How Dreaming Can Spark Joy and Healing in Your Life

Amy Stone [00:00:03]:
Karen Robinson, welcome to the Imperfect Adulting Show.

Karen Robinson [00:00:07]:
Thank you, Amy, for hosting me.

Amy Stone [00:00:09]:
I’m so happy you’re here. Are you ready for a fun chat?

Karen Robinson [00:00:15]:
Let me see. I guess I could be, yeah.

Amy Stone [00:00:19]:
All right, let’s do it. All right, so today we’re going to talk about how dreaming can spark joy, a healing journey. So does that sound like something you love to talk about?

Karen Robinson [00:00:31]:
Absolutely.

Amy Stone [00:00:32]:
All right, very good. Okay, so before we dive into that, I want to give people a chance to learn a little tiny bit more about you and your life. And here’s my question. What part of the world do you live in these days? And then while you’re chatting about yourself, you can tell everybody as much or as little as you want about your family. Today.

Karen Robinson [00:00:52]:
I live in Alexandria, Virginia, but I’m originally from Maine.

Amy Stone [00:00:58]:
Okay. A main.

Karen Robinson [00:00:59]:
My mom’s side. Yes. My mom’s side of the family is all from Maine. My father’s side of the family is from New Brunswick, Canada.

Amy Stone [00:01:07]:
Oh, it’s Canadian. Very nice. Alexandria, Virginia. I spent a summer there in, like, in a rental in Holland Hills with the. The Wright Houses that. It’s like a whole community of Andrew Lloyd Wright houses. Anyway, random thing, I swam on a swim team. So summer stories from Amy’s childhood. All right, so now dreaming, joy, and healing. How did you, like, let’s go talk about, like, the origin story of this, like, project. How did you get started thinking about dreaming? Are you, like, someone who is a naturally good dreamer?

Karen Robinson [00:01:47]:
I’m going to say yes and no. I think it’s a little complicated. I. I will say that any dreams I’ve had, like, in childhood or young adulthood, I’ve. I’ve achieved them all. All the dreams. Okay. But the reason I’m hesitant to say yes is because I took a lot of side turns. Like, I let boulders get in the way. How to climb a few mountains. So it wasn’t all like, oh, I had a dream, and boom, it happened. It was. I did the struggle bus a few times, learned things the hard way.

Amy Stone [00:02:25]:
I think that that’s part of the reason it’s important to have that conversation, because that’s part of the reason behind the whole podcast is giving people a chance to talk about those things, because I think that’s always the story. Even if something looks afterwards like it was a very straight shot, something that was very, very smooth, there’ always a change in direction. And part of. Part of the mastering of the lifing, which is impossible to do. Right. But part of the learning to love the experience is Accepting the fact that it’s probably not going to be a straight line and that just because you don’t know about somebody else’s straight line doesn’t mean it wasn’t a straight line. Like, we don’t always share those stories, but so we go from there. Yeah. All right, so when we talk about dreaming in this example, or when you talk about dreaming because you’re the. You’re the teacher, are we sort of talking a little bit about visualizing or how would you do describe dreaming in this?

Karen Robinson [00:03:18]:
Yeah, it’s a good question because. Right. There’s a couple kinds of dreams. Like the dreams you have at night. Those. Those are different than what we’re talking about now. The dreams you have at night, if they. If they’re happy and smooth, awesome. If they’re kind of hard dreams, It’s. It’s just your body’s way of working out stress while you’re sleeping because maybe you’re trying not to think of those things during the day. But the dreaming I’m talking about in terms of, it’s more about what you want for your future. And it is visualizing that, you know, in very clear, succinct ways. But it’s also taking the baby steps a little at a time when you look at your dreams. And it’s also not worrying so much about the how, because that’s where we trip up and have a lot of bumps, is the how are we going to do this? You know, and just taking a step out in faith can be enough to propel us in that direction.

Amy Stone [00:04:17]:
Okay, very good. I. I’m a person, so sometimes I remember my dreams at night and sometimes I don’t. But. So I like to set goals. I like to try to visualize the things that I’m trying to create. Sure, absolutely. But I will also say that sometimes if I’m working on something big, I will. I have. I will. I have trouble. I have trouble seeing things I’ve never done before. If I’m doing something where I’ve never been, that kind of thing. If I’m setting a goal that I don’t know what it’s going to take to get there, there’s going to be stumbling blocks for me, which I just throw out as conversation points. What parts of this type of dreaming do you find that either you or other people do struggle with? And since I just laid mine out right on the table, I was like, here are my obstacles.

Karen Robinson [00:05:03]:
No, it’s a great question, because the more negative experiences you’ve had, like, if you Had a lot of trauma. You could end up with the belief that I only deserve for. To happen or bad things to happen.

Amy Stone [00:05:17]:
Yeah.

Karen Robinson [00:05:18]:
You know, I don’t deserve to be happy or have joy. And so. And even if we know better in our mind, like, we cognitively know, of course I deserve good things to happen just like anybody else. But our subconscious really tells the story. Like, our behavior tells the story. Right?

Amy Stone [00:05:37]:
Right. No, exactly. If you want to see what people are, if you want to know somebody’s motivation, look at what they’re doing. Absolutely. The. I have. So we. Do you guys have the lottery in Virginia? Do you guys have, like, Powerball or any of those things? So we will sometimes in my house, we will play the game, like, when it gets up to, like, a lunatic number will be like, all right, if we won 50 billion gazillion dollars. Right. You know, what will we do? Right. But I do have a friend who hates that game. They don’t like to play it. They’re like, nope, I don’t even like to think about it. I can’t even have the conversation. Not fun for them. So I acknowledge that people are definitely different in how. How they do that. I think it’s fun. Like, it’s like, if you won $900 million, I would buy an island by a castle. I just come up with, like, crazy things. All right, so if we rewind the clock here to the start, I don’t know how long you’ve been working, doing this work, but if we rewind the clock, like the. And think back to when you began to work on this project and putting together resources for this. Do you. Do you have a memory of, like, what was going on in your life and the things that you were working on, healing and how you started to do this work? Do you want to take us through what was part of that story for you?

Karen Robinson [00:06:49]:
Yeah. And that’s also kind of a long story, but I’m going to try to be concise. So I myself am a trauma survivor, and I had a suicide attempt when I was 12. You know, I was. I felt misery. And then when that attempt didn’t work, I thought, well, maybe there’s more. Maybe there’s a reason why, what’s my purpose kind of stuff. And then, of course, I end up being a mental health therapist, a social worker, where I’m rewarded every day of my life with the work that I do. You know, I’m helping people. We’re empowering people to heal, you know, either mental health issues or family issues. Relationship, parenting, yada, yada. Right. And so at one point in my life, I thought that all my dreams came true. Like, I had the career, I’ve always wanted to have a beautiful home. I have an amazing husband now. There was some rocky paths to getting him right. Looked for love in all the wrong places kind of thing. And I have beautiful children. So I thought all my dreams have been achieved. And I was just kind of settled. And then one day I saw this advertisement for this program called Dream Building, and it just really just stopped me in my track. I’m like, huh, this is very curious. And almost I felt compelled to attend. So it’s. It’s a coach, a transformation coach called Mary Morrissey.

Amy Stone [00:08:22]:
Okay.

Karen Robinson [00:08:22]:
Who’s very. And she’s a minister, but she’s also very into the law of attraction work. So I signed up for the event for three days. Once you sign up, you pay a deposit, and if you show up, you get it back. So it was a fair wax.

Amy Stone [00:08:38]:
Yeah, that’s a neat idea.

Karen Robinson [00:08:40]:
So. And I love traveling. I’m like, okay, let me go to this. And then it was such an amazing experience because she taught us on just thinking a little bit about what it would mean or look like if we wanted more. Yeah, there’s always a bigger dream, something more possible. And I was. Even though I had achieved my goals, I wasn’t very happy in the work. In where I was working. I was working for the Department of Defense. And for those that don’t know, there’s a lot of. I don’t. A lot of political bureaucracy, I guess, and there’s oppression and sexual harassment and racism, all the things. Right. I mean, it’s improved office.

Amy Stone [00:09:28]:
I think that you find a lot of those things like, you know, that was. The container is not. I mean, I don’t. I don’t think those are uncommon stories, is what I’m going to say. Like, any employer, any big. Any big. Any big office, you’re going to find stuff like that, which is sad.

Karen Robinson [00:09:45]:
And also there was a lot of. Even though there were some hard experiences, like, I got to work in Japan for five years. Like, I had some amazing experiences too, within that organization. So it wasn’t all bad. And it helped me achieve a lot of goals because I was paid well for my work. And so anyway, when I went to Dream Builders, I wasn’t really happy at work, but, you know, it was paying bills and so forth, so staying. And then I got the idea about having my own company. And then that’s where Heal Thrive Dream was Born the name of my company where I would focus on trauma, specifically helping people heal their past wounds, thrive in their present relationships and dream about their future. That’s where I got the idea.

Amy Stone [00:10:33]:
Wow.

Karen Robinson [00:10:34]:
And we did fun activities like we, she, she have us like put our back to somebody, a partner, and we would spin around three times and pretend that was like a time machine. And so then I’m five years in the future and I got to tell my partner all, all that I achieved or what’s happened in that five years. So it really makes you project your future. And I was like, oh, I have this company and I’m, you know, serving trauma survivors and I’m traveling and I’m doing this, doing that, and all that stuff has come true since I’ve done that.

Amy Stone [00:11:10]:
That’s amazing.

Karen Robinson [00:11:11]:
2020.

Amy Stone [00:11:12]:
That’s amazing.

Karen Robinson [00:11:12]:
You know, I published, I published books. I’ve gotten to travel this year alone. I, I went, I traveled almost every month this year while I was working.

Amy Stone [00:11:22]:
I love that. Yeah, I love that. The dreaming works.

Karen Robinson [00:11:25]:
Dreaming works.

Amy Stone [00:11:26]:
I love that. I do. I love that. I think that that’s spectacular. And so you. So I want to also pause and just say thank you because you did share your origin story, which does have a tough moment in it. It sounds to me like you’ve shared that piece of your history quite a lot and you’re, you’re comfortable with sharing that. But I think it always deserves acknowledgement that I want to say thank you for sharing that with me and the audience because you don’t have to, you don’t have to can do that. So I want to say thank you for that because that there’s going to be somebody out there that’s listening who has a piece of their story that they’re not sure if they want to tell. And so anytime we do that, it’s a nice thing to put out there. Okay, so what about it? With this totally non elegant segue to the next question, which is not related, but what about, what about if somebody wants to do this work or learn about it or wants to apply these techniques, but they’re like unsure whether or not they need healing or what might need healing? Because you mentioned you were like, I thought I was happy, but I wasn’t happy. And I think that’s a really common spot for people to be in when they’ve got some good stuff in their life, they’ve got a good paycheck. They, you know, they love their home or where they live. But there are other things they’re generally, I know Not. It’s not. Doesn’t feel like a home run. It can be hard to be like, oh, I don’t know, you know, like, so when you don’t know what’s going on and you don’t know what needs healing or you don’t want to talk about it, does the dreaming still work? Is it still helpful?

Karen Robinson [00:12:50]:
I think so. Totally think so. Because remember, there’s always something more that we can achieve, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be something about success. It could be. Okay. What would empower me to make a bigger impact in the world? You know, what would help me feel like I’m making a difference? And that can be anything from volunteer work to starting a nonprofit to working to strengthen your relationships. It could be a lot of different things. So there’s lots of different ways. Like, I like to talk about quadrants of our life, you know, which is like our romantic relationships, you know, parenting, if we’re parents, extended family, your friendships and then your career, your education, your finances, and then like recreational stuff. Like, what, what is this something you really enjoy? Like, I love travel, so I wanted to put time and attention on that. And so with these quadrants, you can set goals in each one of them and just baby step your way to. To doing them. And then one day it’s like, boom, you wake up and all of that’s happened.

Amy Stone [00:14:05]:
Yep. And then it’s time to pick something else. The that I love that. So that I love the breaking things up. Many, many years ago, when I was. I would do like quarterly business coaching for I was doing something totally different. And they would always. And I would pay for a half day seminar that they would put me in a room and make me make a plan, which was absolutely worth it for me because I could take like three hours and just bang it out. And so I went every single time. But so I loved it. I was a big fan. But one of the things that, like, totally frustrated me is that the person who taught this quarterly workshop, she was always like, pick one thing. You only have one goal. You can only have one goal. And meanwhile, I’ve got like a list. I’ve got like, you know, in this is my goal over here, and this is my goal with this. And this is my. I’ve got 25 different things. Like, pick one. I was like, well, I’m going to pick one today. But then I’m going to ignore that advice because I’ve got all these other goals. But I like the way you have the quadrant and you’re like, Set them for. Set them for all of the things. Because I think that we do have lot. We’re complex, right? People are complex. We have a lot going on. So the idea that we would only have one dream related to all of our lives, especially if we’ve got family, because we have dreams. Not about you, but I sometimes have dreams and hopes and wishes for other people in my circle. Like, it’s like I’m working on this, and I hope for that person they have that. Not that I can do it for them, but so on and so forth. All right, so what is it? Let’s talk about joy, because. So it’s like how dreaming can spark joy on your healing journey. So we’ve talked about healing, and we’ve talked about the work of dreaming. What is it about joy that you think specifically connects to healing?

Karen Robinson [00:15:36]:
Yeah, Well, I think when we think about trauma or brief or complicated relationships, they don’t sound like very joyful. Right. Like, it feels like so much work to heal and grow and be and do better, feel better. And so what. How I think of joy is what can we do to make this work feel lighter? What could we do to feel relief? And what does it mean to be joyful?

Amy Stone [00:16:13]:
Oh, you know, that is my next question. That was my absolute. I was like, what the joy difference between, like, joy, happiness, and I knew that. Yeah, you did. That was not even the synchronicity I was thinking of you to remember, but keep going. We are connected.

Karen Robinson [00:16:29]:
Yeah. And so I. Okay. One of the theories of why people have depression. There’s several theories, but one of them is too many unpleasant events have happened in their life. So naturally you would feel depressed. So what would be the opposite of that? Well, the opposite is planning fun. And so it’s something I’m huge about when I have clients with depression. Like, I do the traditional treatments of cognitive behavioral therapy, we how we think impacts how we feel. But I also talk to them about planning more fun in their lives. So, for example, I worked with this woman when I was in Japan. She was. It was a dual military family. Like, she was serving, her husband was serving, and she had two children. Her spouse was deployed, so she was a single working mom. And so one of the first questions. And now this isn’t always important, but certainly when you have resources, like money, it can really help you propel your dreams. But you can still dream without the money. But it really helps if you have money.

Amy Stone [00:17:38]:
Yeah, it does. It’s like, not even worth, like, ignoring that. Like, there’s a tremendous. If you have the money to throw at a problem. It absolutely is a tool that makes, makes a big difference.

Karen Robinson [00:17:49]:
It, it really does. And so I learned with working with her that they had huge savings. Okay. And so, and, but she was miserable every day. Like, she felt overwhelmed with work. She, like, the kids were small. And so one of the counseling sessions, we just planned a Club Med vacation that was two hours away. And they had a kids club.

Amy Stone [00:18:12]:
Yep.

Karen Robinson [00:18:13]:
So she checked the kids into kids club and she went snorkeling and swimming into the spa. And she came up back, she goes, I had the most fabulous time. She goes, I was in the pool, they served me fruit on a platter. Like, she goes, it was next level. And so we just, and we talked about, like, that was a big event that she did. But what little things could she do or bring into her life to give her joy? Well, maybe she can’t go to the spa every weekend because of the kids, but maybe she could get those slippers with the gel in it to put on her feet. And maybe she could get a good smelling candle or essential oils. Like, what could she do to bring pieces of that to give her a little joy? So I don’t know if I answered your question or not. It might have been.

Amy Stone [00:19:02]:
I think so. Yeah. No, I think you did. I mean, I was talking about how the joy was connected, and then you gave us a description of what you were talking about. So, like, the difference between like, joy and fun or happiness, which they may be the same depending on what’s going on in your life, but they can, they can also sometimes, I think probably be. Sometimes there can probably be differences in how people feel them and how they interpret them. Like, because when one person uses one word, like, happiness is hard to describe. Right. And one person’s happiness could be somebody else’s. It’s different. Okay, Right. They don’t get it. They totally don’t get it. I think that that’s, I think that that’s just, you know, worth acknowledging. And when I work with step parents and families, as a nod to the discussion, one of the things I really say is I’m like, yeah, people will tell you that money can’t buy happiness or whatever, but there are times where money makes things much easier. Like if you’re going to have a discussion, well, for your client, right. Dreaming about a vacation that you cannot actually take probably has some benefits, Right. But when you can take it, it’s a totally different conversation. Like, when are we booking the trip? Is a different conversation than, oh, I hope that someday we’ll have the means to take a trip. So I think that. I think that that was very nicely laid out for people. All right, so I love this conversation. I love talking about dreaming, sparking joy on the healing journey. I love thinking about a club make vacation. I haven’t been to Club Med in a very long time, but the last time I was there, they still did everybody who worked in the Club Med. So I live in Miami and there’s a Club Med, or there used to be, just about two hours from me. And the last time we went, which was definitely partly because of the kids club. Right. You can check all the kids in. Some of our kids were too young. There is an age limit. But the employees, like all the people who work in the club would still come out and, like, dance by the pool, like, and do little performances like it was 1975. I don’t know if they still do that. It was fantastic. I highly recommend it. So I think that this is going to be a super helpful topic for lots of people. We’re going to shift a little bit because this is something you do. You actually do work with people and work with people about this. And I want to give you a chance to tell everybody about your business. And then we’re going to talk about some of the special offers that you have for the people who are watching and listening. Listening. So you work with people. So tell us. Tell us what you do and how people can find you. Sure.

Karen Robinson [00:21:23]:
So I have been a mental health therapist for 25 years, but I also now do transformation coaching. And my specialty is trauma recovery and healing. And in my private business, I mostly work with women doing that, but I do have contracts with vet associations where I still see service members. And it’s about 50, 50. I might have a little more men with that than women, but I still have men and women with that. So I help our military and vets heal from their combat traumas and either military sexual assaults or a lot of them have, you know, childhood abuse or what we call developmental abuse as well. So I work with them in my private company with women. I have a membership where each month I offer coaching and support groups for women recovering from trauma. And each month we have a theme and they get a workbook and a planner, and they set goals on those different areas. Like, okay, what’s something I want to heal from my past? What relationship do I want to really focus on this month? You know, where do I want to thrive for? And then also, what. What kind of dream do I want Is it about my career? Is it about travel? Is it about something with my parenting? Like, what is, what do I really want to dream, to make, to manifest, to come true for me? So we do that every month. And new for the membership, the Trauma Recovery membership is. I’m adding the Dream Club so people that don’t have trauma can buy the Dream Club on, on their own, on its own. Or if you’re in the Trauma Recovery membership, you also get the Dream Club as part of that. Because the Dream Club is focused on those quadrants and manifesting how to do that and what that can look like in different areas of your life. And because I want it to be available to everyone, not, not to serve the wealthy or even higher middle class. I’ve set the price, so it’s a no brainer. It’s 75 for the year.

Amy Stone [00:23:35]:
That’s awesome.

Karen Robinson [00:23:37]:
And all it is, is every month I’m, I’m releasing a short video and I’ll have a little small workbook. It won’t be overwhelming, it won’t be a lot of material, but it’ll be enough to kind of get you thinking, like, what is it that I want to dream about next?

Amy Stone [00:23:54]:
We call that the Dream Club. Yeah, we talked about that. We talked about that right before we hit record. We sure did. All right. And then you also have, which I will recap this so that because I have the words right in front of me so that you don’t have to do it from memory. You also have an offer that you offered up for the audience today, which is a healing planner. And this is a journal for therapy and transformational work, including 100 journaling prompts. Normally you sell this for $12.99, but there’s a link in the show notes and for the subscribers to the email list that will get that for free, which, that’s the best deal there is. Really showing your commitment to making sure it’s accessible. That’s really, really a great thing to do and I want to thank you for that and sharing all of the things you do. I also want to say I think that it definitely shows your commitment to the work you’re doing. Did you start working with vets through the Department of Defense? Is that how you started working with military members? That feels like that’s important work because it’s like we know it’s there and they deserve support. Not that other people don’t deserve support, but I think that that deserves things. Okay. Yeah, no, I think that’s really good. I have another friend who Does. But I think he’s. He’s in California and I think he’s actually. I think he’s part of the VA is how he does that and works with that. Good, good, good work. All right, so now we’re gonna wrap this up in a super fun way. I’m going to ask you three totally unrelated questions to the topics that we did. The idea behind this is that it’s supposed to be rapid fire and people are supposed to answer in one or two or three words. We have a 100% failure rate with that. Mostly because I’m too chatty. But I do like to encourage people. And this is the one where I was like, oh, my gosh, there’s a little tiny synchronicity here, because I came up with these questions before we talked today. And the first question I came up with for you is a musical concert. And it was. What is the first musical concert you ever attended?

Karen Robinson [00:25:52]:
I think it was New Kids on the Block.

Amy Stone [00:25:56]:
Okay. New Kids on the Block or Richard.

Karen Robinson [00:25:59]:
Marks maybe been first.

Amy Stone [00:26:00]:
Okay. And then the reason, when I was looking at what I was going to ask you, I was taking you through your thing. You had just told me that you just did what right before we started.

Karen Robinson [00:26:07]:
Oh, yeah. I just ordered for date night. My husband and I take turns planning date night. And so I bought Mariah Carey tickets.

Amy Stone [00:26:14]:
That’s so funny that I was like, totally like, ah, so funny. Okay. Anyway. All right, so we talked about music. This one is going to be either a hit or miss. We’ll see. Are you a sports fan? And if so, do you have a favorite sport or team?

Karen Robinson [00:26:29]:
Yes, I was more so a sports fan in my youth. My favorite team then was the Boston Celtics.

Amy Stone [00:26:37]:
Okay.

Karen Robinson [00:26:38]:
I’m not so much into it anymore because my kids are in sports and I watch them.

Amy Stone [00:26:42]:
Oh, so then they are your favorite team. You are like a youth sport. Like, that’s like, you’re the choice. Cheerleader, the team mom. That totally counts. You could have totally said. You could have been like. You can be like the. The little League, you know, the whatever. County. County. Yes, absolutely, 100%. Okay. Now we’ll see how this. Name something that if you had the choice, you would prefer to never, ever, ever, ever, ever eat again.

Karen Robinson [00:27:10]:
Liver.

Amy Stone [00:27:11]:
Oh, that’s a good one. That is a good one. That is good. I didn’t think of that. I didn’t think about that. But that is a good one. I bet you that’s a lot of people’s answers actually for that one. That’s so funny. All right, so that’s it. That’s a wrap for the interview. Karen, thank you very much for being a wonderful guest on the Imperfect adulting show.

Karen Robinson [00:27:28]:
Thank you for having me.