S3 E10 - A New Kind of Growth and Healing with Dr. Katie Larson

In this enlightening conversation, Dr. Katie Larson shares her journey of personal growth and transformation, emphasizing the importance of hypnotherapy as a healing tool. She discusses the significance of pleasure and self-care, particularly for highly sensitive individuals, and breaks down the taboos surrounding self-pleasure. 

She also touches on the healing process from sexual trauma and the empowerment that comes from understanding one's own body and desires. Dr. Larson's insights encourage listeners to embrace their unique journeys and prioritize their emotional well-being.

You can connect with Dr. Katie at https://www.growthquests.com/ or follow her on Instagram. 

Purchase your copy of Unleash Your Favorite Self book and the corresponding journal.

Interested in one-on-one coaching? Click here to schedule a Roadmap session with Sophia.

Download the Favorite Self app in the Apple Store or Google Play.

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Have a topic you would love to hear Sophia address on the podcast? Send your ideas to hello@sophiahyde.com

Transcript

Sophia Hyde (00:01.102)
Hello everyone, we are back and today I have a special guest. I am so excited to introduce you guys to Dr. Katie Larson. And I'm just gonna give you a little bit of info about her, but you're really gonna see why she's so amazing as this conversation unfolds.

But I met Dr. Katie through social media, think through a Facebook group that led to an Instagram relationship. And then we DMed for a long time. And then before I left Florida, we finally had an opportunity to meet in person. Dr. Katie lives in St. Petersburg, but today she is coming to us from Canada. And if you see the video version, she's a gorgeous like forest look behind her. And you might even hear the breeze as she's outdoors while she talks to us. And I

Dr. Katie Larson (00:26.325)
Yeah.

Yep.

Sophia Hyde (00:52.332)
When I first found Dr. Katie, I scrolled through her content and I was like, my gosh, my people. I was just like, yes, yes, all of this. She was talking about things like hypnotherapy and nervous system regulation and managing your energy. then I learned a lot from her. And so I'm gonna ask her to share with us some more today about HSPs, highly sensitive persons and.

Dr. Katie Larson (00:58.127)
Thank God.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:17.802)
Yes.

Sophia Hyde (01:20.61)
did not know that that was another label I could put on myself until she talked about that. And I also love the freedom that she has in her openness about talking about sex. And so we're gonna go there too. We've had some great conversations. And so, yeah, she's just a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful human. I'm so excited for you guys to meet her. so welcome Dr. Katie. Thank you for coming today. And is there anything else you wanna add in your introduction?

Dr. Katie Larson (01:23.447)
I know.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:49.93)
Thank you, Sophia. No, that was wonderful. I'm just, I'm honored to be here. I'm so grateful. Thank you.

Sophia Hyde (01:55.64)
Cool, and I left out, you live in St. Petersburg with a husband and it's two children, right? Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (02:00.918)
two kids? Do you see these wrinkles? Of course there's two. Yeah, that was the origin of those.

Sophia Hyde (02:05.294)
you

Sophia Hyde (02:08.974)
I love it. Okay, so You know what let's start with a little bit of Tell us a little about your journey because I'm just now remembering that part of how we originally started DMing was you had said something about Asia and I had spent time in Taipei and you were one of the few people talking about Taiwanese food like nobody talks about Taiwanese food and so Yes, yes. Yes before the storm hit and

Dr. Katie Larson (02:18.708)
Sure.

Dr. Katie Larson (02:26.186)
That's right.

Dr. Katie Larson (02:29.884)
Yeah, I'm like, you want to get beef noodle soup? Remember we were gonna get beef noodle soup? You're like, do you even know about beef noodle soup? Yes.

Sophia Hyde (02:36.246)
I mean, that'll probably come up today, but both Helene and Milton created a lot of tragedy in your life. And I'm sure that'll come up in our conversation today. So before the storm hit, we were gonna get together for some Taiwanese food and then life threw a lot of curve balls. so, yeah, so why don't you talk a little bit about your journey? How did you get into the work that you do now and share, yeah, share with us a little bit about that.

Dr. Katie Larson (03:04.512)
Absolutely, you know, it's so I love these because I'm always like, okay, where do I start? Right, but I

really was one of these people that had a storied life that could have been in a book, right? Like it really could have been a magazine spread or a book because I just chose to say yes to so many things at different points in my life. But it started out really stable. I had a very stable upbringing actually. And I think that'll go into a little bit of when we talk about high sensitivity of like, I didn't know I was highly sensitive for a long time because I had such a stable childhood and that stable childhood in the Chicagoland area. So I was born in

the United States. I grew up in the United States. grew up in a Chicago area, beautiful lake, very nature oriented, relatively stable, same spot for about 20 years. Yeah. And I went to university in a different state and that kind of thing. But what happened was I had a really amazing professor and I'm going to go back all the way to university. I had a really amazing professor in university who challenged us. And this is just amazing to find a prejudice that we had and

break it. And I think you and I actually talked about this because, you know, he said, look, the only thing that you're going to ever have to do as a teacher, this I was preparing to become a teacher. He's like, the only thing you're ever going to have to really be aware of is like yourself and your beliefs with your students, because that's going to come out every single day. So if you have prejudices, like right now you have to work on that and you have to break it. And it was interesting because a lot of the students in the class didn't take it very seriously and they would just make up a bullshit one so that they could just, just get done with the assignment. But I was like, wow, I really need to think about this.

And what I realized is I grew up in a very diverse area, but I didn't have a lot of Asians. And so I actually had like a lot of prejudice against Asians. I was living above the Asian grocery store. They were always talking really loudly. They were probably just like, hey, how's your son? How's his school? But it just sounded in a different language. Like they were screaming all of the time. And so I had all of these like prejudices that were coming out as a result of that in university. And so you had to create a lesson that would make you have to meet this person, have a conversation, understand about their family.

Dr. Katie Larson (05:09.976)
learn more about their culture, right? And so it was like a very deep lesson. And so I got to know this Korean family that owned the grocery store downstairs, et cetera, et cetera. And it was such an experience that funny enough, years later, I would actually do my PhD dissertation on this moment. But it was the first moment that I had experienced something called transformative learning, where you like look at yourself, you like really critically reflect on your beliefs and why you have those beliefs. And then you try to do something about it and grow and transform. And so I said to my professor afterwards, like, hey,

I really liked this like what is this like what like how do I do more of this and he's like well What scares you and I said like leaving my friends and family and like traveling by myself and he goes well Then go do it and I literally did that I spun a globe and I put my finger on the globe and it landed in the Pacific Ocean and I was like well can't live there so like I moved it down a little bit and I landed in New Zealand and a four months later I packed up everything and I lived in New Zealand. I had a host family in New Zealand. I taught science in Auckland

And that changed the trajectory of my life because after that I was now saying yes to a lot more international opportunities. And so I returned to the United States to be a teacher, but each summer I was traveling overseas and I was living in different countries, doing different things. So Costa Rica and Peru teaching English. But then I started doing field biology because I was a scientist actually. And the field biology put me into these really amazing locales like Kenya and Mongolia and Borneo. And I was literally like in a machete.

having a machete in the jungle, you know, chasing proboscis monkeys and elephants and things. it's like very, I kind of chased my passions, but also it was like quite intense, right? But it wasn't until I got married and I said to my husband, like, we really, we really should leave the United States and have more of a adventurous lifestyle. didn't have kids yet that that's when it really took off. And so I had been traveling a lot when I was single and young, but then once we got married and we,

were in our 30s, we just picked up, moved out of the country. We lived in Spain, South Africa, Singapore, Cambodia, and Hong Kong. And Hong Kong is actually where I lived the longest. I lived there eight years. And so I actually would have probably never left Hong Kong if it weren't for the pandemic. And so the pandemic really changed life as we know it in Hong Kong. was pretty challenging. We can talk about that later if you want. what it did was send us back to the United States.

Dr. Katie Larson (07:39.475)
and we lived in Dallas, Texas. Like we were not planning on going to Dallas, Texas. I'm not Texan and it was quite a culture shock to return to the United States via Texas after living in Asia. But we lived there for a while and then we moved to Florida to be closer to family. And like you know, Florida was a challenge because we bought a house and we lost it in the hurricanes. And so we've had a lot of movement and I've had a lot of reinvention because throughout all of that.

moving, what happened to me was I was actually studying leadership. So I was my PhD, the doctor. My PhD is in something called Leadership and Change and when I was going into the program I was trying to study leadership because I was teaching academics and educators a lot and so I was trying to see myself just kind of climbing the stair step of academia and education and I was like focusing on leadership and I know

totally ignored the change part of that diploma. And then when I moved so often and had to reinvent myself and reinvent my job and have all of these different things, I went from a teacher to a consultant to like having another kicking and catering business of all things. And then the coach, right? I kept changing my career and I kept recognizing that same sensation that I had all the way back from like the university professor that challenged me to question my assumptions and break prejudices. kept doing that over and over.

and over again to myself as I had to change culture so often, change careers so often. Every year to two years I was changing and changing and changing and changing and the PhD program like, so tell me about this change bit, you know, tell me about this change bit. Like, what are we studying with this change bit? And I asked my mentor.

you know, what is this, what is the description of what I'm going through when I describe all of these things of like, you know, really deep self reflection and really good, like big transformative moments. He's like, that is called transformative learning. There is an entire study on this thing called transformative learning. And so that is what I did my dissertation on. And once I was finished with the dissertation and you may recognize this after being an author yourself, I thought that I would take that body of work and I would like continue.

Dr. Katie Larson (09:58.805)
into academia and continue writing and to continue doing that. I never wanted to see it again. Like was like so done. I was like so burnt out because I was so focused for four years on writing this piece of work that I was like, I never want to do this again. I don't want to be in academia. I actually want to use what I've learned and apply it with people one-on-one. So that's how I created my business growth quest is that I felt so much of what we're doing when we're on these like life journeys, myself, yourself, everyone included.

is you're growing. Your journey is always about, yes, you change, but you're really just who you are and who you were born as and who you have that essence as. And so I don't like the word change because it kind of implies that there's something to change, that there's something inherently wrong with us. I actually really love the word growth because that's really essentially what all living things, I'm like pointing to the trees behind us, all living things are here to do is grow and grow. And so I named my business

growth quest because it's a...

They're doing like a can, they're moving cans. You're probably hearing it in the background. Apologies to everyone. While we're on these journeys, that's what we're doing is we're focusing on growth. And so in 2017, I opened GrowthQuest and it has taken different iterations based on the different certifications that I've had. But as I grow, those are the offerings that I change with my clients. So I started out just coaching and then I added hypnotherapy and then I added somatics because the more that I understand

about the wholism in our growth, the more I add different things and try to really represent wholly what we're going through as we change.

Sophia Hyde (11:39.95)
Yeah, yeah, you said so many great things in there. I'm hold on. making a couple notes because I'm listening I was like intently listening because I didn't want to interrupt but then I was like I was like oh we need to talk about this and this and this okay So let's talk about first before we move on from it I love that you chose the word growth so a part of my story that you probably don't know and For those of you who read my book in chapter 6 in the spiritual chapter. I talk about

Dr. Katie Larson (11:45.526)
I love your brain, because you're going to keep track and that's what's smart. Appreciate that.

Dr. Katie Larson (12:02.101)
Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (12:11.894)
basically my fork in the road life change moment. And it was through an exercise. I talk, talk, I'll actually, it was also a professor that changed the course of my life as well. And I, and I talk a lot about him in that chapter, but he had done this exercise to teach me how to discover your purpose. And I went through this exercise and mine landed with, at the end of the day, I could let go of everything in my life, every title,

Dr. Katie Larson (12:20.63)
It's funny, isn't it? Yep.

Sophia Hyde (12:39.498)
every role I play, every relationship I have. But the one thing I could never imagine having taken away from me was what I saw visually when I was doing this exercise was like all of the times I sat with people in coffee shops having conversations, but it was always conversations around growth. And so what I had actually written on the note card was helping people grow. And it was like, I could lose everything on this earth, but I...

Dr. Katie Larson (12:54.71)
Yes.

Sophia Hyde (13:07.458)
Don't think I could make it if you took that away from me, the ability to help others grow. Like that's what I feel like I'm here for. And so no matter.

Dr. Katie Larson (13:10.878)
I agree. I love that about you. Like almost like a knight. Yeah, like you're like a catalyst.

Sophia Hyde (13:19.084)
Yes, yes, yes. And so I love that you chose that word. also love that word. Over time though, the more I worked with that word, something else that I wrote in my book was there was, there's a saying a lot in especially the business world is where I've heard it the most, but they'll say like you're either growing or dying because nothing is stagnant. Like look at nature, everything is either growing or dying. Nothing just stays the same. But if you really think about that, the reflection that I had is it's actually always both happening.

everything is always growing and dying, right? Like that's what happens with the season change. If you're going to look at nature, you have to look about the fact that every winter it dies and then it rebirths, right? And in my own life experience, and I, having witnessed your life only for the last probably two years, maybe a year and a half that I've known you, this birth, death, life, recycle, this cycle really is the growth journey. There is, in order to grow, there is,

Dr. Katie Larson (14:13.77)
Yes, yes, yes. Yes.

Sophia Hyde (14:19.08)
always something you're letting go of. Every time you're evolving into the next version of yourself, there is always a version of you that you're letting go of. It's always simultaneous. anyways, anything on growth before I move on. When you said that, just had to like, those thoughts were popping in my mind.

Dr. Katie Larson (14:21.866)
Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (14:27.592)
Right. Right.

Dr. Katie Larson (14:33.994)
Yeah, actually, I will touch on the if you're not growing or dying concept because I think so many of the business quotes that we've been fed for the last 25, 30 years, they're very masculine oriented business. it's like, actually, the only thing like we really have to remember that like so many times like in business, we're always looking for linear growth, linear growth, linear growth, and we don't focus enough on cyclical growth, which is the feminine cyclical, cyclical, cyclical.

Sophia Hyde (15:01.411)
Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (15:04.126)
And when you really know nature, which I was a biologist, right? The only thing in nature that has linear growth is cancer. It is the only thing because it has lost its ability to understand the cyclic nature of itself. Right? And so the cyclic yin and yang, right? Like you have to have rest, you have to have reset, you have to have recycling within the cells. You have to break down things. Like you said,

Sophia Hyde (15:13.578)
Dr. Katie Larson (15:33.471)
And so the things that are out of control are cancer. And it's like when you get really like into like the native beliefs and different mythologies around the world, it's like that's the disease, right? Is when you want only linear growth and you don't actually stop and pivot and rest. And so it's like that I think for women is like we understand cycles. We were built in a cycle. We have nothing but cycles all day, every day within ourselves. And so.

understanding that like within your own life you're gonna have yang you're gonna have very active like growth oriented movement like doo doo doo and then you're also going to have so much louder out here that i anticipated because there's helicopters you're also going to have yin which is the receptive it's the reflective it's the nurturing it's the pruning right you have to prune you have to prune you can't be an overgrown something right

Sophia Hyde (16:23.074)
Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Katie Larson (16:26.59)
And so really understanding that cyclical growth is helpful and sometimes because we use the business mindset of like, we have to scale, we have to get bigger and bigger and bigger, those companies fail, right? Because they over grew, they overstep, they over did it. And so it's like, I think that's helpful to understand it. Cyclical growth is actually a lot more realistic to nature.

Sophia Hyde (16:48.014)
I love this. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. I literally gasped when you said the cancerous statement. But it is so true. It is so, so true. I talk to my clients often about the importance of the rest and honestly the importance of the failures. Like they're so important. life, business, none of it is up and to the right. Beautiful. All right. So the next thing that...

Dr. Katie Larson (17:06.548)
Yeah. Right.

Sophia Hyde (17:17.11)
I want to touch on is talk to me about your journey and how you ended up practicing hypnotherapy. And for the listeners, this is something that you guys don't know, but I'll share with you that I have, I think I have openly shared on my podcast that I did. I was, I knew, okay. Pause rewind.

Dr. Katie Larson (17:27.615)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (17:44.854)
I'm moving, I'm moving indoors so I think it's smarter for me, but keep going.

Sophia Hyde (17:46.766)
Okay, you move the doors. All right, starting this sentence over, I've openly shared that there was stuff in my past that I had to clear. Like we've learned about big T's and little T's in trauma. I understood that there were ways, I, blueprints that I had in my brain that weren't serving me. And I realized I needed to do some healing and that I wanted to clean up some stuff on the inside. And I had started with therapy and EMDR therapy. And then I did one session with a hypnotherapist.

Dr. Katie Larson (17:56.374)
Yes.

Yes.

Sophia Hyde (18:16.654)
And one session of hypnotherapy was as impactful as the 10 EMDR sessions I had done. And so I never went back because it was so powerful. And so then I did a lot of that. And then the mentor I had, which is actually, I think that the way the order of the episodes are gonna drop in, I just interviewed her last week, but it hasn't gone live as of the point that you and I are talking. But I think by the time the listeners are listening, probably,

Dr. Katie Larson (18:21.398)
I agree. Yeah, I love it when clients tell me that. I'm like, I know. Yes.

Sophia Hyde (18:44.61)
The episode with Imani will have just dropped last week and then think you'll follow afterwards. So I just interviewed the mentor who did, I ended up working with her for over two years, but she moved out of hypnotherapy and into other modalities and other types of work. And I was just along on the journey as her client, as her business was, again, the growth cycle, right? Growing and dying, she was evolving in the types of offerings that she had. And as she evolved, she was my only exposure to that type of work.

Dr. Katie Larson (18:47.348)
brilliant.

Dr. Katie Larson (18:53.696)
brilliant.

Dr. Katie Larson (19:04.212)
Yeah, brilliant.

Sophia Hyde (19:12.554)
And so then what ended up happening was I, you know, I think it's important that we all lean into our strengths and I love working with my clients and I work with them in so many ways, shapes and forms in so many different areas. But I have not at any point felt called to work inside of people's trauma. So I'm a trauma informed coach. I went through trauma training not to be able to help people.

Dr. Katie Larson (19:19.691)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (19:37.012)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (19:42.302)
manage their trauma, but to recognize when what I was helping them through was not something we could coach our way out of or mindset our way out of or strategize our way out of to recognize what are the signs that the reason that they're stuck or the reason that this thing's happening is some form of past trauma that needs to be cleared. And so that's where I chose to end my training is

Dr. Katie Larson (19:50.411)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (19:54.165)
Right?

Dr. Katie Larson (20:02.058)
Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (20:09.442)
to recognize it and then find somebody else who can help them clear it. And so what the listeners don't know, what I started to say that you guys don't know is I've actually referred several of my clients to Dr. Katie over the last several months and they've spoken so highly of you. And the intention that I had was I was like, you guys need to do this hypnotherapy thing, but because you're good at what you do, then when they land in your lap, you're like,

Dr. Katie Larson (20:11.168)
Yeah.

Totally.

Dr. Katie Larson (20:25.917)
Okay.

Dr. Katie Larson (20:33.844)
Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (20:39.342)
Sometimes you have done that for them and sometimes it's like that's not actually what you need. And you're working on them with nervous system regulation and helping them discover what safety is in their body and helping them discover calm because they've never experienced calm in their body. what you end up doing with them ends up being different, but it's beautiful and exactly what they need. So talk to us a little bit about, because I've never done an episode on hypnotherapy at all.

Dr. Katie Larson (20:44.35)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (20:54.794)
Right.

Dr. Katie Larson (21:07.85)
Yeah, okay, cool.

Sophia Hyde (21:08.27)
And so for the listeners who don't know what we're talking about, what is that? And also, how did you get into that work? And then obviously it's not the only thing you do. So you've evolved into having other modalities. So yeah, take it over.

Dr. Katie Larson (21:22.037)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (21:25.878)
Just jump right in.

So one of the, there's so many ways I'm gonna go about this and so I like us already because we're not going linearly, we're just kinda popping around but I think everybody's going with us. So I kinda nicknamed myself your personal guide for inner journeys. I like the phrase inner journey because so much of what I do is an internal experience, right? And so it's like, you know, we're talking about the emotional body and then we're talking about the unconscious or we're talking about the physical body but from like an interoception.

of how it feels, et cetera. So it's all very inner. It's all very inner. And so I love coaching, and I will never stop coaching because I love talking, right? And I think so much of what we do when we are processing by talking is fantastic. But the talking is only using the conscious mind. And so the talking, like when you said, one hypnotherapy was like 10 years of therapy or whatever. It's like 10 sessions, right? It's like I love when my clients say,

Sophia Hyde (22:22.894)
It was 10 seconds.

Dr. Katie Larson (22:27.446)
that because basically you can only think your way through so much before you get stuck and you feel like there's a wall and you're like I know that there's something that I just am not seeing I have blinders here and so then what my role of helping you do more of an inner journey is we use other tools to get to the stuff that you can't get to and so this the hypnotherapy the way I got into it is actually fascinating I was a I was a kid who had past life memories

And so that is always like that blows people's minds. like if you also have had past life memories, you're like, go on, tell me everything. But basically, I just remembered in very clear detail other lives, many other lives. And it was just like as clear as clear can be. yeah, I've been here before. I've done that before. And there were a lot of different ones. And so when I was in my late 20s, I had my first past life regression and it really validated memories, but also just the experience of like, OK, we've

been here before, laid on this before. There's something more to this life than just status quo. It's very much more a soul's journey. And I think I always saw it from the level of the soul because the types of hypnotherapy that I did in my mid-20s were much, it's similar to what I do now, which is transpersonal hypnotherapy. So it's studying your soul, for lack of a better word, your soul's experience in other bodies.

or in other incarnations, etc. And so I was actually introduced into hypnotherapy through that. So I did a past life regression and then I did something called a life between lives session. And these are all sessions I offer now. But the life between lives session was really fascinating because what you do is you go into a trance, you see a life that you've lived before and then you die and then you go and you meet the energy or the character that that was that life. But then you go and you meet like spirit guides.

and then you understand what is your soul's purpose in this life and what are the main contracts that you have with people in this life and why are you, know, why do you look the way you look? Like I found that really interesting of like I chose a body that was attractive but not too attractive to be intimidating, which I find really funny, right? Of like, I'm just attractive enough, you know? Like someone will listen to me, but I'm not like, oh, she's too pretty to be smart, you know? And like you learn all of these things in trance about what your soul needed to create.

Dr. Katie Larson (24:57.112)
and craft this specific life. And so that was so profound for me. It profoundly changed my life in my mid-20s. And it even helped prophetically show me different areas of my life that I would go into. And at the time I found that really strange, because I didn't want kids, and it said I was going to have a girl and a boy, and I have a girl and a boy in that order. And it said I was going to travel the world, and I hadn't yet done a lot of traveling. Here I have, like travel the world. So it was very helpful and very life-changing.

And so around 2020, so I had been working in my career for a while. Yeah. Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (25:32.27)
I'm not going to interrupt you. I just want to present the listeners. This is fascinating. I love this. Keep sharing. But I just want them to know that I have never done any sort of hypnotherapy that involved past lives. So this is fascinating to me. But mine always... Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So just for their clarity, the only work I've done is been like... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (25:44.638)
Yeah, yeah, because a lot of people don't know that this is another way it can be.

Yes, I actually will give a description of difference too. Because did you do more hypnosis or hypnotherapy where you narrate when you did it? Did you do it from when you were narrating it or not?

Sophia Hyde (26:05.518)
so like I was telling her what I was seeing if that's what you mean Yeah, so I was telling her what I was seeing but it was about going into the type that I did was we went into my body to see like what was stored there and what was ready to be cleared and then the questions like sometimes other people would be invited to the table like people I needed to talk to and then also different versions of me So like a childhood version of me or an older version of me like basically whoever needed to come to the table, but all of it

Dr. Katie Larson (26:08.702)
Okay, helpful. Yeah, so that's more hypnotherapy. Yes.

Yes. Brilliant. Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (26:25.29)
Yes, people. Yes, I like that. Yes.

Sophia Hyde (26:35.594)
Everything I always ever was exposed to or did was always about the life I'm currently living.

Dr. Katie Larson (26:42.026)
Yes, brilliant, I love this. And so this is more how I work now is very similar to how you're describing. But when I like to put the concept of like hypnosis versus hypnotherapy out there because some people have a miss. Yeah, so sometimes when people come to me, they're like, you're not gonna make me bark like a dog, right?

Sophia Hyde (26:55.33)
I actually don't know the difference. I don't.

Sophia Hyde (27:01.11)
right, because hypnosis is where you're like not present. Like I was always aware. was always like, talk, I tell people I always was aware of the room I was in. I never lost consciousness. I told people.

Dr. Katie Larson (27:05.823)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (27:10.014)
Of course. You're always in control. Yeah, you're always in control. You're never going to do what you wouldn't normally do. Yes.

Sophia Hyde (27:15.202)
Correct, I said, I described it as it felt like I could stay awake while having a dream. Cause you would see bizarre images, like when you're dreaming, I was like, it felt like I was dreaming, but I was still awake and could talk you through what I was saying. That's what it felt like. I was laying in a bed, having a dream, telling you about it.

Dr. Katie Larson (27:21.46)
Yep, that's it. Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (27:28.576)
Perfect.

That's exactly how I would describe it actually because hypnosis when when you go to someone who just is a hypnotist and they only use hypnosis, they're usually using suggestions to your unconscious and you're in a state of very deep relaxation and your unconscious is accepting those suggestions. And so you're not speaking. You're not actually having a mutual conversation. So that's just hypnosis. And like you can use hypnosis in hypnotherapy, but usually in hypnotherapy, the added component is

the therapy, right? And so when you're going into a hypnotherapy session, you're going into hypnosis. So it's like the, you the umbrella is you're going to a state of trance that we call hypnosis. So you're going to a state of trance. So you're going to an alpha state or a theta state, these deeper states of consciousness. And so when you're in that deeper state of consciousness, you're accessing, you're unconscious, right? You're accessing things that are usually below the surface that you don't even think about ever, but are always present.

and you're carrying around with you. And so when you're able to narrate the experience with a trained hypnotherapist, you get so much deeper because like, you you go to the memories, for example, I'll just give a couple of my most popular is an inner child healing. So when we do an inner child healing, we're going back to the ages and stages within you that need to be healed. Now, we're not saying go back to age 13 from when that time your dad did the thing to you. We're actually just saying very open-ended,

Sophia Hyde (28:33.198)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Katie Larson (29:01.462)
go to the ages that need to be healed and your unconscious brings you there despite your wishes. And so it's like, it will bring you to what you need. same.

Sophia Hyde (29:09.08)
Yes, I would show up to a session thinking I knew what I wanted the session to be about and be like, let's do the session on this thing that I very much know is my problem. And I'd like to clear it. And then you go in the session and that doesn't even come up. It's like a completely, yeah, not even relevant.

Dr. Katie Larson (29:18.986)
Yeah, and they won't go there.

Yep, and that's what's so cool about it actually, and I will say from a practitioner's perspective, my favorite is when the client is shocked of like, that's what I had to go back into, you know, like the...

the client will maybe have some problem where they think it's like, I remember this thing that happened to me when I was 13. Exactly, like you said. And actually, it'll go back to when they were six and somebody said, nobody cares what you think. And it's like that has replayed in their unconscious over and over and over again. And so the hypnotherapy sessions, we can access areas of your unconscious world and your transpersonal world, which we'll talk about in a minute with the past lives

and the generational trauma, et cetera. And when we're accessing that, we're healing it. And I don't always say clear, I say heal, because a lot of times to healing is you just being able to have more capacity to hold that. Because sometimes what we do when we access that is we're healing it, and it's actually amazing because your unconscious or your higher self is actually using tools that it needs, it creates on its own to heal it. So I've had clients use that.

everything from lights and colors and volume dials that maybe they have a lot of fear but then their unconscious goes in and they literally turn down the volume dial as if it's like a stereo and they turn it all the way down and then they turn up courage all the way up. So there's different things that your higher self and your unconscious gives you to help heal it. But sometimes it's also to say, and this is actually quite magical in my opinion as a practitioner, where we think we need to

Sophia Hyde (30:57.326)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (31:06.91)
to something and you're unconscious or you're higher self, I usually use the word higher self so I'll just continue to use that. Your higher self will say, don't forget that. You needed to have that abuse because now you're more empathetic to people who are victims and that has carried you through and this is part of your origin story and you need that in your story. You need that going forward, don't get rid of that. And that's what I think is very different from maybe somebody who would do maybe eat,

EMDR or something where like we want to just never think about it again. You're like I just never want to think about it again. However, I am you know making lots of yeah.

Sophia Hyde (31:45.038)
And for those who are listening who, because we're using this language, because this is common language to us, but somebody could be listening and be like, what the hell are we talking about EMDR? What are those letters? What is happening? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it is a version of therapy that, and I'm going to speak wrong probably, so feel free to look up the correct terminology. But I think of it as.

Dr. Katie Larson (31:50.389)
Yeah.

Yeah, you should tell them, yeah.

Sophia Hyde (32:08.982)
It's like a rewiring of the brain. I know that E stands for eye because you like watch a little dot that goes across the screen as I move, maybe like a little dot that goes across the screen. I chose a version. It was better for me to keep my eyes closed. I chose a version where I listened to a dot that was like bouncing back and forth in this screen. So I had my eyes closed through my EMDR session. But what I did in EMDR was I went back into real memory. That happened, but rewrote different endings that were better.

Dr. Katie Larson (32:11.35)
Yeah, eye movement. Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (32:26.091)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (32:33.493)
Yes.

Yes.

Sophia Hyde (32:36.846)
or like change the story, because trauma is not the thing that happened that harms you, it's the stories you attached to what happened and how you rewired the blueprint in your life to program yourself to be like, what does it mean to keep me safe? Like your brain rewires how to keep itself safe and sometimes those stories don't serve you. And so when we went back into my EMDR sessions, we...

Dr. Katie Larson (32:45.748)
Right? Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (32:53.45)
Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (32:58.614)
Totally.

Sophia Hyde (33:03.534)
I was able to give my five-year-old self what I needed on the day my brother died. It was like the adults were having to take care of all the adult things, and there were things that I needed. I looked fine. It's like, say, oh, kids are so resilient. It's like, I looked fine. I looked like I had no needs, but I had huge emotional needs that nobody could have. Nobody did anything wrong. There's no blame in what happened that day. there were just so what in that EMDR was like my

Dr. Katie Larson (33:06.961)
Yes. Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (33:17.418)
Yeah, because you had to, yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (33:24.79)
Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (33:32.942)
35 year old self went back into the moment of that time and gave her everything she needed and explained it in the way that she could hear and then she and then I was able to release all I was carrying so much responsibility because the story I attached in my head Sorry rabbit trail, but the story I attached to my head that wasn't serving me was at five years old watching my parents and all the adults panic I just looked to my little brother and sister and decided they were my job. I was like, the adults aren't okay

Dr. Katie Larson (33:36.106)
Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (33:45.792)
Yes

Dr. Katie Larson (33:53.878)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (33:58.913)
Yep. Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (34:02.254)
I got this, I can take care of them. And like from that time, I did not have siblings, I like decided to be their parent. And it's funny because like my family will even even said stuff like, Mother Sophia, you always thought you were in charge, you were the boss. But I started babysitting at like nine years old. But I truly believed like, I was their parent, I was responsible for them. But that might work fine in childhood. And it got us through that time. And I really do believe it was helpful to my parents that I like,

Dr. Katie Larson (34:04.566)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (34:16.307)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (34:23.574)
bright.

Sophia Hyde (34:31.362)
helped as much as I could. Like those things were survival skills that worked. But in your 30s, that's a great way to have unhealthy relationships with your family is to not have a healthy dynamic when I don't know how to like be a peer to a sibling, right? It's like not, it's that thing that was helpful at five isn't helpful anymore, right? And so the way I became a better daughter and sibling at 35,

Dr. Katie Larson (34:35.072)
Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (34:41.728)
Right.

Dr. Katie Larson (34:47.606)
Great.

Dr. Katie Larson (34:54.079)
Right.

Sophia Hyde (34:59.534)
was I had to go back to age five and give her what she needed so we could detach from those stories. So anyways, that was a rabbit show. But okay, that was an EMDR story. That was an EMDR story. But hypnotherapy, when I think of, when you talk about going in for one thing and getting something else, I'll share this story. I don't even remember what I initially went in for. I can't even remember, but it wasn't this. I went in for something that I was ready to address.

Dr. Katie Larson (35:02.89)
Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (35:07.115)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (35:10.858)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (35:17.108)
Yes.

Sophia Hyde (35:27.39)
And then where the subconscious went was all the way back to a pool party from the last day of fifth grade. And what I had stored for three decades was massive amounts of envy that I didn't even realize were in there. I would have never described myself as an envious person, but at the root of the other stuff I was trying to address, underneath all of that was actually the emotion of envy. And it was a result...

Dr. Katie Larson (35:45.652)
Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (35:51.135)
Yes.

Sophia Hyde (35:53.798)
of that was the first time I showed up to a pool party and I was very, I was by far the largest girl in my body. I mean, I was, I was a very large kid. And there were all these girls and their cute little bikini bodies, like normal 10 and 11 year olds that are skinny and I wasn't. And so that was in retrospect, I can now see that was where my body consciousness like originally really rooted. And then I saw other things people had that day. Like I don't have a pool.

Dr. Katie Larson (36:01.899)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (36:19.306)
Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (36:23.478)
I don't have this, I don't have that. And I created this story at 10 that I was just carrying around with me all the time of like what I wanted that other people had. And I had genuinely didn't even remember that party. didn't think about that party. I do like in retrospect, I'm like, that is right. Somebody did do that. That did happen.

Dr. Katie Larson (36:24.758)
Great, good point.

Dr. Katie Larson (36:34.027)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (36:41.075)
No, remembers that stuff, yeah. But not the story.

Sophia Hyde (36:50.04)
But I never, ever, I had moved on. I never thought about that after school party on the last day of fifth grade ever. But yeah, it shaped me for decades. And that was hypnotherapy. with EMDR, we consciously went into something we knew I was stirring. And then in hypnotherapy, we went into something that.

Dr. Katie Larson (36:51.734)
Totally.

Dr. Katie Larson (36:56.747)
Yep.

Dr. Katie Larson (37:00.47)
Yes, so true. Yes. Yes.

But did you also know this? Yeah. It's like, but did you forget about this moment from third grade? Yeah. That person said, well, one thing I, I love these examples. These are such perfect examples of how hypnotherapy like presents itself. And I will say that one thing I really love about the way that I practice transpersonal hypnotherapy is that when you're going to find these things,

Sophia Hyde (37:09.984)
I was like...

Dr. Katie Larson (37:31.454)
The way the higher self finds them for you is either very neutral or loving. It is always from such a good, benevolent place that it finds them for you. And I think some people get really nervous about going and using hypnotherapy to heal because they're like, I don't want to look at that. I don't want to see the thing. But sometimes your higher self chooses not to look at it. It'll actually choose to show you something around something that really influenced you, but show it to you in a way

that is either very neutral of like, look, this happened and that's why you're this way. But it never shames you and never makes you feel like disordered or different in a poor way. And the higher self usually is coming from a place of such loving energy and that's also my job to really keep it that way. But usually most people's higher self is coming from a very loving energy because it's so zoomed out. Like I wanna just say what the higher self is for people that are like,

What? The higher self to me is the equivalent of like, if we are Mario from Mario Brothers, the higher self is player one. It's like the version of you who's playing Mario. And so like you can see all of the different things that Mario cannot see because you've been there, right? This is almost like your soul. We have a lot of words for this in different religions, right? The soul, the spirit, the higher self, the subconscious. This is able to access like every

Lifetime we've ever lived if you believe in this but this is usually what comes up in most hypnotherapies such as the I've here before you don't know before like you lived a lot of lives and they're all happening once but also every version of you and every age of you that's ever been in this body right now it has access to that it has access to every memory every thought every feeling and So what it does is it curates? Something for you to see an experience in a trance state for you to understand yourself it wants you to

and it wants you to understand it in a kind, loving, compassionate way so that you can take that going forward and use it in a powerful way. So like it doesn't want you to feel guilty and ashamed of the envy that you had that day. It wants to say, see this is why you feel this way sometimes when this X, Y, and Z also happens because this is the origin of that. And so what I appreciate about this line of work versus maybe say just even like talk therapy, know, cause talk therapy you're kind of just convincing yourself of a whole bunch of things is like

Sophia Hyde (39:49.166)
Yeah. Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (40:00.937)
like your higher self is a very kind, loving, wise being, and it's like, it's okay that this happened to you. Like, it's okay, and this is how we're going to heal it. This is how we're going to integrate it. This is how we're gonna use it, motivating you going forward. And I find that is a more proper way of how our souls are. It's like, we give ourselves, like when you look at what we're attracted to as human beings, we're attracted to like origin stories, like look at all of

Disney cartoons. Every single Disney movie is like the parents' day. Something awful happens at the very beginning of these kids' lives. These princesses and these important people. There's something traumatic in their young adulthood or in their young life that propels them into becoming the person that they are. We as human beings love to consume those stories and we love to understand those stories of like you gotta come from the ashes to be the phoenix.

love to consume them. But when we live them, we're like, this isn't fun. know, like, this is awful. Like, don't want to be that person. Yet, when you go and you have these experiences in hypnotherapy, or you have these like maybe ayahuasca, or you have like other kind of like psychedelic or whatever, you have these moments of like where you're having like a deep wisdom that's actually giving you some kind of guidance on your life, they are trying to explain to you like, no, you needed that.

You needed that. Your soul wanted the drama. Your soul wanted the pain. Your soul wanted the challenges. And even as I've been going through something like that this year, I have to consistently remind myself because the body doesn't like it, right? And that's why we have all of the stored trauma and that's why it's important for you and I and everyone else to release the trauma that's in our bodies. But it's like the soul kind of loves the drama. Kind of loves it and not only loves it, but is feeding a person.

personality and creating like a journey that is is helpful for you to Become who you're meant to become and we're often meant to become something that's quite powerful strong wise and those are the things that are feeding us and that's why I like to use inner journeys because it's like inner journeys really are more indicative of what we're going through as humans we're not coming here and now we're all disordered and we all have a label we all have these things that are like wrong with us we're actually living a

Dr. Katie Larson (42:30.496)
very universal, amazing human life. And human lives have these things happen to them. Every generation has. So this is now we're all learning how to use that in a good way to propel us forward and healing is part of it. Healing is part.

Sophia Hyde (42:38.05)
Mm-hmm.

Sophia Hyde (42:47.328)
Yeah. Talk to us about, because hypnotherapy is a component of your work, but I know that there's a lot more that you also do. And you already mentioned somatics. And I know you talk a lot about nervous system regulation. And that I also feel like in this conversation too, is I just think of one of the clients I sent you thinking I was sending her for hypnotherapy, but how much she has benefited from

Dr. Katie Larson (42:59.211)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (43:11.623)
Right.

Sophia Hyde (43:15.244)
the thing that you taught her was how to just create a state of calm in her body and continuously go back to that and how much it has served her to just, cause she didn't know what it was. She had never felt fully calm and rested. yeah, and because she didn't, had never experienced it, she had no way to go do it. like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you helped her create that baseline.

Dr. Katie Larson (43:28.758)
There's so many of us that haven't, yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (43:36.456)
It's not a baseline. Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (43:41.658)
And it is, you know, she uses that all the time. And so even in my coaching sessions with her, because she shared with me what she did with you, I'll even be able to say to her, like, okay, when that happened, did you go there? Did you reset? And so she'll, you know, it's now just like another tool in her toolbox that she has, right? And so talk to us about that. I feel like all of that is kind of like related and interconnected with each other.

Dr. Katie Larson (44:02.122)
Yes.

I'll try to use a framework because people will like...

maybe we'll understand it this way. Like when we have these almost like, almost like a nesting doll, right? Of like the different kinds of bodies that we have because we have like, you know, a physical body and then we have an emotional body and then we have a spiritual body and they're all kind of like nested within each other. And it's like, you can access them in different ways. And it's like they, when you change one, it'll change the other, right? And so for our physical body, I use somatics as like the tool to kind of access us.

about the client who has a hard time feeling safe within her body, that's actually really common for a lot of highly sensitive and empathic people. And so we talked before of like, actually, my number one type of client that I work with are people who are highly sensitive, intuitive, and empathic. And so I choose to work with those people because I'm all three of those. But those of us who are one of those or all of those, we have more active nervous systems. We're more highly perceptible.

to many things that are occurring in our reality because our nervous systems are 10 to 50, five zero times more active than a less highly sensitive person. And we're 20 % of the population highly sensitive people and left-handed people are only 10 % of the population. And so we actually are more common and it's not a disorder. It's actually just the way that our population as humans need that amount of people.

Dr. Katie Larson (45:38.805)
Within us to stay healthy because highly sensitive people are often like the healers the caretakers the storytellers We're the ones that are more like the innovators because we're firing all of our neurons right and so we're very very like connected and tuned in and So what happens when you're a highly sensitive person and many empaths are also highly sensitive people But not all empaths, but I'm just gonna speak as if you're just a highly sensitive person and if you're like, my god What is she talking about on my website growth quest calm?

is a test or quiz you can see if you're a highly sensitive person. But you can also read the book, The Highly Sensitive Person by Dr. Elaine Aaron. And when you read it, you might be like, my gosh, she's describing me completely. But we're the people who just feel and experience the world deeply, very deeply. And so part of the reason that we're feeling and experiencing the world very deeply is our nervous system is more active, right? 10 to 50 times more. And so as a result of having a more active nervous system, we're also going to be like,

that energy on our bodies. And so going back to your client where she said like she had a hard time feeling safe, it's like, well, many of us highly sensitive children were absorbing the environment around us as kids and nobody told us that that was like, you know, what we were doing, but like maybe there was a lot of stress and chaos in our familial environment. So you're just absorbing, absorbing, absorbing and your nervous system is just constantly in an active fight, flight, freeze mode.

And so it grows up thinking that that's normal and that that is how you go. You just go into periods of fight and periods of flight and periods of freeze, you know, and like you're always on and you don't necessarily get to go into that relaxed state. And so when we then get older and we're starting to recognize like, okay, these patterns that I've had since childhood, you know, they made me survive, right? So like they were there, they helped me survive. But when now, like you said, I'm like 30 something years old and I have this

pattern, it's not serving me, what we have to do when we're older is retrain your nervous system to say like not everything's a threat. Not everything needs to be, it is as triggering as it's becoming. And so one of the very first things that I offer all of my clients and you don't even need to see me to do this, you can do this by yourself, is we need always to return to safety and pleasure first. Safety and

Dr. Katie Larson (48:08.184)
and pleasure, safety and pleasure. And the reason is the safety grounds the vagal nerve into a place of calm, right? And so that you can actually kind of like feel your body, can think your thoughts because the vagal nerve gets activated whenever we're triggered, right? And it like turns on every single thing. But it's like the safety actually allows you to feel a little bit calmer and not as if you have to act. And so safety is really important. But the one that a lot of people miss is pleasure.

And the reason I bring up pleasure so much is when you have a highly sensitive nervous system and things annoy you, like sounds, smells, right? All of your senses, like too many flickering lights. When that annoys you, you're actually creating a neurological pathway. let's just, I'm just like, for those of you that are watching me, I'm like going up and to the right, up and to the right, up and to the right. And so you're gonna have like a neurological pathway and that every time you hear noise, it goes to annoyance.

annoyance, annoyance, annoyance. You're creating something that goes sound equals annoy. But when you add pleasure, and so you add a lot more, like music you enjoy, music you love, like sounds you enjoy, it creates a new pathway, maybe to the opposite direction. It goes into pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. So you're rerouting and you're actually growing your capacity to hear sounds in general by exposing yourself to the polarities. Because if you're only recognizing things that annoy you, you can't stop.

can't stop that. You can't stop things that annoy you. You can only increase pleasurable sounds and pleasurable sensations and pleasurable tastes and pleasurable things that are sensual because that's what increases your resilience and your capability to handle that annoyance. And I think that's really like hard for us to do because sometimes pleasure seems like indulgence, right? Or like pleasure seems like a waste, but it's like, you know, yeah.

Sophia Hyde (50:02.168)
Yeah, the word pleasure even in our society has a, it feels sexual, it feels sexual, it also feels naughty. Like not even in a sexual way, just like you're not, like even like a dessert, like, it's pleasurable. I shouldn't be eating this much sugar. this is pleasurable on this vacation. but gotta go back to the real world. It's like everything that we want and that is pleasurable.

Dr. Katie Larson (50:08.02)
and it feels sexual, which we'll hopefully get to before the end of this, yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (50:16.406)
Yeah. Yeah, little pleasure. Yes. Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (50:30.932)
Yeah, it's taboo, isn't it?

Sophia Hyde (50:31.5)
our society, yeah, it's like we're only allowed to have small amounts of it. We're only allowed to have little bits of it. Don't over-consume it.

Dr. Katie Larson (50:36.916)
Yes. That's because culturally we've used pleasure as reward instead of a fuel.

And actually when you're highly sensitive, and if I could drive home any kind of comment, it would be, when you are highly sensitive, you need pleasure as fuel, not a reward. Meaning, you cannot run on an active nervous system unempty. You need to fill it up first. And the way we fill up an active nervous system is to give the senses pleasure, to make the senses feel good. So like cold water on your skin sometimes feels really good, maybe warm.

warm water for most people. Warm water on your skin feels really good. So like give yourself that sensation of feeling really good as a fuel to go through something that maybe you're not gonna feel so great at later, right? Or like listening to calming music is gonna feel really good before you have to go into a stressful situation. Because what you're doing is you're actually like giving yourself enough momentum and energy to like give you the foundation for what will be very challenging for many people.

which is just a very overstimulating environment 24-7.

Sophia Hyde (51:47.82)
love that you're saying this. It's funny how the more you discover new ideas and truths and ideas, certain things are just universal truths that different people have found different language to describe the exact same thing. Because what you're describing right now through these pleasure centers, I feel is the, it's like this is the exact same medicine that I've been giving my clients since before I was even coaching. Like this is my entire.

Dr. Katie Larson (52:04.307)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (52:15.488)
that.

Sophia Hyde (52:16.974)
Practice everybody who has ever worked with me I teach that self-care is energy management and one of the very first things that we do is an exercise to figure out what fuels your energy and What drains your energy and I help them turn their lives upside down by creating so much more restoration, right? So it's like more of whatever it's different for every person right because for one person a massage is stressful and for the other person it's pleasurable

Dr. Katie Larson (52:24.042)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (52:31.648)
Yeah, I love it.

Dr. Katie Larson (52:36.596)
Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (52:41.43)
Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (52:44.782)
And so it's like, what are the things that restore your energy? But at this point, I live my entire life. It's like so rare that I'm doing anything that's draining me. Especially now with this move, like we're living in the place we feel like our bodies belong. I open up the doors and I see the sunrise is pleasurable. And then I read a play. I'm just thinking about today. I woke up, I had a pleasurable, I mean, I love. Yes, it's like, yes, but that.

Dr. Katie Larson (52:46.592)
Totally, yeah. Love that.

Dr. Katie Larson (52:56.734)
Yeah, Now you know. Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (53:06.304)
Gas.

And you know that about yourself too. Yeah, so you know how to give it to yourself. Yes. Yes.

Sophia Hyde (53:14.446)
Yes, like from the cafe. It's like, where can we, just tell people, look for Joy, where can you, how can you make your shower? Okay, you have to take a 10 minute bath anyways. How can you make that 10 minutes pleasurable? And so it's like, I love the shampoos I use and I have those little massagers for my scalp and I love the way that the thing I use feels on my skin. It's like every, everything should be restoring.

Dr. Katie Larson (53:19.008)
Yes. Yes, I agree. So make it nice. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (53:33.578)
Yeah.

And those are, collectively, those really matter.

Collectively these little moments in pockets of joy and pleasure in our life They very much refill because you have to imagine almost like you said like when you know, what's draining me? What's refilling me? It's like we when you're being bombarded by a lot of stimulation It is just little holes in a cup and everything is leaking out consistently And so each little pleasurable moment and offering that you're giving yourself is like a plug to one of those holes You know so that like yes, it's still gonna empty but like it is gonna empty a lot slower and you're gonna have a lot more Resilience and a lot more stamina

to get through a very overstimulating life culture is not our friends, it's highly sensitive people. It is designed for less sensitive people. And so when you're walking around and there's flashing lights and there's things that are changing every 10 seconds and social media is like, you you're getting things in quick bits and lights, that's not healthy for our nervous system. And so we have to do things that are more nourishing to bring us back into a state of homeostasis, right? And so for some people, they're like, another thing I have to

do, know, like, I don't want to self care, it's too much I have to do. But actually, it's more of a way of being. It's more of understanding that like, it's the way you move through the world and take your time and really like, double, double, double down on the things that really restore you.

Sophia Hyde (54:46.36)
Yes, it's the way you move through the world.

Sophia Hyde (54:56.046)
And it's the small changes, like the more you become aware. I look like, I think about a version of me in my 20s who would get in the car and I would turn on NPR. And so it's like, I'm playing the news. Now I turn on the car and it's always pleasure. I mean, I love a good car drive, right? And so today it was two different musicians that I really loved that made me happy. But then I turned on an audio book that was like filled with dopamine hits. And so all the driving I did today,

Dr. Katie Larson (55:11.498)
Yeah, same, same. Yeah. I need some good music. Yep.

Dr. Katie Larson (55:20.564)
Yes. Yes.

Sophia Hyde (55:24.704)
It was delightful because I made the little 10 minute commute I had. I added pleasure into running errands. It's like every, that's the, Versus if you're driving around listening to a news podcast and you're just inundated with the things that are going horribly wrong in the world, like you're just, you know, it's like.

Dr. Katie Larson (55:26.539)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (55:33.344)
Totally.

Dr. Katie Larson (55:39.627)
that's gonna just stress you out. Yes, totally. You're already continuing to like amp your vagal nerve, yeah, totally, and cortisol, which we don't need. But yeah, so these are things, and I know we wanted to touch on potentially self-pleasure because that's another thing that you and I bonded over. Because I'm like, that's important too,

Sophia Hyde (55:47.66)
Yes! Yes.

Sophia Hyde (55:59.062)
Yes, yes. So you've talked. Yes. So I love one thing I love about Dr. Katie is he is not afraid to talk about self pleasure. So if you go through, by the way, what's your Instagram handle?

Dr. Katie Larson (56:11.024)
at Dr. Katie GrowthQuests. Yeah, at Dr. Katie GrowthQuests.

Sophia Hyde (56:13.358)
Okay, you guys go follow her. She has so much great content out there, but I love how she is not afraid to talk about masturbation. I have taken, like I remember a couple months into knowing you, you put up something and I was like, whoa, like this takes some nerve to say this. Yeah, but then I took it to my husband and I was like, look at this. Did you know this is how things actually work?

Dr. Katie Larson (56:21.642)
Yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (56:27.542)
Yeah, I love that post. That was like one of the most popular posts. Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (56:35.06)
Right?

Sophia Hyde (56:37.748)
And so then you gave ideas for people to try and I was like, I'm like learning stuff about my body from you. And then when we got together in person, should I say the phrase or do you wanna talk about the thing you taught me when we got together? Okay, so Katie blew my mind. We were just hanging out and one time we got together, driven out to St. Pete, I'm telling her how much I love her masturbation and sex posts because they're so educational and blah, blah. And then she goes, well, know,

Dr. Katie Larson (56:43.136)
I appreciate that.

Dr. Katie Larson (56:49.758)
no, you do it, yeah.

Sophia Hyde (57:07.318)
Not everybody is the same. Some people are root rubbers and some people are what's the other one tickle? A clit tickler and I was like, what did you just say? This is common language and I was like, wait, pause stop saying it again. What? Yeah, well, you know, some women are this and some women are that and then you describe the two, which I'll let you do that for the audience and.

Dr. Katie Larson (57:12.086)
A clit

What?

Dr. Katie Larson (57:22.998)
I know, like you don't know that.

Sophia Hyde (57:35.456)
It was this giant light bulb because some of us, you know, get to pleasure one way and some another way. And I finally, I let go of all of this frustration I'd had for so long because all these other women talked about how they would get to pleasure. And that no matter how many times I tried that stuff, it never frigging worked for me ever. And now I was like, that's why it never worked because it's never going to. And it felt like this giant permission slip to stop caring and just like.

Dr. Katie Larson (57:37.878)
Totally.

Dr. Katie Larson (57:45.206)
Totally.

Dr. Katie Larson (57:51.766)
Totally.

Me too, yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (58:02.464)
Totally. Yes!

Sophia Hyde (58:05.428)
Let it be easy. So anyways, share and lighten us.

Dr. Katie Larson (58:06.774)
See, you know what's funny is like this is how...

What they got for women who have no shame in talking about sex that can say it to other women who maybe like weren't brought up in a way that we could talk about it openly because then you like permit something that you've always felt, right? And so, okay, I hope this changes somebody's world really well because it changed my world as well. And so we were talking about root rubbers versus clit ticklers. And so what that means is there's different ways that you can feel pleasure in your genitals, right?

The root rubber woman is somebody who needs firm pressure. She needs consistent firm pressure that's almost touching something that's like, it's still external, but it's touching something in her root, right? And so these are the women who can almost get off on a bicycle seat. If you tried hard enough, I always say, I'm a root rubber. And so if I'm riding a bicycle seat and I'm going over a couple bumps, I could get off on that. It feels great.

The root rubber is like they want firm touch.

and that just feels good to them. And what will probably never get a root rubber off is oral sex. Because oral sex feels really good to a clit tickler. And so what a clit tickler is, is a woman who can feel much more pleasure from the soft, gentle, often more like lubricated or moist sensation that you would get from like a tongue or like something like very light finger touch. It's just needing only like very subtle

Dr. Katie Larson (59:43.977)
touch and like tickling like almost of the the clit right of the clitoris and so it's like What this is like why so many women if you're a root rubber cannot get off on oral sex like it just is like all right Are we done here? Yes

Sophia Hyde (59:56.268)
Yes. So if somebody stayed around long enough to be on here for the whole hour, they get to know this about me. OK, I'm just going to go ahead and say, when you said that, it my fault because I learned from you that I'm a root rubber, which I did not know. But it finally made sense because I would hear these stories of girls who discovered self-pleasure in adolescence or whenever they found it through a shower head or a jacuzzi.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:00:04.566)
Now we know everything.

Same, I'm a root rubber.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:00:24.638)
Yeah, totally. Yeah, we talked about that. That's nothing.

Sophia Hyde (01:00:25.804)
And I'm like, WTF. And so then like people would say that. So then I'd be like, I'll give this a try. And I'm like, this is boring AF. What is this? What is supposed to be happening here? And then God bless my husband who's willing to try anything, but has never been able to get me off using oral. And it makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. makes him feel like he is doing something wrong. And then I read all these romance books and over and over again, every single book, every single one of them all of the times.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:00:34.516)
Yes. Totally.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:00:43.7)
Yes. Totally.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:00:53.5)
Love that, yes. Totally.

Sophia Hyde (01:00:53.698)
they're doing it I'm like, what am I doing wrong? Because apparently 100 % of these stories, like, you know, and you just feel like you're, you feel like you're like, I don't know.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:01:00.532)
Yes.

And it's like, I'm like you, like I'm very aware of myself, so I'm like, I don't have shame. Like it's not like a thing that like when someone's going down on me that I'm like, ugh, like don't smell me. You know, like I actually am like, get down there, you know, like go ahead, do what you can do, but I'm not gonna get off on it.

Like I've never gotten off on it. And I think it's because it doesn't have enough pressure, right? And so for me, and it's like for a lot of women, I think it's 50-50, but I think the more people that I talk to about this are like, I'm a rubber, you know, like they're like, that's me. The pressure is the key for a lot of women. And it's like, you know, we were joking about like, I was like, man, when I was an adolescent, like a good firm pillow. Like if I walked up against a good firm pillow and you're like, you too?

Sophia Hyde (01:01:35.81)
Yes, yes, yeah.

Sophia Hyde (01:01:44.608)
I And I told you I was going to-

Dr. Katie Larson (01:01:48.136)
But it's like, it's not that same way for some people. Some people, their first thing when they were, you know, young girl was the shower head.

Sophia Hyde (01:01:51.886)
I was like nine years old. Yeah, I was like nine years old and it was like I accidentally got off the side of the bed the wrong way So it was like the bed edge like hit me the wrong way and I was like what just happened to me And you know what? I was like nine

Dr. Katie Larson (01:02:00.919)
Yes. Yes. Totally.

Yes. And that was like how we all discovered our first, know, you know, this feels good. What's this area? Yeah. And so that's helpful though. Like, so I always tell, I always tell my clients, cause a lot of what my clients do come to with, with is like a lot of sexual shame or sexual trauma and things like that. So we're like building back up into feeling safe and feeling pleasure in your body. And it takes a while, right? But like one of the things is, well, how do you feel when you touch yourself? And they're like, Whoa, touching yourself? I'm not doing that. And it's like, no.

Sophia Hyde (01:02:12.744)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sophia Hyde (01:02:31.168)
And an orgasm is a way to...

Dr. Katie Larson (01:02:38.968)
That's the most important thing that's very healing for us as women and I'll say why I have a soapbox about this a little bit which is our gender Traditionally wasn't allowed to have pleasure. And so it's like it's actually quite

It's actually quite rebellious of us to demand pleasure and some of us feel a lot of shame for demanding pleasure, but it's like it actually is so healing for us to feel seen enough and to know, like having a partner know what gives us immense pleasure and a female orgasm is absolutely unbelievable. Like it can get really long, are very long, so I always test to see how long I can get it, but it can get really intense and it can be very healing to your overactive nervous system.

if you're highly sensitive, right? And so being able to, let's say you have a partner who maybe doesn't know how to give you pleasure, you have to find out yourself. You have to find out yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (01:03:36.13)
Yeah, that was the post I shared with my husband. Because you were like, you have to find this for yourself because how can they know? Like you, this is how you teach them. I was, that was like a.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:03:46.377)
And sometimes it's the opposite too. Like I think I learned I was a root rubber from my husband because my husband's stronger than me. And I was like, damn, he's good at getting me off. It's because he's stronger. He has more pressure. And so I was like, that's what I need. You know, like more pressure. But it's like, personally, I can't use a vibrator because the vibrator is too much. And so like sometimes, you know, there's like a, there's a, there's a line that you have to cross, but it's like, there's a way of understanding either from your partner to you or from you to

your partner of what you like. And I think that's what's really important as women is like being able to communicate what we like to our partner. Or even if you don't have a partner, being able to understand like what feels good to you. And I will say like understanding your cycle helps a lot. Understanding that you're probably more likely to want to get off at the first half of your cycle. So after you bleed and right before you ovulate, you're going to feel really wanting to have like a lot more self pleasure. So give it to you. Give it to yourself, right?

or right before when you have PMS and you're really stressed and you're feeling that tension of the muscular tension that we get at PMS, sometimes, know, self pleasure and masturbation, it's the best way to relieve that tension. And I sometimes prefer to masturbate besides have sex when I'm pre-menstrual because I'm like irritable and I like don't want to come on to my husband and I just want to get off, right? And I just want to get off to like release the tension and then be a better human being.

go into the other room and I will like self-pleasure and then I'll be like a happier person and it's a way of stress relief and I don't think we talk about it enough as women because I feel like a lot of my guy friends I had a lot of male friends growing up my guy friends would always joke about how they would relieve their stress intention through like you know masturbation like if I have a really stressful day the next day I just masturbate and then you know I'm fine and I don't think we talk about that as women and so I think for me a lot of like my you know education

with my clients privately. I talk about it publicly but like privately is like you know how can we use your sensitive nervous system to help you because you're a highly sensitive person if you're a client of mine. So one of the ways that we can use it to help you is to give yourself more pleasure and if one of the ways that you get more pleasure is through sex it's like increase that and if you can't increase it with a partner increase it with yourself and I find like personally I find the only way that I got through a lot of stressful things in my life this last year

Dr. Katie Larson (01:06:15.946)
after losing the house and all that kind of stuff is I would go into the other room, get off, and then come back out and deal with my chaotic life. But I had a little bit more energy and happiness because of that little cocktail of hormones that I got when I was getting an orgasm. So it's like, that helps us.

Sophia Hyde (01:06:33.356)
Yeah, which orgasms, if I'm correct, are one of the, there is a long list of things that can help you regulate your nervous system, but it's on there, right? Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:06:42.152)
It's on there, yeah. It's definitely on there and because it's like you can't feel safe, you know, like if you're having an orgasm, that is your body's, like we're 100 % safe, right? Like, cause it's like a very, you need to feel safe in that moment.

Sophia Hyde (01:06:55.212)
Okay, but you know, before we wrap this conversation, I am aware that there is a correlation between women who have had sexual abuse. And I believe the statistic is around 50 % of women who have been sexually abused are unable to orgasm. And is that, has that been your experience in your practice?

Dr. Katie Larson (01:07:13.078)
Yes. Yes.

That's really what a lot of when I'm working with someone who has sexual abuse in their past, that's what we're working on is trying to find pleasure again, because you, myself included, feel as if your power has been taken from you. It's been taken from you. And so part of the work that we do when we go in and we heal, right, we heal is we're looking at that energy, the chakras mostly actually, and we're looking at the root in the sacral chakra, because that's usually where sexual abuse happens.

and we're healing that because that is where you felt like you were violated and you were.

Sophia Hyde (01:07:55.032)
So what I am hearing, the people that I know who have had sexual abuse in their past and can an orgasm now, they have a belief that they cannot, like period, that's the end of the story. They cannot. You are saying that there is a way to heal the body and for that woman to be able to experience an orgasm?

Dr. Katie Larson (01:08:21.472)
There's always going to be physical things that may have happened, That like physically it's impossible. There's always a physical component to it. Perhaps like something occurred in the genitalia, right? But from a spiritual and emotional and energetic perspective, yes, you can heal that. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, and some of it comes with playing with ourselves. And I think that's such a funny thing. And I know, you know, like one day my kids are gonna find this episode, but I'll probably have already had a good conversation with them about that. you know, this is what I'm putting myself out there promoting, but I do so strongly believe in the power of pleasure for women, especially, to help heal. And that is one of the ways, yeah.

Sophia Hyde (01:09:05.176)
Beautiful, beautiful. Okay, thank you for sharing that with us and for being, yeah, and for being so open to go there, because it is more of a taboo conversation. A couple episodes ago, I actually had my husband come on and to do an episode with me on the power of like how we improved our sex life and different things about it, because I don't think enough people talk about it. And I talked about how much reading romance novels like made such a huge difference, but it was his idea.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:09:10.39)
It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:09:21.909)
Have

Dr. Katie Larson (01:09:25.974)
Good, I love, I gotta put the list in this one. No, yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:09:32.713)
Right? Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (01:09:34.734)
for me to do that. Anyways, yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:09:35.415)
I love that. I'll say one little sentence that people can take away about the partner thing is when we first started having sex again after kids, the little sentence that we used all the time to initiate was no presh sesh, which means no pressure session, because you put so much pressure on yourself, right? Post kids to like, everything has to feel right, and everybody has to calm, and everything has to feel like this and that, and it's like, it's not gonna happen like that right away after kids. There's so much things that have to be reestablished.

and like re-understood from both parties and so we used to say no presh sesh. Yeah.

Sophia Hyde (01:10:09.458)
and much less time available. yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not only are you having to reinvent what that looks like, because your body has changed, but also you have the least amount of time bandwidth you will probably ever have. Yes, and energy, yes, yes.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:10:19.701)
Yeah.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:10:25.302)
Totally, and energy, yes. And so the no-presh sesh was a permission for either party to say no, right, no pressure, and so you can be like, no, I'm good. And then also, like, for both parties to be like, if I don't come, I don't come. But at least, like, we're, like, practicing, you know? So no-presh sesh, it was a really helpful phrase that we created, and sometimes we still use it of, like, if one of us is in the mood, like, hey, no-presh sesh, and, like, you know, it works.

Sophia Hyde (01:10:51.842)
I love it, I love it. Thank you for sharing that with us. Was there anything else that you wanted to make sure that you shared with the audience today? Was there anything on your heart or on your mind that you wanted to pass on?

Dr. Katie Larson (01:11:04.662)
Thank you for asking that. I'm sure I won't bring up anything new. I'll just say I hope that it came across that the type of practitioner that I am is somebody who is a lot more soul centered and more...

like journey oriented. And what I mean by that is you're never going to come to me and you're never going to leave feeling that there's something wrong with you. I think that's really vital. And I think that's the feedback I've gotten from my clients is like, you're the first person that ever made me feel that there wasn't anything wrong with me. And I really want that to come across of like our journeys are designed to create these experiences for our souls to grow and to become who we are.

And the way that we handle those experiences and the way that they've influenced us and made us be who we are in the world sometimes can feel challenging and sometimes can feel like there is something wrong with us or like I'm the only one who does blah blah. But when we look at it from a different perspective, it can be so empowering. It can be so inspiring and motivating of like these things have happened to me and

I now know that I can use the wisdom that I gained from X to do Y. Or I now know that I am dealing with something that every woman before me has also dealt with, but this is the generation that I want to do it differently. And so you get more courage, you get more awareness of your skills and your gifts and your talents when you look at it from more of a soul-based journey perspective. And that is more of the perspective that I take as a result.

of all the different tools that I have and all of the different things that I've explored with my clients. And so yes, I hope that came through. And if not, that would be what I would leave everybody with. It's a growth quest.

Sophia Hyde (01:12:59.404)
Yes, yes, yes. I believe you are just getting started with your work in the world. You are a beautiful human. I'm so grateful that our paths crossed. I'm so grateful that you spent time today sharing your knowledge and your gifts with us. And like I said, you guys go check her out. Is there anywhere else you want me to plug other than your Instagram? Is there anywhere else you want to send people?

Dr. Katie Larson (01:13:07.389)
Same, thank you.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:13:14.302)
Agree, me too.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:13:27.414)
You can do the website, yeah, growthquest.com. So it's like a crest that you're onto growth, growth quests with an S at the end, growthquest.com. Fabulous, thank you so much, Sophia. It was absolutely my pleasure. I'm so grateful we met as well. And these are the conversations that I think we all have behind closed doors, but sometimes we need to have a little bit more out in the open so people could say, what? Yes, yes.

Sophia Hyde (01:13:29.198)
Okay, yep.

Sophia Hyde (01:13:34.478)
And I'll make sure that it's included in the share notes as well.

Sophia Hyde (01:13:49.28)
Yeah, so that's what podcasting is for. That's the beauty of podcasting is taking those private conversations and making them public. So thank you for being here today.

Dr. Katie Larson (01:13:55.904)
brilliant. It's my pleasure.