A listener reached out and invited me to explore one of the most common struggles I hear about — addiction, numbing, avoidance, and staying small in habits that no longer serve you. This episode is my answer.

I bring in my full toolkit here: behavioral science, psychology, and the spiritual and energetic frameworks I use in my coaching and shamanic work.

🌱 In this episode we explore:

• Functional analysis — the behavioral framework for understanding why any habit persists

• The role of skill deficits, emotional avoidance, and limiting beliefs in keeping you stuck

• Why your brain is motivated to maintain the stories you've built your identity around

• The shadow and light of the Fool archetype

• Energetic and ancestral patterns that operate beneath the level of mindset work

• The spiritual dimension of addiction — and why 12-step programs begin with surrender

• Positive vs. negative reinforcement — and how to find the hidden gift in a habit you want to release

• A personal story about identity, bankruptcy, and what it takes to let go of who you thought you were

• Why self-compassion and curiosity are not soft alternatives — they are the mechanism of change

💫 "If a behavior persists or increases in frequency, it is being reinforced somehow. You just can't see the way that it's serving you yet. So let's dig deeper."

—

🌸 Free resource mentioned: Sacred Discomfort guide

soulbloomcoaching.com/sacred-discomfort

Want to invite me to answer your question on the podcast? Email suzanne@soulbloomcoaching.com with the subject line: Invited

I'd love to hear what's resonating for you — drop a comment and let me know.

be mindful of what you create 🌿

And that extreme, however spiritual it looks, creates its own kind of suffering.

In this episode of Fascinated by Design, I'm sharing one of the most fundamental polarities I know: we are both the created and the creator. Not one, then the other. Both at once.

I share what a personal ayahuasca experience revealed about the limits of my creative power — the guideposts that feel like non-negotiables in a lifetime, and the wide-open spaces in between where we actually get to choose.

I talk about the shadow side of surrender: what it looks like when spiritual language becomes a sophisticated way to wait.

And I share what it looked like to hold grief and a quieter knowing simultaneously when my father was dying — living Ram Dass's framing of Buddha consciousness alongside the bleeding heart of Christ in real time.

I also get into what I call acting into being — why trust isn't something you wait to feel. It's something you build by living from it before the evidence arrives.

This isn't about graduating from the created into the creator. It's about holding them simultaneously, and what that actually looks like in a life.

The oldest philosophical traditions in the world have been pointing at this for thousands of years. The invitation is just to play it consciously.

In this episode: The difference between binary thinking and dialectical thinking — and why it matters more than most people realize.

What my ayahuasca experience taught me about creative power and its real limits.

The shadow side of surrender, and how to recognize it in yourself.

"As within, so without" — not as a concept, but as mechanics. What it actually means that your inner state is creating your lived experience.

Why people fear stepping into their creative power, and what's underneath that fear.

What acting into being looks like when you're living it, not just understanding it.

Reflection question for the week: How do you want to use your creative power?

If something landed for you, or there's a question you'd like me to explore, send it to suzanne@soulbloomcoaching.com with "invited" in the subject line — that's your ticket into a future listener Q&A episode.

And if you haven't yet picked up the Sacred Discomfort Guide — it's free at https://soulbloomcoaching.com/sacred-discomfort. Everything we explored today about honoring what you feel as the foundation of creator work — that guide walks you through it as a lived practice.

Until next time — be mindful of what you create.

This episode opens with a brief reflection I added after the fact — about what I noticed when I went back and listened to the first two episodes, and what I'm committing to doing differently. It's unscripted. It felt more honest than pretending it wasn't there.

I've had a vision for about ten years that I wasn't ready to share.

Until now.

This is the origin episode — the one where I tell you who I am, why I'm here, and what this podcast is actually about. Not the professional biography. The real story: the shame, the experiments, the spiritual awakening I didn't see coming, and the vision that's been quietly building underneath all of it.

In This Episode

I grew up as a highly sensitive person in an environment where I learned early that my job — everyone's job — was to keep a particular family member regulated. That meant not being too loud, having too many feelings, or taking up too much space. I turned perfectionism and striving into a survival strategy. It got me a PhD. It didn't touch the shame underneath.

I share how I discovered that the only way through fear is straight through it — and how I tested that theory at a weekly karaoke night, and eventually at a community theater audition I had no business going to and absolutely needed to do. Not to prove anything. As a gift to a younger version of myself who never got to walk out onto that stage.

I talk about the spontaneous spiritual awakening that shattered my worldview as a confirmed atheist and scientist — the sunset in Arkansas where the boundary of my personal energy body dissolved, the synchronicities I couldn't explain, and the slow, uncomfortable rebuild that followed. Physics. Ram Dass. Ancient wisdom traditions. Eventually, Human Design.

And I share the vision behind everything — a three-phase framework that starts with loving yourself unconditionally, moves into loving another consciously, and extends outward into loving all of humanity. Not as a sequence. As a simultaneous practice.

What You'll Hear

• The childhood experience that became the engine for a career in psychology — and a profound personal shame I couldn't logic my way out of
• What karaoke taught me about fear, freedom, and the cost of perfectionistic standards
• The audition I went to with a ten out of ten anxiety level — and why I'm so glad I didn't turn around and walk out
• What a spontaneous spiritual awakening actually feels like from the inside — and how a psychologist rationalized it
• The Cross of Planning and what it means that its energy is dissolving right now
• The extinction burst — a behavioral psychology concept that explains exactly what we're watching happen in the world
• The Cross of the Sleeping Phoenix and why the void phase isn't a problem to solve
• Why Sacred Discomfort is the foundation of everything I teach
• The three-phase vision: Love of Self → Love of Another → Love of Humanity
• Why this podcast exists now — and what my Human Design has to do with the timing

Resources Mentioned

• Sacred Discomfort — my free offering that teaches you to turn toward what's hard with curiosity and acceptance: soulbloomcoaching.com/sacred-discomfort
• Soul Bloom Coaching — individual and couples coaching, Human Design readings, and more: soulbloomcoaching.com/services
• DayLuna — my favorite Human Design resource: daylunalife.com
• Invite Me — have a question you'd like me to share my opinions on? Email suzanne@soulbloomcoaching.com with the subject line: Invited

Connect

Website: soulbloomcoaching.com

Email: suzanne@soulbloomcoaching.com

Instagram: @soulbloomcoaching

Facebook: Soul Bloom Coaching

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional psychological or medical advice. If you are experiencing mental health concerns, please reach out to a licensed professional.

Until next time — be mindful of what you create.