Confessions of a Professional Overthinker: Interview with Kristy Rigall

Kristy is an ex-nurse turned author, her first book “Confessions of a Professional Overthinker” is coming out in October 2019.

Her journey of writing this book is nothing short of personal experience on acceptance, courage, and healing. Her background in nursing has helped her to identify certain connections between physical or emotional problems and the life stories people tend to hold.

More often than not, the thoughts of “I am not good enough”, “I am unworthy” or “I am not lovable”, were the stories many patients have in their minds, especially those who have addiction issues.

She talked about how we unknowingly play the “old stories” in our mind based on our childhood experience and even though they are not valid or true, we are still affected by them.

We may not be able to change the past, but now we have a choice to stop repeating those stories that no longer serve us and we can decide not to let them define us any further.

Kristy said powerfully, “At the end of the day, it’s a choice if you want to heal emotionally, physically, spiritually, but it’s also a choice to stay in what is keeping you safe.”

I hope you will enjoy this deep and meaningful conversation about healing and self-discovery.

If you would like to connect with Kristy or check out her new book, please go to https://www.kristyriggall.com/ and her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/confessionsofaprofessionaloverthinker/

Transcript of our interview:

Sze Wing: Hi, everyone. Today we are going to talk to my guest Kristy Rigall. She is the author of “Confessions of a Professional Overthinker”, which I think is an awesome title. I know Kristy has a nursing background and now obviously more focused on her creativity. She just finished the book and I know it’s in the works, it’s coming out soon, which is extremely exciting because myself being an author and I remember when I was working on my first book, it was a huge project. So I guess we have a lot to share in that sense. And I’m so excited for you to have your book coming out and I just love the title and I’m really curious to talk to you today about your book because it’s something that I think a lot of us do (to overthink). So welcome to my show, Kristy.

Kristy: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. I’m excited.

Sze Wing: Yeah, so first of all, let’s jump into the title of the book because when you mentioned that to me, I was like, “Wow, that’s really catchy.” When I was working on my book, it took me a long time actually to come up with a title, because you know, I was working with goddess archetypes, partly psychology and mythology. And I’m also very grounded in personal development and spirituality about helping people to transform their life. But I don’t want to sound too witchy woo, but there is the element of myths and the wisdom from the people before. So it took me a while to actually put it together in something that captures everything and showed the essence of the book. So when I hear your title I thought, “Wow, that’s super great, and I can really get what you’re doing.” So how did it all come together with the book and the title?

Kristy: Well, the actual title, it didn’t actually come about until this year. I had a few different titles or working titles as they call them. Then, yeah, I guess this year I started to think about what is it that I actually want the book to say and what is it that is actually or has actually been going on. I guess the thing is, is that how it came about was that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I was sick and tired of my mind running the show.

Kristy: I guess in about 2014 or so, my daughter was two, I started writing in a journal and I did that as a teenager, and I stopped doing it for some reason or other, but I did. But after I had her all these questions and things were coming up. Anyway, I started writing in journals, and asking specific questions, and then I got this little intuitive hit of just start writing a book, and I was like, “What?” And I thought, “Okay.” So instead of writing in my journal, I started, I guess making a book out of my uncovering, yeah.

Sze Wing: What do you discover for yourself from basically… I mean, a lot of books actually came out that way, that we are recording all our inner experience, our self-reflection. What came out of it? What have you learned since you start pulling this out? Because I think when you started it cannot even stop. Right.?

New Speaker: Oh yeah.

Sze Wing: And how did the overthinker thing came up? As in you realize you keep on telling yourself different things, is it ow did it come about?

Kristy: It was interesting, I guess a few life circumstances were happening at the time. I remembered saying to my husband, I was just like, “This just doesn’t feel right. I don’t feel right. Something is not right. I need to figure out why.” I had been seeing a psychologist and she was great, but the way that I… I guess the way that I was able to download things myself was through writing. Yeah, I guess the personal journey was just about the fact that I was deep in stress, deep in anxiety, and deep in depression. I had a complete work-life imbalance, even though I was a nurse, and they say, “Oh, nursing is perfect for a work-life balance.” It wasn’t, but for my family at least. Yeah, I was very unhappy and very stressed out. So I guess the book became a format of downloading. Yeah.

Sze Wing: And I guess if people can relate to this that often we feel there’s something we need to look at and sometimes there are many different ways to bring it to the foreground, and that happens to us that writing, it’s one of those ways that we can really channel our inner dialogue, and discover more about ourselves. I remember you said something before when were talking earlier on, that you nearly didn’t finish the book or didn’t do the book. What was that about? You were already on the path as then you were pulling all the thoughts out, and that’s probably a one way to help you get out of your anxiety or your depressed state. So what happened then?

Kristy: It’s funny. The whole me nearly not publishing the book was, I guess it was just a very small part of me. I didn’t feel anxious, and I didn’t feel depressed, it was just something that was stopping me and I could not put my finger on it. I have delved into soul purpose, numerology, life purpose type things and I was like, “Maybe there is something within that, that is probably telling me, giving me further information about why, what is that is actually stopping me.”

Kristy: Yeah, I delved into… I love numerology, I love soul purpose, Akashic records. I’m very into that, but I guess it comes down to a fear that I downloaded as a child, that nobody wants to talk to me. I mean, sorry, nobody wants to hear would I have to say. I just did not feel, in life, that people wanted to hear what I had to say. Yeah, it was quite an interesting journey. And I thought that maybe the download of the book was more for me, and why would anybody want to hear anything I have to say about being an overthinker because isn’t everybody? Yeah, I guess it was a little bit of fear, a little bit of, “Am I still not good enough?” I don’t think it ever leaves you that, the whole overthinking stuff, it doesn’t ever fully leave you, but it gets more manageable.

Sze Wing: I think that’s interesting because I know Oprah often say at the end of every interview people asked you, “How did I do, was it okay?” They wanted to have a confirmation or validation that they’re being heard. And so often that we think, who wants to know my story, in our head? But then the fact is a lot of the times that when people read your story, they realize, “Oh, I’ve been saying that to myself,” or “Oh, that happened to me.” A lot of times that these things, that this secrets that we keep inside our head are so relatable, and it’s about feeling worth to share our story. I think that’s why, I think being a writer, it’s a very vulnerable adventure because in a way you open up your mind, and your emotions and your inner world to tell people what you have experienced, what you have learned.

Sze Wing: This is not something, it’s not the same as a social media post, Instagram, it’s a lot deeper because you have more words to spare because with a book you’ll get at least 40 or 50,000 words. But in a short post you only show a little bit, even no matter how authentic or how much you want to share. So I found this is really interesting how you talk about, having this, is it worth to share it, kind of stopping us to do some of those probably most monumental things in our lives. Just tell me a bit more about your book. What is in it and how the confession is like, so was it like a story, or pieces of thoughts? Is it like that, or it comes with different topics of things that we tend to overthink?

Kristy: I started it about three years ago. When I started it, it was a little nudge, I guess you could call to just start writing and stop thinking so much, and just start writing. Because then it’d always been something for me, writing in journals had always been my form of creative expression. Now everyone’s got their creative side they can, some people can paint and some people can draw and do just amazing creative things. But writing was always my little download. Yeah, the book was, I guess it was more of an unfolding and this year was the culmination of just learning to accept the fact that things were the way they were.

Kristy: While I was nursing I’ve witnessed a lot of very different habits of people who probably had been living in their heads, addictions or misuse of certain things, and I was able to correlate a lot of patients issues, and things to stories, emotions, and stored feelings, which was pretty much very similar for myself. So yeah, that’s… I guess, yeah, that’s how it unwound. I guess.

Sze Wing: I felt like it sounds like how Louise Hay, talk about… You know about Louis Hay, about her book?

Kristy: Yeah, I love… Oh my god. I love her.

Sze Wing: Her basically debut, or what got her to become Louise Hay, as Louis Hay, was How Do You Heal Yourself? Right? Did I get the title right?

Kristy: Yeah.

Sze Wing: But she’s also similar as in, your background was in nursing, but she was a spiritual counsellor. But through meeting people, listening to the story and identifying the problems, and their health problems or emotional problems together, and what they were saying that she finds relationship or connection between this and that. A classic example I remember was, if you don’t feel supported, you may have back issue and something like that.

Sze Wing: Yeah, in a way when you were in your profession, you also witnessed things that you just… Even if you’re not paying particular attention, through time you kind of picked it up that the similarities in your head, and I think that’s really interesting how it’s very similar from what you just described. I mean, is this something that you can share with us, exactly that, these commonalities between people facing certain issues and their perhaps physical emotional problem that they’re also dealing with?

Kristy: Oh, a thousand per cent. I’ll give you a specific example… Okay, every three years I had to update my first aid. I studied to be a Bowen therapist and a Reiki master, it was just as a field of extra learning for me. But at that time I had to go and do my first aid certificate, even though I was a nurse, I still had to do it. So I did, and then I met this woman who was coughing, it was a cough that was like this, it was like… I was thinking to myself, “Well that’s not a productive cough. There’s something that is not right there.”

Kristy: I said to myself, “If I’m meant to speak with this woman, then I’m about to get to the toilet in the break, please send her to me.” So she did, she followed me and it was just her and I in the bathroom, and I sort of asked her a few questions and I said, “You’ve got this strange cough, it’s not productive. How long have you had it for?” I’d noticed that she was breathing very strangely but very shallowly. I started asking her a few questions and yeah… I mean I won’t go specifically into everything, but I was able to devise why she was ill, and it was all linked to an emotional overthinking. She’d been holding onto another person’s story basically, and it was making her sick.

Sze Wing: So something she can’t let go with it, is that why she couldn’t cough it out?

Kristy: Yeah, yeah. Her husband had been mistreating her in some way and she knew about it, but she wasn’t talking or had not told him that she knew. So she developed this… In your heart, your heart is where you hold people that you love, if people are mistreating you, then they will step all over your heart, certain things like that. She was being mistreated, and she thought that she didn’t deserve better, which was really sad for me to hear. It was actually something that followed me around in my nursing career. I would watch people in addiction… I know this is really awful to say, and I don’t know if I can say this on the podcast, but post attempts on taking their lives and things, and it was all because of being in their heads. Stories that were in their heads that they weren’t good enough, or that they weren’t lovable enough, or nobody wanted to hear what they had to say.

Kristy: I started seeing this pattern unwinding. It was like, “Wow, you know, I feel like this at times and I’m looking after these people that feel the same way. And sometimes the medical profession cannot, or does not understand the human mind at it’s deepest capacity.” I mean, psychologically, of course they’re learning, but for me I just was starting to… Not only was I unfolding myself, but I was also able to, when I was looking after patients, I was always, I started to be able to understand a lot of people’s health issues relating to stories that they were holding on to.

Sze Wing: That’s really interesting. Where you use the three common, not common but I guess major, or things that really stand out, when what you just said, was people think they are not lovable, what they say doesn’t matter, so they don’t have a voice, basically feeling powerless, and not good enough. These are the three really key things that we hear largely, say the self-development community, for instance, to overcome in a way. What would you say with your experience working with these people, even though your role as a nurse, but sometime we can’t help ourselves, but to think a little bit further, or try to understand it more like a holistic way or integrated approach?

Sze Wing: So what would you say to people, say someone is listening to this and realize, “Oh my gosh, yeah, I’ve been always talking to myself in a way to suggest that I’m not lovable or what my opinion doesn’t matter, nobody cares or I’m not good enough, so I may as well don’t try.” When you experience from your work background, as well as writing this book, what would you say to people, how can we better manage this? Because it happens all the time and it’s all about management because there’s no way that we will be completely a hundred per cent always positive and happy. Right?

Kristy: Yeah. Okay. I guess the thing that I’ve come to realize or understand is that, from the age of zero to eight years old, that is when we download all… We’re unconscious. We come into this world as unconscious beings, and we rely on the adults that bring us into this world to download our information. So once we come into adulthood, 95% of everything that we do is related to our unconscious download at that time. It’s tricky because of a lot in our environment. If we don’t feel safe in our environment, it causes anxiety. It’s a lot of everything that we do as an adult is linked to our childhood.

Kristy: I find that a bit tricky to talk about because often you can’t blame your childhood on your upbringing, you just have to look at it from a different perspective. And that is that if you didn’t have parents that provided you with a safe environment. You walk into your adulthood and you’ve got a decision to go, “Okay, well that wasn’t a safe environment. I’ve got the decision to change that now.” But a lot of us, yeah, we play old stories in the back of our… Unknowingly, and that’s where our thinking comes from. It’s fear of the past and fear of the future, and an inability to live in the present, because of past, or present, or future. Yeah. Sometimes it can do due to ancestral lineages as well. We’re all a part of a soul group and we don’t… People who have passed over, we download a lot of their information as well, unknowingly until we become aware of it. But that type of stuff, it’s not for everybody.

Sze Wing: Yeah. I totally can understand, if you grew up from the family or women who have little respect… Just say an example for three or four generations. There’s something in this lineage to make you feel small, and as you said, the first eight years of childhood is so important to shape up our view of the world. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t empowering. We were not being treated with respect. So there is something in our minds that kind of it just imprinted on us. So it takes an actual effort, like what you said.

Sze Wing: I suppose when people realize they are overthinking or when they catch themselves in those little downward spiral, then you can ask the question, you need to make a decision, so to say, “Well look, this is not doing well for me. I’ve made a decision that how am I going to make my environment safe and therefore trying to change what I’ve learned from youth,” because you don’t want to stay that way. That’s the thing, and sometimes people may not believe they can actually get better or change. I suppose that could be an element as well, because they’re so used to having a generation of influence that maybe come out from a certain family, that it’s hard to make them feel and believe that can be different.

Kristy: There’s a woman in America, her name’s Caroline Myss and I talk about her in the book. Caroline Myss, she’s a medical intuitive and she’s actually one of the people that I have studied and one of her medical intuitive books. It was called Why People Don’t Heal. And it was so fascinating to me because I was still nursing at the time… It was strange. I was having to look after a lot of mental health patients who are in post or current addiction, or post attempts on their lives, which is not nice as a nurse. Caroline actually spoke about why people don’t heal, and I loved what she said because it’s a choice. At the end of the day, it’s a choice if want to heal emotionally, physically, spiritually, but it’s also a choice to stay in what is keeping you safe.

Sze Wing: Wow.

Kristy: I didn’t actually know about her work until maybe a year or two into my journey, but yeah, when I found out about her, I was just like, “Oh my God.” I’m like, “This is a choice. It’s a choice for me to stay miserable. It’s a choice for me to overthink, and it’s a choice to not be conscious of my life. Everything is a choice. It’s a choice… illness even.” Yeah, it was very interesting and she spoke a lot of sense to me just because of my medical background. Yeah.

Sze Wing: I totally understand. First of all, no one said the choice is easy to make and even you make the choice of, “Okay, I’m going to get better. I’m going to kick this addiction or whatever that is.” It doesn’t mean the journey after is easy either. But I think once you make the choice, what happened from what I observe is that once you make the choice, those things start to fall into your lap. Maybe you hear someone’s podcast, you read this book, or sometimes even people told me how books fall on their head or foot in a bookstore. The universe has a way to tell you, or you got it in the callings, I need to write a book because I felt when you write a book, you’re also in a way helping others and you also help yourself. But that’s all comes from that decision you make early on that you decided to move forward. Right?

Sze Wing: I definitely think making that choice is so important. And I think you have witnessed so many different cases, and you can definitely tell, who would… You have made the choice to get better? Some may just stay because they feel safe or they basically don’t have the faith to think they could change for the better, and that’s really incredibly sad, and I guess that’s why you and I are writing books and doing things to try to… Kind of wake up people you can do better. I mean, no one is saying it’s easy. So I guess, you know that first hand is not easy from your personal experience to what your witness. None of this is easy, but you got to start somewhere.

Kristy: Yeah, I mean the book, I’ve had about 15 people… or more people reading it at the moment. And a lot of them have all said, “Wow, Kristy, this is quite raw, but they all relate to it.” And I’m like, “Wow, you’re relating to this?” I thought I was alone, and I thought I was alone in the thoughts that I was having. I mean I don’t have, thankfully I don’t have the thoughts that I used to have. The book is, it’s an unfolding, it was an unfolding of me. Initially at the start and then to me now. Yeah, it’s tricky. This type of journey, it’s not for everybody because it means you’ve got to face a lot of your demons, and some people just don’t want to, and that’s okay. It is what it is.

Sze Wing: You had this inner calling to write a book and writing a book wasn’t easy either, but you were called to do it, and I think if people feel called to change, then they may feel inspired to do so. So before we wrapped up, so tell us how can people get their hands on your book when it’s all finished? Would it be from your website, or is there anywhere they can get their hands into getting your book? The “Confessions of a Professional Overthinker”.

Kristy: Yeah. I’m currently listing it on Amazon. I’m about to pop it onto IngramSpark, I’m trying to get it out to as many people as possible.

Sze Wing: Basically, from what you said, the major online store, will have it, IngramSpark actually covers hundreds of outlets.

Kristy: Pretty much, I’m trying to find as many places that I can get into as many people’s hands, and it should be available within the next week or two, yeah. Because I’m pretty much finished.

Sze Wing: Fantastic. And if people want to get in touch with you, or connect with you, or tell you how they feel about the book, so would that, how would they find you online? Do you have a website or something to share?

Kristy: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s www.kristyrigall.com. I’ve also got a Facebook website. It’s called Confessions of a Professional Overthinker. So yeah. There’s a few other links and stuff there. Yeah.

Sze Wing: Fantastic. Thank you so much for today, joining us and all the best with your book coming out next week.

Kristy: Thank you very much. I’m very excited.