Why High Achievers Burn Out (Even When They Do Everything Right) with Sofia Souiri

Sofia Souiri 

Being a golden child, it’s almost like you’re not allowed to fail. You always have to perform. You always have to look good and to be the best at everything, which means you are always, always beating yourself up internally. And one of the biggest limiting beliefs is that you’re never good enough. Everything is conditional and no matter what, you’ve got to make sure that you’re not stuck in the past, but you’re also able to rewrite your narrative.

Lorne Brown 

By listening to the Coherence Code Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition, either in yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast. Welcome. Welcome to the Coherence Code Podcast. The Coherence Code Podcast. Where we explore how the mind and body work together so you can move from stress and inner conflict to clarity, calm and alignment. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. And through my work, I’ve seen that healing happens when you remove what gets in the way and allow the body and the nervous system to do what they’re designed to do to heal. Welcome to the Coherence Code Podcast.

All right. Before we jump in, I want to set our conversation with clear intention. A lot of high performers on the outside, everything looks good and great, but underneath inside there’s anxiety, poor sleep, burnout. And many of you may even experience rapid or crazy hormonal shifts. And what I see personally clinically is you can do everything what seems right and still not feel yourself. So the real question is, how do you heal when your identity is built on pushing through? Because the very traits that made you successful can actually keep you stuck. Today, I’m joined by Sofia. She’s an award-winning resilience coach, integrative psychotherapist, and she contributed a chapter to the book, Transforming Your Life, where she shared her chapter with me on Returning to Your True Essence. Now, Sofia has a background in finance, working in high performance environments at global banks before she transitioned to psychotherapy and coaching.

She holds a postgraduate diploma in psychotherapy and counseling and now integrates evidence-informed therapy with somatic and mind-body approaches. And what makes Sofia’s work especially relevant is that it’s not just professional, it’s deeply personal. And after navigating her own experience with chronic stress, anxiety, and health challenges, she began exploring modalities, including psychotherapy, Chinese medicine, curious to hear what she did with that, and nervous system-based practices, not just to heal, but to understand what actually allows the body to recover and transform. Her work now focuses on helping people build resilience, regulate the nervous system, and move beyond patterns that were shaped by trauma, stress, and high performance conditioning. So today, my hope, my intention is that we’re going to unpack why high achievers burnout, what stress actually does to the body and I’ll say chronic systemic stress and how to move from survival mode into something more coherent.

So Sofia, welcome to the Coherence Code Podcast. 

Sofia Souiri

Thank you Lorne.

Lorne Brown 

On paper, when I was reading about you, everything looked successful, but internally it wasn’t. And I’m really curious what was really going on for you. So can you share your story of how you go from finance banker to a psychotherapist and what was your life wake-up call and what kind of worked for you?

Sofia Souiri

Yeah, that’s correct. I’ve been through a lot of internal turmoil, high functioning anxiety, insomnia. I even suffered from hormonal issues, amenorrhea because that’s your field, you know what I’m talking about.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah. So amenorrhea, so you lost your period?

Sofia Souiri 

Yes, I did. That was in my early 20s as an adult and my immune system as well was very weak. I had a problem with my gut. I had all sorts of issues and you can name them.

Lorne Brown 

So you had hormonal issues, digestive issues, weak immune system. We’re already starting to see that how stress can impact the physical body, but I’m curious to hear when did you realize, hey, there’s something not right. And what put you on this journey to do this internal work and change careers even?

Sofia Souiri

So initially I was trying conventional way trying to find solutions and then I realized that it was more than just my body. There was something missing. I was a high performer, but every day it felt meaningless. I would just go to work, perform, meet the targets, but then think, okay, what is it that I’m doing? What is it that I’m achieving? I didn’t feel a sense of alignment. I wasn’t aligned. I didn’t feel a sense of, okay, I feel accomplished. I felt like I had a positive impact somehow, or simply if it’s not a positive impact, am I actually using my gifts? Am I being true to myself? And the answer was obviously no. So I kind of did this research on both levels. The first one was my true purpose. What is it that I’m very good at? What is it that makes me happy?

And I did some sort of trial and errors. So I did few courses, tried different industries and then I realized, okay, I’m very good at listening people. I’m a great listener and I’m very good at supporting people, guiding them, giving them advice. So it was clearly, okay, I’m either a coach or a psychotherapy psychotherapist. So let’s start with training and see where this leads me. So I started to train as a coach, a resilience coach. And funnily enough, each time I was having a client session, people would open up so easily that we would fall into more counseling or psychotherapy and I didn’t really have the tools to do that. I didn’t have the tools to… I wasn’t trained to deal with complex trauma or just trauma. So I deepened my training and that’s when I became a psychotherapist, integrative psychotherapist. And in the meantime, I realized that, okay, there was this sense of misalignment.

It wasn’t my true purpose and my body clearly was telling me there was something wrong. Clearly it was my lifestyle. My lifestyle was very different. I was a million miles away from the holistic, natural, complimentary, all of that. It was very much, okay, you are unwell, here are some meds and that’s it. Even the food, I used to eat processed food and this was something I normalized. I had to review and change basically everything in order to feel that sense of, okay, I’m now finally myself. I can recognize myself back to my true essence. And that felt like a new person. And this is when I built a very strong immune system. I healed anemia as well that I didn’t mention. 

Lorne Brown 

So you had anemia as well. Okay.

Sofia Souiri

I also had anemia and then I started helping… I tried different modalities, yoga for the prana or the chi as the Chinese medicine calls a lot of breath work, mindfulness meditation and all of this combined enabled me to reach optimal health and then I decided to help others do the same.

Lorne Brown 

I want to unpack a little bit of what you shared there. So why don’t you just talked about the stress and how it can impact the body. For you, you had anemia, you lost your period, a lot of gut issues, anxiety, insomnia, but you were also at that time, it sounded like when you were in the banking and finance push through. So you said you pop pills just so you can keep going eating processed food. Have you found then working with your clients, it’s kind of bidirectional. So you have to have the mental emotional, so you found purpose, but you also have to give your vessel what you got to feed it. You got to give it what it needs. For example, do you have those clients where they exercise, they do everything perfectly, they eat well, but yet they have all the physical symptoms because they don’t have the purpose or mental, emotional, spiritual.

So it’s not like if you’re just physical, you’re going to be good, or if you’re just spiritual, you’re good. It is bidirectional for many people. Was that your experience?

Sofia Souiri 

Yes. So I can talk about my own experience as well and this is not something I did mention in the book. And this came after me healing and helping heal many people. And it felt a bit like a failure somehow because I was doing everything. The organics, whether it’s products or food, I even pushed it to the product exercising five to six times a week, everything on paper, using wearables to track my HRV, the quality of my sleep, the oxygen levels. I’ve done it all literally. And then I started experiencing painful sexual intercourse and I had also bleeding in between the cycles. I thought there was something wrong, although it was not heavy bleeding and it was not like I didn’t suffer from any other symptoms that fibroids actually have. So I developed fibroids and it was kind of a shock when I went to the gyno who told me, “Okay, actually let’s do an ultrasound because it seems like there is something more than just…

” We ruled out a lot of things and then it happened to be fibroids. So it was kind of a shock and more than a shock, it felt like, how does this happen to me? How can this happen to me? I’m healing people. I’m helping heal people. I help the client heal from… It’s not a brain tumor. It’s the word in French tumor hypophyse. So it’s the one in the pituitary gland, prolactin. Yeah.

Lorne Brown 

A mass on the pituitary gland that was blocking your Menstruation?

Sofia Souiri 

Yes. So the correct name is prolactinoma or… Yes, that’s correct. And this client came to me and we basically did this assessment, if we can call it, although it sounds clinical, what is really happening? You’re taking your medication, you’re feeling deflated, you’re not feeling good in your body, you’re high achiever and executive, despite the meds, you are not having your periods, you’re not healing, although being very committed to healing. And we had to do the work, although she was eating well and trying to exercise and all of that, she was unable not only not to have her period, but also not to exercise or to find the motivation and lose weight. So what we did is we deepened the work and took it to a more unconscious level, the subconscious, like what is happening in your subconscious mind, what is happening spiritually as well.

So we’ve done all of that. And when I did a guided imagery with her, we realized that there was something else, not necessarily spiritual, but there was a belief underneath her feelings and her emotions. There was something else. It was almost like there was a belief that was limiting her. It’s not almost, it was a belief limiting her. And when we did the work, she basically realized while we were doing it is that she was scared to lose her partner’s attention. What if she heals? Well, she heals, she feels great in her body. She gets her period again. She feels like a woman again. She feels normal again, but then she won’t be the husband’s full attention. And it was something that we could have missed if we didn’t do the guided imagery. And believe it or not, after five session, lost weight, she started having her periods again.

She felt like a completely renewed person, a totally different person. 

Lorne Brown

I want to unpack that with you a bit for myself and for our listeners. So what I think I’m hearing, so I’m just getting curious here is you’re sharing that the body gives us messages and sometimes it’s happened on a subconscious level things are going on that are… If you have this chronic stress in Chinese medicine, we call it qi stagnation. So energy stuck in the tissues, people call it trauma stuck in the tissues, emotion stuck in the tissues. We call it energy stuck in the tissues. And when that happens, it wreaks havoc on the body. So in the West, we now have a term called PNI, psycho neural immunology, meaning your nervous system and your immune system, there’s a connection there. And now they’ve added, some people have added the E to PNI, PNEI, so psychoneuroimmunoendocrine something, meaning that your thoughts and feelings, your nervous system interacts with your immune system, hormonal system, which I’m getting a sense of what you’re sharing here.

The unconscious part, the guided imagery, there’s tools, right? There’s tools to get into these limiting beliefs. And I just want to ground it for myself here. When you have these programs, whatever they are and however they come out like you’re sharing, she was unconsciously looking for attention or approval. In this case, she thought it was her husband. So you make the unconscious conscious, but when that’s sitting in the nervous system, it’s consuming resources and people can develop physical symptoms. That’s the theory of the work that you’re sharing. It’s not a medical diagnosis, not a medical treatment. When people are able to release these old programs, it sounds like that resources get freed up that we’re trying to keep the body safe and deal with it and healing happens. And in this case, what I think I heard is she had all these things going on.

She’s been doing Western medicine. And again, we’re not practicing medicine here, everybody. This is a conversation. See your healthcare provider, just want to mention that. You gave her another approach to innate her own body’s healing. And in this part, you had a way to get into her unconscious or subconscious guided imagery, it sounds like. And when this got unraveled and released, all of a sudden the signs and symptoms changed and she had a healing response in her body. Am I understanding what you just shared?

Sofia Souiri 

You are absolutely correct. And you’re probably doing something similar when you practice hypnosis with your clients, just a deeper level. Guided imagery is very light in comparison to the work you do, but it seems like it’s working and –

Lorne Brown 

It doesn’t have to be deep to be effective. So yeah, if you can –

Sofia Souiri

As long as it works.

Lorne Brown 

Well, as long as the limiting belief is released, whether it was a deep humanthodic or a light-guided imagery, if I do a deep work and it doesn’t release the limiting belief, it doesn’t really have a benefit. Absolutely.

So this person and yourself, when I was reading about you, I think you described it as this golden child pattern, right? I thought of it the perfectionist can never do enough and how that shapes the nervous system with yourself and your clients and for our listeners, because there’s a lot of people that have done, they push through everything, they’re successful, everything looks good on the outside, like you experienced your life and yet they become what we call, we become those neurotic people where we eat perfect, every diet, we’ve got the wearables, you brought it all up and yet we’re suffering. And so I thought when I was reading about yourself, I connected with that golden child, how you described it and that perfectionism. I’d love for you to share how that impacts a nervous system and how we can develop this. Burnout is almost like a personality or an identity based, not so much a workload.

It’s not so much how much work you have, but your personality identity. And I loved how you kind of phrased that in some of the articles you shared with me. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Sofia Souiri

Yeah, sure. Being a golden child, it’s almost like you’re not allowed to fail whatsoever. You always have to perform, you always have to look good and to be the best at everything, which means you are always, always beating yourself up internally. And one of the biggest limiting beliefs is that you’re never good enough, everything is conditional and no matter what, you’re almost doomed to fail, which is a bit like a vicious circle. The more you try, the more likely you are to fail and then it goes on like that. And it also impacted my self-esteem, my anxiety and fear as well, not only fear of failure, but fear of taking risks, fear of being myself fully because when you are the golden child, you are in a mold somehow. You’ve got to fit the society, people around you, everyone, please, people, although I’ve never been a people’s pleaser.

So I don’t want to portray myself as something that I’ve never been, but it’s very much linked to accomplishments and it has a huge impact on who you are, your identity as well as your body. And this is what I experienced.

Lorne Brown 

I wanted to touch on the fear of failure, but you just said something that reminded me of myself, my own experience, which I’ve read about you as well is this perfectionism, this pushing through, this overachieving is a way to fill the void of feeling not enough, not good enough. And often that’s unconscious. And when I started doing this inner work, that’s when I became aware of that personality inside of me realizing, oh, all these accomplishments and all these things I’m doing is because I’m so incredibly insecure. And so when I started looking at all these famous people and people have done so much, I started realizing there’s a good chance on the inside they are so empty, alone, scared, not enough. And it wasn’t until working through those programs, those shadows, as you call it, limiting beliefs, when they get cleared up, you can still have the success on the outside, but you no longer need the success on the outside.

Was that something you found? Because often we’re doing the external success to try and fill something on the inside, which cannot be filled. That’s what all the traditions say. You can’t fill it up.

Sofia Souiri 

Achieving goals is never the key to happiness As simple as this. It’s very much reorganizing yourself internally and finding other ways, things as simple as being grateful and then if you actually push it a bit more being aligned, not just gratitude.

Lorne Brown 

But you can have both. I want to clarify.

Sofia Souiri 

Of course

Lorne Brown 

You’re not saying give away all your riches and live on the mountain, because what I think our listeners and many people experienced and what was your story is that you had it going on on the outside, but it wasn’t good on the inside. So it looked good for everybody else. Maybe your social media posts looked like life was great, but it wasn’t like that on the inside. And what you’re sharing is it can get aligned where it’s full on the inside too and you also have the success because abundance does make being happy easier. Like you said, money won’t make you happy, but it sure does, you know what, worth $10 million and not feeling good enough is still better than poor and not feeling good enough. So the goal here is to work on feeling enough because it seems like a lot of our listeners have that part down where they can create abundance on the external world.

We’re talking about making the abundance on the inside. And what you’re sharing with then, and I want to clarify this is because you’re a psychotherapist, I find that the bidirectional part is important. So in your work, is it only like talk therapy, a top-down approach, or do you do a somatic, like a bottom-up approach to, because acupuncture and breath work you mentioned, these are what I call bottom-up approaches to help release the store stuck energy in the body. I’m just curious, what is your approach to help people release these limiting beliefs, open up resources for healing?

Sofia Souiri

Okay. So I train to be a resilience coach, but what I’ve mainly practiced is holistic coaching. So when I say my approach is both combined, I integrate. So I use neuroscience, but I also use holistic methods. So I do incorporate guided imagery, breathing, and I also incorporate the body, meaning I would ask, can you do the correct blood tests, for example, or I even use biofeedback and that’s when I discovered the different qi’s, if I can call them the qi because there’s the liver qi. They’re very different ones and –

Lorne Brown

You are talking about the organ qi’s in Chinese medicine, if I heard

Sofia Souiri 

I’m talking about the energy points.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah, So liver, spleen

Lorne Brown 

Okay. And so when we use these terms, our listeners, we’re not necessarily talking about the Western understanding of these organs, but the Chinese concept. Okay.

Sofia Souiri 

So my understanding, because I’m not trained as you are, I had a very basic understanding. I did the basic training just to understand how to unlock these energy blockages using biofeedback. And I was fascinated discovering that there were all these energetic points that I didn’t know about. So we do talk about chakras and clearing the chakras and there are different ways to do it, affirmations, visualizations, mantras and all of that. But when I discovered the Chinese ones, that was a different world for me. And I really, really, really benefited from it. And I think this is very important as you mentioned. There is the mind, body and there is the soul as well. And the three, to have a very good result or to make healing happen, I think combining the three is important and not combining, incorporating them and doing it at different levels.

Lorne Brown 

So what are some of the tools you bring to your practice? So you mentioned guided imagery, which is a great way to lead and work with the subconscious breathwork. Do you do anything to the level like the holotropic type breathwork or?

Sofia Souiri 

No, I don’t do that. Mainly, it’s mainly mindfulness. And I do box breathing.

Lorne Brown 

Box breathing. Okay. And then how do you use your biofeedback? Do you use devices or what’s your level of biofeedback?

Sofia Souiri 

Yeah, so it’s a device. I’ve used the device for many years and this was fantastic. It really helped a lot of my clients, including the one that initially came for coaching and then we used the biofeedback as an additional element to integrate and that’s the reason we got amazing results after five sessions.

Lorne Brown 

So it sounds like you’re doing a biodirectional approach. You can coach and talk, but you also get into that somatic work to help people’s release. And people really like to hear people’s personal stories. It’s nice to know the person you’re working with has walked your path. It helps a bit. So going back to your story because you shifted careers and you had no menses of amenorrhea, your iron was low, you had anemia, you talked anxiety, the gut issues. Was there a moment where your body basically forced you to change and what actually shifted the things? What started the healing for you?

Sofia Souiri 

The latest one was the fibroids because I literally thought I was doing everything right, but there was something that I was doing wrong and I had to introspect and rethink the way I viewed life, my boundaries.

Lorne Brown

Boundaries?

Sofia Souiri 

Yeah, my boundaries, it took me to another level spiritually because I was very confined in certain practices, if that makes sense. And I started digging thinking, okay, here is the very methodic way, what is happening on a physiological level? So let’s look at the deficiencies, the toxicities, all the biomarkers and all of that. Let’s change the lifestyle. Maybe I’m overdoing things because I started pushing my body to the point where I started running a bit more than it was very much a lot of high intensity simply because I grew up with asthma and I was not able to run. I was literally exempt when people were running at school, I was just sitting and watching them and I suffered from it a lot. I had to keep school very often and it really, really had a huge impact on me. And when I realized that I could push my body and push my limit and actually run really fast, I impressed myself, but then I pushed it a bit too much.

At the end of the day, I’m a woman with a reproductive system and this forced me to slow down and I went back to practicing yoga, meditating more and also I started thinking, what is it about the uterus? What is it about the reproductive system? Okay, let’s do some research and what do I find? Okay, trauma, there is a link and one must have a trauma informed approach to healing when it comes to the female reproductive system, but is there something else? And then I started thinking, okay, maybe it’s something to do with growth, right? It’s a growth that it’s not supposed to be at its place. And I’m the golden child and do I have to actually outgrow my environment? Is it what’s the universe is telling me other than slow down, review everything? And that’s when I started also reading different things about spirituality, not just yoga, that was my main practice, the yogic philosophy, other than the Asanas, just leaving it as a philosophy, a way of life rather than just practicing regularly.

Lorne Brown 

Can we share that with the audience just so Oh, so yoga, my understanding, because I don’t practice yoga, but my understanding of yoga here in the West we do it like fitness, like exercise strength. But yoga, thinking we’re on the Coherence Code podcast, yoga is really about that way to tap into that higher self, that spiritual side. So there is movement and breath and that just like qigong, movement, breath, and tension.

Sofia Souiri 

Yes

Lorne Brown

Yoga has movement, breath, and tension. And that is to get you into another, I say non-ordinary state. And that would be one of those somatic approaches versus hot yoga trying to stretch and lose weigh, which there’s a place for that. You’re sharing what we would call or what I’ve heard called yin yoga then.

Sofia Souiri 

Yin yoga is a specific type of yoga. Maybe that’s too general.

Lorne Brown 

I think of it as a gentle yoga, yin yoga, but yours was a spiritual

Sofia Souiri 

Yoga. Yin is a very, there is Ashtanga, yin yoga and yin is very, very gentle. It’s long postures with a lot of breathing, but the most important part in yoga, not just the physical part of it is the breath. So the breathing part, the force breathing part, and that’s what activates the prana or the chi. So it’s the life force, basically the life force energy. It’s just different words, but it’s basically the same concept.

Lorne Brown 

It was exercise for your soul versus exercise for your body in a sense.

Sofia Souiri

It’s very much meditation in movement.

Lorne Brown 

Okay. Yeah. Okay. I want to just clarify with the audience that I do yoga. I sit in front of my YouTube and I’m doing my yoga and watching social media. This is a meditative yoga that it sounds like you were doing.

Sofia Souiri 

Yeah, it was very different. But yeah, then I started introspecting, as I told you, and being more open to the unseen and learning as well and growing spiritually. And what I try to do is grow daily and learn daily when it comes to spirituality.

Lorne Brown 

You talked about the fibroids and I just want to share from, this is my lens, is you had a fibroid and we’re meaning makers and you shared it’s about growth and I think you can get inspiration and that’s not quite the right word I’m thinking of here, but you can get insight. That’s the word I’m looking for, insight about what’s happening, the fibroid. For me, a lot of it is at the end of the day, there’s so much happening on so many levels like dimensions that bottom line is if you get into coherence, if you get aligned, things can happen. And you still may not have a physical healing, but you’re okay. It’s really your relationship with when it’s ever happening. So you don’t have resistance against it. So I’m sharing that when people have a fibroid, for you, it could have been like you talked about the growth aspect, but somebody else, it can mean something totally different.

At the end of the day, the fibroid gives you it’s a wake-up call or an opportunity. It became an opportunity for you to do the introspection to have this healing because there are some people that have fibroids and they don’t do the introspection, but maybe they get a cancer diagnosis or an infertility diagnosis or a divorce and that’s their wake-up calls.

Sofia Souiri 

But I have to mention though that there was also a toxicity component that I believe also was linked to it because when I looked at the body by itself, there was obviously certain deficiencies, but this very much helped me from my emotional state. Although I didn’t feel it, it seemed like my brain needed some LEPTin and some B1, which is not usually what is recommended when it comes to fibroids and their symptoms. So you might think, oh, there must be something else. And then there was L-ornithine that I took. I’m not sure if that L-ornithine. Have you heard about it?

Lorne Brown

Yeah. So you took that and the other one was

Sofia Souiri

L-thenine. I said that because it was-

Lorne Brown

Was the other one L-theanine?

Sofia Souiri 

Yes, L-theanine and B1. B1 and

Lorne Brown 

Then L-carnitine.

Sofia Souiri 

Not L-carnitine, just carnitine.

Lorne Brown 

Okay.

Sofia Souiri 

So the L-carnitine is used for ammonia toxicity.

And that was the missing for the body, that was really the missing point. You’re eating whole foods using the organics shampoo, organics products, everything, but you’re also highlighting your hair. So that must be something that you didn’t think about other than the high intensity training that perhaps was a way to slow down as well. I’m not saying I do agree with you. There is a lot of spirituality and it’s very important to heal the soul because that’s when true healing happens, but we shouldn’t undermine science. And I love the fact that you always have this disclaimer. The body also is important.

Lorne Brown

We’re having a material experience here. And so you have to deal with both. I share that our dimension, our reality is quantum and Newtonian, material and spiritual. And to do the spiritual work, you have to have a physical body to sometimes be able to do the trauma. Like you talked about the fibroid or you had painful… Yes, Chinese medicine talks about often stress, trauma, special sexual trauma will show up in the reproductive organs later on in life. So yes, you never ignore the physical. We do both. I think in our society we focus mostly on the physical and therefore ignore the spiritual. And so having the Coherence Code podcast is to remind people there’s another aspect of your beingness that you want to address.

Sofia Souiri 

Yeah. And there is also one additional element is that when I was doing my research, I also found research. Yes. And the research is linking trauma and female reproductive health throughout their life course.  

Lorne Brown

And you found common research. Because Chinese medicine talks about this for 2000 years, right?

Sofia Souiri

Yeah. If you want the full name, I know the full name by heart. I want

Lorne Brow

I want to hear it. Yeah, I’d love to look at it

Sofia Souiri 

Okay. So it’s called Trauma and Female Reproductive Health.

Lorne Brown 

I’m looking up as you’re talking. Go for it

Sofia Souiri

Across life course.

Sofia Souiri 

Motivating a research agenda, and you’re probably going to find it.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah. Okay. So trauma and female reproductive health across the life course, motivating a research agenda for the future of women’s health. This was published, I don’t see 2023, human reproduction.

Sofia Souiri 

Yes.

Lorne Brown

Thank you.

Sofia Souiri 

So not that long ago. I think when you both started practicing and you started way before me, it wasn’t something that was necessarily research, but it was somehow matching my intuition. There must be something else. It’s trauma-informed. It has an impact. That’s probably something I’ve built up as well because this research mentions that it can be from childhood and then women develop it at an adulthood. And this can be either through stress itself and it can also have a direct impact because of the emotional health they’re in. And then that it has an indirect impact as well on the body.

Lorne Brown

The way I practice in Chinese medicine, the way you practice, but coming from Chinese medicine, which you mentioned you’ve done some studies with, two things that are very clear that I’ll share. One is that it’s documented thousands of years ago that the number one cause of disease are your emotions out of balance. So that’s us not… And when you talk about the childhood, if you have trauma, and trauma is not the big T, but it could be as simple as being picked up late from daycare. If you’re one of those sensitive people, you could have internalized, perceived that as abandonment or whatever else could come up and that sits in your tissues and it sits in your tissues for decades. And then somewhere around age 40 plus or minus five years, your body says you need to deal with this. Meaning we’re getting older, we need all the resources to function healthy as we get older.

So we cannot use our energy, our resources to depress, suppress, pack this away. So the body kind of brings it up for you to deal with because you’re not a child anymore. It seems like it’s programmed in the human body that it just shows up somewhere around 40.

Sofia Souiri 

Yeah, it’s time for you to have a look and to correct.

Lorne Brown 

We did 40 years like this. We’re not doing another 40 years like this. The body says, “You got to deal with it. You got to go see somebody like Sofia. You’re going to have to get this out of me. ” We make light of it, but that’s why it’s bidirectional. People are doing the diets, the blood tests, they’re eating well, all part of health. Move your body, eat well, community. All those things are really important. And then at some point it seems like, and in the time of our recording, it seems like there’s collective trauma going around. People have their individual trauma, but it seems like there’s a collective awakening happening. So really important to do this kind of work in my opinion. I mean talking for myself, this is why I like to do this work and share it and why I believe you share it is if the collective awakening’s happening, it’s going to happen.

The question is, do you have the tools to help you ride this wave? It’s still uncomfortable, but at least you can ride the wave because if you don’t have the tools, you’re going to blow a fuse and go crazy. This is kind of what I’m asking about is what is your approach? I have my notice, accept, choose again, but what’s your fast method?

Sofia Souiri 

So basically it’s exactly what I described to you earlier is to have a functional approach to it, to have a look at the body, the deficiencies, the nutrition as well. Although I’m not a nutritionist, I do sometimes advise, especially when it comes to elimination diet, and that’s what I’ve done, even with this client that suffered for five years and then her life changed after five sessions is we do assess what is the nutrition like? What is the lifestyle overall like supplements? What are you feeding yourself with? Whether it’s food or supplements or what are you listening to? What are you hearing? Everything. And it’s also about having someone to listen to you. But the most important part in my methods, other than the talk that they have to also… Self-expression, people have a tendency to forget is crucial. Now the most important part is rewriting your story.

And this I believe changes everything because as you said, you can have a spiritual approach introspect. You have got to unlock something. You’ve got to make sure that you’re not stuck in the past, but you’re also able to rewrite your narrative. You rewrite your story. That’s the

Lorne Brown 

New program. When you talked about the subconscious, that’s where you change the program. So now your behaviors change because your program changes. So very important to rewire the story or the narrative.

Sofia Souiri 

Yes. I’m doing this and that’s the reason I’ve now come to the point where I want to give the ability to people to do some self-healing and have all the tools to manifest health and to be able to heal. So to build self-trust and to change their identity. And the program I’m referring to I’m launching is all about changing the limiting beliefs, rewiring your brain and also work with a subconscious mind. And this time not with hypnosis or light hypnosis, but mainly with… Although I am also offering recordings that some people would say, but you’re pushing them in a REM state, so that’s called hypnosis. So it’s guided imagery and a lot of visualization because this is what worked for me when I healed my fibroids. Visualizing

Lorne Brown 

That – We’re all in hypnosis all day long. When you drive your car, you’re in a form of state of hypnosis. Just what level? So we’re always going into states of hypnosis and alter or non-ordinary states. There’s stage hypnosis, which I don’t do, you’re not doing, but anything that can get into the operating system. I don’t want to get stuck on the word hypnosis, just like we said yoga, there’s different types of yoga.

Sofia Souiri

Yeah. So I just call them recordings now in my current program.

Lorne Brown 

Does FAST stand for something?

Sofia Souiri

Yes, it does. So it’s functional.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah.

Sofia Souiri

Acceptance.

Lorne Brown 

Oh, that’s my favorite. Yeah.

Sofia Souiri 

Somatic

Lorne Brown (44:13):

Somatic

Sofia Souiri 

And talk.

Lorne Brown 

And what was the last one?

Sofia Souiri 

Talk.

Lorne Brown

Talk. All right. So that’s your approach. So functional. So you talked about, I like this because we’re aligned in that in my clinic. We always assess the physical. What’s your dialyte? We run labs, we do a Chinese medicine diagnosis. So functional, we’re there. Acceptance. T me, that is the secret sauce that everybody I’ve ever met. If somebody’s work brings you into a state of acceptance, a state of surrender, by the way, that doesn’t mean you like it, that doesn’t mean you’re resigned to it. It just means you drop the resistance to reality, then you have flow and then healing happens. So I love the acceptance. Somatic, I get. So somatic is because there’s body work here. You’re getting rid of the issues stuck in your tissues and then talk

Sofia Souiri

And maybe as well to reset the nervous system, not only with energetic blocks because people get stuck in survival mode. And you mentioned it earlier, high performers and constant.

Lorne Brown 

True or false, do you agree with this? Can you outthink a dysregulated system? Can you talk your way out of a dysregulated nervous system?

Sofia Souiri 

Yes.

Lorne Brown 

You think so? I don’t

I think you have to get in. That’s why I like the somatic. I want to clarify that. It’s your thinking and meaning mind that’s caused the problem that’s in the somatic, that’s the story you’re believing in. So I believe you got to get out of the thinking mind and get into the tissues. So the issues are in your tissues and so you can’t outthink a dysregulated system. That’s why the breath work or biofeedback, sometimes acupuncture are ways to get it out. You bypass the brain, the thinking process. Whereas your person with a fibroid, when they got into the story and realized what was going on and they were able to heal, but you did some guided imagery to get them out of their… You made the unconscious conscious. You brought it up from the cells to the thinking mind, not the other way around.

Sofia Souiri

But don’t you think that by changing the way you think and your beliefs, you actually impact your body.

Lorne Brown 

Yes

Lorne Brown 

But that’s a different thinking. So that’s where you change the story. So you can’t positive affirmation the fibroid away. The work that you do and I do is simple. It’s not easy. It’s simple because anybody can do it. You can listen to a guided meditation, you can listen to your recording. It’s easy. It’s simple. I meant to say simple. It’s not easy. If it was easy, everybody would do it. It’s not easy because you have to get comfortable with your uncomfortable feelings. When you heal, those uncomfortable feelings come up. It’s not like unicorns and roses. It’s uncomfortable. When you went through your shadow and you cleared and you had your shift, now you’re in a good place. But do you remember what it was like when all those programs started coming up? Did it feel so good?

Sofia Souiri 

It didn’t. And funnily enough, I think I said yes, but the way I viewed it was very much, okay, you are self-compassionate. You actually work on the safety and then the body will actually –

Lorne Brown 

But you’re coming into your heart when you do that. So when you’re being compassionate, so when I say you can’t think your way out of it, you still use your mind to… That’s the effort part. You’re purposely doing the work to get in there, but it’s your thinking that got you in there. It’s that negative self-talk that got you in there. And then tools that you offer interrupt the negative talk so you start to change the negative talk and you give them tools to accept themselves so they don’t need to stay up and do that extra report or that extra goal for their boss. They start to develop boundaries. When you said earlier, you’ve changed the rewiring, that is the unconscious part. That’s the part that’s not thinking. That’s a program running. And so you’re changing that is my understanding. I mean, that’s how my style of work and the people I’ve interviewed, that terminology, and again, it just may be semantics here is you can’t think your way out of this.

It’s that expression you have to feel it to heal it.

Sofia Souiri 

Yes. So that’s the point I’m getting to. I met people who couldn’t connect their mind and their bodies. And for them, it was almost mission impossible. They would do cognitive behavioral therapy I tell you. Oh my God, you’re talking about the body? I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s very much here. It’s not here. It’s not the felt sense. It’s not the feeling. And what you’re referring to is very much being in touch with your body, which also enables you to be in touch with your intuition.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah. That’s your S part, somatic. 

Sofia Souiri 

Yes

Lorne Brown 

So you have to learn to feel. And when we get these uncomfortable feelings, I mean, this was my experience when I went through this work and when I facilitate this for the people I see, it’s really uncomfortable when they’re not used to it. So when they start to get into their feelings, they want to disassociate right away. They want to leave it right away, push it away. And that’s what, by the way, for those of us that are workaholics or do a lot of work, it’s another way of numbing. Some people use drugs and alcohol. Some people use sex. Some people use food. Some people use scrolling. Some people work. It is a coping mechanism to not feel these uncomfortable feelings. And when you slow down, I know this for me, when I would take time off, that’s when I would get really stressed because I wasn’t producing.

If I’m not producing, I’m not valuable back in the old days. So when people start to slow down and all of a sudden they start to go visceral, somatic, feel their feelings, that’s really uncomfortable. That’s the hardest part. That’s why I say it’s not easy. However, with practice, with the things that you offer, you get comfortable being uncomfortable. It’s like the high-end athlete. When they work out, they’re pushing themselves, but they’ve learned to become comfortable with being uncomfortable when they’re pushing themselves in the gym or running a marathon. So

I think the people that are listening for yourself, myself, what put us into poor health also can be shifted to put us into good health. In Chinese medicine, going back to Chinese medicine, the spleen system, not the Western spleen system. The flavor of the herb that tonifies it, that helps the spleen is the sweet flavor. And too much sweetness damages the spleen. So there’s this expression, Chinese medicine, too little is too little and too much is too much. And so when we talk about the high achiever, it’s just finding balance. They’re great. We just want to facilitate or coach them into shifting from that too much to more balance. We’re not saying they go from too much to too little. We’re just shifting them a little bit. So that’s why I find that they do really well with the kind of work that you offer.

Sofia Souiri

Yeah, balance is key.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah. And everybody’s balance is different

Sofia Souiri 

Based on ages. Exactly. You’ve summarized it. Everyone’s balance is different because we are all different and we have a different journey as well.

Lorne Brown 

Yeah, we have different journey’s, so don’t compare.

Lorne Brown

So a few things I got from talking to you and reading some of the material you shared, coping is not healing. The survival mode often is dressed up as success. So that’s a good side. If you’re really successful, take a look inside though and see how you’re doing on the inside. And that kind of overworking works short term, but doesn’t seem to work long-term. And this is where we often get stuck. And then coming back to your fast approach, if you’re looking for peace, the reason we call this the coherence podcast is there’s noise. So we want to bring the noise down so you can reconnect. And so you talked about functional. So look at diet, supplements, look at test, look at the testing like you did. What could be off on your body that’s impacting your physical and mental health? Acceptance. We could do a whole podcast on acceptance.

Somatic. So my understanding it’s a body-based. This where you and I had a confusion around, I said you can’t think your way through it, meaning you got to get out of your head into the body. That to me is the somatic. That’s why I though you’d be like, yes.Because that’s to me a somatic. You got to feel it to heal it. And then talk, meaning talk is communication being heard. Can you just elaborate what that means to you?

Sofia Souiri

Well, talk is one, self-expression.

Lorne Brown

Okay.

Sofia Souiri 

Self-expression. Yes. You’ve got to express yourself instead of suppressing or repressing your feelings. You mentioned the discomforts. Okay, it’s one thing to feel it, but are you actually talking about it? Self-expression is really important for our wellbeing. And then there’s the human relationship, communication. So it’s bonding, building that authentic relationship. And what is important is the authentic part, not just any type of relationship. And this I believe happens when you’ve done the work and you’ve done this introspection and you’re willing to change because this also has a huge impact on who we are and the way we behave and our wellbeing.

Lorne Brown 

So when you talk about this, you’re saying it’s quality over quantity when it comes to relationships. So really good connectivity. So not so much how many Facebook friends or how many Instagram followers you have, but how many people you can share what you’re feeling, like you said, to communicate and self-express. And you shared at the beginning, you’re a really good listener. And so having that where you can talk and you feel heard and somebody’s willing to listen to you, not judge you or fix you. Is that my understanding?

Sofia Souiri 

Yeah, there is this point. And the second point is the loneliness point. The loneliness point. A lot of people have a lot of friends, but what is missing is feeling seen, feeling heard. There is this communication but not the communication people actually need. So they feel lonely because they don’t feel heard, they don’t feel seen.

Lorne Brown 

Gordon Neufeld, who was on my podcast episode, I heard him say this, he has a whole institute on this. He’s on attachment and he says when somebody feels seen and heard, they feel loved. And feeling seen and heard, if you’re doing the scene and hearing, doesn’t mean you agree with them. It doesn’t mean you like what they say even, but you’re letting them know that you get that’s how they think and feel. And when somebody feels seen and heard, they feel loved.

Sofia Souiri 

And there is one more thing which people often mention is the support system and the community, which is very important. But I would say that for me, the most important one is spiritual practices.

Lorne Brown 

And can you name a few? What do you call a spiritual practice?

Sofia Souiri 

Believing in a highest good that everything will turn out for something better. As I mentioned, yoga. There’s Kabalah as well, which a few years ago discovered. And I learn more every day. And I’m also becoming more and more open to the unseen and miracles. I haven’t done the course of miracles, course in miracles. But yeah, it’s very much gratitude and seeing the light everywhere. I think this really, really helps.

Lorne Brown 

And it is a practice. The Course of Miracles wonderful by teacher. That a big part of her base, so we went through that. Many of the people I’ve interviewed have used Course of Miracles. Interesting enough, recently, a few of the people I’ve interviewed have used the Kabalah as part of their spirituality. We haven’t released it at the time of our recording, but I interviewed a kabbalist, so that will come out. So many traditions, the mystical aspect, I’m not talking about the religious aspect, the modern religion that’s kind of ruined the world for everybody. I’m talking about the spiritual mystical.

Sofia Souiri 

Important to mention.

Lorne Brown 

Although so many of the religions all have in common, the common part where we’re all part of consciousness source, it sounds like that there’s light and it’s the quantum story that we’re hearing from quantum science. It seems to be more aligned with the course and miracles and cabalism and Sufism, all the stuff that you read, including the course and miracles. Yeah. I want to wrap up and thank you for your time. This was really great for me. I’ve really enjoyed it. And I think what really stands out is this idea that first of all, you can’t force healing through willpower. Although that may get you the bonus and the next contract, healing cannot be forced through willpower. And at some point the body does step in like you experienced and I’ve experienced and so many of the people we worked with. So instead of pushing harder, the shift is learning how to listen.

And for those of you listening, if you feel stuck or you’re doing everything right but still not getting the results you want, it may not be about doing more actually. It might be about shifting your state. And Sofia, I thought you could share where people can learn more about you and your work so they can find ways to shift their state through you.

Sofia Souiri 

Yes. So I do have a program now calling Manifest Through Alignment, which is exactly what you just described. Align yourself in order to enable yourself to heal and to allow yourself to heal, welcome healing and to shift from survival to safety or being a survivor to being a creator and recreating your healed reality. So at the moment, that’s what I’m doing. And also I do work with a few clients one-to-one.

Lorne Brown 

What’s the website? How do they find you? What’s your social? We’ll put in the show notes, but website and social media channel that we can send people to

Sofia Souiri 

Okay. So the website is sofiasouiri.com. It’s my first name. 

Lorne Brown 

It’s your first and last name 

Sofia Souiri 

Put together.

Lorne Brown 

Got it. Yeah.

Sofia Souiri 

And my social media account, the main one is Instagram, would be sofia_souiri. So the same but with an underscore.

Lorne Brown 

Okay. Now we know how to find you. We’ll put that in the show notes everybody. So that’s in the show notes and we heard it out loud. Sofia, thank you very much for connecting, sending me that chapter that you wrote in the book. I found that enjoyable and interesting and I’m glad I had the opportunity to meet you and hear about your story.

Sofia Souiri 

Likewise, really, really great to having this conversation and being your guest.

Lorne Brown 

Thank you, Sofia. Thank you for spending this time with us on the Coherence Code podcast. I’m Dr. Lorne Brown and I will see you next week for another conversation on coherence and healing. If this conversation resonated with you, please like, subscribe or follow the show and also share it with someone who might benefit from it as well. Remember to take a moment to breathe, reflect, and stay connected. Welcome. To the Coherence Code podcast.