Episode 206
Tori Jenae:Why Your People-Pleasing Is Actually Making You Sicker
Tori Jenae:
Why Your People-Pleasing Is Actually Making You Sicker
Trauma-informed coach Tori Jenae reveals how people-pleasing, perfectionism, and over-functioning create chronic stress that drives autoimmune conditions. Learn the three levels of consciousness for healing, why your immune system acts like a protective mother, and practical steps to shift from victim to empowered healer.
First Aired on: Aug 25, 2025
Episode 206
Tori Jenae:Why Your People-Pleasing Is Actually Making You Sicker
Tori Jenae:
Why Your People-Pleasing Is Actually Making You Sicker
Trauma-informed coach Tori Jenae reveals how people-pleasing, perfectionism, and over-functioning create chronic stress that drives autoimmune conditions. Learn the three levels of consciousness for healing, why your immune system acts like a protective mother, and practical steps to shift from victim to empowered healer.
First Aired on: Aug 25, 2025
Table of Contents:
Table of Contents:
In this episode:
In this episode:
Introduction
Tori Jenae is a trauma-informed confidence and relationship coach with multiple degrees in psychology and over 15 years of experience. She helps women heal from emotional wounds and rebuild self-worth after challenges and personal loss. In this episode, she joins me to talk about the hidden emotional patterns that drive autoimmune conditions and how inner work is essential for true healing.
Episode Highlights
The Mind-Body Connection in Autoimmune Disease
Tori explains how emotional trauma and chronic stress directly manifest as physical illness, particularly autoimmune conditions.
- Our bodies exist in either fight-or-flight or rest-and-digest states
- When your nervous system is stuck on "gas pedal on," your body can't absorb nutrients or heal properly
- Lifestyle changes won't work if you're not addressing the underlying stress and trauma
- The immune system becomes hypervigilant when we don't feel emotionally safe
Three Levels of Consciousness for Healing
Tori outlines a powerful framework for shifting from victim mindset to empowered healing.
- Level 1: Life is happening TO me (victim mindset - normal but limiting)
- Level 2: Life is happening FOR me (seeing lessons and gifts in challenges)
- Level 3: Life is happening THROUGH me (allowing experiences to flow for highest good)
- Each level requires different healing work and offers greater freedom
Common Emotional Patterns That Drive Illness
Tori identifies the key psychological traits that correlate with autoimmune conditions, particularly in high-achieving women.
- People-pleasing and over-functioning in relationships
- Perfectionism and need for control
- Comparison and worry about what others think
- Selflessness to the point of self-neglect
- Difficulty setting boundaries and saying no
The Biology of Belief
Tori breaks down how our unconscious beliefs about safety, worthiness, and love directly impact our immune system function.
- Core beliefs formed in childhood create internal stress patterns
- Beliefs like "I can't trust men" or "I'm not enough" trigger nervous system responses
- Thoughts and beliefs literally influence our biology and healing capacity
- The ABCs of healing: Awareness, Beliefs, Cleansing/Clearing/Claiming
Your Immune System as Protective Mother
Tori offers a beautiful reframe of autoimmune conditions as protection rather than attack.
- When you don't say no, your body will say no for you
- Your immune system becomes the mother you never had and the boundaries you don't know how to speak
- Autoimmune conditions often force necessary boundary-setting for the first time
- Instead of fighting your illness, thank it for trying to protect you
Nervous System Regulation and Building Resilience
We discuss the importance of moving beyond the protective "bubble" phase of healing into true integration and resilience.
- Early healing often requires creating a safe bubble (avoiding triggers, strict protocols)
- True wellness includes resilience - being able to handle life's challenges
- The goal is bringing your calm state with you everywhere, not just on your yoga mat
- Test your capacity slowly while always listening to your body
Feminine and Masculine Energy in Relationships
Tori explains how understanding energetic dynamics can transform both health and relationships.
- The feminine is designed to receive and create, not just constantly do
- Healthy masculinity provides and protects while lifting up, not controlling
- Learning to receive support is crucial healing work for over-givers
- Clear communication about needs and wounds creates healthier partnerships
Notable Quotes from this Episode
When you do not say no, when your body doesn't feel safe, it will say no for you. Your immune system becomes the mother that you never had and the boundaries you don't know how to speak.
Tori Jenae
The feminine is designed to receive and create, like that is what we do biologically. We don't have to do anything. Everybody just does it for us. And that is true for businesses, for babies, for everything in life.
Tori Jenae
What kept us safe before becomes the cage that we live in.
Tori Jenae
Other Resources:
Other Resources:
Connect with Tori Jenae
Connect with Tori Jenae
Watch this interview:
Watch this interview:
Episode Transcript
Tori Jenae:(Teaser) was the first time that I had to set boundaries. I've never set, and until I got that low, I would not have done it. So my body was saying no when my mind would not and could. And maybe you're making self-care a priority for the first time in your life
(Intro Bumper)
Julie Michelson:(Julie Intro) Welcome back to The Inspired Living with Autoimmunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Houghton, and today we're to joined by Tori Janae. Tori is a trauma-informed confidence and relationship coach. With over 15 years of experience and multiple degrees in psychology, she helps women heal from emotional wounds, rebuild self-worth, and create aligned thriving lives and relationships after breakups, challenges and personal loss. Her work blends psychology, somatic healing, and spiritual wisdom to guide deep lasting transformation. Tori's own journey from a difficult childhood to profound personal loss fuels her mission to help others rise stronger and reclaim their power.
In today's conversation, we discussed the importance of addressing our emotional and psychological layers along with the physical in order to truly heal. Tori walks us through the emotional patterns that are most common among people with autoimmunity and shares, her insights and wisdom regarding how we can begin to change and heal.
Julie Michelson:(Main interview) Tori, welcome to the podcast.
Tori Jenae: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here and have this conversation today.
Julie Michelson: As am I, I would love to just have you share some of your journey with us, um, because it, it's actually, I would say 98.5% of, of guests, it's their personal journey is what brought them to the healing space.
But even whether it's, you know, functional medicine or energy work or, you know, fill in the blank. And so, um. Share with listeners so they can get to know you a little bit. Um, and I'm anxious to learn a little bit more about your story as well.
Tori Jenae: Yeah, so I love to start with where, where I am today. Yes. So I do have multiple degrees in psychology, from clinical to transpersonal.
I have studied Ayurveda, functional medicine, yoga, and meditation for 26 years. Energy healing, energy psychology, like EMDR, you name it, I've done it. I've gone down every healing path on the planet. Acupuncture, eastern medicine, western medicine. Because I was actually born to an addict. Um, both my parents struggled with addiction, so my, I was actually conceived in a heroin rehab facility and my dad was already married and in the military, so I was the result of an affair.
So he left when I was six months old. And being raised by an addict who was married multiple times, she was very beautiful and she did the best she could, but she struggled with drugs and alcohol until about two years before her pa, before she passed. So my childhood was incredibly challenging. I had to take care of everyone and every, everything from the time I was probably eight or nine, I had a younger brother, but I helped raise, he's seven years younger.
Um, and I made radical decisions to be different. So I've never really drank alcohol. I did a lot of things to be different. I, I left home at 17. I put myself through university. I've had this intensely. Um, I grew up incredibly quickly, but that also created a lot of people pleasing, over-functioning, overtaking care of, and just an incredible amount of stress that I was under my whole life.
And then starting in 2012, my adulthood wasn't any easier. Mm. I ended up, my sister overdosed. My mom died. My grandma died. My dad died. Like every, I lost my entire family in the span of a couple years, and then I, my long-term husband and I met when I was 22. Like we've been together for a long time, like we ended up getting a divorce.
So in a 10 year span of my adulthood life, I lost everything, like my job, my health. I ended up being diagnosed with Addison's disease. I already had psoriasis and other. You know, gut issues and all these things. And so it sent me on this massive healing journey of really how to heal mind, body, and soul.
And so when I talk about the things I talk about, it's never because I read it in a book, it's because I've walked the fire deeply and there is no type of grief that cracks your soul open that I've not worked through. And so I've really learned when it comes to healing. It's the internal we work, work we do that helps just as much.
And so what I hope to share today are what are those deeper things that we can be doing that we don't always see when it comes to healing the body and the mind?
Julie Michelson: Uh uh. Amazing. And you're right, you did say, even though I was familiar with her story, I would be like, wow. Um,
Tori Jenae: talk about
Julie Michelson: somebody who is supposed to be here, number one, right?
And then doing the work that you're doing. Um, so thank you for sticking with it and, and using your journey to help others navigate theirs. Um, yeah. And truly heal. And, uh, I. Wholeheartedly. I wanna underscore and, and cheer the, you know, it's not, everybody is like, what should I eat? Right? Or what, I mean, I guess some, for a lot of people, the beginning of the journey is what medication should I be on?
Sadly. Absolutely right. But then as we learned, grow, um, and, and any of the other lifestyle changes and approaches are only going to take you so far. They're not gonna take you across the finish line if we, if you're not doing the inner work and that, and it doesn't mean everybody needs to like start with deep work.
Like that's not sure necessarily safe for everybody to do. Yeah, yeah. No, it's not. Yeah. Um, but, but all of us, I mean, I think all of us literally on the planet anyway, but definitely all of us with autoimmune stuff. Absolutely. Um, you know, I. It doesn't happen in a vacuum, you know? Yeah. Genetic predisposition is a, can be a component.
Um, but I've yet to meet anybody, you know, people say, you know, we talk about different triggers, right? Toxins and viruses and bacteria and stress and try, you know, and. Usually it's more than one. Absolutely. And always some kind of emotional trauma, whether someone's aware of it or not. Absolutely.
Everybody has
Tori Jenae: trauma. Yeah. And I think we've done ourselves such a disservice of having this narrow definition of trauma. Yeah. And so I love to explain to people that your trauma may be an emotionally absent parent. It may have been a critical parent, it may have been a parent who worked too much. It may have been someone wasn't parent.
Yeah, it could be a coach. I've had that happen with a client, like she had a tennis coach that just really wore her down mentally, emotionally, and physically, and she definitely had a lot of different, you know, health concerns because of that. Yeah. And so I would love to explain to people that when you do not say no, when you body doesn't feel safe, it will say no for you.
Yes. Your immune system becomes the mother that you never had and the boundaries you don't know how to speak.
Julie Michelson: That was so beautiful. I love that idea of your immune system becoming the mother you never had or you know, or if you had one and, but you needed a new one.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. Like, because we think of like that mother that like holds us.
Yeah. Really protective. Yes. And so even if you had a mother, like maybe she wasn't there as best she could, or it doesn't, you know, it's not their fault, but it's our responsibility. Yeah. But it's like really seeing it as like our immune system's not turning against us. She's really trying to protect us, and so she becomes hypervigilant in that protection.
Oh.
Julie Michelson: So well put. Amazing. So, um, well, and certainly the, I think one of the things I really appreciate about how you show up, you know, the, the. The work you do is about empowering people, and the whole reason I have this podcast is to empower people. Right. Like it, it's, I think that's been part of my healing journey is taking my own power back and then realizing we all can, um.
Mm-hmm. And I think a lot of people hear the word trauma and, and like. Think victim mindset or like identity of, you know, you certainly do not show up as a victim or somebody who wears, you know, like big T trauma, like a, you know, as a crown, right? Yes. And so. Um,
Tori Jenae: and that's actually a really important point.
Yeah. For all of us in healing is in a spirituality called Kabbalah. I think they explain it the best, but I've studied the Vedas, like the yogic mindset and Buddhism when I lived in Japan. So I've, I've really spent 26 years looking at the life's biggest questions. But the best way I've heard explained is that the lowest level of consciousness that we have is the victim mindset.
That's life is happening to me, and that's normal. We're human, we're gonna go through that. We have to have that moment. At that moment, why did this happen? Why am I struggling? Why do I feel like crap all the time? Like I remember I was so tired at one point when I had Addison's disease, I couldn't even wash my hair.
Yeah. And so it's so frustrating and, and I don't say this with like any lack of compassion. I have deep compassion, of course. But it's like when we get out of that mindset, the next level of our consciousness that we can use to heal is life is happening. For me, yes. That means if I really sat with my physical challenges, what were they trying to do for me?
Guess what? My Addisons was the first time that I had to set boundaries. I've never set, and until I got that low, I would not have done it. Right. So my body was saying no when my mind would not and could. And so one thing I really challenge people to sit with is what's the gift? Like maybe you're able to ask your partner for help that you've never asked for before.
Maybe you're making your kids make their own lunch when you've never been able to do that before. Yeah. Maybe you're making self-care a priority for the first time in your life. Mm-hmm. So these are the gifts that's life is happening for me. This disease, this divorce, this, this death, whatever it is that came into your life is happening for you to make you better.
And the highest level of consciousness is life is happening through me. Meaning that everything is showing up is for my highest good, whether it's good, bad, or other. I recognize that I just have to allow that to flow through me, and I have to get through it the best that I can and as quickly as I can and learn the lessons.
And that's kind of the space that I'm at, at, in my life at this point, but with massive work.
Julie Michelson: So I was gonna say, well, and you're not done right. You, you're done. Okay. I got it.
Tori Jenae: You know. No, I do not have it. There's always new levels and new opport opportunities. And God, does the universe test you when you say, oh yeah, I've got it.
It's like, okay, well Tori, let's see. Do you have it? Let's, let's give you a nice big life test. You know? Just like I worked so hard on my health, and then just recently, like I'll share, I had mold all through my, my place. Yeah. And so I had to do mold remediation. I tested positive for mycotoxin, and instead of going into that fear mode, which I would've before, like, oh my gosh, it's gonna set me back, who knows what's gonna happen, right?
I was just like, you know what? I've healed a lot of other things that they told me. I never would. They told me I'd be on steroids the rest of my life with Addison's. I'm not, I make my own cortisol now. So I was like, I'm going to detoxify this. And I really believe like you gotta throw everything at it.
Yes.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and that's the perfect example. Um. Because you can remediate and you can, you know, support the body with detox. But if you're stuck in, in stress response, absolutely you're not gonna heal it. So, um, and that's like
Tori Jenae: such a big thing that we forget is that the body's either in fight or flight or rest and digest,
Julie Michelson: right?
We don't have. Like a variety of states in that For nervous system.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. And that, and especially when we grow up in chaotic homes, our nervous system is just set to gas pedal on.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. And
Tori Jenae: so it's really hard to even recognize, and I never recognized that it's survive. It's served you though. Absolutely.
Julie Michelson: As a child,
Tori Jenae: you know, it's the only way I survived.
And so it's like being grateful for that survival mode. Yeah. And thanking it instead of fighting it. And then. Practicing to shift
Julie Michelson: it. Yes. Really. And lots of
Tori Jenae: things help.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, because Mo Oh, I, if not all, definitely most of our patterns that we, it may serve us to work, to change as adults. They ca They didn't come out in a vacuum.
No. They were there. They served us in some way at some point. I love that you, you said that too. Like, you know, you thank that. Like, thank your body, thank the pattern. Thank the nasty voice in the head, whatever. I would say it to somebody's like. I have a, I have like a cheerleader voice in my head. Nobody, no, no.
We all have,
Tori Jenae: I call the crazy lady in the addict Uhhuh. Like, and if anyone else said those things to you, you'd be very upset.
Julie Michelson: Or And would you ever say them to anybody else?
Tori Jenae: No. Yeah. No, definitely not. It's, it's, you know, it's our own, like, I love the thought of it. I'm, it's my own inner opponent. Yeah. And if I can overcome that voice, I can really overcome anything.
Oh,
Julie Michelson: yes, yes. I love that. And I think even for. It may just show up in different ways. In different times. I think even for somebody who has textbook like idyllic, loving, supportive family growing up, like just life on this planet in, in modern times, if we do not practice getting into a parasympathetic state.
Tori Jenae: Like, you
Julie Michelson: know, that it is just not the way our life is right now doesn't match how our nervous systems were designed.
Tori Jenae: No.
Julie Michelson: And so I, I think, you know, like I
Tori Jenae: would say we're on a very ancient system. Yeah. And it's not designed to like watch the news 24 7. It's not designed for a horrible boss or a hypercritical.
Partner, you know, all these things like, yeah. Even if we had a good base as a child, right? There's a lot of things that I've seen affect clients that they just did not even see. Like I said, like, like I had a, like a tennis coach, a boyfriend in college who was abusive. You know, just these things that really set that nervous system up for safety.
And like I said, like we're talking about those strategies that we have that kept us safe eventually keep us stuck. What kept us safe before becomes the cage that we live in.
Julie Michelson: So well put, it's true, and again, it doesn't, we don't have to, it is not about blame. It's not about, you know, it's just about creating the awareness and, and then, you know, working with someone like you, finding the help to shift.
Um, but you can't eat cleanly. And, and ignore all the things that got you sick and yeah, maybe our food system was part of what got you sick. Um, for sure. Yeah. But for like, for sure, like we, and even, and if somebody listening and they're not like, we all, if you're not doing this work on some level, today's a great day to start.
Tori Jenae: Absolutely. And it's like start small. I always say start with, I always kind of joke, there's the ABCs of healing. The A is just the awareness. Like if I can admit that that thing happened to me, now I have awareness. Then I can start looking at like, what are the beliefs I have about myself, about life? Do I believe that I'm safe?
Do I believe that I'm lovable? Do I believe that life is for me or against me? Yeah. And then I can start saying like, that's, that's becoming how my nervous system is programmed, because my inside voice is telling my nervous system. Those things. Yeah. You know, if I have got beliefs, like I can't trust men, everybody's out to get me.
I, you know, only my family blood is thicker than water. All these things we're told money doesn't grow on trees. They create internal stress.
Julie Michelson: Those are all, take all of those things you just said back, like, I don't like any of them,
Tori Jenae: but they're all kind of like running under the surface and we don't know them because we don't have that awareness.
And so I always like to do, like, have clients do a belief stump of like, what do I believe is true about love? What do I believe is true about my body? Maybe I think that my body is weak. Maybe. I think that, you know, and it's like our thoughts, like there's a book called The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton, and that's a great book.
I was so good. Yeah, I read that years ago, but I still think it's a great like basis of understanding. Mm-hmm. And then we can go to the sea of healing, which is that cleansing, clearing, um, claiming ourselves again.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. That's huge and, and I think a lot of people focus on the cleansing and clearing.
Tori Jenae: Yes.
And it's, it's the most simple. I always say like, we wanna work from what. Common knowledges, which makes sense, right? Like you said, the medication, the food, all great things. Yeah. But again, if your body is not in rest and digest, it does not matter how clean you're eating. Your body's not absorbing it. And I've been there before I, I was taking 30 supplements a day or 30 tablets a day.
My body wasn't absorbing any of it because I was in such a state of dysregulation from stress that my body couldn't even take in all that goodness.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. No, it's so true. It's so true. But it's kind of like also the, the, you know, what do I need to take out of my diet to heal? And it's like also, and I'm actually a big proponent of the opposite to nourish and bring in, you know, and so I love that it to be is the, is the claiming is that same, you know, we're so focused on, okay, what do I need to avoid?
Again, in that, in, in, in that fear. And that's still saying the Absolutely.
Tori Jenae: It's fear and it's saying the world's dangerous. Yeah. Like, and I, I did, I went through all that too. Trust me, I was a gluten-free vegan at one point, you know, like, like,
Julie Michelson: it was like, I'm still gluten-free,
Tori Jenae: but I have
Julie Michelson: Celia because, so I, I, yeah.
And that's totally different. Me.
Tori Jenae: Yes, absolutely. If you're a celiac or you're, or if your immune system, you know, again, always honor your body. I always tell people this, your body is your guru. Well, and
Julie Michelson: tell you. What you, you know, what you eat five years from now may not be the way you're eating right now.
That might not be what your body needs. Um, so I can eat
Tori Jenae: gluten again just fine. Yeah. But I was off of it for seven years because I had to heal all that inflammation. I had to do a lot of work. Like I said, I was a gluten-free vegan, I won't eat much. So I went to that extreme like, you know, I gotta cut everything out.
I've gotta be so clean. Like, and that also creates stress. And I've seen that a lot of my clients. Yeah.
Julie Michelson: No, it's true. It, it's, um, and I, I do think it is, it is a very typical healing pattern.
Tori Jenae: Mm-hmm.
Julie Michelson: And, and we do stay stuck when we, you know, we are starting, we get relief and we're doing something that, that, you know, you can actually feel, oh my gosh, the, you know, I, I feel better.
And there's that fear of like, don't, don't rock the boat. Don't take you Totally Yeah. Know. I always joke that I
Tori Jenae: became a bubble person for a little while. Oh
Julie Michelson: yeah.
Tori Jenae: And I, I think I, I think we
Julie Michelson: all do. Like I really do. Because like I couldn't
Tori Jenae: even go through the, like the laundry detergent aisle at Target because the smell would overwhelm me so much.
'cause I was so sensitive to everything I had that, uh, I
Julie Michelson: still hold my breath when I walk through the,
Tori Jenae: but doing some nervous, I don't get a migraine
Julie Michelson: anymore. But yeah, I used to get tons
Tori Jenae: of migraine. Yeah. All that. So I've done, yeah, like I always say, I've been through down all of these paths so I know what it feels like.
Yeah. But it's like, I definitely have done a lot of work too. Allow myself to feel safe so that when I do walk down the laundry detergent aisle, if I need to go grab my seventh generation free and clear, I can make it without, you
Julie Michelson: know, without passing out. Well, I mean, re it's so interesting because when I, when I first met my husband, I used to, I was not far, I was still in the bubble.
Mm-hmm. Um, and he used to say, you know, but true wellness, with true wellness, there's resilience. And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm great. Uh, I I feel so good. And he is like, yeah, but you shouldn't have to be that careful to feel, you know? Yeah. And I, I used to just in my head, you know, like, what does he know? You know?
Exactly. He's
Tori Jenae: not been through this. He's a doctor, but he's never
Julie Michelson: been through this. Right. Totally. And now I'm like, oh, yep. Um, and so that's kind of the same thing that resilience,
Tori Jenae: my, my guru said to me the same thing he said, like, um, yeah, you know, we, we do the inner work, we do the meditation, we do the breath work, all that kind of stuff so that we can go out into life.
'cause yes, you can feel calm and grounded on your yoga mat or at the ashram, right? But if you can't walk out of that space and hold that calm, you're actually not integrated. You're not well.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Tori Jenae: And so that really stuck with me of like, you know, he's like, people will. Feel great when they're in the healing phase or when they're in the safe space.
But our journey is to really bring that safe space with us everywhere, to be
Julie Michelson: part of us where wherever we travel. Yeah. Oh. Amen. Well, here's to getting outta the bubble.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. Slowly but surely. And you know all, and it's okay to visit
Julie Michelson: the, you know, totally. The bubble is the healing space.
Tori Jenae: It's, yeah. Yeah.
We're not, I'm definitely not saying it with any judgment. That's why I'm totally knocking the bubble, totally owning that. I was, I was in the bubble for many years and the bubble got me well, and it's like I'm slowly, um, letting down my bubble a little bit at a time, and I'm just testing things and I'm always listening to my body.
Like when I started eating gluten again, um, I was like, okay, like. I started eating it in overseas, so in like Europe and Paris, it was, I was like, oh, okay. I'm okay. I'm not having inflammation. I'm, I, I really watched and I would stop and see how I felt and then I'd go back and so now I can have it. It's not, it's not a staple in my diet still.
I like, you know, the standard American sad diet. Like we, none of us are gonna be Well doing that. You don't, you don't
Julie Michelson: look like you eat the standard American diet. Yeah. But you know, diet.
Tori Jenae: I'm, I'm 47 years old, so I take care of myself. I lift weights, I eat well. You know, I've done the best I can to stay healthy.
I do Dr. Mark Hyman's, um, blood work every year, which is pretty amazing. And so that gives you all yeah, functional health like that, you know, I do all the things to make sure that I'm hitting the marks. So, yeah, like I said, I'm not doing it. Um. Flippantly, like, oh, let's just throw it to the wind and see.
It's like I'm testing.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, well, and, and just to, and then, you know, we'll pop the bubble and move on. But you know, it, it's there. You're, you're. Intentional and you're constantly checking in, right? Like, so it's, I am not telling everybody, like, just get out of the bubble, like Yeah, yeah.
Tori Jenae: No baby steps out of
Julie Michelson: the bubble.
Yeah. And, and really maintain that awareness and, and, you know, um. So, yeah, your body
Tori Jenae: will never lie to you. Your mind will make up all kinds of stuff. It's a, it's a, it's a creative force, you know, but your body Yeah. Will give you immediate feedback. This is a
Julie Michelson: pretty straight shooter.
Tori Jenae: It is. We just don't like to listen to it.
It doesn't tell us what we wanna hear. Exactly. At least mine didn't. I'd be like, why can't I have cupcakes? I'm still bloated.
Julie Michelson: Well, and I, I really do believe that, that that's how we end, like you said, like the body will end up doing. What you may not be able to do for yourself, right? Yes. And so nobody, it, it may feel like you wake up overnight with a diagnosable autoimmune condition, but I guarantee you Yeah.
There were years of whispers that you were not listening to before your body started screaming. So, um, yes. You know, I, I I love the, yeah. Our minds are creative, but our, our body's just giving us information. It is. Yeah.
Tori Jenae: And it's always just trying to survive and take care of us. Yeah. That's its only goal.
Julie Michelson: Literally.
Tori Jenae: Literally,
Julie Michelson: literally. So I wanna talk a little bit about either like emotional patterns or I like pulling threads. Um, and, and I know again, there, there are. I call 'em umbrellas. Um, you know, I, I know that our emotions. Definitely, if not driving greatly impacting our health. Absolutely. What do you see with like autoimmune populations?
Are there certain either, you know, emotional patterns, character traits, different uhhuh? Yeah,
Tori Jenae: so, um, I, I'm, I know you know this book, but I'll just mention it like Gabor Mate Uhhuh, when the Body Says No Is a great one, Uhhuh and all the study on people with fibromyalgia. And their psychological profile is highly correlated.
They actually know if you have fibromyalgia, if, depending on how nice you are, it's one of the things they look for. Interesting. So what do, what do I look for? I look for people pleasing. Mm-hmm. Over-functioning, which means I'm just, I'm working really hard to make all my relationships work. I look for perfectionism and control because they're actually two of the sides of the same coins.
Mm-hmm. I'm looking for someone who has a lot of compare, comparison, compare, and despair. Mm-hmm. Someone who's really worries about what people think of them. Mm-hmm. Because I know that they're in a chronic state of worrying about other people and not themselves. People who are very selfless and loving all good things.
Like all of these things have positive attributes. Right? What do they do to our health? That means that we're not. The primary source of making sure that we're nurtured, that we're cared for. It's that, and, and women are taught this too, so this is also, we're, we're going against culture as well. Right. Like, you know, we revere moms who are self-sacrificing.
Mm-hmm. It's like, that's, that shouldn't be, it shouldn't be like, my mom would do anything. Like, you could shoot her and she would still try to feed me. It's like, that's not a good thing. It's horrible
Julie Michelson: modeling.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. It's like we need, and I even grew up that way. Like, you know, my, my own mother wasn't obviously nurturing or.
Didn't have those skills because of her addiction. But I had a grandmother who was, you know, it's like she would give anything like the shirt off her back, like she would have nothing left to give it to her children. And so that was kind of my only model of love. And um. I had to, I've had to really relearn that 'cause I can still to this day, overgive over love overtake care of allow someone to, I'm so good at understanding people's wounds and why they do things that I forget that I don't have to accept it.
Julie Michelson: Right. Yeah. I love that you said that because yes, it's a
Tori Jenae: lifetime thing
Julie Michelson: and, and here you are like. Having moved through, I don't even wanna say the word, like overcome, but you know, you through more than the average bear for sure. And, you know, have, you're, you're a healer, right? So like really other end of the spectrum.
And, and I think it's so important for listeners to understand. The patterns are patterns and, and we can shift them and change them and create new patterns, but we're still gonna have some defaults that pop up. Like, you know, as you said, the universe is always giving us new opportunities to, to learn whether it's Absolutely healing it at you're just ready to heal at a deeper level.
Yes. Like I really believe that.
Tori Jenae: Absolutely.
Julie Michelson: That, that's the opportunity. We get it, you know, where life can feel so much better and different and I feel, you know, so much more healed and, and, um, you know, my relationship, all the things right are, are just a whole different level than they were. And, and at least my experience has been you, you tend to get to stay there a little while and then you get tested again.
Tori Jenae: Absolutely. And native. Um, my dad's a native part, native American, so like in my d in my DNA I'm like 30% I think. Oh, wow. So I've done a lot of study in that. And so there's two things that I love to share from that culture. One is that, you know, the healers of the group, they, they knew the shamans and the healers because they had the most challenging lives.
So we're meant to transform our wounds into our wisdom. And number two was that we're all on a spiral path, meaning we're at cross the same, like we're on a spiral path inward to our own healing journey. And so there's a line across that spiral, and we're gonna go through the same thing multiple times because that's your soul's lesson.
I'm here to learn to heal, like my abandonment wounds, my guilt wound, you know, and I have on my website for free, like a download of like the seven psychological wounds that I see the most, which really hurt us, um, as women particularly. And I think they do show up in these places with the autoimmune.
'cause like, again, the body's trying to protect us. And so it's like, it's like the abandonment, the guilt, the betrayal, um, the people like all these have deeper things and I kind of like. Um, like the rege, the fear of rejection. You know, I really go into them deeper. Like we've been betrayed, we've been rejected, we've been, um, like the not enough wound.
We all, that's a human wound that we all have. Yeah. And if I don't feel like I'm enough on some level, I'm not smart enough. I'm not pretty enough, I'm not been enough. Whatever the world tells us because we're women and it fricking sucks. Um, but I'm now going to go out into the world and try to prove I'm enough and then I'm gonna overdo, I'm gonna overgive, I'm gonna over be.
And that's not what the feminine is designed to do. The feminine is designed to receive and create,
Julie Michelson: oh, say that again. What? Yeah.
Tori Jenae: The feminine is not here to just do like the feminine is here to receive and create, like that is what we do biologically. It does not mean for children even, but if you think about just like our biological body is meant to receive and create life, right?
We don't have to do anything. Everybody just does it for us. And that is true for businesses, for babies, for everything in life. And we forget that we've just become human doings.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know. Were you ever taught that?
Tori Jenae: No. My gosh. As a, as a
Julie Michelson: younger, you know, a girl, a younger woman, uh, you know, I wasn't, I, I, no.
You know, I mean, it didn't even occur to me. To, I honestly didn't even understand masculine and feminine. No, and I don't think we did. I think it's really blurred right now too. And until like my late forties when it was like you, as far as as that, right, like feminine is here to receive and create and or you know, my, my society's kind of.
Illustration of masculinity is so not what masculinity is. True masculinity?
Tori Jenae: No, no. I think it's, it's, I call it like there's, I see. I don't even like the word toxic. I love to, because I think men right now are getting a really bad rap. You know, I love, like, men are good and we're, they're necessary. I don't have that like negativity towards them.
I understand what people do, but like the positive masculine. Holds, it provides and protects emotionally, physically, mentally. That doesn't just mean money, but I like to say like that means they're holding you up. They're lifting you up, negative masculinity controls and pushes down.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Tori Jenae: And they can do that through providing and protecting, and that's why it's such a delicate balance.
But see, I,
Julie Michelson: I feel like what you call negative masculinity to me is not genuine masculinity.
Tori Jenae: It's not, it's actually, like I said, it's control, it's power. It's the dark side of power. It's all those things that, um, have held the feminine down. And so that's why we need to look to teach men. I think younger men are starting to get it, but to hold the feminine.
Yeah. Which with which safety, with love, with care, and provide and protect in a way that does not put down. Or limit or diminish in any way, and we need to do the same for the masculine. Allow them to. Be with, you know, the positive side of that. Like allow even, like, I don't know about you. Wow. There's that word.
Allow them to, I didn't learn that till my forties either. Right. Like allow myself to receive even Yeah. Like the care and stuff, because I'm very much someone who can do it myself. I've been doing it myself since I was forever born. Pretty much. Yeah. So, yeah. Even like with my boyfriend now, I've had to like learn to, like, if he wants to do all these little things, like, okay.
Just be like, yes. Thank you. Mm-hmm.
Julie Michelson: And again, probably not your initial reflex. No, no. It's a work and I'm very
Tori Jenae: honest about that with him too. Yeah. And I'll tell him, and I'll, and I like, I've, now that I'm older, I know a lot better. I got. My first husband, or you know, my, my past husband we're still good friends.
Thank God we had an amicable divorce and all that, but it was still hard to like lose that partner in my life. But now I'm so honest, like I, you know, I told him within, like the guy that I'm with now, like within months of dating, of like, look, it's hard for me to receive. Here's all my traumas. Right? You know, this is who I really am.
Like this is, you know, these are the kinds of things that I need, and I wanna know what you need and I wanna know what's happened to you. And so I've had these. We think in re, like especially for women, relationships can be so draining for us because we can be trying to figure it out all the time for everybody, right?
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Instead of just communicating. Obviously the, to set it up though, it has to be the right partner.
Tori Jenae: For sure. They have to be willing to do that with you. And if they're not, that's a red flag.
Julie Michelson: So
Tori Jenae: if
Julie Michelson: they're not,
Tori Jenae: they're not their partner. Yeah,
Julie Michelson: they're
Tori Jenae: not.
Julie Michelson: And it's not worth, it doesn't, this is not a first date conversation.
No, no, no. This is like,
Tori Jenae: okay, I'm interested in you, you're worthy. Yeah. I would say that like we, we as women, it is a little about me, you know? Yes. And those, and you know, you do start slow. What's fascinating in dating and relationships though, is they found it when people are more vulnerable earlier on.
You actually can weed out if someone's right for you or not more quickly.
Julie Michelson: Sure, yeah, sure. I, I just recently said to my husband, you know, like, you are the, this is the only relationship I think that I have from day one. Like, he's just always known me as me. I never tried. To, because I definitely, that list you just gave of those traits.
I have almost all of them. Yeah, me too. Yeah, right. It just, oh, and codependent, I forgot. Prominent. Yeah. Um, so, you know, the, the, like, I don't think anybody on the planet has genuinely know. I didn't know myself. Either, and that's the key, to be fair.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. Self knowledge is the most important knowledge.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
And, and so to, to show up into what we call a later in life relationship. Um, and have something, you know, just, just a genuine friendship that grew into, you know, now sharing every aspect of life together. Um. But to, it's kind of sad. It's, I mean, it's beautiful. It doesn't feel sad to me that like, wow, I never thought I would get that.
Um, yeah, and, and it took a lot of work to become the person who was ready for it. Um, but, but also, like that's really common I think for especially women to. You know, um, I know, I know grown women that like jump up and put makeup on before their significant other weeks. Absolutely. Up in the morning and it's like.
Why, what? I don't, you know? Yeah. I
Tori Jenae: always try to
explain too that like if you're not your authentic self, you'll never actually feel loved, right? Because there will always be a part of you that knows that you're performing right to receive care and love. And most of us are taught that, oh yeah, you're not a good girl or you're not loved if you don't get good grades.
You know? And my mom like, gosh, I was always revered, um, for how I looked, or that's, that was her, my mom was very much about that. Like, my brother's, my brother's actually the pretty one, he's, he has different dads, so he literally looks like, um, like Chris Heworth, like he's six foot three. He's got like kind of my features, but he is got like light hair and light eyes and he's just, yeah, well you're stunning.
So, but I
Julie Michelson: get family dynamics, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah.
Tori Jenae: So, but like that, that was the only thing she ever said. Even though I did really well in school, it was always like my beautiful children. Mm-hmm. So it was kind of like, I got taught like, well, you're only valuable for your looks. Yep. And so it's like those things that we don't even think about.
They affect us. Like I so many clients who they're so, yeah. Like who their, their mother was, you know, had problems with her own weight, so she was critical of their weight. And so now their weight becomes a way in which they measure their worthiness.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Tori Jenae: And just like those little things that we just don't think about how they get put into our mind.
But I always remind people that like, if you grow up in America and you're, you know, Western as a child, people told you that a fat guy named Santa Claus was going to come down your chimney and leave you gifts, and you believed him. Or you believed whoever told you that and you were like, oh my God, I've gotta go to bed.
Or the Easter Bunny or whatever your culture said, you believed some weird fable. Right? And it's no different. Your mind was so open as a child that when your mom criticized herself or talked about someone's else's weight or, yeah, or what, or if you didn't get good enough grades, like all that got like kind of, you know, planted in the garden of your mind and now you need to weed it out.
Julie Michelson: I love that. Yeah. And my, my daughter's great at. She'll call me out. Like if I say something negative toward myself, she's like, oh, that's really great modeling for me. You know?
Tori Jenae: I'm like,
Julie Michelson: oh fine. I'll pay for your next therapy session. Oh my goodness. Which is, it's wonderful because, yeah, yeah.
Tori Jenae: But children are your teachers too.
Julie Michelson: She doesn't have, you know, I mean, it's not that she doesn't have stuff to un again, she's on this planet, like in this country. She does. Totally. Um, you know, but I love that in her twenties she is so aware that, you know, the impact of others on her and as she's working to change her patterns, you know?
Yeah. It, it's just, yeah. It's beautiful. It is beautiful. It's really, it, it's really a, a fun thing. So do, do you, well that,
Tori Jenae: that speaks a lot though to your healing as well. 'cause this is one thing that like also comes from made of American culture, but I truly believe it. When we heal, we, we heal seven generations before us and seven generations after us.
And I've seen this so many times in my clients where they start their healing journey, they start unpacking those wounds and they start seeing it heal in. Like, they'll have better relationships with their mothers, they'll have better relationships with their children because we're really, we're, we're changing how we relate.
We're, we're unpacking all of that stuff and we are shifting it for everyone. So I would say healing's not just for you, it's for your whole family.
Julie Michelson: Absolutely. Uh, uh, it's the, you know, and it, it's so oversimplifies when we were, you were talking about, you know, the, the giver, the mother as the giver and the mm-hmm.
You know, your grand for you, your grandmother, the shirt off her back, and. Right. Probably skin off her body if someone needed it, right? Totally. Absolutely. A kidney and, and it's often my way in with clients of the, you know, especially clients with daughters, children in general, but if they have of, you know, your daughter's learning from watching you, is this what you want for her?
Absolutely. It's a, it's kind of cheating, but it, it is a really good way, it's a motivator
Tori Jenae: to
Julie Michelson: shift the perspective of, especially if they still have this, you know, they haven't, they're still working on the, I'm not worthy story anyway. Uh, you know. Yeah. So most of us
Tori Jenae: do not know that's what we're working on.
Julie Michelson: Right.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. That's the hardest one to see. And
Julie Michelson: that was you just, that was the question I was gonna ask is do we need to identify all of these things? To begin healing.
Tori Jenae: I always say like, start with what's coming up for you. We don't need to go find it all. You know, I have a ton of trauma in my lifetime. I don't need to go looking for all those dead bodies, right?
I believe that your mind will present your mind and your life, and your body will present what needs to be healed in that moment. And so if I'm struggling with something specific in this moment, it might be like. You know, am I loving enough for something because I'm overgiving in a relationship and my body is telling me I am, or my mind is telling me I am.
That's where you start, and I feel like everybody has a different entry point into healing. Mm, too. Yeah. So some of us need to start in the mind. Some of us need to start in the body. So some of us might be struggling more with anxiety and depression, even though we're having some body issues, it, it feels heavier there.
So start with your own unique journey. So that might mean that for you, you know, therapy, talking to someone, meditation, breath work, nervous system regulation for the mind is actually better and that will help the body. They're deeply interconnect. Interconnected or other people, your body, you know, you'd be having IBS where you can't stop gonna the bathroom, that's where you start.
That's okay. Right. Then next you start pairing it with the mind stuff. But yeah, I, I do think that the human condition is, we all have been told or believe that we are not enough on some level and it's hard to see it and it wears lots of different hats. But I think we're all growing that to believe that.
Even if I have confidence or worthiness, I always need to grow that. 'cause I love to explain to my clients too, like that confidence, that worthiness you might have a great in one area and it might be lacking in another. Like a, a big way I can see is like, I'll see women who are very successful at work, but they're really struggling in their personal relationships.
Mm-hmm. And they don't have the same confidence there. And so they feel confused because they're like, I can walk into a boardroom and I can demand anything. But then I come home and I over-function and I do the dishes and I take care of the kids and I, I do do do do do do all day long. And it's like, yeah, but that.
That isn't translating, so that's where your self-worth and your self love and all that stuff just needs to grow. It doesn't mean it's not there, it means. There's more work to do in that area. And sometimes it's the opposite. They're great at home and they have great boundaries and they have a great relationship, but they have a hard time speaking up to their boss.
They don't say anything in a meeting. They're afraid they're stupid, or that they won't be taken seriously. So it, it all looks different for us, but we have to really be honest about what's showing up for me right now. Where am I struggling and what is life trying to reflect back to me that needs to get stronger and better so I can feel stronger and better.
Julie Michelson: Because it's a spiral, so it will keep giving us that opportunity. Yeah. Don't
Tori Jenae: keep coming back. If we don't get it the first time, they'll come back again.
Julie Michelson: For women who have dated a lot, you know, you hear the, like, I keep dating literally the same guy and it's like, well, different body. Yeah.
Tori Jenae: And really like that.
That comes back to a core wound of whatever your parents, there's some amalgamation of Yeah. There's a great book called Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix, and that one is a mago therapy, and it's really figuring out what were the core wounds that your parents created or your primary caregivers or someone early in life that you're actually trying to work out in your, like, I used to love emotionally unavailable because that's what I grew up with.
I that felt like love, like my parents weren't,
Julie Michelson: you knew how to navigate that.
Tori Jenae: Totally. Like someone tried to get too close to me, I'd be like, what's wrong with you? Like, yeah. Very so interested. So yeah, Mr. Emotionally unavailable was the sexiest guy on the planet to me,
Julie Michelson: Uhhuh, because that
Tori Jenae: was, that was exactly what I grew up with.
And I That's
Julie Michelson: not all younger women.
Tori Jenae: No. I mean, it, it shows up in so many different ways. Interesting. Yeah. It's so fascinating. It's like, you know, even someone who had a, a dad who worked all the time might end up with a guy who's very unavailable. Yeah. And it, and it, and it wouldn't even look like unavailable.
It will just look like, oh, he's busy. But like you'll feel alone. You'll feel unattended to, you'll feel disconnected and it will feel familiar. And sometimes, and I always warn my clients too, the more butterflies you have and the more excitement at first, the bigger the red flag. It's actually your nervous system.
Julie Michelson: Oh, interesting. Saying this
Tori Jenae: is very familiar. I'm very excited about this. Yeah. The one you feel calm about is actually the right guy.
Julie Michelson: Interesting. See, and I tell my husband all the time, he was so sneaky. 'cause I, like, I had no, because we worked together first and then became friends and, and, and then from there.
Yeah. And so we built something real.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. Interesting. But if I'm on date, one date too, and I'm like imagining that this is the guy I'm gonna marry and I'm so excited and I'm, I'm just obsessed with him and I'm thinking about him all the time. He's triggering a wound in me. Oh see.
Julie Michelson: Mic drop. We're gonna,
we're, we're gonna now jump to our final question of the interview. Okay. Which listeners know is coming, which is what is, and it can be anything related, literally to anything that whatever comes up. Okay. Um, one step that they can take starting today to either on their healing journey, I'll just leave it that way.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. I would say, I think because everyone is struggling with something physical here. Mm-hmm. Sit down and say, what is this trying to teach me about myself? What have, what have I learned so far? What do I think it's still trying to teach me what, see if you can come up with like five to seven positive things that it's given you or it's trying to teach you.
To see if you can start to shift your mindset around it. Because what we resist in our lives persists particularly psychologically. And if I keep and where
Julie Michelson: energy and when, where attention goes, energy flows, it flows. Absolutely.
Tori Jenae: And so when I'm in that space of I just want this thing to go away, I wish it would stop.
I can't be in pain anymore. I get it. I've been there. But it also blocks the flow of healing. Uh, and so I've got to be able to see what's happening to me differently to shift my relationship with it so that my disease or my disorder, or my sickness does not become my identity, does not become my path, does not become something that I can't work with.
And through amazing.
Julie Michelson: Such a gift for people that are listening on the go and aren't gonna check the show notes or click the links. I am one of those people. Absolutely. Where is the best place for people to find you?
Tori Jenae: So Instagram is easy to contact me. It's at Tori, Tori dot j, or J-E-N-A-E. And you can DM me there and I've got links for free freebies.
Then also my website, Tori jena.dot com, so T-O-R-I-J-E-N-A e.com. And both of those are simple. And again, you could find my freebies, especially like we talked a little bit about, um, the seven psychological wounds and like kind of how to build, build confidence in yourself. And that confidence is directly correlated to that self-worth, that self-love, feeling good about yourself, and that is a very important thing on your healing journey.
That's a great, I mean, it's like 16, 17 pages long, so it will be a true, a true gift and they're completely free.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Dig in and, and mm-hmm. Get to know you even better, which I'm sure tons of listeners are gonna check it out. Highly, highly encourage. Tori, I really appreciate the, the light that you bring and the work that you're doing and, and really grateful for you sharing your time with us.
Tori Jenae: Oh, I'm so grateful I got to be on the show. I'm so excited. I love what you do and just how you're helping women.
Julie Michelson: Thank you right back at you. Thanks for everyone listening. Remember, you can actually get those show notes and transcripts by visiting Inspired Living Show. I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did.
Go get those resources and have a great week.
(Outro)
(Intro Bumper)
Julie Michelson:(Julie Intro) Welcome back to The Inspired Living with Autoimmunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Houghton, and today we're to joined by Tori Janae. Tori is a trauma-informed confidence and relationship coach. With over 15 years of experience and multiple degrees in psychology, she helps women heal from emotional wounds, rebuild self-worth, and create aligned thriving lives and relationships after breakups, challenges and personal loss. Her work blends psychology, somatic healing, and spiritual wisdom to guide deep lasting transformation. Tori's own journey from a difficult childhood to profound personal loss fuels her mission to help others rise stronger and reclaim their power.
In today's conversation, we discussed the importance of addressing our emotional and psychological layers along with the physical in order to truly heal. Tori walks us through the emotional patterns that are most common among people with autoimmunity and shares, her insights and wisdom regarding how we can begin to change and heal.
Julie Michelson:(Main interview) Tori, welcome to the podcast.
Tori Jenae: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here and have this conversation today.
Julie Michelson: As am I, I would love to just have you share some of your journey with us, um, because it, it's actually, I would say 98.5% of, of guests, it's their personal journey is what brought them to the healing space.
But even whether it's, you know, functional medicine or energy work or, you know, fill in the blank. And so, um. Share with listeners so they can get to know you a little bit. Um, and I'm anxious to learn a little bit more about your story as well.
Tori Jenae: Yeah, so I love to start with where, where I am today. Yes. So I do have multiple degrees in psychology, from clinical to transpersonal.
I have studied Ayurveda, functional medicine, yoga, and meditation for 26 years. Energy healing, energy psychology, like EMDR, you name it, I've done it. I've gone down every healing path on the planet. Acupuncture, eastern medicine, western medicine. Because I was actually born to an addict. Um, both my parents struggled with addiction, so my, I was actually conceived in a heroin rehab facility and my dad was already married and in the military, so I was the result of an affair.
So he left when I was six months old. And being raised by an addict who was married multiple times, she was very beautiful and she did the best she could, but she struggled with drugs and alcohol until about two years before her pa, before she passed. So my childhood was incredibly challenging. I had to take care of everyone and every, everything from the time I was probably eight or nine, I had a younger brother, but I helped raise, he's seven years younger.
Um, and I made radical decisions to be different. So I've never really drank alcohol. I did a lot of things to be different. I, I left home at 17. I put myself through university. I've had this intensely. Um, I grew up incredibly quickly, but that also created a lot of people pleasing, over-functioning, overtaking care of, and just an incredible amount of stress that I was under my whole life.
And then starting in 2012, my adulthood wasn't any easier. Mm. I ended up, my sister overdosed. My mom died. My grandma died. My dad died. Like every, I lost my entire family in the span of a couple years, and then I, my long-term husband and I met when I was 22. Like we've been together for a long time, like we ended up getting a divorce.
So in a 10 year span of my adulthood life, I lost everything, like my job, my health. I ended up being diagnosed with Addison's disease. I already had psoriasis and other. You know, gut issues and all these things. And so it sent me on this massive healing journey of really how to heal mind, body, and soul.
And so when I talk about the things I talk about, it's never because I read it in a book, it's because I've walked the fire deeply and there is no type of grief that cracks your soul open that I've not worked through. And so I've really learned when it comes to healing. It's the internal we work, work we do that helps just as much.
And so what I hope to share today are what are those deeper things that we can be doing that we don't always see when it comes to healing the body and the mind?
Julie Michelson: Uh uh. Amazing. And you're right, you did say, even though I was familiar with her story, I would be like, wow. Um,
Tori Jenae: talk about
Julie Michelson: somebody who is supposed to be here, number one, right?
And then doing the work that you're doing. Um, so thank you for sticking with it and, and using your journey to help others navigate theirs. Um, yeah. And truly heal. And, uh, I. Wholeheartedly. I wanna underscore and, and cheer the, you know, it's not, everybody is like, what should I eat? Right? Or what, I mean, I guess some, for a lot of people, the beginning of the journey is what medication should I be on?
Sadly. Absolutely right. But then as we learned, grow, um, and, and any of the other lifestyle changes and approaches are only going to take you so far. They're not gonna take you across the finish line if we, if you're not doing the inner work and that, and it doesn't mean everybody needs to like start with deep work.
Like that's not sure necessarily safe for everybody to do. Yeah, yeah. No, it's not. Yeah. Um, but, but all of us, I mean, I think all of us literally on the planet anyway, but definitely all of us with autoimmune stuff. Absolutely. Um, you know, I. It doesn't happen in a vacuum, you know? Yeah. Genetic predisposition is a, can be a component.
Um, but I've yet to meet anybody, you know, people say, you know, we talk about different triggers, right? Toxins and viruses and bacteria and stress and try, you know, and. Usually it's more than one. Absolutely. And always some kind of emotional trauma, whether someone's aware of it or not. Absolutely.
Everybody has
Tori Jenae: trauma. Yeah. And I think we've done ourselves such a disservice of having this narrow definition of trauma. Yeah. And so I love to explain to people that your trauma may be an emotionally absent parent. It may have been a critical parent, it may have been a parent who worked too much. It may have been someone wasn't parent.
Yeah, it could be a coach. I've had that happen with a client, like she had a tennis coach that just really wore her down mentally, emotionally, and physically, and she definitely had a lot of different, you know, health concerns because of that. Yeah. And so I would love to explain to people that when you do not say no, when you body doesn't feel safe, it will say no for you.
Yes. Your immune system becomes the mother that you never had and the boundaries you don't know how to speak.
Julie Michelson: That was so beautiful. I love that idea of your immune system becoming the mother you never had or you know, or if you had one and, but you needed a new one.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. Like, because we think of like that mother that like holds us.
Yeah. Really protective. Yes. And so even if you had a mother, like maybe she wasn't there as best she could, or it doesn't, you know, it's not their fault, but it's our responsibility. Yeah. But it's like really seeing it as like our immune system's not turning against us. She's really trying to protect us, and so she becomes hypervigilant in that protection.
Oh.
Julie Michelson: So well put. Amazing. So, um, well, and certainly the, I think one of the things I really appreciate about how you show up, you know, the, the. The work you do is about empowering people, and the whole reason I have this podcast is to empower people. Right. Like it, it's, I think that's been part of my healing journey is taking my own power back and then realizing we all can, um.
Mm-hmm. And I think a lot of people hear the word trauma and, and like. Think victim mindset or like identity of, you know, you certainly do not show up as a victim or somebody who wears, you know, like big T trauma, like a, you know, as a crown, right? Yes. And so. Um,
Tori Jenae: and that's actually a really important point.
Yeah. For all of us in healing is in a spirituality called Kabbalah. I think they explain it the best, but I've studied the Vedas, like the yogic mindset and Buddhism when I lived in Japan. So I've, I've really spent 26 years looking at the life's biggest questions. But the best way I've heard explained is that the lowest level of consciousness that we have is the victim mindset.
That's life is happening to me, and that's normal. We're human, we're gonna go through that. We have to have that moment. At that moment, why did this happen? Why am I struggling? Why do I feel like crap all the time? Like I remember I was so tired at one point when I had Addison's disease, I couldn't even wash my hair.
Yeah. And so it's so frustrating and, and I don't say this with like any lack of compassion. I have deep compassion, of course. But it's like when we get out of that mindset, the next level of our consciousness that we can use to heal is life is happening. For me, yes. That means if I really sat with my physical challenges, what were they trying to do for me?
Guess what? My Addisons was the first time that I had to set boundaries. I've never set, and until I got that low, I would not have done it. Right. So my body was saying no when my mind would not and could. And so one thing I really challenge people to sit with is what's the gift? Like maybe you're able to ask your partner for help that you've never asked for before.
Maybe you're making your kids make their own lunch when you've never been able to do that before. Yeah. Maybe you're making self-care a priority for the first time in your life. Mm-hmm. So these are the gifts that's life is happening for me. This disease, this divorce, this, this death, whatever it is that came into your life is happening for you to make you better.
And the highest level of consciousness is life is happening through me. Meaning that everything is showing up is for my highest good, whether it's good, bad, or other. I recognize that I just have to allow that to flow through me, and I have to get through it the best that I can and as quickly as I can and learn the lessons.
And that's kind of the space that I'm at, at, in my life at this point, but with massive work.
Julie Michelson: So I was gonna say, well, and you're not done right. You, you're done. Okay. I got it.
Tori Jenae: You know. No, I do not have it. There's always new levels and new opport opportunities. And God, does the universe test you when you say, oh yeah, I've got it.
It's like, okay, well Tori, let's see. Do you have it? Let's, let's give you a nice big life test. You know? Just like I worked so hard on my health, and then just recently, like I'll share, I had mold all through my, my place. Yeah. And so I had to do mold remediation. I tested positive for mycotoxin, and instead of going into that fear mode, which I would've before, like, oh my gosh, it's gonna set me back, who knows what's gonna happen, right?
I was just like, you know what? I've healed a lot of other things that they told me. I never would. They told me I'd be on steroids the rest of my life with Addison's. I'm not, I make my own cortisol now. So I was like, I'm going to detoxify this. And I really believe like you gotta throw everything at it.
Yes.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and that's the perfect example. Um. Because you can remediate and you can, you know, support the body with detox. But if you're stuck in, in stress response, absolutely you're not gonna heal it. So, um, and that's like
Tori Jenae: such a big thing that we forget is that the body's either in fight or flight or rest and digest,
Julie Michelson: right?
We don't have. Like a variety of states in that For nervous system.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. And that, and especially when we grow up in chaotic homes, our nervous system is just set to gas pedal on.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. And
Tori Jenae: so it's really hard to even recognize, and I never recognized that it's survive. It's served you though. Absolutely.
Julie Michelson: As a child,
Tori Jenae: you know, it's the only way I survived.
And so it's like being grateful for that survival mode. Yeah. And thanking it instead of fighting it. And then. Practicing to shift
Julie Michelson: it. Yes. Really. And lots of
Tori Jenae: things help.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, because Mo Oh, I, if not all, definitely most of our patterns that we, it may serve us to work, to change as adults. They ca They didn't come out in a vacuum.
No. They were there. They served us in some way at some point. I love that you, you said that too. Like, you know, you thank that. Like, thank your body, thank the pattern. Thank the nasty voice in the head, whatever. I would say it to somebody's like. I have a, I have like a cheerleader voice in my head. Nobody, no, no.
We all have,
Tori Jenae: I call the crazy lady in the addict Uhhuh. Like, and if anyone else said those things to you, you'd be very upset.
Julie Michelson: Or And would you ever say them to anybody else?
Tori Jenae: No. Yeah. No, definitely not. It's, it's, you know, it's our own, like, I love the thought of it. I'm, it's my own inner opponent. Yeah. And if I can overcome that voice, I can really overcome anything.
Oh,
Julie Michelson: yes, yes. I love that. And I think even for. It may just show up in different ways. In different times. I think even for somebody who has textbook like idyllic, loving, supportive family growing up, like just life on this planet in, in modern times, if we do not practice getting into a parasympathetic state.
Tori Jenae: Like, you
Julie Michelson: know, that it is just not the way our life is right now doesn't match how our nervous systems were designed.
Tori Jenae: No.
Julie Michelson: And so I, I think, you know, like I
Tori Jenae: would say we're on a very ancient system. Yeah. And it's not designed to like watch the news 24 7. It's not designed for a horrible boss or a hypercritical.
Partner, you know, all these things like, yeah. Even if we had a good base as a child, right? There's a lot of things that I've seen affect clients that they just did not even see. Like I said, like, like I had a, like a tennis coach, a boyfriend in college who was abusive. You know, just these things that really set that nervous system up for safety.
And like I said, like we're talking about those strategies that we have that kept us safe eventually keep us stuck. What kept us safe before becomes the cage that we live in.
Julie Michelson: So well put, it's true, and again, it doesn't, we don't have to, it is not about blame. It's not about, you know, it's just about creating the awareness and, and then, you know, working with someone like you, finding the help to shift.
Um, but you can't eat cleanly. And, and ignore all the things that got you sick and yeah, maybe our food system was part of what got you sick. Um, for sure. Yeah. But for like, for sure, like we, and even, and if somebody listening and they're not like, we all, if you're not doing this work on some level, today's a great day to start.
Tori Jenae: Absolutely. And it's like start small. I always say start with, I always kind of joke, there's the ABCs of healing. The A is just the awareness. Like if I can admit that that thing happened to me, now I have awareness. Then I can start looking at like, what are the beliefs I have about myself, about life? Do I believe that I'm safe?
Do I believe that I'm lovable? Do I believe that life is for me or against me? Yeah. And then I can start saying like, that's, that's becoming how my nervous system is programmed, because my inside voice is telling my nervous system. Those things. Yeah. You know, if I have got beliefs, like I can't trust men, everybody's out to get me.
I, you know, only my family blood is thicker than water. All these things we're told money doesn't grow on trees. They create internal stress.
Julie Michelson: Those are all, take all of those things you just said back, like, I don't like any of them,
Tori Jenae: but they're all kind of like running under the surface and we don't know them because we don't have that awareness.
And so I always like to do, like, have clients do a belief stump of like, what do I believe is true about love? What do I believe is true about my body? Maybe I think that my body is weak. Maybe. I think that, you know, and it's like our thoughts, like there's a book called The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton, and that's a great book.
I was so good. Yeah, I read that years ago, but I still think it's a great like basis of understanding. Mm-hmm. And then we can go to the sea of healing, which is that cleansing, clearing, um, claiming ourselves again.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. That's huge and, and I think a lot of people focus on the cleansing and clearing.
Tori Jenae: Yes.
And it's, it's the most simple. I always say like, we wanna work from what. Common knowledges, which makes sense, right? Like you said, the medication, the food, all great things. Yeah. But again, if your body is not in rest and digest, it does not matter how clean you're eating. Your body's not absorbing it. And I've been there before I, I was taking 30 supplements a day or 30 tablets a day.
My body wasn't absorbing any of it because I was in such a state of dysregulation from stress that my body couldn't even take in all that goodness.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. No, it's so true. It's so true. But it's kind of like also the, the, you know, what do I need to take out of my diet to heal? And it's like also, and I'm actually a big proponent of the opposite to nourish and bring in, you know, and so I love that it to be is the, is the claiming is that same, you know, we're so focused on, okay, what do I need to avoid?
Again, in that, in, in, in that fear. And that's still saying the Absolutely.
Tori Jenae: It's fear and it's saying the world's dangerous. Yeah. Like, and I, I did, I went through all that too. Trust me, I was a gluten-free vegan at one point, you know, like, like,
Julie Michelson: it was like, I'm still gluten-free,
Tori Jenae: but I have
Julie Michelson: Celia because, so I, I, yeah.
And that's totally different. Me.
Tori Jenae: Yes, absolutely. If you're a celiac or you're, or if your immune system, you know, again, always honor your body. I always tell people this, your body is your guru. Well, and
Julie Michelson: tell you. What you, you know, what you eat five years from now may not be the way you're eating right now.
That might not be what your body needs. Um, so I can eat
Tori Jenae: gluten again just fine. Yeah. But I was off of it for seven years because I had to heal all that inflammation. I had to do a lot of work. Like I said, I was a gluten-free vegan, I won't eat much. So I went to that extreme like, you know, I gotta cut everything out.
I've gotta be so clean. Like, and that also creates stress. And I've seen that a lot of my clients. Yeah.
Julie Michelson: No, it's true. It, it's, um, and I, I do think it is, it is a very typical healing pattern.
Tori Jenae: Mm-hmm.
Julie Michelson: And, and we do stay stuck when we, you know, we are starting, we get relief and we're doing something that, that, you know, you can actually feel, oh my gosh, the, you know, I, I feel better.
And there's that fear of like, don't, don't rock the boat. Don't take you Totally Yeah. Know. I always joke that I
Tori Jenae: became a bubble person for a little while. Oh
Julie Michelson: yeah.
Tori Jenae: And I, I think I, I think we
Julie Michelson: all do. Like I really do. Because like I couldn't
Tori Jenae: even go through the, like the laundry detergent aisle at Target because the smell would overwhelm me so much.
'cause I was so sensitive to everything I had that, uh, I
Julie Michelson: still hold my breath when I walk through the,
Tori Jenae: but doing some nervous, I don't get a migraine
Julie Michelson: anymore. But yeah, I used to get tons
Tori Jenae: of migraine. Yeah. All that. So I've done, yeah, like I always say, I've been through down all of these paths so I know what it feels like.
Yeah. But it's like, I definitely have done a lot of work too. Allow myself to feel safe so that when I do walk down the laundry detergent aisle, if I need to go grab my seventh generation free and clear, I can make it without, you
Julie Michelson: know, without passing out. Well, I mean, re it's so interesting because when I, when I first met my husband, I used to, I was not far, I was still in the bubble.
Mm-hmm. Um, and he used to say, you know, but true wellness, with true wellness, there's resilience. And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm great. Uh, I I feel so good. And he is like, yeah, but you shouldn't have to be that careful to feel, you know? Yeah. And I, I used to just in my head, you know, like, what does he know? You know?
Exactly. He's
Tori Jenae: not been through this. He's a doctor, but he's never
Julie Michelson: been through this. Right. Totally. And now I'm like, oh, yep. Um, and so that's kind of the same thing that resilience,
Tori Jenae: my, my guru said to me the same thing he said, like, um, yeah, you know, we, we do the inner work, we do the meditation, we do the breath work, all that kind of stuff so that we can go out into life.
'cause yes, you can feel calm and grounded on your yoga mat or at the ashram, right? But if you can't walk out of that space and hold that calm, you're actually not integrated. You're not well.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Tori Jenae: And so that really stuck with me of like, you know, he's like, people will. Feel great when they're in the healing phase or when they're in the safe space.
But our journey is to really bring that safe space with us everywhere, to be
Julie Michelson: part of us where wherever we travel. Yeah. Oh. Amen. Well, here's to getting outta the bubble.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. Slowly but surely. And you know all, and it's okay to visit
Julie Michelson: the, you know, totally. The bubble is the healing space.
Tori Jenae: It's, yeah. Yeah.
We're not, I'm definitely not saying it with any judgment. That's why I'm totally knocking the bubble, totally owning that. I was, I was in the bubble for many years and the bubble got me well, and it's like I'm slowly, um, letting down my bubble a little bit at a time, and I'm just testing things and I'm always listening to my body.
Like when I started eating gluten again, um, I was like, okay, like. I started eating it in overseas, so in like Europe and Paris, it was, I was like, oh, okay. I'm okay. I'm not having inflammation. I'm, I, I really watched and I would stop and see how I felt and then I'd go back and so now I can have it. It's not, it's not a staple in my diet still.
I like, you know, the standard American sad diet. Like we, none of us are gonna be Well doing that. You don't, you don't
Julie Michelson: look like you eat the standard American diet. Yeah. But you know, diet.
Tori Jenae: I'm, I'm 47 years old, so I take care of myself. I lift weights, I eat well. You know, I've done the best I can to stay healthy.
I do Dr. Mark Hyman's, um, blood work every year, which is pretty amazing. And so that gives you all yeah, functional health like that, you know, I do all the things to make sure that I'm hitting the marks. So, yeah, like I said, I'm not doing it. Um. Flippantly, like, oh, let's just throw it to the wind and see.
It's like I'm testing.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, well, and, and just to, and then, you know, we'll pop the bubble and move on. But you know, it, it's there. You're, you're. Intentional and you're constantly checking in, right? Like, so it's, I am not telling everybody, like, just get out of the bubble, like Yeah, yeah.
Tori Jenae: No baby steps out of
Julie Michelson: the bubble.
Yeah. And, and really maintain that awareness and, and, you know, um. So, yeah, your body
Tori Jenae: will never lie to you. Your mind will make up all kinds of stuff. It's a, it's a, it's a creative force, you know, but your body Yeah. Will give you immediate feedback. This is a
Julie Michelson: pretty straight shooter.
Tori Jenae: It is. We just don't like to listen to it.
It doesn't tell us what we wanna hear. Exactly. At least mine didn't. I'd be like, why can't I have cupcakes? I'm still bloated.
Julie Michelson: Well, and I, I really do believe that, that that's how we end, like you said, like the body will end up doing. What you may not be able to do for yourself, right? Yes. And so nobody, it, it may feel like you wake up overnight with a diagnosable autoimmune condition, but I guarantee you Yeah.
There were years of whispers that you were not listening to before your body started screaming. So, um, yes. You know, I, I I love the, yeah. Our minds are creative, but our, our body's just giving us information. It is. Yeah.
Tori Jenae: And it's always just trying to survive and take care of us. Yeah. That's its only goal.
Julie Michelson: Literally.
Tori Jenae: Literally,
Julie Michelson: literally. So I wanna talk a little bit about either like emotional patterns or I like pulling threads. Um, and, and I know again, there, there are. I call 'em umbrellas. Um, you know, I, I know that our emotions. Definitely, if not driving greatly impacting our health. Absolutely. What do you see with like autoimmune populations?
Are there certain either, you know, emotional patterns, character traits, different uhhuh? Yeah,
Tori Jenae: so, um, I, I'm, I know you know this book, but I'll just mention it like Gabor Mate Uhhuh, when the Body Says No Is a great one, Uhhuh and all the study on people with fibromyalgia. And their psychological profile is highly correlated.
They actually know if you have fibromyalgia, if, depending on how nice you are, it's one of the things they look for. Interesting. So what do, what do I look for? I look for people pleasing. Mm-hmm. Over-functioning, which means I'm just, I'm working really hard to make all my relationships work. I look for perfectionism and control because they're actually two of the sides of the same coins.
Mm-hmm. I'm looking for someone who has a lot of compare, comparison, compare, and despair. Mm-hmm. Someone who's really worries about what people think of them. Mm-hmm. Because I know that they're in a chronic state of worrying about other people and not themselves. People who are very selfless and loving all good things.
Like all of these things have positive attributes. Right? What do they do to our health? That means that we're not. The primary source of making sure that we're nurtured, that we're cared for. It's that, and, and women are taught this too, so this is also, we're, we're going against culture as well. Right. Like, you know, we revere moms who are self-sacrificing.
Mm-hmm. It's like, that's, that shouldn't be, it shouldn't be like, my mom would do anything. Like, you could shoot her and she would still try to feed me. It's like, that's not a good thing. It's horrible
Julie Michelson: modeling.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. It's like we need, and I even grew up that way. Like, you know, my, my own mother wasn't obviously nurturing or.
Didn't have those skills because of her addiction. But I had a grandmother who was, you know, it's like she would give anything like the shirt off her back, like she would have nothing left to give it to her children. And so that was kind of my only model of love. And um. I had to, I've had to really relearn that 'cause I can still to this day, overgive over love overtake care of allow someone to, I'm so good at understanding people's wounds and why they do things that I forget that I don't have to accept it.
Julie Michelson: Right. Yeah. I love that you said that because yes, it's a
Tori Jenae: lifetime thing
Julie Michelson: and, and here you are like. Having moved through, I don't even wanna say the word, like overcome, but you know, you through more than the average bear for sure. And, you know, have, you're, you're a healer, right? So like really other end of the spectrum.
And, and I think it's so important for listeners to understand. The patterns are patterns and, and we can shift them and change them and create new patterns, but we're still gonna have some defaults that pop up. Like, you know, as you said, the universe is always giving us new opportunities to, to learn whether it's Absolutely healing it at you're just ready to heal at a deeper level.
Yes. Like I really believe that.
Tori Jenae: Absolutely.
Julie Michelson: That, that's the opportunity. We get it, you know, where life can feel so much better and different and I feel, you know, so much more healed and, and, um, you know, my relationship, all the things right are, are just a whole different level than they were. And, and at least my experience has been you, you tend to get to stay there a little while and then you get tested again.
Tori Jenae: Absolutely. And native. Um, my dad's a native part, native American, so like in my d in my DNA I'm like 30% I think. Oh, wow. So I've done a lot of study in that. And so there's two things that I love to share from that culture. One is that, you know, the healers of the group, they, they knew the shamans and the healers because they had the most challenging lives.
So we're meant to transform our wounds into our wisdom. And number two was that we're all on a spiral path, meaning we're at cross the same, like we're on a spiral path inward to our own healing journey. And so there's a line across that spiral, and we're gonna go through the same thing multiple times because that's your soul's lesson.
I'm here to learn to heal, like my abandonment wounds, my guilt wound, you know, and I have on my website for free, like a download of like the seven psychological wounds that I see the most, which really hurt us, um, as women particularly. And I think they do show up in these places with the autoimmune.
'cause like, again, the body's trying to protect us. And so it's like, it's like the abandonment, the guilt, the betrayal, um, the people like all these have deeper things and I kind of like. Um, like the rege, the fear of rejection. You know, I really go into them deeper. Like we've been betrayed, we've been rejected, we've been, um, like the not enough wound.
We all, that's a human wound that we all have. Yeah. And if I don't feel like I'm enough on some level, I'm not smart enough. I'm not pretty enough, I'm not been enough. Whatever the world tells us because we're women and it fricking sucks. Um, but I'm now going to go out into the world and try to prove I'm enough and then I'm gonna overdo, I'm gonna overgive, I'm gonna over be.
And that's not what the feminine is designed to do. The feminine is designed to receive and create,
Julie Michelson: oh, say that again. What? Yeah.
Tori Jenae: The feminine is not here to just do like the feminine is here to receive and create, like that is what we do biologically. It does not mean for children even, but if you think about just like our biological body is meant to receive and create life, right?
We don't have to do anything. Everybody just does it for us. And that is true for businesses, for babies, for everything in life. And we forget that we've just become human doings.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know. Were you ever taught that?
Tori Jenae: No. My gosh. As a, as a
Julie Michelson: younger, you know, a girl, a younger woman, uh, you know, I wasn't, I, I, no.
You know, I mean, it didn't even occur to me. To, I honestly didn't even understand masculine and feminine. No, and I don't think we did. I think it's really blurred right now too. And until like my late forties when it was like you, as far as as that, right, like feminine is here to receive and create and or you know, my, my society's kind of.
Illustration of masculinity is so not what masculinity is. True masculinity?
Tori Jenae: No, no. I think it's, it's, I call it like there's, I see. I don't even like the word toxic. I love to, because I think men right now are getting a really bad rap. You know, I love, like, men are good and we're, they're necessary. I don't have that like negativity towards them.
I understand what people do, but like the positive masculine. Holds, it provides and protects emotionally, physically, mentally. That doesn't just mean money, but I like to say like that means they're holding you up. They're lifting you up, negative masculinity controls and pushes down.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Tori Jenae: And they can do that through providing and protecting, and that's why it's such a delicate balance.
But see, I,
Julie Michelson: I feel like what you call negative masculinity to me is not genuine masculinity.
Tori Jenae: It's not, it's actually, like I said, it's control, it's power. It's the dark side of power. It's all those things that, um, have held the feminine down. And so that's why we need to look to teach men. I think younger men are starting to get it, but to hold the feminine.
Yeah. Which with which safety, with love, with care, and provide and protect in a way that does not put down. Or limit or diminish in any way, and we need to do the same for the masculine. Allow them to. Be with, you know, the positive side of that. Like allow even, like, I don't know about you. Wow. There's that word.
Allow them to, I didn't learn that till my forties either. Right. Like allow myself to receive even Yeah. Like the care and stuff, because I'm very much someone who can do it myself. I've been doing it myself since I was forever born. Pretty much. Yeah. So, yeah. Even like with my boyfriend now, I've had to like learn to, like, if he wants to do all these little things, like, okay.
Just be like, yes. Thank you. Mm-hmm.
Julie Michelson: And again, probably not your initial reflex. No, no. It's a work and I'm very
Tori Jenae: honest about that with him too. Yeah. And I'll tell him, and I'll, and I like, I've, now that I'm older, I know a lot better. I got. My first husband, or you know, my, my past husband we're still good friends.
Thank God we had an amicable divorce and all that, but it was still hard to like lose that partner in my life. But now I'm so honest, like I, you know, I told him within, like the guy that I'm with now, like within months of dating, of like, look, it's hard for me to receive. Here's all my traumas. Right? You know, this is who I really am.
Like this is, you know, these are the kinds of things that I need, and I wanna know what you need and I wanna know what's happened to you. And so I've had these. We think in re, like especially for women, relationships can be so draining for us because we can be trying to figure it out all the time for everybody, right?
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Instead of just communicating. Obviously the, to set it up though, it has to be the right partner.
Tori Jenae: For sure. They have to be willing to do that with you. And if they're not, that's a red flag.
Julie Michelson: So
Tori Jenae: if
Julie Michelson: they're not,
Tori Jenae: they're not their partner. Yeah,
Julie Michelson: they're
Tori Jenae: not.
Julie Michelson: And it's not worth, it doesn't, this is not a first date conversation.
No, no, no. This is like,
Tori Jenae: okay, I'm interested in you, you're worthy. Yeah. I would say that like we, we as women, it is a little about me, you know? Yes. And those, and you know, you do start slow. What's fascinating in dating and relationships though, is they found it when people are more vulnerable earlier on.
You actually can weed out if someone's right for you or not more quickly.
Julie Michelson: Sure, yeah, sure. I, I just recently said to my husband, you know, like, you are the, this is the only relationship I think that I have from day one. Like, he's just always known me as me. I never tried. To, because I definitely, that list you just gave of those traits.
I have almost all of them. Yeah, me too. Yeah, right. It just, oh, and codependent, I forgot. Prominent. Yeah. Um, so, you know, the, the, like, I don't think anybody on the planet has genuinely know. I didn't know myself. Either, and that's the key, to be fair.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. Self knowledge is the most important knowledge.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
And, and so to, to show up into what we call a later in life relationship. Um, and have something, you know, just, just a genuine friendship that grew into, you know, now sharing every aspect of life together. Um. But to, it's kind of sad. It's, I mean, it's beautiful. It doesn't feel sad to me that like, wow, I never thought I would get that.
Um, yeah, and, and it took a lot of work to become the person who was ready for it. Um, but, but also, like that's really common I think for especially women to. You know, um, I know, I know grown women that like jump up and put makeup on before their significant other weeks. Absolutely. Up in the morning and it's like.
Why, what? I don't, you know? Yeah. I
Tori Jenae: always try to
explain too that like if you're not your authentic self, you'll never actually feel loved, right? Because there will always be a part of you that knows that you're performing right to receive care and love. And most of us are taught that, oh yeah, you're not a good girl or you're not loved if you don't get good grades.
You know? And my mom like, gosh, I was always revered, um, for how I looked, or that's, that was her, my mom was very much about that. Like, my brother's, my brother's actually the pretty one, he's, he has different dads, so he literally looks like, um, like Chris Heworth, like he's six foot three. He's got like kind of my features, but he is got like light hair and light eyes and he's just, yeah, well you're stunning.
So, but I
Julie Michelson: get family dynamics, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah.
Tori Jenae: So, but like that, that was the only thing she ever said. Even though I did really well in school, it was always like my beautiful children. Mm-hmm. So it was kind of like, I got taught like, well, you're only valuable for your looks. Yep. And so it's like those things that we don't even think about.
They affect us. Like I so many clients who they're so, yeah. Like who their, their mother was, you know, had problems with her own weight, so she was critical of their weight. And so now their weight becomes a way in which they measure their worthiness.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Tori Jenae: And just like those little things that we just don't think about how they get put into our mind.
But I always remind people that like, if you grow up in America and you're, you know, Western as a child, people told you that a fat guy named Santa Claus was going to come down your chimney and leave you gifts, and you believed him. Or you believed whoever told you that and you were like, oh my God, I've gotta go to bed.
Or the Easter Bunny or whatever your culture said, you believed some weird fable. Right? And it's no different. Your mind was so open as a child that when your mom criticized herself or talked about someone's else's weight or, yeah, or what, or if you didn't get good enough grades, like all that got like kind of, you know, planted in the garden of your mind and now you need to weed it out.
Julie Michelson: I love that. Yeah. And my, my daughter's great at. She'll call me out. Like if I say something negative toward myself, she's like, oh, that's really great modeling for me. You know?
Tori Jenae: I'm like,
Julie Michelson: oh fine. I'll pay for your next therapy session. Oh my goodness. Which is, it's wonderful because, yeah, yeah.
Tori Jenae: But children are your teachers too.
Julie Michelson: She doesn't have, you know, I mean, it's not that she doesn't have stuff to un again, she's on this planet, like in this country. She does. Totally. Um, you know, but I love that in her twenties she is so aware that, you know, the impact of others on her and as she's working to change her patterns, you know?
Yeah. It, it's just, yeah. It's beautiful. It is beautiful. It's really, it, it's really a, a fun thing. So do, do you, well that,
Tori Jenae: that speaks a lot though to your healing as well. 'cause this is one thing that like also comes from made of American culture, but I truly believe it. When we heal, we, we heal seven generations before us and seven generations after us.
And I've seen this so many times in my clients where they start their healing journey, they start unpacking those wounds and they start seeing it heal in. Like, they'll have better relationships with their mothers, they'll have better relationships with their children because we're really, we're, we're changing how we relate.
We're, we're unpacking all of that stuff and we are shifting it for everyone. So I would say healing's not just for you, it's for your whole family.
Julie Michelson: Absolutely. Uh, uh, it's the, you know, and it, it's so oversimplifies when we were, you were talking about, you know, the, the giver, the mother as the giver and the mm-hmm.
You know, your grand for you, your grandmother, the shirt off her back, and. Right. Probably skin off her body if someone needed it, right? Totally. Absolutely. A kidney and, and it's often my way in with clients of the, you know, especially clients with daughters, children in general, but if they have of, you know, your daughter's learning from watching you, is this what you want for her?
Absolutely. It's a, it's kind of cheating, but it, it is a really good way, it's a motivator
Tori Jenae: to
Julie Michelson: shift the perspective of, especially if they still have this, you know, they haven't, they're still working on the, I'm not worthy story anyway. Uh, you know. Yeah. So most of us
Tori Jenae: do not know that's what we're working on.
Julie Michelson: Right.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. That's the hardest one to see. And
Julie Michelson: that was you just, that was the question I was gonna ask is do we need to identify all of these things? To begin healing.
Tori Jenae: I always say like, start with what's coming up for you. We don't need to go find it all. You know, I have a ton of trauma in my lifetime. I don't need to go looking for all those dead bodies, right?
I believe that your mind will present your mind and your life, and your body will present what needs to be healed in that moment. And so if I'm struggling with something specific in this moment, it might be like. You know, am I loving enough for something because I'm overgiving in a relationship and my body is telling me I am, or my mind is telling me I am.
That's where you start, and I feel like everybody has a different entry point into healing. Mm, too. Yeah. So some of us need to start in the mind. Some of us need to start in the body. So some of us might be struggling more with anxiety and depression, even though we're having some body issues, it, it feels heavier there.
So start with your own unique journey. So that might mean that for you, you know, therapy, talking to someone, meditation, breath work, nervous system regulation for the mind is actually better and that will help the body. They're deeply interconnect. Interconnected or other people, your body, you know, you'd be having IBS where you can't stop gonna the bathroom, that's where you start.
That's okay. Right. Then next you start pairing it with the mind stuff. But yeah, I, I do think that the human condition is, we all have been told or believe that we are not enough on some level and it's hard to see it and it wears lots of different hats. But I think we're all growing that to believe that.
Even if I have confidence or worthiness, I always need to grow that. 'cause I love to explain to my clients too, like that confidence, that worthiness you might have a great in one area and it might be lacking in another. Like a, a big way I can see is like, I'll see women who are very successful at work, but they're really struggling in their personal relationships.
Mm-hmm. And they don't have the same confidence there. And so they feel confused because they're like, I can walk into a boardroom and I can demand anything. But then I come home and I over-function and I do the dishes and I take care of the kids and I, I do do do do do do all day long. And it's like, yeah, but that.
That isn't translating, so that's where your self-worth and your self love and all that stuff just needs to grow. It doesn't mean it's not there, it means. There's more work to do in that area. And sometimes it's the opposite. They're great at home and they have great boundaries and they have a great relationship, but they have a hard time speaking up to their boss.
They don't say anything in a meeting. They're afraid they're stupid, or that they won't be taken seriously. So it, it all looks different for us, but we have to really be honest about what's showing up for me right now. Where am I struggling and what is life trying to reflect back to me that needs to get stronger and better so I can feel stronger and better.
Julie Michelson: Because it's a spiral, so it will keep giving us that opportunity. Yeah. Don't
Tori Jenae: keep coming back. If we don't get it the first time, they'll come back again.
Julie Michelson: For women who have dated a lot, you know, you hear the, like, I keep dating literally the same guy and it's like, well, different body. Yeah.
Tori Jenae: And really like that.
That comes back to a core wound of whatever your parents, there's some amalgamation of Yeah. There's a great book called Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix, and that one is a mago therapy, and it's really figuring out what were the core wounds that your parents created or your primary caregivers or someone early in life that you're actually trying to work out in your, like, I used to love emotionally unavailable because that's what I grew up with.
I that felt like love, like my parents weren't,
Julie Michelson: you knew how to navigate that.
Tori Jenae: Totally. Like someone tried to get too close to me, I'd be like, what's wrong with you? Like, yeah. Very so interested. So yeah, Mr. Emotionally unavailable was the sexiest guy on the planet to me,
Julie Michelson: Uhhuh, because that
Tori Jenae: was, that was exactly what I grew up with.
And I That's
Julie Michelson: not all younger women.
Tori Jenae: No. I mean, it, it shows up in so many different ways. Interesting. Yeah. It's so fascinating. It's like, you know, even someone who had a, a dad who worked all the time might end up with a guy who's very unavailable. Yeah. And it, and it, and it wouldn't even look like unavailable.
It will just look like, oh, he's busy. But like you'll feel alone. You'll feel unattended to, you'll feel disconnected and it will feel familiar. And sometimes, and I always warn my clients too, the more butterflies you have and the more excitement at first, the bigger the red flag. It's actually your nervous system.
Julie Michelson: Oh, interesting. Saying this
Tori Jenae: is very familiar. I'm very excited about this. Yeah. The one you feel calm about is actually the right guy.
Julie Michelson: Interesting. See, and I tell my husband all the time, he was so sneaky. 'cause I, like, I had no, because we worked together first and then became friends and, and, and then from there.
Yeah. And so we built something real.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. Interesting. But if I'm on date, one date too, and I'm like imagining that this is the guy I'm gonna marry and I'm so excited and I'm, I'm just obsessed with him and I'm thinking about him all the time. He's triggering a wound in me. Oh see.
Julie Michelson: Mic drop. We're gonna,
we're, we're gonna now jump to our final question of the interview. Okay. Which listeners know is coming, which is what is, and it can be anything related, literally to anything that whatever comes up. Okay. Um, one step that they can take starting today to either on their healing journey, I'll just leave it that way.
Tori Jenae: Yeah. I would say, I think because everyone is struggling with something physical here. Mm-hmm. Sit down and say, what is this trying to teach me about myself? What have, what have I learned so far? What do I think it's still trying to teach me what, see if you can come up with like five to seven positive things that it's given you or it's trying to teach you.
To see if you can start to shift your mindset around it. Because what we resist in our lives persists particularly psychologically. And if I keep and where
Julie Michelson: energy and when, where attention goes, energy flows, it flows. Absolutely.
Tori Jenae: And so when I'm in that space of I just want this thing to go away, I wish it would stop.
I can't be in pain anymore. I get it. I've been there. But it also blocks the flow of healing. Uh, and so I've got to be able to see what's happening to me differently to shift my relationship with it so that my disease or my disorder, or my sickness does not become my identity, does not become my path, does not become something that I can't work with.
And through amazing.
Julie Michelson: Such a gift for people that are listening on the go and aren't gonna check the show notes or click the links. I am one of those people. Absolutely. Where is the best place for people to find you?
Tori Jenae: So Instagram is easy to contact me. It's at Tori, Tori dot j, or J-E-N-A-E. And you can DM me there and I've got links for free freebies.
Then also my website, Tori jena.dot com, so T-O-R-I-J-E-N-A e.com. And both of those are simple. And again, you could find my freebies, especially like we talked a little bit about, um, the seven psychological wounds and like kind of how to build, build confidence in yourself. And that confidence is directly correlated to that self-worth, that self-love, feeling good about yourself, and that is a very important thing on your healing journey.
That's a great, I mean, it's like 16, 17 pages long, so it will be a true, a true gift and they're completely free.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Dig in and, and mm-hmm. Get to know you even better, which I'm sure tons of listeners are gonna check it out. Highly, highly encourage. Tori, I really appreciate the, the light that you bring and the work that you're doing and, and really grateful for you sharing your time with us.
Tori Jenae: Oh, I'm so grateful I got to be on the show. I'm so excited. I love what you do and just how you're helping women.
Julie Michelson: Thank you right back at you. Thanks for everyone listening. Remember, you can actually get those show notes and transcripts by visiting Inspired Living Show. I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did.
Go get those resources and have a great week.
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My Guest For This Episode
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Connect with Tori Jenae
Tori Jenae
Tori Jenae is a trauma-informed confidence and relationship coach with over 15 years of experience and multiple degrees in psychology. She helps women heal from emotional wounds, rebuild self-worth, and create aligned, thriving lives and relationships after breakups, challenges and personal loss. Her work blends psychology, somatic healing, and spiritual wisdom to guide deep, lasting transformation. Tori’s own journey, from a difficult childhood to profound personal loss, fuels her mission to help others rise stronger and reclaim their power. Learn more at www.torijenae.com or follow her on Instagram @tori.jenae.
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