Gina Wickman (00:00):
And you're right, we almost called this podcast Shed Your Shit, but it got voted down to my displeasure-
Rob Dube (00:08):
I know, I know.
Gina Wickman (00:08):
... because I like profanity and I love that we're going to say, "Shit" more times than we can count in this episode.
Rob Dube (00:27):
Hello, everyone. My name is Rob Dube and I am here with Gino Wickman. Gino, how are you?
Gina Wickman (00:34):
Fantastic.
Rob Dube (00:35):
Today we're going to have a fun discussion. So we often talk about on our podcast and in our True Self mastermind as these are a place to shed your shit. We actually considered calling this podcast The Shed Your Shit Podcast. Anyway, that's a story for another day. But recently I was working with a healer who focuses on the subconscious and I want to give a shout-out to him. His name is Gabe Roberts. And out of the blue, he says to me, "I'm helping you get rid of your shit." And I was like, "What do you mean by that?" Because we use that term all the time. And then he said, "Well, I actually have a definition of what shit means in this context," and so here's Gabe's definition.
(01:20):
SHIT is S for suppressed, H for hidden, I for influential, and T for traumas. So Suppressed, Hidden, Influential Traumas is SHIT. So with that as a starting point, what's coming up for you, Gino?
Gina Wickman (01:39):
Well, a couple things. So first, it's like Gabe has handed us a gift because we call it "shed your shit and shine," and so that's the verbiage we've been using now for years. So when I say he handed us a gift, I mean it's like a beautiful acronym he has created because it's so true. Shed your shit and shine, when we say, "Your shit," it's all of that. It's those four words. And what I would love to do is let's just break down each word because these are the energetic blocks. We're trying to teach the world that you can shed and remove and free your True Self and shine, and so I would love to break each one down.
(02:25):
So if we're going there, again, it's an acronym that Gabe created, SHIT, Suppressed, Hidden, Influential Traumas, each word stands on its own, and oh my God, I hope we create some light-bulb moments out there.
(02:40):
And so let's start with suppressed. What comes up for me around suppress, and I hope we'll go back and forth, but we're learning about back pain and other physical conditions in our bodies and that the root of those, there's a theory and a belief in science out there that the pain, the health issue, whatever it is, is a direct correlation to suppressed stuff. And Dr. Sarno, Healing Back Pain, when I did a little bit of a drill-down a couple episodes ago, his belief is we are suppressing anger, and by suppressing anger, it's just showing up in our body in different ways, one of which is back pain.
(03:24):
And so that's why this word, starting with this word is so important. It's becoming aware and conscious of the things that we are suppressing in our life. All of those emotions that our ego does not want us to experience and feel, therefore it suppresses them down in our energy field, and unfortunately shows up in bad ways, because it's just trying to protect us, but we've got to release it if we want to be healthy, mentally, physically, spiritually, et cetera. So I'd love to hear what that prompts for you.
Rob Dube (03:58):
Yeah. No, I mean, I don't know that I have a ton more to add because you're burying it, you're ignoring it, and it's quietly driving your life, or maybe not so quietly.
Gina Wickman (04:06):
Hear, hear.
Rob Dube (04:06):
It could be shouting at you in a physical manifestation of it.
Gina Wickman (04:10):
And that's exactly what Sarno's theory is and many, many others. It's absolutely shouting at you physically through your body, screaming, saying, "Please pay attention to me," and your ego's just holding it down there, suppressing it.
Rob Dube (04:21):
Okay, so deep down. So it's hidden?
Gina Wickman (04:23):
Yes.
Rob Dube (04:23):
Yeah, so what does that mean, you know?
Gina Wickman (04:26):
I love it. I feel like the riff on this one is three words long and 10 seconds and we've explained it, but I just love hidden because it makes me laugh. Your ego thinks it has it hidden. It's just like we could stop there, but obviously we'll say more words, but it makes me laugh when you shared this with me a couple weeks ago that Gabe came up with this acronym because suppressed and hidden are, quite frankly, they're the same thing, but just the hidden piece makes me laugh because the only one that thinks it's hiding is your ego.
(05:00):
It's like your ego's up there going, "Oh, I've done such a great job of tucking this one under your armpit or over here in your lower back or over here behind." Whatever it is, it thinks it hid it there, i.e. in your subconscious. So again, it's down there below the surface in the subconscious hiding, and we just got to shed light on it. We just got to find it where the ego hid it and release it. So the ego thinks it's hidden.
Rob Dube (05:29):
Yeah. When I think about it, it's like I get this visual of I'm trying to find something in there. I was doing a session with Gabe and I was very emotional and I started laughing and I said, "How much more is in here? Where is all this stuff? This is getting crazy."
Gina Wickman (05:52):
Oh, it's so good, so good.
Rob Dube (05:52):
You know? So it's just-
Gina Wickman (05:52):
And I'll piggyback on that because yes, through my experiences, meditation, the few plant medicine experiences, I mean, it just keeps coming up and up and up, but I do believe there's an end point. It does all come up. I do this meditation with my lower back and my subconscious just releasing all of that tension, and I can feel it all coming up and going away forever. So it does go away forever, but I think there is a bunch of stuff in there.
(06:25):
You and I are in our late fifties and this shit started at age one, so we're talking like 50-plus years of hiding shit, and it's hidden everywhere. And so it's just a matter of shedding light on it.
Rob Dube (06:37):
Can I ask you a question on that?
Gina Wickman (06:37):
Please, yeah.
Rob Dube (06:38):
At age one, so for somebody listening who's like, "What do you mean it started at age one," what do you say to that?
Gina Wickman (06:44):
Well, I mean, again, I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist, I'm not an expert on that, but I mean, there's lots of research and there are healers that find things, but it starts when... There's now science and theory behind letting the baby cry for an hour till they learn is not entirely healthy. And so that's going on at three months and six months and nine months and a year, but there's stuff that our parents do to us, even at one years old, that we're already starting to form protective layers.
(07:18):
And so it probably goes back to day one. I'm picking one year just to go back to a time that we can't remember. I probably should have said, "Day one," not, "year one," but it starts right out of the chute.
Rob Dube (07:33):
Well, some say just being born is very traumatic, and when you think about it, you come from this really protected place, comfortable, everything's good, all of a sudden, you're shot out. It's like-
Gina Wickman (07:43):
Yeah, I'll go one step further. Some believe it happens in the womb.
Rob Dube (07:48):
Yeah, that's right.
Gina Wickman (07:48):
So your mother's trauma that she's experiencing three, six, eight months into the pregnancy you feel and experience. So there's work that's done showing that that's where your trauma started, so anyway.
Rob Dube (08:02):
Yep. And that's part of the maybe influential part of this to get to the next one.
Gina Wickman (08:08):
Well, influential is the one I struggle with, so we're moving there now. But what I love about influential is that I wish I would've looked up the definition, but again, I try not to do any preparation for this so that it's very organic. But I'm assuming if we look up the definition of the word influential, it means something really important. So we've suppressed and we've hidden something really important.
(08:34):
So again, I'm winging it on that one, but I'm guessing-
Rob Dube (08:38):
It's good.
Gina Wickman (08:38):
... it's such a beautiful word, so now we got to go find these really important things hidden in us and release them because it's very important. It's very influential. It has an impact, it's... Anyway, I'll stop with all the making up words and turn it back over to you.
Rob Dube (08:53):
Well, and that influential thing is the trauma. That's the thing. And that's the next one. That's the T to all this. And we've talked, we have an episode on trauma, "Big T," "Little T" Trauma. And so I always like to start there when it comes to trauma because it's likely that something happened in your life, and it's okay, it doesn't make... "But my parents were so great. I love my parents." Yes, I know. They were great, all that, but something might've happened. As a baby, this might be a little far-fetched for some, but as a baby, you might've been in the crib and heard an argument in the other room-
Gina Wickman (09:31):
Exactly.
Rob Dube (09:31):
... and that might've felt unsettling and you might've been crying and nobody was paying attention to you.
Gina Wickman (09:35):
Exactly.
Rob Dube (09:36):
And it was at one, like Gino was saying earlier, and it's stuck within you that maybe you don't always feel safe or you don't always feel secure. Just coming up with an off-the-cuff idea on that for people to think about.
Gina Wickman (09:49):
Yeah, and I hope this doesn't take us off the rails because I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangential rabbit hole, but it's very much on point because you're using this word trauma, which is the word we use these days, but I'm going to try to not use a word to make this make sense because that's just today's word. I don't know what they called this thing 2,000 years ago and what we'll call it 2,000 years from now, but trauma's the fad-ish word at this moment in time.
(10:21):
But what we're talking about, again, influential, what we're talking about is something happened somewhere in your life, and let's just use the timeframe we're talking about, from womb to today and you held onto it. For some reason, you made up a story about it. It was really important to you. It was influential to you, no one else, you. So you're hanging onto it. Your ego hit it somewhere in your body. And so that is officially known as trauma, but I almost want an energetic understanding of this thing we're talking about. Again, trauma is the current word. Now let's try to not use words.
(11:04):
This thing happened, this situation somewhere. You turned it into something. You then hid it someplace in your body. You're hanging onto it, i.e. trauma. And so the point is whatever you call that thing, it's stuck in your energy field and it is dark energy that's dragging you down and draining you and causing you pain and so it's really important.
(11:30):
And so that then takes us to what do you do with that really important thing that's hiding inside of you, i.e. influential, i.e. we'll call that trauma?
Rob Dube (11:38):
Yeah. So what are you seeing when you're working with leaders, which you have been for decades? How is this showing up, this shit showing up in their leadership? Are they aware of it? I'm sure some are and some aren't. They're very busy. So busyness takes over, and they're building, they're driving, they're achieving, they're being recognized. And because of this, they rarely have time to pause and to notice what's actually happening beneath the surface.
(12:13):
We write about in the book that driven people are a small percentage of the population, and you tend to leave a black trail behind you. You are the changemakers in this world. I mean, your creativity and your ability to get through challenging times with resilience and persevere is unbelievable, so thank goodness for you. But you do leave a black trail, and that's how it shows up. It shows up in the way you're treating people, in your companies, in your organizations, in your personal life. Sometimes you have a great situation in your business and it's not so great at home or vice versa. It is showing up in many different ways.
(12:55):
So this is what's going on. Suppressed emotions are influencing your decisions. They're influencing your relationships. And Gino talked about the back as an example. It's influencing your health, but yet on the outside, you look like you've got it all together, you know? But on the inside, there's unease. You might have a stomach or a GI issue or something like that going on. That's unease, dis-ease. Disease, dis-ease. Maybe you just have this feeling in life like just something isn't quite a aligned and you keep trying to figure it out. Well, that really is likely something that is your shit. That's what's going on.
(13:37):
And what usually brings it to the awareness, unfortunately, for you driven people out there, is you either get burnt-out, you have some sort of massive health scare, or a super strained relationship with one of your key leaders at your company or at your home, and then you might even have this feeling of emptiness. You've done it all. You have this great life, and all of a sudden you're like, "Why do I still feel empty?" So okay, that's my riff.
Gina Wickman (14:04):
Listen, I was just going to sit here and you can take it into the home stretch with that, man. That was a beautiful riff.
(14:10):
I don't know that I'm going to say anything new, but maybe I'll say a few different words because you're asking me, so how does that show up in a driven person functioning in the world as they function in the world? And these driven people are in all walks of life, all careers, all... And so it shows up as, again, we're talking about shit, so the suppressed, hidden, influential traumas stored in your body, it shows up as fear because you're making fear-based decisions almost with every decision you're making. It's showing up as aloneness. You're afraid of being alone, so you're attaching yourself to people. It shows up as insecurity. So you're walking around with an imposter syndrome. It shows up as isolation where you're afraid of being alone, and then you're isolating yourself. It's the most fucked-up dynamic. And you constantly don't ever want to feel that pain that was the shit from the past, and so you've got 18 layers of protection so that you don't feel that pain.
(15:13):
And again, with all of that going on inside of you, like you said, you're not treating people well, you're yelling, you're defensive, you're getting triggered every 30 minutes about something. And so as a result of all that, you've created this so-called perfect package, all these layers, the suit of armor we've talked about, the cocoon, and your nervous system is amped. And again, that's what leads to the dis-ease, the unease. And so the tectonic plates are just always shifting.
(15:45):
Well, it's possible to feel peace in all of those situations. If we could turn back the clock and you spent the last five years being and doing all of those things I just said, by shedding the shit, you could experience all that with peace. The tectonic plates won't shift. Your nervous system will be calm. As a result, you'll make much better decisions, love-based decisions, intuition-based decisions, inside-out decisions, and life will be more impactful, you'll have much more energy, and you will feel inner peace.
Rob Dube (16:19):
Ah! But I love that because this is a great segue into this last part that I want to touch on. And I've had conversations with people and one question after another about an issue that's going on at work, and then you get to the root of it, which is something unresolved. And then they might say to me, "I just don't feel like dealing with that. I don't want to. It's scary. I don't want to go there."
(16:45):
Why don't... Why? What's going on there? In your estimation, what's going on? Why don't people want to go and address this shit?
Gina Wickman (16:53):
Because it hurts and it comes up with as much pain as it went down. It hurts. We don't believe that the pain we have to go through to release it is going to make it go forever, and on the other side is that feeling of peace. So it just hurts. It starts to come up, we feel it, and then we push it right back down because we start to feel that old pain. It's because it hurts.
Rob Dube (17:19):
Yeah. Let me build on that a little. Actually, it's a death every time it happens. It's a part of you that dies, and you don't want to die. You don't want parts of you to die. And so this is your identity that you're dealing with here, and your ego doesn't want that to change. You built your lives around control, around proving yourself and persevering, building wealth, getting stuff, all those things. So they serve you at a certain stage in your life, and what ends up happening is you stick with them because they are familiar to you.
(17:53):
And what I want to say here is this is about letting go. Always a great book that we recommend by David Hawkins, Letting Go. And this requires trust. It requires belief and the trust. Gino was talking about peace. This is the trust that you're not going to lose your drive. You're not going to lose this edge. It's not going to happen. You have to believe that you can be driven and have peace. And it's scary for you high-achievers out there, it's scary, but I'm speaking from experience. I say you actually create a space for more peace, more clarity, and this is where you're going to make the greatest impact. It just starts to flow and you'll be like, "Oh, I didn't know. I actually didn't know you could feel this way. This is so nice, actually."
(18:38):
Okay. Gino, do you have anything else to add?
Gina Wickman (18:43):
The only thing is that I'm feeling incredible gratitude for Gabe, and thank you for SHIT, S-H-I-T. And other than that, I feel we've said it all.
Rob Dube (18:53):
Yes, so good. So good. All right, well, thanks for joining us, everyone, and we'll see you next time. In the meantime, stay focused and much love.
Gina Wickman (19:02):
Thank you for listening in today. We truly appreciate you taking the time to spend with us and please tune in for the next episode. Until then, we wish you all the best in freeing your True Self. Stay focused and much love.
