How I Stopped Looking Outside Myself For Love 💖

🎙 Episode 4: How I Stopped Looking Outside Myself For Love 💖

For most of my life, I looked outside of myself for love.

I wanted someone to tell me I was doing a good job.
To tell me I was enough.
To tell me I was worthy of being proud of.

And when I didn't get that validation, I carried the same harsh voice inside my own head. The voice that judged, criticized, doubted, and made me feel like I needed to earn love instead of simply receiving it.

The truth is, most of us were never taught how to process our emotions. We learned that some feelings were "good" and others were "bad." We learned to suppress sadness, avoid anger, numb fear, and hide disappointment.

But emotions aren't who we are.

They are energy moving through us. They are part of the human experience. And just as we can't have joy without sadness, we can't experience love without loss, hope without doubt, or peace without uncertainty.

In this episode, I share one of the most life-changing lessons I've learned through healing, coaching, and personal growth: how to stop running from difficult emotions and start caring for them instead.

We talk about:
✨ Why so many of us search for love and validation outside ourselves
✨ How childhood experiences shape our relationship with emotions
✨ Why there are no "bad" emotions
✨ The role our nervous system plays in emotional healing
✨ How to care for difficult feelings instead of suppressing them
✨ The connection between emotional processing and self-love
✨ Why learning to love all parts of yourself changes everything

This conversation is an invitation to stop fighting your emotions, stop judging yourself for having them, and start giving yourself the love you've been searching for all along.

—

Meet Nicole ✨ intuitive guide, energetic healer, multi 6 figure entrepreneur, and mom of 3 boys 

This podcast is for women who do it all but feel overwhelmed, emotionally depleted, disconnected from themselves, and who are craving something more. Through conversations on intuition, energy, healing, self-worth, motherhood, and entrepreneurship, Nicole shares simple advice to help create a life that feels deeply aligned from the inside out.

👉  https://nicolesalmoiraghi.com/

Follow Nicole on Instagram!

What is Your Soul Called?

A podcast for women doing a lot and craving more soul alignment — motherhood, business, healing, relationships, growth — trying to do it without running themselves into the ground.

We talk about:
* intuition & energy
* nervous system regulation
* trauma healing
* self-compassion
* emotional processing
* entrepreneurship
* motherhood
* creating routines that actually support you
* staying connected to yourself while juggling real life

This is about learning how to feel energized, grounded, cared for, emotionally honest, and fully alive.

Your soul called - are you ready to answer?

Nicole: 00:06

Welcome to Your Soul Called. A podcast for those feeling like there's something more. More alignment, more purpose, more peace, more connection, more joy. I'm Nicole your host and in this podcast we're going to talk about what it takes to create a life that feels deeply aligned from the inside out because so many of us women especially have become disconnected and just drowning in the pressure of everyday life. I'd like to help you get reconnected with your intuition remember your value learn how to love yourself deeply from the inside out and realign with your soul with the deeper calling inside of you.

Nicole: 00:49

I'm so happy you're here. Let's dive in. Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Your Soul Called. Today we're going to be talking about how I stopped looking for love outside of myself. Let me begin by saying for a very very very very long time I didn't even know that's what I was doing.

Nicole: 01:14

I was looking outside of myself for acknowledgment for someone to tell me that I was worthy enough to be proud of for someone to tell me that they saw me. Didn't feel seen by the people that mattered to me most like my family and it's largely because I didn't see myself, but I was never taught how to love and care for and see and acknowledge myself. And I didn't even realize that was something that I was doing so I was feeling unseen and I was feeling like if only they really knew me then I would feel whole then I would feel enough then I would feel worthy of being loved, then I would feel deserving of being loved. But I had never been taught by my parents how to love and care for myself. And maybe that's something that a lot of us can relate with because and it's not their fault either, really.

Nicole: 02:31

It's that they weren't taught it. And our society that we live in doesn't teach this either. It isn't something that people talk about. It isn't something that is even mentioned. So, know, it it would make sense that this just exists.

Nicole: 02:50

And what when I say this, what I mean is like negative feelings, like when we talk about feelings and emotions and what the difference is between emotions and who we are at our core, they're different. We are not our emotions. They're separate from us. Who we are at our core, at our soul, at the depth of our being is not our emotions. Our emotions are feelings that occur because of thoughts and beliefs that we have that are often subconscious.

Nicole: 03:24

They're underneath the surface. They create these feelings, these emotions, and then there might be a circumstance that happens that makes these emotions come up. They are not you. They are not who you are. They are separate.

Nicole: 03:38

They are energy that is moving through your body. When your nervous system gets triggered, an emotion pops up. Right? You might feel anger. You might feel embarrassment.

Nicole: 03:49

You might feel shame, disappointment. And then this emotion comes into your body, and your body experiences it. But it is not who you are at your core. I did not understand this for years, and I would make my emotions mean something about me. If I was feeling some kind of, quote, bad emotion, I would make it mean that I was bad.

Nicole: 04:15

And I learned this because when I would experience a bad emotion as a child, I was told, stop being so sensitive. Stop. Just stop it. Like, let it go. Drop it.

Nicole: 04:29

And I see this happening now even now that I have kids of my own. I'll be at a baseball game, and the baseball dads, they are intense. And if one of the kids, you know, gets in his head and starts messing up when he's hitting the ball, when he's up, you know, up to base, the dad will say, stop it. Just stop it. If the kid starts to cry, he'll pull the kid over and start telling I can tell.

Nicole: 04:59

The kid immediately shuts down, and he develops this belief that I can't feel. I shouldn't feel this emotion that I'm feeling. It already exists in his body. He's already feeling bad. He's already feeling disappointment, right, that he didn't hit the ball the way he wanted to, that he missed, that he struck out.

Nicole: 05:22

He's already feeling that, and his dad's telling him to stop it. Stop it. Stop crying. So he's telling him that the emotion that he's feeling is bad, that it shouldn't be there. And this is how we learn as we grow up to do the same thing to ourself.

Nicole: 05:39

So when we start feeling this emotion later on, unconsciously what we're doing is we're replaying the same exact shit that our parents said to us and we're telling ourselves, stop it. Stop being so sensitive. Let it go. Drop it. Just drop it.

Nicole: 05:53

Or whatever it is that your parents said to you, we're doing the same exact thing. And of course you are, right? That's what you experienced. That's what you were taught. That is would make sense, that's why you're doing it because you don't know any other way.

Nicole: 06:10

It's not your parents fault either. They didn't know any other way either. That's probably the way their parents talk to them. But, we are not five year olds anymore. We're not 12 year olds anymore and we now have full control.

Nicole: 06:29

We have full power over how we treat ourselves, over how we talk to our self over how we criticize or love on ourself. We get to make these feelings that occur because of whatever subconscious is going on underneath the surface. They come up. You're feeling shame. You get the option.

Nicole: 06:52

You have the power to care for that feeling or to criticize it. You have the option to love on it, to ask it what it needs, to allow it to be there without having to change it, to be curious about it, or you can say, get the fuck out. You can numb it by drinking alcohol. You can escape by doing other things. There's a thousand ways, right?

Nicole: 07:23

You can distract. Some of us self harm. Some of us overthink and we replay it over and over and over and over in our head saying, why'd you do that? Why'd you do that? Shouldn't have done that.

Nicole: 07:32

Should have done this differently. Maybe you should have and you're doing this out of habit, but is that the kindest way you could be to yourself? And maybe it wouldn't be your natural response to be kind to or care for these negative quote negative feelings, but that's truly what you need and that's what I had to learn how to do through years of burst therapy and then life coaching and then intuition training but life coaching really is what allowed me to learn how to process my feelings in a way that I had never considered before. So, that's what I'm going to talk about today and like, why these feelings occur and how they're not bad. So, big negative feelings, they happen, right?

Nicole: 08:26

Sometimes and we can't have one without the other because we live in this earth and our earth is one of balance. So, on this earth, there everything is about balance. You cannot have joy without sadness. You can't have excitement without anxiety. You can't have clarity without confusion.

Nicole: 08:49

You can't have trust without let down or betrayal. You can't have peace without uncertainty or joy without fear or love without loss or hope without doubt. We must have both. So if we must have both, because that's just the way our earth works. That's the just the way our world works.

Nicole: 09:13

It does like, one can't be good or bad. They both have to exist. Would you give up, you know, fear? If you could never ever experience fear again, would you give it up so that if it meant that you also had to give up joy? No.

Nicole: 09:34

Right? Would you give up loss if you could never have another loss again? Would you give that up if it meant you could never experience a great love again? No fucking way. Like, of course, you you want it all.

Nicole: 09:48

And to be quite honest, one of the most amazing things I learned through intuition training is some of us that have the biggest variation of experience, like the most intense, you know, experiences of anxiety, we also get the other end, the most intense experiences of excitement. You don't have one without the other. And if you have a larger, you know, amount of negative, so called negative feelings or emotions, you also have the other side, the bigger experience of the positive. And you want both. You need to experience both.

Nicole: 10:33

Some of us higher frequency beings who are into intuition, all this stuff, we have had tough times. You know? We have experienced the worst of the negatives. We've been in the the broken, curled up on your bathroom floor, cutting yourself, whatever panic attacks, shit places. I'm talking from experience.

Nicole: 11:01

I have been in the shit hole places where you felt full shame, embarrassment, not worthy of anything. But I've also experienced the greatest love ever, most joy, the most hope, excitement. I've had both sides and one doesn't exist without the other. So understanding that, that you must have both. I think you would agree that we don't want to give one up and we're not willing to let go of one without the other.

Nicole: 11:36

Now, remember that these emotions are not who you are. So, when you're going through them, when you are feeling embarrassment, shame, you know, those are some of the worst ones to experience. When you're feeling those, you know, can you just allow them to be in you, to be there and to not judge it, to not try to change it, to not make it mean anything about yourself because who you are at your core, your existence, your being, your soul is not the emotion that your body is experiencing at the moment. It is energy that is passing through your body because of a thought, because of a belief, because it's probably subconscious, because of a bunch of stuff you've learned, and you're thinking about a situation that just happened. That's it.

Nicole: 12:35

That creates this energy, comes into your body, you're feeling it. It's trying to teach you something. You you will learn how to figure out what it's trying to teach you, but right now, all I want you to do is try to allow that feeling to exist without judging it, without trying to make it go away, without trying to, you know, force it out or make it mean anything about you because it doesn't mean anything about you. It doesn't mean anything about who you are at your core because who you are is always one in 8,000,000,000 special. You are the most unique, most special, most incredible soul.

Nicole: 13:11

And the emotion that you're feeling is just how you learned to cope. That's it. It's just how you've learned to cope with emotions. You can always learn a different way. And you will learn a different way because you're listening to this right now so what I want you to try to practice is how to process emotions how to care for them So, like to think of it rather than let's just deal with this emotion, this so called negative emotion that's coming up.

Nicole: 13:44

We want to care for it. It's coming up for a reason. It's coming up probably because it's never been cared for before in the way that it needs, and it's craving something from you, something very specific, something that only you can give it. You can't find it outside of yourself. You're not gonna get it from your mom or your dad or anyone else your husband.

Nicole: 14:08

You're going to need to learn how to give it to yourself and the more you can practice giving it to yourself the less you're going to need it from an outside place and the plus side is that you can give it to yourself so much better than anyone outside of you is able to give it to you and once you learn how to give it to yourself consistently, you'll start getting it from the outside world too because that changes your energetic electromagnetic field around you and that self care starts coming in from the outside too but you got to learn how to give it to yourself first. So, recap. Remember that the emotions are not who you are, it's just energy that's moving through your body. We got to have the good and the bad, and I'm just saying good and bad by meaning like the positive and the negative emotions are not good or bad. They're all neutral.

Nicole: 15:05

So scratch good and bad. They're all neutral. They're just emotions that we as humans give different meanings and they're just trying to tell us or show us something. A lot of times the more negative emotions like sadness or grief or they just need extra care. It's just a part of you that is craving some extra reassurance.

Nicole: 15:27

She needs care. She needs to know that she matters. She needs to to be loved on, to be cared for, and there's probably something very specific that she's craving from you. And if you allow the feeling to sit inside without trying to change it, without judging it, without making it mean anything about you, you could just practice that, then what you could do next is like talk to it or ask it what it needs. I like to see it as my inner child, five year old me, sitting in a little ball curled up, and I just let her be there.

Nicole: 16:06

And I say, what do you what's the matter, love? What do you need from me right now? And I'll sit with it. I'll sit with her. Sometimes I'll sit next to her and I'll just let her say nothing or sometimes she'll tell me exactly what she needs.

Nicole: 16:27

And I'm not going to judge her, I'm going to give her exactly what she needs. Because it's this is how you learn to love yourself unconditionally on all levels and these are the parts of you that are craving some kind of special care unconditional love that you never got as a child. And any of the negative feelings that come up, the big ones especially the ones that keep coming up the ones like guilt or shame or like sadness even sometimes those ones are those are the exact perfect times that you get to practice this You get to learn how to give yourself this unconditional love that you never got. When you were three, when you were five, when you were 12, when you were 16, when you were 27. And, you when you start giving this to yourself, you start to feel full.

Nicole: 17:28

You start to feel connected. You start to feel loved. You start to feel cared for. You start to feel seen. You start to feel enough.

Nicole: 17:38

You start to feel worthy. You start to feel proud. You start to feel unconditionally loved from the inside out and that's really the whole point. Because when you feel unconditionally loved from the inside out, you can give unconditional love to everyone around you. And until you give it to yourself, you can't give it fully to everyone around you, and that includes your kids.

Nicole: 18:00

You cannot give and give from a place of empty, and this is how you fill your own bucket. And this level of self care, it's never taught. Like, nobody teaches this. I don't know why. It's so important.

Nicole: 18:12

It's something that I literally do all the time. I did it this morning. I was was looking for examples of like when I felt like complete shit and I was reading through some of the emails from my dad that triggered me because they're just so hurtful and I immediately got into that feeling place of like where your emotions just take over your body and you feel from the inside out like everything. For me, I go into freeze. I freeze, I shut down.

Nicole: 18:48

I can't, I can feel this energy in my body and it feels too intense to do anything and I want to distract, I want to like scroll on my phone but I didn't do that. What I did and this is what I'm wanting you to do and I'm going to walk you through this in the next podcast, but I just want to give you an overview of it first. So, I did is I allowed that emotion to be there. I put my hand on my heart and I just felt it. I described it.

Nicole: 19:15

I let it be there. And I allow I allowed it to have some space and some time. I didn't try to change it. I didn't make it mean anything about me because it's not me. It's just the feeling, And it felt like this energy that was moving really fast and then really, like, crazy amount of fast and, like, this gray bubbly energy that was moving all through my left side, through my throat, through my chest, through my stomach, and I would describe it that way.

Nicole: 19:46

I would breathe into it, and I would tell it that I'm here for you. What do you need from me right now? And it's just poor like I just initially I knew it was like I miss him I miss him so much and I just feel for that little girl that part of me that just misses her dad because he was the most important person to me and I still love him to death. I love him so much but he can't be in my life and that's okay and the little girl misses her dad and a big part of me misses my dad and I needed to love on that part of me and tell her I'm so proud of you for for always having an open heart for loving the way that you do, for always coming at him with kindness even when he said those mean things, for always caring about everyone around you, for always giving so much and giving and giving. I love that about you and I'm so proud of you for becoming a woman that cares so deeply for everyone around her for becoming someone that gives her heart to everyone so fully for becoming for growing into the person that always did the right thing, even though it was hard.

Nicole: 21:14

For trying so hard with him over and over and over again, for still loving him even now as much as you do. I'm so proud of you and I love you so much and you can keep missing him and you can keep loving him and you can keep connecting with him through your heart even if He's not in your life. And I talked to myself this way until I felt a shift, until I felt cared for, until I felt like it was done. And the emotion shifted in my body, and I felt love. I I shifted in a five minute time.

Nicole: 22:01

I shifted from I don't even know what that emotion was. It was some kind of anxiety, maybe, into love. And I still feel that love now. I don't and here's what used to happen. I never processed emotions this way, and instead they would they would stay in my body, and they'd stay there, and I would replay them for hours.

Nicole: 22:28

I would think about it. I would do other things, and I would think about it again, and I would do other things, and it would pop up in my brain again and would just keep coming up, keep coming up. And I wouldn't I would just be like, I'll I'll do something else. I'll distract. I'll distract, but it doesn't go away, and it sits in your body.

Nicole: 22:44

And here's what happens. Here's a up heart it stays in your body and you shove it down and it stays in your body and you shove it down and it stays in your body and you shove it down and it turns into cancer and it turns into you know back issues and it turns into whatever heart issues it turns into something bigger because you didn't move it through your body you didn't release it you didn't allow it you didn't care for it you didn't love on it the way that it needed and that is you know, tragic because it's something that every human needs in this life, and we're not taught how to do it. But you can do this for yourself now, And it's not outside of you. You can't find it outside of you. No man is going to give you this love in the way that you need it the same way you can give it to yourself.

Nicole: 23:41

No parent is, no child is. I mean children are amazing. They give you all the love, but you got to learn how to give it to yourself because when you learn how to give it to yourself, you get to self model for your children. You get to teach them how to give it to themselves. And also, you're not craving it from other people.

Nicole: 24:01

So when you get into a fight when you're with your husband, you're not taking everything personally. You're not taking everything as criticism anymore because you know who you are. You know your soul feels connected. It feels whole. It feels loved.

Nicole: 24:13

It feels supported. When you feel that way, people can't criticize you. They can't get in the way they used to be able to get in. You you your self worth, your value, your enoughness is been created from within, and you feel whole. And that that's what I'm talking about.

Nicole: 24:34

That's where all of us need to get to, and that is the work. That processing of the feelings that in real time, them, caring for them, loving on them, not making them mean anything about who we are. That is the work. And if you can do that consistently over and over and over again, your self worth, your levels of self love, all that go up. And when your levels of self love go up, everything good in the world happens for you.

Nicole: 25:04

And that is because you put it in your electromagnetic field that I am lovable and people will love you back. Everything you could give to yourself, it comes back a hundredfold. And learning how to give it to yourself, It's the biggest, most important lesson you can can learn in this lifetime, I think. So if you like this, if you found it interesting, next week I will walk you through the process of how to process emotions the exact way that I do it. So when you get hit with a feeling of shittiness, of anger, of disappointment, of shame, of whatever.

Nicole: 25:51

Like, you can listen to it, and you can process those feelings, and you can love on yourself, and you can get the feeling to a place where it feels feels cared for, and you can feel cared for and you can come home to yourself. That's really what this whole point of processing your feelings is. And remember that these feelings they're not you. They're not who you are at your core. Your soul essence is NOT the feeling that you are having, the emotion that you are having at the moment.

Nicole: 26:25

It is separate from you. It's just something you are going through. It just needs a little extra love. Alright guys, that's what I have for you today. Hope you have a great Friday.

Nicole: 26:37

Stay tuned next week if you'd like that little lesson on how to process your feelings. Alright, have a great weekend. Bye for now.