Why I Want To Be Bothered

by | Mar 10, 2023 | Uncategorized

When you proclaim something and put some intention on it, Life tends to put it in your path to ask you if you’re really sure. In this episode, I unpack a couple of things related to healing and my words for this year that have been coming up for me lately.


Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | Stitcher

Join me as I explore popular online messaging around nervous system regulation and finding what resonates with my wild soul. I also touch on the divine timing of some scrubby and bothering behavior that I’ve been inundated with and what that means for my words of the year.

In episode 418 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:

  • (1:22) What The REAL Uplevel Interview Series is all about 
  • (3:19) Healing in the age of social media  
  • (6:05) Why it’s unrealistic to strive for a perfectly regulated nervous system all the time 
  • (8:51) Cultivating a flexible, resilient, and adaptable nervous system
  • (12:35) The two reasons why I’m releasing the word ‘unbothered’ as one of my words for the year
  • (17:27) What I’m realizing about my boundary with #NoScrubs

Resources mentioned by Elizabeth in the episode:

Work with me:

Special offer:

Stay in touch: 

Quotes from this Week’s Episode of the Embodied Podcast: 

  • So much of healing is not about fixing yourself ー it’s just peeling back the layers to reveal and embody who you really are. 
  • It’s amazing to be able to regulate your nervous system. But just like a lot of things, your nervous system is just not going to be regulated all the time. And getting dysregulated doesn’t mean that you’re not healed enough or that something’s wrong with you.
  • Being bothered is actually a really good thing in my life. It shows me where my values are. It shows me where I have tolerated something or signed myself up for something that goes against my values. It shows me where perhaps I have compromised my values and I need to recalibrate. 
  • It’s not gossip every time we talk about a person.There’s a big difference between talking shit and just processing what happened. 
  • When we do our healing work, our spiritual development work, and our liberation work, we don’t have to be pristine, perfect, or do anything to the extreme.

How was this episode for you?

Was this episode helpful for you today? I’d love to know what quote or lesson touched your soul. Let me know in the comments below OR share the episode on Instagram, tag me your stories @elizabethdialto, or send me a DM!

About the Embodied Podcast with Elizabeth DiAlto

Since 2013 I’ve been developing a body of work that helps women embody self-love, healing, and wholeness. We do this by focusing on the four levels of consciousness – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

In practical terms, this looks like exploring tools and practices to help you tune into the deep wisdom of the body and the knowing of the heart, which I believe are gateways to our souls. Then we cultivate a new relationship with our minds that allows the mind to serve this wisdom and knowledge and soul connection, rather than override it, which is what many of us were taught.

If you’ve been doing self-help or spiritual development work for a while, these are the types of foundational things that often people overlook in pursuit of fancier concepts that often aren’t practical or sustainable. Here, we will focus on building these strong foundations so you can honestly and thoroughly embody self-love. If you’re feeling it, subscribe to the show, and leave us a review wherever you listen from. You can also keep up with show updates and community discussions on Instagram here.

Transcript for Episode 418 “Why I Want To Be Bothered“:

Elizabeth DiAlto  00:00

Healing is about getting to a place where you can personally function and move through life and experience the things that are going to happen, right. stress, strain, drama, trauma, chaos, grief, tragedy, right? No one is above that stuff. I don’t care how spiritual you are. I don’t care how good your fucking vibes are. No one’s above that stuff shit is going to happen. And how are you going to be able to move through it when it does, right?

Elizabeth DiAlto  00:35

Hello, everybody, welcome to episode number 418 of the embody podcast, I am your host, Elizabeth C Alto. And before we dive into the episode today, I am so excited because finally, you can enroll for the real up level business interview series. I’ve been talking about this thing for like the last few months. And we still don’t actually go live until April 3. However, when you sign up anytime between now and April 3, you can get it for a half price. And that is not intended to create urgency, it’s actually more of an accessibility thing. For those of you who have been tuning in and listening in and waiting for this series to go live. Why not save a little bit of money before this thing kicks off. So you can go to the real up level.com.

Elizabeth DiAlto  01:22

And just to let you know what it’s all about, if you have not heard me mention it. By the way, it’s fun to talk about it now that I’ve completed all the interviews, and gotten through and have personally learned so much from these 17 different conversations with amazing, amazing guest mentors and speakers. Basically for too many years, I let myself get overly distracted by how toxic cringy and harmful the coaching, health and wellness and online business industries are. finally doing something about it by creating something for coaches and healers feels so good. It also feels so good to be ready to do something about it. Because I personally have spent the last six years in the trenches of this work and trust you will see in the conversations, I still have a long way to go myself. But you know the saying if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go together. And when I say this work, I mean justice, liberation, anti oppression and decolonization work, and not just in my own personal life, but integrating and implementing those things in my business to the maximum capacity and ability that I can each year year in and year out, season in and season out. And the series is a reference to learn from, first of all, from incredible guides and professionals who do justice dei anti oppression and decolonization work as well. You’ll hear from several other coaches and healers who’ve been in the trenches, like me learning unlearning, implementing and integrating liberatory practices in their businesses for years, Ahem, ahem, long before 2020 When it officially became trendy and marketable to do it. So you’re gonna go for some real ones. And I’m so excited about this, my wild dream is for the future of business to be liberatory. And if you are with me on that, go to the real uplevel.com and sign up for the series.

Elizabeth DiAlto  03:19

Now, to get into today’s episode, I wanted to talk about a couple of things related to healing. And this increasingly digital age we live in the proliferation of social media can really ingrain in people, these concepts, these ideas, and these, what I want to call them really, really it’s just new programming, right? But you know, so much of healing is not about fixing yourself, it’s not about that you need to be fixed or that you’re broken. It’s really just peeling back the layers to reveal and uncover and embrace and embody who you really are, which in my world, we talk about that being your wild soul, right, letting your soul take up more space in your life. And in order to do that, you really need to shed the programming and conditioning of again, just living in this fucking culture, living in this world living in this society. All the things we take in through our ear holes, like secondhand smoke in the forms of advertising, marketing, information, media, TV entertainment, so much of which is still painted through these systems and structures of oppression, like colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism, heteronormativity, racism, like white supremacy, all the fucking things, right? 

Elizabeth DiAlto  04:40

So we’re all being inundated with that all the time. And then you have this big social media thing. And now more people are talking about healing, which is friggin great, right? Like, please for the love of God. Don’t anyone feel like you shouldn’t talk about healing on social media? Because we need more people waking up healing doing their work, all those things. However, when we haven’t yet shed all of the different systems and structures of oppression and supremacy, and those things are still coming through the messaging and the healing practices, which Listen, we don’t need to hate on people for doing that, we all do it, we’ve done it again, because we’ve all taken that shit in like secondhand smoke. But then we’re just kind of deepening the programming just in a different context. So things like your energy needing to be pristine, or your practices and rituals needing to be perfect, or doing anything to the extreme, right, really, always zoom out, look in and question, even those things, because if you’re perpetuating your need to control your perfectionism, your needs to please your need to get it right, you need to be right, you need to be better or ahead than other people, or competitiveness, that’s just not you. It’s just the same shit in a different friggin area of your life.

Elizabeth DiAlto  06:05

And so something I love that I’ve been seeing lately is not just lately, like over the course of time, but what I’ve been seeing more of lately, specifically, is messaging around this, regarding the nervous system. And when you do embodiment work, you know, I do sacred embodiment work. So a lot of it is more rooted in mystical sensual type, movement and practices. But you can’t ignore the nervous system, no matter what, right? So I’m not out here teaching the nitty gritty of the nervous system. But a deep understanding of the nervous system is integrated into everything that I do. It’s just not super explicit. A lot of people have taken in this gold standard of what should be going on with the nervous system to be this word, regulated, right? Which is great. It’s amazing to be able to regulate your nervous system. But just like a lot of things, your nervous system is just not going to be regulated all the time. And getting dysregulated doesn’t mean that like you’re not healed enough or that you know, something’s wrong with you. Because again, we just live in a world that is so stimulating, right? There’s too much information, there’s too much stuff, there’s too many choices.

Elizabeth DiAlto  07:19

Recently, I did a cleanse. And I was a little surprised to be honest that that was what my body wanted. But then I checked in with my body, right my discerning body that has shipped to heal. And then my judging mind that was like, ah, cleanses or fat phobic and this and that I was like, Nah, girl, do the fucking cleanse. So I’m doing this cleanse and a half to tell you how glorious it was for like 10 whole days, to not think about food, to not think about what I was going to feed myself, to not have to make it to not have to do all these friggin dishes all the time. And even just that little thing reminded me how it doesn’t take much to tax or burden, the nervous system in the day to day. And as I’m unpacking and learning more about my own neuro divergence having ADHD, and I’m sure some of you can relate to this as well. Even just going to the grocery store, getting food that I could like, actually make meals out of taking breaks throughout the day to freaking feed myself, it actually takes so much mental energy for me, and so much effort. So it was really glorious to not have to think about that for 10 whole days, which had me thinking about a lot of other stuff, and zooming out in my own embodiment practice to just pay closer attention to what is like the mental burden, what is like the mental tax of all these things that I do in the day to day in my life.

Elizabeth DiAlto  08:51

But I bring that up around the conversation of regulating the nervous system. Because what I have been really appreciating seeing a lot more posts and conversations and videos and things online is to cultivate rather than a regulated system, which is not going to happen all the time, a flexible, resilient and adaptable system. And I love that right? Because those words include that you get to get to a point in your healing where even things that are taxing or burdensome are triggering for the nervous system, just simply don’t create as much of a reaction or response as they used to. And this is one of my favorite things to talk about in the wild soul sacred body membership and all my programs and courses and especially to really and I’m going to use an aggressive word here, hammer into my people who come through my sacred embodiment specialist training is that

Elizabeth DiAlto  09:57

healing is just never about perfect. Mission. Healing is about getting to a place where you can personally function and move through life and experience the things that are going to happen, right. stress, strain, drama, trauma, chaos, grief, tragedy, right? No one is above that stuff. I don’t care how spiritual you are. I don’t care how good your fucking vibes are No one’s above that stuff shit is going to happen? And how are you going to be able to move through it when it does, right? You don’t need to be regulated all the time, you could be able to move through being dysregulated with more grace, without sacrificing joy without shutting down or isolating yourself. 

Elizabeth DiAlto  10:43

So I wanted to mention that because the other thing I’m talking about today, and this is just a real short episode, since I’ve been doing all this work for the real up level series, I haven’t had a huge bandwidth for recording podcasts. But in the beginning of the year, I mentioned on a podcast episode, and we’ll link to it in the show notes. I don’t remember what the episode number was. That two of my words for the year one of them was unbothered. And another one I called scrub free, right? With a hat tip to TLC. If you are a 90s person or a Gen X or an elder millennial, or maybe even a maybe even a millennial, if you had some cool parents or siblings, you probably remember the TLC song, no scrubs. And so I applied the word scrub, you know, not just in a dating context. But in any context, we’ve talked about like scrubby behavior, and I’ve just been fucking cracking up. I know cursing a lot in this episode. I’m like, real fired up today. I have been cracking up at what happened by choosing words, like unbothered and scrub free for my words of the year. 

Elizabeth DiAlto  11:55

First of all, when you choose something, when you like, proclaim something and put some intention on it, life is always going to be like, cool, are you sure. And like, I don’t necessarily love calling it being tested. And it also just doesn’t matter for the sake of semantics. So we’ll just call it you know, being tested, or challenging you Right? Or certainly send you things in that like realm to deal with so that you can fulfill your intention, right, so that you could walk your talk so that you could do what you say you were gonna do. And what I have found really funny is, you know, we’re coming up, we’re a couple weeks out from the spring equinox, and 

Elizabeth DiAlto  12:35

I am ready to release having the word unbothered as one of my words of the year for two reasons. First of all, I’ve been nothing but bothered. Since using that as a word for a year, but why and what I’m taking away from it. And what I’m really realizing is, great things happen when I’m bothered. And this is why I wanted to talk about the regulated nervous system thing, being regulated versus being flexible, resilient, or adaptable, right? being bothered, is it’s like what are you going to do when you get bothered? Or is it going to like, you’re gonna freak out? Or you’re gonna have a meltdown? Or you’re going to start like ranting and raving and like blowing shit up? Or are you going to be like, cool, why does that bother me so much. And then go ahead and learn something about yourself or do something about it. And you know, the real up level interview series really highlighted that for me, because the whole reason I even started it. And I mentioned this in a podcast episode, again, earlier in the year, and I don’t remember the episode number, but I do remember that it was called liberating your communication, or liberate your words to set yourself free. I think it was episode number 413. Actually, 

Elizabeth DiAlto  13:57

I mentioned that I had an experience with a business coach in December. And that ship hissed me off so much. I was like, Alright, I gotta do something about this. You know, I need to talk about the nonsense that I know has been going on in the coaching industry for years that’s been agitating me, like I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, when I was talking about the series, just like distracting me making me want to, like opt out, making me lose focus of my own thing, because I didn’t even want to be associated with like, these mofos, you know, so being bothered is actually a really good thing in my life. It shows me where my values are. It shows me where I have tolerated something or signed myself up for something that go against my values. It shows me where perhaps I have compromised my values and I need to recalibrate. And so I no longer wish to be unbothered and I actually am this.

Elizabeth DiAlto  14:51

So this is what I’ve realized by choosing the word I’m bothered is that I am highly vulnerable, and I am also highly actionable. I I’m not a person that gets taken out by being bothered, I’m able to zoom out, do my own internal work on it, and then decide what external thing comes from this, if anything right now, right, because I’ve been bothered by the coaching health and wellness on my business industries for years. Um, it really started getting to me in late 2017 2018. But the time wasn’t right yet. And so part of that is because back then, how I engaged with being bothered, was much different than now. Now, I could do it from a place where I can be more focused, and I can be less triggered. And I could just be like, Damn, that bothers me so much, and be curious and excited. And I also have been doing the podcast for so many more years now. And I have incredible peers and friends and colleagues that I could be like, Hey, you, I want to talk about this, or, Hey, you have this skill set that I don’t like, let’s learn something about this together. And I’ve just gone so much deeper with friends and other people in my life who I work with and process with. So I’m officially retiring, I’m bothered, I have no desire to be unbothered, I’m perfectly happy to be bothered in my life.

Elizabeth DiAlto  16:12

And then as well scrub free. That one I’m keeping, but I did want to share something about it because I have just been inundated with scrubs. Since picking scrub free as the word and what I love about that. First off, I want to say just like I was saying a little while ago about how when we do our healing work when we do our spiritual development work. When we do our liberation work, we don’t have to be pristine, perfect, or do anything to the extreme that often is what people think they should do. But that is not the way there’s often a middle path, a middle way, a middle ground that is much more beautiful, much more inclusive, much kinder to ourselves and other people involved. And so I’m about finding like that middle way, middle path gray area. Where’s the nuance? Where do we get to honor all of our humanity, all of our complexity? Where do we get to dream up new shit, right? Where do we get to stop trying to do things that we know don’t work? Where do we get to to repeat the Audrey Lorde quote that I’ve probably said 50 times on this podcast over the years, stop using the damn masters tools to dismantle the Masters House to shit does not work.

Elizabeth DiAlto  17:27

So what I love about being inundated with scrubs scrubby behavior scrubby people, since I picked scrub free as a word of the year is it’s given me a chance to be so much more compassionate, right to go. Okay, where am I super judgy? And probably always will be. What do I do with those judgments when they happen? How do I process Who do I process with, and something that’s been really helpful for me, which I know I mentioned in another one of those podcast episodes earlier in the year, where I was talking about liberating all different types of things is that, you know, we do need to talk about people. Every time we talk about a person, it is not gossip, sometimes we’re just processing. And if any of you can relate to growing up in an environment with, you know, parents or teachers or other family members, or guardians, perhaps or people in your community, or perhaps in a religion, where you were constantly gaslit it is actually more important for you than others, to talk about people, again, not to talk shit, there’s a big difference between talking shit, and just like processing what happened and talking about what happened. Because when you have been gaslit a lot, your perception of reality can be off, or your ability to trust yourself and your own intuition and what you feel and what you think probably needs some work. That was a big thing for me. You know, I had people in my family who were like highly sophisticated. manipulators and gas lighters, like you’re telling them how you feel and they’re telling you no, you don’t you feel something else or you think this or you’re not like that.

Elizabeth DiAlto  19:04

And so when you grow up experiencing that, to get to a place where you come back into your own self know what’s yours and what’s not what you feel what you think what is true for you what your values are, to separate yourself from the group, not for the sake of radical individualism, but just for self love in terms of like the framework that I use, which is self awareness, self knowledge, self acceptance, self trust, and self respect, all of which connect you more deeply to your actual soul and disconnect you and unhook you and unattach you from the ego and from the programming and the conditioning and the socialization, right. 

Elizabeth DiAlto  19:45

So I love that I’ve been inundated with scrubs and being able to be like, cool, how do I want to engage with these types of people? And what are the different categories? What are the different areas and so again, I bring that up to say, in a lot of you know what like law of attraction or energy work, you know, the thing people might be like, Well, if you’re having all these scrubs in your life, what did you do to attract that? Or where are you a fucking scrub Elizabeth. And listen, it’s not that I’m not a scrub ever at all in my life where I don’t have crappy behaviors or habits or things that I need to also work on. But it’s not just always about that, if you spot it, you got it stuff. Often it’s about if this is coming up for review, it’s because you need to do something differently with it. And so that is the experience that I’ve been having. And I look forward to continue to work in the scrub free zone of my life, where maybe the outcome is perhaps less scrubby shit coming into my life, or maybe I do actually become either less bothered about it, or just continue to develop deeper and deeper compassion, curiosity, and different ways of engaging with those types of things in my life, or which this has been a very useful practice for me getting support, so I don’t have to do it all on my own, or I don’t have to do it by myself. 

Elizabeth DiAlto  21:07

So I hope any of that was super useful for you. As always, thank you for listening. If you’re a social media person, and you want to share this on social media, I also know a lot of you share the episodes with your friends, and I appreciate that and love you for that so much. I can’t tell you how many people when they come into our membership or something I always ask people how did you find us? Um, because you know, the internet is a vast place. And it’s always interesting to hear how people found their way into the world. And often people say, Oh, friendship podcast, and I think that’s great. So if this resonated for you, or you know, someone who could use any of the things that we talked about today, including the real up level interview series, please share this with your peeps. We will be back next week and I will see you then.