How To Get Out Of Your Own Way! With Karen Ansen

How To Get Out Of Your Own Way!
With Karen Ansen & Samia Bano

Need help with #PeoplePleasingRecovery or #BurnoutRecovery? Feel like you're standing in your own way?

Listen now to this interview with Karen Ansen, the Founder of Ignite Your Purpose, as well as Principal Lawyer & Consultant at Ignite HR & Employment Law. Karen shares her powerful journey from fear, burnout, and childhood trauma to building a life rooted in peace, boundaries, and purpose. Karen reveals #practicaltools and invaluable wisdom to help you #liveyourbestlife, a #PurposeDrivenLife.

Learn:

-- Tools such as #Breathwork to rewire your nervous system and make it a daily practice for clarity, calm, and confidence.

-- How to get the courage it takes to admit when you’re not okay — and why it matters.

-- How to let go of responsibility for others’ outcomes, creating more #healthyboundaries, and learning that love does not require self-sacrifice.

-- And so much more!

Connect with Karen now at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenansen/

To Book your Free HAPPINESS 101 EXPLORATION CALL with Samia, click: https://my.timetrade.com/book/JX9XJ

#TraumaInformedHealing #NervousSystemRegulation #HealingJourney #FromSurvivalToPeace #EmotionalHealing #BreathworkHealing #InnerWork #WomenInLeadership #ConsciousLeadership #BoundaryWork #MindBodyConnection #TraumaAwareness #SelfTrust #EmotionalResilience #HealingThroughPresence #PeaceOverPressure #HolisticHealing #holistichealingjourney

Here's the audio version of this episode:

Transcript generated automatically

SAMIA: Hello, Salaam, Shalom, Namaste, Sat Sri Akal, Aloha, Holah, Ciao, Bonjour, Buna, Privet, Mabuhay, and Dzień Dobry. It's really, really good to be with you all again, and I know you'll be so glad you have joined us today because we have a very special guest with us, and that is Karen Ansen, who is the Principal Lawyer and Consultant at Ignite HR & Employment Law, as well as the Founder of Ignite Your Purpose. I'm so happy to have you with us, Karen.

Welcome!

KAREN: Thank you so much, Samia. How are you today?

SAMIA: I'm doing really well, and I'm looking forward to our conversation so much. You are not exactly like our typical guest that we usually have. But when you wrote to me and you shared about what you do, I was like, you know what?

Actually, you will have so much to share with our folks that they need to know about. So I'm so happy to have you with us.

Thank you so much. I think the biggest thing, I guess, that I bring to your show is that we have, I guess, from what I read about you, we have a shared journey in terms of going from adversity into what I call the light, into a beautiful space where you can be everything you need to be. That's the way I feel anyway.

So we definitely share that in common and more as we will find out. That's actually to get us on in terms of finding out more. Tell me a little bit more about you and what you do.

KAREN: So I've been, I live in Australia on the eastern coast of Australia in a little place called Clarence Town, which is sort of about two and a half hours north of Sydney. My husband and I and our chickens and our two pugs, and we live here and I run my law firm from home. I have clients, not really worldwide, but I do have a lot in all over Australia.

So I run the whole firm from here. I've been in practice now since 2014. So I was in my late 40s when I started practicing law.

You know, got into it because I thought maybe I might make a few dollars. You know, we've been quite, we had a very challenging life financially, most of our life. And both my husband and I are now self-employed.

And as much as everybody knows who's self-employed, there is challenges, but it has given us, I guess, the platform to be able to just to go for more in our lives and be more in our lives in terms of, yeah, our skills and what we bring to our businesses.

SAMIA: Yeah, that is so true. That is so true. I think a lot of, you know, when you're self-employed, you're a small business person even, and it's like a whole different world and a whole different set of challenges that one has to deal with.

One of the favorite analogies that I've heard of how to describe this experience. It's sort of like, you know, it's like you have a little baby. You know, there's this whole being that you bring into the world, and then you have to take care of it, and there's just so much that goes into it.

KAREN: That's, I've never heard that analogy, but I like it. Yeah, I agree. It's, look, I mean, as I was as a parent, I've got two children and three grandchildren, but being a parent in my early twenties, it was terrifying.

And I found the same thing when I found myself resigning. And, you know, over the years, I've realised the moments of clarity for me. People say to you, you know, all these amazing people in the world that have achieved all these incredible things, and they always say to you, go with your gut.

And I never understood that saying, because I don't actually feel those feelings of that. Oh, yes, you know. But for me, it's like a moment of clarity.

So when I resigned from my job in 2019, in December 2019, it was at the time that it happened, it was the most moment of clarity I think I've ever had in my life. And it was, the aftermath of that for me was just the fear that came out of it, because I'd always had a job, I'd always been able to put a roof over my head. And you know what happened in early 2020, COVID happened and that brought a lot of fear as well in the world.

And it was one of those times I think for three months, my husband said to me, I don't know who you are, you've become this crying person, all you do is cry all the time. You know, and I was just, I was paralysed with fear. And from that, I guess, I realized that I was carrying a lot of childhood trauma and the way that I was coping with things.

Because doing law, it took me nine years to do it. I worked full time and raised my children. And when they could cook toaster sandwiches, I decided that I would go back to, you know, uni.

And it was, you know, it wasn't a time when you could always do it as an external student. So I did have to go and do some in-house stuff. So that was challenging, because my husband has a very challenging job.

So, you know, going through all of that. But I felt like I was running a marathon. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I was going somewhere.

And every milestone was one of those things. And then when I finally got to practice law, it wasn't what I expected it to be. It was actually, I was quite disappointed.

I had poor leadership in the organisation that I joined. In fact, it was another challenge for me because the type of behaviours that I was dealing with were very similar to the way that I was brought up in my childhood. There was, you know, believe it or not, in a workplace these days, there was raising of voices.

You know, my particular manager was just one of the most dysfunctional humans I'd ever met. But you know, I had this kind of focus. It was so weird.

It was like, I'm not going to let this person get to me. And every opportunity I took, I grabbed it. And everything I kept, I kept going, okay, where is this taking me?

I'm not sure. But I knew that it was taking me somewhere. And then I jumped to another firm, which was, there was a place of nurturing in some respects.

But in 2019, I had a moment of clarity. It was just, I can't even describe it. I just knew, I had to resign.

I didn't have a plan. Everyone says have a plan. I didn't have a plan.

And I just, yeah, every day I got out of bed and I did my best. And I started to make some money. And then we, you know, I've been in business now five years and I'm thriving.

SAMIA: Yay.

KAREN: And yeah, like it gives me, it does give me some freedom now because I've got better with my boundaries. I've got better at picking, you know, matters that I know aren't going to cause me too much personal stress. You know, I've been able to work on myself enough to be able to cope with other people's burdens because that's what law is basically.

You're coping with people's, often at the worst time in their lives. So, you know, out of that, I guess, came that idea that maybe I had more to give and not just in the legal profession, but that's how I started Ignite Your Purpose. And this year, I've melded them together, the businesses.

So they are connected. So I do some coaching and also connect people with services because what I realise is that trauma sometimes comes out in people in a way that they want to take legal action against people. And I'm able to recognise that often in people and say, look, once we've finished this legal issue, I would suggest that you go and get some counselling or some coaching or something that might be able to assist you to move on because it can be devastating depending on the outcome of these matters.

SAMIA: Yes, I mean, it's interesting, like, depending on the kind of, of course, trauma we are talking about, sometimes the gut response at a societal level, even if it's not of the person who suffered the trauma, but the people around them, it's, oh, OK, we need justice. Go to the police, go to the courts. And other times, you know, depending, you know, also, I guess there's cultural issues that come up.

Other times, it's like, no, stay away from the police, stay away from the courts. And either way, it's like not very helpful when other people are trying to pressure you to go this way or that way. It's really, really important for the person who's the primary, I mean, the person who's primarily suffered the trauma, for them to be able to make their own decision.

Because even going through the, like, if you decide, okay, you know what, I am going to go the legal route to try and seek justice. It's like it can be a long process, grueling process. It can re-traumatize you in so many different ways.

And so like a lot of people think, oh, just like you were hinting at, Karen, that, you know, people imagine that, oh, once we get justice in court, once we get to have that day in court, that's when we'll feel better. And so forth, but it doesn't necessarily work like that. I would say most of the time, it didn't work like that.

KAREN: Well, what I've seen over the years, I think, and this is not just an employment law, but friends of mine that have had family law matters or whatever it might be. And people stay in what I call the fight, right? You're in the fight the whole time.

And it is traumatizing. It's traumatizing for you because they, whenever I first speak to an employer, it's so funny. They say to me, oh, you know, I had this terrible unfair dismissal because we have very strict laws here in Australia about how you treat staff and how you dismiss them.

And there's a whole what they call procedural fairness process around it. And it can be terrifying for people because they're scared of losing their businesses. They're scared of getting a big fine from the government because the government's here threaten you if you don't do the right thing.

And so, you know, they'll have these war stories from people. And, you know, my approach to most of my job is to A, support the individual in that time and acknowledge what they're going through, but also offer them, offer them an actual truth, the truth of what they're going to go through. I said, look, this is not for the faint hearted.

I've got this, but you have to be okay. You know, I can support you and I can listen and I can, but when I say to you enough, we need to settle this matter, then you need to listen. There's a point where you just go, it's, we're done.

We've run every argument, we're done. We need to settle it, you know, in some way. Because, you know, and look, it's interesting that I have a lot of people come back to me and say, oh, you know, that was life changing, that experience.

Because I've looked at the holistic person, I've looked at the legal problems and I've given them the best possible case scenario that they can get. And yeah, they move on. And I often do connect them with some kind of support afterwards or suggest that they do that because, you know, it's difficult.

I have ongoing clients which who I coach, you know, CEOs and people like that. Because most of the industries that I work in are age care, disability and home care. So, you know, there are a lot of non-English speaking people that work in those industries from all over the world.

And whenever we get in a meeting with people that have, you know, there's been allegations of abuse or whatever towards an elderly person, the biggest fear they've got in Australia is that they're going to get sent home. That something terrible is going to happen. You know, so I have to deal with those very carefully, those matters.

We have to look at them, investigate them very thoroughly, make sure that, you know, because it's a big decision to call, to someone that's going to affect their life completely.

SAMIA: Yeah, you know, I mean, I don't have, I'm not a lawyer. I don't have too much experience dealing with various legal issues. The only context within which I have some experience is having worked as a crisis counselor on a sexual assault and domestic violence hotline.

And so as part of that role, you know, we also serve as advocates for our clients, our survivors. And you know, when their cases go to court, you know, we like, they can, our clients have the right to have someone accompany them. And so oftentimes, they will choose, you know, us as the people who accompany them, because we have some training in the laws that are specifically, specifically related to domestic violence, sexual assault, particularly as related to the rights of the survivors, you know, so we can be effective advocates for them.

And it's, yeah. So that's, you know, I've had a little bit of exposure, to be sure, nowhere near what you have had to courts. And being there as a support person for someone who is going through that kind of process of trying to get justice for themselves, or even just, not even justice.

Sometimes it's a matter of like, you know, survival, just getting access to basic rights and services. So you can be safe and just live your life, you know.

So, yeah...

KAREN: I think your role, what you're talking about, is quite similar in terms of, all I think human beings, as you are probably aware, is they want to be acknowledged and they want to be heard. And I think in that type of scenario, a lot of women feel so helpless, you know, and are not believed, you know, that it's somehow their fault, you know.

And I know a lot of women blame themselves, but, you know, it's quite similar in terms of, because employment law, I've seen everything from sexual assaults at work, to, you know, elder abuse, to, you know, a lot of things that really are very confronting and personally difficult for me to deal with. But, you know, the way that I deal with it is with a lot of humility and with a lot of love. It's the only way.

But you have to protect yourself in some way, because you can't save, you can't help everybody. What my, the way I look at it is that I'm giving them great support and advice and the right path to support them to get to where they need to go, you know. So, that's how I kind of, I kind of try to separate myself from it.

But I'm one of those people. I just, I'd like, people will tell me their story in the line at the supermarket. You know, my husband said to me all the time, I don't know how you do it.

My son once told me, he said to me, Mom, I just want you for one week, not to ask, or not to get someone's story out of them. Just one week for me. And it was the funniest thing.

It's the beginning, I was away for work and I got back and he said to me, how'd you go, Kaz? Cause he calls me Kaz. How'd you go, Kaz?

And I went, mm, not very good. I tried. But I can't switch it off.

SAMIA: You know, my mom is like that for all that, you know, I've trained to be an advocate and survivors and stuff. I'm generally not someone who will, like, ask people about their lives, their questions. Like I'm not one who's inclined to like dig into people's business basically.

But I am a great listener. And there are times when I'm in a space and people choose to share things when I'm there and with me. And so I'm happy to listen and do what I can to support.

But my mom is just like you. She'll be like standing in line somewhere or, I mean, no matter where she goes, no matter how brief seeming her interactions are with someone, she always comes away with all this information about them that seems like, oh my gosh, like, how did you get all this info?

KAREN: My husband said the same thing. He goes, oh my god, how do you switch? I can't switch it off.

It's not always that I even seek the information. I'm a bit like you sometimes. People just volunteer it.

SAMIA: Yeah, and it's interesting because, like, when my mom, I don't think people mind her asking. It's just like she has this energy where she's just asking because she's interested. She's curious, but in a very caring, sort of compassionate way, not a judgmental way.

And so people are like apparently very happy to share with her.

KAREN: They're very relieved when they can feel that acceptance from somebody and there's no judgment. I think a lot of people, I think a lot of people are lonely and they don't share their story very often. And I think when they find somebody that has, I don't know, an interest and a kind heart, I just think they they just want to feel accepted and you know, because all of us have these crazy thoughts in our heads and you know, all of us are just battling our own minds in terms of the way that, I don't know about you, but I know with my, so you know how they talk about the voice in your head that tells you she can't do things all the time?

Mine's my mum. And she'd be horrified if she could hear that. But God love her.

She's a beautiful human and an amazing 84 year old woman who has battled, like she's had the most incredible life. But you know, her peace and her happiness always comes from children and music. So you know, in her ageing years, she has maintained her love for learning and she edits books and she does, she produces shows in a little town where she lives and you know.

Yeah, so it's it's one of those things. But her I know when I get when that person in my head tells me I can't do something, it's it's her voice. For some reason, as a kid, it was just one of those things.

But yeah, we all got it.

SAMIA: I think a lot of a lot of us can relate to that.

Okay. Okay. So tell me a little bit more about about the work that you do with Ignite Your Purpose. What's that about?

What's the? Yeah, just tell me more about Ignite Your Purpose.

KAREN: So sort of in conjunction with the 2019 issue, I realized that I had something else going on. There was a lot of, I think, trauma. I had a coach once that told me you need to acknowledge, because when I think about trauma, I think about, you know, children in war-torn countries or in domestic violence situations or things like that.

I came from a very white-collar background and we had a roof over our head, three mils a day. There was, you know, I wasn't beaten or, you know. So trauma comes in different forms, you know.

I had a very tumultuous relationship with my father and who used to yell a lot. And, you know, it was, I realized when I read a lot of things about psychology that it damages children and, you know, not being heard, not being understood. And so I realized that I had quite a bit of my own self-limitations.

So I started to kind of look for something and I went to this retreat in a place called the Gold Coast in Australia, it was absolutely beautiful, beaches. And anyway, it was out and up in the mountains and I was so out of my comfort zone. And it was the funniest weekend I've ever spent.

I did not know what I was getting into. But they were teaching me about Himalayan breathwork and we were doing meditation and yoga and all these other things which I'd never heard of before. Anyway, I kind of stayed only two of the three days because I was so out of my comfort zone.

And we did a very long breathwork session which was what he called a trauma-informed breathwork. And I'm not sure that anything changed in that moment, but I just know that I was weirded out by it and left. So fast forward to six months later, I noticed that that person, his name is Trey Williams, he had an online course that was for free.

Anyway, I enrolled in it. And weirdly, that day, I'd been going to, have you ever heard of like sound healing?

SAMIA: Yeah, yeah.

So that with the bowls, and I'd weirdly that same day also enrolled in this session for sound healing. And I'm lying down in this room and it was beautiful, all these beautiful bowls, and the little tinking things and all that. It was, yeah, it was beautiful, relaxing, transformational.

Anyway, this lady was sitting next to me, and she said to me, your guides are talking to me. And I thought, okay. She said, I don't know what this means to you, but you need to breathe.

And just enrolled in this breathwork course. Anyway, I went home to my husband and I said, oh my God, this lady told me I need to breathe. I thought, that's weird.

I've just enrolled in this breathwork course anyway. So two years, I did the free course and then I enrolled in a course that taught me how to actually take people through the breathwork. I've done a level one and a level two.

So I'm a level two breathwork practitioner. And it basically changed my life. There's no question about it.

The community that I met, the like-minded individuals that are heart led, that they're changing the world with the way that they view the world. I've been able to transform the, I want to call it getting out of my own way. And what I want to do is to be able to help other people do the same thing.

Because I mean, if you saw, I mean, to the world, the interesting thing about me, I don't know if this is the same with everybody, but if you saw me ten years ago, you would have thought, yes, confident, yes, happy, beautiful husband, wonderful children, you know. The problem was I knew that I was carrying a lot of burdens, a lot of guilt, a lot of sadness. You know, of course, there's moments of happiness, but what it does is, what it did for me was manifest into my life, dysfunctional behaviors that both my husband and I carried into our marriages from our children.

We've been married 35 years next week. So, you know, and we have the most amazing relationship because we've worked on it, but we've been vulnerable. We've been, you know, we often talk about how different our life is now.

And now we've kind of, we understand our trauma and the why we react the way that we do. And so I guess that's my story about how we got to where we are now.

Yep.

SAMIA: So with Ignite Your Purpose, so you basically are doing practices like breath work and meditation with folks. And that's also, I assume a lot of like maybe what you incorporate with the coaching that you do with clients and so forth.

KAREN: Yeah. So interestingly, I led 600 people at an aged care conference for years. I've been trying to get to deliver compliance talks at conferences.

For some reason, no one would want to let me do it. I've been a client's compliance expert for 12 years or whatever. Long time, actually longer than that.

And I put in a summary and applied to do Igniting Purpose in Aged Care Leadership. And it was all about basically the same thing, getting out of your own way, understanding the patterns about why you do the things that you do, why you overwork, why you want to be the nicest person in the room, why is it that you let people cross your boundaries? So I talked about all of that and I talked about setting goals and I talked about how to do a morning practice and an evening practice of gratitude and how the little steps of just writing down your thoughts in the journal and I teach people how to, those practices, the practice that I do now takes probably 15 minutes max, 7 minutes of breath work, you do a little bit of journaling and you do some positive affirmations and you're set for the day, you know.

SAMIA: Yeah.

KAREN: And it's life changing for people because the breath work resets your nervous system. So if you're someone who's prone to anxiety and you're prone to being, when you sit and you feel wherever the tension is in your body and you recognize it and you breathe into it, what it does for you is really make you aware and conscious of how you're treating your body because it's really your mind that's racing and it's changing. It's all these negative thoughts and when you drop into your body and you start to feel that tension and you say, okay, what is it that you need from me?

Where is this coming from? Why is this coming up today? And breathe through it.

It's transformational for people. It takes a little bit of practice. I mean, it took me a few years really to understand how to do it properly.

But little changes and you'll realize one day that you do feel and you think clearer, you feel better, you know yourself better and you're not reacting in the ways that you used to react. And your relationships get better. Your confidence gets better.

And yeah, it's just, for me, it has absolutely changed my life and other people that I've been able to coach, definitely.

SAMIA: Yeah. And you know, sometimes the changes that you experience, they, like you perceive them over time and slowly and other people are able to see them more clearly in you sometimes even before you can see them in yourselves. Other times, you can feel it more immediately that, oh no, okay, I went through this process and I'm feeling different in this way, but either way, it's like really helpful and needed.

KAREN: Do you practice any of those things yourself?

SAMIA: Yeah, you know, I have a wide variety of tools and different kinds of processes and stuff that I use. My favorite practices these days are all sort of like more prayer-based. And like when I, I would say even like five, six years ago, I was doing a lot more like active exercises in terms of like training.

I mean, I did a lot of work to retrain my brain, to think more positively. And, you know, there was like all these exercises that I learned at first just for myself, with my coaches and trainers, where, you know, you have these step-by-step processes you go through to help yourself feel better, think more positively in different kinds of situations. A lot of it, you know, like, based on applied positive psychology research.

And that was also like the crux of what I was teaching my clients in my work as a happiness expert. But in the recent years, particularly in the last five years or so, I've been moving more and more, like, in terms of exploring spirituality and developing my own spirituality and spiritual practices. And in the last, I would say maybe even three years, I have really, like, especially like for myself at a personal level, that has become the main focus of the practices that I have.

I mean, I still, I still do some of the other bothered with psychology based practices just because they're so habitual for me now. But in terms of what I make more deliberate time for, more new time for, what I'm more excited to go deeper into, it's more of the spiritual stuff that I've been learning and practicing and experiencing. And a lot of it is just focusing on like the core of spirituality for me, as I've come to understand it now is just a relationship thing.

You know, it's like, how do we create a more loving relationship? How do we learn to love and be loved more and more deeply? And so it's like, of course, my relationship with my source, but also my relationship with other people.

And because we're all interconnected, interdependent parts of the same whole, you know, and the other big shift in that context has been, and this was something that I was really appreciating about what you were sharing earlier, Karen, is, you know, taking on this attitude of not taking on so much on myself. Because especially when you are in these kinds of professions, where you're helping other people who are going through really difficult stuff, you have to figure out how you can take care of yourself. And for me, one of the biggest lessons has been, you know, when you can realize that, oh, I'm not the one who's responsible for their well-being.

I'm doing something, like I'm part of the solution. I'm part of the process for how they're helping themselves, how the universe is helping them. But ultimately, you know, I'm not responsible for the results that they see in their lives.

It's just a very difficult place to be in when you feel that kind of responsibility. And it really takes you on this path of quick burnout. Which I don't want to, because I want to keep helping people.

KAREN: I think the boundaries thing is really important. And that comes from learning who you are and understanding, for example, the people pleaser in me was just manic. She just wanted to be all and do all for everybody, you know.

And you can't, you can't carry people, you cannot do it. And you have, I mean, they say that about, you know, you've got to put your own mask on first, right? And so learning to actually love yourself.

And the thing is, people kind of talk about romantic love and, you know, putting your partner first or whatever it might be. My relationship only got better when I put myself first, when I understood who I was and loved myself and did things for myself. In other words, talk up for myself, say things when I needed to say them, as scary as they might have been because it might cause an argument or whatever.

But say them in a way that was loving and truthful and authentic.

SAMIA: Yeah.

KAREN: And that then creates, if the person's still coming back at you, if the other person's still coming back at you with anger or fear, then you make an observation about that and say, okay, I can see there's still, you've got some anxiety about this, I feel like you had that, you never believe in them, it's always about I feel, I think, I see. Not you are. I made that mistake many years ago, as soon as you start a sentence with you, always or you never or, that always starts an argument, doesn't it?

But you know, it's, and that for me, it transformed all of my relationships in my life. There's not one question about it. And finding ways to be able to love yourself more, starts with understanding yourself and writing down your fears and, but transforming them.

I'll tell you an interesting story about how it started for me. So many, many, many years ago, when I was in my probably very early twenties, I had a relationship and he cheated on me. And I was going to marry this guy.

It was all… It was a done deal. And it was the moment in my life where I realised that the one person that you can love can do the worst possible thing to you. And you can feel that rejection and the sense of abandonment and all of the hope and the wishes that you ever had on that relationship can be absolutely obliterated.

And you are left with a lack of trust. There's no question about it. And a lot of people, and as I did, my entire adult life carried that with me my whole life.

SAMIA: Yeah.

KAREN: I would often cut people off when they showed me that they, for whatever reason, people are not, you know, they're not perfect. No one's ever perfect. People are always going to be themselves, always going to disappoint you.

But it's how you deal with that disappointment, how you deal with that. And so I found that I didn't realize that my biggest fear was abandonment. And that had come from that experience in my life.

And I didn't realize that. So what I was doing was I was ruining relationships with friendships, all sorts of relationships. Because I was scared that they were going to abandon me, I would see something in someone that I didn't like and I go, right, I'm done.

SAMIA: Yeah. Yeah, I know I've...

KAREN: A lot of people like that, don't you think?

SAMIA: Yeah, I think a lot of us can relate to what you're sharing. I know I've been through a phase in my life where I had serious trust issues with trusting other people. I mean, I had trust issues with myself as well.

I mean, that was probably the bigger problem. But what I focused on was other people. And definitely this, you know, like wanting to protect myself by just having these extremely high, unrealistic standards of...

This is exactly the same.

Just want 100% consistency from the people in my life. So if they ever deviate in any way from my expectations, it's like a problem. And it's like it becomes such a problem that it's like...

The... Literally, the relationship would be... Like, I can't tell you how many relationships I just walked away from.

Whether it was friends, family members, working... In the work context. It's like I just didn't want to deal with people that I perceived as inconsistent and untrustworthy and my standards were so unrealistically high that pretty much no one could meet them.

I couldn't meet my own standards, to be honest.

KAREN: It's interesting when you say that you don't trust yourself because I think you're right. The thing is, I didn't trust my instincts with people was my problem. I would instantly love people.

SAMIA: Yeah.

KAREN: And then I didn't trust that I had their right, whatever that was, to know if people were good or bad. I mean, people aren't good or bad.

But do you know what I mean? For me, in my life, and so I didn't trust myself. And that's interesting that you say that.

And I'm not sure that I've worked that out yet. But I know that I know what I like and I know I'm ridiculously high standard with people. So people have to put up with that in some ways.

But they know that. The people that know and love me know that. And they're constantly in my face going, we're good, aren’t we?

We're good. And I'm like, yeah, we're good, we're good.

SAMIA: Yeah, I figured out the fact that my big underlying problem was self-trust. I figured it out a while back because, you know, like I said, there was, for one thing, I saw the inconsistency in terms of what I was expecting of other people and in my own behavior. Like, you know, for example, I would say to somebody, OK, I'm going to do this by this day and by this time.

And I mean, you know, and 90 percent of the time when I make a commitment, I'm able to fulfill it. If I see myself not being able to meet it, I'm, you know, I'm able to now, because I'm in this much more healthy place, just communicate honestly and be like, hey, it looks like I'm going to run late. You know, I may need an extra day or whatever to get this done or that I've taken on too much, I can't get it done. Sorry, I have to back out whatever the issue is. But in the past, you know, I would have my own times when I failed to meet my commitments or when I’d blow up.

Like, for example, one of my big things in terms of my relationships was I didn't want to deal with drama, like, bad drama, I didn't want to deal with anger. I didn't want to deal with anyone, especially if I thought anyone was trying to manipulate me. That was it.

That was it. Like, I could not abide the thought of anyone trying to manipulate me. And so, you know, but there were times when I caught myself being angry, for example, at someone and or when I would catch myself.

Like, I wouldn't, like, when I think about myself, I wouldn't like to use the word manipulate. Because I see my own actions with empathy and compassion. Right.

And so, so I had this cognitive dissonance where I'd be like, okay, you know, when I used this kind of behavior towards that person because I needed to get what I needed to get from them. And that was the way I saw for me to get what I, and I didn't have bad intentions. I wasn't doing anything to harm them or, you know, this and that.

And so I justify it to myself in my own behavior. But I wasn't willing to do that for other people. So like, there would be times when my mom, for example, would try to lovingly, emotionally blackmail me sometimes to do something.

KAREN: Offend me. Passive-aggressive behaviour, it's called.

SAMIA: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, even if it's like little things, you know, and then, but I would just like get so offended and I would be like, no, no. I remember this one time when, you know, we had, we were getting dressed for a wedding party. And this was, and my mom was not involved in this scenario.

This was me with some of my cousin's sisters and stuff. And we were all like young at that time. We were like maybe teenagers getting ready for a wedding.

And I, in those days, in my teenage days, I hated to have anyone pay attention to my body. I didn't want to look good. I didn't want to look attractive.

So, me, I dressed in the most ugly fashions that I could. And I remember this one time when my sisters were like, but we want to dress like matching and we want to all be the same. And they all tried to like guilt me into dressing better and more like them.

And they were just saying things like, oh, one of them was like, well, if you don't do this, then I will get angry at you. And then I won't talk to you. And then I won't go out with you for that outing.

And I was like, oh, really? Fine. Then just go.

Like, I'm done with you. And I was like, just so like, I saw that as this person is, I mean, my cousin.

KAREN: Because there was such a lack of understanding. And I think when you're in that situation, I know for me, I often feel powerless. Like I felt powerless in the situation.

So what comes out is anger. Which is really fear. That's a lot easy.

SAMIA: Exactly. There was so much fear of, you know, just... Because like for me, the fear of being manipulated was that, that I would then be hurt.

That someone would manipulate me in ways that would hurt me. So to protect myself, I was like, I am not going to tolerate any kind of manipulation. So even if it's, you know, my cousin's sister, and she's just trying to make me dress better and you know, be like, hey, so we can all look alike and you know, do this thingy for going to this wedding or whatever.

It was like not going to fly with me. It was not acceptable. And you know, it was similar things.

Like, you know, just little issues when I talk about, when I referred to my mom. Like seriously, there would be total non-issues if like my mental health was good, if I was able to keep things in good perspective. There would be total non-issues, but they became big issues because I wasn't having good mental health and good perspective. So.

KAREN: Look, I mean, I've been there too. It's funny. My relationship with my mom changed a lot after I did a lot of work on myself.

Because, you know, her, she could be passive aggressive, and it was for manipulating purposes because she wanted her own way, for example. And I remember the first time my husband realized that I'd, that I was OK, was she would ring on a Sunday night and I would get upset after she would ring. And then she got really sick and she was in hospital and we had to, she lives quite a way away from me.

I had to fly up and see her and my husband came with me and he drove me to the hospital. It was two and a half hours drive from the hospital, from the airport to the hospital. And when we left, we got in the car and we were driving back to the airport and I'm turning the radio on and I'm chatting away and he goes, he's driving, he's looking at me going, OK, so when are the tears going to start?

When is the, oh my god, did you hear her say that? And blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, I'm fine.

And he went, oh my god. He couldn't believe it. He was like, I don't know what you've done, but this is amazing, you know?

And it was, it was, it was really, I mean, I can't explain it except that it was about me and healing my own words, my own problems, my own hang ups, whatever they were, that was the change. I had nothing, she's not changed at all.

SAMIA: Yes.

KAREN: Nobody in my life has changed. It's me that's changed. And my reactions, understanding what they are and healing those things for me has been the absolute change.

SAMIA: Yeah. And you know, the interesting thing is that a lot of times when we do this kind of healing work on ourselves, the other people around us don't change, but sometimes they do for the better. And they change because we become the catalyst of their change.

You know, and so I've experienced that as well, actually, where, like, I keep coming back to my mom because she is just such a central relationship in my life, you know, and oh, yeah. And I realized that a lot of the issues over which I used to struggle with my mom, they were definitely my issues. They were not her issues.

And there were, and then as I healed my issues, there were, then I began to see more clearly, OK, that here are a few issues that are our issues. You know, that there is a lot of relational going on. Yeah.

We're still working through some of those things. And actually, for me to work through them, even now, a lot of times now, I depend on my sister to help us out because she is this really socially intelligent, like, relationship genius person. And yeah, so she is my relationship coach, as it were.

And sometimes it's like when you have such a old relationship, these are sometimes the hardest ones to make changes in, because you have all the old patterns that you're kind of stuck in. And so you need a little bit of extra help and support to sort of break through.

KAREN: It's awesome that she's been able to be that figure.

SAMIA: Yeah. And a lot of times, like, I can still lose perspective on, is it like my thing getting triggered, my old trauma getting triggered or something like that? Or is it our issue or is it just mom's issue?

And so for me to then be able to have my sister come in and provide a third or second perspective on how she's seeing things and, you know, how we can sort of... And also, like, because my mom and I have had a very different relationship than my sister and my mom have had. My relationship with my mom for the first good two and a half decades of my life got marred because of my trauma.

But thankfully, my sister and my mom, because my sister wasn't traumatized, thank God, you know, had a much more close and healthy relationship. And so oftentimes it's also easier for my mom to hear things from my sister than from me, because just as I can get triggered and sort of lose perspective on what's really going on when something comes up with me and my mom, the same thing can happen with her, you know. And so for us, it has been we are working on our relationship and it's so much improved now.

And I have to give a lot of credit to having my sister in my life helping us through that.

KAREN: It's truly a beautiful thing but Samia that, you know, one of the reasons that I had started Ignite Your Purpose is the whole point of what I think we're doing is our journey. We're learning from all of the things that we're doing in our journey, right? And we're transcending all of these issues and I think that's a beautiful story that explains for anybody dealing with these complex relationships or any kind of trauma or, you know, relationships that need to be healed.

There is a certain amount of bravery in it and there has to be authenticity. You have to be yourself, real, you have to be able to show that you're sad, you have to be able to show that you're uncomfortable, you know, because we put these masks on all the time, we're fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, but you're not fine. If you're not fine, then you're not fine.

SAMIA: Yes.

KAREN: So it's, there's an element of bravery in there that is really important to understand as well. That's just, that's my experience and I think that, that's my key to happiness is that for me, it's about peace, right? I just want peace.

Peace from all of the things in the world that didn't bring me peace. And yeah, that's been my, yeah, that's been my journey. But I look, I'm so grateful to you for having me on this show.

You're just a beautiful human. And yeah, I hope that this talk's been able to reach someone that needs to hear it today.

SAMIA: Indeed, indeed. And I'm so sad, Karen, and that I'm gonna have to wrap up for today.

KAREN: It's okay.

SAMIA: Because I'm having so much fun talking with you and I want to keep going. And I have to rush off to the next meeting that I have. And I'm like, do you have any last thoughts for right now?

KAREN: Any what, sorry?

SAMIA: Any last thoughts about anything, but especially if you want to tell our audience how to find you or anything?

KAREN: You can find me at Ignite Your Purpose, at Ignite HR & Employment Law. They're linked so you can find them. But it's just Karen Ansen.

I'm the only one. There's no other Karen Ansen in the world. So you can Google me.

But look, I just love to tell my story. I don't really have anything to sell as such, except that people will resonate with the story and connect with me in some way on social media. I share a lot of videos and tips and meditations and things like that.

I make a lovely living out of my employment law business. I'm moving into more of that coaching space. I think when I retire in five years' time, I'll be doing more of that.

But I want to run retreats and collaborate with people, like-minded people to do retreats. Yeah, just because I know that it changed my life. So I know that it can help other people.

SAMIA: Yay. That's awesome. Again, thank you so much, Karen.

And for my last reminder to our audience is just to encourage you all to, yes, please make sure you check the show notes because we will be dropping Karen's links in there so you can connect with her and continue to learn with her and maybe even get some help and support whenever you're ready for it. And until we connect next time, I wish you lots and lots of peace and joy.

KAREN: You too. Thank you so much.