Why do we want to dull our emotions after abortion?
This week’s guest is Nadina Cojocaru. She is a small animal veterinarian and a vetcoach (a.k.a. life coach for vets). Her knowledge and story is truly captivating as she walks us though perspective shifts, processing emotions, brain science and her amazing personal experience.
Visit her website at: https://www.vetcoachinternational.com/
Show Notes:
3:47 Nadina’s Introduction
4:34 Weight Loss For Small Animal Vets Podcast
5:40 “I want to bring love fun and ease to the weight loss process.”
5:50 “If it’s not fun then it’s a no”
5:59 “In my opinion hard is a four letter word… we are doing a lot of assault on our brains” by telling ourselves that “we can do hard things”
7:36 “I think the journey is the reason for doing things”
8:33 Book- Finish, By Jon Acuff
9:40 “Hard exists only in our brains… it’s an opinion that’s bullying our nervous system and torturing our body with chemicals”
11:13 Nadina’s story from her childhood in communist Romania, where it was illegal to terminate a pregnancy and punishable by jail time, making things extra complicated when her mother had a miscarriage and was left without needed without medical care
16:26 The problem was that the communist state demanded kids… there were no contraceptives whatsoever
17:10 “Women who wanted to enjoy their sexuality had to find solutions for preventing pregnancies or to terminate pregnancies” “I know women in our families that had an abortion 2 or 3 times every year, and sometimes really late abortions” “At least now I’m pregnant I will wait to terminate this pregnancy and I will enjoy my sexuality in this time”
18:23 “When she got pregnant with my sister she was 36 years old and she hid it because it was not ok to be that old and still having sex with your husband.”
19:53 This is a beautiful and shocking example of how circumstances can be interpreted in many ways
20:48 “They actually felt joy when they found out they still had time to terminate that pregnancy”
21:44 “The norms of the society to question everything is the first step to understanding how we can relate to that event in our life”
24:39 Buffering “choosing something outside ourselves to numb (or avoid) a feeling
25:54 “our brains are wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain… and we are wired to pick survival, and for thousands of years survival meant seeking pleasure and avoiding pain”
28:00 “Rewarded by society to dull emotions… ‘don’t feel your feelings, eat them’”
28:37 “When we experience and abortion, no matter how we think about it, it will affect us in some way, it will create emotions. We know from evolution, that feeling that kind of emotion in your body means death because showing emotion means you are left outside of the tribe”
30:22 “Some people need that kind of step in their processing of emotions”
31:47 “You don’t have to hate your body, you don’t have to hate yourself”
32:39 “The urge of dulling that emotion is really powerful”
33:32 Would you drive 6 hours to get a bag of potato chips instead of allowing an urge?
36:46 “The way I see craving and urges is that they are just a signal”
37:41 Communicate with the urge- “What do you want me to see, what’s the real problem here?”
39:10 “There is no timeline, there is no manual for our pain… It’s a process that will take as long as it takes.”
40:50 “Usually the first layer is shame”
43:30 When we learn to feel and process and experience the fullness of being human; that’s a gift we give ourselves for everything else in our lives.
43:55 Abortion is just a door we enter to learn how to be human.
44:30 “Coaching gives us courage to be in our own experience”
44:44 “Sometimes we need a hand that us holding us with unconditional love and non judgement”
46:26 “Allow, embrace, welcome that it will come in waves; it’s not one and done”
46:48 “Don’t judge it, don’t judge yourself… allow for the flavors of it”
47:26 “We are actually allowed to laugh about our brains sometimes”
50:39 “To be able to see and to recognize oppression in a lot of ways in any society… to be able to call it out... sometimes loudly and be willing to stand alone”
52:00 “I promised myself that I would always speak”
