Chapter 30: Embracing My Villain Era

Published Jun 14, 2024, 4:00 AM

Rachel decides it's time to have the conversation about being labeled a villain.

This is Rachel Go's Rogue.

Welcome back to another episode of Rachel Goes Rogue. This is your host, Rachel Savannah Lovis, and today we are channeling our inner villain and talking about embracing your villain era. But it may not be what you think it is, so we'll get into it. I have a very special guest, Callie Klug. You may know her from her Instagram. I've been following her for quite some time. Her instagram is Callie Somatics. She is a certified somatic practitioner and yoga teacher. Callie's teachings help clients access the inner wisdom of their own bodies. She believes we all have the key within ourselves to stop outsourcing our healing and unlock potent empowerment from within. Cali, thank you, Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to have you here. I've been a fan of yours, following your stuff on social media, and just the way that you embody this like presence of empowerment and the way that you speak about embracing that villain part of you is something that has changed my perspective on this entire experience because it's not something that I'm necessarily trying to suppress and deny, and so I want to thank you for being so open and vulnerable with your content online. And yeah, I'm just really happy to have you here.

I'm so excited.

So I hear you were voted friendliest in high school. Would you say this is where your villain origin story began.

I would say it started even before that. I grew up in like a very pervasive Christian church as well, So I feel like growing up in that kind of context, the line between good and bad it was so binary and there was never like space for nuance. You're either good, you're either bad. You're either going to heaven or going to hell. There's like there's no one between. And so for me, I grew up from a very young age wanting to be good. I was like, I want to go to heaven. I want to be a good girl. I want to be perceived as good. And I think that's definitely what won me that title in high school of friendliest, because I was so desperate to avoid any kind of interpersonal conflict and also I just wanted people to think I was good desperately.

Yeah, So then what was the thing that shifted for you? Did you do something that wasn't accepted by other people, and I'm just like guessing, did you feel like this immense amount of shame and felt like you were inherently bad and then have to overcome that and what was that thing for you? Yeah?

I started getting therapy in twenty nineteen EMDR do you know EMDR? And that was really supportive and starting to allow my body, like to find safety, a certain level of safety.

And then a.

Few years ago that was I think that was like the foundation for that. And then two years ago I went through just like this slew of grief. And one thing about grief is that it's so tiring and exhausting, and with fawning and people pleasing, it's really high energy. And so when I didn't have the energy anymore to fawn and people please, I just I stopped. And all of these relationshis and ships crumbled. I had entire friend groups just leave me. They didn't like who I was anymore. And I just felt like the entire structures of my life that were built on this foundation of this contrived personality that I had created to be liked were demolished in like a summer. And it was so traumatic and it wasn't consensual. I didn't set out for that, Like, it just happened to me. And for me, that was kind of how I just like I just was the bad guy suddenly. Wow, And so I had I was working with Poverty at that time. Yeah, I was doing coaching with her. And she knows that so well. She knows what it's like to not be liked. She knows what it's like to be the villain in people's stories. And she basically was like, you can either claw and you know, fight your way to tell them that I am good and be understood and put all your energy towards that, which could be futile, or you could just lean into it and be like and what if I'm bad? And what? And that felt really like a release of shame for me. And so for me, that's I think how I started this work.

Yeah, it's incredible. Yeah, so those who don't know Poverty has been on the most recent Traders and she's a legend because she like completely embraced her villain era and just gives no fs at all. Basically, how did you guys start working together during COVID?

I mean I think we all watched a lot of TV during COVID, I got really into Survivor. Yeah, and she's on four seasons of Survivor. I think, yeah four. And I watched her in Heroes Versus Villains? Have you seen that one?

I haven't know that one's really good.

I gues should watch that, Okay, but she is labeled as a villain. Everyone in the tribes, both tribes actually don't like her. They're trying to get her out. She makes it to the end, and I was just like, I, this girl has something that I want, this confidence, this ability to stay true to yourself even when everyone's against you. And I've somehow found her on Instagram and I realized she was a yoga teacher and a life coach, and I just needed what she was selling. I started working with her, and I think that's how my brand was born, because she basically taught me how to be a villain.

Very cool. I love that, Yeah, she did something great because I feel like you definitely channeled that and you're not afraid to speak about it. I feel like as females, especially growing up, we're taught to be small, We're taught not to speak out. I would think three times before saying anything, and I didn't want to be disruptive. I just wanted to be the good girl and almost like not be noticed at all. And I also struggled with that. I want to be inherently good. But if I'm not one hundred percent good, am I bad? And just like really working over time to.

Monitor because if you're bad, it's like, what does that mean? You live a terrible life? Like I'm doomed to be miserable.

I won't be loved, I won't be worthy of love. Yeah, all of those lies that were programmed in us from a young age. Yeah, And I really didn't feel like I was allowed to rebel, and so developmentally, I can see how I have been immature and this has come out in other ways in my life, hence Season ten of vander Pump Rules. But just to back up, because you were talking about fawning, and fawning is a trauma response. There's fight, flight, freeze, and fawn and it's almost like you're trying to appease another person. Can you talk a little bit more about that.

Yeah, So the four trauma responses are very they're reflexive, so we don't really choose them. It's completely chosen by the body. So with a fight response, our body decides that the most effective course of action is to go towards the thing that's threatening to us and fight them. And this usually looks like upwards energy, like yelling energy in the arms, maybe you want to kick. It's a sympathetic nervous system response, which means that it's very high energy and explosive. So even as I'm like saying this, like I can feel it in my body and it's just an upward like explosive energy. It's also very high risk most people. Once again, it's like more reflexive, but most people don't choose this as their primary response because it's higher like higher risk. You could get hurt, you could get attacked, so most people don't have that as a primary response.

Would you say that females are more conditioned to not have that be your response.

Yeah, that's a great point because most women, if you look at it just biologically, most women are smaller than most men. So it doesn't even like our bodies are so intelligent. We probably couldn't take a random man on the street, you know. So our body knows that, and that's why so many women fond so much. And we'll like I can get more into that, but but yeah, that's very true. Yeah. The other response is flight. So in flight, your body decides the best thing to do is to be propelled away from the threat. Usually that looks like downwards energy energy to the legs. You're moving away from the threat. Usually that's most people's preferred response. Like perfect world, you just leave, like you just leave the situation, you leave the person, you leave whatever's threatening to you. And then we have freeze. So and freeze, your body decides kind of like you said a minute ago, you're like I almost just didn't want to exist or like be seen in this situation. Your body decides the best thing to do is to not exist and not feel. And so if you think of like a place where maybe you couldn't leave, like you're in a subway car and a guy comes in and he's acting kind of weird or like crazy, you might just go into freeze. So it looks like the limbs everything kind of goes inwards. There's like a collapsing that happens. Your breathing could get really shallow, it could speed up. It's an activated state, but externally you look frozen. And also there's a lot of numbing that happens, so it's kind of a safe of your response, Like a lot of victims of assault, like might have an out of body experience because their it's like a save Your body's just saving it. It's like this is so terrible, I'm gonna propel you out of here so you don't have to survive this or experience this. Finally, there's fawn. So the fawn response is really interesting because similar to fight, our body propels us towards the threat, but instead of fighting the threat, we actually appease the threat, and so this can look like tension in the body. Usually fawn and freeze are blended, so we're probably some on some level numbed out through the sensations of our body. There's a clenching and embracing that happens when you're interacting with this person, but there's an appeasement, so you're prioritizing their experience over yours. And this can look like fake laughing. It can look like over emoting, it can look like leaning in, it can look like laughing at jokes that you don't find funny. It's almost like you're creating a chemistry that's just not there, and it's very popular with women because and children because biologically it just doesn't make sense for women and children. What are we going to do? Fight not really viable option.

Once you realize that you have this trauma response and these patterns, how do you then work to break it?

It's really hard firsus of all, because it's like we're really good at it, Like I'm really good at fawning, and you're probably really good at fawning, and it's something that by the time you're an adult, if you've been doing it your whole life as a kid, you're an expert. Like we could win the Olympics of fawning. So it's so reflexive that it does take time. I think any kind of thing that has to do with somatics and just tuning into your experience of your body supportive because if I'm like sitting here talking to you and I like feel nauseous and I'm just like my stomach hurts and I'm feeling clenching, that's information that my body's trying to tell me, Like maybe it has to do with the person, maybe it has to do with something else. But I think just starting to tune into how is my body experiencing this person this conversation. That's a really good place to start.

And then like learning to prioritize your own needs, like your need for that emotional wellness, because in the fawn response, you are prioritizing the other person's needs and you're trying to maybe even make the environment more enjoyable for that person, to maybe regulate their emotions or you know, not say the wrong thing. So it's like this piece of self worth that is the underlying thing. I mean, for me anyway, It's like that was the thing that I really realized I am worthy of having my needs met and feeling all of my emotions and like taking back ownership of what's mine and not trying to like read other people's minds and all that stuff.

It's probably so hard to because you're in the public eye and it's hard enough to manage like five people, let alone the view of countless people of how they're perceiving you.

It was so bad, my fawning response that were so good. Yeah, I had the worst social anxiety, like the worst, always hyper vigilant of what other people thought of me, and I was a mind reader and all this stuff and going onto a sh show like vander Pump Rules. It's like exposure therapy where I knew I would be able to overcome it with constant exposure, testing my boundaries of my limits and pushing myself and it definitely. I mean, oh gosh, I'm just so happy I'm at the place that I'm at now.

Do you feel like it helped?

It did? And I feel like maybe even this whole experience helped me get to where I am now. Forces you, It forced me and I have a voice now and I feel the most myself I've ever felt, and that's so empowering. So yeah, it's been this whole journey, but I don't have social anxiety anymore.

That's great.

Okay, So how can we relate embracing your villain era into overcoming the fawning response and the people pleasing.

Yeah, so for those of us who are recovering people pleasers, we are so used to probably being overly accommodating, like for us in our nervous system, being overly accommodating, overly offering so much, saying so much. For us, when we start to do less and say less and offer less, it can feel like really villainous, like we're being bad people. We're like, oh am I a bad person. I didn't offer them the most, Like I'm I'm not hurting yet in this relationship. That's weird because I haven't given so much of myself and so for us, what feels normal for so long that overgiving. When we start to do that less, it can feel villainous. And so that's where I've kind of play is like can you lean into that? Can you make it a game? Because you're like ninety percent of the time you're just saying no, I can't go out, or no I'm too tired, and someone might be upset with you or whatever, And I think a way to play and make light of it and deshame it is just okay, Well I'm in my villain era. I'm allowing myself to be misunderstood.

Yeah, that's the huge part. It's like allowing yourself to be misunderstood. Yeah, because if you have this response to over explain yourself, that's draining. I feel like people who are listening right now may be like, head's like a red flag is going up, like a villain era. Really, really, Rachel, You're gonna advocate for people to enter their villain era. Wow, so I'm brand for you. What would you say to the critics that are like, what are you saying? You're just gonna be diabolical from here on out and you're gonna like have no respect and no regard for other people? Is there a limit that you put on yourself and how do you do that?

Well?

When it comes to healing from people pleasing and the fawn response, there's this overswing that happens. I talk about it a lot because people don't know it and they start to heal from fawning and they're that they go, why am I literally pissed to everyone? And what happens when you people please and you fawn for so long is that you either consent or don't consent. But either way, there's so many boundary violations, little things, big things, and font in fawning, you are suppressing. So, like I said, it's coupled with that freeze response. So there's a suppression of anger, and anger is a biological response that is made to create boundaries and animals that's like what somatics is. It's like going back, we have Amlian nervous systems. How does this play out in nature and in nature, it looks like animals taking space or attacking or you know, doing this these big expressions of creating space, creating boundaries, like cats like will swat at people and the cat's not shamed for that. It's just doing what it knows and what it's nervous system is wired for. And when we have so many boundary violations from a lifetime of people pleasing. I was twenty five when I started this, twenty five years of swallowed nose, and I don't like this, and all these things that I had suppressed. Anger turns, you know, irritation, annoyance, anger, it's just becomes a well of rage, like a reservoir of rage. And when you start to heal from fawning, that comes out. It's like and we're so not equipped for that on so many levels, just like societally, we don't learn how to manage our anger or meet our anger. And then on top of that, if you are a big faunner, you probably haven't experienced that before, and so it comes out in a way that's really big and usually dissociative, so that can look like I've done this, and everyone I've worked with has experienced this, having big reactions to boundary violations that are very disembodied and dissociative. You might not remember the conversation, you might yell, you might, it's like very explosive. So it's like a really explosive fight response. And the reason I bring that up is because this overswing, there's two things with it. Number One, it's natural. It's biologically documented, like happens in animals. They have so many studies on it where they've observed this freeze fawn response. Just going explosive'natural. It's biological, and it's also shamed, and it's also can be destructive. And so I think when it comes to calibrating your villain era, it's really how can I feel the anger and be like, Okay, I'm feeling pissed, I'm feeling annoyed, I'm feeling irritated. How can I advocate for myself and my body while staying embodied, Because if you're staying embodied, it's not going to be like crazy, a crazy reaction. I just won't because if you're staying embodied, you're not going to go into rage because rage is just too much for us to stay present with. Does that make sense? It's like finding that sweet spot.

Yeah. Yeah, it's like you're flexing a new muscle, and so you're gonna go a little overboard, probably for the first few times, as you're learning to set boundaries for yourself and learning to feel your anger and what it's telling you a boundary that has been violated, and it just takes practice. And safe people hope a lot because they will understand that this is a new thing for you, or be open to that concept and not hold it over your head and shame you. So it's super important to surround yourself with healthy, safe people. And then I was wondering because for me, it wasn't so much the rage that well, I definitely was suppressing my rage. Don't get me wrong, my anger was definitely suppressed for years, like most of my life, but it was like that selfishness that I never gave myself before. I was always preoccupied with other people's needs and wanting to create a better reality for them at my own expense. And so when something switched in me where I had my breaking point and I wasn't about it anymore, and I just wanted to start living for myself because what the hell, you know, And I took it too far. Season ten has documented that, and new viewers of the show have tuned in just for that season and that's all they see. There's clearly like a backstory to this girl who's having a whole psychotic break on camera. But I just became so selfish and like narcissistic, honestly, And I feel like it was that overswing that maybe needed to happen for me to find a middle ground now, because now I know exactly how it feels to completely disregard everyone else's experience but my own, and I don't want to be in that place again. So it's like this balance between being quote unquote a good person because I ultimately want to be a good person, and then I don't want to go too far back into the fawning response where I am defending myself and I am spending my energy doing that and working towards, i don't know, managing my reputation. So I didn't want to swing too far back that way. And it's still I'm still navigating this middle ground.

Yeah, it's it takes a minute, I think, to find equilibrium. And I think that, like I said, with myself, with most people in my life, and with everyone that I've worked with, there is an overswing that can look different for everyone. It's usually not documented on national TV and picked apart and criticized, so I can't imagine what that is like, but it looks different for everyone, and finding that sweet spot is harder than people think.

Can you talk about shame a little bit? Because I feel like part of embracing your villain era is accepting the fact that you may be a villain in someone else's story, and once you realize that, you probably feel a healthy amount of shame about it. But then there's also this external shame that could be toxic how and obviously, like embracing your villain era releases some of that shame. But for you, can you describe the difference between guilt and shame?

Yeah, So shame is so heavy in the body. I think it's has an important role in very small doses to kind of shape you into society. You know, so we're not all just like actual animals, Like that's not ideal. So I think in that way, in small, temporary doses, it's good. But I don't think that's how most people experience shame. I think most of us feel as something that's really pervasive and heavy. It does two things. It will bring you into a freeze response, because shame is an intense feeling, and anything that's too overwhelming for the body will probably bring you into a freeze. And so there's a shutdown that happens. It's not really good for you or anyone else if you're in a freeze state. And then also it's like a dampener. So there's no expression that happens in shame. And that's why the the villain era de shaming. It's like, like what you're saying, with everything that happened, you obviously feel bad, Like you don't have to prove that to people. I feel like at a certain point, if I do something bad to someone, I'm not psychopathic, I'm gonna feel bad about that. Like the guilt, I'll feel guilty. Hopefully that leads to corrective behavior if necessary. But the shame is just doesn't even serve a purpose. And so that's where the inner villain work comes. It's like people hate me, Can I can I love that? Can I like it that people are they can't get your name out of their mouth? Like is there a little part of you that's kind of like, oh, okay, or like can you play with that? And I think that's where the release of shame happens. And then also just like parts work, I'm really big on parts work. Can you accept those dark, nasty parts of you? Everybody has them and if you ostracize them, they're gonna just come back stronger, like that anger I just talked about. So can you bring them in and love them? Be like it's cool, We're chill. Let's you know.

Extending that compassion to those parts of you. It allows for you to be a whole, integrated adult who's functional and healthy, and that's ultimately the goal.

Yeah, I would love that. Yeah, that's the dream.

Okay, what is divine rage?

I came from the yoga world, which is very spiritual and very we rise above our anger, and anger is not good and how can you release negative emotions like anger? And that verbiage just pisses me off because that's just not how it works. We live in bodies that are animal bodies, so you're going to be angry, and that anger serves a purpose. And I think a lot of people don't understand that. And that's why I call it divine rage because or divine anger divine rage, because it's something that's so beautiful and a piece of the puzzle that a lot of us just don't understand.

Wow. Yeah, I love the way that you're able to talk about it because it changes your perspective. So when you're feeling these emotions, you don't feel like you need to suppress it. It's like, oh, this is my divine anger coming up. This is the part of me that's telling me that a boundary has been violated. And now I know it's telling me like I need to advocate for myself and make a change, and that is so divine within you. So just shifting your perspective on these complex constructs that I feel like have been shamed by society is so important to becoming a healthier person.

Yeah. I love anger. Yeah, I talk about it so much.

I love anger now too. And there was I had an assignment at the Meadows where obviously my therapist could recognize that I was suppressing my anger, and I had to realize that as human beings, we're supposed to feel all of our emotions, and all of our emotions are I don't know, it's healthy to feel all of them, and anger is not a bad emotion. It's a difficult emotion. And then I was allowing myself to break out of the denial that I was in in that relationship. I talked about it on this podcast before, but like a pivotal moment for me was journaling, doing a fantasy buster's list and really writing down all of the hard proof evidence that this person I was involved with was not healthy for me, and just the specifics with that, and all of a sudden, I just was overcome with anger. I had to go for a run and I was not stopping. I was running around the campus. I was screaming. I went to the Smoke Pit sorority and I was like Rachel, my friend Rachel that was there. It was like, Rachel, I'm so effing done with Tom. And she was like, wait, what did you just say? And I was like, I'm so done with Tom. And she's like, wait, I need you to say that a little louder. I didn't hear you.

And I was like, I'm done with.

Tom and she's like again, I'm done with Tom. I'm so effing done with Tom. And we were all screwed dreaming it at the top of our lungs. We missed our first lecture at eight fifteen am that morning, but it was like so therapeutic to do that with other women and just like feeling that anger and allowing myself to share that with other people. It was a huge pivotal moment for me because then I really was like, okay, like these boundaries have been violated. I can now see how I was betraying myself and allowing this to happen. And I'm no longer doing that.

Being seen in your anger and letting that and having that be a safe experience with your girlfriends, that's special and anger you. So I'm getting trained right now in somatic experiencing, and when someone starts to feel angry, it's actually we celebrate it. It's really exciting because it means you're coming out of the freeze response, you're coming out of a chronic fawn. And it's literally an essential step in finding nervous system regulation. Again, you can't sidestep it. So yeah, that's great.

It's crazy to think about too now that you say it's an essential part of nervous system regulation because I look at some people who have like anger issues and have issues containing their anger and just like going off and I look at those people as not emotionally regulated people. But on the flip side of that, someone who doesn't express their anger at all is also considered not emotionally regulated as well. Yeah, you just don't quite think of it that way. But the villain era stuff, I think, I think a lot of people are familiar with, like, oh, she's embracing her villain era, but you know, there are still some people that only want to root for the hero essentially, but personally, Like watching movies, it always fascinates me getting to know the villain character and their backstory and the reason why they have become so evil. You know, there's always a reason. Like, for instance, the Joker, we see that whole journey in this like mental illness that has shaped him and being shunned by society and that isolation. Also like Maleficent Sleeping Beauty that you know which that comes in and casts a spell on Sleeping Beauty when she was born, and of course we all hate her in the beginning because we're really, why the heck would she do that to a poor little baby, an innocent little child. But then you know that backstory, we learned like there was resentment there towards the King and Queen, and you know, she just wanted a place belonging to. So I think it's like all of these human we're all human.

Almost like those stories have nuance, yes, because people are nuanced.

People are nuanced exactly.

It's like really not that crazy of a concept. Yeah, I mean, I think the old Disney movies were very like binary, like I mentioned, and like how I experienced the Christian Church was good or bad. So you're either good or bad, hero or villain. If you're the hero, you are gonna win and have a great life. If you're the villain, you're gonna die and have a miserable life and be ugly. And we like grew up with that. And now they're just now creating movies that allow for nuance around the villain.

I love that.

But yeah, I think like we grew up with this very binary view of villains and good and bad, and it's scary because you want to stay on the right.

Do you think that some people who are on reality TV have an easier time channeling their inner villain?

I think from what I've seen with PARV and what I've seen with other people from the shows that she's been on, is that some people have easier access to maybe these like more villainous parts, or they have less shame around being perceived as bad. But I've also seen people from the shows that she's been on that have had a really hard time with being perceived as villainous. I think Dan from Traders had a really hard time in the reunion because people were taking it really personally that he was a trader, and I think that was really difficult for him. And we saw Peter on Traders as well, fighting tooth and nail to be the good guy. The good guy he turned down being a Trader because he wanted to be a faithful so badly. So I think it's a mixed bag, just like anywhere. But I think that from what I've seen ultimately is that the people that go on reality TV, and I'm sure you included, it's something that you just have to build because you're thrown into the public eye and people can be really heartless at times, and so you just have to build that capacity to be misunderstood. Yeah, but I don't think you come out of the womb with more capacity for that.

Why do you think people are so drawn to watching these types of villains on reality TV.

I mean, it'd be so boring without the villain, Like, are you getting me?

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to join me in the studio and come on to Rachel gos Rogue. I just think that you're really onto something and channeling your inner villain is a way to get your power back and not live in shame. Just spreading that awareness to other people so important.

I'm happy to be here and I'm glad to like explore this topic with you because I feel like it's important and it brings nuance into the world. We can meet these dark parts of ourselves and then, like when people see things on TV play out because you already have compassion for those darker, nasty parts of you, you're not as vicious towards other people's dark nasty parts. And I think that's honestly world changing. So yeah, I'm really grateful too have been invited here.

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