Hi friends and welcome to Joy is Now the podcast where we take psychologically minded look at life. I'm your host, lisa Anderson Shaffer coach consultant and resident psych enthusiast Joy is Now is sponsored by listeners like you. Visit lisa Anderson Shaffer dot com to join the community and become a one time or recurring patron of the podcast. A special thanks to my Joy patrons and my sweet affiliate friends at OSEA, the makers of clean seaweed skincare save 10% on your OSEA purchase with code. JOYISNOW10. Today I'm excited to host for These Three Things segment discussion Taiwanese Canadian spirit communicator, Wu shamanic occultist and the founder of the brand Ceremonie focused on imparting ancient and practical wisdom to clients on the path of self discovery. Mimi Young welcome. Mimi to Joy is Now.
Hey Lisa, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you.

I love having these conversations with people that sort of interact with others on a different plane because there's just, it's almost like there's so much data from numbers alone and conversations alone. If we stripped away all of the content, your data would be numerous, right? You'd have sort of all these little columns of all conversations and work that you've done with all different kinds of people. And so these lessons that you've hung on to like you have a very deep and wide pool to pull them from, from all different kinds of perspectives and it's I'm always fascinated by that. So what has stuck for me me like of all these all these data points right throughout your life, like what are the things that you just can't shake or you think about time and time again or you've shared with other people?
So my very first point that I would say in terms of what I've really understood beyond an expression or a saying or a cliche, is that change truly is the only constant.

Certainly that's been the case for my life.
That's a really strong number one changes the was like we're starting, I mean it's like we're diving in right now, Number one, here We go.
I mean, even just from a practical perspective, I think I've moved 16 times in my life. So I mean that just from it just you know what you can call as a place that your references very loosely home, I'm not going to use the capital H were at home just a lowercase h home just because it's like that's a whole other different discussion. But yeah, so that alone, which meant that I had to grow up, you know, saying bye to friends and making new friends and even later on in life, I, you know, like my my undergrad is in graphic design and I worked in that field for a number of years before wanting to go back to school and I got my training as an early childhood educator with Montessori as my focus, even though later on in the workplace, I worked in environments beyond Montessori, I was in emergent environments as well.

And so I mean, those are just two careers that I've been in. I've been in many other ones. I just found that this idea of what are you going to be when you grow up is also a total myth because I I don't know, like I still don't know, even though Yes, like I own my own business. Yeah, like it's, you know, like the business is sustaining itself, but I still don't really know what I'm going to be when I grow up. Like that's so I really have come to understand that it's just changed life has changed life is a spectrum of changes.
That's spoken like a true early childhood development. It is this idea of, like I talked about this a lot on the podcast is we we somehow get this idea and I say somehow I do, you know, shake my finger at the profession of psychology as a whole because these opinions and thoughts don't just accidentally happen. It's like we're just not talking about them enough.

And the fact of the matter is that as we now know brain development, we're not, our brain is not fully developed until we're about mid twenties, you know, give or take For some people, it could be 24, around there and then and so that kind of push it like, oh then you're developed, it's like no, you know, infancy, early childhood adolescent late adolescent adulthood midlife elder. Like we keep developing until we die. So the whole thing is a constant change. There's no point that you reach where you're like, oh, this is this is it now, now I'm who I am. It's like, it's going to be different tomorrow. You're you're a spectrum of changes your whole life.
Yeah. There's no such thing as an arrival.
Whoa. Yeah, I love that. You just took everything when you were like, damn period. There's no such thing as an arrival Yeah, that's it. That's it. What do you do when you need to negotiate that change or manage that change and or do you find yourself being the kind of person that is somewhat skilled at that area?

I don't want to say comfortable because change can be uncomfortable. But there's also there's a, the skill to manage it. And then there's also for me, there's just a little piece of me that likes that little bit of peril there that's in the change. So what do you think about those?
I don't know if I'm skilled at managing change. I think the only thing I can say is that I accept change. I mean I you know when the changes are here, I don't necessarily want to negotiate with it or try to buy myself some extra time. I just go with it and I move pretty quickly. I'm an Aries rising. So if I make my mind to just move, I will move and I don't mean just physically, but it just means that I'll engage with the necessary steps that you know, one needs to engage with to be able to re establish, I guess a new set of homeostasis and I think part of it is as much as I love, thrill, I also really love safety, right?

And so it's, it's just a way really like a coping mechanism, just like, okay, well how what do I need to do to get myself comfortable again? are feeling more stable and secure and I understand that acceptance is like the fastest route together rather than fighting it or denying it. And then I think the other piece is, I mean it's hard to say, like it's hard to say what my life would have been if, you know, I came from the kind of storyline where I was born and raised in a place and I never moved and that I have friends from like when I was a baby or something like that, because that is not the truth of my story is I think it's helped shaped and increase my intuitive gifts because that those were part of my tools in being able to reestablish homeostasis.
That's really interesting. I love thinking of intuitive gifts as the practicality of needing to read a room because you are just your change, like as a child is not that that's part of the struggle of childhood, right?

Is not being in charge of your change, right? Totally. And so it's like to adapt and to achieve homeostasis, it has this very practical application of intuitiveness.
I love that you pointed that out because that's basically like what my work is all about. And I hope when people work with me through my business ceremony that they discover that is that there's nothing aesthetic or entertaining about the kind of metaphysics that I teach and offer to clients through services or even just through my aura and skin care line. And certainly it does not exist in my education platform, right? Like it's I I always do reiterate that if your spirituality, if your intuition is not serving you in the pragmatic, then it's basically useless because I'm not interested in a practice that looks pretty or sounds good or is bypassing things, I need to I need it to help me, I need it, I absolutely needed to ground me and to help me make the choices that I make in life.

And and yeah, and so I think that has a lot to do with that. My practice is like I understand that change is constant. It definitely appears in my chaos magic work. It definitely appears in my work, my dream interpretations, like all that stuff listening to the spirits and and generally like if I think I said this before in a you know, a different conversation we've had is that when I smell something because I smell psychically and that's you know how that's connected to salivation and all that as a reflex. But just really when I smell something I do, I smell change and it may land as a scent that reminds me of a person reminds me of an emotion or reminds me that I'd better turn off my stove. Like for instance I've been in a situation where I was at home and my husband was home with the kids but it was way past like dinner time and I smell burning. So I text him, I was like you probably need to go check on the stove because I smell it and he forgot to turn off the stove like and it's just to me that's the whole point of having psychic skills.

It's like if it's not going to save your house from being burnt down then like I don't really care. Right, right.
I love that you brought up this idea of bypass. That's something that I feel very passionate about in this kind of self discovery, the realm that I refer to as the work. And I say a lot on this podcast. Like I don't, I don't care how you got here about being curious about psychology. I think that's great but there is significance to this idea of a bypass and there's a lot out there that looks really pretty and really shiny and looks like doing the work but is a bypass and that's not to say that, I don't think it's good, I don't think it has value if you can only go that far, that's great, you know, but at the same time to get to having these tools that are effective that are coming from places of depth that actually can mean real true change, you have to not bypass and that that's hard, that means it's going to be hard and it's going to be longer than you want and there's going to be times that you feel like nothing is happening but it's almost like in that space of where it's feeling like nothing is happening, that surrender and that talking about how you feel like nothing is happening and you feel like you're stuck, that's where you're gaining the energy, that's where like the arrow is being pulled back, right?

So we think nothing's happening, but that's the very true frenetic energy of that arrow being pulled back across the bow, you're building up the energy to let it go all the limb and I think it's hard to get there when you're involved in something that is supporting a complete by path of entering that space, whatever that whatever that looks like, I hope that made sense. That sounded very esoteric.
It totally makes a lot of sense. I mean I this is something that comes up a lot in my work and I agree, I see it a lot around me online, offline aesthetic based spirituality trend based spirituality, I like to call it low calorie spirituality, you know, it's like it's a mix spirituality, right? It's it's a drive thru spirituality.
That's so interesting. I'm I'm going to borrow that because that's kind of what I'm trying to say. Like there's a low calorie, there's a low calorie therapy work, there's a low calorie self discovery work, there's a low calorie version of doing the work and it really is that like it feeds you a little bit, but if you really want to, if you really want to be nourished in long lasting ways, you got to go for the high density to get high density foods, high density full fat and like really.

And this is interesting because when I say bypass, like there's so many ways to approach by path, but one can like one component is the new age communities refusal to really honor cultures and where many of these practices originate. And you know, goes through like this this whitewashing process so that it becomes really glamorized and quite denatured in many ways from the original source, but of course that's exactly what low calorie food does too, right? Like it's like the parallel is so visible to me, that's why I actually have written extensively on this on IG and I have used words like low calorie or a mixed spirituality because I I see it with food and food is spiritual for me who is so spiritual. And I see it in spirituality and it is it's such a great metaphor and it's such a great container for thinking about what the what the quote unquote the work means.

Do the work. I think it's Yeah, for for everyone that means something different, but food and is so it's such a great container for it because even as in other conversations, I was kind of talking about the therapeutic process and what I really felt like my biggest job was as someone's therapist was to metabolize their content and by content. I mean energy. I mean what they were saying verbally, I mean picking up cues of anxiety, depression, whatever that material is from patient to therapist. And I've talked about this in this term inter subjective analytic third is this kind of material from both. So there is column a continuum and there's this third thing that exists and it's about the skill of metabolizing that and you have to metabolize it before you can interpret it, you have to really take it in through listening through in openness, there's some energy exchange that happens there.

I can't speak to it more than just saying that I don't have the language for more detailed version of that, but you are processing and metabolizing and then presenting it hopefully in a way that it can be understood or heard or then digested, right? And that takes time and skill. and it's a heavy metabolizing, it's a rich metabolizing, it's not a, here's the table like here's the low fat yogurt metabolizing. It's like really digesting, making use of putting out there and it's, it can't happen with a light meal, right? It cannot happen with a light meal. The full stop of what we're saying is that it takes time, the text time. There's very few processes that are quick and I think sometimes we have a little bit of luck, you know, where we might get to a place quickly.

My husband is learning to skateboard and struggled, struggled and then had like a week where it almost happened in his sleep, wow and and a bunch of things came together and he got enough of it to be able to do something he'd been trying to do and like that's the luck in it. But if you look at the wide focus of skateboarding, it's one of those things where you're always green and you know, he knows this like you're you're Tony Hawk and you're Still screw, you know, you're you're falling, you're still falling at 52 years old and all of these accolades, you're one of the best in the sport and you still don't get it. I seek those things out, I'm exciting, but there is that interesting dance, I think with everything where you can have a little bit of luck, something can happen a little bit faster. But then it's still, if you're dedicated, if you're really committed to the process of building that skill or learning that thing or being in that process, you get that little bit of luck and then you have to be just okay with waiting it out while trying, while continuing while still being curious, while still looking and investigating and hoping that you experienced that again, it could be tomorrow, it could be three years from now, but it's all about with withstanding the time.

Maybe it's surrendering to the time for sure.
I love how you brought up skateboard because that's my older son, he's really gotten into it and the same thing. It, it looked like, I mean he was just falling a lot and complaining a lot and saying how hard it was, but he would just pick himself up again and again and again and again. And I think when he first nailed his, like his first ali that's when things started changing because it's so foundational to every other trip and it gave him that little bit of confidence to push himself a bit further. But it took a long time and I don't know, is it luck or is it sort of like looking under a microscope where for a long time you don't see the crystal forming and then all of a sudden it reaches that point, we're visually you finally can see, but all the falls that he had taken prior. Um, and all the conversations because I mean, that's one thing about my son is he's not shy. He'll go up to strangers particular, you know, older teens or even some adult skaters and be like, hey, how did you do that?

Or like, what leg are you leaning into for weight distribution and all those? Like he, he can, he can be really technical when he asks questions and then he'll just soak that information up and he'll just get back on his board and start falling again for a long time before he's finally actually, you know, I mean, now he's really competent. Um, and it's younger kids that are actually coming up to him and asking those questions anyway. Yeah, I think it's maybe it's luck. I think a lot of it is persistence.
I am so glad you brought that up because I just attributed something that I very strongly suggest. It's not look and it's putting in the hours over and over again to look and you're right. It's like, because I'm thinking if someone had said that to me that there's luck in the artistic process, I would basically be like, screw you that there's no way that there is luck. There's moments of ease. So maybe that's what I'm saying. Yeah, there's moments of ease in doing the work that might seem like luck.

But as, as you're saying about your son and skateboarding, I'm talking about, we could say everyone with skateboarding because it has such a trajectory and, there is this linear process in the kind of up and down of the process as a whole. But I'd say it is ease, there's, it's doing the work, it's putting in the hours and that's what gives you that moment of ease or that feeling of luck. Like, oh, I got it. I finally got it. Whether it's the ali whether it's some bit of intuition, whether it's being able to implement a change, even a small change, it's not, it's not luck. It's putting in the time, it's surrendering to the time. It's committing to it and it's being, it's not even being okay being stuck in the mud. It's just tolerating it. Tolerating being stuck in the mud until you experience these again. But it is the, it's the absolute work that gets you there. It's not, you're not, you don't wake up and are touched by stardust. That would be cool.

But that's not the case. So thank you.
Oh, no worries. I mean, maybe maybe there's like a little tiny bit of luck because as we were talking, I think the luck comes. He's lucky in the sense that, and I'm not trying to flatter myself here. The luck in his case is that he had parents that encouraged him. That's the only luck he can claim or he had parents that brought him aboard, right? Like that, that's like, well, and that's like, you know, the luck, the privilege, whatever you want to call it, because that was beyond his control, right?
Yeah. And that that's significant.
That is significant because that that's the spring, that's the springboard is being supplied with the tools, whether it's physical or energetic or emotional. That is that is kind of a luck of the draw, right? Especially as a child.
That's so interesting. I want to get to your number two, which I think kind of bounces off of this little bit and maybe it's number two is you are the company you keep and if your company isn't worth keeping, be open to change.

So yeah, that's kind of story of my life, really scanning who I am today and scanning the friendships who or just the people in my life and then if I notice that I'm changing or they're changing, then it's like the checking in and asking myself do I want to do this dance with that change with them? Or are they comfortable doing the dance with me? And I would say most of the time people are, it's great if you have good people in your life and sometimes it's not even that they're bad people. It's just that they're totally not interested or maybe the like the values have been aligned. But yeah, I think values, they matter because they do wind up shaping you and the people that you spend time with. That's interesting too, come from it with the perspective of values.
That makes a lot of sense to me when I was thinking about your number two previous to us talking, I thought, wow.

The the first time that became evidently clear to me was parenthood.
Oh, totally. For sure.
You end up kind of looking around and there's friends that you've had whether or not their parents, sometimes it's irrelevant, but there They're either on board or not with. For me, it was, I mean we did the very traditional thing of, I, I didn't take my daughter out of the house for, was it 90 days or something like that.
Okay. You practice the fourth trimester?
Yeah, we practiced the 4th, 4th trimester. And that's not to say that we didn't have people visiting, but I wasn't like at Target. I wasn't, we weren't. Yeah. No, I didn't go to class of 90 days. No, I didn't do much of anything except just nest and, and be a parent. And even even after that still and I didn't, I didn't, I had no idea who I was going to be as a parent until it happened. I didn't know the intimacy that I would just flock to with my child.

I didn't know any of that. And so as I'm figuring that out, I'm still the person that wants to have the family weekend. Like I don't, I don't necessarily necessarily want to have the break time or go to wine country with the girls or do like that's not. and I completely respect the people. That that's what they want and that's what they need and it's not me. So with parenthood there was this falling away of like who either shares that value or understands that it is a very deep value within me to pull away a little bit right now. That was very evident. And then it, you know, I can see how it's ebbed and flowed with different intimacies within friendships. Sometimes there's more closeness, sometimes there's not what was surprising to me is that now middle aged, I'm at the point of where there was closeness with a friend for no apparent there wasn't any, like, I'm not interested in having you in my life where it was just a time moving distance, whatever life phase that now there's people that are coming back into my life that I have sought out or we have just kind of, our trajectories aligned in some way where we were closer to each other in the ocean waving.

You know, like, oh, I can see you now you're in in sight, I know you've been out here the whole time with me, but now we're sort of coming closer. And so it's it's interesting for me to notice that part where with parenthood there was this kind of falling away and now enough time has gone by in my life I'm like, oh, some sometimes it's not an ending. It was just a pause and now it's continuing.
Yeah, I've definitely experienced everything you've shared since parenthood and I went, you know, I had thought I have two kids there seven years apart. And so when my second arrived, I didn't actually think I was going to go through that process again. I had thought that I had already gone through that process and it was done. I had very little expectation or even consideration that when you birth your first child, like, I mean I knew just didn't agree that would be a transformation.

It was massive for me, like that self transformation and not only birthing your child, but also birthing yourself as a as a as a parent, but I didn't know that that the process of having my second and birthing him that I would also birth myself again. So sort of a similar thing had happened and then same thing, certain people wind up coming back into my life. It's like a like a re convergence in some form and yeah, and then I think, I don't know about you, but it's, it's just, it's a huge time ask, right? Like being a parent, running your business, keeping a home, keeping your marriage alive and well and vibrant and taking care of yourself. And so it's true. Like I definitely spend way last time now than I did prior to having children in like larger group settings or just like, you know, like parties and whatever and it's not to say that I only because it's not true because I have a lot of friends actually that don't have children.

But yeah, the people who have sort of continued to be in my life are the ones that really get that and aren't like they're just really respectful and a really just yeah, like an unspoken understanding of how time is spent and and then of course no one really expected Covid to happen. So that changed a lot too. I think for me it was a really great way to reestablish those values and to deepen friendships. But now of course everything had to change right? It was just like a lot of like a lot of zoom calls with friends and then noticing how how a friendship can really mature that way too. And having like zoom Playdates which is like what a crazy idea really when you think about it. But you know, we made it work.
Yeah, we we can be flexible when we need to be which is always important to remember we forget that or we in our and sometimes our resistance to change, we forget that flexibility is a very strong, thriving possibility within us.

When you were talking about friendships and values, I had this sort of mental image of of a kite and I feel like the very strong friendships I have now both my friends allow me a lot of line on the kite and four and I allow that of them too. So if a friend's very busy and we're unable to connect for a month or two or three months, it's like, okay, there's, I'm still, they're still in my kite line. Like I've still got the, the spool in hand, you know, with their name on it, but there, there might be flying out of sight, but we're still connected and then we can kind of reel each other back in that that's what works for me. I know that some people are very different. They like to have all the kites in sight and they like to be the kite that is in sight for, for those around them. And right now in, in my life, I need a lot of line.

I totally get that. I think that's, yeah, that's very true for me. I've always thought that that is because like I feel things I feel, I feel deeply, but I'm also to a certain degree, I just need a lot of space mainly so that I can process the energies that I've accumulated through the day. And I don't know, like what gives you the most pleasure I think for me, there's nothing better than being quiet in solitude by myself with tea. Like I cannot think of anything more pleasurable. I would actually put that ahead of being with my children not to say they don't love my children of course. Like, I mean we as parents, we would do anything for them, but yeah, like that's it's such a sweet moment for me when I do that in my day and it's it's important. And that's the other thing I wanted at two more things in terms of the company that I keep as an animist. I mean, it is a companion for me and so is the rest of nature and so are my cherished maybe what people would call like an an inanimate objects like such as my favorite mug or my favorite pen.

That that type of thing. It's yeah, they're alive. And then the other pieces, the company extends beyond my private or personal life. I don't know about you. Like in my work I do spend a fair amount of time one on one with clients. So like they make my company, they, their energies make my company and I have an incredible client base, like I adore them. And so when I say that, you know, I am the company that I keep like as much as my work is devoted to serve, like to serving them. I also really understand that they, they feed me and you know what they literally feed me, but also they their energy is what makes my work so like, you know, it's it's why I love doing what I do. I'm so glad you said that I get approached a lot from people that I know whether they're friends or friends of friends or however wide and big that circle gets.

If someone has a child that's having a mental health crisis, I'm usually not in a professional capacity but I might get any, you know, might get an email or something or do you know anything about this facility or I kind of end up being a resource. One of the things I tell people is that the person that is receiving your child during this crisis, whomever that may be, they love what they do.
Mm
So while you might feel in chaos, while you might feel in crisis, while you may feel the burden of this new experience and change, it's most likely that the person that is receiving this has signed up for it. It's what they love to do. You cannot be in that kind of work unless there is a part of you that was just attuned to do it. It's impossible because it's challenging and that there's something about there being fed, it's what they love to do.

They're fascinated, they're interested. They are open hearted, they are. It's not it's not a burden there. It's it's a two way, it's a relationship, right relationships have two pieces and I think you know, sometimes we forget that especially with inner work and deeper work that there is this relationship with whether you want to call yourself a practitioner or clinician or aid or whatever that word is it is, it's being received by someone who is being fed by by the relationship for sure. Assurance.
Yeah.
I'm very fascinated by number three. I it makes it makes complete sense to me that you and I will be talking about this together. I think we share this kind of dark fascination but Mimi's number three is monsters and the devil are my greatest allies. So I can't wait for you to say more about that.

Yeah, I don't even know where to start. So I think well of course you just have to start at the beginning of you don't know where to start. So I was raised in a very traditional han Taiwanese home where the expectation was that I'm a, you know, an obedient obliging Chinese daughter where you follow the rules and not only do you follow the rules but you excel at them. So the idea that good for excellence, it's always been imprinted on me and I followed the rules and I excelled and I think there's some joy and thrill and satisfaction in being able to follow the rules and doing it well. But of course there were many, many, many archetypes that I never actually had the permission to access. And it's not just like The bad girl archetype. Like there's of course there's all those things but one architect I never actually got to access was the archetype of the failed one and or like the one that makes a mistake.

I mean it was just not part of my, it was like I couldn't even consider that. So later on in my adulthood let me actually back up before I continue with the adulthood. So so there's that as the base and then when I was in middle school, my mother converted from buddhism to evangelical Christianity where it was a whole other, I mean if if I even dare say that my culture was depressive, evangelical Christianity is like you know, thrice fold heavier and toxic. So now I had the expectation to not only be you know, the good chinese daughter but to be the sinless, you know, Christian daughter and it was just yeah, so like I'm going to leave it at that for now, fast forward to adulthood.

I just like, you know, it didn't really come as like a boom, it it was undercurrents, deep, deep dissatisfaction, lots of unhappiness, lots of conflict with the key people in my life, including my intimate partner. But really what the thing was was I had fulfilled every single rule in that rule book and realized that everything about my life wasn't me and everything about my life was a big lie and how could that have been when all I did was quote unquote, follow the truth, right? Like how is that possible that I was earning the salary that I wanted and you know, like I had everything on paper that a person would ever dream of having and yet I hated my life and I felt so trapped and it was, it was actually really the only time I've ever been genuinely scared and not actually Like what I was scared of was waking up every day and like facing that this was my life like Oh my God, and to have to live like this until I'm 90 or whatever until I'm dead, it just seemed like such a unpalatable thing.

So monsters and the devil, why are they my allies? Because I've actually really realized that if you listen to them and we all have them is that you realize the truths that you've been fed were actually truth designed to cover the lies and that the lives have always contained the truths. So my my road to salvation was not through Jesus, so to speak, My road to Salvation was defending the devil was like, okay let's start talking about these lies and let's start uncovering the truths that these lives are wanting to hide from me. So through that a lot of stuff happened, you know, me reclaiming my spiritual autonomy, me reclaiming my body, me, reclaiming, pleasure, Me, reclaiming just the capacity to be the failed one or to be that bitch or whatever it is that we were told that we can't be.

It's it's been enormous for me.
I so deeply identify with that I sort of came to. So mine is hideous beast. That's what I refer to it as my monster. My devil is my hideous beast. And it was really through, through years of very deep psychoanalysis, just some, you know, sometimes 2 - 3 times a week on the couch like that, I got to listen to her and not shut her out and push her away. And that was the beginning of of me being able to reconcile lots of things and I think reconcile and reclamation, kind of bump up next to each other a little bit. And it was really sort of being able to stay with an analytical mind. Like my hideous beast wants this, or my hideous beast wants that, or my hideous beast feels that way and to really understand that my hideous beast is not bad is not terrible, is not doing things that I would deem to be morally object.

Or you know, I had to kind of say relax because if you were out in the world watching all the things you're hideous beast wants to do, would you have judgment? No. That was my sort of my final answer. There was like no. And it took a lot of internal work to uncover her. Number one and then to listen, Number two and part of that listening was really learning to actually listen and not judge or take external information and use that towards a judgment of her. And that listening and that desire, you know, I sort of make it a living breathing thing is a hideous beast. But we could say it's desire, we could call it lots of different things, it's still an exercise for me. I don't I don't think that, like you said, there's no arrival, right?

But certainly I have I have personally and also when I was actively seeing clients have seen the benefit of having a conversation with that part of yourself, whether it feels internal or external or whatever that hideous beast is, however, it's named and change begins with acknowledgement. So however that acknowledgement happens, it's been a tremendous information for me.
I love you used the word, reconcile because that was actually why we began exploring me coming on in the first place. Yeah, it is a reconciliation within the self. It's the part, at least for me it was the part that was always denied and completely forgotten that at one point. Yeah, we have a tendency to really push that down. And I what I hope for is that people can see it as a source of information. It is it's not all of you, it's part of you, right? And that part is so informative.

Even if it's just acknowledging a desire that feels that you yourself put judgment upon, like, I don't I don't want to feel that way. I don't it's like who like who cares? You know, there's no one you're watching. You have this internal dialogue with yourself, so have the dialogue plus everyone else does think that way right? Like you know, if you're brave enough to admit it and share with a friend or two or five or whatever and if they were brave enough to admit it to, I think everyone would realize that it's the same stuff that we all think.
Yes, I that's that's one of the outcomes I hope of this podcast is that through listening to conversations that are about human behavior, about emotion, about how we think and feel that are people that are coming from so many different perspectives. It's not just a panel of expert after expert after expert talking about a medication or a study or this and that's a great value to but just to see similarities that these are these are realities of the human condition.

I have found that I love playing with the devil because I feel like that's a really safe space. So what I'm playing with sometimes it's hands, sometimes it's hard really it kind of depends on their mood and all the monsters so to speak. I guess I was really informed by working with children. Not only my own children, but when I was still in the field of early childhood education is just being able to really see how they they play out those potentials through play. And this is why the idea the concept of the villain is so important and their play and as adults we can say like don't do that. You know, you're you're looking at the world through such binary lens. But the fact is it's actually quite essential in my opinion to have a good guy and a bad guy in in a story or in you know in a play, in a play session, so to speak. Because you can wind up living out through those personas, all those potentials that exist but never have to actually, you won't have to go through those, those distortions in your actual life.

Let's talk about the archetype of the mother just because you and I both are so within this society, she's expected to be all giving and all patient um and nurturing and you know, overperforming. But the fact is that we all have within us the raging mother, Right? We all have the mother that maybe wishes she was like 21 again or we have the mother that is just completely exhausted. It's just like fuck the world like I fucking hate the world or whatever, right? Like So what I love is in a play session is I can I can bring on all those archetypes, I could be like the dark goddess or the destroyer. You know like why why does the mother have to be the serene meadow? Like maybe I want to be the volcano for a change. Maybe I want to be that like devastating fire And so through play I can be all those things have my expressions expressed and then go on being that mother.

Because if I were to if I were to be that dark mother with my own children, they're going to need a lot of therapy afterwards. Right? So it's nice to be able to channel it in a place where it's safe, where it's where it's contained and then yeah, when I emerged then I can kind of go on being the sort of person that my children need me to be.
Yeah. I mean, this is one of the benefits. The great benefits of doing the work is allowing this integration of ourselves. And I've talked on the podcast, I'm a big proponent of the gift of therapy. I'll say gifting. I really do think it is gifting children with some some sort of internal work. Whether it's a therapist, whether it's play therapy, whether it's someone that's involved in a supportive, maybe it's someone at the after care Y M C A. That your child connects with that they can talk to. But someone that is helping them with some sort of reflective work. Because the fact of the matter is the reason why the container of time is so important for clinician and I use that word very broadly and patient and I use that word very broadly is because it's a unicorn of a relationship and that's really important, especially for children.

I am not mothering under the guise of believing that I am offering what my child needs all the time. Right? That is not a possibility. If you think it is for you, maybe you might want to think about that possibility a little bit more deeply. But I also firmly believe that children do need to have the experience of have their needs met And in a one hour or a half an hour or 90 minutes or whether it's once a week, once a month, whatever, it is that experience with that clinician teacher figure coach, right? Coach, whatever they are, giving them that because they're not also having to give them all the other things totally. And that goes for adults too, right? Yes. To the expectation is not for my partner to fulfill all of those needs each and every time that what I want is a unicorn.

If I want that for myself, If I want that for my child, if I want that for my friend, for my family member, I'm wanting a unicorn, I'm not wanting a real breathing, living personal relationship and we can have that unicorn through doing the work and having that kind of use again, therapeutic relationship in a very wide sense. But having that relationship with someone that for that limited period of time can give us that because again, we're not relying on them for all the other things too right.
And I love, I love that that space because I think part of what gives us, we we do wind up doing is just like, I feel like it's such a natural human thing to do is we begin having expectations and then living, you know, up to expectations. And it's sort of this reciprocal thing. And this is sort of how we define friendships and love and all these things. But what's great in those other containers is that I don't think those expectations are there or maybe only certain expectations, but they don't go beyond that boundary, right?

It's a very small piece of the pie and and that in and of itself is limited by the container of time, which is great. That's that's why these things work. That's why they're effective time and space because it's not like you're hanging out with your therapist on, you know, at a barbecue, right? Like, like its place. And that's kind of the beauty of it is just to sort of show up and that's that.
Yeah, Yeah, that's the point.
This has been such a fascinating conversation. Mimi, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much Lisa.
This has been Joy is Now now with me Lisa Anderson Shaffer LMFT You can find me for hire at lisaandersonshaffer.com along with patronage support for this podcast at patreon.conm/lisaandersonshaffer. And these three things project. You can also fall along with my musings @lisaandersonshaffer on Instagram. For more places to find all the brilliance. That is Mimi Young head to https://shopceremonie.com/ and check the notes for this episode, See you next time.