Episode 154: Take The First Step: There Is No Time Like The Present With Alreen Haeggquist
Interview with Alreen Haeggquist, founder of Haeggquist & Eck, LLP in San Diego. We discussed her journey of childhood abuse and how taking the first step toward healing transformed her life, benefiting her family and future clients. Alreen opens up vulnerably about the difficulties she faced in being open to therapy initially and shares the courage it took to begin breaking free from the beliefs instilled by her parents. Through her deep inner work, she now serves as an inspiration, empowering others to take that crucial first step toward recovery, find their voice, and realize they are not alone.
---
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Take The First Step: There Is No Time Like The Present With Alreen Haeggquist
Alreen Haeggquist’s Story
Welcome to this episode of the show where I interviewed Alreen Haeggquist, a seasoned lawyer, author, and advocate on a mission to amplify voices and combat silence around abuse. With over 21 years of legal expertise, Alreen champions women facing sexual harassment, discrimination, and abuse, drawing from her own traumatic past to empower others. As the Founder of Haeggquist & and Eck LLP in San Diego, she has successfully secured millions for clients in these cases.
Alreen’s book, Fired Up: Fueling Triumph from Trauma, illuminates her personal transformation and commitment to ending the cycle of silence. Her unwavering belief that silence empowers gaslighting drives her to inspire others to speak out against her abuse. During this interview, we discussed her journey of childhood abuse and how it led her to a healing process that benefited her, her family, and future clients.
Alreen opens up vulnerably in this conversation about her past to discuss how hard it was for her to be open to therapy originally and what it took to recover and break the beliefs that were programmed into her by her parents. By using the deep inner work she did, she is an inspiration because she helps others like her have a voice and know they are not alone.
There is a warning with this episode that we are talking about sexual abuse and emotional abuse during this episode. If there's anything triggering for you or it brings up anything in yourself, please seek medical help where people are trained to be able to take you through this journey that Alreen discusses during this episode.
We also talk about the importance of transformation, looking at those belief systems or that programming, and what we need to do ourselves, each of us, so that we not only help ourselves but help others. That is why we have created a workbook and have courses and coaching on how to break these belief systems. It can be on anything, our health, our energy, our jobs, our career, or our finances. Whatever it may be, we have 90-day coaching programs to be able to help you.
If you want to start on this journey of health and wellness, we have programs available on AmyVetter.com/BreakingBeliefs. You can learn more about both of our programs and see special discounts for our readers. I hope you enjoy this episode, engage with the story, and take away some actions for yourself that will help you and the people around you.
---
Welcome to this episode of the show. I'm excited for our guest to share her life story. This is Alreen Haeggquist. Would you like to introduce yourself before we get started?
Sure. I'm the Managing Partner of Haeggquist & Eck and also the author of the book Fired Up: Fueling Triumph from Trauma.
It's a pleasure to have you here. I want to dive right into your story. A lot of what you talk about is what this show is about, which is all about breaking generational patterns and belief systems. I want to start from the beginning. Where did you grow up? What did your parents do for a living?
Thanks again for having me on this show. I'm really happy to be here.
I’m glad to have you.
Thanks. I was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and moved to the States in the San Fernando Valley, specifically when I was two. I'm the youngest of ten kids. Most of my family have had the longest history in the US since I've been here since I was two. My father was Indian-Burmese. My mother is from India. They immigrated and eventually made themselves to the United States.
It's a beautiful story about a family wanting to create a better life for their kids and moving out here. As we were growing up in the States, what people didn't know about was how abusive my father was. It was a really rough childhood growing up. I was terrified of him my whole life. He was abusive in all the ways. He was physically abusive, emotionally abusive, and sexually abusive.
We didn't talk about it. Nobody knew. In the outside world, we always had smiles on our faces like nothing ever happened, but at home, it was rough and very different. When it's your father that's abusing you, it's a person that's supposed to be bringing you up and building you up. Instead, he was tearing me down at every opportunity.
When you're a child, you expect somebody to come save you or there's going to be some savior that's going to make all the pain go away. I expected that to be my mom. Unfortunately, my mom was silent. She didn't say anything despite what was going on. The empathy that I have for her is that she had an arranged marriage when she was 17 years old, started having babies at 18, and did that with 10 kids.
The home life was tough. The way I got out and what really saved my life was going to college. College wasn't something that anybody else had done. I was the first to go to college, so it wasn't like I had somebody to look up to and be like, “What do I need to do? What are the steps?” I learned that my parents would allow me to do it. They wanted me to do it because it almost was like status. It was something like, oh, “That's how we've made it in America. My daughter went to college.”
I learned that if I go to college, I could move out of my house so I put a lot of focus and energy into that. School already came easy to me. I did well in school. I really focused my attention on getting out and going to college. After high school, I moved to San Diego, started college, and then went off to law school. Now, I run my own law firm. I represent women who have been sexually assaulted or abused in some way. I flipped the script in my life.
It's an amazing story. I'd like to go backward a little bit and get into who your parents were. Starting from the beginning, why did they want to leave where they were from? Was it for a better life or did they have any trauma in their life? What happened?
My dad was 1 of 12 kids. Some had already passed when he was growing up. He grew up in Burma, which is now known as Myanmar. When he grew up, it was under English rule. It became communist so my family fled. They had seven kids there. They fled when it became a communist country. When you flee a country, you leave everything behind. They had no possessions and no money.
They went to India, which is where my mom was from. She had family there. When you have seven kids and no money in India, it is not as easy. They were trying to make due there. It wasn't working out. They moved over to Pakistan because they heard there would be some more opportunities to make some money. That's how they had three more kids in Pakistan. They spent probably about ten years there.
My oldest sister had an arranged marriage with somebody who was from the States. That's how we ended up here. Why? It was exactly that, a better opportunity to make money and be able to support the family. Before we moved to the States, two of my sisters had already gotten married. They had eight kids themselves that they moved over here with primarily to provide for them.
Your mom, what was her family situation like?
My mom's completely uneducated. We've been in this country for 46 years and she barely speaks English. I only speak Urdu with her. She has an eighth-grade education in India, and that was in Hindi and not even in English. She is uneducated and poor. She came up in a very poor upbringing. My father did not. He's the one who had the marriage arranged with her. She had no choice in the situation.
With the way she was raised, her mom used the example with her that she was like a goat. She gets untied from her family and gets tied to my father. That's how she brought me up. The level of where my place was in society was always there was God, there was man, and then there was woman. Whether it be my husband, my father, my brother, or whatever male person was in the house, my job was to serve them. Growing up, you had to make sure you knew how to cook and clean. When I was in law school and even now, she asks what I'm cooking for my husband and what he is going to eat. That's the way she was brought up and she passed that on to us.
First off, how did they even connect to arrange the marriage?
They were in the same religion. The way it works with arranged marriages is there's somebody that knows a family has women to marry off of marrying age and there's a man that's looking for a wife. One person connects the other person. My father did not know my mom's family at the time but he was looking for a wife. That's how they were connected. My mom's family had her and another sister who was ready and of marrying age.
Did your mom ever speak and say she wasn't happy or is this what she saw as her fulfillment in life?
She wasn't brought up to think about how she was going to be fulfilled in her life. She looked at it as her role, and her role was to serve her husband. Her husband wanted a number of kids. Therefore, she had to have a number of kids. My mom's litmus, she would say how great my father was because he didn't throw his daughters out. There were six of us girls. Despite all the things that he did, he was still a good father because he didn't throw us out on the street. He provided for us. We had a roof over our heads. We had food. Her standard was very different from the standard that I have for my daughter and most of us have for our kids.
Your father, what was his job? What did he do?
Before we moved here to the States, he traveled. I was always told it was import and export. I never quite understood what that meant, but I think he dealt in jewels. However, that business ran. When they left all that behind and we moved to the United States, they had a dry cleaning business. My dad ran the dry cleaners and my mom was the seamstress. She did the alterations for customers. My family's big into food. They've always cooked. Since we have such a big family, they always had to cook for a lot of people. They opened up a catering business when I was in middle school. My parents together ran a catering business up until I even got to college.
Understanding Parental Influence And Belief Systems
With these messages from your mom, because she's referencing her belief systems from her family of the goat, did you always feel that it wasn't right? What was your pivot where you're questioning the things that she's saying to you as a woman or a girl?
I don't know if I always didn't think it was right. There was some mixed messaging going on. At home, I'm being taught my role is to serve the man, I'm going to get married, and I'm going to have to cook and clean for him. When you're in school, those aren't the messages that you are being taught. In school, the girls are getting an education. They're going to go out and go to college and have a job and work. There was this mixed message.
For me, I thought I was going to do both. What I saw in my sisters, and they’re not alone because I see this in a lot of women, they're not only working but they're also taking care of everything in the house. They have two roles. I went on to think that that's what the role of a more modern woman was. Not only does she serve the man but she also has a career or does her job as well. Her first priority in life, the way that I was taught at home, was to be of service.
First Step: A lot of women are not only working but also take care of everything in their houses.
Is there any woman or girl that you can picture that gave you a different vision or character? Is there anything that comes to mind that you thought about?
The way the sexual abuse stopped in my household with me was because my sister finally said something. She was my role model when I was young. She's seven years older. With the other sisters, the way they got out of the house was they got married themselves. There are six girls. Four of them had gotten married.
My sister who's seven years older than me, she's like, “I'm out.” We call it running away. She takes off, doesn't speak to my parents, and tells another family member about what my dad had done. She was my role model because she spoke out. She did something. She got the abuse that was happening to me to stop. She didn't then go out and accept what my mom had said, which is we got to always obey my dad and he can do no wrong.
Did you both go to your mom and she wouldn't acknowledge it?
We never went to my mom. My mom would see it. My mom knew what was happening. People always ask, “Why didn't you tell your mom?” You don't tell somebody something when they see it. They're there and they're not doing anything about it. When I was young, I had a lot of empathy for my mom in the sense that I thought she was also one of the victims in the household of the women because my dad treated her very poorly as well. She was one of us. It wasn't until I had my own daughter that my anger toward my mom showed up because when you have a daughter, it's so natural to want to protect them.
Healing Journey And Breaking Generational Trauma
I did not have the same experience, but an experience of when I had my sons, that made me view everything differently since you're in the parent role. It was the same kind of thing. You have a choice to allow it to continue on or take control and heal so that it doesn't pass on to another generation. What did you do as far as healing? I know you went to school and got out, but healing is much different.
My daughter is a really big emphasis on wanting to stop generational trauma, not passing on those same belief systems to her, and not passing on my feelings and my trauma to her through my behavior and projections. She was my reason or my why as to why I wanted to take action. When I moved away from home and went to college, I felt high. I felt so amazing about life, myself, and who I was.
At that time, I believed I had been healed. I had left the abuse. I felt amazing. There was nothing else to do. At that time, I didn't think there was a healing journey or a healing path or I needed to do anything. It was that I had to leave the environment and I was free. I learned that wasn't true. That was false. There was still a lot of anger.
There's a lot of built-up resentment and anger that you have inside you because you never let it out when the abuse was going on. That showed up in my marriage and my relationships where I got angry a lot and would go off on people. The person that got the brunt of it was my husband. When my daughter was born, everybody talked about this feeling that you were supposed to have when you gave birth, like an overwhelming amount of joy. It’s not that I didn't have joy when she was born, but I almost felt numb.
I felt uncomfortable being around her when she was naked, when I had to change her diaper, or when she was crying. I had these uncomfortable feelings. It wasn't sadness. I felt uncomfortable that I was going to hurt her. I was scared to hurt her because I thought that had passed on to me and I was going to do something to my daughter. That's when I started therapy. Therapy was the first step in my journey.
When I showed up at the therapist's office, I was like, “I know you know about my past. I'm going to tell you about it in four sessions. We'll have a month together and we're going to be good after that. I'm very open. I can tell you everything and then you're going to fix it, and I'm going to be on my way.” I really believed that.
He laughed. I can laugh about it now, but that's what I expected to do. I was like, “I'm going to go to therapy. He's going to fix everything and I'll feel the same way I did when I left my house and moved away for college.” That was not the case. I continue to see my therapist. He's still a big part, primarily to process things.
My daughter's twelve and no longer a baby or whatnot, but as she develops and grows, new things come up for me to navigate. Especially with the way that the parenting I received or the household I grew up with, I don't have lessons from that to take on how to handle various situations. I didn't have that growing up. For me, therapy is a part of being able to process what I'm going through at different times in life and then also to help navigate how to deal with the developmental phases of childhood that I didn't receive.
First Step: Undergoing therapies is a huge part of processing different times in your life and dealing with the developmental phases of childhood you did not receive.
How did you go to therapy in the first place? How did you convince yourself to do that?
Prior to going to individual therapy, I had gone to couples therapy originally. I had that same reaction to couples therapy. I told him the same thing. I was like, “I do not believe I need a therapist in my marriage. There's no problem with my marriage.” We went to couples counseling because I was angry and I would take it out on my husband if something pissed me off because he said something the wrong way, he looked at me a certain way, or whatever it might be.
For me, we went to couples counseling because we were on the verge of breaking up and wanting to not break up. We decided to give couples counseling an opportunity. During that session, he told me that he was scared of me. That really touched me before because I was the scared little girl. Nobody had ever told me that I was the scary one. That was eye-opening to me because I thought I was becoming the person that I never wanted to become. My dad was very angry and I was scared of him. That was eye-opening to me. That happened.
When my daughter was born, I had two friends who went to therapy and they raved about it. At that point, I didn't feel like I had anything to lose. I was like, “Why not?” That's how I convinced myself. I wanted to be a better mom to my daughter and I didn't want to miss out on what everybody says motherhood is supposed to be. I didn't want to lose out on the opportunity. I felt like I didn't know what else to do. That's how I convinced myself. At the time, it was supposed to be short-term. I was like, “I can do anything for 4 sessions or 4 hours.” That's how I convinced myself.
That's part of how a mind of abuse is trying to control your surroundings and your environment. When you're goal-driven and all those other things, that works in college, in your business, or whatever. Personally, you don't know what you're going to confront because it's not something you can study for.
That's what I wanted. I wanted somebody to tell me exactly what I needed to do and I would do all the steps and I would be okay. I had that for a long time. That took me a few years to figure out that's not how it worked.
It's releasing control to the process, and that's a really hard thing. After a couple of years, I had the same experience for different reasons with my children. I always had this because of emotional and physical abuse with my family. It was more about I didn't want to show disloyalty when I had children that they weren't still number one. I was having a lot of trouble getting into the role of, “How do I feel that without feeling guilt?”
Lessons In Anger Management And Self-Awareness
I remember the moment that it hit in therapy. I always explain that it was like a pane of glass disappeared between me and my children and I could touch them and feel them. It was the part I was missing. I was going through all the motions of being a mom and taking care of everything. Luckily, like you, they were still very young. It's the best gift you can give anyone in your life to take care of yourself. What were some lessons for you that turned you around from not being scary but being able to be observant of how you're affecting others and self-correct as well? That could be at work or personally.
Step one is awareness of it, the awareness of what you're doing. I used to think that I was angry not because of anything that had happened to me in my past, anything that I was holding onto, triggers, or anything like that. I really believed that I was pissed off because the other person pissed me off. It was something somebody else did and it was all their fault. If they stopped doing what they were doing, being stupid, or saying what they said, then I wouldn't be pissed and it would be fine. Having the awareness that it wasn't them and it was me and I could change that was huge. That was step one.
First Step: The step one to healing is awareness. Be aware of what you are doing and how you are acting.
Two is what your entire show is about, which is breaking those beliefs. You've been programmed for so long with certain beliefs. Realizing that you can change your entire life and your entire experience in life by changing those beliefs and thought patterns was huge for me. Knowing that I had the power to change my thoughts or my beliefs and that shaped going forward of the experience I would have was also huge. It is taking time to have the awareness and then taking action to change those belief patterns. As a result of abuse, you get into this place of, “You're not worthy. You're not deserving. Doom and gloom are going to happen. You're going to fail.”
It’s always negative.
It is getting out of those negative thought patterns. I'm not saying I don't have them because they creep up at times, but I recognize them and I can tell myself, “Stop,” and change it. I’ll be like, “What's the belief that I want to have? Where is it that I want to go? What am I trying to feel? What am I trying to experience? It is stopping that negative thought and reframing it to the one that I want. If I'm not in a conversation with you or I'm not in court or something like that, I can close my eyes and take deep breaths. I have a little bit more time to be mindful. When I have to change it quickly because I am in a conversation, I have those tools as well to stop myself and then repeat the sentence but in a different way.
What makes you aware that you need to change your thoughts? Is it someone else's reaction or a feeling inside of you? What's your trigger to know, “I've got to pause here.”
I can feel it in my body. I'm a lot more aware of the feelings in my body than I was before. It feels like literal physical heat and that anxious feeling. Your heart starts racing a little bit faster than it would be and you're feeling a little uncomfortable. That's how I recognize, “Stop.”
I'm sure for you, you were disassociated from your body for so long.
That was huge for me. I was disassociated with my body and I didn't get that. I feel like things took me a long time, and that's what's amazing. Once you are on this path, the messages have always been there the whole time. I keep getting the same messages. People are telling you the same thing but you’re not ready to hear it.
Due to trauma, you also have a lot of physical symptoms. I had a lot of physical symptoms as a result of the trauma. I had suffered from ulcers. While I was bleeding and I was at the GI doctor, she had no idea what my past was but she kept saying, “You need to feel those emotions that you're having.” I could not understand what she was saying and it was frustrating.
That's what she said. She was like, “You're so disassociated with it you don't even know what that means. Putting your feet in the grass is a feeling.” Finally, I did inner child work. That's what got me out of the disassociation where I was finally able to feel and get what that meant. I have much more awareness of my feelings and how my body is physically feeling.
Do you do any mindfulness practices yourself on an ongoing basis?
I do. I do meditation. I started with Joe Dispenza's meditations when I was trying to change my thought patterns and my beliefs. I continued doing those meditations. I do those in the morning. Sometimes, I go out of practice. It is a practice because you have to do it regularly. I can feel myself being like, “I haven't been in this place for a bit. I need to go back.”
Empowering Clients And Legal Career
Empowering Clients And Legal Career
With the women that you work with, how are you able to utilize your past to help but not get too far into their trauma?
What's amazing to me is even though we all have these different experiences because my experience is very different than yours and different than the women I represent, the feelings that we have are all the same. All human emotions are the same. Those feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, feeling alone in what's going on, and feeling like nobody's going to believe you are similar to what I experienced and what my clients are experiencing.
It is being able to talk to them about those feelings upfront and recognizing, “I can see this might be what you're going through. You're not alone.” A huge part for women is that they're not alone. Even though they might have encountered somebody not believing them, here we are as a team to hear you, believe you, and let you know you have rights and you have the power to make things different.
First Step: You have the right and power to make things different.
To help us not take on our client's trauma, we have a survivor advocate in our office who has the credentials to be trauma-informed. She not only trains our team on what we can do to help our clients but also to not take it all on ourselves as well. Self-care is important for us to be able to do the work that we're doing. She's also there for our clients to talk to them and help them go through the process of their experience and then also through litigation.
Did you originally start this in your legal career? How did you find your way to this?
Having a survivor advocate at my office?
No, for the work that you do. Is that what you started out doing? How did you find your way to this?
I've always represented the people, so I knew I was never going to represent big businesses or corporations. I always represented the people. I represented them for corporate fraud and corporate misdoing. When I started my own firm, I wanted to help women. That's how I became a women's rights attorney. My personal experience puts me in a unique place to help women navigate this area of the law. That's why I got into it. It wasn't the first thing I did out of law school but it was shortly after. I've been doing it for twenty-plus years.
That's amazing.
What I noticed is I've learned to use my triggers in the courtroom. It makes me a very passionate lawyer, but I've learned to control my triggers so that it comes across effectively and not like an angry woman coming at you.
That would be a good thing for anyone. I do believe women, not just because of trauma but in a corporate environment, do struggle if they've got emotions and how they're perceived versus the men in the office. Is there a way that you do that that maybe would help others as well to do it in a productive way and hone it in? What's your process for that?
It wasn't overnight. I had to work at it. You have to catch yourself in the moment that you're doing it. My emotions aren't that I cry or I get really upset. My emotion that comes out when I'm triggered is I'm very angry and I will go on attack mode. There are multiple parts. The why is I know that I'm not going to get listened to or respected by opposing counsel or the judge if I come across as attacking and angry. I know that's not going to serve my client. Therefore, I need to make sure I don't do that.
First Step: You have to catch yourself in the moment you are doing it.
Two, I have the awareness and I can read the signs that that's happening. I can feel myself getting hot or I can feel my heart racing. In the moment, I take deep breaths. The person will be talking to me and I can feel it. I’d be like, “You're getting mad right now. Remember your purpose. Your purpose is to help this client and stand up for her. Say what you're going to say but take a deep breath when you do it. Don’t spit it out.”
What I've learned is to wait before you speak. That instantly calms me down. It comes across as really passionate if what they said is ridiculous or I'm angry about it. That's okay. If somebody is claiming your client lied and they're making this whole story up about being sexually abused, that's not true. The stats on that happening is 2% that somebody makes up a story of sexual assault. When you claim every person that comes in the courtroom is lying about their sexual assault, that does get me angry, but I take a deep breath and I explain why that's not true and that's not how it went. I focus on the breaths.
Sisters’ Recovery Journeys
I love the part about going back to your purpose. You don't want to go against what you're trying to accomplish, so it is getting back to aligning yourself with that. I have one more question before we get to a closing question I have for you. How have your sisters recovered?
I don't know if they have. I have a lot of tools and I've been on this path, but it's everybody's own to figure out. There are a lot of resources but you have to want to utilize them.
That's the hard part with anyone that you want to help who's had trauma too. I'm sure it's for some of the women that have come in as well. You can have the high off of winning the case, but then there's the deep work you have to do to really win at the end of the day and have the courage to go through it. I'm a yoga teacher. I always say people have the courage to get on their yoga mats because it's easier to go to CrossFit and keep your mind busy and keep yourself moving. To be in your head while you're moving at a steady pace is a lot harder. Being ready to face that and put yourself through that has not an end to it. It's different stages of where you are in the healing process so that you're constantly being aware.
I agree. I tell my clients that same thing because they're always so thankful that we took their case or that we're helping them. I'm like, “You're the brave one. You are brave for coming forward. I'm here to help you with my legal knowledge. That's my role. You're the person that's doing this. I’m like your coach helping you out here.”
Rapid-Fire Questions
How great that you've been able to take the pain and help others with it as well. We like to end with a couple of Rapid-fire questions. You get to pick a category, and that's family and friends, money, spiritual, or health.
Health.
Things or actions I don't have that I want to have.
A personal trainer.
Things or actions I do have that I want to keep.
The organic garden that I have.
That's cool. Things or actions I don't have and I don't want to have.
I don't have any physical ailments and I don't want any.
Things or actions that I do have that I don't want. I want to rid myself of it.
Twenty pounds.
Final Reflections
You look great to me. Is there anything that we didn't cover or that you want to emphasize before we leave and close out?
Yeah. I always tell people, “There's no time like the present. You have to take one step to get yourself in there. It's possible that you have to take the first step and you will find people to help you, resources to help you, and a community to help you on this journey. There is no time to waste.”
I love that. Thank you so much for being so open and sharing your story. There are so many lessons here that I know so many people will appreciate. Thank you very much.
Thanks again for having me.
---
It is time for our mindful moments with this episode with Alreen and her story of triumph over all of this trauma that she experienced as a child. We talked about her upbringing where her parents were immigrants from other countries and were part of an arranged marriage and the belief systems that they had coming over into the United States.
Her mom had a belief system that probably was shared over generations that women were the “goats” that were either tied to family or tied to their husband once they were married off and the ranking for women went from God to man to woman. If that is a belief system that has been embedded in your mind, then what happens is her mom lost her power, in essence. When she lost her power, she also lost her power for her daughters as well, having six daughters.
With Alreen being the youngest of the six, she watched the other daughters go through similar abuse. She was really inspired by her sister who was older than her who left home and spoke up against the abuse that she experienced. That gave Alreen hope that she could do the same thing and that she didn't have to follow in these footsteps of staying silent.
That's really important because one of the things that happens when we're giving these messages is we might be looking for signs of, “Are these messages true or is there another way?” Some of us are born with that feeling on the inside that tells us that something's not right and believing what we are being told of ignoring trauma or ignoring the abuse that we're receiving is okay.
When we have the strength to look outside of ourselves and outside of the people that we trust the most and look for that glimmer of hope, wherever we find that, that could be in a book with a character, that could be people we see on TV, that could be people we experience as students in the classroom where she was getting mixed messages of what women could be by going to school in the United States versus what she was being told women were at home.
Having the strength and the courage to follow that journey, know something's off, and have the strength within to support yourself and keep letting yourself know that you are okay and that you have a right to have a different life is a really amazing feat to have. Sometimes, we do this without even realizing we're triumphing over something that was done to us. We don't often celebrate that enough that we have the strength to do those things.
What made us think a little bit differently or not buy into the belief system that we were being told? These things are important that we acknowledge those wins, and they could be little wins over time. It is observing the moment when we do have those wins so that we find strength in the work that we are doing to overcome things in our lives.
The other thing that we talked about was her journey through law school. When she moved and went through law school, she thought she healed because she felt triumphant. She felt that she had survived, that she got out of the house, and that she was accomplished as an attorney. What we often find out is that those moments of celebration can be short because there are things we're pushing down within ourselves that we either decide to see or not see. When we don't see them, they're showing up in ways around us, giving us signs that something is off.
We talked about those awareness areas that really helped her to see something was off, that she wasn't healed, and that she had work to do. That was when her daughter was born. When her daughter was born, it was her first time realizing that she was uncomfortable. It wasn't looking at other moms that it looked like it felt for other moms, but it felt different for her. She needed to understand that.
I loved her story of when she finally had the courage to go into therapy. She went to the therapist and said, “We can get this done in four weeks.” Everybody wants this finite way of being able to say with therapy, “I will be fixed by this time.” We are humans with emotions and we have experiences that happen all of the time. We can fix ourselves as much as we want, and then life happens. We've got to respond to those things when life happens. It's up to us to consistently stay on the path of making sure that we are taking care of our mind as much as we are taking care of our body, our health, and the other things that might be more superficial that we can't see.
Having a healthy mind is very important because when we go in and allow ourselves to be vulnerable and have the courage to open up, then it gives us more awareness of how we are affecting others and how we are affecting ourselves as well so that we can pivot and shift. Even if we slip one day and revert back to maybe an old way of behaving or things that we said, as long as we're aware that it's going on, we have the power to break the programming that's in our body and to change the thought patterns that we have, but it is a practice and it does take work. We did not become experts in the work that we do in our jobs every day by doing it once. We had to keep doing it every day and keep learning more. As new things come out, we keep learning more and growing our knowledge.
This is no different. When we work on ourselves, it's understanding the things that created the programming, that created the belief systems, and that create the habits that we have. It is also about understanding what the triggers are that might put us right back in that spot that we don't want to be in so that we can take those pauses, self-adjust, and pivot when we need to.
She talked about one of the mindfulness practices that she does, which is meditation. She talks about how meditation helps center her and that she can feel the difference when she doesn't do it. It is making sure that she is not holding on to these negative thoughts that might be in her mind of hopelessness or feeling alone that might creep back in.
Her mantra is, “You are not alone,” and by helping the women who have gone through similar experiences as her and them knowing that they have a voice, power, and rights, she is taking her pain and making it her purpose. When we can turn that pain into something positive and allow that negativity or trauma that has happened in our life to fuel good in the world, then we're turning something bad into good and expanding it out into the world so that more people will go on that journey with us.
I hope that you learned a lot from this lesson. I so appreciated her story and how much she opened up to all of you to share her story. A[1] lso, if this episode resonates with you, we can continue this conversation. That is at BusinessBalanceBliss.com where we have free resources, workbooks, and webinars. We also have coaching and group coaching available so that you can do these small shifts over time that will lead to a major transformation in your life where you'll be able to take the negative things that you're holding in your body and turn them into good.
Important Links
Work-Life Harmony Speaker: Amy Vetter
About Alreen Haeggquist
Meet Alreen Haeggquist: a seasoned lawyer, author, and advocate on a mission to amplify voices and combat silence around abuse. With over 21 years of legal expertise, Alreen champions women facing sexual harassment, discrimination, and abuse, drawing from her own traumatic past to empower others. As the founder of Haeggquist & Eck, LLP in San Diego, she has successfully secured millions for clients in these cases. Alreen's recent book, Fired Up: Fueling Triumph from Trauma, illuminates her personal transformation and commitment to ending the cycle of silence. Her unwavering belief that silence empowers gaslighting drives her to inspire others to speak out against abuse, making her a compelling guest for any podcast conversation.