Meet Jo Sutton

We recently connected with Jo Sutton and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jo, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
I was two. TWO…. A two-year-old can have as few as 200 and as many as a thousand words in their vocabulary. I am refreshing my relationship with the Spanish language on Duolingo and I’m still just trying to figure out how to use the word es, vs. the word està. I speak more Spanish than I understand, just as I sign more words than I can read in sign language. So, what if I had a thousand-word vocabulary at the age of two? Did I understand language well enough to internally articulate the thoughts that I best become the most loving, generous, empathetic, helpful, indispensable person in the world, as a strategy to combat the internalized feeling that there was something very wrong with me?
How did I even comprehend the thought, as translated through a feeling, when me, my Mom and brothers Jeff and Ray came home after one of Ray’s tee ball games, only to find my dad’s presence, absent from our home.
My dad was my heart. His shoulders were my favorite seat in and out of the house. His thick, strong hands, warm and soft on my back, soothed me when I couldn’t rest. The scent of Jovan Musk oil spray lodged itself so strongly into the memory banks hiding deeply within my amygdala that I didn’t even remember it was his, but fell in love with any man or woman wearing a similar scent. The day of his absence, was the day that some inarticulatable decision had been made inside my psyche, forming a super hero strong personality and defining my future, like an unbreakable arranged marriage in ancient India.
My purpose to show up for people, to leave them feeling loved, to be loving, caring, kind, generous and interested, was born of a two year old’s pain and a deep desire to feel loved and safe and to not inflict pain on another. She wasn’t far off. What an intelligent part. Sadly, when a value is fueled by fear, it can become poison. So, there were many times in my life when my goodness was fueled by fear and the desire to be loved and not abandoned by others was a self preserving act. Over time, the many crashes I took, emotionally and physically, forced me to rethink the values I inherited by this little girls pain and create a more balanced and mature purpose. I still have that same set of value, only now, I am included in one of those people who my generosity is directed toward.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
As a child, I was sick. Sore throats, stomach cramping, bleeding butt, (yes I said that), joint pains, burning limbs,,, each doctor looked at my symptoms as separate pieces, like dark meat, a drumstick, or a wing on a Thanksgiving platter. They didn’t see the whole picture this way. I attended Acupuncture school in the mid 80’s and found out that throats and butts have lots in common, they are part of the whole alimentary canal, that passageway that opens to food and releases waste. They are connected and thus, the symptoms together, make a story. I was fascinated by this… really? This whole biological mechanism was connected?

What now seems like a big fat “duh” was news to me back in 1983. I learned about symptoms and patterns, heat and cold, excess and deficiency, herbs and energy, imbalance and how to affect relative balance. After being told I was a hypochondriac, without so much as an endoscopy or colonoscopy to diagnose inner conditions, I was left, not only without help, but also, feeling invalidated and crazy. Again, a part of me was born, one that wanted to provide for others, what I wished was provided for me. Validation, curiosity, and a deep respect for another experience. I became a sleuth and advocate. I have a client I have worked with for almost 500 hours. We sleuth together her many health concerns. We call ourselves a sleuthing agency because together, as a team, we hypothesize and research deeply into her biology and psyche. She receives my respect because it is her body we are discussing.

Unlike many health or psychological professionals, I can share my own story and experiences with my clients because as a Holistic Health Counselor, I believe that relating is medicine.

Holistic Health Counseling is taking a whole look at the whole person.

1- What, when and how they eat and drink, what kind of vessel, temperature and how can we inspire water consumption in their favorite way.
2- Food, aaaah…. food…. We spend a good amount of time exploring what real food is, whole food, unadulterated food, and what kind works best for each and every individual body, culture and lifestyle. I supply many resources for food plans, recipes, and understanding micro and macro nutrients. I love to encourage the awareness of mindful eating as the most delicious road to enlightenment.
3- How do they sleep and how do we create the most inviting sleep hygiene?
4- Exercise, how can we support their bodies capability and then little by little stretch it to become stronger and healthier over time?
5- Intimate relationships? Is it medicine or poison? We explore vital self responsibility for ones own life and grow mature communication skills to love ones self and to dignify another,
6- Work, school, profession… how to bring joy and beauty to the areas of life that take up so much of our time. I heard Maryanne Williamson once say, “Our profession is just a front for our ministry.” I loved that, because at the time, I was a hairdresser, and kept thinking I was supposed to do something “more important.” I realized that I was just as much a life coach behind the chair of my clients as I am now, sitting in front of the zoom screen. Only, now, they don’t get the benefit of looking coiffed. Their spirit however, shines like freshly polished gold.
7-And what about spirit or our relationship to our place in nature and the cycle of life? That is probably where we end up spending most of our time, in those existential question. Here is where we talk mostly about our relationship to the smallness of our size in the universe and what that invisible power is, that created and perpetuated the laws of the universe. Developing a relationship to some time of surrender to “what is” is a powerful topic. I love the Serenity Prayer from the 12 step program, (of which I am a card carrying Al-anon member… I am a recovering from my addiction to fear and control.

Please, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
The courage to change the things I can.
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Learning to be present and trusting of the process, despite it’s twists and turns, is by far the most vital aspect of our time together. We share this path to find peace in the process. Life often does not show up as we wish, but we can learn to have a relationship to how it is.

I love this part of my life and my job…. I believe that it provides healing in the deepest parts of our hearts and psyches.

I have written books on food, digestion, and the insults of life and my idea of their antidotes. I am currently writing a couple of books, one is called Falling In Love With Your Shadows. It is my own breakthrough with having hated myself and trying to heal without self love… the necessity of it and the release from worry about what the world thinks of me, as long as I have a healthy sense of what I think of myself. Also, I am working on a book about my journey with my son who has been struggling with schizoaffective disorder/biploar type. I became a mental health educator through the NAMI organization as a function of his disease and it has been healing me on so many levels. These kinds of seeming traumas, can be used to harness healing, compassion and love on such a huge level. Also, sharing trauma can divide our pain, while sharing love, can exponentially increase it.

One of my best friends, Kelly Sullivan Walden, aka Dr. Dream, and I have a new podcast called Anatomy of Friendship. We’ve been friends for over a quarter of a century and together we have collected many distinctions that we believe make friendships work well. We crammed many of those distinctions into what we are calling rules and they make up the FRIENDSHIP formula. Our website is www.AnatomyOfFriendship.com. It will be released soon….

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The most impactful qualities I have had on my journey were:

1- LOVE – I loved and wanted to be loved so much, that I sometimes got the quotients wrong. I focused too much externally, trying to get love, trying to give love, to get love and often forgot to focus it inward.
I actually succeeded in having a lot of people love me. The problem was, I had a heart with a hole in it, no matter how much love people directed at me or poured into me, it slipped out the bottom and was never enough. It was through a spiritual experience that I heard an inner part of myself say this… I’ll never forget it and have been forever changed… she said:

“You are so afraid that people will reject you, judge you, hate you and abandon you, but You reject me, you judge me, you hate me and you abandon me. Until you love and accept me, you will never be happy, no matter how many people love you.”

HOLY SH#T!!!!!!!!!! I felt like a fireball came out of the sky and hit me in the face… It was so true. I was externalizing my need for love and approval so much that I had exhausted myself, hurt myself, over taxed, over extended and danced in the infinite red shoes of life, in an unsustainable way to get my “fix.” It was like a drug. I was not self-loving, I was self-seeking… and it was the cause of most of the traumatic breaks in my life…

Did I pique your interest? This is what my book, FALLNG IN LOVE WITH YOUR SHADOWS, is about. Keep an eye out… or put yourself on my email list at www.LoveYourWayToHealth.com and go to my contact page to send me a note… Or, just take on my miracle for yourself and see how you can calm your psyche by being the best friend, parent and caretaker of your inner “littles” as I like to call them. Then, you can become less beholden to the opinions of others, to define your lovability.

2- What else could be bigger than the one above?? Well, I’m all about breaking things down, so #2 is RADICAL SELF RESPONSIBILITY. I like to play a game where I imagine that before I was born, I chose certain lessons for this life. So, I imagine that I am the writer, director, actors and casting director of my own life and I ask myself, “in what way am I participating in HOW I PERCEIVE my circumstances? And, how can I find the highest point of view?” This reduced victimhood and put the power of perspective back into my own lap.

I am made of the stuff of the universe. The energy of infinity. This is a law of physics if you look at the constituents of an atom, of which we are made of over 300 to the 300th power of trillions. If that is the truth of me, then many of my limited ideas of self, my fear of mortality, my fear of abandonment or being found out that I am flawed, unlovable and not good enough, begins to sound more like a childhood fear, rather than a divine truth. From this perspective, I find peace.

3- Dignity- As a recovering co-dependent, I have been all up in other people’s business. I try to control, to “help” to do for others, to show my love and care. But I have learned that it is disrespectful and undignified to assume that I am more powerful than another. It is an insult to help others, without their invitation. It has been my way of trying to do for others what I wished had been done for me as a child. I am no longer a child, nor are the many people that I try to “help.” Helping isn’t helping if it is unasked for, it is insulting.

In order to provide dignity to myself and others, I have to trust them to the process of life. I practice trusting life and death, people’s choices and perspectives. This is the most challenging of all my qualities. It requires a true relationship with some divine source. Trust is not easy for a traumatized heart and mine has had its share of trauma. So, trust and the application of showing dignity, are daily practices for me.

Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?
My most ideal client is someone who has been pushed to their knees and they have screamed out for the kind of help that they are actually ready to open up to and receive. I think that spiritual, mental or health crisis can be miracles of the spirit.

I may be projecting, but I believe that a lot of people believe that they can do things better than others or even professionals. I had that opinion, especially after feeling so much medical and emotional malpractice heaped upon me in the form of others believing they knew my body better than me. Or, by telling me that what I was feeling, was actually not happening and I was faking it to get attention. I thought people were incapable and professionals were ignorant. I took it on to do it all myself. I didn’t trust anyone.

It wasn’t until my own personal crashes with my own health, that I opened to help, to generosity, to other opportunities, and other ideas… After years and years of ulcerative colitis, two neck surgeries, brain surgery, fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism, trauma and PTSD, that I had to learn to be open. When my ego, my distrust, my fear, and my pain knocked me down to my knees, face pressed against the carpet, then the door to curiosity and willingness opened up in the fibers of that carpet, and I was able to walk through with readiness.

This is the kind of client I like. The ones that are open. I don’t take that kind of client that I would have to struggle to convince. I want the ones that have been beaten down and are ready to rebuild anew. Those are the empty rice bowl minds that Buddhists talk about.

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