S03|16 - How Doing our Inner Work Changes the Game with Stephanie Lopez

 

Stephanie is a mom of two beautiful girls - Annabella and Sophia. She worked at NASA for eight years as an Organizational Psychologist and coach. She holds a doctorate in Organizational Psychology and is also a Licensed Human Element® Practitioner and Brain-Based Coach.

Stephanie guides women in all stages of motherhood (re)discover themselves. her passion lies in helping moms ditch perfectionism and people pleasing, be more true to themselves, and feel more calm, confident, and at ease.

What we cover in our conversation:

• Stephanie’s personal journey of perfectionism, people-pleasing and high achievement
• How she left NASA to pursue a different dream 
• How helping moms to do their own inner work changes everything in life
• What “Inner Work” actually looks like

Connect with Stephanie on IG: @best.self.mama
The BRAVE method: Guide here

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I would be honored to be your coach and help you get the changes you want to see in your life. The tools that I talk about in my podcast and use in my coaching have completely turned around my life and my relationships with my children. I know what it takes and how to make it happen. You can use the links below to get more of my content and to learn what we do in my program By Design. I love helping women tap into their inner expert and build radical connection in their relationships with their children.

Link to membership: By Design
Find me on the ‘gram: The.Parenting.Coach
My website: coachcrystal.ca
Work with me 1:1 right HERE

 

 

Episode Transcript

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hey, I'm Crystal, a certified life coach and mom of four. In this podcast, we combine radical connection and positive parenting theories with the How-To Life Coaching Tools and Mindset Work to completely transform our relationship with our children.

Join me on my journey, unleash your inner parenting expert, and become the mother you've always wanted to be. Make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and rate this podcast on Apple, and check out my transformative monthly membership for moms in the show notes.

Hi. Hi. Welcome to today's podcast episode, How Doing our Inner Work Changes the Game with Stephanie Lopez.

 

Stephanie Lopez’s background, what she does, and how she got started

Stephanie is a mom of two beautiful girls - Annabella and Sophia. She worked at NASA for eight years as an Organizational Psychologist and coach. She holds a doctorate in Organizational Psychology and is also a Licensed Human Element® Practitioner and Brain-Based Coach. 

Stephanie guides women in all stages of motherhood, and helps them (re)discover themselves. Her passion lies in helping moms ditch perfectionism and people-pleasing, be more true to themselves – and feel more calm, confident, and at ease. Hey Stephanie, thanks for being here today.

 

Stephanie Lopez: Hi. Thank you for having me on, Crystal.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I am really excited. Stephanie and I met over Instagram, and we've never seen each other until today.

 

Stephanie Lopez: On Instagram.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Never, never in real life, so this is exciting. I feel like I know you because I've, you know, been connecting with you on Instagram for a long time now.

 

Stephanie Lopez: I agree.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I feel like I know a little bit about you and what you do. But I'd love for you to tell us, what is it that you do now; and then, also kind of how you got started doing this, what your kind of path was.

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yeah. Okay. So, right now, I work with high-achieving moms to help guide them through self-discovery and, what the heck does that mean?

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I was just going to ask you, what is high-achieving mom and what is self-discovery? Tell us about that.

 

Stephanie Lopez: I tend to work with perfectionist Type As who find themselves wanting to be perfect, do all the things, and people-pleasing, and then feel frustrated and overwhelmed – and have emotions that they don't know how to cope with. 

So, you know, I guide them in understanding all of that better so that they can drop defense mechanisms, you know, understand what's happening for them and show up basically as the woman that they want to be.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love that. I love that. I think that a lot of people can relate to that perfectionist; wanting everything to look really good, and to be well put together and a clean house and all these things – and then feeling so overwhelmed with having all those expectations. How long have you been doing this work, because I know you've had some other careers in the past? Tell us a little bit about that.

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yeah. Okay. So, I have been doing this business, let's see-- I first started this business, June, 2020, is when I started my Instagram page and got things off the ground. 

And before that, and even when I started, I was working as an Organizational Psychologist at NASA. So, I was there for eight years, and I coached everyone from supervisors to executives on actually the very same things that I'm coaching moms. Yes.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love it because we all deal with the same stuff. I love that.

 

Stephanie Lopez: We do. We absolutely do. And my role there was broader, but I realized, oh, this piece of it is what I love. And then, I just started dreaming; and I was like, 'What if I worked with moms who could impact their children's lives, and then I can help impact generations through them?' 

And I just felt so empowered and excited thinking about the possibilities that way, that in January, 2021, I decided to leave NASA and focus completely on this.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Wow. Wow. That is-- That is incredible because when I think of working at NASA, I'm like, that's like a dream career. 

 

Stephanie Lopez: It is.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: It sounds so amazing but I love your passion; and I love your Why. I feel like we share that Why, and that when the mom changes, everything else changes, right? 

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yes.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: It's like a domino effect. And so, I love how we can help not only the mom but the kids, and then their kids, and then their kids’ and it helps-- It helps heal generations. So, it's an also a dream job.

 

Stephanie Lopez: It is. It is. I am originally, honestly, I did not think I was going to leave NASA. I loved it, and it is an incredible place to work; and I just knew in my heart that I was supposed to be doing more. 

And so, I took that leap of faith. It took a lot of courage.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, you’re really brave. 

 

Stephanie Lopez: I needed to be really brave. And what helped is the people that I worked with, they said, "You can come back whenever." So, I was like, 'Okay, I'm leaving on excellent terms.'

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: It's like a soft landing, right?

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yes.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Oh, I love that. And so, now the people that you work with, have they mostly come from where you were working – like referrals from when you were working at NASA? Or do you just kind of coach anybody from anywhere, all over the place?

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yeah, I coach people from, anybody from anywhere. Most of my clients I've found through social media, actually – and then some have been people that I knew in different parts of my life, whether it was college or even high school have become some of my clients, which feels pretty neat.

 

How does perfectionism, people-pleasing, and high-achieving look like day-to-day?

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love that. I love that. And what do you notice, like when you say 'perfectionists and people-pleasing', what does that actually look like day-to-day for one of your clients – or maybe this used to be you or whatever – how does that kind of manifest in their life?

 

Stephanie Lopez: Like, paint that picture? So, you said perfectionism in people-pleasing?

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. Or high-achieving, like, what you imagine the people is that you help. Like what does that actually look like day-to-day?

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yeah, so they tend to be high-control, wanting things to be a certain way – and tend to also end up controlling their emotions, which actually has negative impacts. 

I know you know, but maybe the people that are listening don't. And the people-pleasing, they're not honoring themselves, so they're not saying 'No' when they want to. They are not holding boundaries that they want. They're doing things that they end up feeling resentful for. 

These are, you know, some of the things that people are struggling with. Also, a lot of my clients have a low level of anxiety that they're dealing with every single day. And they're able to release that through the work that we do together.

 

What does inner work look like in coaching?

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. I love that. Can you tell us a little bit about the work that you do together? Like, what does that kind of-- I like to call it our inner work or whatever. What does that inner work look like?

 

The Brave Method Model

Stephanie Lopez: Yeah, so I have a proven process called the Brave Method, and it has five parts. And basically, I'll just high-level, walk you through each part. And then if you have questions, let me know. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah.

 

1. Work with them to understand their emotions

Stephanie Lopez: So, the first part, I work with them to understand what is the purpose of emotions, why are they there? How can we use them as data? How can we work with them and not against them?

 

2. Teach them how to get in tuned with the 'observational self'

And then the second part, I teach them basically how to get in tuned with something called the 'observational self' so that they can ride the emotional waves rather than fighting against them and trying to control them, trying to make them stop. 

And I also teach them about what our brain does on autopilot because I have found that so many of my clients beat themselves up for things that their brains do automatically. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. 

 

Stephanie Lopez: For instance, are one of the five primary processes of the brain is to compare. But so many moms are getting down on themselves for comparing.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: For comparing, yeah.

 

Stephanie Lopez: I’m like, 'It's okay, that's what your brain does.' It's just when you say, 'Oh, my brain did this, and that's the truth,' then that's where we get into trouble.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Like, 'I believe that it's true that I'm not as good as this other Instagram mom.'

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yes. So, that's the second part. 

 

3. Teach them about defense mechanisms

The third part is probably my most favorite because for me it completely changed the game for me. So, I teach them about defense mechanisms; and I have found that people have a very narrow definition of what a defense mechanism is. 

So, I expand that, and I help them see how often they are actually using defense mechanisms – why they're using defense mechanisms, and how to recover from using them and not be defensive as often. 

 

And the fourth part-- If I'm going into too much detail, let me know.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: No, I love it. Yeah.

 

4. We get down to the root cause

Stephanie Lopez: Okay. The fourth part is where we get down to the root cause. So, I find all the time that my clients, over the years, they're just addressing the symptoms of all of their issues. 

And so, until we deal with the insecurities, they're going to keep on coming back. So, that's what I focus on in the fourth part of my model. 

 

5. Help them become more self-accepting and have self-compassion rather than being so critical of themselves

And then the last part is really helping them become more self-accepting, and bring more self-compassion rather than being so critical of themselves. And I give them a few key things that they can do every single day to create more of that in their life.

 

How does Stephanie Lopez’s coaching change clients’ lives?

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love this. I love the practical tools and then the practical application, because I think that sometimes people are like, 'Okay, what is coaching actually look like? Like, how is this going to help me? Like, it kind of seems a little bit like fluffy or woo-woo.' But like, there's actual steps-- 

 

Stephanie Lopez: There's steps. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: -that you can go through, and there's stuff you can do to feel better. So, take me through like-- I imagine that I'm like your client, and now I've gone through this whole method. You kind of explained what I felt like before. What do things look like now? Like for clients that you've had in the past, how does that change their life?

 

Stephanie Lopez: This is the incredible part to me, just really makes me smile thinking about it. I hear so many different things, but the most common one is, "I feel confident", "I feel at ease", "I feel lighter". 

One of my recent clients said she felt like she had brakes lifted off of her shoulders, "I feel at peace", "I feel less defensive, less anxious, calmer," those are the things that I hear most often.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love that. And how does that play into their life then? Like, in their-- Do you notice change in their relationships or parenting – or like, how does that play out?

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yes. My clients have shared with me that they see improvements in parenting – in their relationship with their spouse, their mother, at work. One of my clients, last week, she told me that she just got a $10,000 raise because of how she has been showing up at work, how different. Yeah. So, I was just so please to hear that. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So amazing.

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yeah.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. I love that because I think a lot of times people come and are like, 'Okay, I need help with parenting,' or 'I need help with my husband', or 'I need help with achieving this goal.' 

But really deep down, it's really us; like, it's us doing our own work that helps us to then move to that space of like being light. When we have a better relationship with ourselves, everything else, like a $10,000 raise, how amazing is that?

 

Stephanie Lopez: Everything works. Yeah.

Stephanie’s personal journey of perfectionism, people-pleasing and high achievement

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Oh, good. Tell us a little bit about your inner work then. What does that look like for you? Like, now that you've kind of done it, what kinds of things do you do to kind of maintain your own inner work?

 

Stephanie Lopez: Okay. So, not historically, but what am I doing now?

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. Well, both, actually. I think both would be great.

 

Stephanie Lopez: So, I'll start in childhood; I was a perfectionist, so I'm a recovering perfectionist now – high-achiever as well. And I did not learn skills to cope with my emotions, to cope with difficult situations. 

I was raised in a home, and not ideal; you know, there was yelling and a little violence, and things like that. I felt like broken; and I don't know if that resonates with people or how many people can relate to that, but I really did. 

I felt like I would have these emotional explosions, essentially. After being what my mom would say, "Oh, you're perfect except for three months, and then you explode." I was like, 'What? Like, why can't I get it together? Why can't I figure this out?' And so, you know, I didn't really know what to do. 

I was like, 'Maybe I need to go to therapy for anger issues or something, I'm not really sure what my problem is.' And nothing that I tried helped until, actually, when I started working at NASA, by coincidence, all these people started recommending that I go to this workshop that they have once a year. It's called The Human Element. 

And I went to it, and it changed my life. It changed the way that I looked at everything, the way that I saw myself. It made me realize like; whatever is bugging me about other people, it's about me, and I can address that. 

I learned all these key tools and still, even though it shifted my perspective and changed my life and was eye-opening, I still found myself struggling for the next year. Like, 'Okay, I know all these things, but I don't know what to do with it – and I kind of wish I didn't know almost,' which is weird, but I want to admit that because it's true. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. 

 

Stephanie Lopez: And then, I got a coach who was trained in The Human Element and familiar with guiding people through the inner work. And it was then that everything shifted because she showed me like, she kind of-- She basically held my hand and took me through the rough times and showed me like, 'This is how you apply it, and this is what it looks like day-to-day.'

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love that because it is really our own, like, we have to all go through that journey, don't we? Like, we have to figure that out for ourselves. I can so relate to what you said. 

I think that most of us were raised in homes – I know I say this all the time – that we're more authoritarian, which ended up shaming our emotions, right? 

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yes. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Like, 'It's not okay to yell', 'It's not okay to cry', 'It's not okay to do all of these things'. And so, the approach that I teach in parenting is the opposite of that. But that's not how I was raised, and that's not how most of us were. 

And so, a lot of the times, we can grow up feeling like, I' don't know, like there's something wrong with me here – I don't know what's going on.' And it's helpful to hear other people say that and to fill that validation of like, 'Okay, wait, maybe I'm not broken – maybe this is how most of us, kind of, are.' And then, figure it out.

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yeah. Everything that you said, shame I felt a lot of shame – and authoritarian, absolutely. Yeah. That word didn't come to mind for me, but that, yes.

 

How Stephanie Lopez’s maintains her own inner work

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. Totally, is that. So, tell me then, now – now that you've kind of gone through your own transformation and your own process of using this method to heal yourself and do your inner work, how do you keep up on it? 

Like, we all-- Like you said, like we all have this human brain, right? So, it's going to compare and it's going to explode and it's going to do all these things. So, how do you maintain that?

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yeah. Okay. Let's see, because I feel like I do a lot. So, am I going to-- Well, okay, this is kind of neat. Every time I'm taking a cohort through my program, I find that like I'm taking myself through it. So, it constantly keeps me refreshed--

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah.

 

Stephanie Lopez: -on all the skills that I'm teaching. For instance, we're in like Week 3 right now, and the first week is all about like allowing yourself to fully feel your feelings. 

In that week, I had so many emotions coming up, and then I was trying to like push them down. And I'm like, 'No, I don't want to be sad.' And then they kept coming up, and I'm like, 'No, no, no.' And I'm like, 'Oh, okay, I see what's happening here.'

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. You're, 'Wait, I'm teaching the same thing and going through it.' I find that way every day. I'm like, 'Oh, wait, oh yeah, this is what I'm teaching right now.'

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yep. Okay, so that's one piece. And then, I'm always doing personal development. So, right now, I'm in my own course where we're doing approaches like the inner work a little bit differently than I do, but it's giving me new insights and validating some of the things that I already do. 

And I like doing that so that I can continue to improve myself for my own family; and also, to help my clients. you know, even more than I already am today. And then some basic things that I do probably like five out of seven days of the week, I do a gratitude practice in affirmations in journaling. And it just helps keep me more centered in the journaling. 

I just take a bit of a different approach every day when I do it whatever I need – if it's like to release emotions, to feel my emotions, to help manifest things that I want in my life, whatever it is. I think those are the main things.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. That is a lot. I love that. I think that most coaches that I've talked to do that same thing of like always kind of growing ourselves. 

I think I'm always in some sort of a program or reading some book or taking a course because it really does help us continuously do our inner work. And I think there's always like another kind of level of belief of like, 'Oh, maybe there's this thing over here that I can work on that I didn't really notice was there, let's go there.' 

And so, now I see those challenges that pop up instead of being like blocks and like, 'Oh, now I'm stuck here,' as like, 'Oh, here's another way that I can use my knowledge to grow in a different way'. I think you're always doing that.

 

Stephanie Lopez: Thank you. I think of this like self-awareness work as a staircase that has no top. So, just because I've been doing it for so many years, there's still more for me to discover about what's driving my behavior and the way that I'm showing up and the things that I feel triggered by. So, I think it's so important to-- It's a journey, right?

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, it is. I think that-- It's not always a literary journey. I think that we always think like, 'We're just going to keep growing, and then we end up finding ourselves back somewhere and being like, wait, I thought I already learned this lesson. I thought I already--'

 

Stephanie Lopez: Well, I could talk about this too. So, I'll share. Oh, yeah. I love that you mentioned that because I, historically would catastrophize about things. I've worked a lot on it. and I was like, 'This is like really not an issue for me.' 

And then, I opened the business - oh, holy moly, am I catastrophizing on a regular basis? Like, she is so loud. I'm like, okay; talking to her like, like, 'Okay, sweetie, it's all right, we're going to get through this.'

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. I love that you talk to her that way, because I do the same thing. Sometimes I'm like, I'm just going to name her, this inner mean girl that's like rah or the freaking-out thoughts that we have. 

One of the courses I'm taking right now is through Brené Brown, and she talks about how learning is cyclical, right? We go through-- It's not this like path that we think like, Okay, we've achieved this and now we're on to the next thing'; and it's always like circling back and relearning. 

I think of it almost like an onion, like we're like peeling back the layers and there's more layers; and I can totally relate to that. I'm like, 'Oh yeah, I'm good, things are going well,' and then I move into some other role or do some other thing that I haven't done before yet. 

Even this podcast, when I first launched this podcast, I was like, 'Ugh, like, this is freaky.' And now that I'm, you know, not feeling as uncomfortable about it, there's other areas in my life that it pops up again. 

I think our-- We are just-- It's like we sometimes expect that we’ll get to a point where we don't have our human brain anymore – we'll always be happy and things will always be lovely and like butterflies. And then we're like, 'Oh no, wait, we still-- we still keep our human brain no matter what step of the journey we're on.'

 

Stephanie Lopez: I agree. I totally agree.

 

Stephanie Lopez’s tips for moms struggling with perfectionism, people-pleasing, and high achievement

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love it. Thank you for sharing about your journey. I love how you kind of did this work on your own first, and how you're continuously doing this work. Like I think we all go through that thinking like, 'Well, I should be farther', 'I shouldn't have these, you know, thoughts and feelings'. Well, we all do. 

 

Stephanie Lopez: We do. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Even us that are doing our work regularly, it pops up. So, if there's a mom that's listening that's maybe struggling with these same things – perfectionism and people-pleasing and doesn't really know how to say no or you know, kind of sees themself in this journey that we kind of painted for them – what is one tip that you would give them if they were listening today to really help?

 

Stephanie Lopez: I want to give a good tip.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: There's so many tips. You can give more than one, if you want.

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yeah. Okay. So, I'll give two. The first, I think I kind of already mentioned, but emotions are tied to data. So, a lot of times emotions are viewed as a nuisance or as like, 'I wish I didn't have these things' – but it's actually your body's way of telling you, of sending you a message of what you need and what you desire. So, tune into the message that is being sent by your emotions. 

And the second tip that I would give is if you find that you have a low-level anxiety all the time, that may be a sign that you are not allowing yourself to feel your feelings; you're not allowing yourself to get through that full emotional cycle. 

And unfortunately, when you cut off the emotional cycle, the anxiety comes and it has the opposite impact. You want it to go away; the way to get it to go away is to feel it.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, exactly. Anxiety is like the resistance, right? It's the resistance of whatever emotion is there. And when we're like, 'Oh, this is a problem, I don't want to feel this,' and then push away more, then we feel more anxiety. 

And then sometimes we feel judgment about the anxiety that we're feeling – and like sucked out about how we should deal with the anxiety, about the confusion, about the whatever, right? We just keep on adding these layers, and then we're like, 'Why is this such a big problem?' Instead of just feeling that initial feeling of like, 'What's underneath this anxiety?'

 

Stephanie Lopez: Yeah. It's just going to be a blip if you allow it to be.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, that's so good, 'It's just going to be a blip if you allow it to be'. Okay. I think that that's a perfect way to end. I just love what you just wrapped up with. 

 

How to connect with Stephanie Lopez

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Why don't you tell us a little bit about how you work with people and how people can connect with you. And for those of you that are listening, if you scroll down and look at the show notes, I will have all of these social links in the show notes as well.

 

Stephanie Lopez: Thank you, Crystal. I'm so glad that you had me on today. They can-- You can find me on Instagram @best.self.mama, that's where I hang out most. And if you're looking for tips on regulating your emotions, shifting your mindset, or even communicating more effectively, then I have a free guide at brave-method.com that you can download.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Awesome. I will have the links to those. And thank you for being on here, and sharing a little bit about your journey and your inner work and how we can kind of be inspired to do our own as well; I think it was really helpful.

 

Stephanie Lopez: Thank you. I appreciate you.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure that you give it Five Stars on Apple, and check out my monthly membership for moms in the show notes.