In this live-recorded episode, I sit down with Ruby Shine to explore how our earliest environments — even the womb — can leave a lasting imprint on the body.
Ruby reflects on her journey through early parentification, relentless anxiety, C-PTSD, insomnia, and PCOS with her signature no-filter style. It’s raw, funny, and full of the kind of honesty that makes you laugh and then immediately reflect on your own life.
We recorded this one live at Sol Method — Ruby’s somatic yoga studio in Byron Bay — in front of a room full of people who know her as a teacher, guide, and multi-entrepreneur. It takes real guts to speak this openly in front of your own community. And she did not hold back.
We get into:
- Ruby’s experience of complex trauma showing up as acne, insomnia, and PCOS
- How her mother’s pregnancy and early childhood shaped her nervous system
- The long road to forgiveness, and learning to hold multiple truths at once
- Why overachieving became her coping mechanism — and how she began to unravel it
- What it looked like for her to stop becoming her feelings, and start actually feeling them
If you’re curious about the threads between body, biography, and belief; if you live with a sensitive system, an invisible illness, or the urge to push through when you probably need to pause — or if you just love a conversation that’s vulnerable, girlie, and deeply human — this one’s for you.
Connect with Ruby:
Instagram: @rubyshine__ Her Substack, The Awakened Woman: https://theawakenedwoman.substack.com/ Her yoga studio (in-person and soon-to-be online), Sol Method:https://www.solmethod.com.au/
Connect with me:
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https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey
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@samepaige__
Three new episodes a month — subscribe for more! 💖
TRANSCRIPT:
(00:00) hello and welcome to On the Same Page i am your host Paige Lesey this week's episode is another live podcast if you don't subscribe to my Substack or read my writing then you won't know i've actually been doing a series of live podcasts and it's been it's been really um scary actually uh but super glad that I've done it the point of doing this was to put more stories out there from people in the wellness industry because perhaps contrary to popular belief of those working in the wellness industry there is uh a lot of advice
(00:41) giving and not a lot of authentic storytelling i mean that's I guess my perspective um but it was the perspective shared with my best friend Ruby and she happened to own a wellness studio and we thought why not put on these series of live chats in the studio and utilize my I guess interviewing skills to help draw out some storytelling from educators and people that would normally be giving advice in our community on wellness anyway hope that made sense we've been doing that and we have done three and the episode that you are about
(01:20) to listen to was number two so this episode is me interviewing Ruby Shine who you've met before she was on the pod not too many episodes ago actually anyway it's Ruby telling stories from her journey living through PCOS which is polycystic ovarian syndrome uh insomnia cystic acne hair loss crippling anxiety all of which she believes to be the symptoms of complex PTSD we talk about how that looked for her we talk about how it was diagnosed we talk about the early days of accepting and also kind of rejecting those diagnosis and Ruby speaks with
(02:04) such profound insight about how integral forgiveness was in her fully recovering from all of these conditions my favorite part of this conversation was when she gave some really nuanced context to what was going on in her mom's life when she was pregnant with her ruby speaks about this with grace and a lot of compassion and she demonstrates both resilience and true acceptance anyway this is a great episode and it was such an incredible honor to help facilitate her story so I know you're going to get a lot out of it
(02:40) um it is deep it is meaningful and at times it's light and easy listening if you really like this episode and you happen to be in the Byron Bay area this Friday April the 4th 2025 can you believe um we will be having another live conversation this time Ruby and I will be diving more into love connection relationships and the powerful force that is our sexuality i think that chat will be super juicy if you've listened to this one because this one just gives you a lot of context for where Ruby comes from and why she approaches things
(03:17) in the way she does so I hope to see you there uh I hope you can't hear the drilling that's happening in the background it is my cue to end this intro without any further ado let's dive in [Music] um how exciting is this babes welcome to the show it's your second time on um I have to tell the story well I don't know what it is but I think I do you do know I cuz it's the best it's my favorite story of you and I feel like any opportunity I get to share it i have to share it okay so when Ruby and I have been best
(03:59) friends for 22 years when we were in high school we were in about grade nine and it was school sport and nobody likes school sport like except the people that are into sport and we we weren't into sport so we um we rocked up on the field one day and Ruby was like "Yeah I don't want to be here.
(04:17) " And I was like "I don't want to be here either like we got to be here we got to do this now." And she was like "Nah I don't I feel like I feel like we don't i feel like we can I feel like I can get us out of this and I was like "Okay cool what are you going to do?" And she's like "Like if we fake an injury I think if we fake an injury they'll let us leave.
(04:35) " And I was like "Okay all right i'm going to follow your lead." Which is classic ruby's the leader in general and often the leader in our friendship she always goes first and then I Yeah follow suit um we get on the field and we start doing we start running it's athletics we're doing track and um she she goes she's running out in front of me and she does like these three big steps like moon steps kind of thing and she goes 1 2 3 and then whips her leg out in front of her and basically cartwheels back cartwheels backwards over the top of herself and
(05:05) lands on her like flat on her [ __ ] back on the on the grass in the middle of track and we're like so obviously there's people around there's teachers around and she goes and I was like wo that was like so convincing um I don't know if I can follow that like that was that's um I was just like maybe I can just say that I'm her nurse or whatever so we um the the teacher comes over and he's just like "Oh my god Ruby what's happened?" And I run over and she's just like "I sprained my ankle." And I was like "Man this [ __ ]
(05:34) is committed right she's so committed." Um and then the teachers the teachers run off to get ice or whatever and I was like "Dude that was amazing like we get to go i'll come with you i'll drive you home or I'll drop you home or whatever." and she's like "I [ __ ] sprained my ankle.
(05:51) " Like I've for sure I have for sure cooked it right now it was um And I love telling this story because it's so funny but I also love telling this story because um it is just such a demonstration of you as a person like your level of commitment to everything that you do and your and learning the hard way for better for better or worse learning the hard way and also just how honest you are like everything you do is so real and so raw like you couldn't even fake you couldn't even fake a a foot injury i know i didn't even like consider faking that injury that's what
(06:23) was so annoying about me at that time like I just went full ball into that injury and you were like the one that was like it's called faking an injury and I was like don't be annoying but you were completely right i was like how did I do that anyway i don't know i think so I guess the question that I want to ask off the back of that that story is how did you get to be so honest was honesty something that was a value in your house did you just come out of the womb honest like how where where does that level of
(06:49) honesty and that level of just commitment to the truth come from i'm actually going to give my parents some credit here um fair to do that at the beginning of the podcast yeah well I actually decided that I was going to do that at the beginning of the podcast anyway um based on the fact of everything that we're talking about which is my childhood and how I was like sitting with it today and I was like I feel a bit nervous and um it's interesting feeling the nerves in your body cuz you're like "Oh that's such a
(07:14) representation of actually how my body has felt in the past and hasn't felt for a long time." Um but anyway credit where credit's due all the time and there are going to be things that I talk about in today's podcast that um are raw maybe I haven't worked out how how things are going to be said you also don't know what questions I'm asking you no but I feel like if we're talking about my story that's usually how it comes through and and I'm at a place in my life now that's pretty remedied that I I can but because I'm so remedied I also
(07:42) can see the complexity and nuance of most things and one of the things that my parents gave me that was so great is actually honesty my mom and my dad actually both separately were very big advocates for honesty nothing was nothing was you couldn't not tell them anything like they it was like go not telling them was like that's when you got in trouble you could tell them you did something really bad i was gonna say murder someone you could tell them you did something really bad and they will just rock like my parents are like that
(08:13) they'll rock up and they're like on um and they also just really valued it like one of my mom's things always is like I just want the honest truth that's what makes me feel safe and my dad as a human being like I was telling this story to Tara's son actually when he was asking me why he was asking me about school and he was like school sucks and I was like "Okay I'm going to help you reframe this.
(08:40) " And we were talking and having this conversation around I guess like having different perspectives or opinions in life but particularly when it comes to education or schooling and I said to him I was like "My dad actually taught me this and it was really really important and such a pivotal part of who I am." He was like "You are with in within your rights at all times to have your own perspective about literally anything if you want to argue it you better get educated and if you're in a if you're in a communal space you better be respectful of everyone else in that
(09:14) space." And how that came about was he always told me that if I disagree with my teachers I could fight them and he that I would have his full support he was basically like you just tell them like I don't agree with you and I don't want to be learning this but he's like you better have a really good argument as to why not because they're your elder and they actually know better than you most of the time and you are to not disrespect them in that space you are not to cause a scene you are not to disrupt other children and you are not
(09:43) to call them names and I have never really thought until I was telling that story i never really thought about that lesson and about that story because that's actually how I operate as a human being like I will not be told anything that I don't believe i'm have such a strong belief system um but I will always respect other people and other people's decisions and I will not judge or be disrespectful of other people within a space that makes other someone else feel safe i unsafe sorry I will remove myself and I was
(10:20) like wow that was something where you don't realize sometimes how important all of these lessons truly truly are and so I think honesty is that so that's the per that's like the n the nurture part of it but the nature part of it like I mean if you're into astrology I have a Mercury in Leo my mom came I came out of the womb and my mom was telling me that I basically had a will of iron and just like knew right from wrong and was just telling everyone what to do from like the second I was out of the womb i was always in this
(10:53) kind of like space but for me honesty is of the highest value but I've actually taken it to the next dial on that and honesty is just only being open when someone comes to you and like say I ask you a question it's you being open and honest about it i'm actually into transparency and the reason I think I developed such a strong feeling for transparency was because that's how I feel safe and that all stems from feeling unsafe in my life at times so what transparency is in in opposition to honesty in my opinion is
(11:31) honesty is like I said when I come to you you answer a question honestly but if transparency to me is having the balls to walk forward and say the thing without being asked and that comes from my mom as well she was like a big person on that she never ever wanted anything to she was like no I shouldn't have to ask you like I want you to come forward and say things and I witnessed her do that within her social groups as well so I guess a mixture of everything i think a big thing there is also building like having the capacity to deal with
(12:02) consequences too the consequences of being honest and the consequences of being transparent like just being able to hold whatever is on the other side of that if that's your value you know cuz cuz maybe when people talk about honesty as a value they don't understand that sometimes it's it's actually hard to hold that as a value cuz people ain't going to like your honesty and you're also not going to like other people's honesty either yeah you're not always going to get told what you want to hear actually more often not than not you're
(12:31) not going to be told what you want to hear and I learned that the I've learned that the hardest way in my life as well but yeah so that's a I guess it's just a really top value of mine and has been since I was young and so I yeah you witness that and that's what that came from all the time i learn from it um I want to fast forward a little bit from childhood and uh past um you breaking your ankle on the soccer field in the high school which was my favorite moment not the breaking ankle part um the honesty part and then into um the the
(13:02) kind of first part of your 20s so you moved to Melbourne yeah pretty soon after high school and this is the early 2010s you're in your early 20s you're going to uni for the first time um and your body starts to send you signals that things aren't actually okay and that they haven't been okay for a really long time um and that you're not okay so can you tell me about that time and like what that looked like yeah so it's so hard because when it's your journey like that whole thing where nothing's linear so now I in hindsight I
(13:39) can like piece it all together but essentially I yeah I left school I went traveling I came I moved to Melbourne and that was when a lot of stuff really hit for me in terms of my own physical mental and emotional well-being because I was no longer at home so I wasn't um I wasn't taking care of anyone i wasn't taking care of my mom or my sister or anyone like that and so for the first time in my entire life I really only had to take care of myself and I was really bad at it my god and it was really annoying how
(14:10) bad I was at it i was like "What no I'm really good at this because I'm really good at telling other people what to do because I was really good at bossing everyone around because like you said like I I'm just like honest and that's but what I realized was oh wo in all of this time that you have been trying to hold it together and boss people around how what how do you do this?" And because I didn't need to focus on myself at that time I was it was just so easy it's hard to know what you're putting yourself through when you're not
(14:40) focusing on taking care of yourself so I think this probably happens for a lot of people anyway when you first move out of home and you first are kind of hit with how do you take care of yourself but I'd already been living out of home by the time we moved to Melbourne well living out of home living unsupported for like 3 years so I it was just a shock to the system and it was the first time in my like life that I hadn't have like I wasn't with my sister she was still here going to school um so that was hugely different
(15:08) for me as well so but I've always been this crazily proactive person so some backstory there i've always wanted to deal with my health and wellbeing in as healthy a way as possible that I knew at any given point and what I mean by that is most of us do healthy things until we realize they're not really that healthy like as your education develops you start to realize like what I think is healthy isn't and that that kind of becomes this fluid thing as you develop so I always was like pretty self-righteous around um healthy ways of
(15:42) approaching life meaning I really not into any numbing tools whatsoever so I've never taken a prescription medication i can count the amount of times on my hands that I've taken panadol and I say that because that was just the way I like to approach life and that was mainly due to being around people who had pain medication addiction um and so it when I went down there I was at university and I was at law school and I was struggling i was like um studying all the time working all the time my mental health and my emotional
(16:17) well-being my physical wellbeing it was all deteriorating pretty rapidly like I was I was getting sick i wasn't sleeping i was like um I was spending a lot of time overthinking and so I chose to take myself to therapy and and I'm a complete know it all so I'm at therapy i'm at therapy and I'm like 1920 i'm at therapy and she I walk in and you can imagine what I was like i just walk in i've got like my notebook i'm telling her exactly what's wrong with me why it's happened what my history is what my mom's history is what my dad's history
(16:55) is you know what my dog's history is like I'm just like "Yep you can't possibly tell me anything i already know everything." And she was like "Great i'm so glad we're here spending this hour together." Um and after a while of chatting it out she was like which was pretty good in your first session this doesn't usually happen by the way you usually meet a therapist and like it takes a long time to develop a relationship but I was like "Here's my written history this is everything.
(17:24) " Like I was just so such a know-it-all and she basically turned to me and was like "Okay yeah you're very intelligent." And I was like "Yeah." So this is probably like "Duh bitch." It's like Thomas I don't know no I'm kidding he's your invoice when was the last time you actually felt your feelings and I was like infuriated by that statement like what sort of [ __ ] idiot tells me when was the last time I felt my feelings i'm here telling you I'm feeling them i'm angry i'm pissed off i'm irritated i'm anxious i feel sick are you stupid or something like just so
(18:00) irritated by her lack of of what I deemed her stupidity cavage turns out she was completely right but I uh I was very frustrated by that at that time and I went back a few more times and she was very just like "Yep okay." And once again like kind of just repeating herself over and over again and I was like "What's the point of this?" like getting so annoyed obviously just letting out whatever I needed to let out on the person I was paying money to just like whatever like just so frustrated by the way that she was approaching um my
(18:37) situation i don't even know what I wanted from her really i probably just wanted validation because no matter what she was giving me I was like so dumb this is so irritating so sometimes that top level of frustration there's like it just it has to be it has to be expressed like you can't get it's a a barrier you know before you even get to like what the scripts are well taking the armor off I guess and so after a little while of seeing her like I said this is what we're talking like 14 15 years ago now kind of foggy for me to piece this all
(19:11) in a story but after a few times of seeing her she eventually said to me pretty gently like I think you have complex PTSD and she went on to explain to me what that really kind of meant and it clicked a lot clicked um and but it was also hard for me to hear at the time i was still maybe too premature to hear it because I was still in a state of defending a lot of stuff cuz you know when you're grow up in a certain container or when certain things happen to you in your developmental years there's so many mixed truths and
(19:51) mixed feelings and so although I could see intellectually that this defensiveness would come out this like you don't know anything you're stupid like that's not what happened until you don't know what my parents have been through all that you know kind of just like back into defense mode back into defense mode and credit to this woman actually she was quite young as well i mean young i have actually no idea how old she was but um I feel like she's like me like maybe if a younger me came to me now and I'd be like "Oh my god is this what I sounded
(20:26) like?" Um and she kind of just kept working through things with me and eventually was just like "Look we we know where everything's stemming from you know like a lot of people that come to me and come to therapy they don't know so there's a lot of question and answers and me pulling out all the intellectual stuff that is not where you're at and it's not what you need you are a classic case of overintellectualizing your feelings and you don't know how to feel them and after this point I kind of like just wanted to stop seeing her cuz I was just
(20:57) like I'm just It's very irritating and I know because when I tell my friends you're not feeling your feelings they literally want to punch me in the face because they are also feeling their feelings what they think they are and so I understand that you know I understand that feeling so I stepped away from cognitive therapy for a little while and I was always like into yoga into gym you know you name the healthy girl thing I was doing it so like I was at the gym i'm doing my 5 a.
(21:25) m workouts i'm on the green smoothie i'm lifting weights and sprinting oh my god i say it now and I'm like "Oh god." Um I had taken myself to my very first nonviolent communication course i was doing all the things you know I really thought I was everything I thought I I knew and you know what just so you know like compassion to everyone at any point in your life you truly are probably doing all the things that you know in any bounds of who of where you're at at any given moment just remembering that at times as well and that's something I was thinking about
(21:57) this morning cuz I was thinking about my like self back then and being like "Wow I really thought I was doing all the things and it was so misguided but it feels confusing for it to be misguided." I think it's also a right of passage like it's you got to give yourself a break because here we go yeah like that's that's part of it is you do the you have to do the first part of it and it only works 5% and um so I think it's just it's it's part of it as as much as it maybe didn't work to the capacity that your tool set works for you now i
(22:30) think the most frustrating part when you're doing all the things in that way though when your body continues to decay so like basically what was happening was I was doing all the things and I was getting sicker and sicker and the body was screaming at me and I was at university I said to you so I was in a psych um unit and we were learning about the brain and I remember being like more and more things were always clicking you know more and more pieces were always being put together but I was still kind of ignoring a lot of like the trauma side
(23:01) of things or the brain but I was in some way making getting more and more kind of inspired by it at the same time I was like diving into yoga diving into like as much as I could into mindset but things just weren't really clicking and I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker like I said so I was not sleeping awake all night and tired all day and like my skin was cystic acne and like my body just felt so uncomfortable my hair was falling out in clumps i was having like visceral anxiety attacks which I didn't really
(23:38) understand at the time cuz when you've dealt with a lot of stuff your mental capacity for handling stuff is really different to your body capacity so I was having these like what I would now easily be able to tune into but um a lot of like physiological anxiety symptoms like my body was shaking a lot and basically everything just culminated and continued to pile on even though I was doing all the things and things were getting worse and worse and worse until I landed in the hospital with a burst cyst and a PCOS
(24:07) diagnosis and the that was hard and the doctor kind of turned to me and said "You have PCOS." And basically told me that my only way out of this was to manage it with a synthetic drug so like I said to you guys earlier like that's not my thing in any way shape or form and so that's when things really started to click a little bit more for me so I guess I don't even know if I've answered the question yeah yeah i I just want to go back so so you mentioned a couple of big things insomnia being one cystic acne being another one um uh tremors
(24:44) bodily tremors PCOS which were all the physical manifestations of the complex PTSD that you that you found out you had with that doc uh psychotherapist whatever anyway I just kind of want to like um double click on each of those ones so the insomnia you were up all night um ruminating what were the what were the thoughts what was like what were the things that you were worried about i was always really hard on myself like getting myself to a better position so I you know I was like must get through uni needed to be a lawyer needed
(25:16) to own a house at like 22 like needed to do all these things wanted to make sure that everything was going to be stable trying to build a home whatever that meant it was just this constant like self deprecating conversation with myself but it was actually just what me overthinking and over strategizing to safety essentially or what I deem safety would have been which you know isn't safety's within totally and um another one of the big symptoms was the cystic acne and and I I feel like because we know each other
(25:55) so well we can talk about this but like that that's would have been a big pain point for you because you You do pride yourself on being beautiful cuz I'm hot cuz you're hot cuz you're hot and to have to have something on your [ __ ] face that represents like how churned up your internal world your internal world is do I sound semogen today i've just been hearing myself like doing the bogan thing anyway you churned up you ch your face was a representation of your churned up guts oh my god stop i don't know help he
(26:30) helped me um that would have been really hard um to walk out of the house and just be like "Wow I can my history is apparent to everyone." Well yeah and the hard thing about that is as like a girl who is you know wanting to look hot and do all the things it was always the bad skin that let like you know it's always the thing on the outside that actually kicks you into gear so but it's true i think we can all say that it's like the one thing that's either like making you feel like not good enough so like I don't know maybe this is just me but
(27:01) like ugly or like not good enough and not hot enough and all those sorts of things that ends up kicking you into gear to actually um take your symptoms seriously like you know like for me it was the cystic acne for other people it might be I don't know like holding weight or like bloating or there's other things but it's usually once it starts affecting your appearance and you can't really hide it from anyone anymore more and also because you're trying to put on all these like shiny suits of being really great and everything's all together and
(27:31) my life's perfect that you are like [ __ ] and to be honest I only really really deeply deeply connected with the connection between this nervous system and the skin maybe 2 or 3 years ago i really just did not let myself believe that for so long my sister was just like "The more stress about it the worse it gets the more stressed about it the worse it gets.
(27:54) " I'm sick of hearing it i'm always stressed about it the worst and I was like "No you're just wrong." But she was right and by the way like my sister is always right she's the projector in our sisterly relationship and she is always right her and my partner they're projectors and they're always right so whatever projectors tell you if there's projectors in your life they're always right um so essentially the skin thing was was like the thing that probably made me the most neurotic around like getting better and I but then the PCOS thing as well so
(28:25) the skin and the PCOS because being told by a doctor that my only or me being told my only way guys no way someone tells me my only way I'm like you're dreaming so they basically told me my only way was that I wasn't going to heal and I could only manage on contraceptive pill and I was like a cute but no uh that's not the way I'm going to do things thank you bye and was pretty like rattled like I was 25 years old and had been told basically by someone who's obviously dealing with people like this all the time so they become kind of for
(28:57) their own sake quite like robotic like they have to become unattached from the way they deliver news to you because otherwise like they have to take all of that energy on right and that's what it means compassion fatigue they call it yeah so you're there and someone's like scanning your belly and she's like "Oh props won't have a baby.
(29:15) " like I pretty much that's how I heard it if she didn't mind might not have said it like that but that's exactly how I heard it and memory is a funny thing and then she was like so there's no way you can heal this you can only manage it with the pill well luckily I grew up here in Barame and that's just not the way that that I had been taught things and so went off to prove her wrong and that's what I did and here we are today um anyway So when that happened I really went down this huge journey cuz I'm a nerd big big nerd
(29:51) so I went down this big research journey self-ressearch journey around I guess that's when the complex PTSD like I said it's so hard to know sometimes how you piece things together but I was up late one night researching complex PTSD and kind of understanding and then remembering what this woman had said to me like 5 years before around stored stress and then also like you know I've been doing yoga and I'm into Ayurveda and I'm like thinking to myself like okay there's a link here and then I started to develop my intellect around
(30:24) this link so I I took an eastern approach and in Eastern medicine they believe that disease is caused by two things trauma and toxins that's all it is trauma and toxins no matter what that's what it is and there's balance and imbalance and I loved that so you know I sit here now and I talk about complex PTSD and I talk about PCOS but I actually made a conscious effort to not identify with either of those things in order to be able to heal them and that's because I was learning through those eastern things like say yoga and aa that to
(31:01) identify with is to become so it made me feel safe in one way right to understand myself and be like okay I'm the I have complex PTSD that helps me understand something create this container and I have PCOS that helps me understand something but I had enough knowledge through even my psych units at university and through my own intellect like intelligence and my own um research that to identify with something is to become something and I was just like really making sure that that wasn't the case so I really tried
(31:35) to have this balance of acknowledging where I was at and and not deciding that I was that thing and that's now what I teach you know so so yeah do you want to ask me something before I just keep monologuing yeah um something else that we know that complex PTSD affects is your um your attachment blueprint and your ability to relate to other people in a way that feels easeful mhm so at at around this time um in your life when you have this diagnosis and um and you're you're starting to I guess like let the dust
(32:12) settle around why it is that you have it what was happening for you relationally i luckily was in my second best relationship cuz I'm in my best relationship now um my second best relationship of my life he was the first secure person secure attachment person I'd ever met and I had learn I had learned about secure like attachment styles it's so hard to know again i think around 25 as well so this was all kind of at it was all kind of culminating and happening all at the same time and it was almost like the more I learned about something the more
(32:44) I realized my body was becoming the things because right you're always going to allow yourself to uncover and come out more as you're expanding your your your mind and you're noticing more as well like I think you'll find that hindsight's 2020 i was sick when I was a teenager i had painful periods i was up had insomnia when I was a kid but so did everyone around me so it was just like very you know if that if those things happened to my kid I'll be able to be like you're unwell but I you know you only know as much as
(33:13) you know at any given point and so what was the question again what was happening for you relation relationally you were talking about how you were actually in a really safe relationship at this time yeah so I was lucky enough to be in a very very safe relationship the first time I'd ever dealt with secure attachment and I'm anxious avoidant i identified with anxious I think I swing on a pendulum depending on the situation if you guys don't know what attachment styles are there's secure and insecure attachment styles
(33:41) one is secure and there's about three insecure ones depending on your circumstance and situation i identify more with anxious attachment at this point in my life i have earned security and that happens through all the work that you've done but my subconscious and my way that I was brought into the world is an insecure attachment style so no matter what even when you earn security it's harder for you because you all that that earn of security is is that you learn how to respond rather than react but your body does get better
(34:15) but has is more likely to have a natural reaction in an anxious way an insecure way so yeah it was really healthy to be in that relationship with a secure person and he was as supportive as he could be he was great and and you know like hindsight 2020 I think I blew that relationship up because I'd never dealt with like security before and it blew up really really lovely like it blew up by me being like okay we don't want to do this anymore but what I mean by that is I left it from that p perspective of thinking oh
(34:46) this mustn't be love which I've learned now my uh lesson but I want to talk about love this time um and where yeah so I was lucky enough to have that security and to be learning more and more about more about complex PTSD so I was staying up late at night and I was learning more about it which was so good for me to think back to my childhood and to be able to come to peace with a lot of the way in which I operate and operate even now like you know complex PTSD is also known and can be called like an acquired neurode divergence
(35:22) because of the way that it affects your prefrontal cortex your amydala and your hypocampus similar to a neuro divergence basically trauma affects the brain and when it's complex PTSD which we didn't even talk about what that even is does every should we talk about what that is yeah absolutely yeah yeah the difference between CPTTSD and PTSD yeah complex PTSD is an exposure to repetitive trauma usually in your developmental years can also be not say it can be in like a relationship or something later on but it can be in your developmental years
(35:55) and what it does is it affects I was just like did anyone watch our real we talked about this on a real we did go on it affects um so much to do with how you relate to others cuz it's like a social relating thing so it's to do with your attachment style it's to do with your safety and security in a space in a room so I suffered a lot from hypervigilance i suffered a lot from flashbacks and also from the emotional dysregulation but then there's more to it there's like a really deep negative selft talk that happens because you
(36:26) basically don't think that you're worthy which comes from the attachment piece so you're always mean to yourself you're always just like I'm not doing enough i'm not good enough that is like the biggest disease you can ever give yourself by the way guys like it's the biggest disease there is is to talk to yourself like that um case in point I had that and then there was also the challenges in relationships due to the lack of trust i guess you just don't trust anyone and so you there's guilt there's shame there's this feeling of being a
(36:57) burden there is so much that you get like um accused of being like very private or secret and manipulative because you're keeping so much in and in a way it is like you're not really showing your true self because you don't feel like it's safe enough to do so um and so it was really good to learn and continue to learn all of that because I also like I'm kind of like at one point in my high school life and even when I first went to cognitive therapy she told me I was ADHD before she heard my story someone else did i can't remember
(37:27) i went to two therapists and then I was like okay well this makes sense like you kind of are like I was and am because my brain has been developed in a certain way so that's why I hyperfocus or I'm distracted or all of these kinds of things i'm also a manifestor in human design so I kind of just like blame that now as well um so it was really amazing to continue to learn all of these things and to learn about stored stress and when I started to learn about stored stress that's when everything changed and when someone else told me that my
(37:58) only way forward was to take a pill that's when everything changed i feel like I finally started to listen to myself instead of doing all the healthy things that you think you're supposed to do i was literally you name it I was doing it including all the different therapists like naturopaths and you know TCM and psychotherapy and yoga and workouts and gy oh my god I literally you name it I've done it um and so the stored stress element I was like "Oh my god I felt like I had just had this like lightning bolt of
(38:34) um information." And the way that I do things in the world is from both intellect and intuition and I didn't realize that not everyone does that something I've learned recently is that that's not like a universal feeling so I learn something and I can both go "Okay education." And my intellect goes "Yep." And then I know it enough to also feel it in my body and be like this is the thing okay so I basically stopped everything like I just stopped everything and what I started doing was sematics and breathing and
(39:06) walking and that was when everything started to actually take this up level of proper healing and it was pretty profound and crazy and amazing okay let's go back to um I'm going to we're going to go out of educator mode and back into story mode and we're going to go back into your childhood so we've talked about the PCOS as a manifestation of CPTTSD this is a lot of acronyms um anyway um those those things being like sort of the main um challenges for you in in your early 20s and you mentioned that uh complex PTSD is to do with your
(39:44) belief systems it happens because it's a rewiring of the brain so can you talk about a moment from childhood where something happened and you created meaning out of that and that went on to affect you in these ways in your early adulthood that's a very convoluted way to ask me that question but I know what you mean um do you want me to go again simple not simple no no no i know what you mean i just cuz I know you okay but I'm just from childhood where you where basically someone leaves and you decide no one loves you so that's basically
(40:14) what I'm going to say which is um my parents had me very young and they are like seriously the coolest most brilliant people that I know and it took me a long time to probably admit that but they really are they are like psycho good creatives and super super talented human beings like they're the kind of people that like pick something up and they just know how to do it and like I get so I am so much the two of them where they lacked skills was in emotional regulation deeply deeply lacked skills in this space so that affects you when
(40:56) you have a developing child so my parents had me like I said quite young my mom um had actually only just lost her mother when I was born or like when she felt pregnant with me and then I'm going to answer your question but I just feel like I want to do some backstory um and then I was born into a relationship that they had only known each other for 5 seconds because love cuz she's a Pisces [Laughter] and and um and he was a rock star and he was hot so you know they decided Ruby's mom was a amazing fashion designer and
(41:39) she was friends with all the celebrities and her dad was a guitarist in a bunch of bands like it's very like it's a very Hollywood story fully and they both had their own childhood trauma so mom had just lost her mom and my dad grew up being abandoned by parents again and again and again so they fell pregnant with me and they decided well individually mom went to dad and was like I don't care what you think i'm having a baby great and dad went well I'm not abandoning your child and so the foundation of the relationship and the
(42:14) foundation of me coming into this earth was already bound to their individual traumas um and then when I came out and now that I know a lot about um in utero like I'm at the moment I um am in my preconception plan so I take in I take the in utero and like the whole birthing thing so seriously at the moment um and the more I think about myself and what I am doing for myself and my body and the more I think about my mom I think my mom was grieving deeply whilst pregnant with me you know and that's major the when you're in the belly for
(42:58) the first 8 months of your gestation you only feel the mom's emotions and nervous system before you develop your own so I think about that already you know and then I came out of the womb and I was jaundice so I had a liver deficiency which also led helped me a lot when I learned about my birth by the way guys if you haven't learned about your birth and your birth story it's a really good be beginning point for any thing in your life um and I had to live in an incubator for 2 weeks so that already before we've even gone into full-on
(43:28) parenting I have a disregulated nervous system and attachment issues because you need to have skin-on-skin contact with your parents in order to bond properly and they did their best but mom had me and I was in a hospital and I had to be in the incubator bed so that already creates a sensitive nervous system so as I'm developing my parents are like the only people in the world that I care about like I was meeting friends and mom was like "You're going to this party.
(43:57) " And I'd be like "No I'm not i'm coming to work with you." Like I was just mini mom and dad like I just wanted to always be with them and like we went to a dinner party one night and dad they'd set up like a kids table and an adults table and like that didn't happen in my family so I just like looked at everyone was like "You're joking.
(44:14) " Like I'm not sitting there and my dad sat at the kids table and I sat at the adults table cuz I didn't do things like that and I just was like always with them so when they finally when they split I was five and my sister was three and they were young and they didn't handle that split very well and we didn't see our dad for like a year and I was always used as this like porn to call him you know they were teenagers they honestly had children and they were teenagers and they were the most creative and intellectual people I know they probably still are if I'm going to
(44:54) actually give them credit but emotionally they literally were stunted at like 13 and that's because that's they didn't get the love and support and so that really created this big abandonment wound for me i've blamed both of them a lot um dad leaving like my my my narrative about dad abandoning me has been my narrative for like ever and my anger was always at mom it was your it was your [ __ ] fault you you did something you must have Why did we leave like I just always fostered equal disdain to both of them for kind of
(45:30) ruining this unit um that I obviously believed we had but obviously didn't have cuz why would have we why would have they split but you know you don't see that at 5 years old or whatever and so that already creates that narrative and that story line so I had that story line i've had that story line my whole life you know that that abandonment story line that's probably the the first and first one and that kind of to be honest like everything in life guys things play out in patterns like there are only a number of patterns
(46:00) in your life and they tend to play out and like when you're a kid you are just at the mercy of other people playing out their patterns um and so that pattern did continue for a long time mom having disregulated emotions and not holding a container of safety and dad being unavailable is attent essentially what the dynamic was and I was Ruby mom had named me Stone quite literally and like visualized me as being like the this like strong person in the family and I basically just became my name which I love um and
(46:40) I yeah a lot of this stuff was internalized so like I said to you like you know I was really unwell when I was younger but didn't clue into it a lot and I have a younger sister and she was also really unwell when we were younger but way more unwell than me like actually like hospitalized a lot and all sorts of stuff so I think also too I never deemed myself as sick because I was never as sick um and so it like when I went away and got really sick I was like what the it just didn't it hadn't all computed and that's a safety
(47:17) mechanism in the brain um but yeah I think I answered the question yeah yeah you did yeah yeah yeah in a big way um so at what point were you starting to realize all of this like stuff about your parents and and and realizing that it had had an effect on you oh I feel like I came out of the womb realizing but um I I maybe I guess because you you mentioned before that there was this like disdain this anger towards them i know i was angry for a long time and a big part of the journey um to like coming out the other side of these these big um you
(48:00) know health disorders is is finding that reconciliation with the people that have hurt you and yeah you got to forgive them and led to like your demise in some way so I'm just wondering like what what can you talk me through the spectrum of like being really angry to realizing stuff to moving through to compassion to now having less charge around it yeah so anger is like my number one emotion i'm so good at it um so I was really angry for ages but I also semi like what I mean by that is I I knew the whole time
(48:30) it was affecting us like I would verbalize that it was affecting us so my mom um suffers from a mental condition an illness and to be honest it's been like uh diagnosed differently every 3 years for our whole lives because that's what happens that's what develops as things develop it started with different types of bipolar and moved into manic depressive and after about not a few years ago she finally actually got the the complex PTSD diagnosis which I when I was younger was like "You are traumatized you are traumatized you are
(49:05) traumatized." Like I was just constantly telling her that not realizing you I was projecting all of my you are you are you are on my mom and not realizing anything about me at that point when I was younger i was like stepped into that I guess in a lot of ways like the mother role they call it the parentified child or whatever yeah that's that's complicated and nuance anyway cuz it's like but so I was angry really angry and then I started to do all the healthy things that I thought were healthy so I've already said that and then I
(49:38) realized I'm sick and I start to go on a new journey and a big part of understanding that was getting really comfortable with feeling the feelings which felt like such an irritating concept um and without feeling the feelings and without acknowledging a concept that I talked to you which is the multiple truths I never would have healed so I basically got to a point in my journey I hate I literally hate that word yeah i don't know what my timeline i don't know i got to my point in in this process and I finally wanted to take full
(50:19) responsibility for my health even though I thought I'd already been doing that but I was like "Oh no you haven't time is now." Um and that involved feeling the feels and in order to feel the feels I had to learn a concept known as multiple truths exist at one time um and that really helped so the one truth was your because I loved my parents and I like will defend them to their dying day like even now I'm like I still would um one truth is that they did the best that they could because they did and a second truth was that wasn't good enough
(51:03) for us it gave put on a lot of like there was a lot of damage done and so I had to reconcile those parts of me that both felt love and compassion and defensiveness and protectiveness and all of those things and also like anger and having my own back and knowing that they could all exist at the same time and it wasn't until I accepted they could all exist at the same time that any true healing actually happened and sorry what was it like to be around your parents at that time when you're holding all those different truths of like sorry for you
(51:41) because you [ __ ] up and I also I wasn't around them still hate you i'd moved away at this point so you you you weren't like what about phone calls or text messages or just like anything i took a lot of I mean like like I said my my relationship with my dad even though like I've always considered myself like a daddy's girl has been pretty on and off my whole life um and so like not talking to him was normal and he didn't even probably notice and um I had to take an active break from my mom which was really really really hard
(52:14) after things got really bad at one point um a situation that I had helped her get out of that she chose to go back to and I had to draw a line in the sand and take some space in order to focus on myself which truly was like the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life i did not feel cal like I that's not my nature like my nature is that like we're all in this together and I'm always going to be there and like I'm loyal to the to literally the bone so that felt really hard and really uncomfortable but it was like such a
(52:51) powerful and magical time in learning such deep unconditional and love and compassion for her to release the anger so like in order for her to just to exist in her being and for her to be who she is and for it to no like no longer be something that I take into my nervous system like you always are going to care about those people around you but you do get to a point where I've gotten to a point in my life where compassion like way more patience i was like the most intolerant person known to man i'm I can still be incredibly
(53:33) intolerant but I that dial was turned up so much when I was a kid like no one like wo like for me it's like it's easy put down the wine don't take the pills go for a walk i don't understand why are you so bad at this did not make any sense to me at all times and so that gap of time that year off allowed me to accept that I was intolerant and that was actually a sign of upregulation in my nervous system that's what intolerance is if you're agitated and frustrated and irritated you are upregulated it's actually you like take
(54:09) responsibility like why is this coming up so much blah blah blah and from that process like got to really like sink into this so I did all the healing on my own like separate from them and then once I'd done as much I thought I was out on the other side haha jokes universe has a huge cosmic joke when that happens so I thought I was on the other side then I moved home thinking brand new everything i'm on the other side i've done all my work here I am 28 starting my wellness business look at me this is Yeah this is my era like recent
(54:42) yeah like 2020 5 years ago well it's kind of recent and then and then that was when the final healing the last five three five years but the last 3 years into that really happened because you can only heal so much when you remove yourself from the environment and you remove yourself from the people do you reckon there's a finality to it though like there's a place that you get to and you're just like "Oh take that one off the list.
(55:10) " I since my last rock bottom meltdown when was that 203 which one like the No the one the bad one the June one the one that I like was like I've done which we can talk about if you want so basically I thought I was healed and then I'm like me and Byron and then oh no you're not let's just smack on all of the potential patterns that could happen i think there's such a good story around this and it plays into the next chat that we're going to do in 6 weeks time which is about sex love and relationships so I feel like we got to
(55:39) save that one because that one's like we could talk about that for an hour and it's true so we can talk about that one next time but special stay tuned basically since that rock bottom moment which was June 2023 when I literally had a huge PTSD attack complex PTSD attack so I was like hyperventilating and shaking and not okay and didn't have any of you guys around so SAF wasn't here and you guys were all away i think every single person close to me and I have a lot of people close to me were all away i basically was like "Okay enough's
(56:06) enough like I draw the line here." and I took myself through that final part of healing and yeah look it has been only you know 2 years but I kind of consider myself like pretty remedied i would take that diagnosis off the table now yeah i'd be like "No that's not it i just have a normal human nervous system that gets annoyed by things and then comes back down and gets angry and comes back down and I'm just I consider myself not like in full survival mode.
(56:31) " Well so what's the difference then between um having a nervous system that is super what's the word I'm searching for here like like sensitive a super sensitive nervous system and then also having a nervous system where you like allow yourself to actually get angry at things and be like well I'm still going to feel things i'm just not feeling them from the reservoir like what's that how do you kind of know when you've reached a milestone um okay so that concept of feeling the feels which was something that took me a little while to navigate
(57:04) and understand is one that's really important in this so when you have hyper or hypo arousal so that's like up the peaks of up and down so that's complex PTSD or anyone with an overactive nervous system you kind of what I believe is get stuck in feelings so the reason why you disassociate and reject feelings is because you don't know the difference between feeling feelings and becoming feelings and so like let's use anger as my like I'm so good at anger my god it's like my favorite thing um I'm really really good at it but I also can become
(57:36) anger so the reason why I know that I'm in recovery mode is um or consider myself in remission is I am able to accept that I can get angry notice I'm getting angry express that anger then express it from a place of I am very angry and then talk to myself through a process of I accept that I'm angry i'm safe to feel angry and then be over it that is feeling the feels becoming the feelings is sinking into the feelings and there is such a fine line and it's it's so hard to know until you know and that's why so many people disassociate
(58:15) or reject feeling the feelings because and like I said to my therapist a million times like I am feeling the feelings well what she should have said to me is no you're becoming the feelings and that's what I would say if it was me in that therapy chair um and that's the truth of it for so many years I had become the feelings i wasn't feeling the feelings i was just like either rejecting them intellectualizing them or making them my whole personality instead of feeling them is actually the process of which you allow them to exist in your
(58:47) body and then you allow them to go it is like this amazing well it is for me this amazing practice and this is where the yogi life comes in where you understand yourself as body mind and spirit and you as spirit is constantly looking and observing your being like that's the whole thing and so the reason why you might get so scared to feel the feelings is because you're not becoming the observer you're just identifying with and putting those clothes on and deciding you are depressed or sad or whatever it is you know so the
(59:26) observation of feelings is to have that raw honesty have that transparency to finally say to yourself and everyone else I am depressed whoa and then to say "Whoa that does not feel good and I feel really shitty about feeling depressed and I feel this and whoa that's making my heart hurt and that's I'm feeling that in my toe.
(59:49) " Like that is the process of feeling the feelings and once you do you say "I lovingly let this go." And you let your body take its time to let it go sometimes it will literally be 3 seconds and sometimes it'll be 3 days but it will go and so learning that practice transformed my whole approach to everything and so yeah I'm a human i am a human being i am going to be [ __ ] angry about [ __ ] i'm going to be sad i'm going to be happy i'm going to be joyful i'm going to be pissed off i'm going to be every emotion that exists
(1:00:19) cuz if you won't you're dead i'm a human but the regulation so to have a healthy human nervous system is to dance in the dualities or dance in the up and down of the nervous system and not identify with and not become that is how we've become that's how we've gained all of these pathologies in mental illness is because you have become those things you have just embodied it and become it and decided that's who you are sorry that feels like if that feels insensitive but that's just what it is it's like there is and that's okay too sometimes maybe
(1:00:52) that's just where you're at and that's what's going to happen and that's how I got to learn compassion because the difference between my story and say my mother's story is that I wanted to take off that identity i didn't even want to tell anyone I had that identity as opposed to my mom who I love dearly but at this point in her life has found safety in having that pathology and I didn't want that so that's why it took me so long to tell i didn't even tell anyone was just doing this on my own because I was like that
(1:01:20) will not be me and so I have compassion for whatever whoever you want to be and whatever you want to be and I'm like yeah okay that's what you're doing and that's what I'm like with my friends that's like when someone says I'm like that's cool it's what you're doing you're just doing depression all right let's do it um okay on that note I think I'm going to switch off the cameras and the mics and then we'll open up for questions but thank you so much for coming back on for a second time sharing all of your wisdom
(1:01:46) um and your stories and I can't wait to do the next one with you where we get into way more fun and silly and me crying over Nora Jones oh my god today okay love you thank you love you love you love you love you love you [Applause] [Music]
