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#119: Becoming more YOU with Theresa Lear Levine

• Polly Warren

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This week, I’m joined by the brilliant Theresa Lear Levine - author, podcast host, EFT Master Practitioner, certified hypnotherapist, and founder of Becoming More Me.

Theresa’s work is all about helping high-achieving women, especially those navigating ADHD, reconnect with their truest, most empowered selves, so they can live from a place of calm, clarity, and confidence.

Her book Becoming More Me and her podcast of the same name are heartfelt, practical guides to healing past wounds, regulating the nervous system, and aligning with the abundance that’s already here.

In this conversation, Theresa opens up about her personal journey, unravelling trauma and high-functioning anxiety, receiving an ADHD diagnosis at 43, and finally stepping off the treadmill of hustle to embrace a more peaceful, grounded way of being.

This episode is full of golden nuggets, aha moments, and gentle truths, and it’s especially for you if you’ve ever felt disconnected, burnt out, or stuck in the exhausting loop of not-enoughness.

You’ll learn:
✨ The subtle signs of self-disconnection in midlife, and how to start coming back home to yourself

🧠 The possible overlap between perimenopause and ADHD, and why your hormones might be influencing more than just your mood

💭 How the scarcity mindset keeps us stuck, and the simple shifts that open the door to more ease and abundance

🧘‍♀️ The science and magic behind EFT tapping, and how it can create powerful emotional and physical transformation

🌱 Why slowing down might be the most radical (and effective) thing you can do in midlife

Let this conversation be your reminder: midlife isn’t about becoming someone new—it’s about becoming more you.

Connect with Theresa  by buying her book, listening to her podcast or checking out her offers with the links below:

Book your FREE insight call with Theresa https://gamechangingconversation.com/

Visit https://theresalearlevine.org/ to get Theresa's book BECOMING MORE ME: Tapping into Success– Subconscious Secrets of an ADHD Entrepreneurial Mom 

Listen to Becoming More Me Podcast 

Join Theresa's Community https://www.skool.com/becoming-more-me-community/about

IG: https://www.instagram.com/theresalearlevine

Email: theresa@theresalearlevine.com

Download The Breath Check-Up - your FREE guide to understanding how well you're breathing right now.

Download my energising 5 Minute Morning Practice to get your day started in the best way possible.

To find out more about my membership The Inner Space go to: https://www.pollywarren.com/theinnerspace

Email me at: info@pollywarren.com
https://www.pollywarren.com/
https://www.instagram.com/pollywarrencoaching/

Polly:

Are you, like me, riding the roller coaster of midlife and menopause and eager to get back to living your best life? Are you tired of low energy, a short temper and endless self-doubt? Well, it's time to stress less and shine more. It's time to ditch the worry, reclaim your mojo and unleash your inner brilliance. It's never too late to transform, and you're certainly not too old, and, in my opinion, midlife and menopause provide the perfect opportunity to do just that. Join me each week for inspiring stories and expert insights on topics covering all things midlife, menopause and personal development. So, when you're ready, let the beautiful menomorphosis begin. You, teresa, it's wonderful to have you here on Venom Offices. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Theresa:

I'm delighted to be here. Polly, Thanks for inviting me.

Polly:

Oh, thank you. Well, it must be morning for you because you're over in near Washington in the states, aren't you?

Theresa:

right. Yeah, I'm in Maryland. It's a little after 10 in the morning, so you're in the afternoon, but here we are together and I just love. Abilities we have virtually you found.

Polly:

I know it's amazing, isn't it, teresa? You've got a podcast called Becoming More Me. You've also written a book. Honestly, I'm in admiration of anybody who writes a book, because I know it's a process and also entitled Becoming More Me, and that's also about tapping and your ADHD, and I just would love for you to just tell us all a little bit more about you. Why did you come up with the title Becoming More Me for your podcast and for your book? What does it actually mean? And, yeah, maybe a little bit about how that has all come about.

Theresa:

Oh, the title Becoming More Me came up because this healing journey is never over, right and I found myself really focusing on growth and I guess at first you know if I'm going back decades, honestly it was more personal growth and mindset at first, and then realizing I wanted more of a spiritual deep dive and then getting more into the mind, body connection, specifically with the nervous system and the subconscious mind, and then going through all of my own trials and tribulations alongside the learning whether it was car accidents back in the day, my first marriage, my divorce, having children, wanting to be present and kind of being stuck in a scarcity and lack mindset that made it really difficult at the time.

Theresa:

And every time that I would kind of being stuck in a scarcity and lack mindset that made it really difficult at the time. And every time that I would kind of reflect on things, I would be able to see how far I've come and also be reaching for that next place that I wanted to go and realize that I'm always just becoming more of who I want to be in this world and then wanting to support other people in doing that, because this really is a never-ending journey and I always like to say I like to help people get present for the never-ending journey of becoming and that was really the purpose of starting the podcast to share more of the things that were working for me and helping me. And then it just seemed natural for the book as the main title. And then you know, the subtitle is um tapping into success subconscious secrets of an ADHD entrepreneurial mom, because that's typically who I end up serving the most of.

Polly:

Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? We often end up serving who we are ourselves, and they just come.

Theresa:

The old me keeps showing up for me over and over again. It's like me seven years ago that I, that I help over and over again when, teresa, did all this start to come to light?

Polly:

when did you start making? When did this whole process, in this whole journey, start for you? What sort of age were you?

Theresa:

I don't know if I can pinpoint when I really started getting into like personal growth and development, but I really started getting into personal growth and development.

Theresa:

But I do remember growing up and having my parents were going through divorce when I was around fourth or fifth grade and my mom got really into personal growth and development and she was probably a little bit younger than I am now my age and I still remember, like the public broadcasting system, tv shows that were on with like Wayne Dyer promoting whatever his book was at the time or whatever, and thinking like, oh God, this again. And then I grew up to read and reread pretty much every one of Wayne's books. Okay, oh, so it's always been there, like the seeds were planted, and just like my kids are a little sarcastic and snarky about the things that mom does now reinforces to me that it's not all lost on them and that maybe someday they're going to remember. Oh yeah, mom used to do this EFT tapping thing and we used to laugh at her how it's helpful or oh, she always told me it was in my subconscious mind and then they'll maybe explore it.

Polly:

So, oh, my god, I can say, as far as I can remember, I can so relate to that, with my kids making snarky comments about the things that you do. Mine are exactly the same, but I do think one day you know there's little things that it will come back to all that. So that's really interesting because for me, I found I came to it all much, much in my life. It was more in my sort of midlife and when things started to really when I started to feel really very disconnected from myself and unfulfilled and that whole feeling of needing something else, despite the fact that I thought that I had everything I always dreamt of and I think that's I mean, and I think that's very common. Well, I know that's very common. That happened later for me also. What are the signs for somebody because I come across it quite a lot speaking to lots of women the signs of feeling that disconnection, that signs of you're not really you, you're not in a place that you really you.

Theresa:

You're not in a place that feels fulfilling Absolutely. I mean, disconnect can manifest in so many different ways and a lot of times it is more subtle to begin with. I mean I can remember the disconnect that I felt earlier in life when I was going through like healing from car accidents and feeling isolated, kind of like I didn't belong. Everybody else was able to work and do things physically, that I was having issues with time and kind of feeling that, that isolation, and then having a deeper sense of it when I was going through my divorce years later, after having my first son. And then in the midst of you know, I've been married to my now husband for the last 16 years and we've been together for almost almost to 20. But, you know, in the midst of a healthy, happy marriage and after having, you know, four kids, feeling a lot of that lack and scarcity mindset come in and it hitting even deeper than ever before and this feeling of you know I have all these blessings and everything is really so right in my life. So why do I feel like something's missing? And I think that's what a lot of women tend to experience somewhere in their 30s, maybe their 40s, maybe all of it if it's not addressed. And I think it's a combination.

Theresa:

For me, I think it was a combination of, like the ADHD, the life experiences, the feeling like I had to squeeze what I wanted and what felt purposeful and meaningful to me into these like little cracks of the day that were available between feeding and naps and cleaning up dishes and doing laundry and trying to, you know, work a business from home and take care of myself and exercise and all the things, and it's like there's there was so little left. It felt like that was a mindset thing more than an actuality. And learning how to shift that to really bring more pleasure into my life. I think around that time it's very common for women to realize where did pleasure go? Like it's not even on the back burner anymore, it's not even in the kitchen. You know it's. It's who knows where pleasure went. But re infusing every area of life with pleasure and joy and allowing that to fuel our success, instead of hustling and striving and trying to check things off of a to do list which becomes very unfulfilling very quickly. But so many of us are driven by that, like high functioning, anxiety or achievement and things, so we've kind of forgotten how to do that and that can really lend itself to that feeling of being disconnected.

Theresa:

But when we're disconnected it can show up also. It can show up physically, it can show up through fatigue, that anxiety that I mentioned. It can be chronic stress and that really is a key indicator that you're not in alignment with your true self. You're trying to meet these external expectations instead of honoring your own need, your own desire, your own pleasure and usually I also see this, I saw this in myself and I see this in most of my clients is a disconnect from intuition, from being able to really tap into what our gut is telling us and then follow that. A lot of people be like oh, I knew and then I didn't do it. But there's that disconnect of actually like following through. So there can be a lot of indecision and things that come up.

Theresa:

And disconnect can also show up in self-doubt, lack of confidence in those decisions that you're making in your relationships. It can show up in people pleasing, not having boundaries, not being willing to put what you truly want and desire first and also not knowing what you truly want or desire, kind of like I said, about pleasure being so far removed. Oftentimes when I talk to many, many women around my age or a little bit, you know, younger or even older, it's like what do you really want? And they're like nobody's asked me that I haven't thought about that in ages, like all I know is what other people need and how I serve them, but I haven't really thought about, gosh, what hobby would I enjoy taking up? Or what actually feels good to me physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally they don't know. So taking time to reconnect with that is so crucial.

Polly:

I mean I totally relate to so much of what you just said. For people listening they also will be able to really, really relate to so much what you said. I'd love to come back to this scarcity mindset, this lack mindset, because I think this is something which is so ingrained in so many of us. I just can't. I haven't got enough time because I haven't got enough money, because I've got to work all the time. What do you say to that, teresa? Because for that person listening, you know and it's very hard to notice sometimes that you've got that mindset. What do you say to those people? How do you start that turnaround to make, to create more of an abundant mindset? Yeah, absolutely.

Theresa:

It's a great, great question. A lot of people feel trapped in it. I mean scarcity mindset. I was there, I go there sometimes.

Theresa:

Still I'm not yes, I figured it all out and I'm like, uh, yeah, we're always. We're always figuring it out over and over again on different levels and in different ways. But it's really easy to feel trapped by that Like there's not enough time, there's not enough money, there's not enough resources. But I mean the simple thing and it's going to sound like, yeah, well, but what we focus on, we create more of. So if we're going to focus on those things, then we can expect more of that groundhog day of scarcity just coming back over and over again. I felt it myself so often.

Theresa:

But the reality is that this mindset is deeply ingrained from childhood. It's deeply ingrained from society. We're usually taught to believe that either there's not enough or we're not enough. Unfortunately, it's crazy that's one thing that almost anybody I've worked with ever needs to work on Like we all have this feeling somewhere or other from our lives that we're not enough in some way shape or form. So it's like scarcity in ourselves that just kind of spreads outward and that's kind of what leads to that hustle and the overgiving and the working harder and that survival mindset. But it keeps us stuck in this cycle of fear and when what we want is abundance and love. We really have to be able to, you know, flip that switch.

Theresa:

So I'd say, first, it's important to acknowledge that those beliefs, they are not the capital T truth of who you are. They're shaped by external influences. Beliefs can be changed. We have the power and the authority to change our beliefs and create something that is more aligned with our true, authentic self and to start really like shifting that narrative, instead of focusing on what you don't have, gratitude, appreciation for what you do and I know it sounds small to some people I mean I just I was speaking with somebody the other day who was talking about, I mean really having like true scarcity, like I only have this much money to make it through from paycheck to paycheck to eat, and I'm feeling this, you know, stress around scarcity of food and it being available to me to pay for, and you know, but she's never gone hungry and she's never, it's never not fed her.

Theresa:

So, if you know, we started talking about like how can we just shift that a little bit to the gratitude for, you know, the food that is in your pantry, the meal that you did have, the one that you can see in your refrigerator that you're going to eat next and you know, just focusing there instead of on fear, which is going to create more fear of, well, maybe this isn't going to be enough and I'm going to run out of food, or maybe I'm going to be hungry or all of those feelings that lead to more of that. I mean, there are definitely serious things that people have going on and if you're in a less serious situation than that, it becomes even easier to really just point out things to just be grateful for and to put your focus there so that you get out of the fear and you can step more into love. Because it's one or the other it can't be both and I love to use EFT to really work on those deeply ingrained beliefs and replace that lack with a mindset of abundance on a really deep level, because it's one thing to acknowledge these things with your conscious mind. It's another thing to accept them fully on a nervous system level and be able to show up and behave differently on a regular basis and create new experiences that align with an abundant reality regularly, because you know abundance shifting from lack to abundance it's not just about money.

Theresa:

Actually, I just did a workshop on this about shifting from survival to abundance, and we used money as the topic, the subject matter, for most of what we talked about. But we did that because usually our relationship with money mirrors how things show up in our spousal or partnership relationships, how things show up in our relationship with health. You know, anything health, wealth and relationship wise is going to also be mirrored in your money story. So that's probably the most common area that we can kind of all talk about and have similar feelings, whether you know somebody is broke or even has a whole lot of money. You know, even people with a lot of money have scarcity beliefs floating around or they have fears about breaking through that next ceiling and being more successful or whatever else is going on. So abundance is also about time, it's about love, it's about energy, it's about opportunities. And when we stop subscribing to the scarcity narrative and we start believing that there's always enough, whether it's time, money or anything else, then we start to see that flow shift in our lives. So it does, you know.

Theresa:

I don't like to say it takes time, because I really do believe that healing and change can happen in an instant when people are really open to it and vibrationally aligned and have the right frequency, but it does take effort, you know. I mean, I think manifesting gets thrown around kind of loosely and people just think, oh, I'm you know manifesting. Thrown around kind of loosely and people just think, oh, I'm you know manifesting this or that and it's just going to happen. But there's aligned action that needs to happen in order for any of these things to come to fruition, because in order for manifesting to happen, things have to be able to drop from the airy fairy world of the crown chakra down into the root, where physical, you know, things take physical form and we can mess things up a heck of a lot from top to bottom with energetic blockages and things that we have come to believe that are not true, that misshape our manifestations and create a totally different reality.

Polly:

Yeah, I mean, I think starting with gratitude is just such a great place to start because I know it gets banded around all the time.

Polly:

Everyone's like, oh yeah, gratitude, everyone's heard of gratitude.

Polly:

But actually when you take time to practice that and it is a practice because we can all fall back into those old belief patterns, but it is a practice when you actually take time to just it's just a small shift. It's just changing the pair of glasses, the lens through which you are seeing the world. It's just literally putting on a new pair of glasses and seeing the world in a way which is just happy for what you have and grateful for for everything that is wonderful and that for me has been one of the biggest shifts just noticing and appreciating what is already there, because it immediately takes you out of that mentality where you can't kind of have it if you're being grateful for everything. Way to help shift these really deep rooted beliefs and reprogram them is through tapping. So I am also a trained EFT practitioner but I wonder I haven't spoken about it for ages actually, but maybe for everybody, just explain very briefly you know what is tapping and how how, for example, would you go through that process of reprogramming an outdated belief?

Theresa:

Tapping is so cool because anybody can do it, it's available to everybody. It is this beautiful combination of ancient Chinese wisdom that's thousands of years old which utilizes these meridian endpoints, these meridians that are all over our body, same kind of places that if you went for acupuncture or a deep tissue massage they would be kind of digging into in order to release your physical or emotional pains. And then it also combines itself with modern day psychology, so that kind of talk therapy element. But I love that with tapping we go right to the amygdala. So once we start tapping these different points and talking about the core issue, we are sending signals right to that little part of the brain, the amygdala, that is in charge of the whole fight, flight, flee, fawn, flop response that we have to things, and it calms that. So we start bringing down the cortisol, the stress hormone, and we start opening up to actual change and actually taking in these new ideas, while releasing these energetic blockages that have caused us to feel whatever dis-ease we've been experiencing. So and that's, an energetic blockage is essentially the cause of any kind of dis-ease we have. So once we can release those sort of things which tapping is super duper effective at doing, we start to feel better.

Theresa:

And when it comes to those like deep rooted beliefs, like we're talking about scarcity, not feeling good enough, those are often stored in our subconscious mind and in our body's energy system. So over time we internalize these beliefs through experiences, through family conditioning, through societal pressures. They become like super ingrained so that we don't even realize usually pretty unconscious, that they are influencing our decisions and our actions, pretty unconscious that they are influencing our decisions and our actions. And then it can show up as anxiety or procrastination or self-sabotage and kind of stuck in this loop, right. So tapping goes ahead and interrupts that loop.

Theresa:

It's not just about like talking through the issue, it's about physically shifting the energy and releasing the emotional charge. So when we tap on those points, we communicate to the body's energy system and that calms the fight or flight response, like I mentioned, and then we feel more grounded, we feel more centered. It's kind of like this reset button on our nervous system and this space creator inside of us where we can create space for new beliefs and possibilities to truly take root after we clear those core issues that are getting in the way of us showing up differently. So for scarcity, for example, if we were directly, we're directly addressing the emotional blockages in our energy system, those things that keep us in that lack mindset. So tapping helps us to clear out those negative emotions, to reprogram the subconscious and then open up like a more expansive, empowering belief that aligns with more abundance, or more trust or more possibility, and I love that it's like it's super gentle. Trust or more possibility, and I love that it's like it's super gentle.

Polly:

Anybody can do it, it's um, it's easy, it's quick and, um yeah, super effective on these issues. Yeah, yeah, it really is. So, yeah, it's, it's great. I mean, I also do a lot of breath work and teach lots of breath work, and that also is great. If you were to do that in conjunction with tapping as well, it is super powerful to calm down, I do yeah, breath and tapping and hypnotherapy and integrative eye movement and all sorts of things and it really really helps yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Polly:

No, exactly what I would love also to talk to you about, teresa, is ADHD, because that's been a big part of well it is, it's a part of you. I would love to know, because at the moment, I don't hear it ever in the UK anyway. There is so much talk generally about ADHD and some might think it sounds like everybody these days has ADHD because everyone's being diagnosed. Well, a lot of people are being diagnosed with ADHD. I've always wondered about it and I don't know is the answer, which is why I'm going to ask you is that because there is more, there are more people being diagnosed, so there is more awareness of ADHD? Is it because of our now environment, because there is so much stimulus constantly out there, or is it something that you're just born with, like it's a, it's something in your brain which you were just born with, or is it a combination of all of the things? Maybe you can just shed some light on it? Or is it something else altogether?

Theresa:

Yeah, that's a really interesting question and I feel like there's not really a wrong answer there. It's definitely a topic that's been gaining a lot of attention and there's definitely a few factors that are contributing to that. So I think there's certainly more awareness than before, and in the past a lot of people struggled with ADHD without understanding what was going on, and I think it's often misunderstood and overlooked. And I'll also say and I don't know if this answers your question, but I think it's going to relate to your audience especially with a podcast called Menomorphosis, which I know like being in perimenopause myself and having spent the last roughly year and a half working my butt off through those symptoms and trying I mean, I have spent thousands and thousands on all different things to work on perimenopause symptoms and I feel like I'm this like micro expert in that department. But one thing that I didn't realize so I was diagnosed I'm going to go off on a tangent here, but I think it's going to answer your question better than I could.

Theresa:

Correct. So I was not officially diagnosed until I was 43. So it was never a doubt in my mind that, whatever we want to call it I hate labels, I mean but ADHD is whatever he knows it as, so it's what we use. But I personally think we all are busy minded these days because of some of the reasons that you mentioned, and for some of us that have more of the symptoms of ADHD and a lot more distraction or difficulty focusing, it can be difficult and challenging. I personally, again, it's kind of like that shift from scarcity to abundance, like to focus on the awesome aspects of it, like the hyper focus and being a great brainstormer. And, you know, being asked a question like you just asked me, and having 50 different ideas coming to my head of how I want to do this. But my kids, the ones that were old enough to be diagnosed, were diagnosed before I was, and it was after going through it with them and kind of seeing like, oh huh, so maybe this is what, maybe this is what I've got going on and it doesn't seem to be prevalent in my husband, so probably came from these genes over here. So maybe I'll go get diagnosed.

Theresa:

So when I was about 43, I did. I went and got diagnosed and use it as an opportunity to understand myself better and to also be able to dabble with you know medication and see if that made any difference. For me it was kind of no bueno, but I was glad to have had the opportunity to see what that was all about and how that affected me. And it wasn't until addressing perimenopause symptoms that I realized why didn't anybody bring that up. When a 43 year old came in to get diagnosed with ADHD, nobody asked me about any of the things.

Theresa:

Because, you know, adhd can have the inattention and focus issues and it can also have that brain fog kind of element to it. But guess what else then? Fog kind of element to it. But guess what else? Then Perimenopause, and in going through different treatments and addressing my systems, through trying to clean things up in perimenopause so that I could, you know, reduce hot flashes and brain fog and inattention, and it's like I didn't even realize and I should have like how connected that was until I tried certain things and was like holy cow, like this is better than ADHD medicine ever was, you know getting, and that maybe the perimenopause plus the ADHD is what was making it so challenging for me in in that time and I think that's also why so many women are getting diagnosed later and I don't think that that's being properly addressed in healthcare and that people aren't informed enough to ask the right questions. So that I mean cause somebody might need hormone replacement therapy more than they need Adderall.

Polly:

It's just too common, isn't it, that women's health generally is just swept onto the carpet and there's not enough known about it. But, yeah, I mean it makes. It makes perfect sense to me, because when our hormones are all over the shop in perimenopause, then, yes, we do become, we have much more brain fog. It does affect our cognition and how our brain works, and so, yes, it totally makes sense that it's something which needs to be explored and and you know, that's great that you've gone down that rabbit hole and and really started to explore it so that you can then share it with others.

Theresa:

Right. My first day on hormone replacement therapy felt more productive and clear than my first day on Adderall yeah, there you go, but I didn't know that without like. I mean, I tried so many things before I figured that out, polly, like it was, it's like frustrating in retrospect.

Polly:

It's like man I could have, could have nipped this, I know, but then but the thing is and we have to remember, and that you know, a message to everybody listening is that you know what works for one person might not work for someone else, and so it really is about. It really is about figuring out what works for you. And you know, I know many people hormone replacement therapy has been an absolute godsend and worked wonders, but then also many where it just hasn't done the job. So it's. But then something else is they have found so, yes, but it's the awareness that it might be helpful. That's the difference. It's about knowing. Oh, maybe they say my ADHD has got worse because of perimenopause, so maybe actually I need to look into hormone replacement therapy and as as a solution.

Theresa:

Yeah, for me it wasn't. I didn't look into it as a solution for that. I was looking into it as a solution for the crazy hot flashes and the unexpected weight gain over the last few years and those kinds of things. And then it like was this aha moment for me when I tried it and I was like I, focus is amazing, like where did that come from? And then this, we're all Google doctoring ourselves. It's like okay, hrt and focus. And then I'm like you know finding all these different answers. I'm like wow, like how did nobody mention this for me or to me or suggest this?

Theresa:

Because I work with all different experts on my health and I'm always looking at different ways of approaching things and experimenting on things, and nobody, nobody.

Polly:

No, out of interest. Trader, what HRT are you on? Does it include testosterone? Yours, because that's very good for cognition. Does it include testosterone?

Theresa:

yours, because that's very good for cognition. Not yet Okay. So it may in the future, but right now no, Just estradiol and progesterone.

Polly:

Well, that's great that you've got it sorted. Well, for now, you know, it's always, it's never changing.

Theresa:

Still a work in progress. It always will be just like we're talking about. But yeah, like you said, that, that awareness that might help somebody that doesn't need to struggle with this for as long as I did to perhaps come up with a solution faster whether that or something else is is so valuable.

Polly:

You have said I have I don't know where I read this or heard you say that you managed, through EFT and I don't know if it's EFT or hypnotherapy that you managed to remove the need for reading glasses. Now, this is something I am very interested in, because since I turned 50, honestly, my sight has not been as good as it once was. It's always been perfect, and I'm interested in this. So what did you do, teresa?

Theresa:

Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people have been interested in that and I've helped a few clients with it too. So I found that need for reading glasses coming up in my early forties and I'm 46 now and I would feel frustrated by the need for that. I wear contact lenses as it is, so it's not like I've cured my vision completely. I've been through retina detachments, I've had all sorts of interesting vision issues throughout my life, so I'm not without those. But I've also found very interesting ways to raise my consciousness in different ways, to accept them in different ways, and I think that was part of the key of getting out of the reading glasses.

Theresa:

But literally I did one, maybe two rounds of EFT tapping and I was just feeling really frustrated one morning about it and you know, putting on, putting on the reading glasses, and I just did a round where it was, like you know, even though these reading glasses frustrate, the bleep out of me like I love, accept and forgive myself, and I went through like all the things, like I don't want to put them on, I feel old, I I feel like my eyes are failing me, I'm too young for this and no, just throwing out all the, all the negative feelings, that's. That's one of the big things that makes EFT effective is if you really authentically address like the really crappy feelings you can't just jump to like my eyes are great, I see perfectly, I don't need my reading glasses anymore, life is perfect. Like you can't. It's kind of like how affirmations don't work for a lot of people because it's too big of a jump so you have to let all the stuff out and then and then kind of make make room for like huh, what would it take for me to not need these anymore? You know what would it take for me to not need these anymore? You know what would it take for me to restore the same vision I had, like three weeks ago, where I didn't need to wear these.

Theresa:

Or you know, and I was, I was having a lot of frustration about, like you know, it was so bad at times when I, when I did need the reading glasses that I really I could hardly like read my phone unless I like totally changed the text size or whatever else. It was just frustrating so that that worked for me, just doing a round or two like that. And then I noticed like the next day I put them on and I didn't need them and I was like, hmm, I got kind of used to putting them on and I was like I really, and then I just kind of forgot like they were sitting by my desk but I would just forget to put them on, and and a week or so went by and I was like, huh, I don't need these anymore. And it's just like something, something resolved energetically there with my own resistance or my own acceptance, and it changed the physicality of it.

Polly:

Wow, so that's so cool. Yeah, I mean, that's really amazing. Yeah, I'm kind of slightly into. I don't really accept that my eyes are getting worse, because I'll never take my glasses to a restaurant, for example, if I go out but then I can't see anything. So I'm literally with my phone, with the light on, trying to read a menu.

Theresa:

Yeah, you know it's really cool. I guess I got extra interested in EFT, especially when I realized that it could like influence our genes, even which is slightly different than what we're talking about right now, but like, from like an epigenetic perspective, like the things that can actually change and yeah, so there's so many like we can actually kind of turn off or turn on different genes and have these effects last for quite some time just with tapping which is crazy.

Polly:

You did the same with migraines as well, didn't you?

Theresa:

yeah, haven't had those and I I use I use EFT for that and I also find hypnotherapy to be really effective for that and for restoring different different things in health migraines, tinnitus, all sorts of things.

Polly:

Like that hypnotherapy I find really helpful for do you find that some people are more, are much more susceptible than others? I mean, are there some people you've worked with and it just hasn't worked? No, it always does.

Theresa:

I think a lot of people have misconceptions about, like, what the trance state is, like, what kind of switching those brainwave states is all about, and also about, like, their own control. I think there's a lot of misconceptions that you're not in control during hypnosis, where actually hypnosis, all hypnosis, is self-hypnosis. I don't hypnotize people Like I work with them and they end up in that state, but it's all hypnosis is self-hypnosis and it's actually a heightened state of awareness. So I think people expect, like, oh, I'm going to forget the whole thing, I'm going to be quote, asleep or this kind of thing. But like, at least in my hypnotherapy sessions, like we're talking throughout them.

Theresa:

It's just we're accessing a different part of the mind than is normally active, the part that is like our massive Google drive, that has everything in there that is not always available to us and getting this, this chunk of time where we can go dig into that and see what it has to say about either the physical things that we're dealing with or the emotional things like what does the subconscious have stored about why I don't feel like I'm enough? What does the subconscious have stored about? You know this, this self doubt that I'm feeling, or my lack of ability to trust myself or others in relationships or whatever else. The subconscious always has a different story than the conscious mind. So, yeah, I've never found somebody that can't get benefit out of that.

Polly:

Yeah, I've never found somebody that can't get benefit out of that. Yeah, yeah, it's just. Yeah, it's. It is opening up new, different parts to yourself and, and yeah, believing understanding yourself a lot deeper, isn't it? And the beliefs which are driving the show, as opposed to what your conscious mind is actually trying to do? I mean, we can only hold something like seven pieces of information in our actual front of our brain, or something like that in our memory. Yeah, so actually being able to access those deeper memories and that deeper understanding is such a powerful, powerful thing to do.

Theresa:

It's not like you said, it's just not in the foreground. I was just doing some work with one of my clients the other day and we were working on boundaries, we were working on people pleasing, and we got just a few minutes into this tapping round just kind of trying to get through the surface of it and in no time went deep super fast and it was coming out about her own wounds from her childhood and feeling abandoned. It was her own abandonment, wounds that she had forgotten about, that were coming through in her over-serving, her own family and her own kids. And she was essentially recreating the same thing, but in a different way, because eventually she wasn't going to be able to keep up with it. And then guess what? Her kids were going to feel abandoned just like she did, and uh, and then just creating this kind of cycle where, yeah, so I mean it's, it's crazy how you can kind of go deep quickly with that. And you know, it's like I never put it together, I never, never made that connection.

Polly:

Yeah, amazing. It's so powerful, this stuff, and sometimes you just need somebody to, just to hold a mirror up and show you this is actually what is going on and that's all you need just to to make the shifts and make the changes, and it can be absolutely life changing.

Theresa:

Greatest gifts for healing mirrors and triggers.

Polly:

Yeah, it's absolutely. Is there anything else, teresa, that you would like to share today, particularly from your book Becoming More Me, which you think would be useful, particularly for a midlife woman?

Theresa:

Goodness there's so much. Have I got a copy here? What would be important to know? Ah, I think that one of the best things that can come through is slowing down. I think that, just like we've gotten out of touch with pleasure, we've also gotten out of touch with the fact that slow is the new fast and that we're actually so much more capable and productive and happy and things really flow when we slow down, and too many of us are just rushing through everything because we're focused on what's next. So when we slow down and we can get present, then we can fall into more of that appreciation and that gratitude that we talked about and we feel so much better. So I actually have a whole chapter in the book called Slow is the New Fast and I talked about how I shifted out of that and into a slower, more you know, flow and ease model of things. That has really served me and my marriage and my kids and friendships and family life so much better.

Polly:

That's something which I am constantly working on as well, because we're all so busy and doing, and particularly when you've got a family and a business and you're doing all the things and you're trying to fit in exercise, and actually, you know, we talked about just going through life and ticking off that to-do list.

Polly:

But yeah, for me as well, it's been a real lesson in you can still do the things, but it's just in the way that you do them. It's kind of retraining yourself to again. It's sort of just like, yeah, just slowing down. And I think for me, I always thought, well, I can't, I can't slow down because I've got too much to do. But actually you get much more done when you do slow down and it feels so much better, rather than in the mornings maybe. Just, you know, for me, even just getting up a little bit you know, well, I get up really early anyway, but it's that's, you know, giving myself that time, and so you can start the day in in the way that you want to, to carry on in a way which is relaxed, which is calm, which is, you know, and it just filters out and trickles out into every other, every other aspect of the day.

Theresa:

But the thing that people overlook is that in making that shift from being the overachieving hustler and striver and to-do list checker offer, there's going to be discomfort and that you're going to have to really learn how to feel that discomfort and move through it.

Theresa:

And that's where, like, the modalities that I implement were so helpful to me and have been to others, because otherwise you will revert back to that version that hustles and does instead of you know, I would say we have to shift from doing to being.

Theresa:

But if that's not what you've been used to, it will bring up a lot of things because in the being we embody more and we connect with things that we have been maybe avoiding feeling, avoiding doing all sorts of other things. So there's a whole journey that happens in just that switch. It sounds like the simple thing oh, we're just going to switch from doing to being. Oh, we're just going to switch from doing to being. Oh, we're going to just switch from, you know, moving fast on everything, just slowing down, you know, like there's a whole thing that's going to happen when you do that and you're going to need to support yourself through that or connect with support that supports you through that, because you're going to be a different person on the other side of it yeah, absolutely, because your nervous system has become so used to being in that sort of hyper aroused state that you just it feels virtually impossible to slow down.

Polly:

It's like your new normal uh. So I, yeah, I totally agree you'll be bombarded by.

Theresa:

You know this isn't going to work. You can't do that. How is it? You know, how are you ever going to get things done?

Polly:

you, yeah, all the thoughts theresa, thank you so much today for coming on, and it's been so lovely to chat and to meet you. For anybody who would like to find out more about you, find out more about your work, get your book where can they find you?

Theresa:

Absolutely. I'll give you two places. One would be Instagram, where you can find me. My handle is at Teresa Lear Levine, that's T-H-E-R-E-S-A-L-E-A-R-L-E-V-I-N-E. And then the other place I have a great free community on the platform known as Skool, which is spelled S-K-O-O-L. So you'll go to skoolcom, forward slash discovery, type in my name, which I just spelled a second ago, and you'll see the Becoming More Me community pop up and you can request to join it there.

Theresa:

That community has so many resources in it. Everything is free. There's awesome people in there that are going through similar things to you. I host free workshops every month and happy to guide you towards the resources that are going to help you the most. And if you message me on either one of those platforms and tell me that you know Polly sent you and you heard me on her podcast I will hook you up with a totally free you know breakthrough session where we can create a roadmap looking at your challenges and your goals right now, to kind of get you from where you are now to where you want to be. And that's totally complimentary, to just mention it, and I'll send you a link.

Polly:

Wow, amazing, thank you, Thank you. Thank you, teresa. That's amazing. I'll put all of that in the show notes. So, yeah, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure and yeah, thank you, thank you.