WMH Season 3 Ep 8: From Stuck to Unstoppable: Mental Blocks Holding You Back

This is a transcript of Watching Mental Health Season 3, Episode 8 which you can watch and listen to here:

Katie: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Watching Mental Health, and I'm so excited because today we're going to have a really cool, spiritual, mental, emotional, all the things conversation because today we are featuring Ilona Pamplona, who is a twice published author, speaker, and strategic, dedicated to helping professionals, entrepreneurs, and creatives find their clarity, overcome those limiting beliefs, holding us back. And with an MA in wellness coaching, she combines traditional coaching theories with a range of transformative tools to guide her clients in reconnecting with their inner selves, discovering their life's purpose and transforming their most important relationship. And that's the one with themselves, and we often forget about that. And so that's what we're focusing on today. And so I'm so excited to bring on Ilona Pamplona to the show.

Ilona: Hello.

Katie: Hi. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm so excited to have you here and to just share your expertise with us in these areas.,

Ilona: I'm thrilled. Thank you so much for having me.

Katie: Well, let's just jump right in. Tell me about yourself. Who are you and why is mental health important to you? Why is this job important to you?

Ilona: I love this question. So who am I? I am a trained life coach. I use a lot of tools. I'm a speaker, I'm an author, but really I'm a human who had experiences with all of the things that life throws at you that will make you want to into wellness and mental health. So in astrology, we have this thing called the set of return around the age of 20 to 30. And I had workplace abuse in that period of time, and I really questioned myself, what I knew about myself, what I was doing. And it wasn't until I found my first therapist and I dedicated myself to having other people never experiencing that type of breakdown without support from that experience. And so I just threw myself at anything and all the ways to just shift the way we speak, think, and understand ourselves from that period of time.

Katie: Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I think that a lot of us who get into this space have those personal experiences and have that thought of, I never want anyone else to go through what I went through in this moment. And to do it without support or without feeling like you have a village or you have anywhere to go is so challenging. So that's really cool that you took that experience and you decided to dive head first into the field. That's a lot.

Ilona: It took time. So I worked in higher education and I stayed in higher education, but because I was in higher education, I knew how to research, what are the trainings and what are the things I want to do? Do I want to be a therapist? And then I found coaching and really allowing myself to explore all the possibilities. Made realigning with wellness really exciting. It was like, oh, I'm learning new things. Oh, I figured this out. And so it probably took almost less than 10 years from the moment I'm like, I'm never going to let anyone feel that again to I'm doing things to make sure people never feel that way again.

Katie: Oh my gosh. Well, I mean 10 years isn't that long. I want you to tell me a little bit more, but from a little bit, from what I can tell from your story is it's unique mine in that you didn't wake up and we're like, okay, I'm going to follow this traditional therapy path. And I, in the same way was like, I'm not going to do that. I had my reasons and I knew that I couldn't, but I knew I wanted to be involved in mental health. I knew I wanted to help people, and I just kind of had to uniquely figure it out and became kind of a unicorn in some ways. And I see you in a similar light.

Ilona: Yeah. So it's interesting. I often talk about the fact that I was raised with a spiritually fluid mom. So my mom was open to all types of spirituality, manifestation practices, and I mean, I'm talking, my mother had a vision board in 1983 right before it was The secret was out. And so my mom always led with there's a possibility everything's fixable. As Marie Forley would say, there's a solution to everything except for the end of our own experience. And so I grew up with the mentality of we can work our way through it. And sometimes I think when, so like I said, I grew up with a mom who believed in affirmations and speaking wellness and positivity, not from a bypass perspective, but Hey, can you believe that you can actually make this happen? Can you speak as if it worked? It's possible.

So when the workplace abuse happened, it was just this moment of I lost all those practices. I lost all that basically training that my mom gave me. And so like you said, I'm like, do I want to be a therapist? Probably not my path, but can I recover some of those practices? Can I recover some of those tools? Can I use these things to not only realign myself but then help other people? They made me feel great. I love the idea of, okay, if I don't feel great, what do I want to create? Let's put it in a vision board. Let me wake up every morning and physically see that there's a new reality for me. And then learning and working with people. Like you said, I didn't throw myself maybe into therapy, but I started going to retreats and personal development conferences and I saw what other people were doing and started picking up what worked for me, but also realizing this might not work for me, but I have a friend that I know is going to love this and creating this. I call it the holy shift. Sometimes we need a holy shift mindset wise, the holy shift toolkit, like, okay, this is what might help you with your holy shift, but we can shift you this way. And learning to play with the tools instead of being like, there's going to be a one stop solution. Also, learning that there's no one stop solution. There's so many ways to play with feeling well again, right?

Katie: Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. So that's interesting to me. You may have really kind of answered this in some ways, but why an ma in wellness coaching versus psychology or research or therapy? I know you mentioned you like research a lot. Why did you go this coaching route?

Ilona: I love this question because there's actually a distinction between the two fields. I think some people feel like it's a replacement for the other. I'm like, no, coaching is very different. My high level understanding recap is therapy helps to help you understand the past, so you can be in the moment, but coaching goes, where are you now and what do we need to do to help you move forward? And for me, my base energy is more of a hype girl and let's keep you in the moment to move you forward. For me, energetically and just from my mindset, and yes, we all have things that we dwell on the past for, but when I'm working with people, I love to be like, what are we doing now and how can we move you forward? And coaching really aligned with that sense of, I don't want to stay in your past.

Yes, the past informs where you are now. The past informs maybe why you're not moving or taking steps towards your future in the way you want. But for me, I was like, what do we have right now? What do we know right now? What can we do just in this one little moment to move you one step further? And that just felt from who I am, more aligned and truly more exciting. And I respect everyone because in my head I'm like, that's a lot of space holding to stay in the past. And for me, that's a sacred craft to be like, we're really going to hold you in such a safe place in the past, which was probably not comfortable because that's what you're here. And for me, I want to help people keep moving.

Katie: Wow. Wow. When you said that, it made me feel good. It is a feel good statement that kind of where are we now and let's get you forward. I think that I love that you brought up that distinction because it is so key. Because yeah, I, in my own life have experienced chapters in which I really would've benefited more from having a therapist, but then other chapters where I benefited more from having a coach and recognizing when I needed those things was powerful for me. And so I've had experience with therapy with coaches, and I'll always say, you can always go back if I'm struggling with something or another. I say, okay, well what is it? Is there a coach that could help me out here? Should I be going back into some traumas with a therapist? Should I be working through something specific? And so I just think it's so cool that you brought up that distinction and just make it clear that hey, at different times in your life, you're going to need these different people. And coaches are so valuable to help move us forward.

Ilona: Yeah. Yes. And so when I was doing, so I got a master's in wellness coaching, and the concentration was basically mindfulness. It was a long term that they don't have anymore, but it was basically mindfulness and we were trained to the ICS standards, which is the International Coaching Federation. I didn't end up getting certified, but a lot of my work is ingrained in that. And the distinctions there is like we don't replace therapy. In fact, we're complimentary, right? Well, there's actually a possibility that you can have one at one time another at the other time, but you can even do both at the same time. It's like, okay, with this person, I'm going to talk about this thing that happened to me when I was 10, but then I'm going to work with my coach and be like, because I need a new sales coach. I need to make sure I'm doing something right now with that information. But they don't replace each other.

Katie: They don't replace each other. That is so cool. So how did you then get into a human design? And then you also mentioned astrology before the call. So how'd you get into these two kind of areas and bring them into your

Ilona: Service? So like I said before, I had a spiritually fluid mom, and I joke that I've been exposed to astrology since before I was born because my mom lives into a very famous Puerto Rican astrologer my whole life in Latin America, there was this one guy, they even a Netflix documentary on him, and he was on the radio and TV for decades.

The joke in the Latin American culture is like, if you didn't have the TV on by 5 45, you missed the Walter segment of the news section. So I was raised with understanding some basic astrology things. In retrospect, I'm like, it infused so much of my life, but it wasn't until I started coaching that I would have sessions with clients. And sometimes in coaching, and even in therapy, I'm sure there are times where clients are not used to being held space for it. They don't want to open up or they don't know how or where to open up. And I would notice things and patterns about my clients and I'd be like, Hey, so do you mind if I pull up your chart? I know it's not like the coaching container that this is, but they wouldn't mind. And I would realize that there were patterns that were in the chart that would light the client up and be like, how did you know this?

And I'm like, I don't know this. I'm reading your chart. And it really allowed a level of vulnerability that allowed the client to show up fully to do the work we needed to do. And so for me, astrology has always been in my life, has always informed my life, but I didn't realize how much it informed our world because I'm also a language nerd. I speak four languages now. I studied another two, I've dabbled in others. So language is huge for me, and language is such a huge experience of wellness. What are you telling yourself? What are the words that you repeat? What are the patterns that you say? And so when we look at what astrology means from an etymology perspective, it's Greek astro meaning star and logos meaning speech. So astrology is telling us the story of our life based on where the stars were the moment that we were born. And so I could literally be like, Hey, the day you were born, here's a story that you brought in. Here's some patterns that we can work through. Because the story isn't for you to be stuck in the story for you to work through the story. Some people are like, oh, I don't want to be there. I'm like, great, that's the point. We're going to transcend the story. But you have a story when you know the story, you know what you work with.

Katie: Okay, yeah, that's true. You can't change what you don't know or you can't evolve what you don't know. And you do have to recognize the stories you're telling yourself. And so that's just so interesting how you're aligning that with the stories in our astrology, like in astrological cards and then how we can not succumb to them, but evolve them is what you're saying. Yes.

Ilona: Okay. Yes, absolutely. And I love that you said that, right? A lot of people feel very limited or stuck from what astrology could probably say, but personally, I feel like when you really understand the full experience with astrology, you actually learn how to free yourself because of the work. And then you asked about human design. Human design is a newer system. It's a newer system. A lot of the Wall Street Journal two years ago said it that angiogram is out and human design is in, and it involves a lot of different systems. So it pulls in astrology, it pulls in the chakra system from the Hindu Braman, it pulls in the E ching, which is a Chinese divination system. It pulls in the Jewish Kabbalah and it pulls in the quantum field and it says, Hey, when we have your birth information, we can tell you how your energy works.

And I know that sounds like really like woo woo, but it's really interesting because once again, it's just pulling astrological data, true placements of stars in the sky to say, Hey, maybe you should be trusting your gut more. Or Hey, maybe you should learn how to inform and speak, use your voice a little bit more. So it helps us align. It's helped me align my clients to what I jokingly call your energetic operating system. There are five different energy types. And so learning, hey, you get to learn how to respond and not have to force things or hey, you get to learn how to wait for invitations so that your magic can shine. And using some of these distinctions to align clients from who they're being to who they're designed to be.

Katie: Wow. What are the five different energy types?

Ilona: Oh, okay. Well, technically there are four, but there's a subtype, but I'm going to call them all. So 70% of the population is what we call a generator aura. And so underneath that, there's also the manifesting generator. So those two auras are open auras. And the distinction there is that it's kind of like this idea that the universe is throwing everything at them because their aura is open. Their operating system is to learn how to say yes to the things that are yes to them and no to the things that are no to them. Because when they're saying yes to something that's a no, this gut feeling that that's a no for me, then they begin to align themselves to the best energy rather than doing things out of obligation or because they logically seem correct. Human design says choices should be made in your energy, not in your mind because your mind is speaking of mental wellness and mental blocks, our minds are connected to our nervous system, and that's a safety mechanism, not an expansion mechanism.

So I'm not saying don't look both ways when you cross the street or don't do something protective when you see a bear coming at you. But this is saying, Hey, if you want to try that business or if you want to go into a relationship or leave a relationship, your mind is going to do the thing that they feel is the safest for you, but not the most liberating for you and expansive for you. So human design. So if you're a generator or a manifesting generator generator, then you kind of liberate yourself from the mental block by saying, okay, I'm just going to trust my energy when I go with what's a yes for me. Now the next biggest one is projectors. They have what's we call penetrating aura. So their auras go into the other auras, and so they absorb what people are feeling. They're kind of really empathetic coordinators, and so they do best, they're really good at spotting things and guiding things. And so they do when they're invited to share the wisdom because a lot of times projector energy is going to be like, I know what you're doing. You shouldn't be doing it this way. A lot of they're feeling it all and they want to share it all, but they do best when they're recognized by the right people to share that wisdom and then they shine.

Katie: Wow, okay.

Ilona: And then I'm part of the 9%, which is a manifesto aura, which I jokingly say I would love to eliminate aura envy because the manifesto aura doesn't mean no one else manifests. We all manifest, every aura manifests when they do the thing, right? So generators and manifesting generators manifest when they trust their gut with that, yes or no projector, auras manifest the best when they're waiting to be invited. And it could be energetic, it doesn't have to be waiting for someone to call them or invite them, but when they're being invited to opportunities, they manifest best. I manifest best as a manifester aura. My aura is closed, and so I literally need to do the thing. I joke that the Just Do It logo by Nike that was designed for manifesters, literally because our aura is not open. The generators who are here to attract not taste, we need to do the thing, otherwise it won't happen.

So we have to, we are kind of like the initiators. We're actually an initiating energy too. And then the last one is reflectors. It's only 1% of the human population, very rare. And they're here to kind of wait. They're actually here for society rather than themselves. And they're human. They're our societal barometers. So their work in the world is really to wait things through. They get to sample, they get to try things out. It's more about they get to taste the world. They get to try out the world without being fixed into a box and worrying about things. They really get to try things out. And the cool thing about them is they're designed to wait a whole moon cycle, which is really funny because everyone's like, I don't have time to wait 28 days to figure things out. But it's really almost learning how to work on a divine timing rather than urgency that might not be theirs. And so there's a lesson and alignment that happens when they don't rush themselves to. So every aura we have got things that we can align ourselves to manifest, for lack of a better phrase, more easily. Doesn't mean we can't work outside of that and do well, but it feels just more aligned with the way we're designed to be.

Katie: That is so interesting. So how could one figure out who or what bucket they land in essentially?

Ilona: Yeah, I love this question. If you go to your aura@work.com, I've created a free body graph calculator. What we use is we use all the things that astrology would we use your birthday, your birth time, and your birthplace. And that will populate what we call a body graph, which is the human design version of a birth chart. And on your aura at work, there's a body graph that you can download, but there's also a free, so you know what your design is and all the little details that accompany being your aura type.

Katie: That is so cool. Thank I'm going to go do that. I'm excited to figure out what I am. And man, that is so interesting. So for anyone who's watching today who may be struggling with blocks with these mental blocks that are holding them back, what are some tips that you can just kind of say that might help them get out of themselves or make a little bit of movement forward? Anything in that area?

Ilona: So many. The first thing that came up for me is it's really important for us to be curious with what our thoughts are and what our feelings are. A lot of us have a very fixed experience, like, I'm feeling sad, this is bad. I'm feeling good. This is right. But sometimes feeling sad is not bad. It's feedback. But if we're not curious, if we don't keep an open mind about what is it that we're actually experiencing, the block will stay because we're trying to operate through the block with a mechanism that's not what the block is about. So if you're trying to happy sadness, but sadness is really telling you, Hey, I need to move, or Hey, sadness is I need to change something in my life rather than I just need to be happy that we don't realize what's happening to actually align to what needs to be done.

And in that vein, I also talk about some of my work is about having a new relationship with feelings. Sometimes mental blocks are because there are feelings that we're not acknowledging to be able to understand what they're saying. When we start to experience feelings and emotions as feedback rather than this polarized, good, bad or wrong, we will be blocked because we're putting it in a bucket that it may not belong in. And I'll also say sometimes approaching the block doesn't have to be heavy. Sometimes it can be playful. I was talking about my book, I have this book called This Journal Is Your Mood Ring. Sometimes moving through the block doesn't have to be like, oh, I've got to do the shadow work. It has to be bad. Sometimes it could be like, Hey, can we play with color and emotions? Can we bring some play into working through this? There are people who work with all sorts of drawing and coloring and subconscious play to work with blocks. It doesn't have to be stuck in your head to get you out of your head. Sometimes you have to work outside of the mental state to move that mental state that's in your way.

Katie: Wow, that was all so good. I don't even know. I just love that. So I gave a talk this morning on stress, and we're talking about chronic stress, and it's like, yeah, stress is normal and experiencing blocks in life, roadblocks and just life happens and that is normal. But when you get stuck and when you can't move through them, that's when it starts to become harder. So I just love how you're always going back to having that relationship with your words and with the stories that you tell yourself. Because I mean, I'm all about that storytelling is so important and what we tell ourselves and how we are to ourselves is the most important relationship.

Ilona: Yes, yes. It's funny, I remember when I was younger, there was that really first time awareness. I'm like, oh, I don't fit into my dress. I think I'm fat. And my mother would be like, you're not fat. You're at the ideal weight. You're at the perfect way for you. And I'd be like, but mom, I literally can't fit into this dress. But because my mom was learning all this affirmation stuff back in the eighties, and at the time I didn't understand as a child, I was literally eight years old. But what I realized is what are you speaking into your world? Is it that you're fat or you're growing kid, you're growing 8-year-old that is now out of this size and not necessarily fat. And so for me, affirmation, work, mantra work, speaking things into existence is also really important because I'm sure you know about neuroplasticity, right?

You've got to really train your brain to see things in a new way. So language matters because it forms our brain, which forms our reality. So if you can begin to train your brain with your words and your thoughts to see things in a different way, then you can get through the block almost. It's like instead of I need to break down this block, it's like I'm going to build a new highway. I joke that the grooves in our mind are German auto bonds, and there we're speeding at 120 miles an hour being like, I fuck where we could be the I'm awesome groove. It's like a dirt road. And so we won't be driving fast down that road until we begin to build that road. And in order to build that road in your mind, you need to use your words differently. You need to speak differently into your life. You need to think differently. And that takes practice. It doesn't happen. The German audubon's already there. So if you want this, you got to work on it. You got to work on this third road so that you can create a positive or different mindset that you can wander through or speed down.

Katie: That's so cool. So you're really helping your clients, not just coaching them. You're helping them rewire these stories that they tell themselves and essentially these connections in their brain because it is all about that. And you just need that kind of constant, I think encouragement, motivation is bathing. You got to do it every day, otherwise it'll go away. And I think a lot of things are like that. So I just think it's cool that you brought up your book and that you're like, sometimes you got to take it out of your head. So tell me a little bit more. You said in the top of the hour I mentioned you were a twice published author. So tell me a little bit more about your books.

Ilona: So the first book I have with me, I'm dog sitting at my sister's house, so I don't have all with me, but my sister's a good sister, has my first book, baby. This journal is your mood ring, and it literally is an exploration of emotions through colors. And I just have to brag because it's a pretty, I don't know if you could tell because it's so bright on it, but every page is a different color, and we really navigate emotion through colors and through archetypes. For example, in green I have Esmeralda, which is being green with envy and reframing envy and not having what you want. Or I have raven for grief under the color black and white spectrum. How is grief? Is grief the relationship we have with it? There's happy emotions. It's all the emotions, but it's rewiring it through curiosity, through these visual archetypes and being like, oh yeah, this is another way to see my grief.

This is another way for me to see my courage. This is another way for me to see my excitement or even my wisdom. Sometimes we don't feel smart. Let's lean into what would it take for me to see wisdom and knowing things in a different way. So I really love this play with color and emotions. My second book just came out in December of 2024, and it's human design made easy. So as you could tell, I'm obsessed with human design and astrology, and it is a really beginner's book for human design. There are a lot of experts. So a lot of the textbooks that are available right now in human design is for people who have been studying the work or have some knowledge, but there isn't the human design 1 0 1 until now. And so I'm really excited to give this really introductory framework for someone who's like, I don't want to be become a practitioner. I just want to know how this works and how I can probably play with it in my life.

Katie: That sounds like a fabulous book. I'm so excited. So are they both on Amazon? How could we get there?

Ilona: Yes, they're all available on Amazon. That is, if you look up Alona Pam, so they're also on my website. If you go to alona pamplona.com back slash book, you should be able to find them there as well.

Katie: Perfect. And so that's how people could get ahold of you by going to your website

Ilona: And Instagram. I'm very active on Instagram, Ilona

Katie: Pam. Oh, good stuff. Oh my gosh. Well, this is so powerful. I'm just really grateful that you are here to teach us a little bit more about human design, about why astrology matters for our mental health, and just some good tips for mental roadblocks holding us back. And really, I just want to end it, I think with this question, and I don't always ask this, but I think I just want to ask more about you. Tell us what are some self-care things that you love to do? What makes you happy in this world? Because the energy that you exude, it's beautiful. Oh, thank you. I don't normally stumble. You make me happy. And tell me a little bit more about the things that make you happy.

Ilona: I am so grateful for this question because I don't think I've had the chance to think about this recently. I know this is a really nerdy question. I mean answer, but I love the work that I do. I could spend, even if I didn't get paid for this work, I would be doing this work regardless, helping people understand themselves. So I was in college admissions for 15 years. I used to help students figure out how to get into college, and I joke that now I help adults figure out what to do with their lives. So for me, whether it's with astrology, whether it's with mindset, whether it's with coaching, whether it's just through connection, I feel inspired, excited, lit up and taken care of when I know that I'm being of service to people with the tools and the information I have, because I have a lot in my brain.

I have languages, tools, education, I got stuff. But I think from a personal self-care perspective, the first thing that came to mind is learning to rest. So in human design, and I'm learning even through these methodologies and these frameworks, everyone but the generators, so projectors, manifestors, and reflectors, we were called non sacrals, which is not, we don't have consistent energy. And for so long I was pushing myself to keep up with everyone who multitask and has history jobs and does these things. It's amazing. I can never keep up. Yeah, I could never keep up. And I learned that my aura type, my energy type really needs to honor rest. When I honor my rest, I feel excited enough to come into the world and be like, I can take care of you. I can do the thing. I can share the thing. I can learn the thing. So that's for me, learning to rest and not beat myself up for having downtime. It's such a deconditioning and a healing self-care practice for me. And I just love people from an astrological perspective. I'm a Libra, so while I do need rest and downtime, connection, being with people really is uplifting to me. Helping people, connecting and uplifting people is just amazing. I'm also a foodie, so I also love cooking and taking care of myself on a physical level too. Every one of our senses can also bring healing and self-care, aromatherapy, reading, arts, cooking, right?

Katie: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, absolutely. Wow, those are amazing. Those are great tips. I love that. And I mean, I'm similar and I think that a lot of us are in that we need to decondition ourselves to thinking that into think from thinking that rest is bad, into thinking that rest is good and rest is important for us. And so yeah, that's super, super key. So thank you so much again for your time. I'm excited to go take the Aura test at your Aura at, what was it again? Your Aura.

Ilona: Your Aura at Work https://www.yourauraatwork.com/ .

Katie: Okay. All right, I got it. Oh, I'm so excited. Thank you again. And for everyone out there, we are live every first and third Wednesday of the month, and we're live at 3:00 PM Pacific time. But you can catch all of our episodes including this one with Ilona Al on my website at katierosewaechter.com. Thanks again, everyone. Have a great one. We'll see you soon!