#330 Mental Wealth with Michelle I. Gomez
Content warning for: discussion of sensitive topics like trauma, mental illness, abuse, sexual assault, and suicide. If you or a loved one is struggling, I’ve included some resources in the show notes below.
Sometimes with creativity there can be a roller coaster of emotions, and even mental health issues, that get in the way of your process as an artist.
This week we’re talking about mental health for makers. I recently had Dr. Jennifer Tippett on the podcast to talk about trauma and psychedelics.
Today, I’m sitting down with the wonderful life and business coach, Michelle I. Gomez, to talk about mental wealth.
Michelle helps ambitious multi-passionate creators get paid multiple six figures without sacrificing their mental health.
Through her holistic and trauma-sensitive approach to coaching, her clients gain better emotional intelligence to heal in order to create the life, love, and six figure business they love.
She also has an extensive background as an artist and maker herself, so she’s very attuned to the strain that trauma can put on our creative potential.
Her mission is to help artists of all kinds use their stories as fuel for their creativity, not as a draining force.
Click here to download the show notes
Creativity and Mental Health
Michelle has coached hundreds of makers who struggle with their relationship to art, creativity and money.
She has found that this is often the result of traumatic experiences at a young age, where the artist was not supported in their zone of genius and creativity.
Traumatic experiences lead to a dysregulated nervous system, Michelle explains, and that can lead to dysfunctional habits and behaviors, often carried over from childhood.
It’s important to note here that our definition of trauma has expanded since the early days of psychology, and it can show up in many forms.
As Michelle describes it, the body’s response to trauma is very similar across all different kinds of people with all different kinds of experiences.
Finding Safety Within Yourself
When your body doesn’t feel safe, it reacts with a trauma response, the four most common being fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
When you experience these responses in your body, Michelle recommends strategies to help you learn how to feel safe.
The first step is to recognize that safety comes from certainty, and certainty can be found within yourself. Even in an unsafe situation, you can find comfort in certainty by coming up with a plan.
It’s no wonder that so many creative business owners become overwhelmed when they don’t have a business plan.
The Path to Healing
The goal is not to “cure” yourself of every painful emotion. That’s just unrealistic. We will all god through ups and downs, but you can learn how to better regulate yourself during those highs and lows.
We go through the ups and downs and learn how to better regulate ourselves during those ups and downs and work on our relationship with money and creativity.
The first part of the path to healing is to learn how to feel safe. Work backwards from your goals and create a plan.
The second part is to learn to connect to the present. Michelle recommends a powerful exercise known as the “5-senses check-in.”
When you feel overwhelmed, make note of one thing you can see, smell, taste, touch, and hear. This will help to slow your heart rate, clear your mind, and connect you to the world around you.
Above all else, remember that you are not your trauma, your money, your drive, your results, your wins, your losses, or even your art. You are you. And nothing can take that away.
Listen to the full episode above to hear Michelle’s inspiring story and the journey that has led her to become the life coach she is today.
xo, Tracy
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
Crisis Text Line: Text Hello to 741741
National Domestic Violence Hotline: Text “START” to 88788 or call 1-800-799-7233 SAMHSA
National Helpline: 1-800-662-4357
Links:
Episode #329: Healing Trauma and Mental Health with Jennifer Tippett
Episode #058: How to Spark Ideas for Headlines that Sparkle with Laura Belgray
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