39: Balancing Acts: Motherhood, Mental Health, and the Power of Vision with Brittany Bagy

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Narrator

Hello and welcome to Cherie Lindberg's Elevated Life Academy. Stories of hope and healing. Through raw and heartfelt conversations, we uncover the powerful tools and strategies these individuals use to not only heal themselves, but also inspired those around them. Join us on this incredible journey as we discover the human spirit's remarkable capacity to heal, find hope in the darkest of moments, and ultimately live an elevated life.

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Cherie Lindberg

Welcome to another episode of Elevated Life Academy, and I am your host, Cherie Lindberg. And as you may have seen on our podcast, we are having a Women Entrepreneurs series where I'm reaching out to women healers that are in private practice or in agencies, and just talking to them about what is it like to run our own practices or be in the agencies and also be full time moms and we're just having these spontaneous conversations.

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Cherie Lindberg

So let's see where this takes us. We have a great guest today. Her name is Brittany Bagy and she is in Saint Louis. And I'll let her introduce herself. Hi, Brittany. Thanks for being here.

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Brittany Bagy

All right. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to talk about private practice and business and owning a business and all the rules that I have, and how that kind of plays out. I have a private practice in Saint Louis, Missouri, and I see a lot of different populations, mainly anxiety, people struggling with grief or different life transitions, maybe a new career or just having a baby or changing jobs, going through a divorce.

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Brittany Bagy

Those different major life shifts that they have. And I'm also a mom to three girls, a ten year old and eight year old twins. And so it's busy and it's a lot to juggle, but I do a lot of brain sweating in my practice and a lot in my personal life. That has helped me to navigate this journey and really try to stick with my vision and redefine that vision, you know, so that I can grow healing in my community and in my family and my personal journey.

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Cherie Lindberg

Well, tell us about whatever you're comfortable sharing about your vision. What does that look like for you now? Because I know it's been evolving and changing.

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Brittany Bagy

Yes, it has definitely evolved and changed over the years and over, you know, learning and training and understanding different therapies. And just also the privilege I have to learn from so many clients. I'm working with many people with many different backgrounds and issues has really helped me to, you know, redefine who I want to be, how I want to show up in those different roles, and running my practice and being a mom and being a wife and a friend and daughter.

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Brittany Bagy

And, you know, it looks differently in those roles in terms of trying to live out my values. But it is nice when they can complement each other in different ways. Then, you know, being open to learning from different people and mentors. I've had even, you know, especially people like you, help to really guide how I want to grow my business and grow my family and show up in life.

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Cherie Lindberg

So thinking of your values and your and your vision, can you talk maybe about something in that vision or your values that you know you reflected on and you found maybe a little challenging and you've overcome it?

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Brittany Bagy

Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I kind of goes back to what we were saying about, you know, redefining that vision and that vision evolving. I started my practice. I was thinking about that as we were getting ready for this podcast. I actually opened the LLC in 2016, and I think the twins were four months old and I didn't launch actually going into my office or seeing clients until I think it was May of 2017.

00;04;31;01 - 00;04;59;04

Brittany Bagy

But I was reflecting on that and just really thinking about how. I don't know how conscious I was of a lot of things at that time, you know. But I did have this drive of just I loved being a mom. And it was there was so much newness of having a toddler with twins and nursing and, you know, changing diapers and not sleeping and all these things.

00;04;59;10 - 00;05;24;29

Brittany Bagy

And I just, you know, I had this force of wanting to really not lose myself and really have an identity that was being a mom, but also being able to give back everything I had learned to other people. And so I feel like that's a lot of where that journey started in those new roles for me, and starting the private practice and then being a mom and even then being a wife.

00;05;25;02 - 00;05;51;07

Brittany Bagy

But they were also, you know, it helped me to give more focus in terms of what therapies I was practicing and how I was being present at home and laying out my schedule and being attentive and just being honest about how much of that I could do with this stage of life that I was in, for sure.

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Cherie Lindberg

I mean, having twins and a toddler, three little ones under like they were under the age of two.

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Brittany Bagy

Yeah, yeah, I had three under two or like six months.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. And you're outnumbered. Yes. Did you have a lot of help during that time, or were you, you know, you and your husband pretty much navigating that?

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Brittany Bagy

Yeah, I think that was a really hard part too, because my mom passed away in 2012, and my husband's mom was becoming very ill with cancer and going to treatments. And so we were really trying to help her and take care of her. And, you know, my husband was also working at the time. And so, no, we did not have a lot of support.

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Brittany Bagy

So it was it was a lot to figure out a lot of transitions happening at one time.

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Cherie Lindberg

Well, and maybe that's why you want to work with transitions. I really hear too that during that, you know, that transition time, that part of you, there was a part of you that was still really driven to have. And I, you know, you loved being a mom and you wanted to have another role or identity for yourself.

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Brittany Bagy

Yes. And to tie it back to what you were saying about working with people on transitions, I think that is a significant, you know, influence, especially even in terms of working with a lot of anxious people or people who are grieving, because those are reflective of my experiences during very hard but transformative times and, you know, discovering brains, battling and going through the training and really just connecting with the depth of where that processing took me, even originally, has changed so much.

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Brittany Bagy

And being able to understand things about myself that, you know, was were easy to get lost in when there was a lot of grieving and anxiety and life transitions happening.

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Cherie Lindberg

So you really you had to be intentional with your own healing so that you could have a plan. So not only you can navigate this for yourself, but then be able to hold the space for others that were navigating it.

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Brittany Bagy

Yes, exactly.

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Cherie Lindberg

What was one of your like biggest challenges? Do you think that you had to work on overcoming? Or if not, you, maybe even a client experience that was similar that they had to navigate and got to the other side and like you were saying, transform formative?

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Brittany Bagy

Yeah, I think in terms of I mean, this is more generalized, but being able to be honest with myself about a some of the emotional dysregulation I was carrying around, probably bringing into two sessions sometimes because I had a lot of unhealed stuff, you know, was really eye opening when I was able to do such deep processing with brain spotting.

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Brittany Bagy

Yeah. And different parts work and to really keep at that journey and going to the trainings and learning more and bringing that to my clients. But I think that but that connection with myself that I developed really helped me to see how those challenges, the death of my mom or the eventual death of my husband's mom, or just any of the hardships that were kind of coming in all at one time, were actual opportunities for me to grow, to learn something about myself and to really shed things that I didn't need anymore.

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Brittany Bagy

Believe narratives, emotions. But I loved, you know, the growth that I had and meditating and processing and developing that relation ship with myself really became prime time. The driving force for understanding how to again, like that vision and how I want to show up as a mom and a business owner and all those roles.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, I really like how you're speaking to this in that I, you know, I think there's this misnomer out there that and I really like how you're talking about it in that therapists, you know, the good therapists. And that may be not going to be the right way to say it, but the ones that do their own personal work, the ones that are very aware, work through and grow and change like you're talking about, and then have more awareness and can show up more intentionally.

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Cherie Lindberg

And if you don't do that work like what you were saying, you started to recognize through the work how dysregulated you were and how that can impact a client's process. And so then you you made the decision to keep doing that work for your own healing because of how you wanted to show up for your clients.

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Brittany Bagy

Exactly. And you know, I tell clients this all the time, too. But, I mean, that is one of my big mottos to kind of remind myself and come back to myself that having awareness is the catalyst to being able to change and being honest with myself about those things, rather than just reacting to myself or my mistakes, or even other people with judgment or shame or right.

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Cherie Lindberg

And again, without identifying information, can you can you talk about what was it like for you when you found brain spotting and you started to bring that in as a healing method, you know, for your clients the client said you had been working with for for a time. What were you noticing? What were they experiencing?

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Brittany Bagy

It's funny because immediately I go to like, oh, it was so healing for so many people. And it was very different than the way I had been doing therapy, which is all true. But I also do remember how hard it was.

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Cherie Lindberg

To really.

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Brittany Bagy

Live out and embody the principles of brain spotting, and that that part of my journey, though, you know, it's ongoing. But also the biggest part of me being able to bring those tools and that kind of presence and stability and, you know, just witnessing all the things that are core.

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Cherie Lindberg

Values for me are.

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Brittany Bagy

Really aligned with a lot of the principles of brain spotting. And when I was able to do that for myself as a clinician and then as a mom, and then in all these different roles, it really helped me understand what alignment feels like for me.

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Cherie Lindberg

So let's unpack that a little bit. What are some of the principles that you really are like, connected to and aligning with that make you feel really good about how you're living your life?

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Brittany Bagy

Well, I'm a big component of compassion, as you know what I mean. I think there's so many different elements that even however, you know, different people define compassion. And so to me, it's a lot of intent to understand and be mindful and caring, but it's really the way that it plays out. You know, there's a lot of words we hear about value words all the time and understanding what that looks like.

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Brittany Bagy

For me, it is giving attention to how does that sound? What is the tone of that that would be compassionate, are loving or understanding? How does that play out and how does that feel? And then embodied way? Because I think the more I can give attention to those things, the more I can grow and realign when things are out of alignment, which happens all the time.

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Cherie Lindberg

I think that's the important thing. Like when people think, oh, you know, get in the balance or get into alignment, and then it's like a done deal. You have to make that choice over and over and over again. Being aware, making different choices so that you can become aligned. You might have to say no to something and feel the disappointment of that so that you can be aligned or be in balance.

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Cherie Lindberg

And as soon as you get into balance, you get out of balance because something comes up in your life that you have no control over. So is there when are you Britney being your best self. Like paint me a picture. What does that look like. What are you doing in your life. What are some of the things that you feel when you know you're in your best self?

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Cherie Lindberg

You're aligned with that best self?

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Brittany Bagy

Yeah I think that's a good question coming right from what alignment is and that we bounce out of it all the time because to me, in more of a simplistic way, my best self is just when I am being mindful enough to pause and to set intentions, and I really try to stray away from goals and probably in the way that I define goals.

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Brittany Bagy

Because if I get to, you know, focused on this very specific outcome.

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Cherie Lindberg

And.

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Brittany Bagy

Exactly how it should go and how I should achieve it, it can feel disappointing or upsetting when it doesn't fall perfectly into place with, which is a lot of things that are outside of my control. Most of the time. And so for me, setting intentions of how I'm going to show up and the hard conversations and how I'm going to repair air, knowing that repairs will be needed throughout most of my days, you know, and just work through conflict differently than how I was taught, how I've learned or witnessed.

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Brittany Bagy

And most of my life has been the biggest drivers for me. Feeling competent and resilient and feeling into those values and knowing how to practice them.

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Cherie Lindberg

And then you're teaching all of that to your clients. Beautiful.

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Brittany Bagy

Yes, I hear a lot of clinicians talk about the privilege of being with clients and hearing their stories, and I share that as well. But more specifically, for me, it's such an honor because I get so much of my own learning. I get a lot of ability to give that compassion to myself because we're sharing the common humanity and the room, you know, we're highlighting that we're never going to be perfect, and we all make mistakes and we all hurt or disappoint people.

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Brittany Bagy

But how are we going to use those intentions and our practices and how we show up, you know, to control what we can let go of what we can't? Yeah.

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Cherie Lindberg

I really like what you're saying. And you know, I to listening to what you're saying, had to learn a new way to navigate conflict and growing up repair was never even talked about. It's like you're either to blame or you're not. Right. And so accepting. And I think this leads into your compassion focus to accepting that repair is going to be needed, and to use it to navigate those difficult moments, I think can really help people stay connected.

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Cherie Lindberg

And that's what that's the goal, right? That's the optimal goal. And you can also bring those skills into your own family and with your relationships with your children. And and then you're teaching your, your clients how to do that within their families.

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Brittany Bagy

Yes. And there's so much overlap with what we all experience, even if we are experiencing those things in our own unique ways. And I do think that, you know, learning from other people in terms of how they've had success and repairing or having the hard conversations or gaining the courage to do those things is one is a really cool privilege to have to be able to witness.

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Cherie Lindberg

So last question, why don't you to think back through all of your private practice up until this point, what was like one of your joys or one of your experiences, maybe even it was with a client, but any joy that you can share, or any stories of hope and healing with anyone that you've worked with that was that you would like to share.

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Brittany Bagy

I will say, I mean, I'm trying to keep a journal too, but there's so many people that walk in and I know because I was like living in that and drowning in it without really being able to see it for a lot of growing up. But people walking in with just so much shame and judgment and no awareness as to how they're talking to themselves or how the narratives that they're creating are influencing and adding to their their own suffering.

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Brittany Bagy

Yeah. And I think being able to connect with people, to really see them and help them to understand how some of those negative emotions, shame or judgment, criticism, any of those things have actually served that. And it doesn't make something wrong with them, you know, helping them to understand why they have those parts so that they can change their relationships with those parts of themselves and with those emotions, has been such transformative work for people to do inside the office.

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Brittany Bagy

But to be able to practice outside in their daily life so that they can let go of things that are not serving them. And I just think back to starting a business, too, and making the relationship with myself Paramount was the best way I could, you know, grow. My business was growing. That relationship with myself.

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Cherie Lindberg

Okay, so now you're saying that I got one more question. Yeah. So and I'm sure lots of moms have this question. And I remember what it was like when my kids were little. Three grown adults now. But how did you navigate the relationship with yourself while you were also doing a private practice and raising three daughters?

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Brittany Bagy

Well, and I think it went all back to my identity, and that the first part of that was having to look at all what do I not like about how I'm showing up and about what's going on and how I feel and what this looks like, and how can I feel empowered rather than judgmental or shameful about all the things to create intentions and to create a structure or a routines, or get into a rhythm of more connection, more understanding, more patience, more forgiving, more repair, all of those things.

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Brittany Bagy

What does it look like to infuse those in my life, and how would that change the way I live, the way I feel, my relationships with myself and with other people?

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's so important listening to what you're saying, because so many people come in and they think you either have these, you know, this or you don't know this, they don't understand that you, number one, you might not have had the guidance on how to do this. And number two, these are skills that everyone can cultivate.

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Cherie Lindberg

If you put in time and energy. And that's where the hope comes in. Right. Because some people come in and they're they think they're a lost cause. Like I'm just really messed up. I'm broken. I'm this or that. And then when we really start to to support them and hear their stories with, with the presence that you were talking about, maybe this might be the first time they've ever been seen and heard right.

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Cherie Lindberg

And they get an experience of what that is like, and that's the way it should have been. Now there's an opportunity for them to to see an experience change.

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Brittany Bagy

Yes. And use that and solidify that relationship with themselves, to be able to do that with more align that, you know, rather than external sources.

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Cherie Lindberg

So is there any question I didn't ask you that you want to share any anything else that you would share with our listeners that maybe I didn't ask.

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Brittany Bagy

I was thinking about just a big piece. I think of when I think of businesses and entrepreneurship and imposter syndrome.

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Cherie Lindberg

It is it is one of the big ones. Yes.

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Brittany Bagy

And how common it is. And I'm glad that people are acknowledging and talking about it and trying to normalize that. And so just kind of intertwining with what we've already said, that I think it's going to be a regular thing. And imposter syndrome comes up. If you are generating new ideas or creative things for your business and taking risks, that is going to be a likely visitor.

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Brittany Bagy

Yes. And so, you know, just encouraging people to try to get to know that visitor in a loving and compassionate way so that you can keep driving and growing and evolving.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, because that's the growth edge, isn't it? When we start to go to the edge of our comfort zone and we start to dip out of it and like you said, take those risks and so forth, that's when the imposter might pop up. When when you're doing that. Yeah, that's a very good point and very important for women in entrepreneurship.

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Cherie Lindberg

And, you know, mothers, you know, trying to navigate all those things. So if you had to do it over, would you, would you open up your own business again.

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Brittany Bagy

Oh absolutely. Yeah. It's the best.

00;24;30;27 - 00;24;52;06

Cherie Lindberg

Great. Well, Brittany, thank you so much for being with us tonight and talking about all of your experiences. And we'll make sure that we have all your social media sites on the notes so that everybody can, you know, reach out to if they'd like to it. Is there any classes or anything that you have coming up that I'm not aware of that maybe we might want to highlight?

00;24;52;10 - 00;24;59;05

Brittany Bagy

It's brewing. It's brewing that I got to get some dates sad and say, okay, we will certainly keep you posted.

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Cherie Lindberg

And your website would probably be the best place for them to find that.

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Brittany Bagy

Yes, absolutely.

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Cherie Lindberg

All right. Great. Well thanks again Brittany.

00;25;06;01 - 00;25;08;20

Brittany Bagy

Thank you.

00;25;08;22 - 00;25;46;03

Cherie Lindberg

I hope you enjoyed this podcast as we talked about being a mother of three and how Brittany navigated opening up her own private practice and aligning her values and morals with how she was showing up as a practitioner and her journey with that, and then also talking about imposter syndrome and how that impacts us as practitioners, and how doing our own personal work can really help us show up the way we want to for ourselves, our clients, our partners and our children.

00;25;46;03 - 00;26;14;13

Cherie Lindberg

And as I have always said before, if you find what we are talking about really helpful, please share that with other people out there, because this is elevated life stories of hope and healing, and we're trying to spread the word. We're trying to get information out there. Everyone that comes on the podcast is doing it of their own free will, and our intention is to share positive energy out there and help people any way that we can.

00;26;14;15 - 00;26;19;14

Cherie Lindberg

So thank you for listening. Until we meet next time.

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Narrator

Thank you for joining us on another uplifting journey on Cherie Lindberg's Elevated Life Academy. Stories of Hope and healing. If you found resonance or connection with what you've heard today, we encourage you to share this episode and consider becoming a subscriber. Please spread the word so others can live an elevated life.