Transform Unconscious Wounds that Hold you Back [Podcast with Michelle Chalfant]
“Most people want to be witnessed in their pain. They don’t want it fixed.”
– Michelle Chalfant
So often with PCOS, doctors don’t prescribe the inner work that is absolutely necessary for healing. Instead, you are given what you hope is a magic pill that will “fix” your symptoms.
When that doesn’t work, you are left with a host of negative emotions that spiral out of control and it’s easy to get stuck in a victim mentality.
In this episode, I talk with Michelle Chalfant about The Adult Chair, her transformational model of self-realization that blends simple psychology with grounded spirituality.
She explains that we are all made up of three distinct parts: the inner child, the adolescent, and the adult. Each part is developed separately through our lives and serves an important role in our overall emotional well-being. The Adult Chair Model uses three chairs to represent these perspectives: the child chair, the adolescent chair, and the adult chair.
Unfortunately, most of us are sitting in that adolescent chair.
Listen to discover:
- Why your inner child holds the keys to unlocking your pain
- Practical tools to use to connect with your inner child
- How to stay present in the moment and not make faulty future assumptions
- The importance of feeling your emotions
- How to love and witness all your fragmented parts to restore the whole true self
All PCOS Diva podcasts are available on:
Michelle Chalfant, MS, LPC, CHC
Michelle Chalfant is a licensed therapist, holistic life coach, author, podcaster, motivational speaker, and developer of The Adult Chair, a transformational model of self-realization. Her extraordinary work has helped people all over the world improve their relationships, become unstuck, and develop healthy self-love. With over 5 million downloads in more than 150 countries, The Adult Chair podcast is where simple psychology meets grounded spirituality. Michelle’s audience receives practical tools and techniques they can use to access their personal power and transform their lives. Michelle brings a sense of passion and over 25 years of experience to all areas of self-healing. To learn more about Michelle and her transformational model, visit theadultchair.com
Resources
The Adult Chair Website
The Adult Chair Podcast
The Annual 30-Day Journaling Challenge
A Guided Meditation to Connect With Your Inner Child
Complete Transcript:
Amy:
When I wrote my book Healing PCOS, I began with a chapter called Think Like a PCOS Diva, because in my journey, I found that it was very difficult to build a healthy sustainable lifestyle, and then go on to eat like a PCOS diva, and move like a diva, without a healthy mindset. We need to believe that we can, and most importantly, deserve to feel better. We need to move away from a victim mindset. We need to stop fighting with our bodies and partner with our bodies instead. We need to move from lack thinking to a more abundant mindset and we need to stop striving for perfection and realize that we are enough even with the acne, the weight, the hair issues.
Amy:
And as I was researching ways to continue to help and guide PCOS Divas to elevate their mindset, I recently stumbled upon the work of Michelle Chalfant, and I knew that I had to have her on the PCOS Diva Podcast. So Michelle is the founder of The Adult Chair. She’s a licensed therapist, holistic life coach, author, podcaster, motivational speaker, and the developer of The Adult Chair, it’s a transformational model of self-realization. Her work has helped women and people all over the globe improve their relationships, become unstuck, and develop healthy self-love. So I’m really honored to welcome Michelle to the PCOS Diva Podcast. I’m so happy that she said yes to my invitation. So thank you, Michelle, for being here today.
Michelle Chalfant:
Thank you, Amy, for having me. It’s an honor to be here with you all.
Amy:
So a team member actually told me about your website and your work, and I was really blown away with how you have created a process and system to really work through a lot of these mindset issues that I just mentioned. And I would love for you to share, first, a little bit about your story. Actually, I’m just going to quote this from your story because it really resonated with me, and then you can go on and share that with us. But you talk about how your struggles are not who you are. We’re not broken. We don’t have to live from our wounding. Knowing that is where the journey of hope and transformation begins, and that just really resonated with me because that’s how my journey began and I just think that you have a lot of wisdom to share with us.
Michelle Chalfant:
Thank you. Yes. So you would like to hear a little bit about my story and how The Adult Chair came to be? Is that what you’re asking?
Amy:
Yes, please.
Michelle Chalfant:
Okay. Yes, sure. So when I, well, I’m going to really shorten it for you, Amy. But basically grew up feeling, probably in high school is when I realized something’s not quite right. I had a lot of negative thoughts about myself, a lot of ruminating negative thinking. I got into drinking like all my friends did, but kept going with it. And then also got into drugs in high school, just thought I was a big pot smoker … excuse me, in college. I was majoring in psychology and what I realized is something inside of me, and it was like a secret, I didn’t feel like I fit in, I felt like I was damaged goods, I felt like there was something just wrong with me. So I’m a seeker and I was just began this journey of how do I figure out how to not feel like I do, because I just don’t feel good. And of course, going through a psychology degree, I realized, I think I might be depressed. This might be what’s going on. I didn’t even know until I was going through the program.
Michelle Chalfant:
And back in the day when I was going through my program, this is a long time ago, there were no therapists on every corner, there was no Google, there were no laptops, so I had to figure it out on my own. So what I did was … I’ve always had this burning desire inside to find truth, like how do people truly heal, emotionally, physically, spiritually, all of it. I wanted to deeply understand that. Excuse me. So I started, again, went out I got my psychology degree and went on and got a Master’s, I became a licensed therapist, and I took just about every training you could ever imagine, anything I could get my hands on, I wanted to learn. And what I realized along the way is even though I’m an adult, even though I physically look like an adult, inside I didn’t feel like one. And what I learned along my journey is I wasn’t the only one. It’s like, wait a minute, even though I’m in my 20s and then 30s, I was like, wait a minute, I sometimes feel like a much younger version of myself.
Michelle Chalfant:
So after taking all these classes and courses, and I was getting better for sure along the way, I just cobbled together based on classes and mentors. I had a mentor, that was doing chair work one time and loved how she presented the chairs. And I said, “Oh, my gosh, this is what we’re all looking for. We’re all looking for how to be healthy adults.” Because who wrote the manual on that, Amy? I mean, there isn’t one manual for, how do we become healthy adults? How do we live with boundaries? How do we live with presence? Nobody teaches just that concept.
Michelle Chalfant:
And that’s when I realized, okay, I’m going to take this and I’m going to run with it. And that’s really this whole Adult Chair model is based on how we become healthy adults. How do we live as healthy adults? It’s based on three very distinct parts of our growth process, which is, number one, when we’re children, so the child chair, that would be from zero to six, that’s where we learn about true emotions, true needs, intimacy and vulnerability. And then from about the age of six to 25, we live in adolescence. So pre adolescence, adolescence, post adolescence, we’re learning all about the ego, this is where we learn about codependency, perfectionism, people pleasing. We learn to become someone that we’re not. We learn how to wear masks during this phase. And then hopefully, if we had parents or caregivers that really taught us how to be healthy adults around the age of 25 and older, we slide quite naturally into what I call the adult chair. That’s the healthiest version of self.
Michelle Chalfant:
But what I found over 25 years of being a therapist and a coach is, most of us don’t have it down 100%. There are certain areas where we lack. So we live as physically healthy adults, but we show up sometimes and quite often as adolescents. So that’s what the whole model is about. You can take any issue that you’re going through and plug it into this model and then learn, oh, wait, this is what I need to work on. I need to work on boundaries, I need to work on processing my emotions, I need to work on presence, I need to work on story busting. So you’ll find out what you need in order to be a healthy adult. And when we live as healthy adults, we live in what I call in our adult chair.
Amy:
And what you said, I had to write this down, you said, “How do people deeply and truly heal?” And I know so many of us, and I myself included, I just wanted a pill. I just wanted the doctor to give me a pill to make these bad symptoms go away. Certainly, I have struggled as a lot of women with PCOS, with anxiety, depression. And boy, it’s really easy to think that a pill is just going to make this all go away. But then when it doesn’t, then we’re forced to look outside of that mainstream medical paradigm, and realize there has to be another way, but we’re never really given a framework or a way to move forward. And I think like a lot of us trying to piece things together, but I think I love that you have really created a framework. You’ve done the hard work for all of us so that we can then plug into your model with our issues and work through them within your framework. So that’s just amazing. I was wondering if you could walk through maybe one of those mindset pieces with PCOS Divas that we often struggle with in your Adult Chair model and just show us what that might look like.
Michelle Chalfant:
Yes, for sure. Do you want to talk about some of the most common and I’ll talk about how I’d plug it in?
Amy:
Yes. So I think a lot of women with PCOS feel like a victim. They feel like, why is this happening to me? I want somebody to fix it. Why do I have to live this way? I have to change my lifestyle and all of my girlfriends. They can go and eat and drink and live how they want to live and they don’t have to deal with this. It’s kind of this woe is me, pity party and it keeps you stuck.
Michelle Chalfant:
Yes, for sure. And I’ve actually worked with clients that have had PCOS as well as cancers and various ailments and diseases, I would say. And you’re right. We fall into that victims, what I call the victim chair, it’s like, oops, we’re in the victim, which is part of that adolescent chair. It’s part of the egoic structure that throws us in there and says, now I’m a victim. Why me? Why is this happening to me? So what I suggest that we do with that is turn toward that part. You can’t numb it out, or we can try to numb it out, sometimes we drink wine or alcohol or whatever we’re doing, shopping, those kinds of things will numb it out, but it’s temporary. So if you really want to transform this part of you, and I really consider the fact that as humans, we have many, many parts to self. So the victim is something we honestly all have, but it gets activated because various things happen in our lives. So with someone that has PCOS might fall into that victim chair. Turn toward it, what is that victim part want you to know? What’s going on in there? Give it a voice, journal, write it down, give it an image. What is your victim part look like? Everyone has a different looking parts. So what does it look like?
Michelle Chalfant:
So when you get to know it, it starts to transform. It’s kind of magical, it kind of blows me away. I’ve done this with clients for 25 years, all of the different parts are within self, the more we turn toward and get to know, the faster it can transform. And what we want to do is not come at it from a place of like, why are you like this? I’m sitting in my adult, the woman I am today, the age I am today, and I’m looking at this partner, I’m asking it, hey, what do you want me to know? I know how you feel. Tell me, tell me more. Write it down. And you can build a dialogue with this part of you, or you can close your eyes and do this work, if you don’t want to write it down, you can draw a picture of what it looks like. So we have so many inner parts and anytime we do this work of working with that part is how we transform it. But it’s all about turning toward it, Amy. You got to get to know it to change it, because you can’t numb these parts out. They don’t go away until you give them attention. That’s what they want.
Amy:
And I think it’s also important to really think about that PCOS Diva version of yourself, and what does she look like? In one of my programs, we do a visualization, what is she wearing? What shoes does she wear? Does she wear slouchy mom sneakers or does she wear really pretty cute ankle boots? Really dial in to what that version of you, what you’re like sitting in that PCOS Diva chair.
Michelle Chalfant:
I love that. I have to tell you. So that would be the part of us when we’re in the healthiest version. So maybe have a dialogue when you feel like you’re in that diva, and then from your diva perspective, talk to the victim perspective, talk to that victim part from that perspective, those where you want to come from.
Amy:
Yes, that’s great advice. The other thing that … I know you do a lot of work around getting in touch with your inner child, and I have found that a large majority of women with PCOS have had some type of childhood trauma. And I know for myself, my parents divorced when I was four years old, and I know that that really played a role in the expressing of my genes for PCOS. I’m pretty sure that that child trauma played a big part in my health. How would one go about working through that in your model in the child chair?
Michelle Chalfant:
I have to say, I agree with you. I don’t feel like physical manifestations in the body are random, but I also don’t want anyone to ever blame themselves because it’s never about blame. The body is just reacting to things that it might have experienced a long, long, long time ago that you have forgotten about. So it’s never to judge, never to blame anybody. But it is to raise awareness. So one of the things I would say is, when we work with the inner child, I mean, that is the foundation of this whole model. That’s the child chair. We want to get in touch with, what’s going on with that part of us, as the younger version of us, it carries a lot of information. So how we do the inner child, again, it’s just another part of us. So we close our eyes, we drop down deep inside, we ask ourselves, hey, what’s going on with this younger version of me? It can be anywhere from, again, around the age of zero to six. So it might be your one year old that shows up, or it might be a five year old. But it’s the part of you that really wants and needs your attention. It’s got information for you.
Michelle Chalfant:
And I know, when I’ve worked with people and we do this very powerful work, oftentimes, as you probably found in your own journey, Amy, the physical body starts to shift, but we’ve got to go do that work. So working with that inner child is one way to do that. So again, you can journal with this part, you can imagine her in front of you, you can do a guided meditation, and that’s what we were talking about before. I’ve got that beautiful inner child resource at theadultchair.com/innerchild, it gives you two guided meditations with … it guides you through or I guide you through, how do we connect with this child? And then the first one is bonding with the child, the second one is letting go of all those negative beliefs around yourself. So really clears us out emotionally, energetically, mentally, of this old wounding. So yes, so turning toward that part of us.
Michelle Chalfant:
Sometimes what I like to do with my clients is, I will have, again, I would say, get the diva to start writing and say, hello, younger me. What would you like me to know? And then take your other hand and answer. So it’s like you write with your dominant hand from the diva perspective, and then let the inner child part answer with your opposite hand. That’s a really cool thing to do.
Amy:
I like that.
Michelle Chalfant:
There’s so many things to do. Yes, lots of really fun things to do with the inner child. But yes, the inner child really can unlock so much. The inner child is where all of these emotions within us are. So even when we sit in victim, when you mentioned the victim prior, what’s underneath that victim? What’s inside of it? What’s underneath it? And sometimes I’ve worked with clients that are like, so you’re angry. What’s under the anger? No, I’m just angry. No. I would wonder, is there something under it? Let’s just get curious about it. And when they drop below it, they’re like, oh, my God, I didn’t even know. I don’t feel worthy. So I would do the same thing with the victim. What’s under that victim? What’s inside of your victim? What does the victim makeup?
Michelle Chalfant:
So it’s, again, getting to know these inner parts, same thing with inner child. I love to ask the inner child this question. What do you want me to know? Because, again, these parts have information and they want to share it with someone that can be there for them, and if you’re in the diva seat, man, you’re going to be able to say, oh, my gosh, I didn’t even know. Thank you. And you’re just thanking that part. Sometimes the inner children part of us are angry, and that’s okay. We just listen as if they’re our own child, and you listen, and you’re present with them. And then they start to transform. It’s incredible work working with that inner child.
Amy:
And this is where I was just talking about everybody’s looking for a pill. It’s that realization that you are the magic pill and it’s by doing this kind of work that, as you said, brings true healing. And I just want to reiterate the resource that you mentioned, I will put it in the show notes, and it’s a free resource, I actually just downloaded it yesterday. I’m looking forward to going through steps to connect with your inner child, how to continue with the relationship, as you mentioned, two beautiful meditations, downloadable journal prompts. That’s always my problem with journaling, is I just can’t go and just freeform write. I really need those prompts. So that’s super helpful.
Amy:
So I encourage you listeners to download that guide. I’ll tell you just a quick story. I was talking to a client of mine and we were trying to work through, why is it that she has so much resistance around meal planning and making dinner and sitting down at the table and eating a delicious, beautiful, healthy dinner? And she came to this realization that, as a child, dinner time was not fun for her because she had to sit at the table with her mother and her stepfather that was very nasty to her and nobody spoke, but they were all forced to sit and eat dinner together. And it was this aha moment that she needed to do the healing work around that inner child and dinner time so that then she could move forward with a healthy relationship with dinner and realize how integral it is to her healing process and get rid of that roadblock.
Michelle Chalfant:
I love that story. That’s so powerful and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. So I would say there’s a resistant part, go work with that, go talk to that inner child part, you can do either one or both. But again, it’s turning toward that resistance and not turning away, not trying to force yourself to make dinner or sit down at a certain time. It doesn’t work. It does not work. You’ve got to go in. And then what you’re talking about doing which I love is really what we do, is we want to reeducate those parts that are within us, and we say, hey, thank you so much for sharing all of this. I just want you to know the year is 2021, I’m this old now, I don’t even live with my parents anymore. Dinner can be lovely now. And I just wanted you to know and you can come join me next time. So it sounds crazy because we’re talking to these imaginary parts, but this is powerful work. It transforms us. It transforms us inside to out.
Amy:
And just listening to you and the tone and the language, it’s filled with compassion and empathy, and so many of us, that internal dialogue that’s going on is full of self, I don’t know, self hate, I mean, hate is a really strong word, but disappointments, judging. How do you coach and work with your clients to … Sometimes that change and tone is such a radical change. It just feels so uncomfortable.
Michelle Chalfant:
Yes. I’ve got … something that I’ve shared before, I’ll share the story of what I call Feral Michelle. It was this … I remember one day I got up and I was really angry. I was angry. So of course, I sat with it. And I said, what the heck am I … I didn’t even know where it came from. I was like, why am I so angry? And I sat with it and up came what I call, I’ve labeled her now as Feral Michelle. She was this wild little girl, she was 12 years old, and she reminds me of from … oh my gosh, what’s it called? Is it called Lord of the Rings? That little guy that lived by the river that had the ring. What’s his name? I can’t remember his name now. You know who I’m talking about. That little bald guy.
Amy:
I know who you … Gollum. Gollum?
Michelle Chalfant:
Yes, Gollum, Gollum. Yes. Like, come here my pretty. That’s how this girl, this 12 year old showed up. She had hair in her face, drooling, sweating, swearing, and I walked up … I don’t remember how old I was, but the woman I was today and I walked up to her and I said, hello. I’m wondering why you’re so angry. And she came running up to me right in my face and she’s like, F you. I hate you. I’m so angry. Reminded me of Gollum again, but there was like a chain around her ankle and so she couldn’t touch me. She came right up in my face and she was spitting at me, and I said, okay. I said, what are you angry about? She’s like, I hate you. I hate everybody. And I said, okay. Thanks for sharing. And I just sat there and listened, and I said, I’ll be back tomorrow, and she’s like, don’t do it. Don’t come back tomorrow. Okay.
Michelle Chalfant:
So then the next day I came back again. Anyway, I’m going to make a long story short. It took about three or four days and every time I came back, and I think I checked in on her a couple times a day, every time I came back, she was morphing. So the next time I went back, she wasn’t drooling and her hair wasn’t so nasty. Her hair was a little bit better. It looked like it had been washed. And then the next time, she wasn’t dirty and her clothes didn’t look so tattered and torn. And then the next time … Anyway. So by the time I was done going back to her, she turned into this little girl, like going to church on a Sunday in a Sunday dress, she was like three years old. So that was underneath all of this anger. And what was interesting, Amy, is I didn’t even need to know where the anger came from, I just had to get in touch with it and wanted it to be witnessed. That’s it. It just needed to be witnessed. There was nothing to do with it. Well, like you said, there’s nothing to fix. There’s nothing to fix.
Michelle Chalfant:
These inner parts want to be known. So when we have that childhood wounding, these inner parts are sitting there waiting. They’re waiting for someone to tend to them and they’re waiting to be witnessed. So when we show up and we just say, what do you want me to know? I’m here for you and I love you even. And they may be angry, they may cry, you just never know. I mean, you never know who’s going to show up and how these other parts are going to react, but I promise you this, again, I’ve done this almost 30 years now, I will promise you this, these parts eventually will come around. It might take one time, it might take four times, or 10 times. They will come around and they will eventually morph and become integrated into yourself, and they won’t be angry, they won’t be in the victim seat, they won’t be overwhelmed, they won’t be any of those things. They’ll be more integrated into self. And then when you show up like that, then you’re able to live from this diva perspective, this healthy adult … living in your adult chair, is what I call it. And when we live there, we live with presence. We are story busters. That’s something.
Michelle Chalfant:
With PCOS, oh my gosh, we fall into story. This is diagnosed or this happens, and then the ego kicks in and says, well, now I’ll never be able to get pregnant, or now this is … We have to watch those words always and never the absolutes, right? From our adult chair, we witness that though. We witness those words and we say, wait a minute, from our adult we live present moments, present moment awareness with facts and truth. If people are listening to this, if they could just live like that, that alone will change their life. I hear this all the time. Thank you for helping me just to step into the moment and reach for fact and truth for right now. Because fact and truth right now is, I was diagnosed with … I’m giving an example, I was diagnosed with PCOS. Okay, what else? That’s it. That’s it. But the mind will make up stories or assumptions and say, I’ll never have children, I’m not going to have a baby, I’m dah, dah. You know what I’m doing? You know what I’m saying? It just keeps going on and on. We’ve got to become story busters and say, wait a minute, let me come back to moment. What do I know that’s true right now, right here in this very present moment? Well, I’ve been diagnosed, or I had a miscarriage, or whatever it might be, okay, it doesn’t mean I can’t try again.
Michelle Chalfant:
So we want to be in the moment with whatever’s coming up, live with fact and truth, and again, feel those emotions, let them process through you. We don’t know as humans, we’re not great at feeling our emotions, we don’t know what to do with them, we numb them out, and it’s so important that we sit and allow these emotions to come through us. And when we don’t stop them, they can literally process through 90 seconds. But what happens is we make up a story around the emotion. So this is never going to stop, the mind starts talking and there’s dialogue around the emotion, then stop the dialogue, breathe through the emotion, let yourself cry, let yourself be angry, let yourself do whatever you want to do, get on the floor. I remember with clients, they’d say, I’m just so damn mad. Okay, what do you want to do? I just feel like stomping my feet. So I’d get up and I’d stomp my feet. What else you do you need? I had one client and I remember she said, I just want to put my head in your lap. I’m just going to cry. And I said, let’s go. Let your body do what it needs to do to process these emotions.
Amy:
I’m so glad that you said that because I was going to bring that up about how hard it is for people … they avoid feeling those feelings and I think that’s why so many of us haven’t done that work in the child chair, because we don’t want to feel those strong emotions. And you’re absolutely … I love how you said 90 seconds and I think of it as, and I tell my clients, think about a toddler temper tantrum. You cannot sustain a toddler temper tantrum for much more than 90 seconds, right? It’s like there’s a beginning, a crescendo, and then it disperses. And it’s just like the feelings. And I have a 12 year old daughter right now, and yes, some days when I pick her up from school, she’s a little bit like Gollum.
Amy:
If I wasn’t now as comfortable feeling my feelings, it’s taken a long time to get here, I think it wouldn’t be comfortable for me to be able to just sit there and give her space to cry, to be angry, to whatever have you for a 12 year old girl after a long day of seventh grade. And I can tell you, it’s almost like a temper tantrum. That really strong emotion lasts about, from the time we drive home to school, maybe sit in the driveway and chat a little bit longer, and then by then, it’s dispersed and she’s ready for a snack and to do whatever. So I think it’s so good even to give our children and our spouses that space and not try to rescue them from their feelings as well.
Michelle Chalfant:
But we don’t know how to do that unless we know what to do with our own emotions. We get triggered, we … I watched this with parents, like, if their kid is off or not having a good day, like you said with your daughter, if we aren’t good at processing our own emotions, we rush into fix, we want to make them feel better by fixing and that does not help, or we get triggered and then we shut it down, we shut them down, because, again, because the only reason we do that is because the emotions within us are rising up and we don’t know what to do with them. So if we can just fix what’s outside of us, then we’d feel better. But if we are okay with our emotions processing through us, we’re triggered far less, I speak from experience on that one, and also, we just can allow our kids or whomever around us to have emotion, and we just sit with it and we go, alright, I’m here for you, and just witness it.
Michelle Chalfant:
Most people, most all people want to be witnessed in their pain. That’s it. They don’t want to be fixed. Because when we can witness someone, that person then has the opportunity to really walk through that pain on their own. So it’s not to abandon them, it is to be present with them in it, but they just want to be witnessed. Like your daughter just wanted to vent, just wants to … Most people just want to vent. Can I just tell you what happened to my day? Absolutely, I’m here for you. And then they say it and you’re like, great, is there anything else? No. Is there anything that you need from me? No, I guess not. Okay, great. Moving on. We just got to get it out and then you move on.
Amy:
Yes. You need to make a social media image of that. Most people want to be witnessed in their pain. They don’t want it fixed. That is powerful.
Michelle Chalfant:
Yes, yes. I’ve done that one in the past and that is a very powerful one, because we don’t know how not to fix. Most people say, well, men fix. No, no. Women fix too. We’re fixers, that’s what we do.
Amy:
So for the woman and so many and I have been so guilty of this, especially in my 20s, stuffing my feelings back down with food and I think a lot of women with PCOS have done that. Any other tips to be more comfortable with sitting and feeling the feelings and letting them move through you?
Michelle Chalfant:
Yes. So here’s the thing, when people try to dive in and go, okay, I think I’m having an emotion, let me just feel this emotion, and then it doesn’t work right away. And they, oh, I don’t know what I’m feeling, I’m not doing it right, and then we go into judgment. Start out instead getting curious, this is what we do from our adult chair, get curious around what the physical sensation is that you’re having. That’s it.
Michelle Chalfant:
So you don’t dive right into feeling emotions, dive into, not dive in, but get curious about, well, I noticed when so and so said that to me, I noticed I have a little twing in my stomach right now, or I have a knot in my throat, close your eyes and be with that, and I promise you, again, it will morph. But sit with it. Don’t change it, don’t do anything, don’t shove it down, just allow it to be there and watch it and watch it and watch it and then it might move, it might change, it might get bigger, and that’s okay, but it eventually transforms right out of the body. So start there. And when you practice that a few times, you’ll start noticing, wait, this is so weird, I kind of feel fear, I feel unworthy, or I feel like I don’t matter. That’s so interesting. Don’t judge your emotions. It’s just an emotion. And again, get curious about it, when they start coming through, you feel them and move on.
Michelle Chalfant:
Journaling, I mentioned journaling before. Love to journal. Journaling, like you said about the journaling prompts, once you get going with journaling, pen to paper opens up a doorway into the unconscious mind, and it gives all these emotions a place for them to go, a place for them to land. So start writing. You just start writing, you can say like, oh my gosh, I don’t even know what to write. I hate doing … I don’t want to do it, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and then all of a sudden, emotions start coming through. You start gaining a new perspective, which is what we’re … this is what we’re looking for when we’re in a bad place. We want a different perspective. Journaling does that. So love journaling.
Amy:
So when you were explaining getting back in touch with your 12 year old, you were doing that through journaling or meditation?
Michelle Chalfant:
Yes. My Feral Michelle, you mean?
Amy:
Yes, yes.
Michelle Chalfant:
Okay. So Feral, Michelle, I felt really angry and I just closed my eyes and I imagined, I said, what is this anger look like? Boom. And I’m very visual and I want people to hear me say this. Not everybody is visual, and it’s okay. You may not get a visual, but you may hear words, you may feel something in your body, so do whatever works for you. So please don’t judge if you go, oh, my God, I didn’t see anything. Well, maybe that’s not how you were born. Not everyone is a real visual person. But again, then go with a sensor, go with hearing. But for me, I just said, who’s so angry? What part of me is so angry? And that’s when that came up. I just closed my eyes, I was sitting there, and it just … she came up in front of me. And I walked up to her and I just witnessed, again, I said, what’s going on? You’re very angry. And she was … every other word was an F bomb out of her mouth and she really pissed with me. I said, okay.
Michelle Chalfant:
But the other thing that I do with my inner parts when they come up, and sometimes, I don’t do this all the time, but when I feel it, and I might have done this with her, I just look at those parts, I go, hey, I just want you to know I really love you, I really love you. And they … I remember with her, she’s swearing back at me, and I’ve had other parts that swear at me, that’s okay. It’s okay. I just let them swear because they always change into something else, eventually, they always do, and I really can use that word always. I’ve never had a part stay angry, ever, not working with a client and not working with myself in 25, 30 years, ever. They will change
Amy:
Well, especially if you give them love, right?
Michelle Chalfant:
Absolutely.
Amy:
I mean, love is the most powerful emotion.
Michelle Chalfant:
Yes, if we’re not feeling loved, we’re in the illusion, we’re in the ego perspective, and it’s a distraction from who we really are. So we got to get back to … we want to integrate these parts, and that’s what this whole process is, you don’t share … is really a model of self realization, we’re realizing all of our parts that are fragmented and by loving them and witnessing them and sitting with them, we pull them back into the whole true self. That’s what it’s about. And then when we do that, we’re living in that adult chair again. So yes.
Amy:
Okay. So if you have resonated with this podcast today and can see how this work is just really so integral to the healing process, you have to check out theadultchair.com. And, Michelle, tell us more about your resources.
Michelle Chalfant:
Yes, so something I love, and we’ve done this, I think this is our fourth year, every November, this is a free event, it is the 30 day journaling challenge. It will help you to transform, again, inside out. If you want to transform your reality, you’ve got to go inward and you’ve got to learn how to process what’s going on inside and really learn how to sit in the adult chair. So what I do for 30 days is send out a new journaling prompt every single day for 30 days. So again, for people that don’t like to journal and don’t know what to write, it’s phenomenal. Because you get a real hefty prompts, and I get you going. I get that stream of consciousness going. And what’s so beautiful Amy is when we get the stream of consciousness flowing through our writing, you would be amazed at the intuition that comes through, the guidance, like for someone with PCOS it’s like wait, or anybody, but I’m going to use this specifically for an example, you might have an awareness through journaling that you’ve never thought of, but because you’re in this beautiful stream of writing, you’ve got answers that you’ve been looking for and there they are right in your words right in front of you. So that’s it. That’s at theadultchair.com/30days and that’s the number 30. So theadultchair.com/30D-A-Y-S, and it starts November 1st and it’s for 30 days.
Michelle Chalfant:
And then the other one was the inner child, which is theadultchair.com/innerchild, and the last one would be of course, The Adult Chair Podcast. This is what I do. I talk about, how do we live as healthy adults? How do we live in our adult chair? How do we live from the healthiest version of who I am? And that is The Adult Chair Podcast.
Amy:
And you also have a book too, I think.
Michelle Chalfant:
I do, The Adult Chair book. That’s a guide to loving yourself. And the book is a, really, it breaks down what these three chairs are all about. It’s like, this is the child, this is what the child is all about, the adolescent, the adult, and then how we get in that adult chair. [crosstalk 00:39:52]
Amy:
I am just so happy that you said yes and came on and introduced us all to your really amazing process, The Adult Chair. So thank you so much, Michelle.
Michelle Chalfant:
Thanks for having me Amy. Thank you very much.
Amy:
And thank you everyone for listening. I look forward to being with you again very soon. Bye, bye.
