Solving for Safety with Vanessa Cornell
“There is nobody who can tell you who you are, there are lots of really skilled guides that can guide you towards who you are, but you're the only one who can remember who you are.” - Vanessa Cornell
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Vanessa Cornell
In this episode
Vanessa and I explore what happens when you disconnect from your truth in an effort to solve for safety.
We expand on what it means to hold space for another, and how it begins with holding space for all of our parts. In the space of curiosity and self inquiry, you learn who you really are.
We unpack shame, perfectionism, and releasing a prescribed life for an aligned life.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favorite podcast platform. Favorite quotes and a full transcript of this podcast can be found below.
About Vanessa Cornell
Vanessa Cornell is the founder of NUSHU, a wellness collective and global community committed to fostering true connection, personal growth, and empowerment. Vanessa graduated from Harvard and went on to work at Goldman Sachs. She then dedicated ten years to growing, birthing and raising her five children. After a lifetime of excelling at meeting external expectations, Vanessa felt deeply disconnected from herself and experienced a breaking apart of everything she had known. NUSHU was born into this space. Through NUSHU, Vanessa offers retreats, courses, and community programming. She has trained hundreds of people to hold powerful space for themselves and others through her signature offerings: NUSHU Group, the How To Hold Space Course, and the NUSHU Group Facilitator Training program. Since her personal awakening, Vanessa has become a relentless and curious observer of the human condition, and a leading voice for true empowerment and a breaking down of the guru paradigm in the wellness space. The truth, she believes, lives, and has always lived, inside each of us.
How To Connect With Vanessa
https://vanessacornell.com/how-to-hold-space
Favorite Quotes from the Podcast
“We crave love and human connection the most. Our deepest fear is that we'll be alone and unloved. And so we hide these things away from other people. And it's just fascinating because what happens is exactly the opposite when we share it with the right person in the right way.”
“There is nobody who can tell you who you are, there are lots of really skilled guides that can guide you towards who you are, but you're the only one who can remember who you are.”
Transcript of the Podcast
I'm so honored to introduce Vanessa Cornell to you. She is the embodiment of a powerful woman. She is the founder of NuShu, a wellness collective and global community committed to fostering true connection, personal growth, and empowerment. Vanessa graduated from Harvard and went on to work at Goldman Sachs.
She then dedicated 10 years to growing, birthing, and raising her five children. After a lifetime of excelling at meeting external expectations, Vanessa felt deeply disconnected from herself. New shoe was born from this space through new shoe. Vanessa offers retreats, courses, and community programming. She has trained hundreds of people to hold powerful space for themselves and others.
Since her personal awakening, Vanessa has become a relentless and curious observer of the human condition and a leading voice for true empowerment and a breaking down of the guru paradigm in the wellness space. The truth she believes lives and has always lived inside of each of us. Let's drop in.
[00:01:39] ERIKA STRAUB: So your path, like what brought you to where you are today and to drop into this work? Yeah. I mean, the first 36 years of my life, I'd never heard of any of this work. I had no idea what my inner landscape was. I wasn't interested in it. I was building the life that I thought I wanted.
[00:01:59] VANESSA CORNELL: You know, I worked hard in school. I was a real overachiever. I went to Harvard. I went to Goldman Sachs. I had all these kids. And, um, it never even occurred to me to sort of Understand what my motivations were, what my fears were, what my worries were. That was just like, not a vocabulary I even had. But life was good, right?
[00:02:19] VANESSA CORNELL: I mean, I had all the boxes checked. I had a happy marriage. I had five healthy children. I'd had a great career and success. And I had an amazing life. And inside of that life, after I had had five kids and been pregnant, breastfeeding, or both for eight years straight, I found myself in a place where I literally wanted to press the eject button from my perfect life.
[00:02:46] VANESSA CORNELL: I just couldn't take it anymore. And I had no idea at the time what that was about. Now, years later, I know what it was about. It was the fact that I had been living the life that was prescribed for me, not the life that was right for me. I was completely disconnected from myself. I was actually extremely lonely because I had never been taught or known how to show myself to another person.
[00:03:11] VANESSA CORNELL: I went through this period of time where I tried kind of unconsciously to blow up my life and I spoke to nobody. I didn't tell my mother. I didn't tell my brother. I didn't tell my friends. I told nobody. I was totally alone in this. And so from that point of kind of my life falling apart, cracking open, I started to become incredibly interested in my own inner workings, my own psyche, um, and, and discovered this work of kind of knowing myself and, and mastering my own self that now, uh, I can't imagine doing anything else.
[00:03:47] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah. It's like, once you step in, it's like, this is, this is life. This is love. This is everything. Right here. It's, it's, it's so endlessly fascinating. I mean, uh, I'm really interested in a lot of different things, but the human workings, the in, the inner workings of a human being, I think is the most fascinating puzzle to, to sort of try to uncover.
[00:04:09] ERIKA STRAUB: Absolutely. What was it like for you as that kind of gnawing sensation was coming in of like, I feel really alone in this perfect life. I feel unfulfilled. I want to get out of here. What was that like? There was, there was no gnawing sensation because I had been so, so good at ignoring it. So I'm sure it was there.
[00:04:33] VANESSA CORNELL: Right. I'm sure that all the signs were there. I'm sure that all the whispers were there, but I had sort of trained myself to ignore them. I had trained myself to ignore all the signals and the signs of my own inner knowing in order to achieve the thing in order to fulfill the goal in order to be who I was supposed to be.
[00:04:52] VANESSA CORNELL: So by the time I, by the time I got to this place, there was no inner sensation that I was having a relationship with. There was just this Something inside of me literally screaming at me because I had been ignoring it for so long. So I work with so many women who are so smart and so capable, and it's the capable ones that hold on the longest because they know how to cope and deal and make that part go away.
[00:05:18] VANESSA CORNELL: They know how to keep going in life and become very, very skilled and trained at ignoring all the signals. Especially in motherhood, frankly, in other ways also, but especially in motherhood, we become really, really, really good at ignoring those signs. And so the process of coming back to starting to listen to them again requires some time and patience and work and attention.
[00:05:43] VANESSA CORNELL: But there was no gnawing sensation. There was just all of a sudden, this like, Undeniable feeling of I have to get out of this life and a total lack of understanding of why yeah What is the training ground that takes us to that place to just be in total override or? Disconnection from our sensations not able to hear the whispers.
[00:06:09] VANESSA CORNELL: Oh gosh, it starts so young You know it starts with don't be so sensitive Yeah, don't be so dramatic. Oh, don't be upset about that. Stop crying. Don't cry. It starts with the people around us basically invalidating and denying how we feel, and listen, no shame or shade on the people who raised us, right?
[00:06:33] VANESSA CORNELL: They all did the best they could, but when you tell a child, don't be silly, don't be afraid of that, don't be silly, don't be sad about that, what you're basically saying to them is, don't trust what's happening inside. Trust what everyone around you is saying. And so, we start out listening to all of our signals, right?
[00:06:52] VANESSA CORNELL: A baby cries when it's hungry. A baby cries when it's tired. A baby cries when it's in pain. It's intimately, intimately in touch with all of those internal signals telling it what it needs. And over time, we unlearn those. Over time, we start to learn from the people in the environment around us not to trust ourself, not to believe what our body is telling us, not to believe what our inner voice is telling us.
[00:07:18] VANESSA CORNELL: And so in pursuit of acceptance, in pursuit of this ideal image of what it is to be this perfect, good little girl that receives praise and receives love. Praise slash love, because we can often conflate those two things. We start to kind of unlearn to hear the signals inside of us and to solve instead for the external signals.
[00:07:46] VANESSA CORNELL: And the more capable, capable we are, the better we are at solving for the external signals. The better we are at figuring out how does everyone need me to show up? I can, I can make myself be that. I can shapeshift and twist myself into exactly who you want me to be so that I get your praise and attention and what feels like love.
[00:08:11] ERIKA STRAUB: Such a refined skill and just so easy to slip into. And I'm just like feeling in my body as you're sharing this, like that distance that gets created between ourselves and our body, just a gap, how expansive it gets between sensations and knowing and just how we're living. Yeah. I'll tell you a little story about something that I realized that I was doing as a mom.
[00:08:36] VANESSA CORNELL: So like I had. Five toddlers, you know, so it was like, I was like juggling plates, you know, it was wild. And when realized one day I realized like it was maybe 4pm and I had had to pee since like 8am and it wasn't even like, Oh, I have to pee, but I'm too busy with my kids. I'm going to ignore it. I had found a way to actually physically, literally ignore the physical sensation.
[00:09:06] VANESSA CORNELL: I didn't even feel it because I think in my mind, not consciously in my mind, I was like, there's no time for me to have a need. So if I let that need tell me like, you got to go to the bathroom, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to meet it. So you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to figure out how to ignore all of them.
[00:09:27] VANESSA CORNELL: I'm just gonna figure out how to numb all of them. I'm just gonna figure out how to make sure they stay over there because it's much easier. To not have any needs than to have and acknowledge your needs and know that they won't be met. Yeah. The reclamation of needs, I think is one of the messiest, most destructive and beautiful processes we can go through.
[00:09:53] ERIKA STRAUB: And I'm curious if there's like a particular need that you've had, like a really intimate relationship with, like bringing forward from that like buried unconscious or the numb or distant place. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's just me. It's just one I've seen so commonly. It's this need for rest, you know, the thing about my kind of reclamation of my needs and my looking at myself and what kind of happened in retrospect is that I sit with so many women and our stories are so similar.
[00:10:30] VANESSA CORNELL: They're so much the same. And so this reclamation of this need to rest that sits in direct conflict with this training we've had to always be productive and to measure our worth through how much we produce, how much we can do, and this real balance between the glorification of how tough I was. The glorification of how much I could endure, how proud I was of how much I can endure, and to try to unravel that, contrastingly, be proud of how much I'm not proud.
[00:11:05] VANESSA CORNELL: No longer willing to endure the fact that I'm no longer willing to endure extreme physical pain and exhaustion and so rest has been one of those things that I know I need to reclaim, but it's really uncomfortable. You know, I don't know about you or some of your, your listeners, but, um, my first few days on vacation or like.
[00:11:31] VANESSA CORNELL: I'm like all jittery. I'm like, I'm like all like, I'm like, I, it does not feel good. It does not feel good. That blank space doesn't feel good. I feel, I feel bad, not just uncomfortable, but like, I feel like Bad about myself. And so to unlearn these patterns of measuring our self worth and feeling good and productive and worthy through our output.
[00:12:00] VANESSA CORNELL: That's a really, really hard one to unlearn for me. And I bet for a lot of others. And so in this process. Even though I know intellectually where I'm going, I have to make space for the fact that my body is trying to catch up. Yeah. Yeah. When you've been trained in a certain way for several decades, you're gonna have to come back to it so many times.
[00:12:21] VANESSA CORNELL: And honestly, maybe it never goes away. Maybe that little voice never goes away, but I'm not discouraged by it. You know, I kind of, I'm like, I look at, I look at that old friend, you know, Doubt. I look at that old friend, like, needing to be productive. I look at all these old friends and I'm like, I see you. I know you.
[00:12:44] VANESSA CORNELL: I'm so familiar with you. Here you are again. I'm kind of bored of you, but you'll probably be with me for my whole life. Yeah, and then it gets to be like, you can have a seat at the table and be here. That's fine. Totally. Is this like you are wrong and bad and I'm in resistance to it. It's That's what it feels like in my system.
[00:13:04] ERIKA STRAUB: Like you're welcome here. That's fine. You're not going to lead, but you're welcome. You're welcome to be here. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. But every once in a while I get annoyed. I'm like you again, I'm so bored of you already. I'm curious. Did you Have this experience also with like play, not just rest, but play.
[00:13:29] VANESSA CORNELL: That's an interesting question. You know, play was easier for me. And play for me takes the form of adventure. Play for me, um, takes the form of surfing or rock climbing or, you know, hiking. And I find that Easier because I relate it a little bit to, I was an athlete also, it feels a little bit closer to that place of being an athlete and kind of achieving a goal.
[00:13:58] VANESSA CORNELL: Um, one of the things I really love about surfing is it's kind of by its nature, uncompetitive. Um, one of the things I love about rock climbing is it's, I mean, there are rock climbing competitions, but I don't do those. They're a little bit like just for you. And so play for me kind of is is a little bit achievement adjacent and so it's a little more comfortable for me.
[00:14:22] VANESSA CORNELL: But as I do it and I lean into it and I do things just for the joy of it. Um, I really, really feel that sense of aliveness that joy brings. And one of the things that I'm really focused on and really focused on working with women on is that this idea that joy and play is not a reward for hard work. You don't grind and grind and grind and then at the end when you've done enough and you deserve it, you get to have joy and play.
[00:14:55] VANESSA CORNELL: It's actually a guidepost to helping you understand what you're supposed to do. So in my work now. Whenever I'm faced with, do I do this project? Do I do this interview? The only question I ask myself is, does that sound fun to me? And so my joy and my work have come together in such a beautiful way where it is play.
[00:15:16] VANESSA CORNELL: It is just intellectual exploration and listen, you know, nobody's work is all fun. You know, sometimes you got a little to do list and you got to do stuff that's not fun. How much can I bring my joy into my work, my play into my work? Uh, and that I think actually gives me more energy. It makes me smarter.
[00:15:38] VANESSA CORNELL: It makes me more interesting. It makes me kind of, um, progress my work faster. So I love this idea of, of looking at play, not as a reward, but as a guidepost to help you understand how to navigate your work or, or else, you know, or the other things you do in your life. Yeah, it feels like play gets to be like this door to so much pleasure and like pleasure is so activating.
[00:16:04] ERIKA STRAUB: And when we get to bring that fully in, then things get to be just enjoyable. Like enjoyable isn't this privilege. It's like, it's a right. We get to do things through enjoyment. It doesn't all have to be this grind and this binging our head against the wall. And I think from place, you know, when there's that activation and there's that light.
[00:16:26] ERIKA STRAUB: You're just like lit up inside. Then it kind of all comes full circle. Yeah, I kind of apply that a lot to my parenting. I've got five kids and they're all teenagers and pre teenagers and some of the work of being their mother is a total drag, like, you know, filling out medical forms and that kind of stuff.
[00:16:47] VANESSA CORNELL: There's a lot of kind of, you know, grunt work involved in being a mother. And then some of the work involved in being their parent is challenging navigating their emotional states and it can be really hard, but then there's this whole other chunk of time. That's just fun, where I just get to enjoy them, but actually sometimes we feel like.
[00:17:08] VANESSA CORNELL: That part doesn't count, you know, like that's not the part that's like the mothering part the showing up for them part, and we get so caught up and trying to do the other stuff perfectly that there's no time left over for just sitting and chatting with them and enjoying them and so I actually look at that time where I get to spend time with my kids, and just.
[00:17:30] VANESSA CORNELL: Have fun with them and talk to them and joke with them and send them funny memes and play music with them as the most important work that I do as a parent side benefit. It makes me feel so good. But in order to do that, I have to let go. Of any number of things that I'm not going to get done absolutely perfectly because there are just aren't enough hours in the day.
[00:17:54] VANESSA CORNELL: There isn't enough energetic bandwidth to do things perfectly. Not that perfect's a thing, but to attempt to do things perfectly and to also create the space for that kind of joy. How do you unpack that perfectionism? How do you let that go? Well, I kind of had to do it by necessity. You know, when I had one kid, I was really trying to do everything just so.
[00:18:22] VANESSA CORNELL: When I, once I had five, there was zero chance of it. I mean, I'm a very capable person with a lot of bandwidth, but there was just no way. So it actually gave me the freedom to let go of the idea that it was even possible. It wasn't even possible with one, because perfection isn't a thing. But, uh, the illusion of perfection was still kind of lingering in my mind.
[00:18:47] VANESSA CORNELL: With five that illusion was absolutely shattered and plus a business and lots of other things going on in my life. And so I realized very quickly that I could get from zero to 90 percent with about 50 percent of my energy getting from 90 to 99%. Probably took another 50 percent of my energy, right? So it took as much energy to get to 90 percent as 90 to 99 and then 99 percent to 100 was infinite energy because 100 percent just doesn't exist.
[00:19:24] VANESSA CORNELL: And so I very quickly said, if I want to really show up for my kids and my husband and myself. I am one human being. I have a limited amount of energy. If I try to solve for even 95%, let alone 99%, I won't be able to, and I'm going to miss my entire life trying to navigate all of these ideas of perfection, and I'm literally going to miss the whole show.
[00:19:50] VANESSA CORNELL: I'm going to miss the whole experience of life. And so I just literally in one fell swoop was like, I, I can't, I can't care that much because look at what I'm giving up. Look at what I'm giving up and caring that I get every T crossed and every I dotted. I will literally waste my life away. And I'm not willing to do that.
[00:20:14] VANESSA CORNELL: There's too much goodness in it. Yeah. And it's so interesting, like the high performance and like the capacity, how it's such a superpower. And it's like an Achilles heel and like being able to like lean into that edge. Like, where is this creating expansion and more connection? And where is this really limiting me or where is this taking me out from being a participant in this?
[00:20:39] VANESSA CORNELL: Yeah, and and just like that idea of like reconnecting with your needs and being like, I can't even find it because I've been ignoring it for so long retraining yourself on this requires practice. So. You know, I do reels on Instagram. A year ago, putting out a reel on Instagram was like, the most terrifying thing, and I would re record it a million times, and I was like, my eyebrow looks wrong, and my hair is out of place.
[00:21:07] VANESSA CORNELL: And I just kind of kept at it. And what I realized is, you need to Um, train yourself over 10, 100, 1000, 10, 000 iterations of being like, I'm going to have the courage to just put it out there. I'm going to have the courage to just do it. You have to have courage over and over and over again. But what happens is your capacity for tolerance for that level of imperfection and the way it feels in your body in tiny, tiny increments just starts to shift and move and grow.
[00:21:39] VANESSA CORNELL: And so then you can look back. A year ago or two years ago and say what I was not capable of two years ago. I am capable of now what I am not capable of. Now I will be capable of in two years, but I just have to keep at it and keep up the courage to just keep putting myself out doing things that feel uncomfortable, publishing something that I've worked hard on and I'm proud of, but could I revise it for another 12 hours?
[00:22:10] VANESSA CORNELL: Sure. But I'm not going to. Yeah. That journey is not only about courage to me, but so much about confronting shame and shame's role in our life. And I'm curious just how that word lands for you or what that opens up or kind of your journey with shame. Yeah. So, yeah, shame, shame is a really interesting one because I grew up pretty much a liar.
[00:22:39] VANESSA CORNELL: I was so afraid of being found out or exposed. And so what I realized later on in life is that my entire, you know, pattern had been just to lie about it. And so I recognize that. And I recognize that my shame was living inside of those lies and that the only way to do it. To, to, to sort of start to unravel that shame was to do exactly the opposite.
[00:23:04] VANESSA CORNELL: So I said, my practice is truth telling. My practice is saying the truth out loud over and over and over again. Whatever I'm thinking, I'm just going to say it out loud. Now it doesn't have to be publicly. I do it on Instagram. I do it publicly, but it can be to a friend or a partner or, you know, it can be to somebody that you trust.
[00:23:26] VANESSA CORNELL: And that process of taking something, bringing it out into the light, saying it out loud, and allowing it to be witnessed has an incredible, incredible ability to catalyze shame, especially when you say it out loud, and it's witnessed with love and compassion and you realize, oh shit, nobody left. Yeah, everyone's still here.
[00:23:51] VANESSA CORNELL: I don't need to take that thing and put it away and hide it from the whole world because it means that I'm unlovable. I can actually experiment with putting it out there and actually it means that you love me more, that you feel more connected to me, because I've been willing to show you those parts of me that don't feel so shiny and pretty and, um, presentable and lovable.
[00:24:17] VANESSA CORNELL: It deepens connections rather than making you lose connections. Now, you need a little discernment in who you tell these things. I'm not suggesting that you tell every stranger your deepest, darkest secrets, but if you can find a safe place and you have that discernment to, to know. What that safe place is, this process of actually expressing your shame out loud and being witnessed.
[00:24:40] VANESSA CORNELL: Is incredibly freeing to me, shame, like our, the movement through shame is what opens the door to the deepest intimacy, but it's often that door we don't want to open. It's one of the scariest and, and that, you know, can be my own projection, sure, but it feels like it's the door. This is the pathway. How can I move through this shame and bring this forward?
[00:25:05] ERIKA STRAUB: Because there's so much more on the other side of that and really reclaiming our truth Transcribed And being able to stand in that. And like you said, being witnessed in that with love, it's like instant repair. Yeah. It's so interesting. It's, it's. The things we believe are often, often just exactly the opposite of what's true, you know, we really think that if people, if people knew this thing about us, then we would be unlovable and unloved.
[00:25:39] VANESSA CORNELL: And that's what we crave the most, right? I mean, we crave love and human connection the most. And so our deepest fear is that we'll be alone and unloved. And so we hide these things away from other people. And it's just fascinating because what happens, in fact, is exactly the opposite when we share it with the right person in the right way.
[00:26:04] VANESSA CORNELL: And it opens us up to these worlds of, of connection and intimacy. But the fear is real, you know, like we are such Survivors as humans. We learn how to survive as humans. And so to me, everything about the human condition comes down to survival and love survival and love. And as long as we're in survival mode, we will solve for protection, rather than opening ourselves up to the possibility of rejection.
[00:26:41] VANESSA CORNELL: And. You know, it's a really human thing to do. It's really fundamental. It's in all of us. We all struggle with it. And so if you're feeling that way and you do that, well, me too. Yeah. Me too. All of us. Absolutely. It's that, it's that conflict and that tension between connection and protection. It's that intersection of like our attachment systems and our survivalism and nervous system.
[00:27:09] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah. And self preservation is very strong, especially when there's been a lot of relational trauma or attachment trauma. That self preservation is, is firing internally. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. We're, um, so much so, I mean, so much of our patterns that maybe we look at and we decide I'd like to reorganize this pattern.
[00:27:36] VANESSA CORNELL: It's just solving for safety. Yeah, it's just solving for safety, you know? Of course it makes so much sense. It's so logical, it's so rational. It's so human to solving for safety. And then starting to like, dig deeper into safety and seeing like, Oh, this is familiar. This isn't necessarily safe. And then I think we're now entering another door of like, what is safety then?
[00:28:01] ERIKA STRAUB: Because this whole coding I've been operating out of isn't true. If I do the opposite, I feel all the things that I've always wanted to feel and what is safety. Yeah. And if we don't, if we don't have a, uh, An early map of what that feels like. It's difficult to identify if it hasn't been modeled for us at that safe space hasn't been created for us.
[00:28:27] VANESSA CORNELL: It's really hard to identify. It's really hard to map it in our bodies and come back to it. So, you know, the work is hard and complex and really challenging. Super, super complex, but at the end of the day, really always comes back to the same thing. What was it like for you to create safety, to find safety, to drop into safety, like in your own body?
[00:28:54] VANESSA CORNELL: You know, What for me, I actually, I actually had a very safe childhood. I had a space where I felt very loved and very safe. And so I had the benefit of a nervous system that knew what it was like to feel safe and loved. Uh, and so I had that to come back to over and over again. I had this idea of what feels good and right and true and grounded for me.
[00:29:24] VANESSA CORNELL: And even in the And the depths of my confusion and the depths of my searching and the dark night of my soul, I did have that to come back to. And so I was able to do so much of my work, very self guided, but I think that there are amazing professionals and people that can help people to identify that.
[00:29:47] VANESSA CORNELL: As a base and then be able to go from there. But I am very fortunate that I had that. I had that real sense of this feels right and true and good and safe and grounded to me. And there's something about that that does not. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's so disorienting when that's not there. Cause my, my story was definitely the opposite that I did not know what safety was and safety was not provided.
[00:30:12] ERIKA STRAUB: So it's been the journey of not kind of finding self from what I received, but really finding self from what I'm dismantling and it's such a different journey. But so much of that has been about Sitting down with the right people being held in the right spaces. Yeah. I know so much of your work is around holding space.
[00:30:33] ERIKA STRAUB: And I was wondering if you could just speak into that because that is just, I think where intimacy and safety starts to open and blossom. Yeah. Um, so, you know, I, I teach this course how to hold space and it's really about creating the conditions for somebody to be able to show up in their truth, creating a space where people don't need to care.
[00:30:56] VANESSA CORNELL: Take you. People don't need to show up as who you think they're supposed to be. They just get to show up and speak whatever feels true for them into the space in that moment without any interference. It seems so simple, but it's actually really hard because when you're in the receiving end of listening to somebody's story, it is activating all of the stuff in you.
[00:31:19] VANESSA CORNELL: It is activating all of your old fears and stories and worries and patterns. And so this process of holding space is about. Starting to gain an awareness when you're listening to someone else of what's happening inside of you, knowing yourself intimately, so that you can keep your experience your own and allow the other person to have their experience.
[00:31:41] VANESSA CORNELL: It's a, it's not an easy thing to do. Because it involves looking at and becoming aware of all of the things inside of you. We all have so much stuff inside of us, right? And so, um, that practice though, of doing that work for yourself is what allows you to show up for somebody else. And so somebody who is holding powerful space for another needs to clean up their side of the street so much.
[00:32:10] VANESSA CORNELL: But when you find that person, you find that you can Share who you are and you feel compassion, you feel that they're not judging you, you feel that they don't need you to be a certain way or shift the way you're talking or shift who you are to meet them because they are so clean and. Grounded in who they are that they can receive whatever you have.
[00:32:36] VANESSA CORNELL: So it's a really, really powerful skill to develop. And that is the kind of presence that allows somebody who is working through any of us at a point when we're working through something to be able to really start to create our own clarity. Because there is nobody who can tell you. Who you are, there are lots of really skilled guides that can guide you towards who you are, but you're the only one who can tell who can like, remember who you are.
[00:33:08] VANESSA CORNELL: And so this idea of holding space, creating the space for you to do that work to remember who you are to have enough space to tap back in to that inner knowing before it got kind of layered. Transcribed With our experiences and our traumas and our struggles to be able to dismantle all of that and come back to who we are, having a loving witness is an incredible, incredibly important part of that work.
[00:33:41] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah, I think it's the center of it and what's such a beautiful gift when you do receive that kind of space and that connection with someone is then how we get to internalize that. Start to learn how to hold space for ourselves. And that's such a, like, such a gift. It's mind blowing. You know, I teach this course how to hold space.
[00:34:05] VANESSA CORNELL: I'm like, you know, you have to resist the temptation to fix. You have to actually listen to something before you react. And you have to be able to say, like, I see what it is for what it is before I start to form any judgment or stories around it. And then I say, and now you have to do that for yourself.
[00:34:24] VANESSA CORNELL: When that thought comes up for you before you jump in to push it away, fix it. Put a story on it. Can you create enough of a pause to just notice it with curiosity and be like, Oh, that's interesting that that's coming up for me again. And that's where everything starts to change. Everything shifts. Is there, um, a moment or a chapter or experience that you really like cultivated this skill of holding space for something like, really big within you in a different way.
[00:35:01] VANESSA CORNELL: I wouldn't say there's a big chapter, but there are little places. of, um, excavation that I'm interested in. So for example, I mean, I'm, I'm looking at myself and my own psyche pretty much all day, every day. Like, I don't know if other people do this, but I do this. I'm like, Oh, interesting. That thought came up.
[00:35:21] VANESSA CORNELL: What did that come from? Where is that from? Oh, I had an outsized amount of fear about that. I think I'm just kind of obsessed with the workings of my own psyche because that's like the subject I have to study. I don't have I don't have access to anyone else's I only have access to mine. So I'll tell you one that I'm really interested in looking at, and I was thinking about actually creating a whole day where I sat down and just tried to figure it out is around jealousy.
[00:35:49] ERIKA STRAUB: Like, Oh, that's an interesting one. I haven't figured that one out. So I don't, I don't know that I have, you know, ones that I've gone through big periods of time, but they're definitely ones that I think, Oh, this one needs a little bit more time and space. And I need to sit with this one for a minute because I don't quite fully understand it.
[00:36:06] VANESSA CORNELL: So stay tuned. Is there more that you could speak into the jealousy piece that's coming up? So, um, the reason I'm interested in it is because I don't like it. I'm interested in it because it keeps coming up and I keep being like, Oh, what's that about? Where's it coming from? What is motivating it? And so I think that these places of tension or these places where we feel activated or triggered are really an invitation to look harder.
[00:36:36] VANESSA CORNELL: Not look harder in terms of look harder with criticism, but look harder with, like, real curiosity. You can't actually figure something out if you're criticizing it at the same time. You have to be open minded, willing to be really, really honest, but honest in a kind way to yourself. You know, honest in a kind way that, that says, you know, it's really interesting that this keeps coming up for me.
[00:36:59] VANESSA CORNELL: I'm not sure I'm crazy about it, but let me look at it without letting the, I'm not crazy about it, overshadow the, I'm curious about it. And so whenever it comes up for me and I don't really like it, um, I haven't really taken enough time to figure it out. Now I've figured out a couple of little things.
[00:37:16] VANESSA CORNELL: One is, oh, it's interesting. I think it's an indication of something I might want. I think it's an indication of something I might want. And the second thing I figured out is that I think that there's desire in it. And I think there's also disappointment in it. I desire the success that this person had.
[00:37:38] VANESSA CORNELL: I'm also disappointed that I don't have it yet or that I can't have it or that I tried and I didn't do well. And so there's a little bit of a grief piece, I think also in I can't have that or I don't have that yet that I have to work through. So there's sort of this desire and disappointment that sits side by side, um, in jealousy.
[00:38:00] VANESSA CORNELL: And I think if I take the time to look at both of those things, when something comes up, it can really soften that activation of the jealousy. And instead of being activated, I can get information about what I want and how I want to pursue it and how I'm going to, um, get what I want. If I really realized that it is what I want, because sometimes, sometimes you look at something and you say, I'm jealous of something I don't even want.
[00:38:31] VANESSA CORNELL: So it's not the thing I'm jealous of. It's something else. The desire is something else other than that thing. Um, so yeah, that's as far as I've gotten, but that's, that's kind of how my, my, my mind works process. It's like, let me get closer to this. You really look at this and see what this is and I, I frame it in my mind of who's speaking right now.
[00:38:54] ERIKA STRAUB: Is it parts herself? Because often our parts will be the ones really activated and I don't know about you, but this was my path of me telling the parts on what they should do. And so it's been this. journey of moving from telling them what to do to listening. Tell me more. What else? But that shift, it, it may sound so subtle, but it changed everything.
[00:39:19] VANESSA CORNELL: Yeah. My process is more, um, And I, and I love parts work and, and I, I have a bunch of dear friends who do a lot of parts work. So I've been introduced to the vocabulary and I do kind of bring it in. But before I was, um, my question to myself was always, is this true? Is this true? And there are, of course, many, many different levels of truth.
[00:39:42] VANESSA CORNELL: And there are many things that can be true at the same time and things in conflict that can be true at the same time. But what I really asked myself was, you know, Is this actually true? Which parts of it are true and which parts of it are not? And that is kind of the framework through which I started to sort through all of these things for myself.
[00:40:02] VANESSA CORNELL: Is, you know, when I allow myself to really look at all these things with curiosity, what does it boil down to? What's really true for me in this situation? What are the range of things that are true for me in this situation? And that really helped me to get to the core of, okay, these things. come up for me, but they're not really true.
[00:40:24] VANESSA CORNELL: And these things are really, they really ring true. And so that in my actions, I was discovering what felt closer to core of self and what would bring me away from core of self. How do you identify your truth within you? What tells you this feels true and this doesn't feel true? And it's not that black and white, but just really like that identifying, like, this is my truth.
[00:40:54] VANESSA CORNELL: Um, I, I would say this is where I tip from. So, so I do a lot of kind of intellectual gymnastics. You know, where I'm like, Oh, that's interesting. And this and I remember this. Oh, I think this has to do with this part of my life, or that's what this is motivated by. And then there's a place where I shift from intellectual gymnastics into a place that I would describe more as prayer, more as sort of a direct access to a place of prayer.
[00:41:27] VANESSA CORNELL: God, divinity, truth inside me. And so often what I will do is I will, when it's a bigger question or something that I really can't kind of tease out, I will ask an open question and then I will meditate slash prey on it. And then I let it be. And then a week later, a month later, a year later, something will just, it's like the, the, the clouds part and something just becomes.
[00:41:59] VANESSA CORNELL: Clear to me. So I know that's not that helpful, but that is literally my process for the bigger questions for me. It's, it's almost like a, um, a truth that is both beyond me and inside of me at the same time that can't be and accessed by the intellectual soul. Mind or the linear logical process. No, it actually, it resonates so deeply for me.
[00:42:25] ERIKA STRAUB: It's, it depends on the degree of truth and the bigness of the question, but a lot of it, when that clarity comes through, it's like an instant download. There was really nothing that I did or figured out or this or that, but it's just bringing the questions forward and letting them go. Like that letting go piece creates this space for this.
[00:42:48] ERIKA STRAUB: download to drop in, and I have no control over the timing, but the download comes in. I think for me, it's based on a faith, and I think it is faith, that there is something about my life that is beyond me, and that there is a true self and a life. That was intended for me, not intended by a sentient being, but intended in a more just it is what it is.
[00:43:21] VANESSA CORNELL: And so my job is not to navigate or guide that my job is just to discover and remember that, which has always been there. And so part of the download or the realization or the aha moment is the sense of this is not about what I choose. Or, what I'm trying to do, this is who I am, this feels like who I am, and by extension what I'm meant to do in this short lifetime, because who knows what we're supposed to do.
[00:44:00] VANESSA CORNELL: But the only sort of centering guide that I've found, and it's based on this faith, is that my only job is to discover. in this lifetime and get as close to my path and who I am as I can. What would you describe that as? Like, how would you encapsulate that? Trust? Faith? Connection? Um, I would say it's, um, again, like the word I've always used is truth.
[00:44:34] VANESSA CORNELL: You know, people use different words to describe their relationship with the great mystery or the great unknown, whether it's the universe or source or God. And to me, it's always been truth as the word that's the most potent, as in the way things are. The beingness of things, just the, the fact of it all the way it is.
[00:44:58] VANESSA CORNELL: And so this idea that, um, it just is, and I just have to discover it. I just have to solve for truth on multiple levels all the way down to my core. Um, and the faith comes. From the place of believing that at the core is love. And so that's what I'm so the truth is love and that's what I'm solving for.
[00:45:23] VANESSA CORNELL: And, you know, I was kind of raised like Christian ish, and I had a confirmation and I went to all these confirmation classes and I learned all this stuff, all of which I've forgotten, because I never really got it. I never really got Christianity and the words didn't make sense and all the questions that I asked weren't really answered in the way that I, that made sense to me.
[00:45:45] VANESSA CORNELL: Um, I've actually discovered a lot more of a relationship with my Christianity since then. But the one thing I remember from my confirmation classes was this definition of faith, that which you just believe to be true without requiring any evidence. And it's just kind of this thing that I just believe to be true.
[00:46:05] VANESSA CORNELL: Like, I believe we are love and I believe that there is just a way of things and that my, Purpose is to just become as intimately familiar with that and follow that path as much as I can. I don't really know why. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's just such a, a relationship to the unseen and the unknown. But knowing when you feel that truth, it's, it's so alive and it's just this compass.
[00:46:36] VANESSA CORNELL: Yeah. And the, and the, the willingness to be such a tiny, tiny, tiny little piece of this whole great mystery, like infinitesimally small and yet encompassing all of it inside of me at the same time. Yeah. That's how it feels. So profound. So profound. I'm, I'm curious to name this, I think as we've danced through it and, and weaved through it, but how do you define or hold intimacy?
[00:47:13] ERIKA STRAUB: What does that mean to you? Um, so to me, it's, it's being in that truth with another, showing that essence of you. without curation or editing to another, which is really hard, by the way. It's really hard. So, allowing yourself to see all parts of yourself, to know all parts of yourself, to own all parts of yourself, and then saying, hey you over there, I'm gonna let you see and know all parts of me.
[00:47:54] VANESSA CORNELL: Now, it's super easy for us to show people the pretty sides of ourselves, right? Like, I'm really smart and motivated and kind and all this thing, but I'm also jealous and I'm also lazy sometimes and I also have this shame and I also did this thing and I also had this part of me that I would rather keep tucked away because it's not super pretty to see.
[00:48:15] VANESSA CORNELL: But then people aren't in relationship with you. They're relation, they're in relationship with this avatar that has certain aspects of you, certain parts of you, but they're not really in relation with you. And so this can lead to a feeling of intense loneliness. You can be surrounded by people. Lots of people know you, but no one actually knows you.
[00:48:41] VANESSA CORNELL: And so the person who you actually are is in relation with no one. Your avatar has got lots of friends. Lots of people, but the person who you actually are is in relation with no one. And so to me, intimacy is about having the courage and the discernment. Discernment's important, important to find the people with whom you are willing.
[00:49:04] VANESSA CORNELL: And have the courage to share the whole you, the everything you, the, the, the messy, dirty, um, parts of you. I've got a great friend. She's my shame spiral friend. Whenever I go into a shame spiral, I'm like, girl, I got a shame spiral for you. Like, look at what I did. I'm this horrible, nasty, terrible person.
[00:49:26] VANESSA CORNELL: How could anybody love me? And she just says, Oh yeah, I'm with you. I got you. Obviously, I love you, but I love you in your shame. I love you in your grief. I love you in your regret. I love you in your resentment. I love you in all those parts. So, I am lucky enough to have those people who can receive all parts of me.
[00:49:47] VANESSA CORNELL: I've cultivated those relationships too. But that feels so good. It's so intimate. That feels so, so, so close. That feels, I mean, I can like literally feel it in my body what it feels like to have that person to whom you can say, this is how I messed up. This is how I screwed up and know that you can show that part to somebody else.
[00:50:16] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah. I can feel all of that in my system right now and just like the deepest gratitude for those people in our lives. It's like, it's. That space is so, so healing. But by the way, those people can't do that. for you if they haven't done their own healing and you can't do that for others. So it's such a symbiotic thing, right?
[00:50:43] VANESSA CORNELL: Like for you to be able to show up for others in that way, you've got to tend your garden with so much care and love, and it's not selfish to tend your garden. It's the least selfish thing that you can do, particularly for caregivers, for mothers, for people who want to show up for other people. The most.
[00:51:03] VANESSA CORNELL: Generous thing you can do to the people around you is to focus on prioritize your own healing, because that ripples out to everybody, you know, if someone is feeling lonely, what would you say is their is their path forward their path to their shame spiral people their path into intimacy. Yeah. So look at your world and think about whether there's somebody that feels safe to you, whether there's someone that feels safe for you to just share.
[00:51:34] VANESSA CORNELL: Hey, I'm feeling lonely, right? You don't have to spill the whole thing. Just those few words. Hey, I'm feeling lonely. Do you want to hang out? That's a brave thing to say, by the way, I'm not diminishing it. That's a very brave thing to say, to reach out to somebody. It's really hard for a lot of us to ask for help to say like, Hey, I'm feeling lonely.
[00:51:58] VANESSA CORNELL: Do you want to hang out? And if you have discerned the right safe person, what they will say is, of course, yeah, let's do that. Um, and that immediately will change the nature of your relationship because you just told them a part of you that maybe you haven't shared with them before. And that can start to cascade.
[00:52:18] VANESSA CORNELL: So find somebody who feels safe and share how you feel with them. And I think there's something so transformative of bringing, I feel lonely forward. Cause I think there's been so much shame around that. Yeah. That forward and being met in that just such deep transformation and healing. And what's amazing is, you know, It's like, the math doesn't add up.
[00:52:47] VANESSA CORNELL: There was this amazing longitudinal Cigna study where it's like, more than 60 percent of Americans self identify as lonely most of the time. So you've all these people in their little silos of loneliness, next to all these other people, and they need each other. We need each other. And so, it's more likely that when you say, I'm lonely.
[00:53:13] VANESSA CORNELL: that the other person says me too, then not. And what you've now done is you've given yourself that place of connection, but you've also gifted it to them. When you ask for help, you're gifting someone the opportunity to help. If you took a poll of everyone and was like, would you rather ask for help or give help?
[00:53:32] VANESSA CORNELL: I think everyone would be like, I'm super happy to help other people. I'm not sure about asking for help myself. And so the bravest act is to ask for help and give someone, gift someone the opportunity to help you, but probably help themselves in the process too. When we start to share how we feel out loud, what we will start to get is gratitude.
[00:53:52] VANESSA CORNELL: Oh my gosh, me too. I thought I was the only one. That felt this way. And so you can be a catalyst for a shift for a lot of different people, but I'm not diminishing the courage it takes. It really does take courage. So honoring and celebrating that brave one to make that move, to initiate that cycle, to call other people forward to brave.
[00:54:20] ERIKA STRAUB: Well, thank you so much, Vanessa. This has been absolutely lovely. I'm sure anyone who listens is going to be so pulled into your work. So where is the best place for them to find you? Yeah, thank you. So all of our offerings are on new shoe. com and USHU. com. A lot of my personal work I do on my personal Instagram, just at Vanessa Cornell.
[00:54:42] VANESSA CORNELL: And, uh, we've got a how to hold space course. That's kind of in the works and we're in waitlist mode right now, but, um, it's a really beautiful offering and is really transformative if you want to show up, not only for other people, but for yourself in a more powerful way. Beautiful. We'll make sure to link all of that with this.
[00:55:00] ERIKA STRAUB: And I just want to thank you so much for your time, your presence, your power, the work that you've done. I'm just honored we got to sit down today. Meet someone in that. Like, yeah, well, there's such a strong felt sense. For me and truly enjoyed this so much. Well, thank you for the opportunity. It was so much fun.
[00:55:24] VANESSA CORNELL: You learn a lot about somebody from the questions they ask. So I'm so happy to know you better too. Thank you so much.