Ep 19 | Accessing the Deeper Self: Healing Through the Subconscious Mind | Highly Sensitive Series
Welcome to Rise & Realign: Conversations for the Sensitive Soul. I’m Melissa, and this space is for those of us who feel deeply, love fiercely, and sense the world in ways that are hard to explain but impossible to ignore. Here we honor your sensitivity as a strength, not something to fix.
Through reflections, realignment, and soul-led stories, we remember how to move through life in a way that feels true to who we really are. This is your space to rise, to realign, and to come home again and again to your own wise, sensitive self.
Today is about accessing your deeper self through subconscious healing. I really want to talk about how essential this is for individuals who recognize themselves as highly sensitive. I’m always referencing the science behind this roughly 20 to 30% of the population who have a more finely tuned nervous system.
We’ve talked before about how we’ve all been raised in families and cultures with societal beliefs and patterns and ways of being. When we’re young, we’re just taking that in. We’re not consciously choosing, like, “Yes, I agree with this and I want to engage in this kind of behavior.” It’s something that we’re just taking on even more deeply as sensitive beings.
I really do feel that it’s important that we understand that early programming doesn’t always align with who we truly know ourselves to be, or even just recognizing when we respond to a situation in a way that makes us think, “Wow, where did that come from?” I know I’ve caught myself saying things and recognized that voice, or remembered receiving that type of response, and it didn’t feel good to me. I certainly didn’t enjoy repeating the pattern, but that’s part of our human nature. We pick up patterns. We’re often referred to as creatures of habit.
I really like to raise awareness about the importance of understanding the high sensitivity trait because of the differences between the people who have this trait and the 70 to 80% of the population who don’t — just so that you can be realigning with you, with your authentic voice and truth, and really be able to honor and respect yourself and your needs.
Today I’m touching on part eight of the nine-part Highly Sensitive Series: *Accessing Your Deeper Self*. Just because understanding that we have this depth of processing doesn’t mean that we all understand how we’re processing things so deeply and what’s going on in those deeper layers. I really find it fascinating. I’ve always been fascinated with the mind, but discovering this trait and being able to speak to the science behind it and what my own felt and lived experiences have been — I’m here to share that. I live it before I lead it.
A lot of us have believed certain things about ourselves — being too sensitive, too emotional, thinking too much, overreacting. And a lot of the sensitive women that I support are deeply caring, high-capacity, and carrying a high stress load because of how much responsibility they take on. I’ve been there. I’ve lived it. What I’ve really come to understand is that our mind is our builder for the direction that we’re going.
You may have heard me say before that I used to think that I was who I was and I couldn’t change. Thankfully, I did have a spiritual awakening in 2008, which showed me way more than I could have ever imagined. By 2011, I was training in the Science of Mind philosophy because Louise Hay played a really big part in my expanded understanding and consciousness shift. Beyond Science of Mind, I was trained in neuroscience and quantum physics, and really working with the emotional component that can’t be separated — the mind from the body. I see it as mind, body, heart, and soul. That’s really the whole picture.
As highly sensitive individuals, we have the depth of processing. We have the overstimulation that occurs sooner because we are so open and taking in more information and processing it more deeply. It’s so empowering and liberating to actually be able to create the space to raise awareness and to understand where fear is coming in, where anxiety is arising, and what self-doubt is about — really understanding that inner dialogue. I certainly work with that very specifically when I’m supporting women one-on-one or in group formats, because we often carry forward these beliefs about ourselves that are so incorrect.
There is an evolutionary reason for us to have this trait, and we didn’t always understand it. We didn’t always know about it. I’m here to just keep raising awareness because there is nothing wrong with being highly sensitive. There is nothing wrong with feeling things deeply. There is nothing wrong with being in touch with your emotions and allowing them to come to the surface and be expressed through your voice, through tears. That is healthy. But many of us have learned that it’s not safe, or it’s uncomfortable, or it’s unbearable, and have really shut it down and disconnected.
I see highly sensitive individuals as such deep, loving, caring individuals, but sometimes our conditioning gets in the way. We don’t always know who or when the determination gets made that it’s like, “Oh, I don’t have to believe that. I really can change the way I think about myself. I really can change how I approach this emotional reaction that comes up. I don’t have to judge myself.”
Early on in my work with highly sensitive women, I was really helping them understand that you don’t ever have to apologize for crying. That is healthy. I am so honored to be able to share what I’ve come to understand along my journey of awakening and my journey of understanding what it means to be a highly sensitive individual and the gifts within it. There are absolutely challenges. I don’t care who you are on this planet — at some point, we’re all navigating challenges. We just don’t always see it or know about it. But we’re all navigating something. Sometimes we’re experiencing joy and love and peace and life seems to go along very smoothly, and then other times we’re navigating some rough terrain.
I’m really here to just speak from my heart to say, I’ve been there. I’ve been through the periods where I thought I was achieving everything that I wanted, but it didn’t feel connected. I didn’t really understand my unique experiences. I’m really grateful that my heart and my soul just kept calling me forward — “Don’t drop this high sensitivity information. Stay true. Keep being curious. Keep looking for evidence of it everywhere.” It just kept coming up for me.
We’re talking about the benefit of accessing your deeper self through subconscious healing, because that’s where the patterns are. I call them vinyl records. If we’re not noticing those vinyl records that are playing — and some of them have been playing for decades for many of us — and those create some really deep grooves, and they’re not the easiest to lift up out of. That’s where I find my work is really an honor — to help individuals and groups of women to notice, like, “Ah, that’s a pattern, and that’s not one I choose for myself.” That’s what’s really empowering — to realize that we don’t have to stay stuck in old patterns.
When I say stuck, I’m not implying that we can’t change it. Sometimes we may say we’re stuck in a pattern, but it’s just that there’s more that’s being revealed that we don’t know about. I really find that sometimes our focus is very narrow, and that’s what blocks our ability to see so much more. My own spiritual awakening helped me realize that there is more to the unseen world — what we might call invisible — than there is to what we can see, the visible. I love that life guided me into quantum physics and helped me explore many different religions and different practices, just to keep bringing me back to myself, to my own light within.
Our brain is malleable. I learned about neuroplasticity back in 2011 while I was doing a neuropositive life coaching program, and I just loved it. I loved learning more about the different brain wave states and what we have access to there. I love the work of David Hawkins and the levels of consciousness. His first book, *Power vs. Force*, is really powerful. There are a lot of great resources out there.
I say repeatedly in sessions that the breath is the bridge, which is why I’m always pausing on the podcast to say, “Let’s breathe together.” Let’s do that now. Let’s inhale through our nose as slow and deep as you can, lengthening your spine, and then exhale out your mouth like you’re blowing out a candle, so it’s really slow and longer than your inhale. Just do a few more. Inhaling through your nose, just receiving, lengthening that spine, inhaling as deeply as you can, and exhaling out your mouth, just releasing, letting go of tension. One more. Inhaling through your nose. Nice, long exhale out your mouth. Just bringing you back, connected to your breath, your body, this moment.
There’s so much that interrupts our flow of being right here, right now, especially as highly sensitive individuals. The way that depth of processing uses our mental energy, and so often we are reflecting on past experiences and then projecting things forward into the future. That’s if we’re reflecting on something and then want to make a good decision. That drive to make the best decisions is a really paramount piece that I find with the individuals that I support too. Of course, the trait has that innate survival strategy — that’s the evolutionary component of this. We’re always searching for how to make things better for ourselves, how to make better decisions, how to be sure we’re raising our kids in the best way that we can, how to make sure their environments and their needs are taken care of.
As highly sensitive women, I see your ability and your leadership, even when you don’t recognize it. Believe me, I didn’t used to always either. I remember other professionals seeing me in a light that I would just be like, “Oh, that’s great. I’m glad you see me that way.” But on the inside, I felt tense and stressed and always striving to make sure I was doing all the right things.
That’s what I really want you to understand — sensitivity, it’s not a barrier. It’s not a flaw. It is a gift, but it does require us to pause and to really sit with that gift, really unwrap it. There’s this sensory intelligence about this. You’re meant to live from a place of deeper truth and connection. It’s really about slowing things down so that your nervous system can feel safe and you can move from that chronic stress response — what we call sympathetic dominance. I used to say I was high-strung. We want to have that more fluid oscillation from stress to rest. That is really key.
That’s why I invite you to do a breathing practice on the podcast, and that’s just a really small reset. It really is essential that we’re implementing the time and space to connect with our breath and our body every day. I know that’s not super easy for a lot of people. They may feel like they don’t have the time, and that’s okay. We are where we are. But we all get to a point where we notice things that we didn’t notice before.
My hope for you is that as you listen and as you connect with your breath and your body, it starts reminding you that that light within you is always there. It’s always been there. But we’re not always tuning in and connecting with it. Realigning with that light within ourselves, realigning with our authentic voice and truth — that’s a process, and there’s a cumulative benefit to it. It just calls for us to be as consistent as we can.
I am always supporting women to say, “Okay, if you got out of the habit, no big deal. Recommit. Start again.” We don’t need to be so hard on ourselves. I don’t think that’s our natural nature. I know for me and for the women that I am supporting, love is what is emanating the strongest. But when we’re so busy looking outward, when we’re so busy trying to keep up and carry responsibility for everything that we see — which we see, we’re taking in more than roughly 70 to 80% of the population that don’t have this trait — we tend to think like that. We’ve got to make up for where other people aren’t, and that’s not healthy. That is not our job. Really, we are responsible for tending to ourselves.
I’ve also encountered women who say that doing breathing practices seems challenging or they say, “Well, that doesn’t work for me.” I meet everyone where they are. Some people, when I talk about doing some hypnosis, that can kind of bring up some either skepticism or uncertainty or nervousness. But I have to say that my own natural guidance with clients is already to bring them into that relaxed state, and I’ve just learned to take that deeper and deeper. I’ve created some different offerings that really support women in that subconscious transformation area so that they’re realigning with the truth of who they are and really letting go of those old beliefs that don’t deserve the space anymore, that they’re not benefiting anyone.
There are a couple of ways that I do that. I do that through realignment sessions, and I also do it on a deeper level in the Rise & Realign Intensives, which are roughly a three-hour integrative intensive where we’re really bringing you back to your core essence, where you don’t have to relive any trauma. It’s just helping you to get realigned with you.
I know that we are able to realign with the truth of who we are as we commit to ourselves and clear out that which is not serving us, clear out the things that maybe we inherited, maybe some of the things that we were conditioned with. Because who we are is quite complex. That’s such a big topic in conversation because there are so many perspectives and understandings, and I’m not here to provide that for anybody because mine has changed and evolved so much, especially over the last 18 years.
The subconscious layer is really helpful to really clear out some of those old records and realign you with your truth, your core essence, and how you want to be creating life. Because we’re always creating or manifesting, but we don’t always understand the building blocks that we’re doing that with. The subconscious is what holds those old beliefs, those patterns and programs. I’m certainly grateful that I’ve been able to dig deeper and create new ways of thinking and experiencing life and just releasing a lot of what doesn’t serve me. We can do that gently.
I did a podcast with someone a few months ago, and she said, “If you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?” I remember saying, “You don’t have to try so hard. It’s okay. Just be you.” I sense that about highly sensitive individuals — there is this maybe not trying so hard, but doing so much. It’s necessary to take space, to just breathe and to just be, and to be consciously choosing what aligns with your values, what aligns with how you want to feel, how you want to experience life.
There are different periods of time when we start waking up and transitioning from an old identity to a new one — whether we’re talking our young adulthood in our 20s, or when we’re becoming parents, or even when we’re parents of adults and now that shifts. A lot of us also shift our identities as crises come up and things just shift. The more fluid and flexible we can be, the more enjoyable the ride is, but also just knowing that you’re not alone and there is support.
However you found me and this podcast, I’m really honored that you’re here. If you’re noticing parts of you recognizing, like, “Yep, that’s me too. I’ve been carrying these old stories and emotional imprints for a long time,” and maybe you’re ready for deeper support, that’s one of the reasons that I created the Rise & Realign Intensive. It’s exactly for this layer of subconscious healing. It’s to support you where you are and where you need it.
You are always invited to explore on my website, realignwithmelissa.com.
As a reminder, we are here together to rise, reclaim, remember. Where the heart leads, the body remembers, and the soul awakens.
So before we close, I invite you to return to your breath, to return to your body, and to what feels true for you right now. There’s nothing you need to fix. Just notice what’s here. If you’re ready to rise out of old conditioning and return to your own rhythm, you’re always welcome to walk with me — by listening here or joining the Rise & Realign Lunar Letter that I send out weekly. You can find everything on my website, realignwithmelissa.com.
So take good care of you. Much love and light.
For the full written exploration that complements this conversation, visit the companion blog post: Highly Sensitive Series: Accessing the Deeper Self – Healing Through the Subconscious Mind https://www.realignwithmelissa.com/blog/highly-sensitive-series-accessing-the-deeper-self-healing-through-the-subconscious-mind
