We are made up of all the experiences we’ve had in the past, including our traumas, which we carry inside in our day-to-day present lives. Somatic therapy is the gateway to finding healing from these traumatic events through the mind-body connection. In this episode, we have Molly Fink MHC, CLC, CHT—a licensed regressive hypnotherapist and life coach—to tell us more about somatic therapy and what the journey offers in changing your relationship with trauma. Dealing with her own traumas, Molly opens up about the power of finding healing for herself so she can heal others. This led her to then create the Molly Fink Methodology, where she helps clients uncover the blockages in their subconscious that keep them from healing. Explore the transformative potential of somatic therapy with Molly and discover the liberating path to profound healing and manifesting your desires.
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Listen to the podcast here
Somatic Therapy: A Liberating Path To Healing Trauma With Molly Fink
Finally, I am back with the show. I have an amazing guest, Molly Fink.
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Molly, I met you a few months ago. I feel like we became fast friends. She’s a certified hypnotherapist. You’re a life coach. You also created something called the Molly Fink Methodology, which I want to talk to you about. You have a Master’s in Mental Health Counseling, which is really awesome. We did a session together. You moved me so much. There’s a lot of talk about somatic healing and somatic work, and we’ll get into what that means.
You are so good at what you do.
Thank you.
You are amazing, so I had to have you on the show.
Thank you.
There is so much to talk to you about. You know that the show is about people hitting rock bottom, getting out of it, tips, and gold in between going from the bottom to the top. There’s always gold in our rock bottom.
That’s where the gold is. You have to dig for gold.
You have to find it sometimes in the hardest place. First of all, what’s your story? I know that you mentioned earlier that you had an epiphany about your rock bottom.
My story is very long, but for the sake of brevity, and then we can go in and out, the last part of my rock bottom occurred a couple of years ago. My rock bottom was when my dad died and COVID hit. I had a six-month-old daughter and I was completely not functional.
All of that happened at the same time?
Yes.
That’s a lot.
My daughter was 6 months old, but my dad died 3 weeks before COVID hit.
Unexpectedly?
Unexpectedly. He had a heart attack and dropped dead
Then, COVID hit. We know what happened with that. You had a six-month-old. Your entire life changed literally and the identity of who you are changed.
I was a therapist. People were not coming in.
They weren’t allowed to come in.
That’s exactly right. I was really forced to face a lot of deep unhappiness that I had been feeling in my life. My entire philosophy though is that desire is the universe talking to you and leading you to heal yourself.
Desire is the universe talking to you, and it's leading you to heal yourself. Click To TweetWhen we desire or want something, the universe is pushing us in that direction so that we want to heal.
My deepest desire a few years ago was to get back into my body. After I had my daughter, I had a very traumatic labor. I felt like I was not in my body in any way. I experienced lagging in pain. For instance, if something poked me intellectually, I’d be like, “I got poked,” but it would take me about five seconds that my body would be like, “That hurt.”
You were detached from it.
That’s exactly right. I was completely detached. Also, I was the heaviest I’ve ever been. There were so many markers and I was like, “I need to get back in my body.” That was how this whole journey started. Until not long ago, I had not been able to figure out the trauma that would not allow me back into my body. I then had a memory of the original trauma of leaving my body.
I was four years old. I’m hard of hearing. My grandmother was very old school. If the doctors say, “Jump,” she’d be like, “How high?” She took me in for an audiology exam. Apparently, I was being very difficult, so they strapped me down like a psych patient. I remember it exactly. This is the first time I’ve had this memory. I was dropped down to a board and I was screaming.
You were four years old?
I was four years old.
You were going in for a urology appointment?
Yes because of my hearing aids. I was apparently being difficult before, so they asked my grandmother.
You did not remember this before?
My mother filled in the gaps. The only memory I had not long ago was being dropped down to a board. I can tell you the exact color of the straps. I called my mother and didn’t tell her anything. I said, “I have a memory of being held down against my will. Do you know what I’m talking about?” She thought about it for a minute and said, “Your grandmother came back to me when you were four years old and said, “I made a big mistake. The doctors asked me if that was okay and I said yes.”
I went into a regressive neurotherapy session for myself and was able to go back to that memory and heal it. When I tell you that every core trauma I’ve had since four years old engenders that exact experience. I was sexually assaulted. The reason why I was able to come to it was I am really trying to redefine what it means to have a boundary. Some people were saying to me, “You don’t have boundaries.” I was like, “I do. I have amazing boundaries.” I tell people all the time, “Please don’t do X,” but nobody listens to me. I was like, “This is interesting.”
You’re saying you’ve had that reality where your whole life, you have had issues with boundaries.
I’ll be like, “Please don’t do X,” and people will be like, “We heard you. We don’t care.” That was the core trauma. That was the first time in my life that I said, “I don’t want you looking in my ear,” for whatever reason at the age of four and I was told, “We don’t care.” They strapped me down and looked in my ear.
Healing Journey Into Somatic Therapy
I know that you’ve been a regressive counselor or healer, but also, that has a lot to do with somatic healing, right?
Yes.
There’s a lot of talk about that with healing, coaching, and therapy. I’ve been certified as a somatic coach too, so I’m very excited about this. I love having you here. W ith somatic healing, you’re peeling away layers, right?
Yes.
Finally, you got to that core, and that was one of your biggest traumas.
It is the biggest. I believe that we are in a spiral staircase, which is what I call it. Life is a spiral staircase and you’re constantly moving upwards. Almost like in the movie, Big, where they’re stepping on the piano, at each point that you ascend the staircase, you’re stepping on the same note but it sounds different because you’ve healed yourself in a different way. I have reached the final step of the staircase. That was the final trauma that I’ve spent three and a half years trying to find. I will start my next ascension.
If we were to explain somatic healing because a lot of people still dunno what that is, how would you explain it?
Somatic healing is really the understanding that all past events live inside of you in the present tense. They’re living inside of you and have a very real voice, emotion, and concrete memory that lives inside of you in real-time and present day. What you are doing during a somatic experience is going to that “past experience” because it lived inside of you in the present tense. You are healing it through your mind. In fact, you are in real-time healing your physiological nervous system. That’s what a great somatic healing experience does.
It’s interesting because, on the show, I’ve also interviewed a lot of people who are very much into and experts in the plant medicine world. Plant medicine is not for everyone. People can go into it and get into it quite a bit, and then step away from it. I’ve decided to go into the somatic healing part of it where there is no plant medicine involved and it feels the same in a way. It’s interesting. It does not feel the same, but it has the same result in a way.
I am more of a believer in using your mind as opposed to alternative substances for that reason. Your mind is the greatest tool you could ever have. I f people want to use plant-based healing, go for it. What the somatic experience really offers and what you’re experiencing is complete control. It’s your journey. I don’t know what the math is, but we only use 5% of our brains.
It’s a very small amount.
It’s tiny. Think about that. As you explore the somatic journey, you’re using unlimited untapped potential at any point in any given moment. If you take some kind of medicine, it can tap that for you, but why not learn how to tap into that yourself? It’s there. You have to tap into it.
They’re both wonderful modalities of healing. I’m a believer of that. In some cases, one is not better than the other, but it depends on what is best for you.
That’s exactly right.
It is really amazing what you’re saying about what the mind can do to heal.
Unequivocally.
How did you get into this?
I got into it because I was a therapist and I had gone through regular therapy. I’m a sexual assault survivor. I went through a very traumatic sexual assault experience. I have a lot of other trauma in my life that eclipsed the other trauma. I went through years of therapy and everyone I spoke to was like, “This is the best it’s going to get.” I said to myself, “You cannot tell me that I was created to wade through life to be in a state of semi-trauma and deep sadness. This can’t be it.” A really good friend of mine randomly said, “I met this lady. She does something called regressive hypnotherapy. Try it.” I said, “I’ll try anything. I’ve done bungee jumping. I’ll try anything once.”
You have to be open. The first step to healing is being open to it, trying new things, and being curious. I love that that’s where you’re at. You did therapy, tried different things, and were like, “Now what else can I try?”
I went in, and in one session, she healed me in a way that years of therapy did not. I remember I said to her, “You have to train me.” She laughed at my face and was like, “No.” I was like, “I’m not leaving until you train me.” We went on a journey together and she trained me, and then I went off of my own creation. This is my biggest complaint against plant-based alternatives. It is that in regression hypnotherapy, the plant medication heals the trauma itself but doesn’t heal your coping mechanisms.
All of us, whether it’s Trauma with a capital T, meaning sexual assault, or trauma with a lowercase T, which would be, “I’m a middle child so I got ignored,” there is real trauma in that. As a result, you develop coping mechanisms to move on with your life. What ends up happening is you go in and it’s an unbelievable experience where you, in real-time, heal what happened to you. You have all of these actions that you are doing on a regular basis that you don’t even realize you’re doing that you have not healed and are still, in a lot of ways, making your life a lot more difficult than it needs to be.
It’s true. From the studying that I’ve done as well, I’ve learned that the trauma never really goes away, but your relationship with it changes.
That’s exactly right. The way I explain it is I remember being little and starting to grasp the idea of volume. You could have 2 bowls, both with a cup of water each, but depending on how big the bowl was, that 1 cup of water could look ginormous or it could look tiny. I remember having my mind blown by the time I started to understand the difference between volume. That’s how I describe to people what trauma is. As you heal yourself, that 1 cup of water gets lost in a liter versus you’re trying to fit 1 cup of water in half a cup that you’re holding and it can’t possibly contain that water.
Molly Fink Methodology
I love that. Tell me about the Molly Fink Methodology.
Everything I do, I do it myself first. I always tell people, “My program is possibly the most selfish thing I’ve ever done because I cannot heal you until I’ve healed myself. I can only heal you as much as I’ve healed myself.”
I believe that.
I created a methodology where I break up your life into nine parts and I can go through them quickly.
This is what you do for your clients?
Yes. That is exactly right, which is what I do for myself. It’s mental, emotional, physical, financial, spiritual, time, family, and social . I break up your life into nine parts. What I do is break down your desire in each one of those areas. I believe human beings are mathematical, which means that at any given moment, you come to me and say, “These things are happening in my life.” The math in your life has to add up. This is where your subconscious becomes fascinating. Your subconscious, when it comes to trauma, gives you bad math because it does not want you to have to face the trauma.
When my clients come to me and say, “All of this happened in my life,” and the number you’re getting is ten, I break down the nine parts and say, “That’s so interesting. The number should be eleven. You have a 2 in family instead of a 3. That’s where the subconscious is blocking you.” I dig into that specific area and show you over time why you’re blocking yourself. I often very quickly figure out before my clients do what the blockage is, but it’s not my job to tell you what your blockage is. It’s my job to help you uncover your own blockage. I take my clients to their own subconscious and then they dig and find it themselves.
I do love that about coaching too. You do life coaching as well along with regressive immunotherapy, which is incredible. You merged the two
I created a 40-day program. Your subconscious is your best friend in the entire world. Your brain is your best friend in the entire world. Its sole purpose is there to protect you at all costs. Any bad behavior that you think you’re doing is on your brain’s part. It’s saying, “How can I get you to cope and function as best as you can in any given moment?”
What I was finding was that on a weekly basis, my clients would come back to me, and by that point, their subconscious had figured it out. It was like, “We’re onto her. Make up another number,” and I would have to spend half an hour going back and trying to figure out what the new number was. It made me crazy because I want to heal you as fast as I possibly can.
What I did was create a 40-day program where we meet for 40 days straight. Your subconscious does not have enough time. I’m moving so fast and moving the math away so quickly that your subconscious starts freaking out a little bit, but at some point, it relaxes almost. It’s magic. The stories I have are incredible. Their lives changed forever in the best way possible. It’s cool.
It sounds really cool.
It’s amazing.
Do you do group coaching as well?
I do group coaching. I did a group coaching session for the VA, which was probably one of the most humbling experiences I’ve ever had. For people who have trauma, you tend to think of yourself as being in the arena with trauma. I was with a group of women who had experienced trauma in a way that I’ve experienced in small doses.
You’re saying you were in a group compared to what they had gone through.
They were incredible women. It was amazing because the group we were supposed to do kept getting pushed out. I believe the timing is everything. On this one random weekend, we finally got it together and I did a somatic healing session. I always do a follow-up session with my groups. It happened that they couldn’t meet for another two weeks, so we had a week off. The math of it worked out that 9/11 was in between those 2 weeks.
I’m getting chilled talking about it. They were crying. They said, “This is the first 9/11 I have been able to enjoy with my family and be released from trauma.” It was so special because I remember being so excited to work with the VA and then getting so frustrated that it kept getting pushed out only to have that reward at the end of it. We were able to collectively heal in a real experience because they go through 9/11 every year. They have something tangible where they can come back to me and say, “I healed in a way I’ve never been able to heal before.” It was amazing.
Manifesting Your Desires
That’s beautiful, especially with the topic that you’re talking about. I know you and I have talked about manifestation before. I got to talk to you about manifestation. How do you manifest things that you’re desiring if what you’re desiring is where you’re healing is?
You start really small. E specially in Western society, we all have a little voice that talks to us. The little voice is something like, “Take the lip gloss out of your bag because it’s going to explode today.” You’re like, “I’m driving. I’m not taking out the lip gloss.” You then look in your bag an hour later and your lip gloss has exploded. That’s the first step to manifesting.
Listen to that little voice. If I listened to that little voice all the time, I would be doing so many weird things.
Who cares?
Go do it anyway.
That’s exactly right.
We can practice and try it on for a week. Listen to that little voice. We all know that little voice.
That little voice is the key to manifesting because that little voice gets you back on track. Instead of thinking that you want something, you unequivocally know what you should be hoping for. It naturally comes into your path.
That little voice is the key to manifesting because it gets you back on track. Instead of thinking that you want something, you unequivocally know what you should be hoping for. Click To TweetDo you believe that it’s from your higher self or it’s the universe? How do you believe manifesting works?
It’s both because your higher self exists at all times. I believe that at any given moment, you can become your higher self. The universe is responding to your energy at any given moment. We can go into a quantum physics conversation. Quantum physics is merely your perception of reality. There’s something called the observer effect where they went in with the microscope and started watching particles. What they realized was the particles knew that they were being watched and started behaving differently.
I know the experiment that you’re talking about. It’s so crazy. Even the plants have consciousness too. Before we approach them, they start to move too. It’s the same thing. Y ou’re believing in something we don’t see.
That’s exactly right. You understand that your energy already predetermines the path that you’re going to take. You understand that the universe is working in tandem with who you choose to be at any given moment.
It is so hard sometimes when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed to be positive.
Here’s the thing though. You don’t have to be. This is where it gets really cool. I remember one day, I wasn’t feeling well and my whole body was like, “You have to get up. You’re lazy.” I was like, “I am so tired.” My deepest desire was to lie down. I followed through on that desire, and because I did, it was a notice that was put on my door that I had to address. Had I left my house and not listened to that desire, I would’ve missed the notice and we would’ve gotten fined a lot of money.
My deepest desire is to not pay my tax bill. What happens if I do that?
Let’s follow that through. Your deepest desire is not to pay your tax bill because, on some level, you’re afraid you won’t receive the money back.
That’s true.
What if you believe that your money is an invitation for you and you’re going to receive that back exponentially? You would happily pay.
I t’s believing that that’s going to happen. I know sometimes, money’s a big thing for a lot of people too.
100%.
It’s hard for a lot of people.
The point is to follow the desire. If you genuinely don’t want to pay your tax bill or something slightly nefarious, follow that desire through because it’s leading you to the blockage directly. Don’t not honor your desire. I’m not saying don’t follow through on it. You should pay your taxes. Why I want you to intellectually follow through on why you don’t want to do it is it will take you to your blockage.
Climbing Out Of Rock Bottom
I love that. For people who are at rock bottom, what is a good piece of advice that you could give them? They’re at their rock bottom. They don’t know where to go. They don’t know where to turn to. What is some great advice that you’d give?
There are two things. This is such a vivid memory for me. I was at my rock bottom and I was manifesting. I was on a family run. I asked my husband, and my daughter was maybe seven months at that point, I said, “I need ten minutes. I want to manifest.” I remember I was writing the word calm very slowly. I was maybe a minute and a half in. I heard my husband going, “Molly.” I remember I looked down at my paper and threw my pen down. I stomped off.
You didn’t get your moment.
I remember thinking to myself, “I will never be calm.” It’s one of my favorite moments because I am so far beyond that original manifestation. It’s the paradox. Anyone who’s at rock bottom, you have to hold that paradox of the genuine fear that you’re never going to get out of there. You need to hold that.
When you say hold that, what do you mean by hold that?
That is your reality.
You accept that’s where you are.
That’s exactly great. To negate that, you’re never going to get out.
That’s true.
You don’t acknowledge the fact that you’re there and you have no shot. The first step is owning the fact that you are there.
It’s having awareness.
That’s exactly right. Whatever it is, you’re there. You don’t even ever do anything about it. You have to be like, “I am unequivocally there.”
That’s not easy to do all the time, like, “This is where I’m at.”
That’s exactly right. Give yourself the grace of, “This is where I’m at. It is what it is.”
There’s then the acceptance because there’s the awareness.
That’s exactly right. On the other side of that, it is really building a space where you are fabulous beyond your wildest dreams.
Within your manifestation or meditation?
Yes. You write it down. I don’t know why this is so important. I have looked for scripture, writing, and something as to why this is crucial. Every single person that you talk to who is really a master manifester will tell you, “Write it down. It is essential.” Even if you want to go the biblical route, even God wrote down on the tablet. He didn’t come out as a voice and be like, “Here it is. Memorize it.” Everything is written down. I don’t know why.
I know it’s called scripting or something like that, right?
Yes.
When you write down, you write down as if it already happened.
This is where there are schools of disagreement. For people who are at rock bottom, writing down that it already happened will not work. You have to take a step back. What you have to do is three parts to this. You have to write it in positive form, which means instead of being, “I won’t get angry,” you say, “I am calm, happy, and collected.” It can only be about you because you cannot change anybody else.
Here’s the thing. As your energy changes, a natural byproduct of your energy changing is that you shift the people around you, but it can only be about you. Let’s say you’re depressed because your husband yells at you all the time. You would write something like, “I am calm and collected. I feel deeply loved,” not, “My husband loves me.” All you can do is change your perception of reality.
That’s true.
The third thing is it is in the present tense, not it already happened.
It would be, “Today, I am calm and collected.”
It would be like a general entry like, “I woke up refreshed today and it was amazing.” It’s all present tense. It’s happening to you.
Whether you feel that way or not, you’re creating your most authentic, ideal self.
The reason why the past tense doesn’t work when you’re at that rock bottom is because it’s so far out of your realm. The idea that you can’t even get out of bed or whatever the rock bottom is for you, to create this place that it already happened, you’re climbing too many stairs. You have to get to the first step, which is, “It’s happening to me today. Something good happened today.” Once that becomes a pattern, then you can go to the next level, which is that it already happened and it was amazing. It’s a frequent occurrence.
You have to really believe it, feel it, and know it in every ounce of your body when you’re writing it.
That’s exactly right.
The Power Of Words
You then read it over and over again is what I’m understanding. That’s amazing. I love that. That is an amazing, perfect golden nugget that you shared with us. It’s confusing. Everybody has their own way of telling others how to manifest or how it works for them. Also, before we finish up, I want to talk to you about the power of words and how words have an energetic frequency to them. It’s proven.
I was watching an interview with Bruce Lee. I don’t know why this interview is not everywhere. I couldn’t believe I only found it a few months ago. I was physically impacted by this one sentence. He said, “I don’t know why more people don’t understand that the words you say have such a deep impact. The reason why we use the word spelling is because you’re casting spells.” I was like, “What?” It, in real-time, changed my life and what I say. I was struck by what he said physically. I watched it 3 or 4 times and was like, “This is overwhelming.”
That’s beautiful. That’s all you have to say. That’s beautifully said. They say, quantum physics-wise, there is a frequency to your words.
That’s correct.
Do you know about the water experiment?
Of course, or the plants.
If we are made up of 75% water, what happens to the molecules in our bodies when we’re feeding them only negative thoughts?
I do want to share this. I call it serenity now and insanity later from Seinfeld, for those of you who are Seinfeld fans. When you hit rock bottom, to go into a completely positive state will be serenity now and insanity later. You cannot hold that equilibrium. Go for neutrality. It’s not good or bad. It’s your goal. Don’t try and go into this super positive place. You’re going to implode at a certain point.
It’s also, too, on that note, feeling grateful for what you have. When I also coach people who are at rock bottom, I say to them, “It’s not grateful for something huge. Be grateful that you can have a cup of coffee, or for your snugly bed, or that there’s carpet on your floor.” There are many homes in this world that don’t have carpet. They have mud and dirt. There are plenty of things, especially in this country, that we all can be grateful for. Depending on when you’re in your rock bottom, be grateful for the little things. It’s planting that seed, and then you can move up.
100%. I want to say this. The first real moment of my healing was letting God know that I was really angry at him. It’s not just manifestation. It’s reality. We don’t give ourselves enough leeway to say to God, “I’m angry. How did I get here? Why would you allow this to happen to me?” God or the universe truly is your best friend. I would tell my best friend how angry I was. I wouldn’t be like, “Thank you so much for showing up,” if I felt that my best friend had betrayed me. When you hit rock bottom, you do feel betrayed.
By life. By everybody. You’re in victim mode. You’re like, “Everyone else is talking.”
You allow that primal anger to hold space and say to everyone and everything, “You betrayed me. I feel betrayed,” and then you can move forward. To be like, “No,” or to not allow that deep sense of betrayal to hold a space on the floor, for me anyway, I would not be able to move forward until I did that.
When you’re in your rock bottom, you can’t. I’ve been there too. It’s the same thing. It does exist. Everything negative and positive has a sovereign right to exist. You have to acknowledge it to accept it, and then you can go on, which is what you’re saying. When you’re at your rock bottom, coming out of it, what would you say, if you could sum it up, was one of the biggest lessons or reasons why you feel that you went to rock bottom? Also, tell us how it has helped you.
This was during a reiki massage session. I started hysterically crying and the woman was like, “Are you okay?” I said, “Yes.” What ended up happening to me was with stunning clarity, I was able to see every real trauma that has happened to me in my life. I have had a client come in battling the same thing. Since I have pulled myself out of it, I’ve been, with ease, able to help other people. I see my traumas as a major stepping stone with which I can heal people at a rapid pace.
It is what you do. It is a huge blessing to yourself and to the world.
I am bizarrely thankful for all of my traumas. I would not wish them on anybody, but they really helped me with tremendous ease to help other people.
It’s interesting. They say some of the best books are written in your rock bottom. Some of the best poetry that has ever been written, the best songs, and the best careers usually come out of rock bottom.
It’s because it’s not rock bottom. When you are at rock bottom, there’s nothing there but you. You have no pretenses. There at that rock bottom, you get to connect with your higher self because you’re soul.
When you are at rock bottom, there's nothing there but you. You have no pretenses and you get to connect with your highest self because you're just a soul. Click To TweetFor you guys out there reading, there is a way out. I’ve done almost 100 episodes. I’m writing a book about this. It’s coming out in 2024. I’m on my final draft. If you piece together, which is what I’ve done, all the different things that Molly has said and a variety of my other guests, we’ve all done, seen, said, and believed similar things. I’ve interviewed people all over the world. It’s really interesting how there is a way out. A part of it is reaching out, getting help, educating yourself, learning, and asking for help. Thank you so much for being on the episode of the show.
Thank you.
You are awesome. I love you. T hanks so much.
Thank you.
We’ll see you next time on the next episode of the show.
Important Links
- www.MollyFink.com
- https://m.MollyFink.com/
- https://www.Instagram.com/reel/CwK68lXNUOp/?igsh=ZDE1MWVjZGVmZQ%3D%3D
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