ABOUT MATT LANDSIEDEL
Matt is a Counsellor & Facilitator from Calgary, Canada.
Matt specializes in working with highly sensitive people (HSP), empaths and gay men to develop a stronger sense of self-worth. His areas of expertise are teaching people how to heal toxic shame and attachment trauma and embody their authentic self so they can enjoy meaningful connections in their lives.
Matt is a Registered Professional Counsellor through the Canadian Professional Counsellors Association. He has spent the last 15 years working in the fields of Mental Health & Addiction Counselling and Intuitive Life and Spiritual Coaching where he guides people on their psychological and spiritual journey through life.
Matt has also studied Peruvian Shamanism through the Santa Tierras Earth Medicine Traditions and incorporates this healing modality into his own life and coaching/counselling practice.
Inspired to Be Authentic is a mission Matt has purposefully created. Through his creative content, coaching/counselling, and community facilitation, he offers you inspiration to share more of your truth with the world. He does this by teaching you life changing skills and sharing energetic transmissions that inspire you to show up courageously in your own life by practicing vulnerability.
Matt’s vision for this world is for us all to live with more courage so we can share our authenticity and enjoy more meaningful connections in our lives.
In his spare time, you can find Matt traveling the world, writing, reading, hiking mountains, meditating and contemplating life, spending quality time with family and friends, learning the guitar, singing, photography, and spending time building conscious community and his private coaching/counselling practice.
MY SENSITIVITY STORY
Growing up was not easy. I had a challenging upbringing that although was joyful at times, was overshadowed by suffering due to not understanding my sensitivity.
As a child I was very emotional and felt my feelings, as well as the feelings of others, very intensely. I didn’t know there was a term for this until I was about 25 years old. I spent 25 years as an empath and had no clue what it was.
*An empath is someone who has the ability to tune into others feelings and feel them just as if they were their own.
Empathy is usually accompanied with being highly sensitive as we require our sensitivity to tune into the people around us. When we don’t know this, it can feel very scary to have these abilities when you don’t know how to use them to your advantage.
A common experience for me as a child was to feel overwhelmed and anxious and not know why. I remember walking by homeless or handicap people and having intense feelings to cry. I felt so deeply and it was like my skin was too thin to survive living in this world. For the first two years of school my mom would drop me off at school and I would walk up to the school door and become overwhelmed with fear and anxiety and I would run back to her crying. These experiences led me to think there was something wrong with me. That I was different so I must not be okay. This was the “burden” I was given to overcome in this life and I can confidently say I now lead with my sensitivity, not hide it.
I want to teach others how their sensitivity is their greatest gift and how to use it in such a way that it empowers them.
My empathy and sensitivity are now two of my greatest gifts. They allow me to connect deeply with people in an authentic way. People feel safe to be seen by me because they know I can feel into them and it allows them to emotionally surrender to me.
I get such meaningful connections in life because of this. What started out in my life as a burden, has become something I cherish about myself and so do others. If you are someone who also feels deeply and has a sensitive nature, I would encourage you to challenge what you’ve been socially conditioned to believe about sensitivity and begin to fully embrace the authenticity of who you truly are. Sensitivity is not the same as fragility and once I realized this is when I transformed my sensitivity into my greatest strength.
Are you a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) or Empath looking for a supportive community?
Come join one of my 8 week programs – Authentic Relating & Empowerment for Highly Sensitive People (ARE).
In these intensive workshops combining the principles of Authentic Relating and Emotion Regulation, I will teach you how to thrive as a HSP and you will connect with a community of people just like you. You don’t need to go at it alone anymore!
MY AUTHENTICITY JOURNEY
Growing up gay and holding that secret inside for so long, I developed a potent relationship with shame. A dysfunctional relationship that would take years to unravel. I’ve spent the greater part of the last decade trying to heal from the toxic shame that led me into a crack addiction and sexual compulsive behaviours.
Shame was the major contributor to my addiction and it held me hostage from seeing the beauty that others always saw in me, but I couldn’t see for myself. I have dug deep to do the soul work to heal many of my shame wounds and start my personal journey with true self-acceptance and self-love.
For most of my life I thought there was something about me that needed to be fixed and I became compulsive in this search to fix my “brokenness”. It was in this endless pursuit of trying to fix myself that I realized that there was nothing to fix and only acceptance to practice. I realized through doing this work that I was masking my shame with perfectionism and it was preventing me from healing my toxic shame. I had to unlearn perfectionism before I could get to the root of my shame and heal these wounds.
The shame underlying my perfectionism would tell me “if people could see who you really are they wouldn’t accept you”. They would see me as flawed and this would validate my fear of rejection. I felt unlovable and unacceptable in the eyes of others. I’ve since realized the eyes of others are just a reflection of my own eyes mirrored back at me. Once I began to develop acceptance for myself, it didn’t matter anymore who accepted me or not. I knew it was my responsibility to find my wholeness and this is the place within that I became so determined to do this work. It became my WHY, the fire in my belly!
Once I stopped hiding and let my authenticity be seen, I started to attract the type of people into my life who would help me find my wholeness. I spent many years hiding the most authentic aspects of myself that I was unsure of who I was. It took me a long time to get to a place where I felt comfortable taking off my mask of perfectionism. There were many days where shame tried to convince me to put my mask back on, and some days I listened, and some days I chose to be courageous and practice vulnerability. The journey was not linear but I learned how to navigate my way through the darkness without hiding.
I learned a lot about what it means to live authentically, something that was so foreign to me for so long.
Through this work I started to realize how hard it was for me to show up authentically with other gay men. I was afraid of rejection of who I really was so I would only show up masked behind my perfectionism. This brought me down a path of feeling lonely and isolated in the gay community. I never felt truly connected to because I would only bring forth the aspects of myself that I deemed were desirable. These were things like my body, my always happy and positive personality, my sense of humour, my sexuality, etc. Basically all the things that people told me were okay to show up as by validating me for them. This disconnection and loneliness was the motivation behind me wanting to discover more authentic aspects of myself. I wanted to become more confident in who I was so I could share more meaningful and intimate connections with people and not feel so afraid to let myself be seen.
I spent a greater part of my life not knowing how to have meaningful connections with other gay men. Not knowing how to share intimacy without sex, and most definitely not knowing how to be vulnerable with other gay men because I thought it would make me undesirable. What I didn’t realize is that my vulnerability actually made me relatable and this is how I began to find meaningful connections with other gay men.
This is the path I am destined to walk others down but first I had to get in the trenches and do the work myself. I now am on a full-time path of teaching other gay men how to reconcile their toxic shame so they can celebrate more self-acceptance and authenticity through meaningful connections with themselves and others.
Taking the leap to allow yourself to be seen can be scary but the work pays off in the end. It is through vulnerability and authenticity that I have found the courage to speak my truth in first person, with raw and real stories that connect to you.
I do this because practicing healthy vulnerability has been how I have overcome shame and perfectionism. I became tired of hiding behind my masks and it was time for me to show up authentically. The beautiful thing about authenticity is that you attract exactly what you need to make you happy. When you are being true to yourself, you will make connections with others that will feel true to you.
The truest act of courage is to show up as yourself in a world that is constantly trying to tell you not to.
Sign up for the Embody Your Truth Course!
7 days of teachings guiding you to more alignment + authenticity