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Welcome to Quiet Mind: Fearless and Free, a podcast dedicated to helping you quiet the mind, face your fears, and step into the freedom of a heart-centered life. I'm Leah Danley, licensed psychotherapist, and dietitian, founder of The Quiet Mind, a collective and holistic guide for those seeking peace beyond the busyness of life and the endless chatter of the mind.
This podcast is a space for deep reflection, practical wisdom, and gentle encouragement. Together, we will explore how to live with greater calm and confidence as we fearlessly face the traumas of the past, in order to let go of the stories that hold us back, all with the ultimate goal of reconnecting with the quiet intelligence within us all.
Each week, we will dive into a topic of curiosity, something to reflect on, question and explore in our own lives without judgment and with compassion. From taming the inner critic to finding stillness in the middle of chaos and maybe even figuring out why your brain keeps replaying that embarrassing or terrifying moment from 20 years ago. There's something for everyone here.
Welcome back to The Quiet Mind: Fearless and Free Podcast season one, From Fear to Freedom, Releasing Anxiety and Embracing your True Self. I'm Leah Danley, and today we're exploring episode three, Protective Patterns, the coat analogy. In our last episode, we uncovered the roots of our core beliefs, those deep stories we form early in life about who we think we are.
Today, we're continuing that journey by exploring how those beliefs turn into behaviors and ways of thinking called protective parts, or protective patterns, what I am calling for today's purpose, the coat analogy. These protective layers were once developed and worn for survival. They were essential to a young self-caught in an overwhelming environment that she felt helpless to make sense of. But over time, these coats we put on can weigh us down, keeping us from fully living as our authentic selves. I'm also going to share a powerful story with you, the story many of you have already heard, heard called the Golden Buddha, and I'm also going to share a personal experience from my own life where I realized I was looking outside myself for proof of my worth. Both of these will help us see how to begin loosening those protective patterns with compassion and clarity.
So let's dive in. Imagine a young child, perhaps even yourself, as a child, navigating the world when life felt overwhelming, critical, or emotionally unsafe, the mind responded by creating protective layers, much like wearing coats. Each coat was designed to keep you safe. The perfectionist coat whispers, if I can do everything right, I'll avoid criticism. The people-pleasing coat says, if I make everyone happy, maybe I'll feel accepted or loved. The Invisible coat feels like, if I stay small and quiet, I won't get hurt. The controlling coat may say, if I can control every detail, I'll stay safe from uncertainty and not have to feel helpless. These coats were needed once. They helped you cope, helped you survive, but over time, they may have stopped serving you. What once felt protected now feels heavy like wearing winter gear in the middle of summer, lots of suffering and difficulty moving and often we don't even realize we're wearing them. They become so familiar we think they are us, but they're not. They're just outdated layers trying to keep us safe from past pain. You that reminds me of the powerful metaphor I want to share with you today, the story of the Golden Buddha. Centuries ago, there was a massive statue of a Bucha made entirely of gold when invaders threatened the. Village, the monks covered the statue in layers of clay and mud to protect it from being stolen or destroyed, and it worked.
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The statue was forgotten, hidden beneath the layers for generations. It wasn't until much later, when a crack appeared in the clay that someone noticed the shimmer of gold underneath. Slowly, the villagers chipped away the clay, revealing the radiant gold that had been there all along. I love this story because it mirrors what happens with us as children, we come into the world essentially pure, radiant, and whole, like the golden Buddha.
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When life feels painful or unsafe, we cover our true nature with protective layers, these emotional coats like perfectionism, people-pleasing, control become the clay that hides our inner radiance. But just like the Buddha, the gold is still there. Your True Self has never been damaged. It's simply being covered. And healing isn't about fixing yourself. It's about gently peeling back the layers that were never you in the first place. I want to share a personal story with you, because I've worn these coats too, and for a long time, I didn't even realize it when I was a young therapist, also young mother, I unconsciously look to my clients and my children as evidence of whether I was good enough. I thought, if they're improving, if they're thriving, then I'm doing well, then I'm worthy. But that belief wasn't coming from truth. It was coming from the not-good-enough coat I had worn for years, and it led me to try to control things that were never mine. To control I would find myself overworking, trying to fix and manage everyone's outcomes. I didn't realize it at the time that I was using their progress, or lack of it as a mirror for my own value, and the truth is, it didn't work.
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It left me exhausted, burned out, and disconnected from both myself and the people I cared about. Worse, it was actually disrespectful to their own life paths, their personal curriculum. Each person, whether a client, a child, or friend, has their own unique lessons to learn, and they're their responsibility by trying to control their growth, I wasn't respecting their right to experience life on their own terms. Looking back, I can see it now that COVID was just a protective part of me in fear, afraid I wasn't good enough on my own, afraid I needed proof from the outside. But the truth, I've always been enough, and so have you. Here's the important thing, these coats were never a flaw. They don't mean you're broken. They were attempts to keep us safe, to keep us feeling loved, protected and like we belonged. But you are not the coat. When you notice yourself wearing the perfectionism coat or the controlling coat, the goal isn't to criticize yourself for it. It's to pause and say, Ah, there's that old protective layer again, I must be having something inside that I'm not wanting to feel.
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And say, Thank you for trying to keep me safe, but I'm okay now, or depending on the circumstance you may want to gently look into the lining of that coat and see what belief is it protecting you from, like the fear that you aren't good enough or that you don't matter. The healing begins not by forcefully ripping off the coat, but by becoming aware that you're wearing it, loosening the buttons, feeling the weight and gently deciding if it's holding you back.
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So let's do a practice together, if it feels comfortable to you to close your eyes and you're in a safe place to do. So go ahead and do that. Make sure you can feel your body from head to toe you're fully present. And take a deep breath. Now identify the coat you are often wearing. We have many so reflect on a recent time you felt maybe anxious or angry or overwhelmed or reactive in some way to discover which code reflect on what you were thinking and feeling, also, what behavior were you already doing or did You start doing to mitigate the feeling?
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What program combination of behavior, thoughts, feelings and body sensations, were you playing at that time? Was it the CO program called perfectionism? Was it, the one called people pleasing control, or even a crisis code that comes in to shut the system down, and that could operate through sedation or distraction? This might look like overeating and TV watching as a child, but now, when that coat comes on, it could operate with alcohol or sleeping a lot or just extreme overthinking and working as an adult, I now think the code, and that may feel counter intuitive, but it's not there to hurt you.
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Think it for the intention to keep you safe, loved belonging gently. Place a hand on your heart and say, I see you. I see you. I see the coat. I see the belief that it protects and I see that child, that little child that's underneath it all. Now imagine loosening the buttons, unbuttoning, unzipping the coat just a little. You don't have to take it all off today, just feel the space you create when you loosen that program just a little. It may feel a bit uncomfortable, but that means change is happening if you never push the limits to what is familiar to you, you aren't changing. You're just repeating the all patterns.
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Now take another breath. You and imagine that you're not going to change a thing right now. Instead, in this moment, you're simply going to soften the edges around your human condition. Imagine a hug wrapping you with love and acceptance all the way around the coat at the same time, remembering the gold underneath it all has never left. You are not the coat you were, the one underneath it already hold. You just need to patiently and compassionately uncover the gold. This practice is about gentle awareness, no forcing, just noticing, just softening around your unique version of human. As you move through this week, I invite you to start an. Noticing these protected coats with kindness, noticing the weight, not with judgment, but with curiosity.
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In what ways are they out wearing their usefulness? In what ways are they keeping you small or holding you back. The coats were never who you are. They were simply layers meant to keep you safe, and now you're an adult who has developed enough wisdom and safety in the present moment to begin questioning their usefulness in your life today.
If this reflection resonates with you, I invite you to follow me on Instagram at Quiet Mind Collective with Leah. In my bio there, you'll find a link to my free 15-minute meditation. It's a simple guide to help you step back from the roller coaster of the mind and reconnect with your heart-centered wisdom. Thank you for joining me on this journey. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with someone who might need this message, or leave a review to help others find this podcast. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes where we'll explore how to work with the past, navigate the conditioned mind and untangle its sticky web, one step at a time. And hey, let's make this a two-way conversation. Drop me a message and let me know what resonated with you. I'm here for the stories and the connection too. Until next time, stay curious, stay present, and remember you already have everything you need to be fearless and free.
