The Art of Being Present: Kara Stoltenberg’s Guide to Listening and Navigating Tough Emotions Pt 1

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hi everybody. Mary Meyer with Healthy, Happy, Wise, Wealthy here with
Kara Stoltenberg. She is host of Stepping in with
Kara podcast. She has a
coaching business that she's been doing for a very long time
and I have worked with her personally for years.

(00:20):
It seems like in lifetimes past at this point.
But since our podcast so far, the first 10
episodes, Erika and I were realizing we talk so much about listening
and breathing are topics that came up. Whether we were talking about
physical health, mental health, about leadership, about
entrepreneurship, all these different things were coming up about listening.

(00:43):
And for you, that is one of your signature topics,
which you call holding space for people, which is
very, very active listening, basically.
So I want to hear more about that and tell
us a little bit about your. Because your podcast is also a really good example
of that holding space model. Yeah. So.

(01:06):
Hi. It's so good to be back.
I'm so happy to be here talking about listening. It's one of
my favorite topics and breathing is one of my favorite topics as well. I love
to breathe. Ah, me too. So good. It's
like so life giving. Exactly.
Yeah. So I'll start just even by saying my podcast

(01:30):
title. I was, I, seven years
ago, was in a hit and run bicycle accident
and I was left on the side of the road unconscious to die. As you
know, Mary, and you know,
I. I have spent the last seven years recovering
and fighting for my life and fighting to

(01:52):
have more life within the life I'm living currently.
And that's a long process. And it's one of those
things that it's never going to go away. It's
certainly changed in the last seven years,
but along that journey there have been spaces that have been
very weary. Right. And one of the

(02:15):
things I started noticing was that people have a very hard time
just stepping in to whatever you're
going through. Which is why I named my podcast Stepping in
with Kara. Because I wanted to create a space
in which, number one, I'm holding space for

(02:36):
other people's stories. So I'm modeling what does it look like to just
be with someone and let them just tell their story
and hold space for them without the need
to have answers. Solutions like you don't need
to fix it, you can just be present with them,
comfortable with emotion and that

(02:59):
I want to come back around to that, but I don't want to get too
far off track. But that is one of the pieces of holding space.
Being comfortable with someone having emotion and emotion can
run the gamut. Right. Of from sadness to
anger to anxiety or fear.
Guilt. There's so many ways a person can feel.

(03:21):
And again, to not feel like you have to have the answer,
but to just be with someone and be in
it with them. And so,
yeah, there's a lot to that skill, and I think
that it's unnatural. And, yeah, that's why
we're here. We're going to talk about it today, right? Well,

(03:43):
absolutely. And to give everyone a background. You were the very first. One of the
very. The first episode of this podcast I had you on.
And in part, even when I was deciding what to do with
this podcast, it was to give people a
platform who I know have an exceptional amount of wisdom for
the world who aren't internationally or

(04:05):
nationally known. So, of course, I was thinking about you during that.
And just as a. As a backstory, we're not going to go into all the
things, you know, today that we worked on. But, you know, I.
I had, you know, my history. And we aren't going to go into this today.
We will go into it more later on. But I want to give people just
kind of a context of everything that you know so much

(04:26):
about so many things. And so I know I stand here today as someone who
probably wouldn't be alive had I not worked with you. And that's just a reality
because I was. I had at that point. I know when I started working with
you, I knew you a little bit before that even. But I have seven children.
Four were adopted, and I had had Lyme's disease without knowing it for
I don't know how long, let's say 14 years, before

(04:49):
I came to you. And in a matter of a couple minutes, through
the different testing that you had, you realized that's what it was. And we spent
a year detoxing on that and two years detoxing,
everything physical. And then we started detoxing emotional stuff
along with that. And so this is where I first learned the terms
holding space. I had never heard that before, but I also experienced it with

(05:12):
you to the point where it was a surreal
spiritual experience, actually, to be in the room with you and you're
my friend, even. But like to. And, but like the.
When you're with you in a setting where you're working with you
one on one, it is like you really do feel like there
is nothing else in the world going on. You're not thinking about anything

(05:34):
else. You are so tuned in
to the person in front of you in a way that I've. I've
rarely have ever seen anyone do. So I want to give
that as a backstory to all of this also. Wow.
Yeah. Well, and in addition to that, you know,
is that's when I learned the way that there is such a

(05:56):
connection between physical and emotional. Physical, emotional, spiritual,
mental. Everything is so tied together in our bodies.
So if we're going to be healthy, we have to have an
understanding of listening to other people,
listening internally to ourselves. We need to. We need to be
able to listen. Listen, you know, to the larger to God universe. We

(06:19):
have to have an ability to listen and all those things, but we
rarely do in a way. Right. And.
Well, what you just touched on there is what I almost got sidetracked
on. So now I'm going to come back around to it because one
of the reasons I think it's hard culturally for us to step
in with people, to really hold space is because we're

(06:43):
not in the habit of doing it for ourselves.
Yeah. So, for example, if you're not comfortable
allowing yourself to feel sad or. Or angry
or afraid, it will be very hard for you to hold
space for someone who's sobbing. If
you can't go to sad within yourself and allow that

(07:05):
emotion to course through you,
it's very hard to be comfortable with someone else being sad.
And it's. I mean, what does everybody say on. On your podcast? I
don't know if people cry, but most of the time on my podcast, people cry.
When they do, what do they say? I'm so
sorry that I'm crying. I sometimes still say that I'm

(07:27):
like, oh, my gosh, you never need to be sorry.
If we just give emotion a little bit of space.
In fact, two things about emotions. One,
a true emotion that is just happening in the moment takes about
60 to 90 seconds to be felt
and then released. If you find

(07:50):
yourself in a spiral of emotion that's going on and on and on and
on, it probably isn't just about the thing right in front of you. There's probably
some buried old emotions stuffed down in
you that needs space. And this
is like, as we get comfortable holding space for ourselves
and letting ourselves feel what we feel,

(08:13):
express what's in us, and find people who are
comfortable, whether that's friends or professionals
who are able to create, because you have to have
safe space to really feel comfortable
expressing and feeling what you feel and thinking what you think,
and, you know, just being totally honest.

(08:36):
But I do find that people generally are either more comfortable, like,
sad and angry has been a funny kind of case study
for me. And the whole time I've been working with people, which has been over.
It's been over 20 years in different capacities. And
I watch sad and angry.
Usually most people are pretty comfy with

(08:57):
one of those. And one of the first times I
recognized this was in myself. I noticed, like, I'm
comfortable with sad, I'm okay with sad. But I
had been hardcore trained, not in my family system,
but in my marriage to my son's
dad to be happy all the time. I would,

(09:19):
I could be raging mad inside and I would be like,
I am very mad. That's how I would express anger.
Like coming out of that marriage because I felt so
uncomfortable with the expression of anger. I
had somehow bottled it up so hard. And when you
bottle anger, what happens? Every once in a while you're going to have a blow

(09:41):
up. That's what generally happens. But,
you know, I started watching people around me who had
productive, like they could feel anger and
knock out a wall to do reconstruction in their house or
scrub a tub or do something that was like productive to
move the anger through them. And I was like, well, these are great

(10:05):
ideas. I'm gonna start trying this. And like, cleaning is my favorite one now because
it's like I am now comfortable feeling anger. I don't
like feeling anger, but it's a necessary emotion.
We all need to be comfortable with anger,
sadness, fear.
And I remember having those conversations with you at some point because we've been friends

(10:28):
for so long now that I'm like, I really want you to be angry
saying that. And you're like, I just don't feel anger. I just don't feel
angry. I'm like, well, I feel rage about what's happened
to you. So. Yeah, and it
was, it was interesting too. I think you're referring to
my childhood trauma when you say that. It's like for other things

(10:50):
too. Other things too. Yeah. It's like I could come into
touch even with terror. I could. I felt more terror
about things than I did anger. But when I finally got
to that place where the
anger could. I could add the capacity for it.
I think that's what it was. And I felt safe enough. Like

(11:12):
I was safe and supported and I could
allow myself to feel angry. It's still not my
first go to. It's just not the way I'm wired. But
I am a lot more comfortable with it now.
And I grew up in a house where we are comfortable
expressing displeasure. Like, you know, like

(11:35):
it wasn't. There wasn't a lot of fighting or yelling all the time,
but there was the occasional, like, Raised voice because someone was upset.
Like, anger was allowed in my home growing up. So
that was definitely like a later thing for me. And also as a
woman and as a wife, learning that to, you know, sit
pretty and be calm and patient and not get

(11:57):
angry, which was a misdirection
because anger is not bad. It is not
indesirable, undesirable. It's part of our natural
spectrum of human emotions, and it gives us very
important information. Right. And I think
one of the things I know I learned from you is, well,

(12:20):
first of all, anger is a way to say it's just. It's a boundary. Right.
It means, like, if you're. Something's happening that's making you angry, it's stop or
stop now. Yeah. So the way I. When
I feel angry, I ask myself and I teach people to ask
themselves, what's not okay?
So usually when you feel angry, it's a little like engine light

(12:42):
that says somebody's crossed over a boundary and is. Is
violating you or something's not okay with you.
And another way you can kind of angle that question is, what
matters to me,
anger fuels action. So if someone
is doing something that's not okay and you need to

(13:04):
create a boundary, the anger is what gives you the
fuel to create that boundary.
If something is a passionate cause for you, it's like, this
matters to me, and I'm angry that this is happening.
That anger fuels you. Taking action toward that
passionate cause, standing up for whatever you're

(13:27):
angry about, it. Can also be the fuel
that, you know, if we look at it, I think I've probably learned this stuff
from you, but like, freeze. If you're in a traumatic situation or a
traumatic relationship, you can go to anger, or you can go to freeze, you can
go to flight. So if you've gone to freeze, that's like cold, right? Cold. You
can't move. So the anger can be like the heat that moves you and gets

(13:49):
you moving and makes you make that change that you have to. You have to
take action in order to be safe. Like, freezing is what you think would
keep you safe in a. As an example, a traumatic relationship. But it could be
an incident too. Like, and you're in the middle of a traumatic incident
where you need to move fast. So well, and
anger as a nature, it's hot, it's

(14:12):
physical, it needs to move. So here's the other thing I was going to say
about emotions in general. They are emotions,
energy in motion. I've been saying this for 20 years. I know you've heard
me say this. Yeah, they're meant to be transient.
They come in. I like to think of them as a little three part.
You feel them and most people don't have. They

(14:35):
get stuck in one of the three parts or they're good at two, but they
forget about the third. You feel them. A lot of people don't feel
emotions. They think about them. Yeah, I'm feeling sad,
I'm feeling angry. And this is why. That's the
processing part. And as humans, I think
that generally is an important part

(14:56):
of really getting an emotion to release.
But I do think you can bypass the thinking about it. I
think you can feel it and release it. I don't think you
can think about it and release it. We are bodies. We
are soma. We have to feel.
We are meant to feel emotions. That's what they are.

(15:19):
They're energy. And if you don't feel, feel
it. It's like the energy of that
emotion hangs out in your field.
And in your energy field. Right. Over time, you have all
these emotions hanging out in your energy field. And the energy field
affects the matter in the field. That's your body.

(15:41):
Yeah. So if you're not. The third part is
you feel it, you process it, and you invite it to
release. Because energy or that energy isn't made to
stay within us. And, you know, if you don't do
anything, if you just feel emotion and then you just kind of, okay, stuff it
down, whether that's sadness or grief or fear, you're

(16:03):
literally just collecting all this energy and carrying
all this weight. And
it's. It's affecting your life. Not just in a mental or
emotional. Like it's affecting your health. It's affecting everything.
It's affecting quality of life, your ability to make decisions.
Everything. Yeah. And I think, you know, because we grew up, of course, in an

(16:25):
era where we were trained to. We're told to not
be emotional, not making a decision based on emotion.
Be rational. You're taught, I mean, you go to
church and you're taught that, you know, don't anger is bad
and that kind of thing. But. And I think vented anger, which
is, you know, that's when someone is, you know, throwing

(16:47):
punches or something like that at people or screaming in rage at people because
they're mad. Someone come, you know, a parent comes home from work,
something was bad there, and starts screaming at everybody. Vented
rage is bad. Yes. So there's
distortions of any emotion. And we're going to just stick with anger because
we could do a whole deep dive on every one of them. Right, right. But

(17:10):
rage would be a distortion of anger, passive
aggressive behavior, silent treatment, that's another
distortion of anger. It's right, it's uncomfortable in a
very different way. But emotion, again
is meant to be dealt with in house. If you feel your emotion,
process it, consider it. You're digesting

(17:33):
the actual emotion and then you're releasing it.
Now you can interact around whatever that
I, I like to think of emotions as friends. They're informants. They give us
information about what's going on in our world and the environment.
And if you don't digest anger and then you go try to
have a conversation, you're going to have an angry conversation and it's

(17:56):
going to be tense. And the only thing the other person really hears
is the anger. They may not even be able to hear what you're saying.
And that causes them to get defensive or hurt or
many. And, and we are all imperfect at this, you know that.
Very imperfect. Yeah. There's mastery is
continuing to try to engage with these emotions

(18:19):
and in our intimate relationships, you know, finding a way
back to love, finding a way back to forgiveness. Like that's
true mastery, you know, trying to do our own
work and digest the emotions.
I find personally, like on social media, when
people are really worked up about things, I

(18:41):
feel there's a social media has created this space in which people are
just sort of venting anger a lot rather than
digesting the anger and then talking about the thing.
The passionate. Remember I said anger can fuel taking action
toward a passion, something that matters to you. Right. But when you're
venting, like you said, even with your voice, all

(19:02):
people are hearing is the anger. So generally speaking, people who agree with
you are going to hear what you're saying. People who don't know what you're talking
about just feel like, oh my gosh, that's a lot of anger coming at me.
Or like you said, vented anger. If you don't deal with your anger,
it can come out sideways, you know, whether that's yelling at your
kids or like you said, physical violence.

(19:26):
Or the, the other way, where it's, where it's basically, you know,
psychological abuse, you know, where it becomes very mental. I'm not
going to physically show my anger. I'm just going to make you
suffer for anything that I feel like making you
suffer for. By giving you the silent treatment, by being
passive aggressive, by, you

(19:50):
know, just abandoned abandonment kind of thing. They're just gonna
abandon you, whatever it is. All those Things are also you not
dealing with your anger? Well, yeah. And people
think they are, they're, they're academic. Oh, I'm not, I don't
rage. I just, I just become sociopathic.
Well. And I want to clarify that

(20:12):
I work on these things all the time in my life. I
mean, I practice what I preach and with my clients.
Right. So the things we're talking about,
I mean passive aggressive, for example,
these are the kind of things that we have to get
honest about. If those things are showing up

(20:36):
in little ways, that's not one of my personal
go tos, but I just know like, oh, at
least 80% of my clients, like there's that passive
aggressive streak and it, it's
sometimes it's motivated by like compliance. Like I'm trying to be the
nice person, I'm trying to be what you know. But when we can

(20:57):
identify that's actually passive aggressive.
And here would be a healthier alternative.
And if you digest this anger and communicate in this way,
you might actually create more intimacy and
feel better than when you say in this
pattern. It's, it's being able to recognize those

(21:20):
patterns in our, in our existence
and then doing something about them, you know, that's
the fun of the kind of work I
do. Yeah. And no one, I don't know that anyone has it, you
know. Well, maybe some of us do have it completely dialed in
on anger. But I would, I would, I feel like the healthiest thing

(21:42):
to do with anger is to, to do what you're saying, digest
it quickly, realize what is making you angry and then being able to
speak what is making you angry in a way to the other person where
you're not, where you're calm about what's about
the boundary that you need. Yeah. And you know, when
you're, when there is something at stake, when you might lose a

(22:03):
relationship, you might get screamed at, you might get hit, you might lose your
job, you might lose the income. It's very hard to make the
boundary because there are boundaries can cause
real damage in your life. So that's, I think, why
it's so hard to do it. And it's so easy to go to some of
the other things like fawning or freezing

(22:26):
or passive aggressive behavior or avoidance,
you know, those are easier because then we won't take
the. Necessarily take the hit. Yeah. Quote as
quickly. Yeah. I remember, you know, in
my own journey, you know, so much is. Information
is more readily available. Now in my own journey, when I first

(22:49):
started understanding my nervous system
and people would talk about fight or flight. And I remember just thinking, like,
I don't really relate to either one of those. I'm kind of
confused. And then probably 10 years in,
finally, I don't even. It. It hasn't been that long. Somebody started talking about

(23:09):
freeze the first time I heard that. I'm like, that feels
familiar. I think I'm frozen. I've been frozen for
decades. So let's talk about that
for a minute. Fight is when.
Now. And I'm gonna say sympathetic nervous system. Parasympathetic nervous
state. It's a state of arousal that your body goes.

(23:32):
I'm gonna move toward the thing that feels
threatening and deal with it. Yeah. Flight
is when your body goes. I'm gonna get away from this thing that feels
threatening. That's what feels safest.
Freeze is when you feel like you've tried one of those
or you just know, like, nothing. Nothing is gonna work. And so you,

(23:54):
like. Like an opossum. You go into freeze,
thinking that might be what keeps you alive. Right.
Then years later and not so distant
past, they started talking about fawning and,
oh, it might be my favorite one. I'm like, now that I
have mastered. And so I say

(24:17):
that tongue in cheek, because I think it's really important
to recognize that in your journey of personal growth, it's really important to be
able to realize, like, oh, that's a habit that I learned for
survival. And it pops up every once in a while when I feel
unsafe. Right. And fawning is basically people pleasing. It's
basically, it's my job to make sure everybody's happy and comfortable,

(24:40):
and I'm gonna contort myself into whatever position
necessary to make sure you're good. Right? To
keep peace. Keep the peace. To.
Don't make it worse. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. We are both grew up in the Midwest. We're good Midwestern
women. We are going to comply, and we're. Well

(25:02):
trained, darn it. And, you know, when you
start, I think for me, I definitely feel like I'm at
a level of mastery where if
that shows up as an instinct, I
recognize it immediately. And I'm like, oh, wow,
I must be feeling a little bit unsafe right now,

(25:24):
because I can feel myself wanting to
fawn to make the other person and, you know, you're kind of building them
up or something. Here's the thing. I'm. I'm a naturally very
complimentary, encouraging person. I want to reflect
people's value to them. So that is something that I do
just in my person. It's something that I. I do.

(25:48):
So. But there's a difference when, when you
recognize, like, oh, wow, I'm. I'm feeling
like fawning to stay safe. And I think just
when you realize those moments can happen
throughout your lifetime. This is one of the things I run into

(26:08):
with clients all the time. They're like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I'm still
dealing with this. Which is why I'm making the comment, like, I like to put
myself out there on the plate sometimes and be like, yeah, you're gonna keep dealing
with this. Like, you were trained hardcore in
this. It might take the next 30 years to be
completely well. And I think we get better at

(26:29):
choosing our surroundings and choosing people to do
life with, you know, as we're. Growing or
choosing to be alone. Yeah, well, not alone.
I. There's a lot of people to do life with. Yes. Yes. But,
yeah, and I. Well, and I, I do want to bring up like, we're not,
we're not down. Looking down on people who are

(26:50):
in terrifying situations currently or
in an abusive relationship.
Yeah. When you can't get out. Right. So we're not looking down. We're both in
a place right now. We're in. We're in relative safety and
have done years of processing and healing both of us.

(27:12):
So we feel the most dangerous time
to leave an abusive relationship. Well, the most dangerous time is when you're leaving.
Right. That's what I'm trying to say. That's when. That's when people get killed.
So. Which is another reason why you step in with people. So if you've been
through something and, and you might not be the
capable of protecting someone, but you might be capable

(27:36):
of knowing what the signs are
and when you might need to call
police, when you might need to just show up and listen when
you might need to go, no worries, I understand what you were going through and
now you're past it and come on back. Let's. Let's go
talk. Let's. Whatever you need to process, which is usually shame.

(27:59):
If someone has found themselves in an abusive relationship, the next step,
as they get out of it is feeling shame that they were ever in it,
is what I've found. Shame, confusion. There's
so many. Yeah. There's so many grief. I know. I
just, I almost want to say that just in case anyone's listening, going,
what about, you know, because we do look down at people who've lived through.

(28:22):
Through hellish situations, like it's. Like it's all their fault. Instead
of going let's hold space for this
and go, maybe not. I
don't. I don't look down on people in circumstances.. I
think that's one ways that I look at the world that is so
different and Right. Honest. I don't know. It

(28:44):
blows my mind because I'm like, okay,
anybody who's thinking that, have you never been through something really hard that you
didn't actually plan on or call into
your life? Like, I think it takes one kind of hard
knock situation to realize, gosh,
anything can happen to anybody. And

(29:06):
compassion is a real key piece
to being a human. I have a lot of
compassion for humanness.
Even choices we make or
beliefs that we hold that later we go, oh,
I wouldn't do that again. Like, I. I think there's

(29:28):
so little room to judge when you've
lived much time on the planet and you realize
it's hard. It's hard to be in good alignment and make good
choices. And that's what we want.
Right. That's. That's what I work with people to help people get
into really good alignment. Like, really true about. This is where

(29:51):
I am. And here are ways that I'm functioning
that are keeping me from really going where I want to go or creating what
I want to create. Yeah. But
no matter where you are, you can find your
way from really hard circumstances

(30:11):
into I am okay.
Yeah. And I think about the number of times
I've done that in my life, in my journey, and that is
not a quick thing. That's a. That
can take years to go from. I am in this circumstance. I am
not okay to really do the work to cultivate.

(30:34):
I am okay in my body. And let's
come back to this topic of listening and
listening to your body. Like, it takes a lot of listening
to be able to take yourself from. I'm not okay. Maybe that means
getting out of circumstances. And I'm broadly talking about many different
circumstances or an injury or an accident like I went through

(30:57):
more recently in my life.
Or incredibly intense grief surrounding a traumatic
loss. Yes. Relationship. You know, which could be a physical.
And however, if it's. Even if they're alive, it can still be a
traumatic loss. If. If they pass, then it's a traumatic loss. So
that. That season of grief is another one. Yeah.

(31:20):
Anything that makes me feel like I am not okay. Right.
Like, I always have
emphasized our circumstances do not define us.
Right. But sometimes it feels like they do.
And I think when it feels like your circumstances define you
and you're like, I can't get out of this, I feel so stuck

(31:43):
to me. That's when you may. You may need some support
to get to go from there to, I'm listening
to my body. Let's talk about some ways that you can listen to
your body. I think, you know, like, one way even
just,
you know, just kind of like doing a scan

(32:06):
and imagining you could feel into, like,
where am I holding things? Where do I hold tension? Or
if. If there's something you're feeling, where do I feel that in
my body? And sometimes that can be. You can be
like, I have no idea. So don't be stressed if you can't
figure it out. But if there's an emotion or something going on in your

(32:29):
life and you're just like, where do I feel that in my body?
And just giving some attention to that space, allowing
for emotion, is one of the ways to listen to your body. Like,
what do I really need right now in this moment? So
when you're not okay, or it feels like you're not okay, or you feel
stuck and you can't even see to a

(32:52):
brighter future, you can't even see a light at the end of the tunnel. You
don't even know if you're going to be able to create one. But something inside
of you believes there's more. It's about all you need.
Or maybe I could partner with someone who could believe more for
me. Like, all you need is that little generation of, like, I'm
determined to find a little bit more.

(33:14):
And, you know, you don't look ahead
to the end when you're. When you feel not okay,
you look in and you go, what do I need right now? Do I need
a walk? Do I need a glass of water?
Do I need to put lemon in my water because it makes me drink it?
Do I need to talk to a friend

(33:37):
Because I feel lonely and my heart aches? Do I need to
connect with someone? Do I need
to put my feet on the earth and ground
myself and feel the electromagnetic frequency of
earth coming through my body? Whether or not you feel
that it's happening right? Stabilize myself. Do I need to

(34:01):
be in nature? So go on a hike? I couldn't
drive for seven years, so I. Some of my default
things that I did to be okay were taken away from me.
So I created a garden around me. I started gardening
and planting flowers. And so that for
me, deadheading my flowers and watering them is my

(34:24):
meditation. It's my. I don't put my earbuds in. I
don't really. I really Tune in and be in nature
during that time.
Yeah, there's so many ways in which we're just like the
basics. Do I need a nap? Right?
Yeah, just sometimes sleep will help a lot. Yes, unless

(34:46):
you're totally in freeze and then you're sleeping too much, but.
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So
once we get to that place of I'm okay,
you know, then there's the next of like, okay, now from here,
things are changed. You know, whether your body has changed or

(35:06):
someone's no longer in your life through a divorce or death
or, you know, whatever has happened that has changed you. Then
there's that path of how do I build from here?
So that's the place where it gets a little bit fun because you get to
explore what am I actually doing in my day
to day in this mind, in this body, and how do I want to

(35:28):
use my time intentionally? So this is the listening
in order to create the life that you really want.
Absolutely. When you're doing that for yourself,
that's when you're able to do that for other people.
Right. Hold space for what people are going through.
Yeah. And you and I talked about this and I think it's important to

(35:51):
bring this up when we talk about this concept of holding space.
You know, it's a. It's a listening without judgment.
It's a listening and a being present, fully
present, without
feeling like you need to fix anything. Right.

(36:16):
With my friends, with, with clients, it's a
little bit of a different dance. But with my friends,
a lot of times, if someone is expressing something really hard to me as a
friend, I will say,
tell me where you are. Do you need me just to hold space for you,

(36:37):
to feel this and be here with you? Do you want to brainstorm
some ideas for solutions? Like,
and sometimes people are like, I don't know, both.
But if you don't want solutions, it actually hurts
when someone shows up with solutions. Like, I just want you to listen to me
or hold me or whatever. And so I think even being brave enough

(37:00):
to say, say, tell me how I can support you, I can, I
can help you think about ways to make this better,
or I can just listen and let you feel what you're feeling and
be here with you as you feel it. That to me is what holding
space is. I am okay with you feeling whatever
you feel. And the important thing

(37:23):
here is let's come back to this concept of boundaries.
Yes. Boundaries. Yes. Because it all goes together.
It's not, let's say you have a friend who's
in an ongoing long Time, difficult
situation and he or she is doing everything they
can to heal the situation, to get better, to

(37:46):
find help, to resource themselves, right? And
you are one piece of the puzzle of support for
them, right? You are not
responsible for them,
you are holding space for them within your own capacity. So
you have to not martyr yourself or

(38:08):
feel like you have an obligation to always show up every
single time whenever someone needs you. This is part of
that codependence that we're, I think trying to find the balance
in it is. Okay, let's say you
had a 14 hour day at work, right?
And you're crawling into bed because you are

(38:30):
completely done and you have
nothing left, right. You are probably not
resourced to sit on the phone for an hour and listen
to a friend, right? And so I think it's important
like for us to have healthy expectations of one another
in our relationships. If we have more than one

(38:52):
person, we want to resource our own lives with more than one person,
whether that's a professional person, a couple of friends that we feel
comfortable talking to. This all takes time.
I mean it's not like to find those safe people that
we know we can be so vulnerable with. And
you know, I want to just kind of insert here too. It's like both

(39:14):
Kara and I, as we were dealing with physical issues,
we have had different things we've dealt with in our lives but, or you know,
relationships or how that's affected us. We have
paid a lot of money to go have professionals and work with
professionals both to help physical health, mental health, emotional
health. So we are not in this thing at all saying, you know,

(39:36):
the only thing you do is go find some good friends, a piece of the
puzzle. Even more importantly, if you are the
person who is, you're, you're not, you're not in the, you're
not the professional, you're just a person who's in someone's life,
whether it's a relative, friend or someone. You're just that came in your
path that you want to help. You have to know that you,

(39:59):
you have to have boundaries and you have to have proper
expectations that you are not trained professionally to help
this person. So that what you can do is limited. It's
still powerful what you can do to a certain degree. But we
are not in this thing saying it's, you know, hold space for people and then
everything's going to get fixed because you did the right thing.

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