2 Every Behavior/Feeling Has A Positive Intention - Even Guilt (Baby Loss Series)

Every behaviour or feeling has a positive intention, even guilt. Sometimes, this seems hard to believe. If we're talking about anger or even guilt, for example. I will explore, why this concept is relevant for you after losing a baby and how you can use it to shift behaviours and feelings that don't serve you anymore.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Greet and Grow with Julia Goh episode number 2. Every behavior has a positive intention. I am Julia Goh. I am a transformational master coach. I also am a bereaved mom. My son died in February 2016. He was born prematurely and five days later he died in my arms. And I have been on a huge healing and growth journey that I didn't think was possible right after. And my podcast is dedicated to my son Simon and to everyone who is experiencing a devastating loss like the loss of a baby. And we are talking about life, Love, Loss, The darkness and the light in an authentic way. And my goal is not to push you into one direction but to allow you to see different perspectives, To step into light and step into darkness whenever feels right for you. And in this episode we are talking about the topic that I actually did not plan in my listening list of topics for the podcast anytime soon. But it showed up for me in so many clients sessions and in my own life too last week that I thought okay let's bring this on. Every behavior has a positive intention. Every feeling has a positive intention. I first learned about this concept in my coaching training. I am a certified transformational master coach and many of us struggle with that concept because while it is for good reason it is hard to believe that some behaviors like smoking, Drinking or showing aggression towards someone come with a positive intention. The same goes for feelings like guilt or anger or devastation or things like procrastination or doing what we set ourselves up to. So stay with me if you are in that, If you are doubting what I am saying because what I am not saying is that those behaviors and those feelings are, Or especially those behaviors like aggression are right and that we continue, Should continue taking them on. And I don't want to defend people who show aggressive behavior or things like that. But I think that knowing that every behavior has a positive intention can help us to be one more gentle with our self, To heal and to release emotions like guilt or anger and also aggression and other behaviors because they don't need to stay anymore. If we know that we can fulfill the positive intention they have in a different way. Let's talk about some examples because that will make it a little bit clearer. Let's start with the example of emotional eating. I am a health coach. I work with women who struggle with emotional eating because I struggle with emotional eating and I love talking about health and I love all of those topics and then I still have moments where I go to the fridge and I eat. I eat the stuff that is there because my husband bought it, Things that I usually would not prefer, Things that I know are not good for me, Things that I know make me sluggish and that I sometimes don't even enjoy that much. But in moments when I maybe feel vulnerable or sad, And that's the same for all of us, Food can represent putting on a layer or protection and it also releases, And that's really important, Endorphins and serotonin and it can give ourself also a little break from what's going on. Knowing that I can then go and figure out, Okay, What else is releasing endorphins or serotonin for me? What else can I do to fulfill the need of taking a break? What else actually would help me to protect myself instead of putting on layers, Perceived layers or real layers by eating more than I need? For all of you now listening to this and thinking, What about body positivity and I'm all for body positivity and I'm all for protecting ourselves and allowing ourselves to be in those moments where we do eat emotionally and heal that step by step because what other thing could happen is that we beat ourselves up. Instead of being gentle with ourselves and give ourselves what we need, We are just on the, We're just hitting on our head or our back and telling us, Oh no, I shouldn't have done that. No, No, No, You just don't have another way to approach it and that is okay. Be gentle with yourself. I want to talk about the emotional part, Guilt or anger, Fear and then I also want to tell you before we go into that that I'm not here to tell you that you should not feel a certain way. Not at all. It's really, Really important for me that you understand that my intention is not to not allow you to feel bad. It is just for you when you are in that moment and you feel like you are not in control of your emotions and you don't like feeling guilty, You don't like feeling fear and you feel like, But there is nothing I can do against it and I want to open up the door slightly and you can have a peek through or you can step into the room, Everything at your time. I want to open the door to seeing a different way of approaching those emotions, Right? We're going to open more ways during this podcast, More doors I mean. There are so many doors to approach emotions and today it's the concept of positive intention. So let's look at guilt because I think all of us who have lost someone really dear like a baby experience some sort of guilt and guilt actually happens when you think a certain thought about the past, Right? You feel guilty because you think I should have gone to the hospital earlier, I should not have taken on so much, Should not have been so stressed during my pregnancy, I should not have moved the furniture, I should have gone to the doctor more often, I should have had more checkups, I should have known that something is wrong or if you experienced another loss maybe you think I should not have called at that time, I should not have stepped out of that car, I should have told them that I love them more often, I should. . . Well you notice there is a pattern. First of all it comes with a should and second of all all of it is in the past. There is nothing that we can change about it so we can talk about guilt in another podcast again when it comes to the topic of forgiveness but for now we want to discover what is the positive intention behind it and a positive intention can look different for everyone but with guilt I found out there are two main things that pop up, Popped up for me, Popped up for my clients again and again and again and one positive intention of your guilt probably is the deep love and connection you want to feel to the person you lost, The deep love and connection you want to feel to your baby because if you could change the past you think I might still be with you but first of all that is not necessarily true but it all comes from wanting love and connection and especially when you lost someone one way to stay connected with them is to stay in the past, To stay with your thoughts in the past, To stay with your thoughts around what happened, What didn't happen. You want love and connection and your brain goes into producing thoughts and make you feel guilty so now to release some of the guilt or to feel. . . Spend less time feeling guilty and instead really feeling love and connection you can think about what else you can do right now to feel more love and connection. You could write a letter with all the things that you love about the person, You can paint something for the person, You can do something in honor of the person or if you had a baby who was born prematurely one thing that helped me was suing for premature babies or suing for babies who were gone too soon. Yeah that is one positive intention of guilt and another one of course is who wants to save you from hurt and pain and in most cases it does not because we can't change the past. Sadly we can't change the past. This is only helpful if we are able to transform what we know that we maybe really could have done differently or what we know now that would have made a difference to the outcome. So feeling guilt then yes it has. . . It wants to save you from pain and hurt and wants to change the past but you can use it as a catalyzer to change the future. Maybe not for you, Maybe for you too because you have a knowledge in your next pregnancy but maybe it is a knowledge that you can bring into the world that you can fight for something that people should know, Something that other women should know that can help them avoid things like that happening to them. Often times guilt wants to save us from hurt and pain that happened to us in the past and going there over and over and over and over again won't change it but actually gives us hurt and pain. So if you're done, If you figure that out and say okay thank you guilt for wanting to save me from hurt and pain I'm gonna invite another safety mechanism now to save me from hurt and pain and that is trying to let go of my guilty thoughts and telling myself that I did everything that I could to the best of my knowledge at a given time with everything that I have experienced in my life, With everything I knew I always did the best that I could. So you change your thoughts around that. And it is not always easy to do that, It's a process, It's something we consciously need to do guilt, Like the thoughts that we're thinking we're recycling they come up unconsciously but you can choose those new thoughts and you can give yourself a hug and say thank you and I, For a lot of people it sounds weird if I thank the guilt, If I thank the anger, If I thank the fear but all of those things they want something for us, Want to keep us safe in a way, Doesn't mean that they need to stay there but saying thank you gives another way of releasing them without them fighting too hard to stay. Okay that was pretty deep. Holy moly episode number two, Every behaviour, Every feeling has a positive intention. I hope I didn't overwhelm you and kick you out, I hope it gave you some insights and before I go I would like to ask you a favour, If you like what you're hearing and you know someone else who might like you to share with them, If you don't know someone else who might like it too, It would help me a lot if you could leave a review on iTunes because if the podcast is reviewed it will be shared more and that allows us to find more people who maybe need this and to support them through their grace and growth and through their healing journey. I wish you a gentle and loving day, Be kind to yourself, Be kind to others and you know you've got this, I love you, Bye.

Reviews

This was a very helpful talk. I appreciated the emphasis on understanding where the feelings are coming from and how through that understanding we can find other and more healthy ways to channel that energy. The discussion about guilt was especially helpful for as I continue to process my own baby loss. The examples of how we can move forward from the guilt were really inspiring. Thank you. 🙏🏾