Ep.18 - Hard Truths & 'High Talk' | Sylvia Bueno Part 1 — We are shifting gears in 2022, and Candice is inviting you into her inner circle. In this episode, she introduces you to her closest friend and confidant, Sylvia Bueno, for a two-part series where they dive into the joys & pains of friendship, transparency, and wholehearted connection. In Part 1, Sylvia makes room as Candice unpacks an honest & ass-kicking ah-hah that inspired her to re-imagine the format of the TDP podcast moving forward.
Sylvia recaps the courageous feedback she offered Candice about her experience as a friend and listener, and the two talk about how it landed in light of Candice's struggle with Imposter Syndrome. Candice details how she was able to complete the project (and minimize vulnerability) while recording the first seventeen episodes, and she offers a peek into what she calls 'high talk’ and her theory into how&why so many personal growth purveyors so often use it to armor up and guard against emotional exposure. Together, they explore the cost of high talk when it comes to preserving authenticity and forging deep connection.
If you share Candice's pesky habit of filtering out the grittier parts of your humanity (aka: if you're used to putting on a 'good' face), this episode just might speak directly to your heart.
Chapters
6:08 — Why of the new format?
8:40 — “That’s not you.”
16:25 — Minimizing risk, at what cost?
19:48 — How Sy & I met
23:44 — What is ‘High-Talk’?
28:09 — Self-doubt & Fitting in
33:02 — Invitation for reflection
35:41 — Teaser: Part 2 with Sylvia
Sylvia recaps the courageous feedback she offered Candice about her experience as a friend and listener, and the two talk about how it landed in light of Candice's struggle with Imposter Syndrome. Candice details how she was able to complete the project (and minimize vulnerability) while recording the first seventeen episodes, and she offers a peek into what she calls 'high talk’ and her theory into how&why so many personal growth purveyors so often use it to armor up and guard against emotional exposure. Together, they explore the cost of high talk when it comes to preserving authenticity and forging deep connection.
If you share Candice's pesky habit of filtering out the grittier parts of your humanity (aka: if you're used to putting on a 'good' face), this episode just might speak directly to your heart.
Chapters
6:08 — Why of the new format?
8:40 — “That’s not you.”
16:25 — Minimizing risk, at what cost?
19:48 — How Sy & I met
23:44 — What is ‘High-Talk’?
28:09 — Self-doubt & Fitting in
33:02 — Invitation for reflection
35:41 — Teaser: Part 2 with Sylvia
Ep.18 - Hard Truths & 'High Talk' | Sylvia Bueno - Part 1
Welcome back to The Deeper Pulse. This is Candice Schutter. I have been away from the podcast ethers for a couple of months now. After finishing up my first full-length series, I took some time off. And then the holidays came around and my dear mother who just retired at the age of 69. Bless her sweet heart. She's been working since she was 16 or 17 years old, pretty much nonstop. So to celebrate her retirement, she and her sweet little Morkie this tiny little seven-pound, wonderful ball of fur named Baxter, that is her great love and her companion in life. They drove from Kansas to spend the Christmas holiday with Chris and I in Arizona. And it was the first time that our moms had met each other in real life. And we all spent some quality time together, which was really all the things that it is when you spend time with family. So many wonderful memories were made and lots of feelings came up and it was just such a great opportunity to spend some quality time with my mom. For the new year, she was kind enough to hang out here while Chris and I took a road trip and spent some time in the snow in Yosemite. Some of you may have seen on social media, I took a bit of a fall on the ice. I am not, just full disclosure here, I am not a, what you would call a snow bunny. I'm more like a snow gremlin. When I get really cold and wet, the combination of cold and wet, I become pretty cranky and it's just not my sweet spot. And so I spent a lot of my time in the lodge, reading books and journaling and writing while Chris went out and traipsed through the snow. Big shout out to whomever the person is who invented crampons. If you don't know what crampons are they're, like, these little metal studs that are attached to rubber that you strap onto the bottom of your hiking boots. And they allow you to remain vertical while walking on sheets of ice. So thanks to those, I did go on a few hikes with Chris and enjoyed my time there. And was pretty darn thrilled when we drove home to the clear blue skies of Arizona. And now I am back and ready to tap back into the deeper pulse with you. Things are going to be pretty different as we relaunch here. I want to get braver than ever. There are some stories that I've been holding really close because, well, frankly, I'm afraid to tell them. It's clear that my journey in the personal growth industry has yielded all sorts of personal and professional insights. There's no question that the tools that I have learned and the practices that I've embodied are invaluable. But I want to be real with you and admit that the journey from then to now has come at a cost. The tragedy is that in the process of trying to find myself to recover my personal power, I gave it away. The world of self-help offers a wealth of resources, and yet, there is a scarcity of understanding when it comes to how transference and indoctrination impact individuals it purports to serve. Now, obviously this is a much larger discussion, and it's a conversation that I want to have with other individuals who've walked alongside me on this path so that together we can unpack what I've come to call the beautiful ugly of it all. Together we can celebrate the ways we've grown and also defy conditioning that teaches us that the ends justify the means. If this all sounds a bit cryptic, trust me, it will begin to make sense as I introduce you to some of my later guests. All of the people I'm going to introduce you to have touched my life personally, in some way. They might have a ton of street cred, which more power to them, but that's not what we're here to celebrate. It's our common humanity that interests me most. In this first conversation that I'm having, you'll hear a little bit more about the how and why of this shift in format, as I introduce you to my soul sister and best friend of nearly 20 years, Sylvia Bueno. She was kind enough to indulge my request, to be my first guest on this podcast. And I couldn't be more grateful to her for her willingness to support me in this transition and to show up for you. In part one, you're going to hear mostly from me, but in part two, Sylvia and I take a deep dive into our friendship and how we've been able to love one another through all sorts of life transitions and mental health crises, you name it. That's coming up next week. In today's podcast, we lay the foundation sharing with her and you, how her willingness to be courageous and share a difficult truth with me regarding her experience of my podcast was illuminating and has informed the direction that The Deeper Pulse will be taking in up and coming episodes. Sylvia Bueno is a dear friend and my personal confidant. In the time that I've known her, we've danced together. We've survived relationships and leaned on one another. We've moved through more than one career transition... and I might add, many different hair colors. There is perhaps no one in this world I trust more with my heart.
Candice Schutter: 5:44
Good morning!
Sylvia Bueno: 5:45
Good morning. Happy Sunday.
Candice Schutter: 5:48
I'm so happy you're here. I just keep thinking of all of the countless, literally countless, times that we got together at coffee shops and we would meet and sit down with our coffee and have a conversation. Usually there weren't microphones that I'm aware of.
Sylvia Bueno: 6:06
I hope not.
Candice Schutter: 6:07
Thank goodness.
Sylvia Bueno: 6:08
I know.
Candice Schutter: 6:09
That's the beauty of podcast creation is the magic of editing. If things go sideways or if we say something we're just not wanting to have recorded, then we'll just cut it out and our listeners will understand. So...
Sylvia Bueno: 6:25
Yeah.
Candice Schutter: 6:25
Thanks for doing this with me.
Sylvia Bueno: 6:27
You're welcome.
Candice Schutter: 6:28
So, this is brand new to me. I know it's brand new to you.
Sylvia Bueno: 6:34
Yeah.
Candice Schutter: 6:34
Way, brand new. Which is why you're so brave and courageous to be here with me and to all the listeners just know that we don't have an agenda today. We have like a few bullet points in terms of things we might chat about. Mostly this is an experiment. We will tell you how we got to this point in a moment. But just to say, who knows, who knows what's going to happen here? And so we're just gonna roll with it, and we appreciate y'all coming along for the ride. I wanted to start with explaining to the listeners why I chose to put my best friend on the spot and ask her to be the first guest on my podcast. I did about a year of podcast episodes taking time in between each episode. And they were just me talking. A lot of what I wanted to share has been brewing inside for a long time, and it was just an opportunity for me to self express and to get it out in the world. There were certain stories I wanted to tell. And I was doing the series the seven keys of courageous self expression, which I should note, I have mixed feelings about even calling it that, but it was just a way for me to organize the content. And I knew the end point would be the end point. It was the culmination of my graduate study and a project that I was doing centered around agency, which was the final key. And when I reached the end of it, it was sort of a sense of tremendous relief. Pardon the analogy here, but it was sort of like I had been constipated for like a really long time, and I finally purged what I wanted to share. And then there was this feeling of... that's complete, and that was really lonely. It was a journey I needed to take alone. And also, it was a lot of work doing it on my own. And I was thinking, I really want to begin to have conversations with people. I feel like that's the next step, the next logical step. And I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted to start that. And then, Sylvia and I had this really pivotal conversation. And to set the stage for it, you should know that I had received a lot of very positive feedback on the podcast from people that were clients, that were friends, and it was really positive on the whole. And of course I received constructive feedback as well. As is my nature, which may be is human nature, the constructive feedback which could have been read negative, it's where I focused my attention. I don't know if anyone out there can relate to that. Um, yeah right? So I really felt like there was something important for me to look at in the feedback that I was getting... something that I couldn't quite put my finger on... I was activated by it, so I couldn't see what there was for me to see. I reached out to Sylvia as I do when I'm up against anything that I can't see around. She's my go-to person. Like, Sylvia is my person. We'll talk about our history in a minute, but she's been my person for 20 years, almost. It's been almost 20 years. And when I am the stuckiest of the stuck, she's the person I call. So I reached out to her and we had this really pivotal conversation, and I'm going to let her share the feedback that she gave me on her experience of having listened to only the first episode of my podcast. Do you mind, Sylvia, sharing with us what you shared with me?
Sylvia Bueno: 10:14
Of course. Candice was sharing with me some of the constructive feedback that she had received. And, my experience of her podcast... again, I listened to the first episode, just the first episode. And I listened to the whole thing. The content was great. I wouldn't have expected anything less as far as content, but my experience of listening to your voice was one of Candice isn't there. But my words that I said to you in that conversation was... "that's not you." Those were the words that I could find at the time. What was coming up for me is hmm, that's just not Candice.
Candice Schutter: 11:08
I was already a live wire, second guessing everything that I had done, if it was worth anything. And when the person I feel who knows me the best, out of all the peoples, said to me, "that's not you," it landed in two ways. On one hand, I felt there was truth in what she was saying. There was this sense of resonance of like there's a point to be made here that is important. And right up against that was this... it was a confirmation that I was an imposter. It was the imposter syndrome reinforced... reinforcing my self doubt. Now I knew for sure, after 20 years of friendship, that you don't think that I'm an imposter.
Sylvia Bueno: 11:58
Right.
Candice Schutter: 11:58
And I knew for sure that you would never try to hurt me and/or diminish me in any way.
Sylvia Bueno: 12:05
Right.
Candice Schutter: 12:07
So I walked away from the interaction confused.
Sylvia Bueno: 12:13
And so, as we returned to the subject, which I'm so glad that you brought it back to my attention a few weeks later, because what you heard and what I meant were two different things. And what I meant was the quality and the resonance of your voice, I felt was not grounded. And I felt that... you said that you had some feedback years ago from someone that said, "who are you performing for?" And when you said that, I was like, that's it. That's what I meant.
Candice Schutter: 12:57
Let me tell that story briefly, because I think it's a great example. So I was invited to be in a writing fellowship for about a year, and I got to work with these amazing accomplished authors. And one of them, by the name of Vanessa Veselka, who is an amazing writer and human, just phenomenal human. She doesn't pull any punches. She's glorious in that she just super shoots from the hip. And I was in a session with her and she was reading some of my pages and there were memoir pages, right? This is like personal stuff. And she's reading these memoir pages and she's flipping through them and giving me comments and writing in the margins. And she flips a page over and she reads something and she underlines like two or three sentences and just casually says, "I'm not sure who you're performing for here." And then she keeps going. And it was just such a watershed moment for me, because she was identifying something that I had sensed for a long time. And something, Sylvia, that I feel like if you've seen and that you were attempting to point out the same thing, is that right?
Sylvia Bueno: 14:04
Yeah. I wasn't talking about content or anything you were saying it was more your presence, like your presence wasn't there. Like, I felt like I was listening to a performance, which frustrated me because I know you so well, and I know your true presence and how you do show up. And so when I didn't hear that, I was just like, oh wait, who is this? And so that's, as far as I went, as far as your podcasts. Because I know you so well, it was almost uncomfortable for me to keep listening.
Candice Schutter: 14:37
Sure. Yeah, I get that. As I went through the series, I could feel that tension between my, as Glennon Doyle calls it, my representative... and my deeper truth. Which was really in some ways the purpose of the project for me to, to, to bring these... bring this fragmentation into integration... these different aspects into an integrated form. And I may have succeeded in some instances, and I may have "failed" or learned in other instances.
Sylvia Bueno: 15:14
Definitely not failed.
Candice Schutter: 15:15
And it was a fire I had to walk through.
Sylvia Bueno: 15:18
Absolutely. Yeah. There's no failure in that, for sure. I also want to say that now... in the days leading up to this experience right here. As I started to panic thinking about what we're going to talk about and actually the unknown of what might come flying out of my mouth and what people might hear or not hear or whatever. And I started to panic. Now having had that experience and thinking about what, how many episodes did you record?
Candice Schutter: 15:51
Technically there were twenty. Seventeen of them are long form. Yeah, yeah, twenty.
Sylvia Bueno: 15:55
And putting that out into the world. Holy moly. Like, if I tried to do that, I mean, you probably would have felt the same thing. Who knows, or I probably would've run out of the room crying. Like that's, that's some scary shit. It's so vulnerable, and it's absolutely not a failure that you did that. So kudos to you.
Candice Schutter: 16:17
And it led to this. Thank you, thank you for that. And thank you for being courageous today. And that's really why I wanted to share this with the listeners. It's ironic really that I provided the seven keys to courageous self-expression, and really at the heart of it all is the willingness to make oneself vulnerable and to risk uncertainty. I took a risk doing those podcasts, and I minimized the risk as much as I possibly could by writing it all first. I did a little ad-libbing here and there, but mostly I planned what I was going to say. And, as a writer, I can hide behind words really well. I'm super good at it. So I controlled for a lot of things. And then I recorded it pretty much verbatim with a few ad-libs here and there. And it was an act of courage and it was also a baby step on the path of being able to sit here right now and just speak off the cuff, which is really ultimately what I'd like to do. And as I told Sylvia, one of the challenges of doing that from the get-go was I don't wake up in the morning thinking, oh, I have so much to say and the world needs to hear it. Let me grab a microphone. Like, that's not my reality. I didn't create a podcast to hear myself talk. I really feel moved to inspire, by example, courageous self expression. To inspire it. And I'm realizing now after twenty episodes, the best way to inspire courageous self-expression is to get vulnerable and to be as real as possible. And I chose Sylvia because she is the person that I feel safest around in the whole world. There's a lot of wonderful people in my life. I'm really blessed. And vice versa, right? We've created that environment together. And so I thought if I want to be real, I need to feel safe. And if I need to feel safe, I'm going to call me up some Syvie. I call her Syvie, ya'll. As do some of her close family members. So that's why she's here today. And also... bonus... she's brilliant.
Sylvia Bueno: 18:49
Aww.
Candice Schutter: 18:50
You are. You are a light in my life. And when I say brilliant, I mean it, in the literal sense. Like you illuminate truth for me. And what I love about the way you illuminate truth is it's not that 'high talk' truth. It's the deep, gritty, unflinching truth. And that's why I reach for you when I'm in those deep and gritty places, because there's not a lot of people who know how to do that.
Sylvia Bueno: 19:19
What's high talk truth?
Candice Schutter: 19:22
I'm so glad you asked that because I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think it really speaks to what was happening, what you were hearing... in those early podcasts. So before we define high talk truth, I want to talk about how we met because it's connected. Because the space in which we met is where I learned how to high talk.
Sylvia Bueno: 19:46
Mmm. Okay..
Candice Schutter: 19:46
In the way that I'm going to define it. So Sylvia and I met in 2003. When we had both moved to Portland, I think pretty close in time. Do you remember when you moved to Portland?
Sylvia Bueno: 19:58
Oh yeah, I do. We landed in Portland on November 5th.
Candice Schutter: 20:05
So you arrived November 5th, which is two days before your birthday.
Sylvia Bueno: 20:08
Two days before my birthday.
Candice Schutter: 20:10
Yep. And I had been there for not quite a month. I got the October 8th. So I was working at an organization that Sylvia would soon get a job at. That's what moved me to Portland was that I began to work for this personal growth organization. And you got hired how long after?
Sylvia Bueno: 20:30
I don't know, a few weeks. I started working in December, and I was already affiliated with the organization as well. I just wasn't working for them.
Candice Schutter: 20:41
Right, right. Which was the case for both of us. And it was kind of a big deal that we got jobs there. Cause we, right? I mean, we were both pretty, um, pretty involved in what the organization was doing and we'd want it to be closer to the epicenter of where it was all happening. So we both got jobs at this organization that we loved. And, we worked there for different durations. I think I was there for, gosh, it was kind of a process me leaving, but it was maybe three years that I was involved there as an employee. And I think you quit...
Sylvia Bueno: 21:18
I think I was there for a couple of years.
Candice Schutter: 21:21
So we worked together for this company and we became friends. We would have brunch together on Sunday with a group of other women and we just became super tight. We ended up moving into a house together. We became, not roommates, but housemates because that's what grownups call it. We were house mates, and we lived in this bubble gum pink house in Southeast Portland, right at the base of Mount Tabor. And we loved that it was pink. The pink palace. Yeah. And it was awesome living there, and we sort of couldn't afford it at the same time. So I remember that we learned that the furnace was an oil furnace, which I had never even heard of until we moved into the house. And so after a few weeks into our first winter, the oil furnace ran out and it was a few hundred dollars to fill it up. So we just used lots of blankets, and I think we did it once. And then it took us like four months to pay it off. And so we're not doing that again. No, we were very blessed to have a roof over our heads. But things were tight. We did eventually after I dunno a year or two, we moved apart. We both had relationships and we've been in and out of relationships together. Sylvia has seen me repeat relational dramas that brought me to my knees over and over again.
Sylvia Bueno: 22:46
You've seen me at my absolute worst and best and everything in between.
Candice Schutter: 22:53
mmhm. Ditto.
Sylvia Bueno: 22:54
Familial problems, addiction problems, mental health issues. Yeah. Anything I could throw at you I did.
Candice Schutter: 23:05
Yeah, I think that's part of what brought us together is we both actually were struggling with mental health issues, that it seemed like no one else was comfortable talking about or looking at. It was, it was sort of that, that sense you get when people contract when you begin to communicate around something that's going on and not because they're not loving or well-meaning, they just don't... they can't relate. And we were able to relate. We both suffered from intense anxiety and bouts of depression. And we'd both experienced trauma in childhood, and there was just a lot for us to connect around in terms of language we could speak to one another. And so.. We'll talk about a little bit more about our friendship in a moment. It's going to lead into the questions that I want to ask you in the conversation I want us to have, but first I want to answer your question about high talk.
Sylvia Bueno: 23:59
Oh yeah, yeah.
Candice Schutter: 24:00
Because we were working in a company where it was a personal growth organization and I'm going to talk a lot more about those years in some future episodes, because I want to be super deliberate about how I unpack all of that and share what happened during those years for me personally, and the learning that resulted. The thing that's relevant to this discussion is that we were involved in a lot of different trainings being part of the organization, and not just training in terms of our employment, but training in terms of the personal growth trajectory, I guess, I don't know what to call it.
Sylvia Bueno: 24:36
There was like the personal growth arm, and then there was the business.
Candice Schutter: 24:41
Yeah. As a part of our employment, we were able to take advantage of these trainings even more so at a lower cost or free. The trainings were very helpful in terms of my own personal growth and development. And I was also being trained to become a facilitator at the same time as I was taking these trainings. And there's this thing that can happen in personal growth circles, where, when so many principles and practices are coming at you, a common language is developed. And a common way of holding oneself. Because there's this sense of, okay, I want to rise above my reactivity. I'm becoming more mindful. I'm becoming more deliberate in my life. And it's sort of a fake it till you make it set up, like step into these expressions of personal power that you may not exactly feel and practice them, try them on and you will catch up. There was definitely some truth to that, right? The mindfulness piece was really key. But what can happen, and what did happen for me was that I was so surrounded by so many people speaking the same language. And I was also surrounded by authority figures who expected us to communicate at a certain standard at all times, that I developed what I now call 'high talk.' That I, I, I sought to transcend my humanity so much that I abandoned myself in the process. I became a primary teacher for the, the founders of this organization. I had to represent them, quite literally. And so I began to embody the way that they moved and the way that they talked and the way that I saw other trainers communicating and behaving. And I created a persona. And I see this in other arenas. Like sometimes I walk into a yoga class and the teacher is speaking in a very particular manner and there is something deliberate about using one's voice to elicit sensation and to do the, the work. Yet there's this super fine line that it's easy to cross where it becomes pretentious and sort of fake sounding. And I did that for so many years that I feel as soon as eyes are on me, it's like this safe place for me to go. I'm sharing this story because they feel like it connects to what you were hearing and, and what I feel charged by when I hear other people doing it. And I know the charge that I feel is because I do it. It drives me bat shit crazy because I do it all the time. And I'm, it's something I'm working to undo. I call it high talk because it's above everything. It's transcending the gritty truth, the profanities, the what-the-fuck-does-this-even-mean moments, right?
Sylvia Bueno: 27:39
Yes.
Candice Schutter: 27:40
It's above... and in some ways it's the opposite of the deeper pulse. It's like...
Sylvia Bueno: 27:45
Yeah.
Candice Schutter: 27:46
...way up and out there. And it's not accessible. And that's what was so heartbreakingly true about what you said to me was I was like... right! Like, I'm doing that thing and it's making it so that I'm not accessible, which is the most important thing to me.
Sylvia Bueno: 28:05
Right. Yeah.
Candice Schutter: 28:06
Does that resonate?
Sylvia Bueno: 28:08
Oh, absolutely..
Candice Schutter: 28:09
Did you feel that? I mean, I know I was doing a lot more teaching and presenting, but did you feel that as a part of the culture?
Sylvia Bueno: 28:15
In hindsight, I did. But when I was in it for me, I feel like looking back on my life, I have so much self doubt that I look for the truth or for how I sh... how one should be in others. So for me, it was like, okay, looking to... you know, the founders, the teachers, the trainers. I was like, oh, okay. So this is, this is how I should be. And so it, it, I didn't get the sense of the high talk that you're describing. For me it was more of, oh, this is just how I should be because I'm getting so much really good stuff out of this program, out of this organization. So then what they're doing and what they're saying, even though it may not feel really authentic to me, it must be right. So I'm going to do that. So that's kind of where I was coming from. It was more like, well, they know more than I do, obviously... you know, obviously they know more than I do. And so I'm gonna just do what they do and say what they say. And I didn't really experience that, but in hindsight, absolutely. I see that, like, I see the pretentiousness and sort of the inauthentic-ness.
Candice Schutter: 29:42
And to be clear, nobody, and this is something I think that gets lost a lot. It's like, you know that I love going down, like, the cult rabbit hole. Like we go there together and we watch these documentaries on cult dynamics and, and just what happens in group think and all that stuff. And, and there's this common argument, because we only hear the extreme stories of cult dynamics, that there's always a malignant narcissist at the top, and that there's malicious intent. And there's, there's always this talk about intent. Intent to manipulate. Intent to create a group mindset. And I think that 90% of the time, there's no intent to do any of that. And yet, as we know, especially living through this reckoning around social justice right now that it doesn't matter what your intent is, your impact is what matters. I say that because nobody intended to make us speak in a pretentious manner. Like you just said, so much of the content served us in terms of our growth and development. And there's this thing that happens in spiritual communities and in communities in general, where, and this is what I'm my question to you is in retrospect... did you notice that everyone began to speak the same language? That there was a little bit less... like the lack of authenticity wasn't because anyone meant to be inauthentic, it was just, the individuation was getting watered down by this collective mindset. Like, did you feel that?
Sylvia Bueno: 31:10
Yeah, I mean, we were being taught and trained actually to say certain things and not say certain things.
Candice Schutter: 31:18
True. True.
Sylvia Bueno: 31:19
So, so yeah, and like you said, I think within any community, and maybe even more so like in a personal growth or spiritual community, I don't know why this is some sort of human nature, but we do start to form our own language, right? And that makes it sort of exclusive like, well, you know, you're part of the group, so this is how we speak, and this is how we talk to each other and we understand each other. And only if you're in the group, do you get to talk like this or...
Candice Schutter: 31:52
Yeah, it's almost like if you don't know the language, you don't get it. And there's some really sort of, we get off on that in a way...
Sylvia Bueno: 31:59
Yeah, yeah.
Candice Schutter: 31:59
that I don't fully understand. Maybe not consciously, but it's just the sense of, oh, they would never understand this language that we speak.
Sylvia Bueno: 32:07
Yeah. And I, I would argue, like you said something earlier about you don't, you don't think that there is any malicious intent and I, I mean, I agree with that to some extent. And I think that maybe it doesn't start out that way. And, and I'm talking about in group, maybe personal growth, religions, things like that, maybe it doesn't start out that the person or the people at the top have ill intent. But I think, sometimes as you go along and maybe someone starts to feel power. Then maybe it becomes not so subconscious anymore. That it's more, intentional...
Candice Schutter: 32:53
Right. There's a lot more conversation that's going to happen around all that, whether it's with Sylvia, with if she wants to be a part of it or with other people... there's so much there to look at. And in terms of today and the awareness that I'm wanting to highlight... it isn't about Candice and her podcast. It's just about, in general, where do we filter ourselves in our interactions with people? Sometimes those filters can be constructive. And many times they become reflexive, and they actually keep us from showing up with our most authentic truth. It's just what happens. It becomes, like, it's like muscle memory. If you work in a place where you don't feel safe expressing yourself and you spend 40 hours a week in that place and 40 hours a week, you're consciously censoring what you say. Or if you live with a partner who is volatile and there are certain things you, you know, eggshells, you need to walk on and things you shouldn't say... that becomes ingrained in you. And then you take it into other environments and atmospheres and it becomes almost like armor that you have to chink through. And that's what I feel like I'm doing... I mean, I'm still working in personal growth and I have a lot, a lot, a lot of mixed feelings around it because of dynamics like this and this armor I feel like so many of us wear. And I'm so grateful to you for being loving enough to reflect to me, "hey babe, your armor's up. Is that what you want? Is that what you're going for?" And that's, what's so beautiful about you is you... and this is where I want to go in our conversation next is that you have this ability, this is why I want to share you with the world. You have this ability to allow people to be as they are. I used to describe it as... oh, Sylvia's the most unconditionally loving person that I know. And I suppose that's true. Yet I have mixed feelings around the whole idea of unconditional love. I've talked about in previous podcasts. It's not about conditions or not conditions. It's about the way that you love and the way that it lands in my heart that is unique. And that has given me a permission to show up with a degree of transparency that I don't know that I've ever felt with any other human. In part two, you're going to hear a lot more from Sylvia. Here's a sneak peek of what you can expect in episode 19.
Sylvia Bueno: 35:50
Cause it's, it's so important for us as humans to feel loved, to feel seen. And not just, not just on our good days... it's so important to know that you're loved, to know that your existence matters. It's so important because when we're in those dark spaces and we're ready to give up and leave this earth at our own hand, it's so hard to remember these moments.
Candice Schutter: 36:29
When you show me the resilience of having lived and stood up over and over again and you just keep getting back up over and over again, I'm like... that's my hero.
© The Deeper Pulse, Candice Schutter
Candice Schutter: 5:44
Good morning!
Sylvia Bueno: 5:45
Good morning. Happy Sunday.
Candice Schutter: 5:48
I'm so happy you're here. I just keep thinking of all of the countless, literally countless, times that we got together at coffee shops and we would meet and sit down with our coffee and have a conversation. Usually there weren't microphones that I'm aware of.
Sylvia Bueno: 6:06
I hope not.
Candice Schutter: 6:07
Thank goodness.
Sylvia Bueno: 6:08
I know.
Candice Schutter: 6:09
That's the beauty of podcast creation is the magic of editing. If things go sideways or if we say something we're just not wanting to have recorded, then we'll just cut it out and our listeners will understand. So...
Sylvia Bueno: 6:25
Yeah.
Candice Schutter: 6:25
Thanks for doing this with me.
Sylvia Bueno: 6:27
You're welcome.
Candice Schutter: 6:28
So, this is brand new to me. I know it's brand new to you.
Sylvia Bueno: 6:34
Yeah.
Candice Schutter: 6:34
Way, brand new. Which is why you're so brave and courageous to be here with me and to all the listeners just know that we don't have an agenda today. We have like a few bullet points in terms of things we might chat about. Mostly this is an experiment. We will tell you how we got to this point in a moment. But just to say, who knows, who knows what's going to happen here? And so we're just gonna roll with it, and we appreciate y'all coming along for the ride. I wanted to start with explaining to the listeners why I chose to put my best friend on the spot and ask her to be the first guest on my podcast. I did about a year of podcast episodes taking time in between each episode. And they were just me talking. A lot of what I wanted to share has been brewing inside for a long time, and it was just an opportunity for me to self express and to get it out in the world. There were certain stories I wanted to tell. And I was doing the series the seven keys of courageous self expression, which I should note, I have mixed feelings about even calling it that, but it was just a way for me to organize the content. And I knew the end point would be the end point. It was the culmination of my graduate study and a project that I was doing centered around agency, which was the final key. And when I reached the end of it, it was sort of a sense of tremendous relief. Pardon the analogy here, but it was sort of like I had been constipated for like a really long time, and I finally purged what I wanted to share. And then there was this feeling of... that's complete, and that was really lonely. It was a journey I needed to take alone. And also, it was a lot of work doing it on my own. And I was thinking, I really want to begin to have conversations with people. I feel like that's the next step, the next logical step. And I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted to start that. And then, Sylvia and I had this really pivotal conversation. And to set the stage for it, you should know that I had received a lot of very positive feedback on the podcast from people that were clients, that were friends, and it was really positive on the whole. And of course I received constructive feedback as well. As is my nature, which may be is human nature, the constructive feedback which could have been read negative, it's where I focused my attention. I don't know if anyone out there can relate to that. Um, yeah right? So I really felt like there was something important for me to look at in the feedback that I was getting... something that I couldn't quite put my finger on... I was activated by it, so I couldn't see what there was for me to see. I reached out to Sylvia as I do when I'm up against anything that I can't see around. She's my go-to person. Like, Sylvia is my person. We'll talk about our history in a minute, but she's been my person for 20 years, almost. It's been almost 20 years. And when I am the stuckiest of the stuck, she's the person I call. So I reached out to her and we had this really pivotal conversation, and I'm going to let her share the feedback that she gave me on her experience of having listened to only the first episode of my podcast. Do you mind, Sylvia, sharing with us what you shared with me?
Sylvia Bueno: 10:14
Of course. Candice was sharing with me some of the constructive feedback that she had received. And, my experience of her podcast... again, I listened to the first episode, just the first episode. And I listened to the whole thing. The content was great. I wouldn't have expected anything less as far as content, but my experience of listening to your voice was one of Candice isn't there. But my words that I said to you in that conversation was... "that's not you." Those were the words that I could find at the time. What was coming up for me is hmm, that's just not Candice.
Candice Schutter: 11:08
I was already a live wire, second guessing everything that I had done, if it was worth anything. And when the person I feel who knows me the best, out of all the peoples, said to me, "that's not you," it landed in two ways. On one hand, I felt there was truth in what she was saying. There was this sense of resonance of like there's a point to be made here that is important. And right up against that was this... it was a confirmation that I was an imposter. It was the imposter syndrome reinforced... reinforcing my self doubt. Now I knew for sure, after 20 years of friendship, that you don't think that I'm an imposter.
Sylvia Bueno: 11:58
Right.
Candice Schutter: 11:58
And I knew for sure that you would never try to hurt me and/or diminish me in any way.
Sylvia Bueno: 12:05
Right.
Candice Schutter: 12:07
So I walked away from the interaction confused.
Sylvia Bueno: 12:13
And so, as we returned to the subject, which I'm so glad that you brought it back to my attention a few weeks later, because what you heard and what I meant were two different things. And what I meant was the quality and the resonance of your voice, I felt was not grounded. And I felt that... you said that you had some feedback years ago from someone that said, "who are you performing for?" And when you said that, I was like, that's it. That's what I meant.
Candice Schutter: 12:57
Let me tell that story briefly, because I think it's a great example. So I was invited to be in a writing fellowship for about a year, and I got to work with these amazing accomplished authors. And one of them, by the name of Vanessa Veselka, who is an amazing writer and human, just phenomenal human. She doesn't pull any punches. She's glorious in that she just super shoots from the hip. And I was in a session with her and she was reading some of my pages and there were memoir pages, right? This is like personal stuff. And she's reading these memoir pages and she's flipping through them and giving me comments and writing in the margins. And she flips a page over and she reads something and she underlines like two or three sentences and just casually says, "I'm not sure who you're performing for here." And then she keeps going. And it was just such a watershed moment for me, because she was identifying something that I had sensed for a long time. And something, Sylvia, that I feel like if you've seen and that you were attempting to point out the same thing, is that right?
Sylvia Bueno: 14:04
Yeah. I wasn't talking about content or anything you were saying it was more your presence, like your presence wasn't there. Like, I felt like I was listening to a performance, which frustrated me because I know you so well, and I know your true presence and how you do show up. And so when I didn't hear that, I was just like, oh wait, who is this? And so that's, as far as I went, as far as your podcasts. Because I know you so well, it was almost uncomfortable for me to keep listening.
Candice Schutter: 14:37
Sure. Yeah, I get that. As I went through the series, I could feel that tension between my, as Glennon Doyle calls it, my representative... and my deeper truth. Which was really in some ways the purpose of the project for me to, to, to bring these... bring this fragmentation into integration... these different aspects into an integrated form. And I may have succeeded in some instances, and I may have "failed" or learned in other instances.
Sylvia Bueno: 15:14
Definitely not failed.
Candice Schutter: 15:15
And it was a fire I had to walk through.
Sylvia Bueno: 15:18
Absolutely. Yeah. There's no failure in that, for sure. I also want to say that now... in the days leading up to this experience right here. As I started to panic thinking about what we're going to talk about and actually the unknown of what might come flying out of my mouth and what people might hear or not hear or whatever. And I started to panic. Now having had that experience and thinking about what, how many episodes did you record?
Candice Schutter: 15:51
Technically there were twenty. Seventeen of them are long form. Yeah, yeah, twenty.
Sylvia Bueno: 15:55
And putting that out into the world. Holy moly. Like, if I tried to do that, I mean, you probably would have felt the same thing. Who knows, or I probably would've run out of the room crying. Like that's, that's some scary shit. It's so vulnerable, and it's absolutely not a failure that you did that. So kudos to you.
Candice Schutter: 16:17
And it led to this. Thank you, thank you for that. And thank you for being courageous today. And that's really why I wanted to share this with the listeners. It's ironic really that I provided the seven keys to courageous self-expression, and really at the heart of it all is the willingness to make oneself vulnerable and to risk uncertainty. I took a risk doing those podcasts, and I minimized the risk as much as I possibly could by writing it all first. I did a little ad-libbing here and there, but mostly I planned what I was going to say. And, as a writer, I can hide behind words really well. I'm super good at it. So I controlled for a lot of things. And then I recorded it pretty much verbatim with a few ad-libs here and there. And it was an act of courage and it was also a baby step on the path of being able to sit here right now and just speak off the cuff, which is really ultimately what I'd like to do. And as I told Sylvia, one of the challenges of doing that from the get-go was I don't wake up in the morning thinking, oh, I have so much to say and the world needs to hear it. Let me grab a microphone. Like, that's not my reality. I didn't create a podcast to hear myself talk. I really feel moved to inspire, by example, courageous self expression. To inspire it. And I'm realizing now after twenty episodes, the best way to inspire courageous self-expression is to get vulnerable and to be as real as possible. And I chose Sylvia because she is the person that I feel safest around in the whole world. There's a lot of wonderful people in my life. I'm really blessed. And vice versa, right? We've created that environment together. And so I thought if I want to be real, I need to feel safe. And if I need to feel safe, I'm going to call me up some Syvie. I call her Syvie, ya'll. As do some of her close family members. So that's why she's here today. And also... bonus... she's brilliant.
Sylvia Bueno: 18:49
Aww.
Candice Schutter: 18:50
You are. You are a light in my life. And when I say brilliant, I mean it, in the literal sense. Like you illuminate truth for me. And what I love about the way you illuminate truth is it's not that 'high talk' truth. It's the deep, gritty, unflinching truth. And that's why I reach for you when I'm in those deep and gritty places, because there's not a lot of people who know how to do that.
Sylvia Bueno: 19:19
What's high talk truth?
Candice Schutter: 19:22
I'm so glad you asked that because I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think it really speaks to what was happening, what you were hearing... in those early podcasts. So before we define high talk truth, I want to talk about how we met because it's connected. Because the space in which we met is where I learned how to high talk.
Sylvia Bueno: 19:46
Mmm. Okay..
Candice Schutter: 19:46
In the way that I'm going to define it. So Sylvia and I met in 2003. When we had both moved to Portland, I think pretty close in time. Do you remember when you moved to Portland?
Sylvia Bueno: 19:58
Oh yeah, I do. We landed in Portland on November 5th.
Candice Schutter: 20:05
So you arrived November 5th, which is two days before your birthday.
Sylvia Bueno: 20:08
Two days before my birthday.
Candice Schutter: 20:10
Yep. And I had been there for not quite a month. I got the October 8th. So I was working at an organization that Sylvia would soon get a job at. That's what moved me to Portland was that I began to work for this personal growth organization. And you got hired how long after?
Sylvia Bueno: 20:30
I don't know, a few weeks. I started working in December, and I was already affiliated with the organization as well. I just wasn't working for them.
Candice Schutter: 20:41
Right, right. Which was the case for both of us. And it was kind of a big deal that we got jobs there. Cause we, right? I mean, we were both pretty, um, pretty involved in what the organization was doing and we'd want it to be closer to the epicenter of where it was all happening. So we both got jobs at this organization that we loved. And, we worked there for different durations. I think I was there for, gosh, it was kind of a process me leaving, but it was maybe three years that I was involved there as an employee. And I think you quit...
Sylvia Bueno: 21:18
I think I was there for a couple of years.
Candice Schutter: 21:21
So we worked together for this company and we became friends. We would have brunch together on Sunday with a group of other women and we just became super tight. We ended up moving into a house together. We became, not roommates, but housemates because that's what grownups call it. We were house mates, and we lived in this bubble gum pink house in Southeast Portland, right at the base of Mount Tabor. And we loved that it was pink. The pink palace. Yeah. And it was awesome living there, and we sort of couldn't afford it at the same time. So I remember that we learned that the furnace was an oil furnace, which I had never even heard of until we moved into the house. And so after a few weeks into our first winter, the oil furnace ran out and it was a few hundred dollars to fill it up. So we just used lots of blankets, and I think we did it once. And then it took us like four months to pay it off. And so we're not doing that again. No, we were very blessed to have a roof over our heads. But things were tight. We did eventually after I dunno a year or two, we moved apart. We both had relationships and we've been in and out of relationships together. Sylvia has seen me repeat relational dramas that brought me to my knees over and over again.
Sylvia Bueno: 22:46
You've seen me at my absolute worst and best and everything in between.
Candice Schutter: 22:53
mmhm. Ditto.
Sylvia Bueno: 22:54
Familial problems, addiction problems, mental health issues. Yeah. Anything I could throw at you I did.
Candice Schutter: 23:05
Yeah, I think that's part of what brought us together is we both actually were struggling with mental health issues, that it seemed like no one else was comfortable talking about or looking at. It was, it was sort of that, that sense you get when people contract when you begin to communicate around something that's going on and not because they're not loving or well-meaning, they just don't... they can't relate. And we were able to relate. We both suffered from intense anxiety and bouts of depression. And we'd both experienced trauma in childhood, and there was just a lot for us to connect around in terms of language we could speak to one another. And so.. We'll talk about a little bit more about our friendship in a moment. It's going to lead into the questions that I want to ask you in the conversation I want us to have, but first I want to answer your question about high talk.
Sylvia Bueno: 23:59
Oh yeah, yeah.
Candice Schutter: 24:00
Because we were working in a company where it was a personal growth organization and I'm going to talk a lot more about those years in some future episodes, because I want to be super deliberate about how I unpack all of that and share what happened during those years for me personally, and the learning that resulted. The thing that's relevant to this discussion is that we were involved in a lot of different trainings being part of the organization, and not just training in terms of our employment, but training in terms of the personal growth trajectory, I guess, I don't know what to call it.
Sylvia Bueno: 24:36
There was like the personal growth arm, and then there was the business.
Candice Schutter: 24:41
Yeah. As a part of our employment, we were able to take advantage of these trainings even more so at a lower cost or free. The trainings were very helpful in terms of my own personal growth and development. And I was also being trained to become a facilitator at the same time as I was taking these trainings. And there's this thing that can happen in personal growth circles, where, when so many principles and practices are coming at you, a common language is developed. And a common way of holding oneself. Because there's this sense of, okay, I want to rise above my reactivity. I'm becoming more mindful. I'm becoming more deliberate in my life. And it's sort of a fake it till you make it set up, like step into these expressions of personal power that you may not exactly feel and practice them, try them on and you will catch up. There was definitely some truth to that, right? The mindfulness piece was really key. But what can happen, and what did happen for me was that I was so surrounded by so many people speaking the same language. And I was also surrounded by authority figures who expected us to communicate at a certain standard at all times, that I developed what I now call 'high talk.' That I, I, I sought to transcend my humanity so much that I abandoned myself in the process. I became a primary teacher for the, the founders of this organization. I had to represent them, quite literally. And so I began to embody the way that they moved and the way that they talked and the way that I saw other trainers communicating and behaving. And I created a persona. And I see this in other arenas. Like sometimes I walk into a yoga class and the teacher is speaking in a very particular manner and there is something deliberate about using one's voice to elicit sensation and to do the, the work. Yet there's this super fine line that it's easy to cross where it becomes pretentious and sort of fake sounding. And I did that for so many years that I feel as soon as eyes are on me, it's like this safe place for me to go. I'm sharing this story because they feel like it connects to what you were hearing and, and what I feel charged by when I hear other people doing it. And I know the charge that I feel is because I do it. It drives me bat shit crazy because I do it all the time. And I'm, it's something I'm working to undo. I call it high talk because it's above everything. It's transcending the gritty truth, the profanities, the what-the-fuck-does-this-even-mean moments, right?
Sylvia Bueno: 27:39
Yes.
Candice Schutter: 27:40
It's above... and in some ways it's the opposite of the deeper pulse. It's like...
Sylvia Bueno: 27:45
Yeah.
Candice Schutter: 27:46
...way up and out there. And it's not accessible. And that's what was so heartbreakingly true about what you said to me was I was like... right! Like, I'm doing that thing and it's making it so that I'm not accessible, which is the most important thing to me.
Sylvia Bueno: 28:05
Right. Yeah.
Candice Schutter: 28:06
Does that resonate?
Sylvia Bueno: 28:08
Oh, absolutely..
Candice Schutter: 28:09
Did you feel that? I mean, I know I was doing a lot more teaching and presenting, but did you feel that as a part of the culture?
Sylvia Bueno: 28:15
In hindsight, I did. But when I was in it for me, I feel like looking back on my life, I have so much self doubt that I look for the truth or for how I sh... how one should be in others. So for me, it was like, okay, looking to... you know, the founders, the teachers, the trainers. I was like, oh, okay. So this is, this is how I should be. And so it, it, I didn't get the sense of the high talk that you're describing. For me it was more of, oh, this is just how I should be because I'm getting so much really good stuff out of this program, out of this organization. So then what they're doing and what they're saying, even though it may not feel really authentic to me, it must be right. So I'm going to do that. So that's kind of where I was coming from. It was more like, well, they know more than I do, obviously... you know, obviously they know more than I do. And so I'm gonna just do what they do and say what they say. And I didn't really experience that, but in hindsight, absolutely. I see that, like, I see the pretentiousness and sort of the inauthentic-ness.
Candice Schutter: 29:42
And to be clear, nobody, and this is something I think that gets lost a lot. It's like, you know that I love going down, like, the cult rabbit hole. Like we go there together and we watch these documentaries on cult dynamics and, and just what happens in group think and all that stuff. And, and there's this common argument, because we only hear the extreme stories of cult dynamics, that there's always a malignant narcissist at the top, and that there's malicious intent. And there's, there's always this talk about intent. Intent to manipulate. Intent to create a group mindset. And I think that 90% of the time, there's no intent to do any of that. And yet, as we know, especially living through this reckoning around social justice right now that it doesn't matter what your intent is, your impact is what matters. I say that because nobody intended to make us speak in a pretentious manner. Like you just said, so much of the content served us in terms of our growth and development. And there's this thing that happens in spiritual communities and in communities in general, where, and this is what I'm my question to you is in retrospect... did you notice that everyone began to speak the same language? That there was a little bit less... like the lack of authenticity wasn't because anyone meant to be inauthentic, it was just, the individuation was getting watered down by this collective mindset. Like, did you feel that?
Sylvia Bueno: 31:10
Yeah, I mean, we were being taught and trained actually to say certain things and not say certain things.
Candice Schutter: 31:18
True. True.
Sylvia Bueno: 31:19
So, so yeah, and like you said, I think within any community, and maybe even more so like in a personal growth or spiritual community, I don't know why this is some sort of human nature, but we do start to form our own language, right? And that makes it sort of exclusive like, well, you know, you're part of the group, so this is how we speak, and this is how we talk to each other and we understand each other. And only if you're in the group, do you get to talk like this or...
Candice Schutter: 31:52
Yeah, it's almost like if you don't know the language, you don't get it. And there's some really sort of, we get off on that in a way...
Sylvia Bueno: 31:59
Yeah, yeah.
Candice Schutter: 31:59
that I don't fully understand. Maybe not consciously, but it's just the sense of, oh, they would never understand this language that we speak.
Sylvia Bueno: 32:07
Yeah. And I, I would argue, like you said something earlier about you don't, you don't think that there is any malicious intent and I, I mean, I agree with that to some extent. And I think that maybe it doesn't start out that way. And, and I'm talking about in group, maybe personal growth, religions, things like that, maybe it doesn't start out that the person or the people at the top have ill intent. But I think, sometimes as you go along and maybe someone starts to feel power. Then maybe it becomes not so subconscious anymore. That it's more, intentional...
Candice Schutter: 32:53
Right. There's a lot more conversation that's going to happen around all that, whether it's with Sylvia, with if she wants to be a part of it or with other people... there's so much there to look at. And in terms of today and the awareness that I'm wanting to highlight... it isn't about Candice and her podcast. It's just about, in general, where do we filter ourselves in our interactions with people? Sometimes those filters can be constructive. And many times they become reflexive, and they actually keep us from showing up with our most authentic truth. It's just what happens. It becomes, like, it's like muscle memory. If you work in a place where you don't feel safe expressing yourself and you spend 40 hours a week in that place and 40 hours a week, you're consciously censoring what you say. Or if you live with a partner who is volatile and there are certain things you, you know, eggshells, you need to walk on and things you shouldn't say... that becomes ingrained in you. And then you take it into other environments and atmospheres and it becomes almost like armor that you have to chink through. And that's what I feel like I'm doing... I mean, I'm still working in personal growth and I have a lot, a lot, a lot of mixed feelings around it because of dynamics like this and this armor I feel like so many of us wear. And I'm so grateful to you for being loving enough to reflect to me, "hey babe, your armor's up. Is that what you want? Is that what you're going for?" And that's, what's so beautiful about you is you... and this is where I want to go in our conversation next is that you have this ability, this is why I want to share you with the world. You have this ability to allow people to be as they are. I used to describe it as... oh, Sylvia's the most unconditionally loving person that I know. And I suppose that's true. Yet I have mixed feelings around the whole idea of unconditional love. I've talked about in previous podcasts. It's not about conditions or not conditions. It's about the way that you love and the way that it lands in my heart that is unique. And that has given me a permission to show up with a degree of transparency that I don't know that I've ever felt with any other human. In part two, you're going to hear a lot more from Sylvia. Here's a sneak peek of what you can expect in episode 19.
Sylvia Bueno: 35:50
Cause it's, it's so important for us as humans to feel loved, to feel seen. And not just, not just on our good days... it's so important to know that you're loved, to know that your existence matters. It's so important because when we're in those dark spaces and we're ready to give up and leave this earth at our own hand, it's so hard to remember these moments.
Candice Schutter: 36:29
When you show me the resilience of having lived and stood up over and over again and you just keep getting back up over and over again, I'm like... that's my hero.
© The Deeper Pulse, Candice Schutter