Tina** ((00:00:00)) - - Today. I am very excited and honored to have on a special guest. Her name is Amparo Vasquez and she is the founder of Azteca, where she helps women reclaim their feeling of worthiness and joy after hardship to step into their purpose and global leadership. Amparo is on a mission to create an avalanche of heart driven leaders, powered by their authenticity and committed to service. Her vision is one of a world where power rests in the hands of those who lead from their heart and unwaveringly challenge the status quo to its core. As a part of her work, she also sits on the inaugural Alumni Leadership Council for girls, a US based national nonprofit dedicated to empowering girls. This was such a awesome conversation. I had so much fun talking to Amparo and I hope you really enjoy it. So let's get into it. You're listening to the Soul Aligned Self-care podcast. I'm your host, Tina Stinson, and I had a stroke at the age of 39 from stress and burnout that shook my world. Now I'm laying it all out.
Tina** ((00:01:18)) - - The deep level self-care practices and mindset shifts that I needed that kept me healthy, balanced, and thriving. Join me in this intimate space as we explore healing, resilience, and the soul's journey to alignment. This is where real conversations about deep level self-care happen.
Speaker UU** ((00:01:36)) - - Let's get into it.
Tina** ((00:01:43)) - - Hey, guys, before we get started, I have something new and exciting to share with you. For everyone out there that has been feeling like you're juggling a million things at once, and all of your self-care just keeps slipping through the cracks. I completely get it. That's why I'm so excited to tell you about something that will be a game changer. It's called the Soul Aligned Self-care circle. Just picture this. It's a space where you could finally put yourself first without any guilt. It's all about stepping into your power while embracing deep level self-care. I'm talking about saying goodbye to stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and burnout and saying hello to some peace, flow and yes, thriving in your life. So what's inside the circle? Well, we've got weekly coaching and connection calls where we catch up, share advice and give each other that much needed boost.
Tina** ((00:02:33)) - - Plus, there are these awesome weekly journal prompts that really help me dig deep and gain clarity. And let's not forget our weekly meditation and breathwork sessions. They're like a mini vacation for your soul. This is a space to heal the nervous system, reconnect and protect your power, and then thrive. Oh, and there's something also that's really cool. We've got these weekly affirmation wallpapers for your phone, so they're like little reminders that keep you going even on those tough days. And guess what? We've got guest speakers dropping by, sharing their wisdom and bonus masterclasses to level up your self-care game. But you know what the best part is? It's the vibe that we got going on in there. It's like hanging out with your best friends, except we're all on this journey of healing, self-discovery, and growth together. We laugh, we support each other. We're just there for each other through all of it. So if you're ready to prioritize yourself and create a life filled with balance, flow, and success, then come join us at the Soul Alliance Self-care circle.
Tina** ((00:03:38)) - - Trust me, you won't regret it. Let's do this together. You could find the link in the show notes, and until we start in June, it's going to be at the low launch price, so be sure to get in now. Okay guys, let's get into it. Hello and welcome so much to the Soul Alliance Health Care podcast. How are you doing today?
Speaker (00:03:59) (-) - I'm doing really well. How are you?
Tina** ((00:04:01)) - - I'm. I'm great. As I said, the sun is out, so I'm happy. So to get started, if you could just let the listeners know, you know, what you do for a living and tell us a little bit about your journey so we know how you got to where you are today.
Amparo** ((00:04:17)) - - Yeah. Happy to share. So hi everyone. My name is Amparo. I'm the founder of Azteca. by way of coaching and meditations and workbooks. I help women to reclaim their feeling of worthiness, their feeling of joy, their feeling of badassery after experiencing hardship. whether that's workplace toxicity, relational abuse, there's so much, so many different forms of toxicity.
Amparo** ((00:04:41)) - - and, help them to reclaim sort of that fire that often gets dimmed during the experience of hardship so that they can come back into themselves and, and step into the world as a force of nature. So that's what I do.
Tina** ((00:04:55)) - - I love that. Very similar to what I do. And, tell me about your journey. Like, how did you get to where you are today? Did you transition from a different career? yeah.
Amparo** ((00:05:09)) - - That's the case for so many of us. Right. So, yeah. So I'm a woman of color who grew up in an impoverished neighborhood. I grew up in South Central, so I had an early foundation in dealing with a lot of very high, heavy life challenges. but I'm also very service oriented. So because of my upbringing, my culture, my personality, I've always been someone who's taken whatever hardship I've gone through and immediately turned it into something to help someone else. and so from that foundation, I went off, I got a chance to see a little bit of the world, sort of refine my understanding of things.
Amparo** ((00:05:47)) - - and then I also entered into an abusive relationship later on with the covert narcissist, develop brain damage during that experience. Brain trauma. lost my identity. Lost, everything that I now want to help other people to reclaim. So that's where I think I came from, that I was completely broken during that experience. The hardship that I experienced as an adult was, ten times greater than what I experienced growing up. And so in reclaiming those things within myself, I wanted other people to have that experience as well. I think that there's this there there are a lot of beliefs that are circulating in the social fabric that make it so that people sort of assume that you can't get these things back. It's too hard, that it's impossible, that if you're dealing with very severe trauma, that's it. That's the rest of your life. And no, that's not how it has to be. And so because I'm so service oriented, I and I'm, I'm someone who gets a lot of joy from seeing other people experience joy.
Amparo** ((00:06:47)) - - I want the world to heal. I want other people to get back those parts of themselves. I want them to realize life doesn't have to get just awful as you grow older in this life. And that's just how it has to be, you know?
Tina** ((00:07:01)) - - Yeah, I, I agree with you 100% that you can definitely, heal. You could definitely reclaim your fire. As you said, I love that term. That's beautiful. And, I don't, I think it's really sad that people actually think that they have to just sit there and suffer for the rest of their lives. And the more we can get this word out and help more women heal, people heal, the better the world will be. Right? So, but you said a few things that were really interesting to me. well, first you said that you saw the world, and it's one of the things that I've noticed when a lot of people go through this transition, they seem to like travel a little bit. It's like a common denominator.
Tina** ((00:07:47)) - - I went to, so there was one man I talked to that was like, I went to India, and then the other woman was like, I went to Mexico and and I and I did this. It's very, very interesting stories. So just on a just out of curiosity, I'm wondering where you went.
Amparo** ((00:08:04)) - - Yeah. So as a student and I want to lay out the context. The context is I grew up in poverty, in a very dangerous neighborhood where I couldn't even explore my block. So my world growing up was extremely limited. And but I grew up watching TV shows that showed me a taste of the world. So that's where that desire came from. So college, I studied abroad, I went to Chile and I traveled to Argentina. I went to Uruguay, I went to Peru, I went to Brazil. So that was my great. That was, sorry. And I also went to Mexico a couple of years before that. So. And I'm, I'm Mexican American, but I hadn't gone past the age of two until that point in time.
Amparo** ((00:08:46)) - - I was about 18, as a production assistant for great documentary. so I got all these experiences of getting a chance to travel around pretty much just Latin America during college. And then afterwards I went to Hawaii, which even though it's part of the US, it's it's far away. It's a distinct culture, very beautiful culture. I went to Japan, I went to Sweden, I got.
Tina** ((00:09:12)) - - Wow, you went everywhere.
Amparo** ((00:09:14)) - - Yeah, yeah, it's a really cool experiences, a lot of stamps on my passport, but a lot more that remain.
Tina** ((00:09:20)) - - Oh, yeah. That's that's. Oh, that sounds like so much fun. and then you also said that you were in a relationship with a sister and, Yeah. Been there with you, and. But you said you you had, you received a brain damage or you suffered from brain brain trauma. So I'm very curious. Did you actually have, like, physical brain trauma or was the brain trauma from the narcissism? Because I know that that causes brain damage.
Amparo** ((00:09:49)) - - Yeah. So sorry. Can you clarify your question? If I had physical brain.
Tina** ((00:09:53)) - - Yeah, I was just. And if you were referring to the brain damage, because a lot of people aren't familiar that with the fact that narcissism in that type of relationship causes brain, damage. But did you also receive, like, physical brain trauma?
Amparo** ((00:10:10)) - - Oh, no. So it was covert narcissism. So. Okay. Oh, my.
Tina** ((00:10:16)) - - Yeah. I would like you to explain that because I, I know that myself. I don't even like looking at it because I spent so long in that relationship. But can you explain that to the people, the listeners, so that they know?
Amparo** ((00:10:29)) - - Yeah. So the vast majority of people think abuse is just one thing, right? They think that it's one person hitting another person. They think it's usually a man hitting a woman. And that's abuse. It's a very limited I definition for abuse. So abuse is very broad and it includes psychological abuse. It includes emotional abuse.
Amparo** ((00:10:47)) - - It includes verbal abuse. It includes sexual abuse. There's there are so many components to the world of abuse itself. And then you have the additional layer of whether this person is, driven by something that's part of their makeup. So something like narcissism or something else, something that's a personality disorder or related to something that's specific to their personality, that can drive them to be motivated to manipulate. It can be it can be very, embedded within their, their motivational scheme to harm, within that. And I'm giving a very complicated answer. But within that, there are different categories of how that abuse may play out. And so it can be, so there's four different categories overt, covert, altruistic, and malignant. So malignant is the one that's most obvious. Someone yelling at you and your face in a grocery store kind of thing. Altruistic is the hardest to detect because it's the head of NGOs who seems to be or a spiritual leader who seems to be doing a lot of good. But the closer that you get to that person, the more that they're gaslighting you and manipulating you and psychologically torturing you.
Amparo** ((00:12:06)) - - then there's overt, covert. So overt isn't as obvious as malignant, but it's it's still obvious. They still sort of they don't have, they don't have the motivation of, wearing a significantly different mask than someone who is covert, because they have more power in the world than someone who is covert. For example, often someone who is covert will be very sweet and loving to their partner in public. They'll share all sorts of great things about them on social media, for example. But behind closed doors, they're criticizing them. They're putting them down. They're yelling at them. They're causing fights. They're depriving them of basic care. They're blaming them for everything. They're gaslighting them. And these are all things that people don't understand. How violent they are. It's very much death by a thousand cuts. It's death by a thousand cuts. Yeah, I agree with you. Gaslighting, which is a form of mental abuse. It erodes, it erodes your mental state over time. So I was gaslit to the point of experiencing losing my mind.
Amparo** ((00:13:14)) - - I know what it's like to feel like you're losing your mind because you no longer know what reality is. You can't trust your eyes. You can't trust your ears. You can't make sense of your own thoughts, let alone of reality. So it's a very they're very violent forms of elongated harm.
Tina** ((00:13:30)) - - Yeah. And it's it's something that people don't really notice because as you said in, in public, they're very sweet and usually very charming, very charming. And, yeah, I, when I was in that relationship, I was in the relationship for 20 years. And so it was extremely difficult to get out of that relationship. And I would say the only reason I was able to do that was for my children. Like, if it wasn't for my children, I probably because, as you said, you lose that, you lose your mind and you lose. You lose your confidence. You just you lose your self-worth and you lose the connection with yourself. You don't even trust yourself anymore. And yeah, so it's like re you know, like reversing all of that damage.
Tina** ((00:14:21)) - - And I didn't know until recently that that actually causes brain damage. And as I said, I don't even want it. Like I've never really gone deep into it because it's almost like I just don't want to know, like just but it's because it's scary. and I've been out of that relationship for a really long time. And I would say the whole time that I've been out of that relationship, I've been working to heal and to recover and it and it took a while. It did. It does take a while. But, I would say the way I would describe it and maybe you could let me know what you think. Is that even from the beginning? The once you make the decision to, get out of that relationship and start to heal, that you feel significantly so much better that you don't even realize the the long haul that's in front of you because you feel so much better instantaneously. And you're you don't you don't recognize the amount of work and time that it takes until you're looking back, you know, in hindsight and you're like, wow, that took a long time.
Tina** ((00:15:26)) - - But while you were going through it, it just it felt so good. The more and more that you heal, the better that you feel. Would you agree with that?
Amparo** ((00:15:33)) - - Absolutely. So I had a really horrendous awakening experience. I didn't know because it was so covert and it was so manipulative and presented a very distinct face. Right. and my own suppressive tactics, my own like need to believe that this person genuinely cared about me. I didn't know I was being abused, even though I was rescued. So I was rescue. And then after I was rescued is when my suppressive tactics. Collapsed, and I had all these repressed memories come to the surface of my psyche. And for weeks I was a complete and total and utter just broken mess because my mind was making sense of reality. So for about 6 to 8 weeks I was a blob, I was screaming, I was, I felt animalistic, I didn't feel human. And it took a while to get back my humanity. But during that period of time especially, it was very pronounced.
Amparo** ((00:16:27)) - - And then I had this experience of feeling like I came back into my body. I looked in the mirror and I saw myself again for the first time in years. It's like I recognized myself again. I, I had stopped disassociating. It felt like I had been a flower that had been wilting. That sort of popped back to life. So that was a point for me that you're describing of like suddenly it felt really, really good. And I'm like, wow, I, I got gone back all these things that I had no idea that I could get back. No idea. Yeah. The journey that was ahead of me because I had PTSD and PTSD at that point. For anyone that doesn't know, there's PTSD that typically arises from a single traumatizing experience, something like a car crash, for example, or someone being abusive to you once. And then there's PTSD, complex PTSD that arises for from an extended period of traumatizing experiences. So CP is like the nastier cousin of PTSD. I had both had many forms of PTSD and CC'd, so I had a huge journey up ahead and existed in this world that, forces you to have to work unless you come from a very small segment of society, forces you to have to work to survive.
Amparo** ((00:17:42)) - - While I was dealing with brain damage where I couldn't make basic decisions, I couldn't formulate my own thoughts, I couldn't like, I. I couldn't even do basic things like understand that my needs were okay. How do you function as a human being when you don't understand that your needs are okay? You know? so it was a journey to rebuild myself. And all along the way I kept thinking because I very logical person. So I was like, I healed myself from other things. It was never this bad, but I've healed myself from other things in the past and the way that this has worked in the past, and the way that I imagine that it'll work now, is this sucks, but it's less awful than what I just came from, and I'll keep punching it that way. This sucks. It sucks a little bit less than what I just came from, and it kept going and used my experience to help other people along the way because I thought, this is no way for me to live.
Amparo** ((00:18:40)) - - This is not living, and I know how rampant this is. Very aware of how rampant this is. Oh my God, it's so hard. First of all, society enables us to be the victims. Yeah, right.
Tina** ((00:18:55)) - - We're raised, we're.
Amparo** ((00:18:56)) - - Raised that way. And. Yeah, and then there's cultural elements on top of that. And so I thought, man, like, there's so many forces that make it so that people get and wrapped into this very easily, that make it really hard to understand that what you're living is, is harmful. You know, we have things like these assumptions that marriage just inherently gets hard over time, and you just have to put up with things. No. Yeah. No, no. And then it makes it hard to escape on top of the, the, the chamber of brainwash that you're in because that's what that experience is like. It's very much a chamber of brainwash. The further you go into the experience, the further in dimmer and smaller the light becomes, right? The light of recognition of what you're living and who you are.
Amparo** ((00:19:40)) - - And then there's there's very little support to heal. There's very little support to come out of it, especially when you're in such a deeply broken state. Because if you're inside of a relationship with a narcissist, they break you down across the entire board. Oh yeah, across the board. Emotionally, mentally, financially, spiritually. Everything right? Yes. Yeah.
Tina** ((00:20:01)) - - And so when you mention financially, it's, you know, they cut you off from your family sometimes. but financially also, you know, so when I was, you know, raising my kids in, in this relationship I wasn't working. And so I there was just it was there was no hope, no way for me to get help, you know, and I was I was not close. I was I'm very close with my family. But like, physically, I was not close enough to my family to get the support and to, Kind of. Also notice how far I far away from being myself that I was. There was no one there to remind me of who I was.
Tina** ((00:20:43)) - - You know, and you talk about also, when you said you don't even know how to take care of yourself or basic human needs. Like, it reminds me of this one thing that I always share. after after I was out of the relationship. Still, when I was still healing, I just wasn't able to calm my nervous system and come out of that fight or flight. And I, I remember getting exhausted to the point where my body would just shake, like it would just shake. And I was like, why is my body shaking? I just thought I was dying, like, why? And then slowly I figured out I was like, oh, I'm exhausted. Right? So it like just those little things that people take for granted of just knowing I'm tired, I should rest. I just I couldn't even recognize that anymore because I was always I always had to be on. And in that protection, slash people pleasing mode, you know, so there's so many little things. I like how you described it earlier.
Tina** ((00:21:46)) - - It's the death by a thousand. A thousand cuts or whatever you said. It's it's almost the same way when you're coming out of it. Like there's all these, like, little things that you have to undo and you don't notice it until it, like, makes itself apparent and you're healed enough to start noticing those things. It's crazy.
Amparo** ((00:22:02)) - - Yeah. Because what they did was they rewired your brain in a very, very harmful way. So your brain came to associate very benign things like having needs, having confidence, being in a bedroom with danger and not just a little bit of danger, a lot a bit of danger. Right? Because typically this abuser is a person that you allowed them into your subconscious because you trusted them. So they have the most access to the most tender parts of you than most anyone else in the world. And they do the most damage as a result of that. Right? So your brain gets so mixed up with all this sort of rewiring, actually, I run a group program and I just talked about the brain with them this past Sunday, which is great.
Amparo** ((00:22:49)) - - And one of the things that I talked with them about was this experiment that I heard about a long time ago that was so important for me to have heard about then, so that I could understand what happened to me, post abuse and heal more intentionally, and to understand that I could heal more intentionally. So it's a Baby Albert experiment, I there are a lot of details that I don't know, but I know enough. So the Baby Albert experiment was a experiment that was conducted decades ago when it was still permissible to, do psychological experiments on human children. And the researchers wanted to see if they could get the baby to pair. Flipping of a switch of a light with a, a harsh stimulus. So they left a baby in the room. And every time that they would go into the room, they would turn on the light switch and they would make a very loud, abrupt sound next to the baby. The baby would wince every time, right? Eventually what they did was they would flip on the switch without making the loud sound, but the baby would still flinch.
Amparo** ((00:23:50)) - - Why? Because the brain is wired for survival. So what it does is it creates associations so that you can very quickly learn what is safe and not safe in your environment. What do things mean? Right? That's how your brain is set up for the rest of your life. It is always trying to learn. It's always trying to keep you alive. And so during the experience of abuse, your brain notices, wow, I was calm and then this person went ballistic on me. or I asked for my needs and this person shamed me. Your brain comes to associate those things. I was in my bedroom and this person came in and they started harassing me. It starts to create those associations. So I when I say I was a jumbled mess, I mean that in the most horrific way possible. Existing at night caused panic for me. Because the vast majority of the abuse that I lived took place at night. So my brain came to associate nighttime with awful abuse, like all of abuse, including a lot of lack of sexual consent.
Amparo** ((00:24:56)) - - And so my existence was really rough for a period of time because my brain had come to associate connection, touch, conversation, opening up, having needs, even being outside of my home and having a need. I was shamed a lot for needing to have something water or something outside of the home. So there were so many things I would cause panic inside of me, which is why I didn't feel like a human being until very recently. I would say that I got my first taste of feeling human again in like 2022 is when I first started to feel it again. It was a couple of years after escaping. So this is what happens to the brain. And it's understandable because your brain is wired to survive. And at the same time if you can understand this then you can understand that the solution to this one part of the solution is exposure therapy. Because you have to rewire your brain to help it, to understand, to remember. It's okay. These things don't have to be associated with abuse anymore.
Amparo** ((00:26:05)) - - You can have needs. You can have connection. You can exist in these different spaces. You can be in this room. You can do these things. And these awful things that happened to you in the past. They won't happen to you again. And so that was one of the things that I did was, was very intentional about going through, exposure therapy for myself and giving myself ample time and, space to reflect and rebuild my entire internal infrastructure to just exist in the world. And it was bad. Yeah. Really rough. And again, because I'm so service oriented, that's why I thought, I need to turn this into something. I need to help more people understand that cause and effect. If you can understand cause and effect, you can stop. You can sort of peel off layers of shame. Of I did something wrong and bad. I deserved this. I don't understand what is happening to me. I don't understand what happened to me. And peel off the layers of this is how it's always going to be.
Amparo** ((00:27:12)) - - I will never be able to get myself back. It's going to keep going downhill from here. No.
Tina** ((00:27:18)) - - No. Yeah. And you see the behaviors like I see the. Have you seen a lot of the people that I work with where they're always apologizing for everything, just having they apologize for having a basic need, like, oh, you know, like, for example, you're driving along in the car with your friend and they're like, can you stop? I have to go to the bathroom. I'm so sorry. I'm, you know, like over apologizing or they need a drink and you have to stop with what you're doing because they need a drink.
Amparo** ((00:27:44)) - - Or yes.
Tina** ((00:27:45)) - - That those behaviors are just kind of like survival. And it's about. So it's about, I think one of the most powerful practices that really helped me. There were two that really, really stand out. And one of them is setting learning how to set and maintain boundaries, which took a while to really learn how to do that without feeling uncomfortable.
Tina** ((00:28:09)) - - You know what I mean? It was very uncomfortable at first. And then the second thing was just reframing different situations. taking the time that I need to be able to respond to a situation instead of react, because when I was in that relationship, I was so reactive to everything. And so one of the things I always repeat to my clients is you have you're allowed to pause. You're allowed to pause and decide how you want to react. You don't like respond. You don't have to react. You could just say, stop. And you're allowed to say that you're allowed to do that. And if someone's not allowing you to do that, then that's that's a little bit of a red flag. You know that's intentional.
Amparo** ((00:28:49)) - - Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Tina** ((00:28:52)) - - So go ahead I'm sorry.
Amparo** ((00:28:54)) - - Sorry I just wanted to jump in and say a few things. So one is I, I like to help people understand why it's uncomfortable, why when you tell them something like you're allowed to do this, they feel this visceral, strong gut, almost nauseous reaction.
Amparo** ((00:29:08)) - - Right. It's because of the pairing of things within your subconscious, right? Yeah. So I use logic and understanding of how things work within them and around them to help people to understand this is cause and effect. You don't have to feel bad that this is how you that you this is how you respond. Because the experience of abuse, whether it's individual or systemic abuse, causes, predictable, repeatable forms of impact, and harm. It's like same tactics, same impact across the board. And so, one of my taglines for the work that I do is helping women come out of feeling small, silent, and second guessing themselves because that is how you feel. That's how you survive during abuse. You make yourself really small, so you're over apologizing all the time for needing something, right? You silence yourself so you get to the point. You suppress your needs. You suppress your insides. You suppress your desires. You have moments of explosion all the time because you're dysregulated within it and triggered all the time.
Amparo** ((00:30:13)) - - Right? And then second guessing yourself. Natural result of gaslighting, natural result of gaslighting. So if I can help people to understand A plus b equals C, it's just an equation. It's how it is. And because it's an equation, it's how it is. It's how it happens all the time. Then also we can create a similar equation when it comes to healing. so that you can understand it, pull out the poison, pull out the brainwash, and know that as you do these things, as you set boundaries, as you experience moments of confidence, it's going to feel deeply uncomfortable. Yeah, because your subconscious associates it with danger. It's the craziest thing, right? That your brain associates these really good things with bad things. But it's true. Yeah. That's how it works. There's nothing wrong with you. That's how it works. So if you can understand that that's a natural outcome. That is what you're going to experience. At first it doesn't mean that you're a bad person.
Amparo** ((00:31:16)) - - It doesn't mean that you're doing a bad thing. It doesn't mean that boundaries are bad. It doesn't mean that you're hurting people, which is what you've been taught by your abusers, what you've been taught by abusive systems is that if you have boundaries, it means that you're hurting them. And since you as a target, is often someone who is a very kind, caring, considerate person, you don't want to hurt people. So it really affects you when you think that you're hurting someone, which is why you reduce all of your boundaries, right? You can oh, this is what I can expect. And the more that I do this through exposure therapy, right. That's how exposure therapy works, is that at first you have a really strong reaction. And then it's smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. You know what to expect.
Tina** ((00:31:55)) - - Yeah. Yeah. And then you also you just become so comfortable with it. Like now I set boundaries naturally. I'm not thinking about it. When I first started I had a system that I had to use, like steps I had to go through because I didn't know how to do it.
Tina** ((00:32:08)) - - And also, I remember, you know, this was a long time ago, but when I used.
Amparo** ((00:32:13)) - - To when.
Tina** ((00:32:14)) - - I first started setting boundaries, I was so uncomfortable with it that I would almost be a little bit confrontational about it because it was so hard for me to get well, I. I feel this way and I'm doing it this way and that's that. Like, this is my boundary. So, you know, like so I just remember that's how it started. But then, you know, now it's just something that's set and I don't question it. And if somebody else questions it I'm like that's fine. You know like if you don't if you don't agree with that, that's fine, then you're not meant to be in my life. And that's the way it is, you know. So in addition to this stuff that we're talking about right now, how what are some of the steps that you took to help heal yourself and the steps that you take, take to help heal other women, too?
Amparo** ((00:32:56)) - - Yeah, that's a good question.
Amparo** ((00:32:58)) - - It was such a moment by moment experience for me at first. and so what I did at first was, I spent a lot of time processing, so I gave myself ample time to write everything down because everything was pouring out of me. I was rewriting my entire understanding of what I had lived during that experience, but also of my entire life. I had repressed memories coming to the surface of even before I had visual memory. So it was like a felt memory from childhood abuse. So I wrote and I wrote and I wrote or typed and I typed and I typed onto online journals. I walked every day for a kid, you not 3 to 4 hours every day just processing, getting it out. And I needed this because I had suppressed so much. That I needed an outlet. I needed to give myself time to process. And what happens to you during the experience of abuse? Again, whether it's individual or systemic abuse, is whenever you're doing things that are good for you, they sabotage it.
Amparo** ((00:34:04)) - - Somehow. They make you feel guilty, they shame you, they disrupt you, they cause an argument, something. Right. So who you were before or in between instances of abuse, which is who you really are. You and safety is who you really are, is a very different person who has access to tools that are helpful for her or him, versus the person that you become during the experience of elongated abuse, because you stop doing those things because they disrupt it. They that you, your subconscious can tell. When I meditate, something bad happens. when I'm kind to myself, something bad happens. When I take time to myself. Something bad happens. When I set a boundary. Something bad happens. So you stop doing those things. So at first, I didn't have access to any of it. it tell the difference. And it made me horribly sad that I had gone from this person who was meditating and jolly, jolly, a very happy person. Yeah. And I felt so horribly broken and I didn't have access to anything.
Amparo** ((00:35:04)) - - But I'm very stubborn and I'm very resilient as all survivors are, in my estimation. so I kept thinking, okay, I can't do this. What else can I fucking do to help myself get myself back? I can tell that my mind can't handle doing these things. And I have a theory of why. So what are some other things that I can do that I don't have a negative association with because I didn't use them during the experiences. So we are yeah. Strategic. We're survival stick. So here we are. So a that's what I did, I walked, I reflected a lot. I gave myself ample time. I researched a lot what I had lived so that I could have a framing for it. And then I started to research PTSD and CP, cp tsd so that I can understand what I was doing there. And eventually I started to get more tools back. Eventually I was able to meditate again. Eventually I was able to get back into qigong. Eventually I was able to get back into testing out energy healing again.
Amparo** ((00:36:04)) - - Eventually I was able to get back connection with people and that was a doozy. Was getting back the ability to be connected with people?
Tina** ((00:36:13)) - - Yeah, yeah, that's I agree with you. That's really hard. Especially like for me it was especially with men, you know. so that was really hard. Something you said that really just like connected in my head was, how you said you couldn't do certain practices. And I always talk to people and I'm like, yeah, what works for one person doesn't always work for the next person. And I never thought I never made the connection before, but that's possibly why it doesn't always work. You know, all these different practices. So certain things resonate with certain people. And then some people just like, no, that just doesn't work for me. So that's an interesting thing to explore when you're looking at different practices that you're going to use to to heal yourself. Yeah. now, if you could just share a little bit about systemic.
Amparo** ((00:37:01)) - - Yeah.
Tina** ((00:37:01)) - - you know, like if you could maybe share with people what that means and how it affects people, that would be great.
Amparo** ((00:37:10)) - - So one of the horrendous things that I realized after coming out of abuse, so I'm highly analytical. So I again, just for context, I'm a woman of color who grew up in the hood, who went on to become very highly educated. So I had the combination of street smarts and street view with scholastic right researched background. I realized that just existing as a person in society mirrored the experience of being a person in a abusive family system. So abusive family systems have these, again, very predictable constructs. every person has a role and they have to abide by that role. And if they don't abide by that role, they're horribly shamed, if not ostracized. And the treatment that that person receives within that family is dependent on their role. And your needs are only met if your needs happen to coincide with the needs of your the people in power. Right. So there were so many things that I started to realize, but wow, it's exactly like it's exactly an abusive family system. Children are pitted against each other.
Amparo** ((00:38:19)) - - Right. You don't see each other as humans. You see each other as competition or care for love, for affection, for recognition, for your basic needs. Right. Your family is driven by an experience of competition, often by what's going to keep me alive. Mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually. It's driven by, a hierarchical pyramid type of thing of you really don't want to be here. You don't want to be on Mom and Dad's bad side, because really bad things can happen to you, right? Versus the golden child up top who receives the best experience. Right. And an abusive family system often as well. You're not taught this. You're you're not taught, hey, you're experiencing this type of behavior because of this structure. Yeah. And it's not because it's who you are. It's because of the structure. Right? So children within an abusive family system, they can internalize that I'm receiving the worst form of harm because I'm a bad person. I'm receiving the best form of of care because I'm a good person, I deserve it.
Amparo** ((00:39:27)) - - Yeah, yeah, it's the structure. It's not about desirability. That's where our severe worthiness issues come from. We internalize this stuff. It's not because of who you are, it's because of these structures. Right? Yeah. And so I realized that really obvious things like racism, sexism, classism, ableism, those are all extremely harmful. And they abide by the same sort of tactics and tools and impact that one experiences in abusive family systems. But it's those are those are sort of the equivalent of like malignant overt narcissism where it's really obvious and it's also existing as a person in school. It can have very similar, tendons as well. Ten I don't know if ten is the right word, but.
Tina** ((00:40:15)) - - Yeah, I know what you mean.
Amparo** ((00:40:16)) - - You're you're. For example, I started to wonder, okay, if there are these so many similarities between the way that society is currently constructed and an abusive family system. Well, what society look like if it mirrored more the principles of a healthy family system, healthy family system.
Amparo** ((00:40:32)) - - Children are not pitted against each other. It is not driven by competition, and in competition with each other. Right. It's driven by cooperation in a healthy family system. If one person needs help, they receive that help. They're not shamed for that help, right? The family sort of comes together and whoever is best able to help that person, that's what happens, right? Yeah. There's more of an experience of compassion, of love. You experience that so much more in a healthy family system, right? Siblings try to understand each other. Parents try to understand children. There isn't a listen to me or else there isn't. I know best. And so we're going to do this because you are insignificant and you don't understand what you're doing. It's input from everybody is acknowledged and validated. Right? There isn't things like future faking and breadcrumbs. We get gaslit all the time by our systems. Right. There's a lot of gaslighting that's going on right now. Oh my god. Huge deal right? Yeah.
Amparo** ((00:41:32)) - - But then these other tactics are there too. Minimizing invalidation. Breadcrumbs. Yes. You experience that on a systemic level and you get used to it. So what happens in an individual instance of abuse. Why does breadcrumbs work. Because it's in combination with these other tactics of love bombing. So another example that I like to share think about the experience of coming into a new workplace. what is the average person's experience very often high. Hi. satisfaction at the very beginning. Yeah. You are being welcomed in. There's some sort of positive onboarding experience, if you're lucky, there's some sort of positive onboarding experience, but then that often trails off over time. And we just sort of accept that that's how it has to be. Just like we accept that marriages are that that's how they have to be, that life has to be this way. Really great at the beginning and the. Yeah, oh, no, I challenge all of this. I don't accept this ridiculous idea that things have to get worse over time.
Amparo** ((00:42:32)) - - That's so ridiculous. That's lazy reasoning. Yeah. It's lazy. Why don't we challenge this? Yeah. When we think about this, the average experience that someone has going into workplace, it's like an abusive relationship. Love bombing at the very beginning. Right. To lure you in. You're exactly what we've been looking for. You're a rarity amongst this population. You got this, like scarce thing that you're the perfect person for. Yeah. And then gradual reduction of care. Gradual training to silence anything that is oppositional are.
Tina** ((00:43:09)) - - So true.
Amparo** ((00:43:10)) - - In place. Right. And that's so the whole promotion thing and being led by what other people care about you because how your, your perception according to other people's standards is what you should care about. There's just so much about the work experience by itself that mirrors abusive relationship.
Tina** ((00:43:31)) - - Oh my God. Yeah. And it's the perfect example of the example that you gave before that. It's just the perfect example to be able to look at it on different scales and in different situations.
Tina** ((00:43:44)) - - I just I just love it. It's it really makes sense and it makes it makes it much easier to understand. Really. I feel like it makes it so much easier to understand. Oh my God, we could probably have a. Podcast about that. A whole nother episode because that's just such a great topic. If you could just share, though, how how can people connect with you? Where do you hang out? What's the best way to find you?
Amparo** ((00:44:09)) - - Well, in the world. Just kidding. Yeah. So, yeah. So they can go to my website azteca.com azteca.com. I'm on Instagram at Azteca Underscore. they can reach out to me via email on [email protected] [email protected]. I also have a free gift for anyone that listens to your podcast episodes so they can go to Azteca. Com slash podcast slash gift. And there's a free meditation there. Awesome. On getting comfortable with the idea of quote unquote mistakes. it's another thing that I realized, is a similarity between being a person in abusive relationship and being a person in society.
Amparo** ((00:44:58)) - - Is these unrealistic expectations of perfection? Yeah. And shaming around the concept of mistakes. Yeah.
Tina** ((00:45:06)) - - So being kind to be kind to yourself.
Amparo** ((00:45:10)) - - Being kind to yourself is radical.
Tina** ((00:45:12)) - - I know it's so hard.
Amparo** ((00:45:14)) - - Should not be. It shouldn't be. It should not be. We should exist in a world in which being kind to yourself is a given, but it is currently radical. And the more that people do these radical things, the more normal they become. Yes, and that's a good thing.
Tina** ((00:45:28)) - - Yes, that's radicalized self-love. I love it on radicalized, I should say. before we go, could you share something about yourself that not a lot of people know that has nothing to do with your job?
Amparo** ((00:45:46)) - - Oh, I'm such an open book. I'm, like, wondering what to most people not know. I can share. Okay, I can share a story. Okay. When I was a little girl.
Speaker 3** ((00:46:00)) - - Okay.
Amparo** ((00:46:01)) - - So when I was a little girl, I've always been a a very spunky, service oriented, but, like, wants to explore, wants to challenge things kind of person.
Amparo** ((00:46:11)) - - And so I've always been I had to suppress it during chunks of time because it wasn't accepted. But that's how I've always been. And so I'm remembering the story of my parents telling me that when I was two years old, they took me to Mexico to meet my grandparents, and they were amazed and scared at the same time that when they took me for a walk and it was out in the mountains somewhere, I insisted on not being carried, that I insisted on just running ahead, because I was. I wanted to exert my experience of independence in the world, and that was notable. I know that it's much more commonly seen now, which makes me extremely happy seeing well taken care of. Kids who are respected for their independence.
Speaker 3** ((00:46:55)) - - Is.
Amparo** ((00:46:56)) - - Wonderful. but I grew up in a community that, as a woman, I was not only not allowed, I was shamed for those things. So that's that's a story that I'm remembering.
Tina** ((00:47:10)) - - I love that, that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Yeah.
Tina** ((00:47:13)) - - Thank you. Thank you for being a guest and sharing your wisdom and your experience and your story. I think it's so important to tell our stories so that people know that they're not alone and that they could really relate to us. Everybody. We're all connected. So thank you for coming on. I really, really appreciate you.
Amparo** ((00:47:31)) - - Thank you. Likewise.
