Unworthiness is an Addiction with Angie Monko

george grombacher 0:00
Come on one level, this is George G. And the time is right welcome today’s guest strong and powerful Angie montco. Angie, are you ready to do this?

Angie Monko 0:19
I’m ready.

george grombacher 0:20
All right, let’s let’s go. Angie is the owner of harmony harbor coaching. She is a conscious woman’s divorce and loss coach helping professional women who want to live confidently and passionately on their terms without feeling guilty or selfish. And helping women and their families move through the the trauma of divorce, and on to the next chapter of life in a positive way. Angie, tell us a little about your personal life more about your work and why you do what you do.

Angie Monko 0:52
I personal life, and I am married to Steve coming up on 20 years. And I have a daughter who lives in Boston, she turned 27 Today, wow. And, and then I have a late daughter, Maddie, who passed in 2018. And she had cystic fibrosis. So she’s a big part of my story and reason why I’m passionate about keeping kids out of the middle of divorce. And your other question, why do I do what I do? Whatever. By the way, I have a dog named Mars as well. And I love my dog Mars, he’s a Labradoodle. Cuz he’s eight years old. So I love being outdoors and being with family and you know, that kind of thing. So

george grombacher 1:41
nice. And is Mars due to your love of the solar system and your desire to one day leave planet Earth?

Angie Monko 1:49
No, he actually came with that name assigned, we found him as a puppy online. And they that was his given name. We didn’t name him that but we kept it. Got it.

george grombacher 2:00
So I have spent a good amount of time working on the financial and of of divorce. And as a product of divorce myself, I folks, but when I was five, I know just how challenging and crappy it it can be. And people need a lot of help. And you’ve been you’ve been working in this space for a good while. A good little while as well.

Angie Monko 2:28
Right? Right. I’m also a child of divorce, I was 11. So yeah. Um, so I’m passionate about doing this and helping women through go through divorce and loss. Just because I think parents need to learn how to heal from the trauma of divorce and loss. Otherwise, it could be a divorce, it could be the loss of someone that we love that we’re close to, the parents have that big impact on the children, and then they don’t have that mental and emotional stability, you know, when mom and dad fall apart. And so that’s why I’m passionate about that, and helping keep the kids out of the middle of a divorce. Because it affects them for a minimum of two decades, especially if they’re young, when the parents divorce or lifetime for an a full lifetime. And just the negative effects are pretty profound, you know, as far as, you know, drugs, alcohol, addictive behaviors, and acting out and having that low self esteem and self worth. And so the ripple effects are pretty great.

george grombacher 3:35
It’s, it’s, for lack of a better term. It’s amazing. It is amazing. I know that that I’m still working through, you know, I’m 43 years old. So you said how many decades that is almost 40 years. Right, essentially, and it’s I laugh It’s not funny, obviously. But that’s, that’s, that’s that’s the reality of it. And so the more that that you can do to actually help people through that process, because just like everything else in the world diet, personal finance, there’s no script for helping you get through a divorce.

Angie Monko 4:15
Right. Right. Exactly.

george grombacher 4:18
But if there were, Angie, if there were a step by step which which is not or perhaps there is how is is there a formula that says okay, I wish that people would be more conscious, be more mindful, pay closer attention and and approach it this way.

Angie Monko 4:40
Yeah. So I, I work with primarily women in a group, but I also work with men privately. So my group program is just for women. And but really, the bottom line with all of that is that we have to heal our heart. You know, we need to heal from the trauma of the divorce in the loss. And, and so for me, the process that I follow to do that is to first understand, you know, what are their belief systems around what has happened? What, how are they perceiving this loss? You know, and what how are they making? What do they make it mean? And then I, I’m really good at seeing those patterns, it’s one of my gifts is seeing the patterns of, and they can go to, you know, generational patterns that go back. Well, this is how my mom and dad worked. You know, I mean, nobody showed emotion, nobody talked about their feelings or what was really happening. I see this all the time. And so their parents learned it from their parents, and so forth and so on. And, and our society is so used to wearing that mask, you know, that false front of, oh, let’s hold everything together, let’s be really, really strong and stoic and put this face to the world that everything’s fine. I got to be strong. I just talked to someone yesterday, she felt like she had to be strong for her family. And I’m like, You know what? You can say that, and verbalize what you think sounds flowery and nice. But you see, people feel what’s going on at a subconscious heart level, they feel we cannot lie to one another subconsciously. And so what I do is I use energy work. I use Emotional Freedom Technique, that everything in common here hypnosis, the healing codes, Don Eaton, energy, medicine, all of these things, to really go deep with somebody and start to heal them at the core energy level. So you can even say it’s deeper than the heart level in some ways, but it’s our energy. Okay, so I’ll just say there’s one more thing, and then I’ll pause. Whenever we have a trauma, it could be a big trauma, like the loss of someone we love, or divorce or sexual abuse or what have you. Or it could be a small t trauma, which is something like you didn’t get picked first, when you were a child of five years old, for the you know how the MP, they separate you out, and maybe you got picked last, you know, that could be a trauma that a child takes on and says, Well, I’m not worthy, or I’m not important or whatever. And it clouds their whole experience of life. It’s crazy little T trauma. So when, when we’re looking at our energy, we have to go back to those traumas, and then figure out okay, what, how did what did you make that mean, and then apply energy techniques to go to that deep core energy level, because when there’s a trauma, our energy gets disrupted. It’s like, pretend you think of a, like an energy Meridian in our body like a river. And let’s just say you have a flowing rivers really nice and flowing and, and all of a sudden, there’s a storm, lightning comes strikes tree, and it falls over the bank of the river. And then you can visualize it, it’s impeding the flow of that river water, right? Our energy, these meridians that resemble like a, an energy river that goes up and down both sides of the body. When we have trauma gets disrupted. And the the result of that disruption is it feels like negative emotion. It feels like fear and anger and resentment and jealousy, you know, what, whatever. And when we get the energy flowing again, that’s removed, emotional freedom, and we feel better, we feel love and compassion and peace and gratitude. So I help people get to the core trauma, and remove that energy disruption, and changes everything. Nice.

george grombacher 8:55
So we’re all familiar with the fake it till I make it kind of a thing. You can put on a happy face and say, I’m being strong. But if I am not feeling strong inside that, it’s just it’s, it’s it’s not a long term viable solution. It’s not going to work. You need to get down and you said, What did you make that mean? So I got divorced. This means I am a failure. This means I am, whatever insert negative limiting, damaging belief that is now my identity.

Angie Monko 9:36
Mm hmm. That’s very true. Because, yeah, go ahead.

george grombacher 9:43
No, that’s is is. Is that what you’re talking about when you say what? Absolutely. What are you making that mean?

Angie Monko 9:49
Yes. Because it’s so personal when we get divorced, isn’t it? Some people say it’s worse than death? Because I’ve been divorced. It’s been 24 years ago. But it feels so personal. And we take it to heart. You know, maybe a lot of people witnessed us getting married, and we thought it would last forever. And then when it doesn’t, we’re like, what’s wrong with me? And whether we vocalize that, or we even consciously think it, subconsciously, there’s a part of us that feels like, Hmm, I must not be lovable, and must not be worthy or good enough, because I couldn’t make it work. Even if I’m the one wanting to leave. I couldn’t make my marriage work. So we take it very personally to heart and feel like we are a failure. And if there’s a lot of shame around divorce, I noticed a lot of people, you know, they’re not going to say, oh, yeah, I’m going through divorce. They have to self select. You know, if you put something out there, hey, privately messaged me or whatever, because there’s such a stigma and shame around divorce for a lot of people. So,

george grombacher 10:59
yeah, yeah, certainly. Fascinating. It’s asking those questions of what’s wrong with me, why couldn’t I have made this work? Other people do so that I couldn’t even if I wanted to leave, that still means that there’s something wrong with me that just sits there. If that just sits there, it’s not going anywhere that’s going to carry with me into all of my other future interactions and will stop me from it’ll probably bleed over and everything?

Angie Monko 11:34
It does, it really does. Shame is the game like, we have to get to the shame, you know, what makes us feel like we’re not enough or we’re not worthy. That we want to hide, we want to hide whatever that shame is.

george grombacher 11:51
So this this this energy work? Is that what is that getting? Is that finding the shame? Is it? Is it? Is it is it actually getting in? Or is there something physical that we’re also doing? What does that mean energy work?

Angie Monko 12:10
Yeah. So energy work is, first of all you have to if you’re going to clean your house to get to see the dirt, right? Yeah. So we want and that wasn’t my phrase, that was Louise Hay. And she was referring to this tapping technique, Emotional Freedom Technique. Because what we do is we do isolate the pattern of what is something that you’re just not proud of, that you would like to keep hidden from the rest of the world? And then once we identify that, then I see, okay, when you have that thought, for example, that something’s wrong with me, because I got divorced, when you have that thought, what’s the feeling? What is the emotion that you’re having right now, in that moment? For a lot of people, it’ll be shame. But for some, it might be sadness, you know, grief, whatever that is, and, or guilt. And, and so then I’ll say, Well, what is that feeling remind you of? Like, What’s your earliest feeling, or memory of grief or loss or shame or sadness? What is that, you know, and it’s the feeling that is the indicator to take us back to a trauma event, usually as children, and they don’t consciously understand it. But if they can put their hands over their heart and close their eyes, that’s a great way to connect in with the hardness of conscious and the energy of the body. So energy work is doing this investigative work to figure out, you know, what’s really going on, and then, and then we apply energy techniques. Okay, so like tapping one of the energy techniques, what that does is, remember I said that river before that meridian is like a river. And it gets stuck or disrupted when they have a trauma. So the tapping what that does is at the beginning of the river, we call them the meridians. There’s the beginning point, and we stimulate it with acupressure. It’s not acupuncture, which uses needles. It’s acupressure. So you stimulate it by tapping on the beginning of that river or that meridian. And what it does is when you’re focused in on that specific game that you’re ashamed of, or whatever that memory reminds you of, from when you’re a child, you can go back and we do tapping specifically on that event. And what it does is it clears that energy block, it clears that and so that energy, river starts to flow again, and then it removes, in essence, it’s emotionally freeing you from whatever the shame is, or the guilt or the sadness or whatever. Does that make sense? It does.

george grombacher 14:51
How do I know where where where the block is? How do I know where to tap?

Angie Monko 14:56
So so we have nine major meridians. I mean, there’s more, there’s more, but we call this EFT, and there’s nine of them that we stimulate. And so we just stimulate on nine, just to be on the safe side, wherever that is. And we do a setup. And, you know, we, we, we direct the energy by saying a setup statement, like, even though I’m feeling really ashamed of my divorce, and I feel like I’ve done something wrong. I love and accept myself anyway. And you tap on the side of your palm here, it’s called the karate chop point, while you’re saying the sentence three times, okay? And then after you say it, then you start tapping on those meridians, those nine meridians. And you state a reminder phrase, like, all this shame, you know, all this guilt? I can’t believe that I’m divorcing, you know, you just talk to yourself, like you’re talking to a best friend, as you stimulate those meridians. And you stay focused on what you’re wanting to clear what trauma you’re wanting to clear.

george grombacher 16:06
And sometimes this works right away, sometimes it takes longer.

Angie Monko 16:11
Yeah, if a lot of sometimes you have these, like one minute miracles, you know, and you, you can go back to the originating event and clear it out. Some people who’ve gotten over fear of water very quickly, like a fear of heights very quickly, fear of snakes, you know, phobias, it works amazing on that. And it can happen very, very quickly. Other things, like, for example, the feeling of I’m not enough, that shame of that, that internal insecurity, that it’s got fingers, like it has all these tentacles that go out into other areas of your life. And so that might require multiple tapping sessions, you know, because there’s different aspects to that belief of I’m not enough. So you need to isolate it down and start tapping on like the major ones. But there’s something called a generalization effect, once you start to maybe see get three things that constitute that belief of I’m not enough, and the rest topple, they fall over. It’s called the generalization effect. It’s pretty amazing.

george grombacher 17:19
Well, it certainly does make sense. But I guess it doesn’t really matter how or why that happens. Just just just that it does.

Angie Monko 17:28
Right, right. Right. You can really start to raise your, your security, your internal feeling of security and confidence by doing this technique.

george grombacher 17:39
And how about with kids are how

Angie Monko 17:45
they’re wonderful, like, EFT is just one of the energy techniques, okay, there’s many, there’s others, but it’s just one of the most simple, profound and powerful, and children. If the parent introduces it to them in a good effective way, they take right to it, you know, they take right to it, because they don’t have a lot of the same belief systems and rigidity that we have with our thinking, you know, children are, they’re more pliable, especially if you get them before age eight, you know, and but even after that, it just works beautifully. And there’s even something that’s called a Tapi bear. It’s a stuffed animal. And it has these Meridian tapping points sewn as buttons on the bear. And so you can introduce that to a child. I have two of them, and I’ve got a moment out right now. And the the child, I just got to share this because it’s so impactful. The guy that created it, his name’s tiller, William tiller, I think the he they’re not making him anymore, but you can still get a bear and so buttons on okay, you can still do that. And what you do the story this is amazing. He’s an EFT practitioner, like I am. And his daughter who was like, I think a teenager. She was watching the neighbor kid. Okay, babysitting, babysitting the neighborhood. So this is William Taylor’s daughter, okay, EFT practitioners daughter was babysitting this neighbor kid who was about five years old. And this kid wet the bed. And he’d been wetting the bed for a long time. And anyway, she got this idea. You know, I’m going to sew buttons on my teddy bear. And I’m going to take it to Johnny. And I’m going to see what happens. So she took this little teddy bear with these marine buttons sewn on. And she said, Johnny, my friend, Tabby bear is having a problem. He’s wetting the bed. Would you be willing to help him out? And sometimes like, yeah, because little kids want to help, you know? And so she said, Well, all you have to do is start tap on these buttons around his face, and just just tap right here and say, you know, it’s okay. Okay, it’s okay that you wet the bed, you know, and so, so Johnny’s tapping on the Bear NOT on himself, okay, that’s important. He’s tapping on the bear and within a matter of days, Johnny stops wetting the bed just by intending it for this bear. Okay, that’s the power of intention and energy work right. It’s intentional. It’s so anyway, so then tap the bear came about and, and kids love it. It’s adorable and and it helps them with their stuff. It helps them to talk about what’s really going on.

george grombacher 20:22
Yeah, that certainly does make sense. Fascinating. Yes. Truly, I love it. And it’s EFT, Angie.

Angie Monko 20:32
Emotional Freedom Techniques. And it’s also called tapping, which seems like more people are knowing it as tapping nowadays, even the ft.edu

george grombacher 20:43
The people are ready for your difference making tip even though you get a lot, what do you have for them?

Angie Monko 20:50
My tip is to pay attention to yourself, to get to know yourself and the various parts within you who are attached to the story of suffering, unworthiness and drama, because it’s an addiction. unworthiness is an addiction. Okay, we get attached that and the inner child, you know, we we all have these parts within us. We have an inner child, a rebellious teenager, I mean, various parts who are practicing self sabotage, which is really just misguided self love. So self tap sabotage is misguided self love. And the reason is that our body, the Prime Directive of our body, and our subconscious mind, is to keep us safe. That’s That’s it. It doesn’t want us to die. It’s going to do everything to keep us from dying. And so what happens is self sabotage might be No, don’t put yourself out there. Don’t take risks. Don’t love people. Don’t market yourself. Don’t you know, whatever, fill in the blank, don’t eat healthily, you need the sugar to stay happy. Right? I mean, whatever that self sabotage looks like for you. It’s really misguided self love. We get so beat up, we get so hung up on the fact that we’re not doing what we want to do in life. And then we’re so angry at ourselves. But if we really know ourselves, and we start to understand those parts within us, then it goes a long way with helping us to heal and have compassion for ourselves.

george grombacher 22:24
Well, I think that is great stuff that definitely gets a Come on. That is powerful stuff. Right there. Angie, unworthiness is an addiction. And primary directive is to keep us alive and keep us where we are. Yes, miss. Self love. That is, it’s so true and so powerful. I’ve never heard it put like that. So thank you for that. You’re welcome. And thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you and how can they engage with you?

Angie Monko 22:52
They can go to my website, harmony, so H AR Mony harbor H AR Bo r.com. Harmony harbor.com. My contact information is out there. It’s just Angie, Angie IE, at Harmony harbor.com Is my email and phone number. Should I give out 23144226520 That’s a 131442265 to zero.

george grombacher 23:24
Perfect. If you enjoyed this as much as I did to enter your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to harmony harbor.com Ha RMONY Ha rbr.com And check out other great resources and she has and get in touch. Thanks, Ken. Angie, thank you. And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai