Carolina Novoa launches her book ‘Amor Detox’: the lack of self-love, how to set limits and how to heal a broken heart

Novoa has become a very influential figure in the Spanish-speaking regions – credit Courtesy of Editorial Planeta

Carolina Novoa Arias, journalist, writer, health coach in functional medicine, speaker and winner of an Emmy Award, known for her wisdom in emotional biohealing and thetahealing which promotes healthy lifestyle habits in the Hispanic community in the United States and Latin America launches its third book: ‘Amor Detox’: a relationship that heals you and does not make you sick.

Novoa has become a very influential figure in Spanish-speaking regions for his expertise in biohealing therapy and his passionate style of guiding people by mixing personal life experiences with medical and spiritual knowledge. With more than 500,000 followers on Instagram and two best-selling books: ‘The body screams what emotions keep quiet’ and ‘Let your life not be a headache’

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In an interview with Infobae Colombia, Carolina talks about her inspiration for writing her third book, why love can make you sick or heal you, and how self-love is the basis for love in all its forms.

“After the success of my first book ‘The body screams what emotions keep quiet’, which in addition to becoming an international best seller, has touched so many hearts and I have received so many testimonies of healing from people who have told me ‘I had no idea that my breast cancer referred to this, I didn’t know that stomach pains were due to fear’, After writing down all the stories and testimonies I have received, all I find is that our lives revolve around relationships.”

“The relationship as a couple, the relationship with my family, the relationship with my job where we spend most of our time, but the saddest and I’m going to say it because it’s sad, is the lack of love for myself. So when I have a bad relationship with myself and I stand in front of the mirror and say, “Today I am fat and ugly,” then the whole day is going badly for me. Secondly, the relationship I have with food, whether it is because I am fat or because I overeat or because I have anorexia because I stop eating, is a relationship. When I say, “I am stressed and I drink three glasses of wine,” it is a relationship with the drink. We live in relationships because we are human beings and we are in constant relationship,” says Novoa.

‘Love Detox’: a relationship that heals you and doesn’t make you sick – Courtesy of Editorial Planeta

Why was Amor Detox created?

Carolina Novoa: Because every relationship goes hand in hand with love, love for me, love for others, or lack of love for me or lack of love for others and Why detox, because it seemed to me that, just as we detoxify the body when we went on vacation and ate hamburgers, we also have to learn to detoxify ourselves from what we need.from negativity, from lack of growth, from lack of setting boundaries, that’s why I did it.

Aside from basing it on your own story and on the stories of friends and acquaintances, what was the overall process of making Amor detox?

CN: I think that I am always in favor, as I am a journalist, of being a storyteller. We are storytellers, so through the stories of my patients (because I am dedicated to emotional biohealing and every morning I have therapies), IThrough my friends’ stories, my own story, and interviews with psychologists, psychiatrists, and investigative and scientific articles, I was able to capture stories and analyze these stories.

It is a book full of medical and psychological tools and instruments, and stories that I have witnessed, my own because I like to speak with authority and stories of those patients who have gotten ahead through therapy or who during therapy enter into a relationship and come to me and get sick, so I have to rescue them and say: you had come to me perfectly and since you are dating this person, look what is happening to you.

Every relationship goes hand in hand with love – credit VisualesIA

Does it also have to do with energies? Can a person consume another person with their energy?

CN: As I am an energy therapist as well, my sister Andreita Novoa has a very interesting chapter in the book about what love looks like from the soul, because As we are soul, it is understanding that love is a force, it is the universal force and therefore it gives energy. So much so that when you see someone you like (which can be horrible) but you have the chemistry, the best sex and no one understands why. Or some men sometimes say that my girlfriend is ugly, but I fall for her. That is love, love is chemistry, love is energy. Just as love makes us ‘divine’ it also destroys us because love is the most powerful energy in the universe. It exhausts you, if it is a bad energy.

How can love heal? How can love, a good love, heal you both physically and emotionally?

CN: A good love can be healed in different ways. First, by loving, as it is. Thanking the other person for their help. Telling the other person, look, I love you, I thank you, but I already learned what I needed to learn from you. Understanding that everything in life has a cycle and that this cycle must be respected. Why? Because if you don’t respect this cycle, the red flags will only get stronger.

How is it possible that there are so many people who are with people they don’t like or who don’t love them, but are with them for other reasons and last for years?

CN: There you can see the lack of self-love that exists in the world. And the book talks about this topic in one part, how some relationships are maintained by money. And you can read about it in the chapter Narcotic Love, where I talk about the relationship of lovers. There are so many women who, in order to avoid leaving their comfort zone, prefer to have a lover who keeps them locked up and gives them everything so that they don’t have to go out to work. And where is your self-love? Where is the fact that you are second and will never be first?

There are so many women who prefer to have a lover instead of leaving their comfort zone – credit VisualesIA

Are there any tips you can give to people who can’t get out of a toxic relationship?

CN: There are different pieces of advice throughout the book and above all there are tips for setting boundaries. Because surely that person who has not been able to get out of a relationship like that, needs to set boundaries. Why do we fail to set boundaries? Because we lack self-love and we are afraid of being abandoned. When you are afraid of being abandoned you let others treat you as they please, not just partners, friends and bosses too.

When do you tolerate a boss yelling at you? When you need your job. The same as when your husband abandons you. The first time you are innocent because you didn’t know he was going to cheat on you, but the second time you accept being cheated on, you are being complicit in the act. Why? Because you have an attachment out of fear that that person will leave you, out of fear that your life will become unstable.

And how can a broken heart be healed? There is a chapter that talks about the subject and how our upbringing and childhood influence this.

CN: One heals a broken heart and I tell my own story. I was widowed in 2020 and met Eric, my current husband, last year. I feel that in order to heal a heart, one has to first love oneself and know what one wants in the next relationship. Because until you are alone, you cannot know what you want. Second, going to therapy is essential.

If you don’t have the money to go to therapy, therapy shouldn’t be a luxury, but something obligatory because you don’t think you go to therapy when you’re feeling bad, but you should always go to therapy. If you don’t have the opportunity to go to therapy, there are tools like Amor Detox, like psychologists on Instagram and it’s free, like YouTube.

So how do you heal a broken heart? First, having the will to heal yourself. Second, investigating and investing in your healing, and I don’t mean investing money, but investing time. An hour a day to see psychologists and psychiatrists and to read a book like Amor Detox. Go to the cinema and watch the film ‘Romper el Círculo’ for example. And also surround yourself with those you love. When you are in mourning, and not just because of death, but because you were fired from work, because you fought with a friend, because you ended a relationship, you tend to isolate yourself out of fear or for protection. When you isolate yourself, it is more difficult to heal. People who are alone are the ones who get sick the most.

In her book Amor Detox Novoa talks about how to heal a broken heart – credit visualsIA

How can love make you sick? How can it reach such a strong level that a bad love really makes you sick?

CN: We tend to blame others, but in reality, it is you who allows them to hurt you. If your mother is toxic, it is up to you to tell her: don’t talk to me like that or block her. You set the limit, and if your partner cheats on you and messes up again, then bye, it’s over. In my case, I don’t give opportunities because the opportunity is me. I am very clear about the woman I am and you should be very clear about the woman you are.

Advice you can give to people who are closed off to any possibility of getting out of this mess. People who are closed off to seeking help.

CN: If you complain, you are looking to stay there. Do not expect your life to change if we remain in the same place. Do not expect to earn more if you do not train yourself, do not expect to be treated well if you do not learn to know yourself. And there is a very nice chapter called Exercises to heal the heartn, this is the last chapter of my book where I give you 7 free tools. They are tools to learn to forgive others, learn to set boundaries and learn the most important thing, which is to forgive yourself.

Healing doesn’t happen until you forgive yourself. To forgive others you have to forgive yourself. Once you forgive yourself you can set boundaries; otherwise, you have no authority. If I don’t know what I want in my life, how can I demand that others respect me?