I only left the house to go grocery shopping and I had very little contact outside of the one or two people I was living with at the time. Because of my fear of phone calls I would not contact people in that way either. For me, I know part of why I was so isolated in the first place is because I am not able to face certain reflections of myself. I remind myself when things are really triggering me or causing me a lot of resentment that it is a reflection of myself and that of course makes me even angrier. Because, when we do that it can be a way of invalidating the part of ourselves that feels hurt by the whole situation. The good news is that you can work on integrating your parts even through your interactions with other people. The way you treat others is also how you are treating yourself. Just like the way you treat yourself is also the way you are treating others. So I'm improving your relationship with plants, insects, and animals (as well as stones and computers and everything else) you are actually doing some of your internal work as well. You are particularly working on yourself when you find a kind way to communicate with someone who is triggering you.

Remember how they talked about how time doesn't exist even at the fourth dimension? The planets have fixed movements, but when you have all of eternity to choose when to manifest yourself in three dimensions, there are any alignments you could possibly want. Also, the way the planets are aligned is attached to everything else. So if there is a particular family stream you're interested in, you don't have to be worried about where the planets are. You can choose what you want from any perspective. You can choose it through your specific parents, your family line as a whole, the time and history when you're incarnating, the country or culture that you're coming into... We usually think of all of these things as facets, but these facets are fractals. You could pick any one of these aspects of the condition for when we incarnate and actually figure everything else out from the complete information of any one of those aspects. This is why you can read someone's health, past, future, and everything in between on their palm, or in the iris of their eyes, or on their feet. These are canvases on which our body displays the fractal nature of itself. In other words, when your soul stream is choosing to incarnate, it doesn't like it's going to hang around thinking about where the planets are and wanting the planets to be just so. They don't even have to think about that at all. They can simply think about what experiences they want to have and what part of the time space reality is going to give them those experiences. (Of course, everything about the words I'm using is misleading. We aren't going to be hanging around exactly, or thinking exactly, or whatever when we're not incarnated, lol.)

I relate so much to what Teal said about food. As I have progressed along my own journey I've only become more picky and sensitive to food. And I was already an extremely picky eater when I was a child. I gave up chocolate when I was nine because I saw that it was addictive for adults. At 14 I gave up soda and most candies and other sweetened things. Then I gave up refined sugars entirely when I was 17. I went vegan at 18, then raw vegan at 20. Raw vegetarian at 21 because I was having issues which raw milk seem to help with. But, I had to very carefully source the milk from local cows. Still, I felt that the milk wasn't entirely right for me and I experimented with going vegan again for a while. (Later I discovered raw goat milk from a local Farm which treats their goats really well and that has that much better with me. And now I always consume my milk after it's been turned into keeper which is completely different.) I stayed completely raw for years. At 28 I gave up lectins which was an extremely beneficial move for me. I ate out at a restaurant maybe all of seven times from the age of 21 to 27. I had a period of experimentation where I tried eating out more around 27 or 28 and that went terribly. My whole body felt like it was just on fire with problems. And I could also see how the emotional problems and the physical problems were always lining up with the poor food all together. Now I'm 33 and I've been on a modified gaps diet for the past year and that's worked really well for me. I source everything very carefully and order food specially from different places. I drive to multiple different farms to get things direct. I never eat out at all anymore. When people ask me what my sensitivities are because they want to cook for me, at this point I just tell them that they can't, lol. I also grow a fair bit of my own food these days which I love. This is a really exciting time of year because my house caps and currents are blooming and the figs are growing on my trees and the strawberries are ripening in my solarium. Soon there will be fruit ripe continuously through the end of October. 😄 Honestly, I have trouble relating to people when they want to binge on crappy food. For my birthday I don't eat cake, I cleanse on raspberry juice or something wonderful like that!

Many of the videos early on in the Ask Teal series on YouTube are more about esoteric and spiritual things. Teal originally thought that teaching about that would really help people awaken, but then she discovered that people really needed the down to earth practical advice that she had to offer. She also talks about esoteric stuff a lot in interviews with people who have their own channel about spirituality. So if you look up podcasts and interviews with Teal where the interviewer has a spiritual event then they always end up asking to you a bunch of questions about the more esoteric stuff.

I think I actually met my twin flame in perhaps a couple different trees. There was a tree in Toronto that I was practically in love with. And someone actually guided me to spend a little bit more time with that tree when I was in a time of emotional duress. And I felt profound connection with it. I suppose it doesn't actually matter whether or not it was a twin flame; obviously I had a connection with the tree whether or not that was the reason. I really liked how this interview pointed out that anything could look like a benevolent or malevolent force in the universe depending on what your perspective was. In other words, humans can look like a cancer cell to another species who is observing how destructive we can be. And yet, another evolved species might look on us with compassion and see our capacity to love, grow, and integrate. As for the exercise around becoming closer to one's emotions, I tried that exercise a few years ago. I wrote down all the somatic sensations, but my experience was that my attention on somatic experience actually shuts out my perception of my emotional experience. For some reason these two things were fragmented within me. I tried various approaches to get around this, but eventually just decided to go with the approach of acceptance. I write about this a little bit in my book perspective alchemy, because I have had a few clients who also have this experience where going into what their body feels actually removes their awareness of their emotions.

Yeah, those were my thoughts exactly. He just wanted to be on stage and present stuff and get attention. He didn't actually want to bring up anything of his own, but then when he does he is giving his life story when Teal is finally about the impart some wisdom, lol.

Another great interview with Teal. Only problem is that I've heard all of this dozens of times and could have answered the interviewers' questions myself with ease. I'm seeking Teal's more esoteric understandings and experiences. I'd love a course from Teal for her most advanced students. (Beyond becoming a CPCP which I already am.)

Whoa. She says viewing our lives in the context of awareness of our death is one of the healthiest things that can happen! Mind blown! Can Teal expand more on this?

During the stuckness meditation I saw myself beside a cliff with a hang-glider. (In real life I've never used anything of the sort!) I had every reason to believe I could fly. Everyone told me I could fly. All the evidence told me I could fly. Yet I was too afraid and I realized I would always be too afraid to jump off this high, harsh cliff in the desert. The solution was to ride a bus to the coast and get a hang-glider over the ocean, pulled by a boat. 💗🤩

I got to 1 hour and 47 minutes and now I'm just balling my eyes out. Teal . . . If you were to die to make a point . . . I can see why you might choose that, and that it may be in alignment for you, and that it may be good for humanity as a whole . . . But GOD I will miss you so much and I will shed so many tears for you. I'm already crying for it now and it's probably a decade in the future.

Those camera people are working on making a movie about Teal. I met them when I got certified to be a Completion Process Practitioner. Unfortunately they don't have an agreement yet with Teal's team about how the footage will be used. I think after they make the movie they will probably give the spare footage to Teal's team. I certainly hope so. So the camera for this one was probably being attended by someone on Teal's team who got called away for some other responsibility.

I love watching Teal channel parts of people. This one was particularly amusing.

The second woman (the older one with white hair who self-identified as autistic) is an INTJ like my mother. I mention this partly because Myers-Briggs is a fantastic way to approach understanding people through a logic-oriented system. When you learn the eight cognitive functions that Carl Jung identified and the system that the Myers-Briggs team developed from those cognitive functions, you have a model for understanding how/why different people think the way they do. Also, INTJ women are fairly rare. It is a more common type among men, which leaves INTJ women particularly lonely and finding it hard to relate to anyone, particularly since INTJ types tend to be the most reclusive. Other types that tend to benefit a lot from the Myers-Briggs system include INFPs, INFJs, and INTPs. (Although INTPs are usually huge skeptics until they dive really deep into it.) So, if you're reading this and relate to that woman (or are that woman), I suggest looking into it. 🙂 ~ Raederle (an INFJ)

This is my second time watching some of this workshop. I wish there was a way on Premium to say, "Show me all the videos I have not watched yet."

This was really fantastic for me. I listened to the whole thing while watercolor painting in the coloring book I published last year (Waveward Dreams). I resonated a lot with a couple of the questions, especially about needing someone else to facilitate because some part of me resents having to heal myself, take care of myself, or do everything myself. I have never directly worked with this feeling because I'm afraid that if I heal it, then others will be even less likely to help me. So that overlaps with a few questions that were asked, actually. I am now seriously considering investing in hiring a Completion Process Practitioner because I believe my needs around having this done for me are directly conflicting with needs of my husbands, which is why we are hit-and-miss with processing one another. Thank you so much for uploading this to Premium for us! ~ Raederle (Ray-der-lee)

I related a lot to the second woman on stage. I hide at home, and I use difficulties with my body as an excuse to stay safe . . . and lonely. I have a great life at home, but it's too small a life. I know I want to emerge more into the world, but I keep choosing simplicity, safety, solitude . . .

Having watched around twelve of these workshops from beginning to end, this is the first time seeing someone on stage who really sounds and acts like me. The first woman on stage, a writer, up her head, who Teal compares to a butterfly (which I believe is my spirit animal) . . . Terrified of joy and other positive emotions because those emotions mean loss to me. Terrified that expressing emotion means losing someone precious to me. Up in my head, where it is safe. Always thinking, thinking, thinking about feelings, because that's the only safe way to interact with them. Lots of drama about Mom. Dad was just "there." God. This is so me. So me that I can't even let it in. I think about it . . . Write about it . . . So as to keep the understanding but not yet let the feeling overtake me . . . Whew.

It would be amazing if the subjects with links to pars of the video could be added to these older workshops. ~ Raederle PS: I always find it interesting how Teal has yet to run into any long-term polyamorous relationships. I can't imagine not having my two husbands at this point. They are my family, my community, my support system, and we all watch and read Teal together.

Teal Team, I love that you're adding the subjects/questions above the workshop to make it easier to navigate. It would also be REALLY HELPFUL if there was a way to search all of tealswan.com for every relevant video, blog post, etc, to a given subject. For example, right now I'd like to review everything about Developmental Trauma, but Teal does not have an Ask Teal episode about this specifically. She's spoken about it in a dozen different videos I've seen, yet I'm not sure which interviews/workshops those were, and trying to find them has thus far been unsuccessful. Thanks for considering this idea. ~ Raederle

I took these notes live, so I'm sure I missed things here and there, but for those of you who benefit from a written review, here is my own summary (as altered by my own filters/blocks, of course): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BIgcQ86kY4qicXLHdZE2_qq3QtXhFihNqKllgZX93ec/edit?usp=sharing