Core emotional healing expert Elicia Miller joins Tonya Dawn Recla to talk about the deep work required to attain higher consciousness. They explore why some people resist diving into the depths of themselves to reveal their true inner power. Listen in as the explore how to get started on discovering the places within you that hold the keys to your super powers.

Hello everyone. This is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert and I am tickled to have with us today, Elicia Miller. She’s so much fun and you’re just going to love her from the place of really understanding the connections of some deep core emotional healing and the role that it plays in growth. Now I know a lot of you are cringing because oh my gosh, we got to talk about emotions and I don’t really want to do that work and big scary, dark place inside of us. It really is the key. You can’t really expand out any further than you’re willing to go deep and so I love the work that Elicia does. We’re going to be talking today about emotional healing is the doorway to higher consciousness and she’s the perfect person to talk to about this topic.

She’s created a core emotional healing model that she shares therapists. She’s also a Candida expert and I like the combination, because it’s the knowingness and the awareness of the body, seeing beyond symptoms. She has some really fantastic theories and philosophies and practices around those kinds of things. She’s a certified holistic health coach. She’s a journaling and inner child facilitator and author. Again, really impressive resume but I what I love most about her is just the really matter of fact, let’s make sure that we’re really providing something of value to people that they can use to move through their stuff.

Take a moment gift yourself with listening to what she has to say about the connection here with emotional healing. I’d imagine the conversation’s going to turn to some pretty strong opinions that the two of us share around the fact that you have to do this work. As of right now, I don’t see any way around it, so sit back, grab a cup of coffee, listen to Elicia and take notes, because I think you’re going to really enjoy this. Welcome, Elicia.

Thank you, Tonya. What a wonderful introduction and also stressing the importance of emotions, thank you.

Releasing the free magical inner child.
Photo by Gianandrea Villa on Unsplash

Well, it’s so funny. I watch my journey with clients and everything else and even with the Super Power net and the podcasts, all of the … As we grow ourselves in everything that we do and I was really hesitant to say that that work was necessary early on. My experience with emotional healing was a little bit different than what I hear reported from other people and so I just disregarded it. It just wasn’t a big deal to me and what I’m seeing and where I’ve gotten to is like that is the … I don’t know if I can say the single, but I will say absolutely one of the top three contributors to what stops people, despite what their awareness is, despite what their knowingness is, despite how connected they are or what guides they’re talking to or anything else, it keeps them from embodying those spaces that they see so clearly. It has to be done. I’m like you might as well get comfortable [inaudible 00:02:58]. Let’s go for it, but anyway, that’s my little soap box, so let’s jump right in first of all and just ask you what are your superpowers?

Okay, well first of all, I completely agree with your soap box, 100% what you just said.

This’ll be fun.

Yes, so my superpower is being the nurturing mother, so this work can happen in a very safe, supported space. It’s about the recovery of vulnerability, which then releases the free magical inner child, which is our true self and it releases our gifts and our superpowers. I model how to be compassionate, loving, nurturing and empowered with our emotions so that they can learn how to be their own nurturing mother to themselves, which in turn, they become more so to their children as well.

Let’s talk a little bit about … Everything you said with really beautiful and eloquent, but the … I especially like the free magical inner child. I conjured all kinds of yummy, fun images, but I think that the piece that stops people is this idea … You said empower and emotion in the same sentence, and so it’s like I think that … I remember one of my dearest, dearest girlfriends, early on in her career, she’s a scientist, and she … We’ve been friends since the 5th grade, so hi, Megan. I’m going to talk about you. I remember how she would be so frustrated with herself about the emotional waves that would come over when she was passionate about something and she felt like, if I can put word in her life, kind of like her body was betraying her, if she got teary eyed or angry or whatever the case may be.

I think we have a misconception in our society that if you cry, it’s a weakness. I know Neva, our seven year old, is also … Her emotional energy piece is where she really, really connects with people and she gets so irritated when the tears come. I’m like, “Oh my lord, that is your biggest superpower. Don’t shut that down. Please let’s …” We work a lot with that, but as a society, we disregard it and we think that emotions are one of the least powerful aspects of us. How do you work with people to help them shift that piece of it?

Empowerment comes from choosing what we really want.

Yeah, exactly. The valuing the rational instead of the emotional is really at the root of why people are so disempowered. They’re living in their head around what they think they should be doing versus being in tune with how they really feel about things and responding to life from that place and that’s really where our empowerment comes from of choosing based on what we really want, based on how we feel, so that’s a whole other part of this, but in order to value our emotions, it needs to be educated on why we cry, why we grieve, what the purpose of anger is. All of our emotion are serving a purpose and we cry because we care so much and it’s a beautiful response to loving something and losing something or feeling hurt. It’s really an expression from our heart and it cleanses, it helps us release. Grief helps us release and process events in our life that have been painful. When we don’t do that and we suppress that, we’re still living from that pain in different ways and that pain gets triggered in different ways until we feel it.

Well, and I think that … I tend to have a little bit of a different, sometimes unpopular, opinion, because of the work that I do, my experiences, I do make a distinction between those folks who are more of the true empaths, so the emotional energy for them is fairly … Doesn’t carry a lot of intuitive information versus the people who tend to have emotional energy. Their intuition comes in through emotional energy and most of those folks in my experience think that they’re true empaths. I like to make that distinction, because the folks who really, really connect in the emotional energy space with people, that information is huge. It’s full of … I would say that’s the bulk of the population. The challenge that I had, and so this is for you listeners who aren’t really connecting with the emotion conversation, because I will tell you that that’s what one of my blind spots was for so long, because I didn’t connect with it. I didn’t get it. It didn’t make any sense to me, because it’s not how I get information.

I get information really through just straight knowingness, and so emotional energy to me was always kind of confounding, because most of it wasn’t mine. It was either coming in from outside of me or it was something buried so deep inside of me. The pure emotional energy in the moment isn’t something that I generate. It took me a long time to give myself permission to see things that way and to give other people permission to experience emotional energy in the really pure way that they’re experiencing it. My husband and my daughter were both hugely instrumental in that, because they both receive information through emotional energy, and I really had to face the fact that I had a huge bias against that. It felt a lack of self control. It felt like lack of willpower. It felt like, “What is your problem?” I would look at them like that was a robot like, “Does not compute.”

What I grew to appreciate was the fact that there’s so many experiences of the human experience. I do find it helpful to make that distinction and when I finally gave myself permission to say, I’m fairly devoid of that emotional energy in and of itself, but what I see in the people who utilize it in a very different way than I do is nothing short of pure magic and I think that they hold the keys, much like the work that you do with people, they hold the keys to how we really move into higher consciousness and how we move into that oneness place.

Yeah, definitely, and I think what you were describing is more along the lines of thinking types versus feeling types, which it sounds like you may be a thinking type.

I could see that … Yeah, we use different vernacular …

Yeah.

… assessments and everything else that we’re experiencing, but that feels right. What I notice was it was easy for me in society in a lot of ways, because we honor that. Like you said before and I think we’re seeing the shift to really looking at the magic and the power in the feeling types. Has that been your experience?

Learning how to process emotions.

Yeah, definitely, and that’s typically the people who I work with that respond so strongly and that’s why I work with physical symptoms. They’re feeling things and they maybe haven’t learned how to process their emotions and maybe they don’t have strong emotional boundaries yet and that’s a whole other thing I can talk about as well. Then they start processing other people’s or they’re taking on other people’s and they’re not listening to their own or it’s all jumbled up and so then that’s when they start to get really emotionally triggered or physical symptoms flair up or they don’t know how to say no or they’re not clear on what they want, because they’re cut off from their own intuition, which is typically in their body, their emotional guidance system. Yeah, the work that I do is just helping people process, learn how to feel safe, feeling their own emotional pain from the past, which helps them get clearer in the present to what’s happening.

I love what you’re talking about, because I do see also some … Maybe I can’t say damage, but at least some obstacles maybe get created when we have those juxtaposed situations, so if you have a coach or somebody who is more the thinking and doesn’t get what you’re talking about and you’ve got somebody who really is more the feeling, I think a lot of people try to fit themselves into that box. The damage that I’ve seen happen because of that … I guess I am going to say damage. It keeps coming up, but the damage I see happening from that is really pulling people away from that strong sense of self as they’re trying to be something that they’re not, like you talked about earlier. Empowerment really does come from choosing what we really want and what our experience is here. That’s challenging in a society that doesn’t really allow for that. What advice do you have for people who … I know there’s people listening who are like … That resonates with them. Like, “Wow, I’ve been trying to put myself in this box.” What can you offer to them about how to pull themselves out of that box, just some tips that they can do now, today, and get started in that?

Just to clarify the box of trying to fit … Maybe this could be an example of trying to fit into a company who doesn’t value how they feel or doesn’t care about how they feel, something like that?

Sure, yeah, perfect.

Yeah, okay, so my advice is to first learn how they feel and pay attention to how they feel and what’s important to them, so an example could be maybe they have a history of suicide tendencies and they’re in a workplace and people are joking about suicide and so to them, it’s insensitive and it’s actually hitting them in a place where it doesn’t feel good or safe and so they approach the boss and the boss says, “Oh, we can’t address that and just get over or stop being so sensitive.” That would be not a safe place for them to be, because they’re not being supported in what they need emotionally.

Got it. Is that a situation where you would usually advise maybe they need to leave that situation, or is there inner work that can be done to make it so that they intrinsically feel safe and so the external environment isn’t quite as abrasive?

I think it’s definitely a case by case basis, depends on … There is a place within where we can heal and we’re not getting triggered, but I do think that if they’re surrounded by people who are insensitive in general and they’re a feeling type, they’re going to still feel. That doesn’t feel good to talk about people in that way, so in that case, I would suggest or they could feel and respond from that place of like, “This doesn’t feel good and this isn’t the right environment for me.”

Got it, awesome. I love how you’re using the verbiage. You’ve been listening to the Super Power Up! podcast. We’ve been talking with Elicia Miller today about emotional healing is the doorway to higher consciousness. When we come back from this quick break, we’re going to dive a little bit more into the connection between going deep and then being able to expand out, so stick with us and we’ll be right back.

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Awesome, we’re back. Again, we’re talking with Elicia Miller here with the Super Power Up! podcast. We’re talking about emotional healing is the doorway to higher consciousness and you and I, before the show, we were like, “Okay, you know what? We want to make sure that people understand just how emphatic we feel about this concept and we kind of got down a rabbit hole about thinking and feeling, which I appreciate you going there with me, because I think it’s easy to disregard information if we don’t immediately connect with it and so to flesh to that out, I think was a cool experience. We were clear. You have to be willing to do this work and so what have you seen or maybe you can share some stories of maybe some change agents, some folks who work in the metaphysical space, healers, that type of thing, who … Have you had clients who their path got kind of stymied because they were blocked and not willing to go into this emotional healing space and what transpired when they actually did that work?

Yes, everyone I work with, so typically, when people come to me, they have already tried quote-unquote “everything” to address whatever they’re experiencing and nothing’s worked. I do work with a lot of physical symptoms and so a lot of people come and say, “I’ve tried everything and I still am having … I’m perfect on my diet and I’m taking tons of supplements and all these modalities and everything. I’ve done everything and still not working.” They tend to then google. It must be emotional. If it’s not this, it must be emotional. Maybe there’s something else that I’m not aware of. That’s typically when they come to me. I would like and the reason why I’m writing a book and more is so people don’t have to wait to try everything to do this work and like you stressed in the beginning, this is so important and most people avoid it and wait for the last resort like, “Okay, I have to do it now, because nothing else is working.” I wanted them to value doing this work, because everything changes so quickly once you do it.

The suffering I think comes from avoiding doing it. They don’t even know the connections, so when people come to me, yes, they’re suffering from this physical symptoms, but then they’re also not getting their needs met at their job or they’re not in the right job or they’re not in the right relationship and it’s all connected or they keep attracting the wrong people or they don’t … They’re operating from still their wounds of needing to be loved and accepted by the wrong crowd, even. Yeah, so it’s all related.

Other than the stuff that we’ve talked about already, why do you think we’re so resistant to that?

The resistance comes from the fear of feeling.

The resistance comes from the fear of feeling because it wasn’t safe to feel all emotions as a child, so most parents came from the parenting style of don’t feel, don’t feel the way you do, be quiet, because of their own emotional wounds that they couldn’t hold the space for their child’s emotions, because they were avoiding their own emotions, emotional pain typically, which can show up in so many different ways of someone who’s very controlling or perfectionist or even a rage-aholic. They control all of the emotions in the household. I think the fear comes because it wasn’t safe and so then they’re stuck in defenses that were created to not feel the fear. I mean not feel the pain, so the defenses come up and say, “This isn’t happening,” so there’s a denial. There’s a, “My parents loved and supported me. Nothing’s wrong. I’m okay.”

Then the avoidance and distractions and numbing behaviors start to continue to avoid feeling the pain, so then if someone mentions, “Well, there is something for you to feel here,” then they’re threatened to lose the things that they’ve been using to what they think is to feel safe, but actually they actually don’t feel safe using them. They still don’t feel safe, because they haven’t felt the anger that needs to be expressed so they can feel safe. Say they were in an abusive environment as a child or neglectful. They don’t feel safe, because no one’s there for them and no one’s caring about their emotions and how they feel and so anger is such a valuable emotion that is so misunderstood. Healthy anger expression actually helps us feel safe. It’s like, “No, this is wrong. This hurts. Stop.”

That creates and restores our boundaries and our energetic boundaries, so that also helps people who are very sensitive not take on other people’s stuff and stand up for themselves and their feelings by just expressing the anger that was repressed as a child, which also helps them feel safe in their energy and in their bodies and in their emotions and helps start processing other emotions. All that’s really needed sometimes is just expression of the anger or a release of the sadness of when they were hurt as children. The fear just comes from that child who still feels afraid, so that’s why it’s so important to be supported throughout this whole process, to be held and supported and loved and that’s what I do in all of my programs and it works best in a group setting. I have groups online and also on retreats where everyone is sharing such similar things. They’re like, “Oh, this is okay. I’m safe now. Okay, I can do this.”

That’s so fascinating. Yeah, I hear a lot of folks talking about that anger is a reactionary emotion. In fact, that’s some of the verbiage that I’ve given. It’s an interesting take that you have on anger and the power in it, so I’m really going to have to sit and kind of feel into that myself, because I just like that twist on it and so I can see how that could aid in the healing process. From my vantage point, from my side of things, it’s like a lot of people are quick to go to anger because they’re not interested in what lies underneath of it. I can see how the release of that or at least working through that opens the pathway to seeing what’s underneath of it.

Yeah, definitely. It’s both.

It’s cool.

Some people are stuck in sadness and they continue to cry easily and that’s really stuck in covering up what’s underneath that, which could be anger and then alternatively, someone could be stuck in anger, where they respond in angry ways to other people because they’re covering up that vulnerable, sad, hurt place. Either way, when I say expression of anger, it’s not towards someone else. It’s just processing and expressing what needed to be expressed and felt by themselves as a … The expression of the inner child, of what really the inner child needed to say or someone needed to say or be for that inner child.

I love that. Well, very cool. Well, I’m excited about you and the work that you do in the world. Talk a little bit about your book. Give us a little sneak peak into what you’re doing there.

Your Symptoms are a Gift.

All right, it’s called Your Symptoms Are a Gift and it has a lot of my stories. I experienced a chronic, systemic Candid condition for most of my life. I spent 15 years trying to heal myself through diet and supplements and cleansing and shaving my head and doing spiritual practices and doing energy work and selling all my belongings and moving to Thailand and so I’ve had quite the journey of self discovery and at the end of it, what I learned was my symptoms came back even when I had done everything that I could when I got into the same relationship pattern that triggered my core emotional wounds that still needed to be healed and felt and I needed to do that work myself.

It’s an inspirational guide to help readers really take action and ownership of their wellbeing, to heal the emotional root cause. It’s not a book that will teach them how to do it. It’s just to help them … It’s to inspire them, like we were sharing, to value the emotional work and to see, “Oh, there are things that are needed and hers why this is happening.” I talk about the symptoms that show up from our core emotional wounds that typically most people are not aware of. They’re not aware that they have … They were hurt often. I typically work with people who didn’t come from such a overt abusive childhood. I do work with that as well, but a lot of people who weren’t allowed to be themselves or completely were taken care of their parents, oftentimes, which symptoms show up.

The symptoms tends to be very common among all my clients, so this book is really for the people that I work with and the people who need this work to help them see the connection between their physical and emotional symptoms: anxiety, depression, digestive problems, rashes, chronic symptoms that are unexplainable and untreatable and addictions and compulsions and emotional eating and numbing, anything that’s number behavior, to perfectionism and a lot of relationship challenges. All of those are symptoms of all the same things, so it’s really to help them see once they address these core emotional wounds, all of these things that are creating all this suffering and struggles in life fall away and then they open up to their true gifts and they establish a really strong, healthy ego where they can express … They feel safe to express who they really are and without needing approval even and saying what they need to or setting boundaries when they need to to continue to express.

It’s going to talk about the symptoms and defenses, as I shared before, typically what gets in the way of doing this work. That’s why I love working with symptoms, because it is the way to the unconscious of like, “Yeah, you’re not really aware of this and this is why the symptoms showing you and I have the message from the body for you.” They’re all learning them of what needs to be addressed in the unconscious that they’re not aware of and that they’re not done. A lot of people say, “Oh, I’ve already addressed that. Oh, I’ve already dealt with that.” Well, if you have, it wouldn’t be going on.

Be like, “Yes, and wait, there’s more.”

I’ve already done this. When I am going to be done? It’ll help them see it’s okay. It’s just what’s up right now to be addressed. That’s it.

Well, we talk a lot about the spiral and so rather than falling into the trap of like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve already done this work and I failed and …” But it’s like there’s layers upon layers upon layers and as we do more and more work, we open up more and more layers. I like to give people credit for the work they’ve already done and so it’s like, “Yeah, of course you did that. The end. Here’s this other part of it, which is perfect because that’s an indicator that you went somewhere. You raised your frequency and so as you circle back around to it, now you get to deal with it at this level, then at this level.”

I’m like, “All those little pieces and parts of you didn’t go on that journey with you. They’re like in this arrested development state, waiting for you to show them that it’s safe and that it’s okay and to teach them what it’s like to be where you’re at. They didn’t get that memo.” It’s really removing some of the biases and stigmas that we have around emotional work is a huge part of at least how I can contribute to the work that you do and helping people see that it’s safe to do. I love the complementary nature of the work that we do and I love that you’re tackling that and I think it’s such a huge piece of this whole conversation. Where can people go to find out more about you?

They can … I actually have a great webinar that explains my journey and what I opened to from my own emotional work and how I put together this core emotional healing model and so they can find that on my website, which is eliciamiller.com and there’s a button that says, “get started”. It takes them to the webinar or they could go to /free-webinar and find it that way as well. It’s will explain it all. I also offer a free assessment, free 30 minute assessment if they want to just talk about what’s happening with them and what would be best. I have a private inner child session, which is great to get started with. I have a candida home study, so different levels of support, and also a retreat in Costa Rica that I do with Janet Raftis, who’s an energy healer and physic medium.

She’s also had a parallel healing journey as I did, also with Candida and the emotional work and opening up more and more to her gifts, so we do this retreat together because our work complements each other and also because we’ve gone through the work and we’re embodied and were able to hold that safe space for others. We’ve also dealt with addictions and most things that our clients have gone through, all kinds of abuse and neglect and how that’s showed up and the struggles that we experienced in life and how we’re now fulfilled in every area of our life from doing the emotional work.

Very cool.

Our retreat is called Sacred Emotion Retreat.

That’s beautiful. Well, it sounds very safe and very embracing and compassionate, so thank you … Thank both of you for the work that you do in the world and for really creating those safe spaces for people. I think that it’s so needed and so many people benefit from that, so we appreciate the work that you’re doing in the world.

Yeah, thank you. I’m loving what you’re doing. It’s so important for everyone to be inspired and have the resources and know that what’s possible for them, so thanks for sharing that.

Absolutely, my pleasure. Well, I get to talk to really amazing people like you, so it’s like I have a pretty good gig going on. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Elicia. I recommend to all of you, reach out, see what she’s about, get on her free consult. Just ask some questions. As you can tell, she is that nurturing mother. It’s a safe place for you to go to and talk to about things that perhaps you’ve never even … You didn’t know you were holding onto and so it is valuable work and I know if you’re listening to this, you are here to change the world and you can’t do that if you’re not willing to change yourself. The emotional healing piece is a great place to start. We’ve been talking today with Elicia Miller about emotional healing is the doorway to higher consciousness and dare I say, the doorway to unlocking your superpowers. Until next time, everyone, we appreciate your loyalty. Go out, uncover your superpowers and change the world. Take care.