Kristin Taylor 0:04
I remember after the very first day this like eight to five with like, oh, what’s the code for? I need to grab a glass of water? What’s the code for any to use the restroom? It felt like one of the longest days of my life. And I remember going home and be like, You got to be kidding me. I’ve still got four days left in the week.

Adam Baruh 0:32
Welcome to The Change. Thanks again for tuning into our pilot episode wading into discomfort, where we discuss emotional courage and mindfulness. This is part two of this episode. Again, thank you for listening. Here to tell us more about the power of emotional courage is Kristen Taylor. Kristin is a business and mindfulness coach, and works with executives and individuals, helping them look within using techniques to truly connect with one’s higher self. Kristen, welcome to the change.

Kristin Taylor 1:02
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Adam Baruh 1:05
Of course. We’ve been talking about emotional courage today and the journey of finding oneself in purpose, you earned an MA in counseling psychology from the California Institute of integral studies and started your career in counseling. After struggling financially to establish your career you pivoted from being a therapist and started working in corporate America in the insurance industry and worked as a corporate trainer. You’ve described for me that the pay was better, but it was soul crushing. Can you tell us more about this time in your life? And what you learned going through this experience?

Kristin Taylor 1:39
Yeah, yeah, it was soul crushing. So it was not where I imagined myself, but the financial constraints had gotten such that I was like, I need to find a job that pays me enough. And so looking at what I’d earned in terms of my degree, what my skill sets were and what was available, I found work, like you said, an insurance company. And it was soul crushing in the sense of, I worked for what’s called employee assistance programs. And so I did a lot of triage work. But you were always been timed. Like I even had to put in a code if I had to go to the bathroom versus if I had to get a snack versus whether I was at lunch. We had our little cubicles. And you know, there were a lot of jokes about, you know, just our little cubicle worlds and just trying to find the humanity in it. But there was also a ton of pressure to fit in, and to follow scripts and to follow protocol. And it was the antithesis of creative and authentic, authentic even though you know, getting into conversations and doing crisis management and assessments with people over the phone you you could connect with people, but I remember after graduate school, I got this job. And I was trying to get my clinical hours. And I was like, Okay, let me see if I can do both. Let me see if I can work towards licensure, while also getting paid to work for this insurance company. And I needed to. And I remember after the very first day, this like eight to five with like, oh, what’s the code for I need to grab a glass of water? What’s the code for I need to use the restroom. It felt like one of the longest days of my life. And I remember going home and be like, You got to be kidding me. I’ve still got four days left in the week. And this is what it’s going to be like over and over and over again. And this is like I say this from such a place of privilege. This is what the work day is like, but it was just an adjustment.

Adam Baruh 3:57
Wow. Yeah. So then you went to work as a student coach for a company that partnered with universities across the US and what was it about coaching? What was it about coaching that resonated with you?

Kristin Taylor 4:08
Yeah, so that’s a major fast forward. So working for insurance companies being a crisis counselor getting into corporate sales, and then corporate training. I found this company called Inside Track. And it was totally liberating. It was liberating because the culture was amazing. There’s these like, brilliant and deep thinking, compassionate people. And when I was going through the training, everything just clicked. It was like it connected with all of my clinical training. We were being taught like, okay, so you’re working with someone and they don’t know how to resolve a problem. You’re working with a student. How do you help them resolve this problem? And so many people were all about giving advice, and I knew having been true trained as a therapist, I don’t know, you know, I’m not going to tell them how to do something if you know if their hair’s on fire on, throw a bucket of water on them if they need it, but the most important thing is to help them figure out their own capacity to solve a problem. So I already had been trained how to be a coach, and that I’d been trained to be a therapist to say like, Okay, let’s take a look at where you are. Now. Let’s take a look at where you want to be. Alright, between there, here and there? What steps might you think to resolve it? Because I wanted to empower people. And I remember the trainer being like, yes, that is right, that takes a long time to train people to know how to do that. And that’s just something that was part of what I had learned to do, and part of who I was. So it felt really liberating. And I didn’t have to put in a code when I had to go the bathroom.

Adam Baruh 5:50
Yeah, it sounds like a much different experience, then that, you know, having to have your whole day organized, or, you know, entering codes to use the restroom and stuff like that. Um, so today, you’re a business coach, working with business leaders and CEOs. And your focus is on mindfulness, emotional resilience, and you’ve described yourself to me as an empath. So, what is an empath? And where do you think this originated within you?

Kristin Taylor 6:18
Yeah, so that’s a really big question, because there are two parts of it. So what is an empath is the easier part. An Empath is someone who feels very deeply and can feel the feelings of other people very easily. So there’s a high level of emotional intelligence. So I’m continually as are empaths, picking up signals, often body language, energy, emotion, reading a room reading a person and tuning in where things are more subtle, and aren’t always as obvious to other people. And that’s just how I gather information. That’s how I connect with people. That’s how I learn that sort of like, my field of perception is the language of emotion. So that’s a bit about what an empath is they connect with and feel with people in situations. Yeah. Where did that come from? I feel like I was born this way. And I feel like with a particular environment I was raised in and this is where I’ll just open up and be real. It was not great. My family upbringing not so great. There was domestic violence. There was a lack of safety. And it required of this quiet, Empath, a lot of vigilance, a lot of reading cues, a lot of trying to understand people a lot of trying to look for safety, which is not easy, but it only dialed up that sort of spidey sense of who’s thinking what, who’s feeling what, what’s about to happen, so that as a child, I could be safe. So that’s where it came from. Yeah. And for better or for worse, and both are true. I needed to hone it. And that’s what I did.

Adam Baruh 8:23
I’m really interested in this idea of these sorts of feelings of empathy and intuition and emotional connectedness that comes out of trauma. You know, do you what’s your perspective on that connection, like out of trauma comes this deep ability to heal?

Kristin Taylor 8:49
Well, I don’t know if I would say it exactly like that. I think you were on to something, what I would say is as an empath, there’s a special sensitivity I had and that all empaths have a deep responsibility to care for that heart centeredness, to care for that intuition. And what trauma does is that, for me, I will speak to this. I, it impacted my ability to emotionally regulate. So what we all need, particularly as children is the ability to have safety with those that we care for. To have the experience. This is just a human experience of needing co regulation. So a baby cries and the caregiver picks them up. The caregiver is safe, calm, soothing, and I did get that my mother absolutely provided that. But as children, we need that CO regulation desperately. And when we don’t get it, we become dysregulated in our nervous systems. And so we can go like our happy place is that this is what psychiatrist by the name of Steven Porges. He has is the founder the originator of a theory called polyvagal theory. And when we’re at our happiest where we’re present where we have access to joy to connection, when we’re deeply connected to who we are as an empath, we are in social engagement, our nervous system is at its home base. But if we have parents that are not able to emotionally regulate and provide that safe co regulation and that safe mirroring in that safe, nervous system, calm, happy place consistently, it’s very easy as an empath, or as anybody to be dysregulated. So I was often and even as an adult, really have to be so focused on my own emotional regulation as an empath, because I can easily go into dysregulation which means I can either go into fight or flight, panic, nervousness, anxiety, or I can go into shutdown, it all just becomes terribly overwhelming. Like, for example, I remember, my mother was my primary parent. But for whatever reason, she wasn’t there, and my father hadn’t learned to emotionally regulate. And so I, we were leaving in a hurry and I couldn’t find something and I was starting to get frantic. And with my mother, she could help me down regulate. Okay, honey, we’re gonna find it. Don’t worry about it. Take a deep breath. Where did you last see it? I remember with my father, this is an example of a parent not knowing how to help a child regulate, started to get frantic. And he got angry. And so what I did, seen in the face of my fear of my anxiety, him getting angry, I then parented him. Okay, I got it, Dad, don’t worry, don’t worry, it’s okay, I got it, I got it. So that I could feel emotionally safe. And so it’s no accident that you know, as an empath, and having these experiences and wanting to foster my own healing, I chose to be trained as a therapist, and that I am now working with executives, who are struggling to emotionally regulate, who are dealing with anxiety and imposter syndrome and high levels of stress, because so much of my own healing is what I bring to other people so that I can co regulate with them. Like I remember working with you. It’s okay, I share this, you you said, you said, you know, you just created such a safe container. That is another way of saying, as I co regulated with you, I tuned in to you and provided safety, so that people can explore their thoughts and their feelings and practice vulnerability in a safe setting.

Adam Baruh 12:58
You know, you said something that, I think is curious to me, which is how your father, you know, he, he kind of you had to emotionally regulate him in some regard. And, you know, when we don’t learn that, as children, we’re obviously not able to model that for our own children. Right. Now, there’s some people that, you know, they just never, they just don’t ever improve, or I don’t know if that’s the right word, they just aren’t able to make the connection and, and see what’s happening within them and how they’re modeling their behavior. And there’s others like, it sounds like you, you know, as, as you matured, and became an adult, you know, you’ve you figured it out and have spent time working within yourself to make the changes necessary so that you could be the right the parent that you want it to be. I’m just very curious how, you know, why do you think it is that some people just they kind of, like halt emotionally, whereas others are constantly challenging themselves and constantly exploring?

Kristin Taylor 14:12
Mm hmm. Well, I think I don’t know. The big answers, I don’t know. But here are my guesses. So starting with the fact that you called me an empath. I didn’t have a choice, because I’m so connected to emotion and because I am a highly sensitive person and my nervous system can so easily become dysregulated. I started to have panic, it started to create dysfunction. I started to have auto immune issues. So it was like the issue just it’s like, okay, you ignore me now. I’m going to get louder. Ignore me again. I’m going to get louder, just got louder and louder. People who are less sensitive and have different life paths, they can become very functional and adaptive. They might live in a world Old were being non emotional, or having and this is going to sound judgmental, but because it is judgmental in a way, but having toxic masculinity, where outward expressions of anger control mastery, a certain type of leadership is encouraged, then that kind of behavior is reinforced. And they can gain success and accolades and influence, or they, they live in a world where it’s just not an emotional domain. Maybe they’re focused on numbers or accounting or, you know, so everyone’s need for upregulating. And upregulating means I need more energy, like I need a little bit more of an arousal state versus someone who perhaps like me, or people who are empaths. And a lot of the people that I’m working with who are just incredibly stressed out, so much of the work is around down regulating, it’s around how do you use the breath? To engage your sympathetic, excuse me, your parasympathetic nervous system to engage the relaxation response? How do we create peace and calm and again, that’s through the breath is through mindfulness. So some people, their life just doesn’t require it. And they’re not as sensitive. So they’re not. They’re not encountering all of the consequences. In fact, it might be working for them, in many ways that the world encourages, so to speak. Does that make sense? But I just said,

Adam Baruh 16:38
oh, yeah, for sure. Okay, um, you know, so in regards to your development, you know, as an empath, and your career, and, you know, you described how you had that job where, you know, you had to enter code to go to the bathroom. You know, you had, and this is, you know, true for a lot of people and people have their own different journeys. But in your journey, it wasn’t until you were around midlife, that, you know, you finally came into your own, you told me that you truly came to learn that you were not doing anyone any favors by playing it small. So do you want to go back a little bit and describe this time in your life? And I mean, specifically around when you had, you know, quote, unquote, a revelation that you were you realize you were playing at small and, you know, now’s the time to stop and, and really become what you were meant to be.

Kristin Taylor 17:34
Right? Right. So that it was not one incident. But it was a series of occurrences where when it was because I am highly sensitive person, when I was in small groups, or one on one, I was so connected at ease. And I was working as a manager, I was directing groups of coaches to really allow them to flourish in their roles. And that’s where I was shining, like people were like, I want to be on Kristin Taylor’s team, and and it just felt right. And then I would get into a larger company meeting. And suddenly, the anxiety for me would go through the roof. And people had heard the reputation, like all the coaches are saying they want to work with you. And we hear so many great things about you. And then you get in this meeting, and you’re so quiet. And I had another director, who was very outspoken after a meeting, she said, Kristen, come on, take the lampshade off, what are you doing, people need to hear your voice, we need to learn from your wisdom. And so logically, I understood that I knew what I was doing both where I shined with the one on ones and with my smaller team. And I knew what I was doing in those larger meetings. And what was happening in the larger meetings is that my anxiety was going through the roof. So I was in my amygdala. I was in that lizard part of my brain, the limbic system where I was in fight or flight, I was in fear. And I was dysregulated. And it was hard for me to access my wisdom. But I knew she was right. And I knew I had to do something to manage this, this anxiety. Because I wasn’t put on this planet to play small or to allow fear to be in the driver’s seat. And truly Adam, it wasn’t until I was laid off twice, in about a year and a half. That it was like I need to roll up my sleeves and do this work. And it wasn’t that I hadn’t been to therapy for years. And it wasn’t that I wasn’t acutely aware of my own anxiety. But I just started to without restraint. Pour myself into a journey of learning and healing and connecting to the wisdom that I was learning in a courageous way and stop playing small.

Adam Baruh 19:58
I love that metaphor that that you reference taking the proverbial lampshade off and letting the light of your gifts Shine. Yeah. You know, that’s just so powerful. You know, tell me more about what that meant to you and what that journey was like to actually take the lampshade off? Because I can’t imagine that is at all easy.

Kristin Taylor 20:21
No, it’s not. It’s not it is it is the the path of courage, which means it requires so much vulnerability. But it was so interesting. So what is I can’t remember what that saying is that the energy it takes to remain small actually becomes more painful than the energy and I’m totally butchering this beautiful saying of actually becoming larger, of taking risks. When this woman said that, to me, I knew deep in the core of who I was, she was absolutely right. And yet, my nervousness in moments of public exposure, just could feel so overwhelming that I was like, I see the gap. I see the gap between how I’m living versus who I am. And what I mean by that is my nervous system. My fear is not who I am. But it is. I’m experiencing myself in the smallness that my fear requires and dictates. So the journey wise, how do I learn to manage my fear? And I do this every single day, I feel like I really am in many ways, encountering fear, I think, as we all are every single day. But how do I learn to live side by side with it? versus having it be the dictator of my choices? And whether I speak up? And how loudly and to whom? And so, so much of what I learned was Yes, about the nervous system. Yes. Was about mindfulness. Yes, was about meditation. Yes, was about breathing. Yes, was about remembering my own intuitive gifts, and the gifts of being an empath. But really, the biggest teacher was learning self compassion. Because what I would do in the face of my fear is I would be so critical of like, What the eff is wrong with me? Why am I doing this again, and it would catapult me into a narrative of my brokenness. And it would actually amplify the fear response in my body, and more deeply ingrained the belief that I was this fearful person living with a lampshade on and not allowing my light to shine, and then beating myself up in that whole cycle. And so self compassion really was the route to recognizing those moments of even when my voice was shaking, that I would speak out. And then honoring the shaking voice honoring the pounding heart with sweetheart, you’re a good heart, you’re allowed to third loudly, you are invited, and just speak to myself with kindness. It’s almost that like spiritual re parenting. It was what my mother did when she was a great mother, when she would co regulate and provide safety for me. It was really practicing compassion. That was the breakthrough. Self Compassion.

Adam Baruh 23:24
Yeah, I just, it’s, it’s odd that, you know, as people, we just focus on the negative, and we spend so much of our mental energy around that. But we, you know, we spend so little time nurturing ourselves, and I want to read a statement that you shared with me. Um, and when I read these words, I mean, they completely moved me I found myself contemplating in my own life, how I had come to a similar perspective. So you wrote these words. What I’ve come to learn and appreciate is that vulnerability and courage are not just about doing the thing that is scary, which is where most people focus. But in being there for ourselves after we do the scary thing. It’s when we read the negative feedback, when we don’t get the job or when we mess up, or do not live up to the performance side of vulnerability. The practice of courage in those moments is dependent on the cultivation of self compassion. Do we have our own backs in those moments when painful emotions like fear and shame surface, and when they shape our thoughts, our beliefs and our concepts of self? My greatest growth has come in those dark places, when I do not abandon myself, but instead practice nurturing myself. So how did you come to the self discovery about nurturing and not abandoning yourself in tough, tough, tough times? I think it’s, like I said before, it’s, it just seems so easy to just, you know, focus on and on the negativity and and circle back into the negative self talk. So, for you, you know, can you describe a little bit about where you started to recognize this nurturing aspect? And that’s where really the magic of the healing is.

Kristin Taylor 25:13
Yeah. So when I thank you for reading back those words, and what you’re really referring to is what I think of is act two, of courage and compassion. Act One is doing the scary thing in front of other people. It’s more relational and act two is when you’re on your own and how you reflect and how you as an organizing principle of your self concept. How you hold yourself, how you nurture yourself, and truly in this, like immersing myself in this growth over the past, specially for years, it’s through Tara Brock. So Tara Brock, teaches meditation, Buddhists, meditation, mindfulness. And what she taught in terms of self compassion, as well as Kristin Neff, was so restorative and illuminating. Let me repeat those differently, illuminating and restorative. That’s the right order for me. And I just listened every single day. And I’d never, in all my years of being trained to be a therapist and working with people and doing my own therapy. Maybe I’d heard it, but I wasn’t ready. And so what I also want to move back to is when you say God, it’s, it’s amazing that we can be that’ll say your words, I’ll paraphrase them. But we can be so mean to ourselves that we don’t practice self compassion. But when I think about, and I’ll just use myself as an example, but I think other people can relate to this. When we’re children, when we’re young adults, it’s about survival. So as a child, when you’re seeing adults and people around you acting in ways that you simply can’t control and you have no agency over. One reliable thread that we do have agency over, is our own ability to self manage. And if we can find the culprit, and if we can feel responsible, then we feel it’s a modicum of control. So that’s the shame, it’s my fault, I should have been a better little girl, I should have not gotten dirty or made them upset. It’s a way of feeling a sense of control. In a world where we don’t have control. It’s like when children blame themselves for their parents divorce. It is not adaptive. But when you feel terribly out of control, it’s reliable. And then we fostered over and over and over again, in our world certainly does reinforce it in many ways. We’re continually be measured. And so in many in ways that are not again, adaptive, it worked until it didn’t, until it became corrosive and harmful. And yeah, tar Brock changed my life.

Adam Baruh 28:07
So in regards to mindfulness, I mean, how did you discover it? How does it relate to emotional courage? Tell us a little bit about your own journey to mindfulness and how you practice it.

Kristin Taylor 28:21
Yeah. So what was also a huge revelation was recognizing that my anxiety was often as at its worst, when I would time travel, when I would project into the future, or when I would revisit the past. But if I truly anchored myself, in the moment, in my body, that was where I could find peace. It was in being in the present moment. And for me, as well as so many people, the thought of meditation in the beginning was so daunting, like, my mind is just so damn noisy. That mindfulness felt like the gateway drug to meditation. If I could just become aware of and this is one of my favorite questions is like, what is my mind fall in it’s that metacognition, it’s the observing part of me that could notice the habits of thought, the habits of emotion, the habits of how I’m holding my body, and just through a neutral curiosity, and acceptance, bear witness to what I was thinking, feeling and believing those rare moments of an invitation to practice self compassion, an invitation to notice differently. An invitation to move from the roller coaster of my thoughts. Send emotions into the ground in principle of feeling my feet on the ground. Feeling the wind on my face and through my hair, it would break the spell or the illusion of fear. And get me into the moment. And out of this sort of trance of this is what tar Brock talks about the trance of unworthiness. And replace that word, unworthiness, with whatever it is trance of jealousy, trance of anger, trance of whatever it is that we find ourselves repeatedly believing, thinking, imagining, and really using the present moment to break the spell, and be with what is.

Adam Baruh 30:51
Yeah, so, you know, for somebody that, you know, wants to explore mindfulness or begin implementing implementing it in their own lives? How does somebody start to understand and explore and practice mindfulness?

Kristin Taylor 31:08
Well, first comes to desire. There’s so many resources out there, I mean, all you need to do is look up mindfulness, you can try TR Brock. I mean, there are a million different practitioners. But to me, it’s the recognition much like I’m talking about with my story to say what I’m doing isn’t working as well as I would like. I am not sleeping well, I am stressed out, I’m feeling tension in my body, my blood pressure is high. My relationships are suffering. There’s so many ways in which when we are not in the present moment, when we are not mindful, when we are not practicing self compassion, the consequences begin to build and you say, I want to do something differently. That is, the first thing is to notice this isn’t working, or it isn’t working as well as I want. I’m not experiencing enough access to joy to peace to connection. And then you make a decision to say I want to try something different. Because mindfulness is actually quite simple. Not easy, but simple. But it’s the desire to not suffer really feel like Adam, the reason I do the work that I do. And the reason I was born an empath is I want to help people alleviate their, their emotional suffering. Mindfulness is a beautiful route and invitation to do so. So it’s the desire to end or be in relationship differently to our emotions and minimize our suffering.

Adam Baruh 32:41
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you, you know, at least for myself, that I had gotten to that place where I felt there was nothing left to do, then, you know, stop being my own barrier, I had all these patterns developed, that I thought were my ways of emotionally self regulating. And it was, you know, when I kind of looked within, and I let my higher self, I let that voice, reach my heart. Where, you know, that’s when the connection was made for, for me, at least.

Kristin Taylor 33:19
I love that. I love that. It’s the awareness that when you are, this is how I interpret what you were just saying, when we’re connected to ego, we’re connected to fear. And when the coping mechanisms and patterns no longer work and serve our own desire to evolve, and to suffer less than it’s like the spell is broken. And you’re like, let me let me try something different. There’s got to be a better way. Your higher self is showing up. Yeah, I love that.

Adam Baruh 33:46
Can you speak about the neuroscience and the fear response and how we need to care for ourselves when getting back to that taking off the lampshade? You know, being in that vulnerable place?

Kristin Taylor 33:58
Yeah, yeah. So I know, as a client of mine, you’ve heard me say this, and any client who’s worked with me has heard me say this. It’s the amygdala hijack. And I and I referenced that it’s part of the limbic system. It’s the most primitive part of our brain, it’s the fight or flight, it keeps us safe, and then God, it’s there. But it can be overly activated. And when we are in our amygdala, and when we are in fear, we are not accessing other parts of our body. So our nervous system and our amygdalas are just highly activated. And it’s hard to, like I said, Be present. It’s hard to be in our prefrontal cortex. It’s hard to exercise, executive functioning and abstract thinking and connection to ourselves and others. And so what I teach people is number one, the awareness to recognize when it’s happening, but it’s pretty damn loud. So it’s easy to see, but it’s also teaching them breathwork because that it really is the most powerful way to interrupt patterns in the mind and in the nervous system to engage, like I said before the relaxation response. So that is one of our most powerful resources to start rewire rain, how we think and how our body responds to stressors in our life.

Adam Baruh 35:20
Yeah, you mentioned breathing, I know, there’s some techniques that, you know, we’ve worked on straw breathing, and, you know, different different exercises, like the basic exercise really to just kind of reset and put yourself in that place of common quietness and, and really focusing on within, talk to us a little bit about how those simple actions you know, can really just bring that level of calm within yourself.

Kristin Taylor 35:53
Um, so what’s happening is that when we are in an amygdala hijack, and our heart is pounding, and our blood pressure, pressure is elevated, and we’re in that fight, flight blood is go into all the extremities so that, you know, our ancient wisdom of our nervous system is, you know, being attacked by a tiger on the Serengeti, I gotta run the hell out of here, our life isn’t in parallel, our body’s just reacting as if it is. And so one of the most effective things to do is to understand that when we are inhaling, we are activating the sympathetic branch of our nervous system, that is the arousal state. And when we are exhaling, we are engaging the parent parasympathetic branch, and that induces the relaxation response. So what you’re referring to is stop breathing is a very deliberate way to interrupt an amygdala hijack, or this activated nervous system by inhaling for a shorter period of time through our nose, and exhaling three longer period of time through our mouth. And what you’ll find after even like three to four breath cycles, it’s also called ratio breathing, shorter, inhale longer out, hail through the mouth, just start to calm down, it just feels so much better. And I also work with people, especially when there’s trauma, and all of us have been traumatized with grounding exercises. Right? There’s so many different ways to ground I had a client said that, you know, for her, she’ll just interrupt and say, Do I have feet right now? Do I have feet, and she will connect with a sensation of our feet on the floor, when there’s such activation internally with our brains and our nervous systems. But that’s a way of bringing us back to that home base, that place of connection. It’s called ventral vagal social engagement. That is where we want to live more so that we can live side by side with our fear rather than the fear of being in the driver’s seat.

Adam Baruh 38:00
Yeah, I think that’s powerful. Just the recognizing living side by side with that, I think we spend so much time fighting against it and really not allowing it in. Okay, so I have one last question for you. And then and then we’ll let you go. Okay. Do you ever think about where you might be today, if you hadn’t found this emotional courage within yourself? Yeah.

Kristin Taylor 38:22
It’s funny, I was just talking with someone and she also has some of the same sensitivities that I do. And both she and I were saying, our bodies are so loud. I would be so sick, physically and emotionally, I would be so sick, I worry, I would have a heart attack. I worry, I would have cancer. My body was screaming, care for me, love me. Tune in. And all of these signs and symptoms were showing up. And so the gift of being an empath is that there’s a deep awareness and ability to connect and to be a part of a healing journey for others and yourself. But it doesn’t mean it feels good. There’s so much self care that is required to finely tuned this this gift. And I was ignoring it, because I learned to ignore it. If I did not do this, I would be miserable, and potentially very, very sick.

Adam Baruh 39:29
Well, thank you for joining today. It’s been, you know, really interesting to hear about your journey and what you’ve been doing to help others on, you know, people in business individuals, you know, to help you know, the work that you do to help them in their own journeys. So thank you, Kristin.

Kristin Taylor 39:46
Thank you for having me. It’s such a pleasure. Thank you, Adam.

Adam Baruh 39:51
Kristen Taylor lives in Olympia, Washington with her husband and son. You can find out more about her as well as her coaching and mindfulness practice on her website www.kristintaylorconsulting.com. You’ve been listening to stories of emotional courage is told by our guests, Cassandra Robinson and Kristen Taylor. I want to thank them for demonstrating emotional courage by being our inaugural guests here today on our pilot episode of the change. Our theme song and sound engineering was provided by Shane Suffriti. You can listen to more of Shane’s music at www.shanesuffriti.com. These links and more about our guests can be found on our website, www.eiqmediallc.com/thechange. Thank you all for listening. We’ll see you next time on The Change.