176. Mind Your Own Karma: Melissa Brunetti on Somatic Therapy and Healing

[00:00:06] Welcome to Girl, Take the Lead for each week we explore womanhood and leadership. And I'm your host, Yolanda Canny. Melissa Brunetti, Gen X certified SMGI practitioner, trauma healing and mind body coach with Somatic Mindful Guided Imagery and the Mind Your Own Karma, the adoption Chronicles

[00:00:29] Podcaster joins us to talk about her journey to educate people about adoption trauma, the primal mother wound and somatic mindful guided imagery for SMGI. Her goal is to inspire people and remind us

[00:00:46] that we are only one decision away from a totally different life. I've had the pleasure of knowing Melissa over the past three years when we did Kathy Haller's podcast course together, and I've seen her pivot and grow. I'm so grateful for the love and support she's given me,

[00:01:07] delight in seeing our friendship grow as well as with the other members of our dearest HUD squad, Whitney, Rachel Blair, Rachel Brunberger and Misha. We all did the course together and continue on the podcast and business and life journey together. I learned so much from each of you

[00:01:30] and appreciate each of you so very much, and I'll have the information about their podcast in the show. With Melissa we'll cover her journey and all she's learned along the way, big stuff like the mother wound, generational trauma, somatic mindful guided imagery, and the importance of

[00:01:53] honoring and allowing our feelings. So good. Enjoy the listen. Here you go. Melissa! Hello! Hello! Take the lead! Yay! We are so excited to have you. I am so excited when

[00:02:14] a good friend comes on the show and I kind of feel like that with you. So thanks for coming. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. So let's start. Would you introduce yourself please to our listeners

[00:02:25] and viewers? Yeah. So I'm Melissa Brunetti. I am 56 years old and I, as you know you, Landa, am the queen of pivoting. You've known me for about three years now. I've probably

[00:02:42] pivoted more in the last three years than I have my entire life. I was a and still am a sonographer for over three decades and I do that part-time. That's my money making job and my

[00:02:56] passion job is I have a podcast so I've had that for about two and a half years. That started with a podcast kind of about authenticity because I jumped into podcasting without ever

[00:03:09] listening to a podcast and had no idea what I was going to talk about. Like a lot of us. And so I just knew I was supposed to do it and I think the one thing I got out of that 12-week

[00:03:19] course that was worth all the money that she said was just start. Just start. And I have taken that with me through the last, you know, three years and it's really gotten me to where I am

[00:03:33] right now. So I did, I just started and started with kind of an authenticity, you know, live in your best life podcast and I did that for like 26 episodes and ran out of things to say and

[00:03:46] I'm like well now what am I going to do? And I was kind of at a point in my life where I had just taken care of a friend that had passed away. She had lived with me for the past year

[00:03:56] and I was had some time on my hands and I was on Facebook and found an adoptee site which I'm an adoptee and I just never really thought to look that up or become, you know,

[00:04:08] a member of a site like that. And I thought oh this is going to be fun. So I joined that and quickly found out about adoption trauma which I never really thought about for myself and never

[00:04:20] gave myself permission to think about because I had a good adoption and you're always told, you know, to be grateful and how lucky you are and all those things. And it just

[00:04:30] really gave me permission to start exploring the wounds that I had and I quickly became part of leadership on one of the pod around the platforms and we used to do Zoom calls with private groups

[00:04:49] of adoptees. And I just remember this one man he was probably in his late to mid 60s and he said I've had pain in my body ever since I can remember since I was like three or four years old

[00:05:00] and I don't know where it's coming from. And it just really tugged at my heart so much so that I wrote it down on a sticky note and I still have it on my office wall. And I was like there's

[00:05:12] something else I'm missing something there's something I'm supposed to be doing to help. And literally five days later, I was talking to a friend who had gone through a pretty traumatizing event. And she said did I tell you I did this somatic mindful guided imagery and in

[00:05:28] three sessions I cleared all that trauma from that and I was like what the heck is this. So she was telling me about it and just the light bulb and again just like I had that feeling

[00:05:38] about I need to do a podcast was like, I need to find out more about this. And so I read everything I could get my hands on about it and just made that feeling grow even more.

[00:05:49] And so I ended up taking the course and I'm a practitioner of somatic mindful guided imagery now starting my business. And it's been my dream job really it's combined my medical background and my left brain thinking with the right brain and the mind body connection and the spirituality

[00:06:13] and it's just been like I said my dream job and also pretty profound in helping adopt the the adoptive community which was what I really wanted to do in the first place. So and you've got a recent award I think I did from the business award.

[00:06:33] Yeah, I got best hypnot therapy in Turlock California for 2024 from the Quality Business Awards recently which was you know a huge honor especially after just starting this a year and a half ago. And then I recently got published in a magazine online Canvas Rebel kind of about

[00:06:53] my business journey there as well so yeah. I don't have things to all that you guys in the show notes. Yeah, so and I just want to make a point too that I listen to your podcast and I'm not adopted sometimes I wonder if I worry about.

[00:07:14] And it really you know what it relates so much to anybody that has had trauma in their life or things going on and I just want to thank you for doing that. Thank you and for the service

[00:07:31] that you're doing for all of us because I think it's sometimes we just bury this stuff so far down. Yeah and we don't notice it and then as you said it might appear as a pain in our body or

[00:07:47] a question we're having over and over again and you know we almost have to go back and revisit it and to kind of clean clear it out. Yeah but what other discoveries have you made while

[00:08:04] you've been doing this? Well this has kind of been my platform is to educate society on adoption because you know and this is where I want to ask your listeners to kind of be curious and have

[00:08:18] an open mind because Disneyland umbrella over adoption isn't really how it goes and we need to remember that adoption is building a family and I think that's kind of where we start our narrative when we

[00:08:33] think of adoption but really it goes back to the breaking of a mother and child bond and there's trauma there. It's rooted in trauma for the birth mother and the child

[00:08:46] and we forget that as babies we're really not blank slates you know science is really proving that now and when I mean I would think that birth is traumatic enough for all of us right but then to

[00:09:03] come through that out into the room in this world and what's happening and be taken from the security that you've known for nine months, the voice that you've heard for nine months, the person that you've shared blood and nutrition and hormones and you know with how much closer

[00:09:25] can you be to that person so to be taken from that and placed away from that with strangers and hopefully somebody who's holding you who knows you know he could be laying in a

[00:09:39] crib somewhere crying and nobody's you know helping you and as a baby there is no flight or flight the only thing that you have in that moment is surrender and acceptance to survive

[00:09:55] so I think a lot of people don't think about that and then they think oh well we just plug this baby into this new family and you don't remember and everything's great. But we do remember our bodies remember and there's so many books, Gabor Matei you know

[00:10:12] the body keeps the score even pre-verbal, pre-memory trauma gets stored in the body and obviously we don't remember it and so we don't deal with it and it manifests in so many different ways mentally, physically you know health wise in our bodies and just to get that

[00:10:36] validation when I went on that web on that Facebook page it's like oh my gosh I do that you know and just to have that validation of wow even though I had a great adoption I still

[00:10:49] have this wound that I need to look at so I just you know want your listeners to have that open mind and kind of think about that not to mention we were talking about mother wound

[00:11:02] those mothers that had to give up their child whether the whatever the circumstances obviously they think they're giving their child a better life they're still giving their child away and there's a wound there and I have dealt with that with my birth mother through the years

[00:11:18] and even had a second rejection from her where I had to really step back through using the hypnotherapy and realize that she was traumatized too and she's functioning from that place and it's getting you know it's not my fault I always thought what's wrong with me why didn't

[00:11:37] you want me but really it's issues that she's dealing with and that made all the difference in freeing me from a lot of the trauma I was feeling and a lot of the all the things I was

[00:11:50] putting on myself it really wasn't me right yeah there's a couple of things that I've learned listening to your podcast and one of them is you know I thought when I brought my kids home

[00:12:04] like oh my god they're trusting me with these babies right it's like you know at the time I guess the books to get were what to expect when you're expecting you know I remember that one

[00:12:16] right but it shows that I think one of the points that you make in your podcast is that adoptive parents aren't aware yeah of these different phases that an adopted child is going

[00:12:40] to go through and they live in a lot of fear yeah and I think that has just made me understand that part that you were saying earlier it's not about Disneyland it's not you know you have to

[00:12:56] understand that these things are going to happen and you call it the fog yeah can you talk a little bit about that so it's called the adoption fog and I didn't learn this term until I dove into

[00:13:09] the community but it's basically because it's pre-verbal and you don't remember you know you question everything you're doing like why can't I keep relationships why am I having abandonment issues attachment issues and you really just feel broken you know especially if you do come from a

[00:13:29] good family you're like there's something wrong something is off but you feel like you can't talk about it because for me I was like well I'm this is just normal teenager stuff that I'm feeling

[00:13:44] meanwhile I'm going to the medicine cabinet and opening it to see if there's any pills I can take you know to numb myself or maybe do worse and adoptees are four times more likely to try

[00:13:57] and and alive themselves than a non-adoptee and I think those numbers are low because how many times do we really look at that when someone unalives themselves do we say where they adopted or

[00:14:09] a foster child or had you know childhood trauma we there's probably so many that we don't even know about so I really think that number is higher um so yeah it it it can affect everything

[00:14:23] yeah everything you say something about when the fog is lifted is it like becoming aware that you're yes it's that light bulb moment when it's like oh that's why I feel this way that's why

[00:14:36] I do these things um you know and and you society doesn't know about adoption trauma so you really can't talk about it anywhere except in these communities um and that has really freed me

[00:14:51] to explore my trauma which I didn't really even acknowledge because I had a good adoption so it's it's helped me heal tremendously by listening to other people's stories which is why I have that on the podcast um because it's very validating and everybody's story is the same a

[00:15:13] lot but then different and there's always somebody out there like oh finally somebody that's telling my story yeah I'm hearing my story now I'm not I'm not weird I'm not crazy for feeling these things so

[00:15:24] that's why I do what I do well I think too a lot of times on the podcast I'll hear your guests talk about I thought I was in this all by myself mm-hmm like it only happened to me yeah yeah I still

[00:15:38] I still hear that all the time all the time and then a community like yours is one where like you said oh that's me mm-hmm oh I understand that more yeah I know I understand a lot more

[00:15:53] about myself listening to your because you know I wasn't adopted but there are definite things around the mother wound mm-hmm that you don't like you you like sometimes I'll feel like this I want this I want this attachment I want this closeness

[00:16:18] and it's not there yeah and I'll think is that me yeah well I'm glad you brought that up because we always think of trauma as the incident or an incident of something that happened but

[00:16:32] really the trauma happens when a need isn't met and we're not getting what we need to get so when you think about that mother wound you know and the mothers are supposed to be a certain way when you think of a mother and you're not getting those

[00:16:48] things you're not getting love you're not getting compassion understanding any of those things that's an unmet need and that's where the trauma really is rooted in the unmet need yeah well it makes me think too that we have coping mechanisms around that right

[00:17:07] for me it was like overachievement hoping that was going to make me worthy and that I would get that maternal bond and I was pretty clear I had it from my dad

[00:17:26] but there was just this other side that I kept you know trying to achieve trying to do more and more to be worthy yeah and that's a trauma response yeah that's a trauma response yeah

[00:17:41] so I think what it's sometimes when we listen to something we can just reflect more on ourselves and I think that that's what your podcast really helps us do now let's talk about how you've taken

[00:17:56] that and move that into somatic therapy and what that's about and because I know that that's a great way to deal with trauma whether you're adopted or not but talk a little bit about that

[00:18:11] yeah so like you were saying society society's way of coping nowadays is go to the doctor I have anxiety I've got depression I've you know stress and oh here's this pill you'll feel

[00:18:23] better tomorrow you know and all that does and we all know is it just covers up you know really what's going on and we do that because we need to get to work we need to take care of our kids

[00:18:37] we need a paycheck we don't have time to not feel good so we just store that trauma in the body and what happens it's almost like taking a child that's having a tantrum and locking them upstairs

[00:18:50] in the attic the child's still having the tantrum but you go downstairs and you turn the tv on you just turn the volume up a little bit louder so you don't hear the child screaming but the child is

[00:19:00] still screaming so and it's going to scream louder and it's going to start ripping the door off and you know it's going to get your attention at some point through disease mental illness you know all kinds of chronic conditions and if you don't deal with the child

[00:19:19] that's what happens and the other thing is you know a lot of people go well it's genetic my my mom had anxiety my dad had depression and that might be true but I just want you to kind of look at it

[00:19:33] a different way and I love this analogy that I heard it's like inheriting your family home and you're moving in and you move in and you notice there's a broken window there's you

[00:19:45] know a leak in the shower and you're like why didn't my mom fix this how come my grandma didn't fix this um that's generational trauma so let's just plant that seed that yeah maybe your mom had it maybe your

[00:19:59] grandma had it but does that mean that you have to keep that you have to wear that label that you can't fix possibly that so that when your child moves into this home they don't have to deal

[00:20:11] with those things it's kind of a responsibility to heal ourselves at that point yeah we can look at mom say thanks you know but when you're an adult it's your responsibility to take to

[00:20:24] start healing yourself so those are just some things that that I analogies that I like to think about that help me when I feel like for me or that I'm stuck it's like I'm not stuck

[00:20:38] there's there's you know there's things so with this the somatic hypnotherapy what happens is through a combination of hypnotherapy meditation inner journey work and somatics which is feelings feeling what you're feeling in your body with all those things combined it accesses the

[00:20:57] subconscious mind so where all these pre-verbal stresses and traumas are hidden um you know it could even be something like say you're you're wondering why you're self-sabotaging yourself in your business I was doing that recently I was discounting my prices every time I would like

[00:21:14] tell my priceless to somebody I would fill this guilt even though I knew what I was doing was this is a great modality I know what it can do it was something in me

[00:21:24] that I had to look at why was I discounting it as soon as I said the price and so going in somatically and figuring out that I was wearing labels that people had put on me

[00:21:37] of self-doubt and lies they were lies so I was able to look at those and say are those true and if they are maybe there's something I need to change if not why am I why am I hanging onto this

[00:21:50] and so it was so freeing um so yeah it just it goes into the subconscious mind I think of this subconscious mind is like a storage unit where you've put all these boxes from the past

[00:22:02] stuff for your grandma had you know you might pull a box out and say I don't remember I even had this you know do I want this or not I don't need this anymore throw it out you know it's not helping

[00:22:12] me anymore or oh my gosh this is grandma's wedding ring I need to take this home with me you know this is very sentimental I need this so um that's kind of what we do uh with somatic

[00:22:24] mindful guided imagery we clear clutter it's getting in the way of whatever it is that you're wanting to create we connect you to powerful resources that are inside of you and we integrate

[00:22:37] parts back that have been hidden because of stress because we had to survive in the moment and you know that's what we had to do to survive and now it's time for those parts

[00:22:48] to come home so that we can feel whole again so um and you know it just depends the sessions are all different for everyone it depends on what you want to get out of the sessions what your desire is

[00:22:59] what you want to create and um your subconscious knows how to get that and so by the the client actually leads the session there's no script um they're all personalized to where the client

[00:23:13] goes in the journey so and so what kind of results and just I mean I know that you said it kind of depends on the client yeah you know um I've healed so much in my adoption trauma I've

[00:23:29] grown my business through this um you know figuring out blocks that have kept me from from growing that I didn't know were there um I've seen people that wanted to stop smoking and drinking

[00:23:41] done in four sessions I've seen um somebody with body dysmorphia which I was thinking how's this going to work because this is somatic we're like feeling into the body and you don't want to even

[00:23:51] she didn't even want to take a deep breath into her belly because it would make her belly feel fat um and so I was like I don't know but in three sessions she had a tremendous

[00:24:04] quantum leap in how she saw herself out in public and was able to go out without thinking everybody was looking at her in just three sessions um so really anything's possible

[00:24:15] things I mean that I thought oh no this is gonna work you know they're subconscious does I mean and that's the thing is I'm putting the tools in your hand you can take these things home

[00:24:26] and you can do this yourself after you learn how to do some of these things it's simple it's gentle um occasionally I have you know when I'm working with myself um I'll be like you

[00:24:38] know what I really need to be facilitated for this I'm not I'm not getting there I need somebody to help me um so I will go get sessions it's like for me I'm a practitioner I practice this as well as

[00:24:51] you know give it to other people it's like the hair club for men I'm a customer too I think that makes us even better right when you are practicing on and seeing it for yourself

[00:25:05] yeah and how you've changed yeah and that's one one thing I learned through this was um to you know when you think oh I'm a practitioner I gotta be I gotta be healthy mentally physically I gotta have

[00:25:18] it all together no people want to see your authentic self and they want to know that you struggled too but that you you know found a way to get through it and how did you do that

[00:25:29] and so your your best advertisement a lot of times for that you know you don't have to have it all together um that's crazy to think that so that was one of my other obstacles that I had

[00:25:39] to get through to um well it is going I gotta tell you I mean over the three years that I've kind of known you to see where you were in the beginning and how we just what am I doing

[00:25:53] yeah we ran around in circles right we did and we just went what what do I do next how does this work and now the confidence that you have I think for us too it's confidence in knowing

[00:26:11] the blockage like you said or the thing that we've got to overcome in the challenge so that we can can move forward and not make it so difficult for ourselves yeah and it could be

[00:26:25] something small like something a teacher said to you in first grade that you don't really even remember or think oh god that was in first grade that doesn't bother me but that stuff gets stored in your brain and in your subconscious mind and it really can affect you

[00:26:43] later in life so even those little things will get brought up and it just like oh I didn't even know that was a thing you know get rid of it yeah and then you feel so much lighter yeah

[00:26:53] well I think one of the things your imagery does because you've done some work with us in the in our pod squad it helps us look and have a vision from where we want to be

[00:27:10] and if you're stuck you can't see yeah that vision yeah yeah and your subconscious really wants to know what you want and it could be kind of in a general way doesn't have to be

[00:27:24] really detailed but the more detailed you can get the better um but it could just be like I just want to heal my relationship with my mother you know I don't know how to do that your

[00:27:37] conscious knows they're like oh I'm on the case I got it let's go you know I know what needs to happen yeah I was I've been doing some reading and I understand that how we ask for that

[00:27:51] is super important because if we look at it like you know things with this relationship are really damaged if we go the negative route for example and we only see the negativity of something that will just keep materializing and showing up over and over again

[00:28:14] but if we go down the path of this has the potential to be to change it and to make it positive all of a sudden things will start online the universe will start aligning things for us so it's

[00:28:31] more positive and I think the missing piece to that which is universal I'm finding is as soon as you have that negative thought you're told you know get get to a more positive

[00:28:46] thought get your energy you know you're you're vibrating down here and you want to be up here you're not gonna you know you're manifesting this but I think what needs to happen first

[00:28:57] is you need to honor that feeling so so true and validate it there's a reason you're feeling that and if you just and if you don't do that you're not going to get anything that you're trying to

[00:29:12] manifest yeah you need to acknowledge and allow that feeling and validate it for yourself and then you can move on to a more positive thought and say you know what yeah I'm here

[00:29:27] right now but this can get better it'll yeah yeah yeah yeah and it will be as it should or whatever those are my favorite ones like it couldn't have been any different and yeah this is it yeah that's

[00:29:44] this well that's the problem with a lot of the manifesting rules that are out there is it kind of skips over that part and if you don't do that part I have found for myself I don't nothing happens nothing happens because there's resistance I still have that

[00:30:05] resistance inside of me whether I want to acknowledge it or not it's there and until I deal with that then I can't move forward so true gotta do the work first yeah yeah so my drawing we could go on for like never talking

[00:30:23] just beat off of each other in our energies so what would you tell your 20 something self today I would tell my 20 something self you are born to do great things um don't be afraid to make mistakes because that is telling you what you don't want

[00:30:49] and clarifying what you do want so don't be afraid to be yourself and be curious and make mistakes everything you have been through has not been wasted everything you've been through the pain can be turned into superpower so nothing's wasted nothing you've gone through

[00:31:11] whether it's good or bad is wasted so I mean that's the main things I would say I just love the answers I hear did that question you know that's just so rich with our lives and what what we've gone through

[00:31:27] so is there anything we haven't covered that you would like to tell our listeners about and viewers because I know some people are watching I would just say kind of going full circle

[00:31:40] it's never too late to pivot I don't care how old you are it's never too late to live a life that you want to live um and a lot of us sit there and wait for a hero to save us or pull

[00:31:54] us out of whatever and what I want you to know is you are the hero of your own story and you're writing you're the author of your own book take your pen back you you know I used

[00:32:06] to give my pen to everybody else to tell me what my story was going to be take your pen back write the next chapter it can change everything can change so um yeah just to be your own hero

[00:32:20] take your pen back be authentic write your own story it can be whatever you want it to be you're one of my heroes love you I love you

[00:32:33] so how can our listeners get in touch with you and how can they follow you yeah so mind your own karma the podcast google it it's everywhere um on all the major platforms um mindyourownkarma.com

[00:32:48] my website I'm on facebook and instagram too and if you know of an adoptee birth mother birth parent I interview everyone not just adoptees so if you have a story to tell

[00:33:01] get in touch with me um and let's get your story on the podcast uh if you know someone that is adopted and you just want to get a little bit more education please do that um just listen to a few episodes

[00:33:13] and uh get a new perspective um somatic mindful guided imagery my website somatic healing journeys.com everything is on there tens of information um you can uh DM me or email me if you have any questions about it um but yeah check it out it's pretty amazing.

[00:33:35] Thank you so much my darling for coming on yeah thank you for having me. It was such a special special episode for me so it's fun thank you all right be back to your listeners take care bye

[00:33:47] thank you for listening today and we sure hope you enjoyed this episode if you did please leave a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts tell a friend about us join our public facebook group girl take the lead or visit our website girl take the lead pod.com

[00:34:05] we also have a youtube channel where your subscription would be appreciated once you're on youtube search at girl take the lead and we're on youtube music where you can see a video of this episode. Here are three takeaways from our conversation with Melissa one the common sense

[00:34:28] of you that adoptions are like a disneyland happily ever after experience needs to be challenged and the resulting trauma uncovered and accepted. Two the mother wound or primal wound occurs when babies are missing the mother child bond or connection which can affect many aspects of

[00:34:58] life going forward both mentally and physically. Coming out of the fog is a term used in the adoptee community defining the moment when an adoptee realizes the role adoption trauma has played in how they move and respond in their everyday life. Three semantic mindful guided imagery helps people

[00:35:28] who are seeking relief from physical or psychological symptoms stress anxiety trauma find a sense of well-being by accessing their subconscious mind supporting them in discovering their natural ability to achieve healing and wholeness. Our next episode will continue to be

[00:35:56] about self-care and build on what we've heard from Melissa it'll be a sound bite based on the book Worthy How To Believe You Are Enough And Transform Your Life by Jamie Kern-Lima. When you see the

[00:36:14] praise for this book including those from Tony Robbins Jay Shetty Mel Robbins and Glennon Doyle we've got to take a look. If you may remember Melissa and I talking about achieving and always

[00:36:30] trying to do more as a result of trauma we'll take a closer look at that and dig into the book so all you overachievers out there hang on understanding is coming please join us again and talk to you soon bye