Meditate & Heal Mind-Body ~ Serenity Wellness Podcast E87

Purpose * Action * Outcome
Emotional Awareness brings long-term health. Noticing the ways we avoid our emotions and how becoming our personal trainer brings an appreciation for the value of all of our emotions.

Transcript

Hi there.

Welcome to episode 81,

Catch Yourself.

Where are you tapping out?

I hope you've been enjoying the practice of noticing aspects of your mind as well as your body,

How they work together,

And even when they're feeling like they're working separately,

They're still working together.

Today I'm going to be talking with you about emotions.

It's been quite stormy today,

So you might hear some thunder rolling through as I'm recording this,

But also I thought what a great signifier to the topic for today,

Our emotions,

Because sometimes we can feel inside,

Around us,

In our mind,

But really also in our body when we pay attention,

The storm of emotion,

And that storm can feel different depending on the elevation and how safe we feel or comfortable we feel within the emotion,

How we can go through the storminess,

Even difficult emotion,

But when we have comfort of safety,

Of understanding,

Of tools,

Then even in those really challenging emotions,

We can find that we can stay in them,

And within staying in them,

There is value there,

Just like with the storms coming through right now.

It's quite humid today,

And it's starting to settle some of the humidity,

But it also adds quite a freshness to the air.

My plants out there are definitely appreciating the water,

So within a heavy storm,

Within ourselves,

And even within nature,

There's an ebb and flow of what it brings.

Before I get into some information about today,

I wanted to highlight one of the areas that I covered last week,

How I think it was towards the end I was talking about advertising,

Social media,

How what we absorb,

What we bring in,

Can impact how we feel,

Even where our mind goes,

And where our body,

How our body feels,

But also what I'm going to be talking about today with where it takes our emotion.

And it might have been the day after I put out last week's information that there was a conference,

A sports conference,

And Cristiano Ronaldo,

He is the captain for the Portuguese soccer team.

Coca-Cola was sponsoring the event,

And he was being interviewed,

So there was like two bottles of Coca-Cola sitting next to him,

And when he sat down for the interview,

He removed the bottles and replaced it with water.

And then in his interview,

He did this simple action,

But not simple at all.

Coca-Cola's value went down four billion dollars from that one event,

Where a captain of a soccer team said the right thing,

You know,

For paying attention to our body,

I assure you no one's body,

If you're listening to your body,

Is saying yes,

Give me soda.

Doesn't mean we won't be called to drink it,

But so he was speaking something very true,

Four billion dollars lost by Coca-Cola.

Think about commercialism,

Consumerism,

And what they feed us.

I mean,

Four billion dollars is a nice little chunk of change there.

They have a commitment to driving our impulse and desire to purchase Coca-Cola,

And this example,

The emotions behind it.

So just keep that in mind as a great example of something that was just talked about.

I have another example of something else that came up after that that I'll be talking about in a moment,

But just another example of,

Again,

Advertising industry,

And what is the purpose behind what they do.

Well,

They want to pull in our emotions.

Emotions bring money for them,

Okay?

With today,

Let's talk about emotions and how we might catch ourselves with emotions.

I'd like to start by sharing something with you.

This graphic here was developed by HeartMath,

And I thought,

What a great representation of what we're talking about here today.

I'll leave it up for just a few moments here while I'm speaking so you can get a look at it.

I'm not going to read word for word what's on here.

You can kind of pause it and take a look at it and read it as you would like,

But it is to help us see really how stress affects our body.

As we've been talking about this month and through other courses,

If you've taken some of the others,

It's a whole system.

It's not just one unit.

So when we are having an overwhelm of stress,

It's going to impact the body in all of these different ways,

In our mind,

In our heart,

In our digestion,

But also elevation of autoimmune disease,

How we digest and move through our body,

And how we understand our emotions is going to impact this.

Our emotional awareness is going to have long-term health benefits.

If we understand the emotion,

If we understand regulation,

Gather tools,

Then we can move away from avoiding and numbing out or judging and rejecting our emotion.

We can start to notice what makes us want to move away,

What makes us want to avoid,

And remembering this here.

What's it going to do to our body?

What will it do when the stress starts really increasing?

How will that impact our health or overall well-being?

And that's a nice little infograph that happened to come across my way this morning,

And I thought,

I'm going to share that.

That's not even what I was referring to when I said I had something else to share,

But it's such an impactful awareness because if you read that,

It talked about things from the American Psychological Association,

But also physicians talking about what they're seeing in individuals' health,

And we'll see this,

But no one's given tools.

It's like,

Here's your diagnosis.

Here's some pills,

And check back up in a little bit.

I will say that more and more doctors are moving into education around wellness.

They are not just telling people you're having inflammation in your body or,

Oh,

You're having elevation of emotion,

Difficulty in terms of depression.

Here is some medication.

Goodbye.

More doctors are moving into holistic understanding and integration.

They are recommending get out in nature,

Get some movement in your body,

Try exercise,

Get into therapy.

The stigma of therapy is starting to get removed because as we see and as we know,

Based off where mostly anyone lives,

And the whole reason I put these courses together,

It's very difficult to get into a therapist because we have very long wait lists,

And we just don't have any extra spaces,

But also people don't have insurance.

They can't afford it,

And a multitude of other reasons.

They might not even have a safe feeling inside in terms of trusting the relationship you have to build in therapy to get into self and the work within there,

But again,

Stigma is starting to get removed,

And stigma was a big blocker,

But even if you want to get into therapy,

It's really hard to get into therapy.

There's just so many things that we can do to get into therapy.

There's just not enough of us out there right now,

And so it leads to more and more limitations even if we start to realize I need some more tools here.

I need some more understanding,

Because when we notice,

Again,

Thinking of the stress and overwhelm,

When we notice what's happening to the body,

If we're just noticing and we're not doing anything else,

And maybe you have medication that's helpful for you but you're not doing any other things,

Well then you might stay within what you're experiencing,

And that could be a multitude of different things.

Understanding how to manage emotion,

But also where are our fears coming from?

What moves us away from feeling and experiencing,

Because that's where we start to gain the tools.

We can't tap out,

And we can't numb out,

And also gain experience at the same time.

If you think about anything else in life,

It's just not how it works.

We can't learn something at the same time.

We have to engage to learn,

So emotions is a huge one here in that category.

Part of the understanding is understanding what is the fear around experiencing and moving through our emotions.

All emotions are impermanent.

You will not get stuck in any,

But what is the fear around the experience?

Sometimes we don't even know what emotion we have and what we're going through,

Because maybe we've just trained ourselves to numb out for a really long time,

Or we from earlier on in life have never really gained the insight or were taught to not experience that emotion.

This stepping away from our own emotion,

It might be a fear of emotion because we have seen others go through or express that emotion in a way that we don't want to go through that.

Depression,

Anger are common ones that this category falls into that many people talk with me about.

They might have had a caregiver or a family member or someone close to them when they were younger with anger that had high volatile levels of anger,

Maybe explosive,

Maybe even abusive,

So they might repeat that or they might avoid anger altogether because they don't want to have that as their outcome.

Or depression,

You may have had someone close to them go through depression and it was really deep and it was really hard for them to get out of a lot of maybe hesitation and fear around depression,

Or maybe our own experience in the past around emotions makes us also not want to keep repeating that,

So maybe we've even gained more tools and awareness and even had some insight around past high emotion.

But we might still fear the emotion because we might have fear of what if I bring it in and I rage again or I treat someone really poorly because my anger gets out of control,

Or I get into depression and I'm stuck in bed for a few days.

Happiness falls into this as well.

Individuals will self-sabotage or avoid happiness or have fear around it because they're afraid of when the happiness goes away,

Like,

Well,

Here it is,

But it's going to go away,

So I might as well control that myself and get rid of it.

So what are our fears and understanding where they come from can be really valuable in the insights in terms of gaining that safety and security in ourselves of emotion,

Experience,

And expression.

They are,

You might want to put them into the awareness of like an imprinted memory because with any of these past emotional experiences that we have or that we carry,

We also have imprinted memory within us.

The imprinted memory of our mind,

So we might even get visual snapshots or like your memories of past moments kind of in our mind type of thing,

But we also have the physiological and body imprinting of the emotion.

We also have this,

Our senses that can bring in emotional experience through sensory experience.

This is the example of the random thing that came up.

I had mentioned when I was talking about food as medicine last week,

Sorry,

I feel like I'm about to hiccup,

But I think it's going away.

I talked about like an experience and I mentioned it in there how I typically do juicing as my breakfast.

So usually like do juicing smoothie situation with fruits and veggies and I tend to always use like mason jars to put them in.

So it was like the day or two after last week when I recorded that I was watching this one and I don't know if it will pick up on the camera or not,

But there is,

It's probably won't,

Oh there we go,

Like right here you can see there's a crack that goes,

Kind of goes all the way.

So I'm going to throw this away but I,

Or recycle it,

But I set it aside to talk about what I'm talking about here.

So when I was washing this,

I was just randomly washing it after I just finished drinking something out of it and suddenly I see that as I'm,

You know,

Washing the glass out,

I see the crack through here and it was like,

Suddenly I transported back to my six-year-old cell for a moment and I was walking in through like the,

Off the driveway where I lived,

Went through the door and like it was leading to the kitchen and I had a big wheel at the time,

I don't know if you know what those are,

But I had a big wheel and I was riding my big wheel in the driveway and I came inside to tell my mom something and she was standing at the sink with a similar glass,

It was actually mason jar glass,

And she was washing it and it broke on her hand and it broke on here and my mom was a hairdresser so it was like a whole situation and she had to get all these stitches in her hand.

And so washing the glass last week in my kitchen 40 years later,

I see this and flip back.

So that wasn't a traumatic experience for me,

For my mom I'm sure it was,

I mean it was not pleasant.

That is an example of how senses can bring emotion in.

I had emotion when that came through,

Not even so much about the cutting of her hand,

I got like the message from my mom that she would tell me for years like buy one of those thingies,

I don't know what they're called and I even have one under my sink,

Have I used it since then?

No,

I'm just going to be honest.

And you use them to clean glasses to avoid such things like that.

And so when I had that tunnel back to six-year-old Nicole,

I also then had a repeat reminder a few times in my brain of her message of use that thing,

Whatever it's called.

And then I had some heart-space stuff of just missing my mom,

You know,

Miss my mom a lot.

So that all came in and we can have sensory experiences that bring an emotion and that can also be related to trauma.

We will use sensory activation or awareness,

Obviously with the client's awareness and permission in different types of trauma work.

So when we're working on somatic body release in trauma therapy,

Sometimes we'll bring in sensory activation to assist in opening up some folders of the body to release.

And that might be a smell,

It could be a song,

It could even be a taste for some people,

Like a certain type of candy or even a certain type of meal that they had.

It's a really challenging situation until you get free on the other side.

Is that song right?

Break on through to the other side?

Anyway,

Emotions and trauma and folders.

So we can have something come through in our senses and suddenly we find other memories coming through.

And we can do this in a lot of other ways as well.

We can have an emotion there and then we start going through and finding different ways or reasons to help us activate that emotion a little bit more.

Think about self,

Emotions,

And all the different ways our emotions come in,

We experience them and how we move through them or we move away from them.

We numb out,

We avoid,

And what would create that?

Where does that come from?

It's different for everyone.

We're all different.

The thing to remember within this,

Even within the example of past trauma and senses and how it can activate,

We may have for those other reasons or that I mentioned before about past memories or these imprinting cycles in the body,

We may have then really avoided that emotion or those experiences around emotion and that took away the opportunity for us to gain comfort.

We like moved away from training ourselves and instead maybe moved into a different type of relationship or avoidance of the emotion.

We are our own personal trainers.

We have the opportunity no matter where you're at right now in your life of your relationship with emotion,

You're your personal trainer.

You have the opportunity to gather information and to start to train yourself to move through emotions in a safe and comfortable way.

Starting at low levels,

Not jumping in at something huge,

But starting at a place that you can start to experience what emotions feel like and the safety and support that your body has there for you.

When we avoid and tap out of things,

We can find ourselves things,

Meaning emotion,

We can find ourselves getting into all these other secondary loops.

I talked about some of the mind stuff in week one.

We even talked about some of the physical stuff last week and within that in decision-making addiction cycles,

How we can loop into addiction cycles because we want to numb out,

Avoid or escape emotion.

We can also get into procrastination cycles.

With procrastination,

There's numerous reasons we might procrastinate,

But one of numerous and I'll put an episode link down below to one of the podcasts on that,

But with our procrastination situation cycles or loops,

One of them might be about emotion.

We might not want to experience the emotion that we have to experience by going through said situation that we're procrastinating doing,

So we'll avoid it and not do it because we don't want to move through the emotion.

Even though on the other end of it,

We might have a lot of positive emotion and gratitude that we're finished,

We jam ourselves up in the in-between because of the discomfort or avoidance of emotion.

One other common area to keep in mind is that for some people,

We might even avoid ourselves in terms of trying to really grow.

In emotional comfort,

We want to be able to remove judgment around emotion because with it,

It creates what's called psychological flexibility.

Psychological flexibility,

It's how we move,

Glide and flow through our different experiences in life,

Recognizing impermanence as well as some of the things I'll be talking about next week,

But that all emotions are coming and going.

Life is happening.

We can be fully in participation.

We can be an observer role.

We could be numbing out,

But wherever we're at,

Life is happening.

Things are moving.

Emotions are moving,

And psychological flexibility to be able to move and flow through these things that are in front of us that we're experiencing if we're in the now,

Then the training part but also the sitting with self part is important.

If we're numbing out all over the place,

We avoid learning about who we are.

We will look outside of ourselves for accountability but also for love.

We will look outside of ourselves to fill space to keep ourselves busy so that we don't maybe have the space.

I'm not going to try to search for a different word right now.

The space to do the challenging sometimes work within to break cycles,

To create new patterns,

And to experience new different types of connections,

And that can lead to relationship addiction cycles.

That is where an individual might go from one relationship to the next to the next with no in-between.

There's no in-between processing.

There's no in-between self discovery or understanding or sometimes healing.

If healing is,

You know,

Any relationship,

There's healing with a transition or change there,

But sometimes we'll avoid that and we'll just go relationship to relationship.

Each time we're showing up as the same person,

We.

.

.

I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to get into too much energy stuff here,

But like where we're at is what we're bringing in.

And if we keep moving,

Moving,

Moving from person to person without anything in between,

Well you're the same person that you keep showing up as.

So that's the energy that you are going to be bringing in towards self.

If you notice yourself in some repeat different face,

Different body,

Same relationship,

Let yourself have a little reflection on yourself.

Let yourself have a little reflection there.

Like are you in a repeat cycle there?

Because thing that's not different is you.

You're showing up in each of those and in order to change that,

There has to be maybe some time there with self to create some of that change.

And to do some of that inner work,

It requires safety in self.

It requires safety around our emotions,

Desire and willingness to get to know ourselves,

To hang out with ourselves a bit and not avoid.

And in the process,

Remembering,

Creating healthy boundaries,

It's important for us to have safety and security in our emotions.

If those around us are putting down our emotions,

Judging our emotions,

Shutting down our emotions,

Well then we might not feel safe and even sitting with our emotions.

So be mindful of what and who you surround yourself with.

Remember last week,

People,

Places,

Things.

So with that,

Let's talk about some tools.

First is bringing with you,

As always,

The information from the mental stuff we talked about,

The physical aspects we talked about.

But the next part with the tools,

Each of these,

They're going to also be around added awareness and some reflection in self.

The first area is slowing down and pausing a bit to notice how your body is experiencing emotion,

How you might be holding or avoiding emotion,

And how you're experiencing your emotions in your body so that you can begin to regulate that and create a feeling of safety and comfort.

I believe I mentioned last week a little that if I have increased sadness that I'm working through,

I have a little bit more of a tendency to hold my breath.

I notice it and I'm very aware of that,

So I don't hold it for long periods of time,

You know,

Because I am aware that that is going on.

But if I were not aware,

I might hold it for more extended periods of time.

Like my,

One of my very close friends,

I won't put too much personal information on here,

But one of my very close friends has a young daughter and she is,

She just turned four.

But prior to this,

She's getting better at this now,

But like when she was two,

Her daughter would,

If she was frustrated or like told no,

Right,

What two,

One two-year-old wants to be told no,

She didn't like being told no,

So she would hold her breath.

I mean,

Hold her breath.

My friend would have an increase in her anxiety,

Like is my daughter gonna pass out,

Because she was like,

Serious about holding her breath,

Like her little lips would almost turn purple,

But what a big example of how our body can support or really elevate our emotions.

And in the beginning of last week,

We did that kind of quick check-in with body,

Where you're holding tension,

So that would be another example of awareness around emotion.

So just whenever you're feeling different emotions,

Allow yourself just a tiny pause.

What is this real experience like fully?

How do I feel in my body right now?

Because it's giving you building blocks.

You're the personal trainer of yourself,

Right?

You're giving yourself information,

Because if we don't start building and giving information,

Then we might stay way back where we were and fear emotion,

Because we shut off the training ground,

Like no,

No,

No,

Get away.

So we want to,

We want to build.

And so just like tap in,

Oh,

I'm feeling happy.

What's that feel like?

I'm feeling anxious.

What's that feel like?

The heart rate,

You know,

Is going to go up in both examples,

But it will feel different there,

As well as other parts of the body.

The other area,

So we have our body,

How,

Like what's,

What's going on here with my body in terms of breath tension,

But how am I actually in my body in this moment?

So am I numbing out,

Tapping out?

But these other three things to consider here,

Am I fidgeting?

So remember how I talked about fidgeters?

I think it was in this course,

Maybe been a different one.

No,

I think it was in this course.

How I,

There's,

They're fidgeters.

I get it.

And I was talking about like my necklace,

How I use that for grounding and my favorite brain and fidgeters and how,

What does it,

What's it doing to our emotion and experience?

Number one,

It's not really keeping us in the moment so much.

It is a grounder,

Right?

It's kind of keeping us grounded a little if we need it for like the ring.

But if we're fidgeting,

The fidgeters are like fidgeters.

That's what they're called,

Fidgeting.

Well,

We're potentially increasing the fidgety anxious energy within us.

So you want to kind of be aware of that.

Pacing is another one.

We might be pacing like if we're thinking about something or we're talking on the phone,

But if I'm pacing because I'm feeling frustrated or anxious and I'm just kind of like pacing,

Or if I'm in a difficult conversation and I'm pacing off frustration energy,

Well,

I might be elevating my emotion.

So how am I moving in my body?

And the other one is noticing how we're positioning or what we're doing.

So there's like the fidgetiness,

There's the movement,

Pacing and things like that,

Posturing we talked about,

But also part of,

I guess that would kind of,

It kind of fits into fidgetiness.

If we are fidgeting and moving our body a lot,

Like fidgety energy,

So we have a hard time sitting still,

We might be like moving our foot a lot or we're sitting here and we're just,

You know,

Kind of just moving like fidget,

Fidget.

Well,

That is also moving our body in a way that might be increasing the anxious energy,

The central nervous system,

All the internal stuff,

The hormone,

A lot of internal stuff that I won't go through all this,

All of that right now,

But it's activating,

Increasing and could even open up some of those folders,

You know,

That I talked about before in terms of even trauma stuff that it opens up past memory imprinting in the body.

And for some people,

They will pick scabs or I've had clients who have what's called trichotillomania and that's where they will pull their hair repeatedly.

It's this like fidgety,

Anxious,

Repetitive action or behavior.

And we really want to be mindful of that because what's it doing to our emotion and how can we use a replacement behavior to replace that and settle in self and get comfortable there.

And even those individuals who I have worked with who have trichotillomania,

That's what we work on is settling the system,

Replacement behavior with hands in a way that brings safety,

Security,

And noticing what emotion comes in that creates the desire to fidget out or to pull out the physical sensation and what it taps us away from emotionally.

One of the areas I specialize in is self-injurious behavior and self-injury is so common in terms of a relation to emotional tap-out.

Individuals don't want to feel the emotional experience.

They'd rather tap it over to physical pain.

Does not,

I assure you,

Create any type of resolution and it actually self-injury taps into the addiction center in the back of the brain and becomes an addiction like anything else.

So just be mindful of that as well and it can look like a lot of different things.

So how are we moving in our body and what is it doing to our emotion?

We also want to be aware of our action.

What is the purpose behind my current action?

Let me think of some good examples here that are common.

When we're thinking about our common action and emotion elevation,

I'll bring up the emotion reasoning that I said I'd bring in back to and the tools that I almost forgot about.

So emotion reasoning is when we feel an emotion,

So we might feel anxious or we might feel sad.

I'll use those two examples and then we put on the detective hat and the glasses and we go searching for anything in life,

Even if it's made up in an illusion in our mind,

To elevate that emotion.

Instead of what we could do if we're really elevating emotion,

We could use a technique called opposite to emotion where you find something that's the opposite to sadness,

So maybe a happy song or anxiety,

Maybe a meditation song or relaxing,

Stretching,

Etc.

Then that will help to bring down emotion,

But sometimes we elevate it through action and not notice or ask ourselves what's the purpose of my current action and the outcome of it.

It's like we'll get into the mind reading cycles where we'll create all these assumptions and then we react or act from the illusion in the mind.

What's the purpose and what's the action and then the outcome?

There's a type of therapy called reality therapy and that looks at what are we doing,

What's the purpose behind our doing,

And is it working?

So what are we doing?

What's the purpose?

What's the purpose and is it creating the desired outcome?

So examples here that are common with this and I'll stick with the same emotion,

Depression or anxiety.

So someone might be feeling sad.

This comes through a lot with I'll keep it in tune with the relationship example of how people can kind of go through recycling of relationships and they might be feeling sad about like a relationship breakup or dissolvent and they're working through the emotion,

But then the action and outcome,

The action will be they will get on social media and creep on the other person's page and maybe the other person's other relationship that they're in now or lots of stuff and then the outcome is they're even more sad.

They're putting themselves down.

They're judging themselves.

They're feeling worthless.

They're feeling less than or even angry.

Just a lot of stuff.

So what's the purpose?

What's the action?

What's the outcome?

With anxiety,

Someone might be feeling anxious.

Maybe they have to go on a trip and they're feeling anxious about travel and then their action is to go start reading news about travel detriment or if they're afraid of flying,

They'll go start watching videos of bad outcomes in flight and then the outcome for self is going to be elevated anxiety and fear.

So what are we doing to ourselves and noticing what is the outcome of the doing?

Allowing ourselves to maybe have more kindness towards ourselves and not move ourselves into taking over our emotion through other means that aren't really helping ourselves to be the personal trainer in a helpful way.

Yeah,

We're training ourselves to elevate emotion,

But we're not training ourselves in a way that's maybe healthy or helpful because when we elevate ourselves like that,

It's going to create more of a desire to get away from it and to not move through it.

Even things like watching things that are adrenaline based or ourselves going through high adrenaline experiences if we're trying to settle our anxiety,

It's going to spike our anxiety.

We can do those things and watch those things as a thing separate than that.

Making sure that we're not in a really anxious place at that moment and experiencing it for maybe joy.

I love adrenaline seeking things,

But I also have to be mindful to not be in a certain activation with my own body state if I'm going to engage in adrenaline type behavior or activities myself or watch things.

It's like if you've ever watched those videos that they do on roller coasters where the camera will just focus on the track and you're like kind of going and you're moving and you feel in your body like you're going on a roller coaster.

So what are we doing in our own actions and what are we creating?

And being mindful that we might want to try to support ourselves in a different way.

And the way that we gain emotion comfort is through practice and starting at low levels.

Let yourself start at low levels.

Listen to a song that brings up an emotion.

So it's like you're setting the stage,

You're activating it with permission with yourself versus kind of getting blindsided by something that brings in an emotion and then that's going to give you more safety,

More understanding,

More comfort for sitting with your emotion and other experiences.

Catch yourself where you're tapping out and start practicing ways that you can be with yourself and that is where the training really happens.

That's where you gain more safety,

More comfort for everyday life so that you can even feel more like you have maybe more desire or ability to break unhealthy habits for yourself.

Because when we want to be with our emotions and we realize it's quite pleasant that even the hard ones are a part of our humanness.

Maybe they're not really so hard,

They're just different.

I hope you find that information helpful.

Thank you everyone and I look forward to continuing to share more wellness with you.

Reviews

Nicole: Thank you for sharing what you do the way you do. Neil