Women over 40,
You Need
a Game Plan for
De-Repression

Most of us women have been living our lives on top of wobbly self-appreciation, childhood trauma, and limited beliefs that have shaped how much we feel we deserve or how much freedom we will allow ourselves.

Now it’s time for an evolution.

This evolution will require talking about repression and de-repression. Don’t worry this will not be to science-y but this is really important.

Let’s dive in!

De-Repression = Release from a blocked state.

Repression is a psychological defense strategy in which unpleasant thoughts or memories are pushed from the conscious mind.

These unpleasant thoughts might include the lack of clarity, uncertainty of purpose, diminished self-appreciation, not feeling safe to be who you are, or not having a satisfying sense of love and connection.

They can show up as feelings of anxiety, being in overdrive to produce, constantly needing to be perfect, feeling overwhelm, confusion, anxiety, tension, fear, lack of confidence, procrastination, shame, not feeling worthy or deserving. All of these create blocks to you having more ease, creativity, clarity and joy in your life.

This is common for someone who does not recall abuse in their early childhood, but still has problems with connection, feeling safe and anxiety resulting from the unaddressed trauma. And trauma comes in many forms and intensities.

For example, I had a client who was riddled with anxiety as an adult. Her anxious ways started in childhood, but she wasn’t able to connect the dots until in her late 40’s when her immune system started to attack itself with an autoimmune disorder.

As a child she was an overachiever, A student, athlete and had her first job at 15 yrs old. All of this effort to be “amazing” was to compensate for the lack of safety and love she felt at home. Her parents held their love as an unattainable carrot, but mostly motivating their kids by using a large stick. Her entire focus of childhood was to not be “too displeasing” to her parents to curtail their swings of emotional outbursts….and she had high hopes of one day being pleasing enough to feel loved. (It’s not just physical safety a child needs, but emotional safety in the stability of a parent’s emotional state as well.)

She continued her trajectory of amazing efforts throughout adulthood. She was promoted to run the international division at her company. A dream position it seemed. Finally she felt seen…and lingering whispers of validation crept into her realm. Her system had a moment of relief.

It was not long before “hello anxiety my old friend” resurfaced. The anxiety that fuels the drive of “I must keep pushing or they’ll find out I’m not really good enough. If I achieve this next piece then I’ll feel valid, worthy, deserving, safe, etc.” And every time she crossed that finish line it wasn’t enough to heal the hole left by her childhood. Yet not to worry, another finish line would appear. “This one will be it - it will calm all that torments me inside,” she thought.

What we uncovered was her need to be valued, loved and safe by her parents got projected onto her new boss. She kept expecting her new boss to react the same explosive way as her parents when she made a mistake. Her new boss did not. This sent her into a whirlwind of anxiety. She could not find where her boss’s breaking point was.

When the stick did not show up, she didn’t know how to be “pleasing enough” to feel some sense of safety…as she did in childhood.

This is common for children who experience significant instability in their parents’ emotional states. They don’t know when the fuse will blow so they are constantly tracking for the explosion… tracking for how safe they are in the moment and how to act to be “less displeasing” to not cause a bigger eruption. This is exhausting mentally, physically and emotionally for anyone, and especially a child who doesn’t have the capacities yet to make sense of this.

De-repression was bringing wounded, childhood-belief patterns to the surface for my client at a time when she was at the top of her game, wise in her experience, and seasoned within herself. Her system was stable enough now for her to start to address these foundational cracks; these deeply buried beliefs about herself that when resolved can change the trajectory of her life and health to one of ease and joy.

Just to be clear, de-repression is release from a blocked state.

In society today, we are conditioned to resist, ignore and suppress these symptoms. To put them off by working harder, pretending they will go away by adding xyz powder to our coffee or squashing the tension with willpower.

Have you ever considered…these symptoms are how your body tells you what needs to be addressed, communicated and healed for Your Highest Good? Your system is showing you where the blocks are that prevent you from having what’s important to you. Once you resolve that blocked state, de-repress, then more of yourself and more of what you want is more easily available to you.

And that is a gift worth having.

It’s a Gift.

De-repression is a gift to yourself to revise, heal, and resolve blocks within your physical, mental & emotional systems. When these old, out-dated strategies can complete, they free up emotional, mental and spiritual real estate.

And in this newly created vacuum your Creational Authority becomes your superpower in creating what’s most important to you with ease, certainty & joy. There’s no more struggle, no more anxiety or confusion. You get to know yourself through this process, giving yourself deeper clarity, expanded freedom, more creative ease, alignment of purpose, and choice.

It’s Time to Receive the Gift.

Have you ever had a cat bring you a present of a mouse, bird or lizard?

From the cat’s perspective it’s a gift…the best kind, one that nourishes and supports you. Maybe it’s not the type of gift you’d register for…but it’s something you now have to deal with to keep your home free of a decomposing cat treat.

This is the same when your body starts its de-repression process.

Your body is telling you it’s time to address your physical stress, limited self-appreciation, emotional anxiety, lack of clarity, procrastination and the mental overwhelm - which are all symptoms of de-repression happening.

The body knows what it’s doing - it’s not a mistake. These symptoms are the missing link to resolving the conflict within your system. In your body’s infinite wisdom it knows your system is stable enough to handle what needs to be healed with your attention and appreciation.

Sure, it’s not the gift you’d ever buy for yourself, yet it will greatly benefit & support you when it’s held & properly processed with appreciation. Your body is ready to do this with and for you. This is why these symptoms are resurfacing in significant ways when you are over 40 and decades into your adult, self-awareness.

It’s time to allow those old belief patterns to complete and install new ones that support who you are now.

When de-repression symptoms are viewed through the lens of adaption: “this is how my ancient-wise body has decided to help me, protect me and keep me living”… then you don’t have to resist them and you don’t have to fear de-repression. This shift in perspective is the key to unlocking and overcoming your anxiety, lack of validation, uncertainty, the constant need to people please, the belief that you have to do it all yourself, and the compulsion to always be driving forward.

Your body doesn’t lie - it has a strategy for what it’s doing. Become the sleuth to find out what is the source belief of that strategy, then revise it to one that is more useful. One that supports what is most important to you and what you want to have in your life.

And all of this can be done within yourself. Knowing you have more Creational Authority than you might believe or have ever experienced, your symptoms are clues that directly affect how you unwrap the gift you’re being given.

Similar with all gifts, you can receive it or donate it to the trash bin. Mostly our society has us donate it to the trash bin, then cover it with all sorts of other strategies of denial, shame, and distractions. You can look all around our society to see denial is not working…maybe it’s time to reframe how we experience our symptoms.

Two Un-Useful Paths with De-Repression:

Most commonly what I see when de-repression starts to unearth our darkest belief patterns and fears we tend to do one of two things:

First Un-Useful Path - We turn against ourselves. We believe “there is something wrong with me or this would not be happening.” This creates so much internal strife and hope at the same time. It’s always easiest to blame ourselves because IF we are the “problem” then we have a shot at fixing it and then we have the “hope” of having life go as we want.

This is also a very common strategy in childhood, when much of these limiting beliefs became foundational. This is why young children blame themselves when a parent leaves, dies, or is upset. Their first move is to assume they are the problem. The child has the fantasy that if they were more of this or less of that, then the parent would have stayed, been more loving, accepting, etc. They desperately believe… “if I can be different, then I can help heal my parent or take their pain away….then I will get the loving, safe, secure parent I crave.”

This strategy is based in their belief: “if they, the child, can be the source of the problem, then they too can be the solution.” Otherwise they are screwed.

Kids take all the blame and all the credit.

It’s not their fault. This is how the brain develops, and it’s not a flaw of our brains. We tend to beat ourselves up for how we as humans develop. And repression is part of that development and later de-repression is part of our evolutionary gift decades later to heal what was too big for us to fully understand at these younger ages.

Another way we turn against ourselves is when we keep trying to make a better version of ourselves, “being my best self at 45.”

Were the versions of you prior to this less valid, precious and beautiful? Will the next best versions of you devalue this “best self at 45”?

No. They are all equally valid, precious and beautiful - just different you’s.

For example, do we expect a baby to be the best version of itself at 6 months? How about when it starts walking around one year, is that version more valuable than the 6 month old who can only roll over? What about the 5 year old who can talk, use the toilet & dress themselves - are they a more valuable, precious and beautiful being than the 2-month old who is just drooling in diapers?

Lastly every child comes into this world subconsciously wanting to heal their family, yet no child ever has. It only results in the proliferation of the family’s generational trauma.

Second Un-Useful Path

If we are exhausted from turning against ourselves for being the problem…and our efforts to “fix” ourselves isn’t working, then we will resist the uprising of these old belief patterns, the de-repression, by denying them or overpowering them mentally or physically.

In denying the de-repression of these buried strategies, we are further repressing them. This forces them to find other ways to express and resurface. This is when my client experienced her anxiety turn into her autoimmune symptoms.

However de-repression shows up, we are conditioned to resist it, view it as “something is wrong with us.” So we try to squash the symptoms with our drive, and even feel shame for having it, or we hide it away, deny its existence, only to pretend we’re fine.….and refuse to receive the gift at our feet.

Your Brain & De-repression:

When a young child experiences that it’s not safe to be seen, loved or self-expressed AND they do not have any other outside references for being safe, loved or seen in other situations, then this limited experience creates neurological pathways that form their beliefs about themselves. These beliefs change how much self expression they allow themselves, how free they will feel or how much happiness they embody. The child is trying to figure out how much to limit themselves in order to feel safe, loved or seen because their full self-expression did not go so well. This is a strategy, it’s a survival strategy that the brain adopts to keep that child safe as possible.

This belief strategy that the child is not lovable, safe, seen, etc. becomes the filter for how they experience themselves and their world…which is a small footprint on this planet, yet to them its their entire Universe.

Children don’t have any way of knowing there are other options, other experiences for how life can be, for how loved, valued and seen they can feel. This is their only reference for how the world is, and how they will always be viewed, valued and treated. So it becomes what they believe is true about themselves. And unfortunately our brains don’t upgrade these old, outdated belief strategies when we get older and can understand those childhood traumas do not define who we are, how much love we deserve, or our value in the world.

A great analogy for this is, if you grew up in a town where there was only one restaurant with only three items on the menu:

Moldy, stale bread
Moldy, stale bread that’s cold
Moldy, stale bread, that’s cold with a side of rancid mayonnaise

What would your view be of eating out if this was the only restaurant you knew and your only experience of eating out?

These experiences get laid down early in life, repeated again and again, until they are wired into our foundational experience of how we see ourselves and how we view the world. This causes us to start to see ourselves as only deserving to eat moldy, stale bread that is cold. And we start to see the world as only bringing us moldy, stale bread that is cold with a side of rancid mayonnaise.

Add to it, part of our brains have a compulsion to predict how the world is, to ensure our survival. This part of the brain uses the RAS (reticular activating system) to start filtering your experiences to find evidence that your experiences of how the world is, and your place in it, is a match. Meaning your brain finds evidence to support your internal beliefs about how loved, valued, seen, safe and free you are…or not.

It's not a belief unless it’s true.

Your brain is finding evidence to match what your six-year-old self decided you deserved, based on a childhood that might not have been as safe, loving or nurturing as you needed.

It would be great if our brains updated like our phones, so the next time you were out in the world your brain would say, “here’s a chicken salad or taco Tuesday to add to your menu. That is more nourishing than the moldy, stale bread you’ve been surviving on.”

Yet our brain doesn’t do that when we have these foundational, early childhood limiting beliefs running. Our brain keeps our original menu of moldy, stale cold bread because our brains are only looking for moldy, stale cold bread with a side of rancid mayonnaise. This is also the lens it uses to choose our partners, jobs, bosses, friends, opportunities, and bring those people and situations into our orbit.

If you have a filter that “being safe isn’t safe”…then this part of your brain is going to filter for people and situations to support the experience that its not safe to be safe. Your brain will start looking to enlist certain people that end up not being trustworthy, who take advantage or are not safe to be yourself around.

The opposite is also true, if this part of your brain cannot find the old, moldy, stale bread in someone, then it filters that person out of your life. This is where safe, trustworthy people won’t show up on your radar or you won’t have any chemistry with the “nice guy.”

Granted no one has just one experience of their childhood growing up. We have a variety of experiences good, bad and indifferent. Everyone has times where they felt okay because most everyone has to sleep, allowing a few hours without threat. The more difficult or painful the child’s experiences were, the more these associations get automated for your survival. This automation supports your brain in finding more kinds of people who will serve you more old, moldy stale bread with a side of rancid mayonnaise that tastes familiar. This part of your brain craves this unpleasant meal.

The good news is when you shift these beliefs at the root source, not just at the affirmation level; but when the strategies get rewired in your neurology, it causes your experiences to shift. You no longer have to avoid safe people or situations; your brain starts to allow good opportunities to come through your filter. Your experience of yourself, and of yourself in the world changes. The people and situations you subconsciously enlisted to create these stale, moldy bread options start to go away, and other palatable, more nourishing options become prominent and satisfying in your life. And just as your brain kept filtering out what you were so desperately wanting…it can now start to bring in that clarity, safety, love, freedom and success with ease that you want.

Invitation for Evolution

This gift is an invitation to let your unresolved conflicts complete so the truth of who you really are is what gets expressed.

By the age of 6 years old, everything you believe about your worth, your lovability, how safe you are being you, what you deserve and how easily life can be for you, is in place…and many times much, much earlier.

This means by the time you are in first grade you’ve already decided how safe it is to be seen, how much love you’re worthy of, and how much struggle you deserve to experience in your next 70-80+ years of life.

Would you ever let a six year old determine you how much love, safety, success and clarity you deserve in your life? Of course not.

I don’t know about you, but my six year old self really did not have the capacities or abilities to make sense of all that was happening around her.

She would never consider that her parents had their own childhood wounds that were being played out in her direction. Or that her siblings were struggling with their own hurt from parents who also had parents who were still heartbroken from generational cruelty. She thought it was personal to her. She thought “there must be something wrong with me since my dad is frightfully angry, my mom doesn’t have time to comfort me and my siblings tease relentlessly.”

This is when children decide on some level: “I’m not safe here, I don’t feel I belong, It’s not safe to be me; I can’t be happy, show love or succeed without upsetting someone….its safer to shut down and deny who I am.”

All of these beliefs turn us against ourselves. We are either too much or not enough of something, or just fundamentally unlovable, unworthy, worthless, etc.

This turning against ourselves by thinking there’s something wrong with us, is a way to protect ourselves from more harm, emotionally, physically, and mentally. This is part of how we maintain our survival at this very young, tender age when those around us do not feel safe.

This has part of our brain start to strategize for how we can be more

pleasing, less displeasing, less noticed, more supportive, less needy, more tough, etc. whatever it is that has us be less of a target.

In the animal kingdom this adaption strategy is supposed to be temporary until the threat is gone. Yet for many of us, we forget it’s an adaption so we keep it and it becomes how we move through life and how we view ourselves.

We don’t allow ourselves to shine too brightly or to be too successful. We feel we need permission to be who we are. We feel confused by what to do next or unclear on the “right” decision. We feel we have to do “It All” by ourselves in life and we think its us against the world because we can’t rely on anyone else to help us or to show up when we need them. We drive and drive to avoid the pain of being rejected,

shamed, hurt, etc. from those who’s love, nurturing and sense of safety we needed the most. These strategies become foundational blocks to us having the freedom to be ourselves, feel ease, joy, self-appreciation and clarity in our lives.

These early childhood feelings of being unsafe, unloved, and unvalued get shoved down, pushed out of cognition. Yet these are strategies our brain has used to keep us alive; it has used them for our survival in destabilizing or dangerous situations. Your brain is not going to let them go or dismantle them just because you consciously shoved them down into the depths beyond recognition. And your brain is not going to revise them instantly because you did your 5 minutes of affirmations daily in the mirror four decades later.

These strategies do go underground…yet they have to resurface to fulfill their purpose.

This is where health issues, auto-immune disorders start to emerge, amongst other symptoms of anxiety, imposter syndrome, procrastination, overwhelm, lack of confidence, doing it all yourself, etc.

These symptoms are the body trying to execute its strategy to

fulfill its purpose based in a belief conflict that happened long ago. It was a belief created by a very, very young version of yourself that didn’t have the abilities or capabilities to make sense of the world or what was happening around them. So this younger version of you decided it must mean something about you.

And this pattern is on rotation 24/7 for decades. The flavors of this pattern permeates the decisions we make, the actions we take or don’t take, how we view ourselves, how safe we feel giving and receiving love…and the way we move in the world. This belief pattern is not the truth of who you are.

Instead of viewing the symptoms as bad and feeling like you need to punish them into submission…it’s time to evolve your perspective to see them as an adaption. A meaningful adaption that your body needed in order to survive a conflict of a circumstance in life…and that strategy worked, because you are here, now reading this.

Sure you’d wish it would have been a different experience all together, yet we cannot change the past. But you can change the strategy. You can revise the strategies that don’t serve you (ones of struggle, overwhelm, anxiety, lack of self worth, etc.), into ones that do bring you more of what is important to you (freedom, clarity, ease, purpose, abundance, joy, love & connection, etc.).

What we can do is revise it so that you experience the memory differently, and allow it to complete. You can hold it in your body in a way that doesn’t cause un-useful symptoms to emerge. Repression happened as a survival strategy, and now it can serve as the road map forward to the gifts on the other side.

Celebrate the Invitation

De-repression is a wonderful way to get to know yourself better through this process of seeing your symptoms as an adaptation of something working on your behalf. This helps to loosen the pattern and take a bit of the charge off of that unwanted experience. When you can see the unwanted belief patterns as a young child’s survival adaption, that supports the revision of those limiting beliefs.

Celebrate that the time has arrived for evolution of these old stuck patterns that run out-dated beliefs.

Your system is giving you a gift that has been percolating for decades. Don’t miss the opportunity to release, rewire, re-imprint this pattern from decades ago.

Your body is ready to resolve these conflicts. Whatever the energetic imprints or patterns, you no longer need to carry them. It’s time to let it go. It’s time to stop turning against yourself as the problem.

There is no problem.

These are just old strategies your body used to ensure your survival to adulthood. Now as an adult, it’s time to update those strategies to ones that are more aligned to the truth of who you are.

Subconsciously, part of us never wants to turn against ourselves because on a soul level we know how beautiful and precious we are. So when we do blame ourselves as the problem, we can get frustrated, angry and/or righteous. That is an invite to evolve. It’s an invitation to growth, to expand, to learn about yourself… and step into your own self sovereignty in how you create your world.

No matter where you live, how healthy you are, or how broke - we all

have just as much Creational Authority for our health, wealth and happiness that we create ourselves. All three of these go together b/c they are ALL self generated from our Creational Authority. It is always US who’s in charge of how much health, wealth & happiness we create & bring into our lives. We control it.

If you are stuck in traffic on struggle street, then there is a belief pattern that needs revising or updating so your adult self can more fully access your Creational Authority. Life does’t have to be a struggle. We create that experience, as mentioned earlier,….so we can also create a different experience using the same parts of our brain.

This is how the brain helps you to make lasting change. You need the tools to do this - or it’s a missed opportunity to engage your seasoned adult wisdom in shedding the past strategies that run as if you are still that terrified 4 year old not getting the love, safety or validation you needed.

We have the tools to heal her, allowing more of you to come back into alignment. Otherwise leaving this gift on the floor or locking it down in the bunker has you separate from yourself. And you feel that separation as energetic leaks, when you continue to turn against yourself and the truth of who you are.

Partnering with your body to allow these old strategies to complete gives rise to the inner knowing, the fortitude that you are enough just as you are, there is nothing you need to do, be or produce to be loved, valued, worthy and safe. This is where your Creational Authority thrives.

It’s important to for me to state again, these tools are not to make a “better version of you” because there is no such thing as a better version of you. That notion has you turn against yourself which puts you in back in the original patterns of conflict with yourself as a Creator. It’s more useful to include all of you, all versions of you and give your system more options on its menu.

Creational Authority is your birthright. It’s your superpower. And it’s always been within you, it’s just currently being directed by your 3 year old subconscious self who’s limiting beliefs are that she is unworthy of success, undeserving of love; or she does not feel safe being who she is, being seen, heard or known. Your body is signaling that it’s time to revise these beliefs, to heal that inner child and create your life from this new place of clarity of purpose, worthiness, aligned success, and certainty.

Next Steps:

Regardless of whether you work with me or not, let me offer some next steps because you can’t go back to the old way now.

Celebrate the invitation - your body is wanting to upgrade outdated beliefs. Remember there is no problem - This is good news.
Partner with your body - support your system in revising and letting these old patterns complete.
Create new beliefs that you choose. Ones that support the truth of who you are.

If you are interested in doing this deeper work to revise those subconscious strategies that create struggle.….then I invite you to join my Your Wealthy Self course.

This is a deeper dive into my work to help you receive the gift of de-repression that your body is trying to gift you. I offer this for women who are really wanting to claim their Creation Authority by unapologetically embodying the truth of who they are: beautiful, precious and worthy already…just as they are.

Learn more

If this deeper dive feels too soon…

The simplest starting point, is to take the Money Story Edit course to begin revising the beliefs that work against you in your life, around money and with yourself. When you revise your story, you open yourself up to new opportunities of success, creativity, ease and prosperity. This course helps upgrade your beliefs to ones that support what you want, so you can have what is most important to you without struggle or pain.