Your Emotional Capacity: In Conversation With Fabienne

Join Fabienne in this conversation about building your emotional capacity. Fabienne explains what we need to do to expand our emotional capacity, how its connected to insecure attachment styles, what it means to hold space for others emotional experiences and how we can deal with our own.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to In Conversation with me,

Fabienne Sandoval,

Life coach,

Author and speaker.

I talk way too much so I thought I'd put that skill to use by sharing with you this series of conversations designed to expound your awareness and knowledge of becoming secure and empowered in your self-worth.

Meet Sam,

My OBM,

Wingwoman and literal can't live without.

We tried to break up once and it didn't work.

I'll be here to ask the juicy questions and help extract some of these powerful insights from Fabienne.

So let's begin.

And today we're going to be talking about building your emotional capacity.

So I guess for me,

My first question would be,

Where do you start?

How do you work out what your emotional capacity is?

Yeah,

That's a really good question.

So it's really funny that we're recording this off the back of a session that I ran yesterday as a live event on SightTimer.

So yesterday we were talking about emotional availability and what that is.

And we also have a recording on this.

And one of the things that I think really is linked to emotional capacity is our emotional availability.

So essentially,

What are we available for when it comes to emotions?

Can we sit with those really hard conversations or do we get really easily triggered and we need to leave?

Do we shut down?

Do we start shouting?

What do we do when we're experiencing really hard emotional situations?

So when we're talking about building our emotional capacity,

We're talking about a lot of things.

So we're essentially talking about what experiences can we hold from an emotional perspective?

So can we sit with our partner while they are explaining to us something that went wrong in their day?

Or do we suddenly start getting fired up and we need to add more fuel to the fire and like,

Yeah,

It's like this and it's like that?

Or can we just sit there and listen to them,

Give their experience and hear them out and wait for them to decide if they need something from us or not,

You know?

It's holding space for them,

Isn't it?

Yeah,

So essentially holding space.

So our emotional capacity is,

I guess in one way we can think about it,

Like how much space can I hold?

But also in order to hold space,

We have to have emotional capacity.

Well,

What does that mean?

It means how are you managing your emotions and taking care of your emotions?

So if we think to attachment styles,

Because obviously this is something we cover off quite a lot as well,

When we are dealing with a more insecure attachment style,

So either being anxious or avoidant,

Right?

Usually our emotional capacity is obviously being flexed to whatever one of those we're relating to.

So if we are anxious,

Our emotional capacity is more fine tuned towards anxiousness.

If we are avoidant,

We are more fine tuned emotionally with our capacity to avoidance.

What does that mean?

When hard things come up and we start having to deal with something,

Whether that is your partner talking about a hard day,

Whether that is your boss telling you that something didn't go right in a project or at work and you need to sit and listen and hear it out,

Whether that is someone dealing with like deep grief through the loss of someone,

Whether that is heartbreak,

Whether that is your partner coming to you and telling you about something that's going on in your relationship,

Like whatever the scenario is,

Essentially,

We're going to be tuned in kind of one way or another in terms of how we're going to respond to that.

And in a lot of ways,

It's more of a reaction than it is a response.

So when we build our emotional capacity,

We're building it out so that we can respond over reacting.

Right.

So are there any kind of steps that you can advise that people can use,

You know,

Any tools that there are to help you build this emotional capacity to turn it from,

You know,

React to response?

Yeah.

So I mean,

I guess the first thing is like reacting versus responding.

What is that?

So reacting is like an instantaneous like,

You know,

Almost think about it like it's like fire,

Like it's like,

You're coming like straight back,

You didn't give it a moment to think about it or to do anything.

It's like a very instantaneous like,

Got like,

This is the response.

This is the reaction,

Sorry.

Whereas a response is much more mindful in the sense that you've taken the time to think about things,

You've taken the time to consider things like,

For example,

At the moment,

I have a tricky situation that I am navigating,

And it's all being done via email.

And I just know that when I receive like an email response like that,

If I gave that person my immediate like thoughts within like the first hour,

And it would go,

It would not be like helpful to anyone,

Right?

Because actually,

The funny thing is,

Is I think that they are giving their immediate reaction,

Right?

So it's like fire with fire.

Whereas if I can sit for 24,

48 hours,

And I can really consider what they're saying,

I can really consider all of the points,

I can come back in a responsive way where I'm actually responding to all the things that they're saying or asking for or whatever it is that communication is asking of me,

I can really give the point through in a way that's mindful,

In a way that I've actually really thought about it.

I've thought about where the other person's coming from,

I've thought about where I'm coming from,

I've thought about what the outcome is,

It just gives you a lot more time.

So,

You know,

Practicing responding is much more about really taking the time to be mindful of how we're responding.

And so it's perfectly okay for us to take a little time with that.

When you say like,

What are some of the tools and things like that,

I think of emotional capacity.

This is something I do a lot in coaching.

So when I'm coaching clients one on one,

And like I said,

It usually is coming from because if we are secure,

We are likely open,

Available,

Have the capacity to be vulnerable,

Have the capacity to sit with the hard things.

It doesn't mean we know how to deal with the hard things,

But it means we have the openness towards them,

Right?

Because we're operating from a secure place.

If our emotional capacity,

Less or lower,

Or not like necessarily coming from a secure place,

Then we're probably more dialled into one of the other two attachment styles.

So attachment styles,

Knowing your attachment style,

That really,

Really helps because that gives you well,

What's my likely reaction going to be?

Am I going to jump straight into anxiety,

When I'm dealing with a really big experience?

Or am I going to jump straight into avoidance?

And then it's about,

Okay,

So what do I need to do that is the opposite of that?

Because for example,

It's like I was explaining,

Like I'm going through something at the moment,

And it's like a back and forth on email.

And so my initial response,

Like reaction,

Let's call it,

Would be anxiousness,

Because I'm,

In my past have been more attuned to the anxious attachment.

If I can take a little bit of time,

And I can really think about it,

Like my anxiety is not going to help me in that situation,

Okay?

But what is going to help me clear thinking,

Clarity,

Processing time,

Mindfulness,

Awareness of everyone involved,

Right?

So we build our emotional capacity by knowing like,

Well,

What are my defaults?

Where do I usually go when I'm dealing with a big emotional experience?

And then what can I do that essentially,

It's like usually like,

What's the opposite of that?

Okay,

The opposite of being totally chilled out,

Right?

It feels like it's less about knowing the answers in that scenario,

More about acknowledging,

Like you say,

Where you're coming from,

From your attachment styles,

From that anxiousness or avoidance.

So you acknowledge that and you say,

For example,

In your situation,

Right,

I'm going to go and step away for 24,

48 hours before I write my response.

Is there anything else that you can do to help with your emotional capacity?

Sorry.

Yeah.

So obviously,

If it's like,

You know,

Usually between you and someone else,

Then of course,

Like navigating,

Navigating away from reactions,

Moving towards responses.

But of course,

Like actually working with your own emotional experience.

So what am I feeling?

And for some people,

There's certain feelings that are really scary to feel.

So for example,

Grief,

Like I've spoken about this before,

When I created my healing from heartbreak,

Healing after heartbreak course,

And grief is a really,

Really,

Really big emotional experience.

And a lot of the time,

We don't want to necessarily go there,

We don't want to be like engulfed by the emotion of grief.

Why?

Because it feels so scary,

It feels like we're never going to come back out on the other side,

If we go into it.

So when we're building our emotional capacity,

It's about realizing that any of those harder things,

Right,

Even like the anxiety,

Right?

What is that telling me?

What is my grief telling me?

What is my sadness telling me?

What is my disappointment telling me?

What is my frustration telling me?

Right?

So it might just be that that was a really important thing for me.

Like I really wanted that thing to happen.

And then,

Of course,

As adults,

We recognize that,

Okay,

So disappointment,

It's an inevitable part of life,

Okay,

We're going to get disappointed sometimes,

Right?

Okay,

That's fine.

And it's also okay,

That I really wanted that thing.

So it's like really getting into your emotions as well and recognizing like,

Well,

What am I actually feeling?

Why am I feeling that way?

And so when I'm doing the work one on one with clients,

You know,

We do this often.

And so a lot of clients will say to me like,

But why are you asking these questions?

And like,

Because it's building your awareness.

So for example,

Like a classic one that comes up is people get nervous a lot,

Right?

They have to do something new for work or something I've never done before.

And so the nerves come up and they're like,

Oh,

I don't want to do this thing.

I'm really nervous.

It's like,

Okay,

Well,

Let's just explore what your nervousness means.

And most of the time,

It just means like,

I really want to go and do this thing.

I'm really excited about this thing.

But I'm also kind of scared because I've never done it before.

And I don't really know what it looks like.

And I've never met any of the people and,

You know,

And like,

There's a million different things that can come up.

But when we're working with our emotional capacity,

It's about like recognizing like,

Well,

What am I feeling?

You know,

And then of course,

The more that we become attuned to what we feel and what we're experiencing,

What is happening for us,

The more that we can also sit with other people in their experiences.

And a lot of the time,

It's not about necessarily needing to do anything.

It's just being with that emotion that's coming up and just experiencing it.

And acknowledging it.

Yeah.

That's brilliant.

Thank you,

Fab.

So with,

You spoke briefly about there being some pieces on Insight Timer with regards to attachment styles and things like that.

Is there any of the other Insight Timer pieces that you've done that you would direct people to,

To help in their emotional capacity?

Yeah,

So I would say like,

At the moment,

This series that we're recording for,

It's called In Conversation with Fabienne.

I would definitely recommend that anyone that's listening to this session and is like,

Oh,

Okay,

Maybe I need to learn more about some of the things that I've been like pinpointing,

Go through all of these In Conversations with Fabienne,

Because it covers off all of the different topics.

So there'll be quite a lot of useful information in there.

We are working on building out like a variety of different courses.

So this one is in the pipeline,

It will be coming at some point,

Some like a more in depth piece around,

You know,

How we build emotional capacity with exercises and things like that.

But for now,

I would just say going back to what has been talked about.

So listening to the pieces around boundaries,

Communication,

Attachment styles,

Creating secure attachment styles,

Emotional availability.

And then of course,

There's always my live session.

So if there's subject really is like exciting for you,

If you pop over to my profile,

You'll be able to find when I'm next doing this session as a live session.

And feel free to come along,

You can ask all your questions and we can meet each other in that space.

That's brilliant.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Reviews

This was very pleasant and moving. Thank you so much teacher