Welcome to the space versus this podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Dominique Pritchett. And today I am joined by Sean nail. Betty's. How are you? Thank you for having me. I am well, and thank you for being here. Y'all let me introduce our guests. Sean now is a barrier breaking master's level. No BS. Licensed professional counselor providing mental health and wellness services to BiPAP LGBTQ plus.
Foster and adoptive families, as well as formerly incarcerated individuals virtually through her private practice. Which is called choosing empowerment. Chanel uses the power of choice and the power of healthy relationships to fuel her mission, to provide access to those who need it most also she is a speaker, author, and leader in her community. Welcome again. Thank you. Yeah. So much that was very well done. You might say, oh, you can take that as a sound bite later.
Cause you go get the recording. Yes. For this episode, we will be chatting about the choice is yours. Choose wisely. First and foremost, when you ain't out here shining in your glory, looking fabulous and slang stages. What do you like to do for fun? When I'm not. I guess lane is therapizing and all that good stuff. I like music. I was like, some music. So I get jammed up on the makeup on and all that kind of stuff. We shall go to wish. I'll go to the jam.
Oh, I like Neo, so I like, the old school, like the seventies. My 72 baby. Rock steady. Yeah. Mostly. Think of music. That's what I think about when I hear music. I'm not going to shade to nobody. That's now a day. Okay. Y recently, I went to Chicago. to one of these places where they have intimate. Musical performances and Liz Wright was there. Are you leaving Liz? Yes. Yes. This is just as amazing as she was 10, however many years ago, she got me. College.
Where yeah, my daughters, they seem to me. My biological daughters. I have adopted daughters as well. My daughter just said a few weeks ago, like I realize I haven't been, I've been in a funky mood cause. I haven't been seen. And I'm like yes. So as she noticed this, that does it for me. And my youngest and we get ahead and get the harmonizing and jam man. And, everything is better when we're doing that. The vibe in the house is super high, as so it's that's, that's how I regulate.
Oh, my headphones. I don't wanna be bothered to just put me up. I don't want to just jam out, Just depending on what mood I'm in Miami. RNB and might be some new. So jail's got it. And the idea to my favorites. You. They might. Broadest, speak to myself. Okay. Like you came back right higher than it was when you think about. Being a therapist. I like to think of it as soul work. How did you start your journey as a therapist?
When I think of therapy, I think of it as soul work, one, it is spilling to my soul and two people are giving us access to the deepest part of their life. Can you share with us? What has been your journey to becoming a therapist? And how did you know that was a good choice. It was the only choice. More. This is. This is. I tell people, this is who I am and not what I do. Because at seven years old, I was like, I want a bitch. And I was psychiatrist. I didn't even know what a shot.
Psychiatrist was. Where does that thought come from? I believe in, no, it could've been from the TV or something. I don't know. I really don't know. But I remember saying, and I don't remember a lot of my childhood. But I remember that moment. And I just, they, from there, I just don't operate in it and I was always helping somebody and I was always somebody's shoulder lean on and. And I've never been willing to like telling other people's business.
No. They had confidentiality with me anyway, with. High school. You're going to, I was the one that knew everybody's business. And nobody else knew it from me. bEcause I was keeping all the secrets you. And I was easy to talk to I just, I nurtured that thing. That's all I've ever known. I've wanted to do. And I've had moments where that was challenged and what a school for psychology people are like, you're not going to be. I was like, what? I'm still not changing my major though.
Yeah. Along that journey. It took me 13 years to get my bachelor's degree in and out of school. I took a break. Did you know, this is working in the field. with social stuff and being a foster parent and, working for different companies. One of them lose to the job. And I. And I stopped saying I lost that job. And it was time for that transition. And then I went back to school and got this message and start working toward that, I've loved every moment of the. Good the bad, the ugly.
And I like to add ugly as hell too. Ugly. But I realized there is nothing wasted in the creator's economy. What were some of the challenges you face? So it took you 13 years to get your bachelor's. And then your masters, what were some of the mental challenges you faced? I think a lot of it was, most of my life's been like just stuff worth. Not believing that I could do it still doing, trying to get. But still not believing.
Cause blowing up my mother, And they, it was very demeaning in, didn't make me feel valuable, even though I was the one thing. So I was taking care of a household taking care of her, taking care of. Little siblings. But I didn't, she did. Show me that I have value. And so I walked most of my life, not feeling seen or heard. Understood. Yeah. And so that I think has been my biggest challenge. Yes, I can imagine those of you that are listening.
Many of you have been in a position where you have been in an inverted hierarchy, so parental education, that's what it is. You become your parents, caretaker, confidant, parent to your other siblings. Reason why I know about this, I wrote a 235 plus page doctoral dissertation on parentified, adolescent. But the focus was helping them rewrite their trauma narrative, their expressive art.
And so when you said that, that stood out to me, because I too shared as part of my story of but when do I get to be a kid? Yes. Yes. So your value was only tied to how much you could do for people and what you did for people. And what I did for people is that it's following me. That is followed. I still have the champion. Get out of the struggle of it, because I still have to check that subconscious part. Okay wait. She can't be too much. Wait a minute at.
This is a group of people that here y'all can take at your own ground. I just did. I had a whole. Conversation. And it almost a panic attack. A few days ago about responsibility. I just kept getting hit in the word responsibility. And it's not my responsibility. Is. At any, it makes you a super people pleaser. Because I'm not doing something for somebody else. And I go like me, then I go to love and be, I don't feel good, but I have to take care of needy first. Okay to take care of the people.
But not to your demands, right? And that has to do. Every relationship. Yep. Every relationship, every. It's all relationship, not just, intimate relationships, but like with his kids with ex-husband, what a job. I didn't know how to leave a job. It created a, had to fire me a thousand times because it was time to go. What's on the go. But I went to go. And my therapist called. Ask me. Why do you go down to the ship? I was like, wHat did you say. I didn't know. I didn't know at the time.
And she helped me to navigate and figure out. That need, again, it needs to be needed. And I realized my mom had to say me because. And I said all the time, my mom is I need you to need me because as we grew up as the old day, And became more independent. I've been independent, unfortunately, Fueled in her more envy and jealousy as I was making my way. I was doing the things is so she was attacking. What you were doing, you were disrupting those generational patterns. Absolutely.
I was just having a conversation last night. I was on a committee call for this organization. I'm a member of, and, we're talking, we're planning. Our upcoming calendar for mental health has called in awareness events. A person naturally. stated I think we should really focus on bringing generational curses and I let them finish. And to the best of my ability, I said, we are cursing ourselves. That whole we've been told it keeps going in a family.
We today are talking about the choice is yours choose wisely. When we keep choosing, we do have a choice. We understand y'all resources are different. People are in healthy situations. And like you said, it's still shows up. We are not exempt from being so damn human, but we do have a choice. What kind of human issue we're going to practice. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You have to be you have to choose to get you got to choose to reach out for help. Everything is a choice. Everything.
When you say that, what are some of the pushback you get? Because I can imagine people are like, you just make an, a sound easy, but a choice starts here eager. That's the simplest part of it though. I'm going to choose to do or be better. What do you say to push back it's like excuses, this is just how I am. I don't even know what to do, but you still gotta make the choice to begin with. Much of the pushback is just people making excuses and not wanting to do the work as necessary.
Or they don't want to feel it because you got to feel the pain in order. You got to go back and feel the pain cause you never allowed yourself to feel the pain. We block it out or we just. Associate a week. It is something else or. Find some distraction to not deal. You got to go through it to get to the end. You can't go over it under it, around it. You have to go. I think that speaks to really breaking the word choice apart.
Choosing wisely, we operate starting with thoughts, our thoughts impact our feelings or emotions. Then we acted out either we. Or we don't do thoughts, feelings, and actions. When we are talking about choose it is you getting to the point where you're no longer in denial that yo ish is messed up. You feel good here? And good for you and mom and them can be a loving from whale butter. Thank you.
So that choice is not a sign of weakness because you, you're not ready to proceed, but are you going to choose to admit this ain't healthy and you're not well, Yeah. If people don't want to be wrong. They don't, they. we're conditioned that way you. Don't make mistakes. Don't miss up. Don't fail. But every piece of that is building you, right? Every piece of that is a learning experience. You get something out of it.
And I think a lot of it is connected to the grief, the loss of the thing, because if I get better and the people around me not getting better. In some aspect, I'm going to lose them. Identity. So much based in our identity so much based in our day. If I'm not Cheryl's daughter, come on now. If I'm not, my daughter's mother, it's a matter of fact, like I love. My therapist. Cause she gave me this assignment a couple of years ago. Draw a circle. Cut it up until the time.
And she said, I want you to put caregiver is one section. Now I want you to fill up the rest of those spaces. With who you are outside of taking care of. Okay. Caring for other people. It took me two years. I think I still got one session to go. And it was hard because, I can't use therapists. I can't use mom. I can't use anything that needs I'm doing for other people. What am I doing for me? Who am I outside of that? I took a trip by myself to California.
The first time I've really been alone with no responsibility for nobody else. It was weird. It was. I Had to sit in it but then I was able to put traveling. When that thing. You know what I'm saying? I realized it was going to take. I was going to have to lift this thing in order to fill that out. There wasn't an overnight. Yeah. Yeah. First of all, I love your therapist, that she is a gimme you those tangible activities. And that's one of my favorite activity.
I do annually for myself to make sure I'm still living out loud and I give to the clients. So I love that exercise. It really does challenge us to who am I outside of my tie to other people. That's how we start choosing to shift the narrative and the language around. Oh these are generational curses. That's holding me down. When you get to start putting your life pie together, you start disrupting those narratives. In our world, we call certain things.
Schemeless your worldview of what it looks like to. I have historical and generational stuff. Yes. It is possible to imagine it and it's possible to live it. Thank you. We have been taught our whole life. Go, be focused, take care to take care of them. Schedule your daydream time. You are not ready to make that shift towards disruption. Schedule your daydream time, your mindfulness time. I just want to sit in at time. And allow yourself to do it. Give yourself permission to feel.
We live most of our lives, not Ealing, a thing. Was there ever a time where. You didn't allow yourself to do that and why? Oh. Come on. I lived, not in my body. And to an extent that's that pouring into other people think. I realized as much as I adore my doctor girls, I realized that was a trauma response for me to take on so many kids. Adopted. Five kids along with my two. That was giving me meeting. No anything. I was doing for other people. I was allowing that to define.
Who I was, and I want operated and give me value. So when certain things are going. I looked at myself and was like, what am I doing wrong? Not even considering that it could be a situation thing, or maybe it's the other person too, or not. It was wrong with me. I can't do this thing. What's wrong with me? I had to start to stepping back from that is then there's not that. That doesn't need to be growth or there's something I shouldn't learn or do. But it's not in totality.
I'm not a failure, because this thing didn't work out. It didn't work out. Cause maybe what. It wasn't work out it. Take two or take five. What you're talking about. Looking at our behaviors because even through good stuff, it still has meaning. Looking at why you keep volunteering for stuff. Why do you keep standing? Oh, I'll take it on I'll drive. As we're healing, I N G if anybody has the audacity to put an E D at the end of hill, Never. Okay. Okay. Yeah, always.
Healing because the world, just look at what's happening around the world. The world is happening in front of our eyes. As you look at even the good things that you do to serve your community and make an impact. Let's take a step back and ask yourself the powerful question, which we do well, why. wHy do I doing this for. A lot of times. Altruistic oh, it makes me feel okay, but why. Let's go again. Why. You got to get deeper into that. I did a good job.
As a mom and I pride myself on being a mom of many, not just my own children. that also became a part of my mission. I think subconsciously as a kid, I need to be better than me. This is good. This part got to change. That became my identity. I couldn't see outside of that. It's still, the kid was going up. It had to be with. That'd be somebody. Sometimes they just wasn't making the choice themselves.
Yep. Most interesting about when we subconsciously try hard, like breaking our neck and back to be the person we say we'll never become when I was in my therapy journey. In college that's when I, had. Major mental breakdown I was trying so hard to be this, trauma disruptor that I inadvertently started doing things. My mama did. I was angry. At the world and I blamed other people. I was drinking heavily my first two years in college because yes, I just didn't want to feel.
When you talking about just being out of your body, boy, have I been there? That whole subconscious thing where we're trying hard not to repeat things, slow down. The acronym I love to use. Y'all know, I use a lot of acronyms for, just for the sake of just recall. Just stop. Stop. as you stop, you have to state was actually happening. Like I'm trying, I don't want to feel, I want to be disconnected to the world.
And then when you slow down and stop, you get to take inventory of damn, I feel that all in my back in my body, in my thigh, in that area, I feel it's showing. Yeah. So state was happening. Take inventory. What am I options I can keep going. I can keep staying out, but I want to face it. I can go to therapy. I can call my sister, doc or a therapist.
Then when we start exploring our options, because remember, trauma is, tricky, low HAFA, and she will make you think you can't do nothing else, but shit. And it'll just lay down heavy on. Thank you. And so that P M stop is identifying when to pivot, when to choose wisely, to do it differently. I like that. Yeah. It was stealing you got it. Okay. Yeah. That's beautiful. I love that. When you start changing and you start playing tug of war with, Ooh, I like this woman on becoming, now just wait.
You got to ask yourself, why am I talking? Stop doing so much, explain it to people about, who you are no longer as you're healing and watch and observe. Wait. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. That is so good. That is so good. That is so good. You did all that you did that. That definitely describes every step of that game. It's just. And he put it in a framework like that, to be able to see it. It's the, okay, this is the thing that I had to do. In order to make this transition.
And who I am in that piece of not being stopped, explaining all this stuff to people. My favorite phrase. People say no, it was a full sentence. I don't need to tell you why. No. Is it. Unless you want to add. No period, unless you want to estimation. You don't listen to me, I get to a hell. It's the soul work and it's the self. I say that. Therapy your healing journey is your journey back to yourself. When we get here, Outside of the dig and nature is first of our ancestors. With a clean slate.
The things that happened to us in life, and he was trying to tell us what we should be as who we should be and how we should be in. All that conditioning, that messes us up and then the bad things happened. And then your brain trying to figure out what to do with this information. How do I protect myself? This is a journey back to. Who you really are. True self. When you say identity earliest so much as wrapped up in our identity and who we are. And who we are in other people's lives.
And we don't know who we are in our own lives. It's hard to look in the mirror. And see the person you want to see that the person is really on his side of you. She is seeing that person is so long ago, you didn't recognize it before, right? It's like looking for a stranger. When you were free to a certain level, you recognized. This is who I've always been like tucked down inside this, all mama said, shut up on what he has seen. Before, daddy was like, I'm not helping you with your homework.
Don't be stupid. Before those negative things. Negative impacts in all before your first. Heartbreaks. The. All of those bad things, I'm gonna say bad. on them. Cause they're not really bad. They're just their lessons. We reflect. Everybody around you is some sort of reflection of something on inside. I need to see where you can connect in that. As you're describing, getting back to a version of you that didn't have all this this judgment and the hurt put on you.
I want y'all to really listen and, replay that part because obviously logically we know we can't go back, but what you're describing from what I'm listening to. Is getting back to when, you probably felt more regulated when you didn't know that, oh, I'm a piece of crap, right? Her getting back to peeling back that onion that's what I'm hearing you say. Yeah. Yeah. When you talk about the why, and he's talking about why I do a certain thing, Why did I go down with the ship?
Because I felt unworthy. BEcause I felt not well. Outside of these other people. Society says I needed to get married and I needed to stay married and work it out and figure it out. If he ain't beaten you. He ain't cheating on you. I don't know why you leave in. Because I might have. 'cause I ain't do this for the right reasons and the right purpose. 'cause I thought I was supposed to. Rather than what's wrong. What do I need? What am I looking for in a mate? hOw do I know what I'm looking for?
And to me. I don't even know myself yet. But I need to just, I need a marriage. I'm the baby. I need to, confirm. The societal standards and norms and yeah.
It goes without saying and we host so much empathy for people who are in complex and complicated situations Complex and complicated and as we reflect on what's happening around the world but like domestic violence and all the uprisings Many times we have to do with scared We have to do that scared yeah but do know when we choose there are risks And there are consequences the consequences have been playing in your favor or you.
It might you might bump your head a little bit as we get ready to wrap up What's a message you want to leave us with in terms of the work you do at your practice Fair p give us a little bit of a takeaway Aye. I am No bs Because we've been bs for too long It can But you already know what, And who you're trying to convince me or you. What are you trying to convince It starts with not bsa Yourself be real with yourself. It's yourself.
Look in the mirror Figure out Who you are looking at your eyeballs See. Your soul And be comfortable there Because that's how we get that i don't know how to love myself Start by looking at yourself it's about being with yourself Sitting with yourself And uncle Recognizing what thoughts do i have What feelings do i have am i present in my body Like you said earlier where do i feel this illy is it Physiologically right because it's all connected Yeah.
Your Spiritual your mental your emotional all of that is connected in one affects the other so if you're not paying attention to you then it's hard for you to change anything Because they in denial about it And You don't have the knowledge Absolutely Thank you for that please share with our audience where they can find you on the socials and in the world All right The socials most of them, I choose that empowerment oh websites use it. apartment.com. The podcast is mtbs Got as.
That's As the bs Keep an eye out pay attention to the website and the socials cause i got lots of stuff about the pop off cause i'm a disruptor And that's how we heal the people Thank you. Thank you so much for listening please subscribe download and share got a topic you want us to cover don't hesitate to send us a message We welcome you to subscribe to our email list and connect with us across social media platforms to stay in the know about space for sistas.