Navigating Insomnia, Anxiety, and Stress with Stephanie Dalfonzo

Hi there. My name is Avil Beckford, and I'm the host of The One Problem Podcast. We know there are tons of problems in the world. But we're going to tackle them one problem at a time. Why should we get overwhelmed now? As has been the case, most of the people who come on this podcast, I have some prior relationship with them. I've known our guest, Stephanie Dalfonzo, for a couple of years or so. 

I met her at Ellevate Network, and I've talked a lot about that. So Stephanie has an awesome voice. She used to be a radio personality, and you would enjoy listening to her. She's a speaker and author, and she coaches entrepreneurs and corporate leaders in reducing stress and increasing their revenue. Over to you, Stephanie.

Stephanie Dalfonzo

Thank you so much. And it is so lovely to be here with you because yes, we have kind of circled around for a couple of years. So one problem. Okay, what would my big problem be? It would be finding myself at my kitchen counter, smashing a bag of Cheetos into powdery fine orange dust everywhere, because I had developed insomnia. I couldn't sleep.

So I went to the doctor, and he gave me a prescription. And said, by the way, your insomnia is because of your anxiety. What? So the big problem. My big problem dates all the way back to the 90s. If you look at what's happened in the past several years, I think this big problem is certainly not just for me. It is rampant worldwide. So when I discovered, and this was in the 1990s, when I discovered I had insomnia, I had anxiety, which I didn't know. Like, literally, I had spent the first half of my life not knowing that I had anxiety, because I thought it was normal to walk around with my shoulders up like earrings and to worry.

Stephanie Dalfonzo: Speaker, Author, Coach to Entrepreneurs

But not just worry about anything, but always worrying about the worst-case scenario. So, okay, the doctor gives me medicine. And it worked, but only for a short time. Then things got out of control even more because it was like, okay, I'm stressed out. I can't sleep. I don't know what to do. I'm smashing Cheetos. What do I do? The medication didn't work. So I started, I was old school.

Stephanie Dalfonzo

This is back in the 90s. Remember the cassette tapes? I was going to the library, trying to find anything to help me calm myself again and to learn how to sleep well again. And so I happened to be like, let's talk about technology. By the way, you mentioned I was a radio DJ. That was my first career. But Avil, I was the first automated voice. If you think to listen to your messages, press one. That was me. So I'm into technology and where we've come.

So if you think about back to the 90s, I'm on a phone that had a cord, little curly cue cord. The phone is bolted to the wall, right? Go that far back in technology, and I learn about EFT, emotional freedom techniques and tapping. It changed my life. I learned a natural way to calm my stress and to learn to sleep well again. I was like, oh, my gosh, I was so thrilled. And I wanted to tell anyone and everyone. But at this point, I'm no longer a radio DJ. I'm a stay at home mom. And I'm telling people about this, and I'm watching their eyes glaze over, like, what are you talking about?

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So, all right, whatever. I just kept doing it for myself. But it opened things up for me, because one size doesn't fit all. So, all right, great. I love tapping. It changed my life. And yet there are so many other modalities out there, so many other methods, and one size doesn't fit all. So I heard this whisper to learn hypnosis, the H word, right? So hypnosis totally changed my life.

Stephanie Dalfonzo

On the first day of my training. That was when I felt like the skies opened up, the heavens were singing, and it was like, oh, my gosh, I have found what I'm supposed to do. Because with hypnosis, we can change. We can change in an instant. I've been a practicing hypnotist for almost 20 years now. So I have clients like Sarah who had a believe it or not, crippling fear of flying. Yes, here she is ready to skydiving out of an airplane. And yet she built a very successful business as the five-foot traveler. How is that related to stress and anxiety?

They're all interrelated. We have fears or whatever. And we think, well, I have this fear of flying. Or I have this fear of driving on the highway or going in an elevator, and then the rest of my life is over here.

But they're all interconnected. And so I have watched, in over 20 years of doing all this research, I have watched us get more and more stressed. And particularly in the past several years, not just in the US. Or North America, but worldwide. When COVID hit the whole world, we've heard about fight or flight. But the whole world went into freeze. That's the other part that we don't hear about. It's fight, flight, or freeze, because we fight, we flee, or we freeze.

Stephanie Dalfonzo

And that's what I saw happen in March 2020. The entire globe went, what do we do? And I was like, okay, this is what I've been prepping for my whole life. I had already published my book, Goodbye Anxiety, Hello Freedom, and I started doing webinars as often as I could to help people learn how to find really easy ways to calm their stress and anxiety.

And that's the biggest problem that I see. And that is my mission Avil, is to really let people understand it doesn't have to take a lot of time, it doesn't have to take years and really hard effort. With my book, it's like, okay, pick a couple of those techniques and action them. And allow yourself to learn to respond instead of react.

And that's it. Avil, that's what I got for you today.

Avil Beckford

You know, that's so good because even though the pandemic is not quite gone yet, I still know people are getting COVID, and it raised a lot of mental health issues, isolation and all of that. So I see how you can help them. But one of the good things is that people are talking more about the effects of stress because they have mental health issues. So now it's in the foray, so we can actually tackle it. So thank you so much. This has been great.

Stephanie Dalfonzo

Thank you. Wonderful to actually finally connect with you.

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