Listen to Episode #19
About our Guest
Years ago, even as an adult, I felt controlled by Mom. Her “You can’t do that” words still rang in my head lighting my inner fire of rage and started many screaming sessions. Mentally I always replied “Oh yeah, watch me.”
Anger was my fuel, the energy, I used to accomplish everything— get through college, make the grades, apply for jobs. Then one day it evaporated suddenly as I lay in bed too sick to move. What happened?
Anger had become a physically destructive emotion ruining my health. It distancing me from people thus creating a social vacuum in my life. It alienated me from my spirit. It kept me spinning in circles seeing every negative life experience as an enemy to be slain.
But actually my adult life resembled Humphy Dumphy who had fallen off the ledge and now lay in pieces on the ground. I felt anxious, depression, lost and confused. I had to make a decision.
I was not going to let my childhood abuse, beatings, belittling comments, emotional abandonment and controlled behavior become the blueprint for my life. So by researching the best ancient wisdom and neuroscience healing techniques, I was able to reconstruct myself.
I learned self inquiry, self empowerment, and how to create freedom for me. I learned how to listen and be guided by your intuition, break patterns of thinking and behavior, and find harmony with your Spirit and be a creative, fun kid enjoying nature, animals, art, writing.
I became a life coach, hypnotherapist, psychic reader, energy worker and author of 2 books on
self healing. Now I seek to be a peer support specialist who can gently cheerlead, motivate, and mentor others unto their own personal discovery path back to wholeness.
I also am drawn to creating support classes focused on expressive art and writing. Creating is so nourishing & healing to the soul.
Podcast Transcript
Michael Roesslein:
Hello, and welcome to The Natural Evolution, produced by Rebel Health Tribe, a radio show focused on providing you with inspiration, education, and tools for true healing and transformation. I’m Michael, and I’ll be your guide on this adventure, as together, we explore very nature of the healing journey.
Hey everyone, this is going to be a really fun episode. One of our listener supported, community sourced episodes, which are so far turning out to be really fun to do. I’m here with a member of our Rebel Health Tribe community, Amber DeAnn. Amber, thank you.
Amber DeAnn:
Thank you for having me.
Michael:
Yeah, this is going to be fun. This was an idea we came up with when we were trying to do something unique with the podcast is people are used to hearing from certain guests and certain people in the functional medicine world. And we’re lucky enough that a lot of them trust us enough to come on our things. But then I was like, how can we make this more fun and engaging and how can we involve more people? And so we put out a little APB out to our community and asked for their healing journey stories. And yours is one that came in that really grabbed my attention and I feel is one that needs to be shared.
And so it’s been really fun getting to know and meet and talk to some of our people who are valuable members of our audience and our community. And it’s fun to bring you on, to be on the other side of the camera. So I hope that you enjoy the experience here. And I just appreciate in advance, because I know enough about your story to know that this is going to be really powerful for people to hear. So thank you for volunteering to share it.
Amber DeAnn:
Thank you for having me here. I love it.
Michael:
Yeah, it’s going to be fun. So I guess we’ll just go back to the beginning and I’m going to put a little trigger warning out there for people in the audience on this one, we’re going to talk about some sensitive subjects a little bit just to let everybody know. And we’re going to start back at the beginning where you have now done a lot of work and a lot of healing and a lot of growth work. And so now you have a really solid understanding of where your chronic health issues and mental challenges and things stemmed from. So I will let you describe and explain that in the way that feels good to you and set the stage for how you wound up where you wound up to even need a healing journey.
Amber DeAnn:
Okay. I’ll start from the beginning. My parents were in World War II and they were working in Omaha for insurance companies. They all had nice jobs and they loved their social life even though they weren’t making a lot of money. And then my mother got pregnant after four years of marriage and she was shocked and she didn’t like this and she wasn’t happy. And then dad wasn’t happy because at that time when you worked, if you were a woman working in insurance company, you got pregnant, you were fired. No questions asked. That was it. They were not putting up with that, especially after the war years and shortly after. So mom got fired from her job and then dad had to leave too. So they had to leave Omaha and they moved in to my mother’s parents, they had a farm in of that part of Nebraska.
Michael Roesslein:
Hello, and welcome to The Natural Evolution, produced by Rebel Health Tribe, a radio show focused on providing you with inspiration, education, and tools for true healing and transformation. I’m Michael, and I’ll be your guide on this adventure, as together, we explore very nature of the healing journey.
Hey everyone, this is going to be a really fun episode. One of our listener supported, community sourced episodes, which are so far turning out to be really fun to do. I’m here with a member of our Rebel Health Tribe community, Amber DeAnn. Amber, thank you.
Amber DeAnn:
Thank you for having me.
Michael:
Yeah, this is going to be fun. This was an idea we came up with when we were trying to do something unique with the podcast is people are used to hearing from certain guests and certain people in the functional medicine world. And we’re lucky enough that a lot of them trust us enough to come on our things. But then I was like, how can we make this more fun and engaging and how can we involve more people? And so we put out a little APB out to our community and asked for their healing journey stories. And yours is one that came in that really grabbed my attention and I feel is one that needs to be shared.
And so it’s been really fun getting to know and meet and talk to some of our people who are valuable members of our audience and our community. And it’s fun to bring you on, to be on the other side of the camera. So I hope that you enjoy the experience here. And I just appreciate in advance, because I know enough about your story to know that this is going to be really powerful for people to hear. So thank you for volunteering to share it.
Amber DeAnn:
Thank you for having me here. I love it.
Michael:
Yeah, it’s going to be fun. So I guess we’ll just go back to the beginning and I’m going to put a little trigger warning out there for people in the audience on this one, we’re going to talk about some sensitive subjects a little bit just to let everybody know. And we’re going to start back at the beginning where you have now done a lot of work and a lot of healing and a lot of growth work. And so now you have a really solid understanding of where your chronic health issues and mental challenges and things stemmed from. So I will let you describe and explain that in the way that feels good to you and set the stage for how you wound up where you wound up to even need a healing journey.
Amber DeAnn:
Okay. I’ll start from the beginning. My parents were in World War II and they were working in Omaha for insurance companies. They all had nice jobs and they loved their social life even though they weren’t making a lot of money. And then my mother got pregnant after four years of marriage and she was shocked and she didn’t like this and she wasn’t happy. And then dad wasn’t happy because at that time when you worked, if you were a woman working in insurance company, you got pregnant, you were fired. No questions asked. That was it. They were not putting up with that, especially after the war years and shortly after. So mom got fired from her job and then dad had to leave too. So they had to leave Omaha and they moved in to my mother’s parents, they had a farm in of that part of Nebraska.
But the problem was my mother didn’t like her mother. So there was a lot of friction there. And my grandmother didn’t like my father. So right away, here she is pregnant, delivered the baby. And now she’s in this really tense stressful situation, which was her birthplace, which she never got along with anybody in the first place, and didn’t know what to do. So she’s really upset. So from there they eventually found a farm and rented it and then became farmers, because that’s what my dad wanted to do. Then they eventually bought a farm. They became very successful with what they were doing, but my dad was a workaholic. My grandfather, my mother’s father, was a workaholic. There was a lot of family dynamics in there that were going to create a lot of stress and they were going to create stress on me. So I was the one that was blamed for tearing up my mom’s life in Omaha and ruining everything she had planned because she now had to be a farm wife and a mother.
Michael:
So it was your fault she lost her job, her career. They lost their social life there, they lost all of those things.
Amber DeAnn:
They lost everything. So it was all my fault. So she carried this revenge against me for a long time. And as you know, when you do some functional medicine, the stress hormones develop and they move from the mother into the child, into the womb. And now the child has as much trauma and stress as the mother did. She’s not even born yet. So when I was born, mom said it took three days in labor to have me and then I didn’t want to be touched by her at all.
So every time she touched me, I screamed. So that is a bad start already to have for a life. And then after that, a lot of things happened and I was abused in a lot of different ways, but I don’t remember it. When I was almost eight years old, my brother was born and that’s when my memory kicked in. It was like I had an energy transfusion and now I was awake and I was alive. And here I was on the farm and trying to cope with the whole situation. Everybody was still angry at me. Now all the tension is focused on my brother. He gets all the praise and the glory and they’re constantly taking care of him because he’s a man and he’s going to help on the farm and all of this kind of stuff.
So I was ignored and there wasn’t any security, there wasn’t any safety, there wasn’t any trust. Because every time mom got upset about some little things she blew up and she started to hit me. And so I grew up with an overactive nervous system. I grew up with the fight, flight or freeze thing going on, 100 times a day. I had bad dreams, I had all kinds of things. I couldn’t relate. I ended up the, first couple years of school, I did very poorly. I think I had Ds and Fs in everything. Something happened when I turned eight and then I had that energy transfusion and then I could do good in school. So while I was being ignored by my dad, ignored by my brother and abused by my mom, emotionally, mentally and everything, my outlet was going to school. So I went to school, I’d got good grades, things were moving along really well.
When I was 10, I said to my parents, “You’re going to buy me a piano.” And they go, “What? Nobody around here plays the piano. We don’t do music.” I said, “You’re buying me a piano and you’re going to do it now. So let’s get going here.” So they did. And that turned out to be the saving thing that calmed my mother down. Because when I played piano, her nerves calmed down. That’s what allowed me to get through the next 18 years without us beating each other up too bad. So she still had emotional abuse of the things I did. She didn’t like spending money on me. She didn’t anything with me. She had a constant feud with her mother. So I always in the middle of a feud someplace. She was either arguing with dad or arguing with her mother. And I had to go along all the time.
And then my grandfather died when I was 13, and then things got really bad between my mom and my grandmother. So there was a lot of stress there. So when I turned 18, I said, “Now you’re going to pay from me to go to college,” and they did. It took some work. Mom had to convince dad because he had the old time philosophy that women don’t need an education, all that stuff. So through grade school, I fit in because it was all dealing with country kids. When I got to high school, when I got to college, I didn’t fit in at all because I didn’t have the social skills. I didn’t have that bonding, I didn’t have that attachment. I was learning to be self-sufficient. When I was home and I tried to be self-sufficient, I tried to read a book, I tried to paint something, I tried to do something.
Michael:
Something to stay out of the way.
Amber DeAnn:
Mom would always squash it, “Oh you can’t do that. We got farm work to do. We’ve got produce to do. We’ve got strawberries to pick. We’ve got da, da, da, da.” So there was always something going on pulling me in all these directions. So I never got to figure out who I was, what I liked, where my skills were, how I was even going to fit in and relate to the world. But I knew that I had to get away from mom. So I finally got through, so I got through college, I got pretty good grades. Then I got out from school and I had no skills to function in the real world. And I was bouncing from job to job to job and it was really disgusting.
So those first years when I was young, I had to deal [inaudible 00:09:46]. I was very shy. So I stuttered and I just couldn’t find my way. I didn’t feel I could make friends. Friends were not allowed in the family. I couldn’t bring people overnight. I couldn’t have friends over. I couldn’t go over to other people’s house. So all the social arrangements were cut. Everything I wanted to do that was productive or creative or expressive was squelched. Everything had to be work on arm and work, work, work. That’s all my life was. So when I got out, I decided I still need to separate from my mom, so I married a man she didn’t like. I thought that’s going to do it. Now, I can finally cut the cords and I can be away from mom. I’ll just get married.
So I got married. He turned out to be an alcoholic. That didn’t last, but a couple of years. Now I’m back in the world by myself, trying to find my own way, bouncing from job to job, to job. I finally end up in the 12 step program based on advice from my friend who was conquering her alcohol addiction and that turned out to be my saving grace. That was the thing that allowed me to really start taking a look at myself, pulling back the covers and all those emotions I had squelched, all that anger, all that fear, all that everything. But it was really hard because everything was not accessible. My conscious mind couldn’t talk with my subconscious mind. So I had trouble feeling. I had trouble making friends, expressing myself, all that stuff was just huge problems.
Michael:
Which is totally understandable given you had no access to that and no demonstration to that and no attunement to that and no modeling of that and no way to learn.
Amber DeAnn:
No.
Michael:
Yeah.
Amber DeAnn:
So not only did I not have any feelings, I didn’t have any respect for myself because you need a mother, you need mirroring, you need attachment, you need love bonds in order to build up those self-esteem channels in yourself. So I didn’t have any of that. So after that, my whole life had been a progress, a journey of, okay, how am I going to heal myself? How do I put all of my pieces back together again? And the journey has been, it’s been difficult, yes. And I’ve had lots of health problems along the way. When I was a child, I had trench mouth. And then when I got older, I had mercury poisoning about the time my father died, from several amalgam fillings in my teeth. And so that took a whole year to recover from that.
And I was unemployed a lot. So I was living off welfare and food stamps and money from the home and everything. And it was just like, oh my goodness, this is a very difficult life. But once I moved to California and I started to absorb all the good things that were in California, then things started to turn around. And one of the first things I did was when I moved here, I moved straight to Sacramento, on a bus from Des Moines, Iowa. Took three days to get on a bus. I had one suitcase and I had a group home that I could stay at for a while after I got here. So it was a female group home.
And while I was in there waiting for my job opportunity to come through and all that stuff, I got to listen to Bradshaw. And Bradshaw had fantastic stuff. Bradshaw was big in the eighties and the nineties. He was really big. And I was listening to his stuff and he’s analyzing the family and the family connections and the dynamics and how addictions are born and created. And I was going, “Oh my God. Wow, this is cool.” So I just absorbed everything he was saying. Later on, I got settled and then I could start buying the books and looking up my program and going to the psychics and the healers and everything.
Michael:
Were you pretty physically healthy as a kid or in high school or college? Did you always have symptoms and issues and things physically?
Amber DeAnn:
Yes. I had colds. I would get colds two or three times a year and they would last over a month, each time. I was constantly blowing my nose. The sinuses were always draining. Other than that, I had good health. I didn’t have any chronic issues. I didn’t have anything. Once in a while I would get the flu. I had the measles, the chicken pox, all this stuff, childhood stuff. But my health was really good. All through grade school, high school, college, everything. And it wasn’t until, like I said, a year after my father died that I got the silver amalgam fillings and the mercury poisoning.
Michael:
How old were you when your father passed away?
Amber DeAnn:
He passed away in ’87. I was born in 50. So I was 37.
Michael:
Okay. And so things slid after that, healthwise?
Amber DeAnn:
Things slid after that because he was my buffer between me and mom. And every time mom got ready to kill me, dad would step in and buffer that. And so when he died, I was like thrown. I didn’t know where I was going, what I was going to do. How am I going to deal with mom by myself? Mom was a really tough cookie. And so it was very difficult. Emotionally, I felt drained and I knew I was going to have this constant battle with my mother. And she was sick too. She smoked and so she had coronary problems and all those things. So she was never in a good mood. She never liked me anyway. So yeah, that was a real trip. But then after that, when I started to get on my journey, that’s when I started to discover that all of this is ancestral pain, ancestral trauma. Things that she couldn’t process, her mother couldn’t process, all that kind of stuff.
And it was when I started to develop my psychic skills, when I started to do readings, when I started to connect with my spirit guide and all that, that’s when all the information started to come out. That’s when I could see what was really happening and why all the friction between us that I hadn’t caused, I didn’t think, and it was amazing because then I could start to talk to my mother’s soul. This was after she had died, she died in 2004. And she left me some money, which I used to publish and promote my book, buy a house, all that kind of stuff.
So she was trying to take care of me financially. But here I was in all this trauma because not knowing how to deal with her. And then when I could start to connect with her psychically, when I started talking with her soul, that’s when all kinds of things opened up. And that’s when I also learned more about the family history. And when I did, it was amazing because then my heart, my cold heart and that anger at her, I hated her for all those years. But then my cold heart started to melt and then I could see her as a real human being, having all these challenges that she couldn’t deal with. And she didn’t have any resources because they weren’t available then. And then it was like, okay. And that opened up a whole new sense of forgiveness.
Michael:
So a lot of the ways that you share the story about they were forced to leave their social life and they were forced to leave this. And then they had to go live on a farm with her mom who she didn’t get along with, which was really stressful and difficult. Those are all perspectives that you have gathered as an adult. Because that’s very empathetic or compassionate to look at it like, yes, she was objectively terrible to me as a child. And she was dealing with this and this and this and this and this intergenerational thing and this stuff put on by her mom and the stressful thing and having to leave a career and having to leave a social life and all of that. And that really shifts something in us when we can understand and empathize with.
It doesn’t make it right. I always want to just put that out there. It doesn’t make it right that you, as a child, were treated in the way that you were. And it doesn’t make it fair and it doesn’t make it okay and it doesn’t change the damage that was done, but it allows the person, if there’s somebody listening here, to shift their current experience of that person.
Amber DeAnn:
Yes.
Michael:
And retroactively it shifts something as well, I found to be, because there’s people that were in my life when I was a kid that I didn’t have that for, for a long time. And I carried a lot of animosity and bitterness and anger and rage. And then now I see things much differently. And it’s because I did the work to understand the dynamic and their experience and in their life.
We create stories, this person did this because of this or this person said this because of this. And we don’t consider any other possibility and it’s the story we run with. And as a kid, the story that a child might create in that situation is, you mentioned your self-esteem issues and your lack of ability to socialize and addiction and these things is, “I ruined my mom’s life. I caused her to be like, this it’s my fault. I’m the problem. I’m the thing that shouldn’t exist,” I’m X, Y thing because children don’t have the capacity to see the bigger picture, to understand the dynamics in play. They just know that the person who’s supposed to be taking care of me is scary and unsafe and does not take care of me. And then there’s this isolation. I’m guessing didn’t really have anybody to communicate any of that to, or with, as a kid.
Amber DeAnn:
I didn’t have anybody to talk to at all because you’re very isolated on the farm and especially where we were and it was the fifties and then moved into the sixties. That wasn’t available. Nobody was thinking about intergenerational trauma. Nobody was thinking about problems with child abuse with the family. None of that existed until many years later on. But what you said was totally right. I had developed a, “I’m not good enough, I don’t belong here” mentality. And I think that affected my, it was [inaudible 00:20:55], it affected my interactions with people, it affected my ability to get certain jobs. It affected everything because-
Michael:
And your physical body.
Amber DeAnn:
My physical body, yes. And what happened was when I was bopping around trying to find jobs after I had graduated from college, I remember there were at least 10 years where I had to fight suicide thoughts and it was only one kind of suicide I was thinking about, and this was something that happened in my family. So it was like I was going to repeat a suicide thing that was an accident, car accident, from my family. And I was going to terminate myself because it didn’t seem like anything was going to work in my life. And it didn’t seem like anybody cared. There was nobody there for me. But I was able to restrain myself so I wouldn’t drive my car underneath a truck and kill my myself. I was able to restrain myself or my spirit did for some reason. And that’s the only reason I’m here now, because that went on for many, many years. But that all has to be something that comes up as a result of your subconscious saying-
Michael:
It’s the programming, it’s the story.
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Amber DeAnn:
I picked up all these messages from my mom, “You’re not good enough. You don’t belong here. Why do I have to deal with you? You don’t serve a function in this world. You’ll never be anything.”
Michael:
And you couple that with this stress, the utero stress and early childhood stress. I’ve done a lot of study the last few years on child development and neurobiology. And for anybody listening, who’s interested in that, checkout Dr. Dan Siegel’s work, The Neurobiology of “We” is a great book. He’s at UCLA, I think, or UCSD or one of those. But Neurobiology of “We” explains a lot of how that happens. And the neuro pathways that are affected as children when attunement is not present like regulated nervous system. We learn how to regulate our nervous system by attuning to a regulated nervous system. Our nervous system is as much internal as it is like an antenna. And so we regulate to the nervous system. And infants, newborns and fetus, infant, newborn, that level of child, does not have the capability to self-regulate a nervous system.
It doesn’t have it. It has to learn. It has to attune to. And so when you’re tiny and you freak out and everything’s going crazy, like every panic for a baby is like an existential crisis. They’re hungry, “I’m going to die.” They’re cold, “I’m going to die.” Everything is I’m going to die. They don’t even have the conscious ability to think I’m going to die. But the level of fear instilled in a newborn or an infant when they’re cold or they’re hungry or they’re confused, or they’re whatever, all of it is about survival. It’s, “I’m going to die” because we’re actually, I don’t know if this is true, but we’re one of the most helpless creatures born. You look at a horse is born, two hours later, it’s trotting around, running, eating for mom or grass. Some animals eat right away, other ones feed right away. But they can walk, they can move, they can run away from things. They can do stuff.
Amber DeAnn:
Yes, yes.
Michael:
Human children are helpless, completely helpless and completely dependent on the caretakers. And that nervous system attunement, if when we freak out, we don’t receive an attunement to a nervous system that tells us, “Oh, this is okay. You’re going to be okay. I’m okay. Look at me, be okay. This is okay. You’re going to be okay. Let’s calm this, let’s solve this problem,” and then your nervous system realizes, okay, this isn’t the end of the world. This can calm down. And then you feel like that heightened thing drop. You eventually learn the ability to self soothe and self-regulate and whatever.
Those of us who didn’t have that, for one reason or another, not only did you have these stories ingrained in your head that, I’m no good. I ruined this. I don’t belong, et cetera, et cetera, you also had a nervous system where every little thing that happened is a crisis for you, is an alert, is an alarm, is unsafe, is whatever. And because it frankly was. Things were dangerous. It’s like you caught yourself in a double whammy, the self-loathing type of story mixed with everything is a catastrophe on your system. And for people who don’t understand this, it’s like, if you miss a red light or something… Everything when your nervous system is like that, every little thing that happens, like something falls on the floor or a phone call doesn’t go right or whatever the thing is, it’s this charge.
Amber DeAnn:
Because when you’re small, you don’t have a way to regulate your emotions. You don’t have a way to deal with the trauma. You can’t move out of the fight or flight by yourself. You have to get that from your parents. My mother was always in a fight or flight kind of a thing. And my dad was a workaholic, so he was always pushing to make money.
Michael:
Not present. Not able to be that.
Amber DeAnn:
And my brother said, “Oh, you’re crazy. I don’t want anything to do with you.” So there was no way for me to learn that. And that was part of my journey to learn how to do this. And I was really proud of myself because I would go to talk therapists, after I got to be an adult, and they would sit and say, “Okay, now tell me your story and what happened. And then what happened?” And I said, after five minutes, “I’m not going to sit here and tell you my story. You either have a solution for me or I’m walking out of here because I know what my story is and I’m not just sitting here paying you a whole bunch of money to sit and ask me those questions if you don’t have any kind of a remedy. You don’t have any kind of a solution. This is crazy.”
So we would put me on an EMDR machine and I would watch this with the eyes and I’d be holding on to some electro-energy current going through my body. And I would hear beep, beep, beep. That would help for about a day, and then that all blew up too. From the work I was reading from Bradshaw, I said, “Okay, I’m going to have to go back to my early childhood. I’m going to have to relive it the best I could as normal as I could.” So I pretended I was going to be a child again. I watched cartoons, I watched child movies. I read child books. I went to the playground and watched children play on that. I took courses at community college for child development. And then I worked for child development agencies for a, like day care stuff.
Michael:
And there’s a part of you that really appreciated that.
Amber DeAnn:
Yes. And there was a part of me and then all the pieces started to fit in. Then I started to see what I had missed, what I couldn’t remember, what I had squelched because I had to survive. And that’s when all these other things started to come in. And that was really the best therapy that I ever imagined because that activated the inner child part of me that I thought was dead.
Michael:
Who never got to be a child.
Amber DeAnn:
Yeah. I never got to be a child.
Michael:
You were parenting your mother. You probably became really hypervigilant and would learn what set her off because I can relate to that. What would set her off and what would cause that to happen, and then it’s your responsibility to make none of that happen.
Amber DeAnn:
Yeah. Well, it wasn’t that I couldn’t make it happen because I knew it was going to happen. But the thing of it was I wasn’t going to let her crush me and I had this really strong desire. If we have to fight it out to the end, I’m going to fight it out, but she’s not going to crush me like a bug. So I would stand up for my rights and then she would stand up for hers and we were working in the kitchen and I would turn on the rock music and she would turn it off and I would turn it on and she would turn it off.
Michael:
That’s not getting to be a child.
Amber DeAnn:
Yeah. We had all of this just going on. There was no time to read books, no time to listen to music, no time to do anything.
Michael:
Play, explore.
Amber DeAnn:
No, no time to play, explore. It all had to be directed to the farm and what made the farm work. So it was when I took the classes, tried to redevelop my child development issues, that’s when things started to perk up. Then we could move into the 12 step program, which is for people from dysfunctional foundation families. That’s when I learned to write, when I learned to feel, when I enjoyed poetry, when I enjoyed music, when I enjoyed ballads, when I enjoyed all kinds of things. And all that stuff started to perk up and it was like, oh man, there’s a whole new world out there. There’s music and there’s art and there’s this and there’s that. And it was like, okay, I could be part of it now and I could embrace it and I could use it and I could deal with it. And I did and moved forward. That’s where I developed my creative writing. So I’ve written two books since then. I’ve written poetry, I’ve taught workshops for women who also feel stuck and have had family issues.
Michael:
I’m curious how your physical body responded when you started doing that work, like the child work and the explorations and the art and the music and things like that.
Amber DeAnn:
Well, my soul woke then. I finally could wake up my soul. It was like, okay, I’m not just this body that I detest. I’m not just this energy spirit in this body, which doesn’t even fit. My energy wasn’t even flowing all the way through my body. Psychics would look at me and they’d say, “Why does your energy field end at your knees?” And I would go, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” So then, because I didn’t know what I was talking about, then I got to explore energy and energy healing and spirituality and the flow of energy and working with energy and that whole dynamic. And it was so cool. It was hard.
It was the hardest because I had to pull, physically, mentally, pull and with imagination, my energy field back into my body because this had disappeared. The body code lady said, “Well, shortly after you were born, your spirit left your body because it couldn’t cope with what you’re having to deal with at home. And you didn’t come back in until you were almost eight years old.” And so the spirit and the body never really connected in a way that made you a functional whole person. So I had to mentally, and imagination [inaudible 00:32:59]. It took a long time. Then I had to feel my body and get acquainted with it, like it was a stranger-
Michael:
It wasn’t safe.
Amber DeAnn:
No.
Michael:
There’s actually, here, actually I think I’m using it as a stand for my microphone. Yeah. This is a book called The 5 Personality Patterns. It’s by Steven Kessler. It’s based off the work of Reich, which was the first character styles look. And that is called the leaving pattern or a schizoid pattern. But it’s early childhood wound leaves the body as a defense mechanism. And it’s very common actually for kids with various forms of trauma in childhood to not remember anything.
It’s actually like a key clue when in both of the trainings that I’m currently in, especially the one with Gabor Mate, when his work, if someone says they don’t remember their childhood, but it was totally normal, that’s his first clue that there’s a lot there to explore. Because not only from a spiritual standpoint and energetic, like you’re talking about, leaving and physically not being present and these two things being separate, there’s also, like you mentioned, that your mother was extremely stressed when she was pregnant and was extremely stressed when you were young and that the stress hormones go in the child. And the stress hormones actually inhibit the part of the brain that’s essential for recall memory.
So if a young child is very stressed, the part of their brain that is responsible for… Because the subconscious remembers everything. But by recall memory, I mean conscious memory, like I can’t remember this thing or I can’t see this thing. What we usually refer to as memory is actually recall. The subconscious mind remembers everything. That’s stored in the body, it’s stored in the mind. But the cortisol and the other stress hormones actually shut down the function of and development of the part of the brain that is essential for having those recall memories.
So my wife, she remembers stuff from when she was like two years old. She’ll remember a party she was at and what somebody was wearing. I don’t remember a thing until I was probably about five or six and even then it’s sketchy until later. But that pattern, if somebody’s interested in learning about that, this book, The 5 Personality Patterns, is excellent. And it explains how the origin of those patterns, and leaving is just one of them. The schizoid, the not being present, is just one of them. And it’s usually related to pre-birth or birth trauma or really young trauma because like you said it in your words, the spirit or the energy, it’s unsafe. So it checks out. And you said your return, as you explained it, was when your brother was born, right?
Amber DeAnn:
Yes.
Michael:
And so there was probably a deflection of some of the energy that you had been the primary recipient of, gave a little space, would be my unsolicited opinion on how that might have happened.
Amber DeAnn:
I think that happened too because now mom and dad had other things to do. They had another child.
Michael:
Another focus of their-
Amber DeAnn:
Yes. They had a child to raise and they had to groom him to take over the farm. And they had a lot of work to teach him how to do everything, and they didn’t have all the time to be with me all the time.
Michael:
So you got a respite, like a little bit of a-
Amber DeAnn:
Yeah, I got a little respite. So it was like, okay, there was some breathing room here. Parents still didn’t like me, dad still didn’t talk to me, mom’s still emotionally-
Michael:
At least they’re over there most of the time now.
Amber DeAnn:
Ranting on me all the time. But now her focus on to be, “I have to keep my son alive. He’s got allergies, he’s got bronchial conditions. He’s got this. Doesn’t matter, we got to keep him alive because he’s carrying on the farm and he’s he’s wise and he understands money and he can help us grow and prosper and all that stuff.” And I was just another mouth to feed. I was just a thing that they had to deal with. So when you asked a while ago how this affected my body, when was learning how to reconnect with my soul, feel my emotions, express myself, then it was like a brand new world and my body was so excited. It was like, wow, there is something to live for, there is some adventure in life. There are some good things in life. There are some positive things that make me feel good.
But then as the years developed, I still had challenges. I couldn’t feel comfortable where I was living. I couldn’t feel comfortable with my jobs, so I moved a lot. I changed jobs a lot until I got into hypnotherapy. And then I figured that, oh, this is my world. But through COVID was another layer of stress. And then I left where I was living because I didn’t like it. It was an old people’s home, a senior citizen place. And they were pretty controlling on us, on all of us. And that triggered me, all the control from my parents. And I said, “Okay, I got to bust out of here.” So I stayed with a friend for a couple months in Sacramento. She didn’t want me either, so she was emotionally abusive. So there’s a whole nother layer of stress.
So then I finally found this place in Reno and I’m moving in. And the night of my moving in, I’m very tired, it’s late at night. I slip into the bathtub and fibromyalgia kicks in. All over my body is in pain, burning itching, pain deep from inside. I’m going, “Oh my God, what is all of this I have to deal with?” So it took months and months to deal with that.
So while I had cleared off some layers of stress, mentally and vibrationally, I hadn’t dealt with the nervous system. And so now my whole focus these last couple of months has been resetting the nervous system so that I can function without pain, without all of this, of stress and anxiety. So I get rid of the brain fog, I get rid of the pain, I get rid of the reactions. And while it’s been difficult getting through all that physical pain, it’s been a real eye opener as to how to deal with the nervous system and how to learn to calm down and how to learn to breathe and how to learn to focus and enjoy nature and just expand that other aspect of me that is my inner child looking for comfort and peace.
Michael:
And you did do functional medicine work as well, in addition to that, right? Because we went on, you shared with me your practitioner that is in Reno.
Amber DeAnn:
Yes.
Michael:
So you were combining that approach with doing the work on your nervous system and the inner child and the soul exploration and the energetics and things like that. And how is the progress with the fibromyalgia? How are you now and how long was that?
Amber DeAnn:
Tremendous. After just a couple of weeks of working his program, changing my diet, being on supplements, dealing with more emotional stuff that was coming up, allowing myself to self express with painting, with writing, with poetry, all that stuff, reading more, accepting more, and then starting with and dealing with the scoliosis because that locks up certain muscles and nerves, and then you’ve got tightness and then the body doesn’t work. Once I learned that I was going to have to approach this, all of these areas at the same time, then the fibromyalgia’s gone.
And now I have maybe 2% of the pain that I used to have. And it only comes and goes once in a while. And the brain fog is lifting and it’s like, “Oh, wow. Finally, I’m free.” And it’s free, not just from the pain, but it’s free from the past. It’s free from all of those buried emotions, all that buried self hate, all that buried conflict with the mom and the parents and the ancestral woundedness. And I’m clearing out the ancestral trauma too, while I’m doing all of this. So I’m pretty busy, but it’s really coming together in a beautiful way.
Michael:
And it breaks the cycle.
Amber DeAnn:
Yes, totally. It breaks the cycle. And that was the one thing that I think my spirit knew I needed to do. It was not just the fact that I had bad karma from past lives with all of these members of my family. But it’s also the fact that I had to deal with their generational trauma, clear all of that for them, for my peace of mind, for energy flow, and I could learn how to live better by integrating all of my parts. Now my intuition’s alive and my creativity and my self-love and respect. Then I recently just finished a class on self-love with Teal Swan, and that was amazing. I totally loved that. And then I decided I should teach an anxiety class because I can touch some of these points that other people are having and I can help them start to see the bigger, broader picture. So I wrote it out, but I haven’t promoted it yet. And it’s one of the things… I need to get a team and a whole bunch of stuff to move-
Michael:
Turning your wounding and your pain and your struggles into medicine. I can definitely-
Amber DeAnn:
Into medicine that’s useful for other people.
Michael:
I can definitely relate to that. It seems like it’s the only thing to do. Once I’ve figured out a lot of this stuff for myself, I was like, well, this is stuff that everybody needs. This should be part of the human experience. Everyone needs to know this. We operate in this society and this culture in such a closed, miniature, minuscule kind of way. You touched on so many different disciplines and lineage of healing and different types of things like even intergenerational trauma. Some people may hear that in our audience and roll their eyes or think that’s not a thing. There’s multiple levels on which that exists and shows up. One, they’ve shown in, I believe it’s mice or rats or something 12 or 13 generations, I don’t remember, a rodent, is traumatized in some way by a sound or by a thing or whatever, it’s 12 or 13 generations later that their offspring still have a of that thing. And so it changes the genetics for at least 12 or 13 generations that we’re aware of.
And then also it’s passed down in the behaviors themselves. So that’s the more obvious programming of this person abused this person who abused this person who abused this. If you do any backstory on serial killers or abusers and rapists, and these types of people, almost 100% of them were abused as a child, literally almost 100%. And that it’s this passed down behavior in addition to the genetic switching. And so people roll their eyes at that, and I used to be one of them. And it’s not only true, there’s multiple levels on which it’s true. There’s different ways to look at it. For the scientific mind, go look at the epigenetics research. For the less scientific mind, just look at the way that it shows up. You mentioned that your mother was combative with her mother.
Amber DeAnn:
Oh, all the time.
Michael:
So of course there’s going to be a continuation of that, and you were combative with her.
Amber DeAnn:
Yes.
Michael:
The reasons you were combative with her were probably the same reasons she was combative with her mother who was likely combative with her mother. And these are things that are very, very real and that the child doesn’t sign up for. This is something you walk into and you’re defenseless with. People say, “Your mind shapes the world that you see.” And that’s true. But what they often leave out is that before that happens, the world shapes your mind. It puts the lenses through which you see things and experience things there. And then we operate from that, from the abused child, from the terrified brain, from the nervous system that’s heightened, from the people are dangerous, from the I can’t have friends from the whatever, and we don’t realize that those are-
Amber DeAnn:
All multiple layers.
Michael:
Masks that can be removed.
Amber DeAnn:
And the thing that I want your listeners to understand is that you need a source of energy when you’re doing all of this. You need a really strong belief system in the power and the guidance and the wisdom of your higher self. And until you get that, I think it’s going to be very difficult to do this kind of a program. And so as I was learning spirituality years ago, I was learning what is the benefit? What’s the purpose of us even being here? I had to go back very fundamental to that question. And what I was coming up with and what made the most sense and what everybody was saying is we’re here to have experiences, as a soul in a body, conquering all of these challenges to create collective energy, collective consciousness for everybody.
And if we decide we don’t like something, we just change our thoughts about it and we move in a different direction. We don’t have to be stuck. We don’t have to perpetrate all those old family belief systems, those family woundedness, the hormonal changes, ancestral panic, trauma. We don’t have to do any of that. We can say, “I’m done and I’m moving away.” And I’ve done that several times and that’s what gets me through. You have to have that really strong connection with your higher self. And then you have to understand you have a purpose here and that purpose is to help elevate collective consciousness toward the good.
Michael:
I couldn’t agree more. And I have come to similar their conclusions in my own journey and with those that I’ve had the pleasure of walking with and learning from and learning with. It really is so missed in our culture, all of these things. Not only missed, like it’s an accident, but it intentionally suppressed and intentionally driven out because it’s not the narrative, it’s not the system. This is a very structured, patriarchal, masculine type of system that doesn’t involve things like energy and soul and spirit and purpose and connection and divine and higher self and all of that. You go to other cultures in the world, sure, these things are commonly understood. Especially like indigenous cultures and indigenous healing. This is all common sense to them. They hear somebody talk about this stuff and they’re like, “Of course, this is how you do it.”
And then they would look at our medical model and be like, “This is insane.” And so of course, everybody’s sick. Look at this, look at how you live. I’ve had the pleasure, honor of learning from several wisdom keepers from indigenous traditions and they find it almost comical that it’s like a mystery to us, why everybody is sick and unhealthy and unhappy and diseased. They’re just like, look at what you do, look at how you live. I’ve gotten to learn from some students, direct students of the Dalai Lama when it comes to Tibetan Buddhism and they said when he first came to the United States for the first time, and he met a bunch of Americans, he said, “I can’t teach these people,” because we’re so pulled away from what we really are by the time we’re adults that he didn’t even know how to reach them.
Because there’s so many of these layers of trauma and story and misconceptions and walls and diversion, where in his culture, in Tibet and in the East, there, they start teaching it as a child. They start teaching these practices as a child. And so that doesn’t exist. And he was like, “I don’t even know how to reach these people.” Now obviously, if anybody out there’s read his books now or watched his videos or listened to the Dalai Lama talk, he’s obviously figured out a great deal of how to reach the Western thinker or mind, because he is really fun and brilliant to listen to. But at first he said, “I don’t know how to teach these people” because we are so far removed.
And in the functional medicine world, the people who are part of our community and audience, they understand that and know that and it’s common sense from the aspect of nutrition and lifestyle and like ways of living and movement and things like that. The paleo movement really brought that forward, that we’re way out of touch with our natural way of being when it comes to what we eat and how we move and how we live our lives.
But this other side of things with spirituality and emotions and the mental aspect and the stories and the attunement and the child upbringing and the connection and the nervous system stuff, we are, as a society, just as out of alignment with what produces health there. But that gets swept under the rug. There’s pills for that, just give them the antidepressants. I saw an article yesterday, the headline was more Americans than ever are depressed, we need new antidepressant drugs, was the headline. And it’s like, no, that’s not what you just deducted from that, that’s not the story. That’s insane. Someone who understands these things could look at that and be like, “This is completely insane to think.” No pill was going to help you get through that. All it could do is numb it out. And like you said, at the beginning, you numbed that out and you missed everything else.
Amber DeAnn:
You do. When I lived in the Bay Area, I got to know some Indian families, very well and their lifestyle, their diet, their belief system, their everything, their community, their sense of community was so strong. I was in awe. I would just go every day and go, “What can you teach me today? I want to learn this. What is this book about? What’s this theory about?”
Michael:
Well, they’re less removed from the original way.
Amber DeAnn:
Yes.
Michael:
They’re less modern. I don’t want to say less modernized because that’s usually used as like some sort of an insult, but less modern societyized. In the US, you don’t see Americans living in family units and communities. Most people don’t know who their neighbors are. There’s no sense of that. It’s rugged individualism. And then you see the immigrant communities in this country and they’re close together. They work together. The family units are in one house or in a neighborhood or they all know each other and it’s this thing. Well, no kidding.
Amber DeAnn:
That’s what so impressed me. It was not just their diet and it wasn’t that they were really more healthy than I was. They got colds and all this stuff too because they ate lot of dairy. But they had a peace. There was peace in their soul, there was peace in their mind. They knew what their belief systems were around religion and spirituality. They knew who they were, what they could do and they had a community. They had a community. I mean they were tight. They got these Yahoo pages, they got this group, they got that group. They want something, they’re on-
Michael:
Helps with each other’s kids. Family getting jobs for each other.
Amber DeAnn:
Yes, jobs. Where do you buy this kind of food and where do you buy that kind of vegetable and how do you deal with this at the school? They’re communicating all the time, sharing all this information. Everybody knows everybody else’s business and it’s okay. It’s not gossipy and it’s not belittling, degrading, it’s community.
Michael:
It’s like a village, like a tribe.
Amber DeAnn:
It’s like a village, like a tribe. And I’m going, “Oh my God, we have missed that in our whole society. So how do I get that? Where can I be part of that? I want to be part to the tribe. Where do I sign up?” And they say, “You’re not Indian.” I said, “Shoot.”
Michael:
Give me a do over. Next time.
Amber DeAnn:
I’m not Indian. Maybe an reincarnation.
Michael:
But it’s possible. There’s ways to create that and there’s ways to find that and there’s ways to explore that. That is an essential part of healing that most people miss out on too. A lot of our audience, a common theme that I see in the chat rooms during our webinars and things is, how do I get my family on board with this? Or I don’t have anyone to support me, or I don’t know people like you guys in real life, how do I find any people? And it’s a real challenge. It makes doing any of this stuff much harder if you don’t have that support.
Well we’re at about time and this has been really enriching, I feel. And I hope that everybody can appreciate. I understand the amount of work that you’ve done. I have an understanding of what are the results of what you went through and where does that leave someone? And what’s needed to move through that and how much? This is not like a snap your fingers and decide I’m better type of scenario. A lot of the things you’ve mentioned are a lot of work.
Amber DeAnn:
They were a lot of work. And I worked really hard at least 10 years on this. And then five, 10 years before that, when I was learning to write, learning to feel, learning to do all that stuff. It’s been a long journey. And I had to drop connections with certain people, had to drop connections with certain programs. I had to take MDs out of my life, put functional medicine people in. I’ve had to adjust all of those things so that I’m doing what’s good for me, so that I’m bringing in resources for me. And to finally get to the point where you start looking at, yeah, me is important and I got to have a community of support people here, medical, spiritual people, all that around me to support me, that’s a huge step to make too. And that’s another reason why I’ll never go back to live in the Midwest. It’s just not-
Michael:
Hey, as an Illinois boy who lives in California, I can’t disagree with your assessment there. I will also not be moving back to the Midwest anytime soon. And I’ve actually been to Des Moines, Iowa, several times and Omaha and those areas. So I’m pretty familiar with the vast amount of nothing that’s there and the distance that was probably between your house and the nearest people and the social disconnect that goes on with that, especially in your situation. So kudos to you and thanks for sharing it. And now you do work to help others.
Amber DeAnn:
My work is on a website called coachingbyamber.com. And on that website are also links to my social media channels. I’m on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, on Instagram now and then. And I’m soon going to be moving onto all of the new social media platforms that are out there because I think they’re going to be really valuable. So I have a couple of Facebook groups. I have a Transformed Childhood, Experiences With Trauma and Stress, and I have one on Anxiety Tamed.
Michael:
Great.
Amber DeAnn:
So they can find me on Facebook, any of those groups, and send me some questions and comments and whatever. I’ve just made some posts now and I’ve got some new blogs coming up. And I’ve written two books. Those books are on my website pages.
Michael:
Congratulations on that. That’s no small feat.
Amber DeAnn:
Thank you.
Michael:
I’ve kicked around the idea a few times and the scale of it always gets the best of me. And I think, “No, you can’t do that right now.” So at some point I’ll jump in, but I have a lot of friends who are authors, I know what that is. And so congrats on that.
Amber DeAnn:
It’s a huge energy thing to do that, and that’s even the small part. Marketing is the big picture here, the big expense, the big time endeavor, everything. Yeah, so I’ve got to boost that all up.
Michael:
Hopefully, we help out a little bit with that. Everybody head over and check out Amber’s work and her books and her Facebook groups and everything else. And thank you for reaching out.
Amber DeAnn:
I do really good services.
Michael:
I’m sure that you do, you’re working from experience and you can understand where people are at. And that’s a huge thing in helping people heal in any regard is being able to see where they are and understand where they are, and for them to feel seen and understood. And so you have, unfortunately, all of the experiences necessary to be able to do that, but then those burdens and those pains become gifts.
Amber DeAnn:
They do, they do.
Michael:
It’s really inspiring. So thank you for reaching out and for volunteering to share and for coming on and sharing your story and for everything that you’re doing.
Amber DeAnn:
Thank you so much. Best of luck Michael.
Michael:
And this brings us to the end of today’s episode. Head on over to rebelhealthtribe.com/kit to access the RHT quick start bundle, which includes four full length presentations from our RHT masterclasses, two downloadable PDF guides and a 15% off coupon, which you can use in our retail shop. If you’re on Facebook, come join our Rebel Health Tribe group over there. And finally, if you like the show, please subscribe, leave a review and share with your friends. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you again soon.