What's the difference between a psychologist and a magician? Authentic Action Podcast, Episode #38
Join Angel on the Authentic Action Podcast for a deep dive into Emotional Fitness and why you need more of it!
Emotional Fitness can reduce overwhelm and chronic illness and help you get clear about your purpose
Many think being "too emotional" is the problem but really the problem is dysregulation and getting triggered into our parasympathetic, or fight-flight-freeze-f*ck nervous system.
We are not able to think well when we are in this mode, and left unchecked it creates disease and dysfunction in the body and in society.
There are reasons we become dysregulated and it is not because we are broken or unfixable. The alarms are going off for reasons!
You cannot master yourself until you master your emotions, and this does NOT mean simply suppressing or numbing them, any more than it means allowing them to run amuck and drive us further from our goals.
By learning to feel our feelings, name and understand our feelings more, and express them in healthier ways we can become more emotionally intelligent, resilient, and fit.
There are simple and free, tried and true tools we all can learn and practice and improve our emotional fitness. We are energetically contagious to one another, so we all benefit when we do, and when we don't, we all lose.
The current programming is designed to keep you dysregulated, numb, and dumb. Turn off your television and remember how to live vibrantly and authentically alive!
Awaken your creative spirit with Aromatherapy Perfumes and more at
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Learn more about building with papercrete and being bravely and unapologetically authentic, while also helping to support this channel by buying my books on Amazon:
The Head Hutt: Papercrete Mega-Sculpture, in Black and White
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732669848
The Head Hutt Papercrete Mega-Sculpture (full color paperback)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/173266983X
The Head Hutt Picture Book, Full Color Edition: The why's, how's, and what-for's of building the Head Hutt Mega-Sculpture (Mega-Sculptures)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732669899
47 truths: Musings of a Modern-Day Multi-Medium Storyteller; A playful exploration of alchemy and coherence through the transformative magic of words. Kindle Edition
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M6GWCZK
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Enjoy a wonderfilled day!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Angel (00:01):
What's the difference between a psychologist and a
magician?
Hi, welcome to the AuthenticAction Podcast.
I'm Angel, your hostess, andtoday's topic is emotional
fitness.
Have you been feelingoverwhelmed, chronically ill,
(00:22):
unclear about your purpose?
Well, you might need moreemotional fitness.
Emotional fitness is the topicof my upcoming book.
Hopefully-- not hopefully,definitely-- it will be done
soon, and so it's a topic freshon my mind.
And well, the reason I'mwriting the book and that it's
(00:45):
fresh on my mind is becauseemotional dysregulation seems to
be increasingly a problem inour world.
So many people think that beingtoo emotional is the problem,
(01:09):
too emotional is the problem,and so they tend to want to numb
themselves, or, you know,suppress the emotions, repress
the emotions, distract ourselvesfrom our emotions.
But actually that suppression,that numbing, is another form of
dysregulation, anddysregulation makes us subpar.
We are these phenomenal superbeings, these, uh, human
(01:36):
thinking, self-awareconsciousness, expanding meat
machines, and so we're doingourselves and each other a
disservice when we go through somuch of our lives in a
dysregulated state, and I thinkmost of us recognize when
(01:56):
someone is overly emotional andwe think of that as just plain
emotional.
When people are dysregulated,however, this is really the
point that I'm trying to drivehome is that suppression, being
unemotional, being numb, is notequivalent to really being
(02:19):
emotionally fit, reallyunderstanding how to feel your
feelings.
Express your feelings inhealthy ways, navigate them.
You know when they're coming up, recognize when you're becoming
dysregulated.
Re-regulate yourself before youwrecking ball your
(02:39):
relationships or, yeah, ask mehow I know about all of that.
Anyhow, I'm looking at my notesover here.
You can't master yourselfunless you master your emotions,
(03:02):
and this does not meansuppressing, gaining complete
control by repressing orsuppressing.
Repressing is just unconscioussuppressing, really.
And that's not the same, justabout just as bad as allowing
them to run amok, amok, amok,right as allowing them to run
(03:24):
amok, amok, amok, right.
And I don't think this istalked about enough.
In fact, many of the leadersthat I follow and who I respect
greatly, still promote this ideaof suppressing emotions, not
bringing emotions to yourdecision-making, you know, not
(03:45):
showing your emotions, andthere's aspects of that that are
true, and so I want to navigatethe nuances of all of that a
little bit, if I can, or try to.
So, emotional intelligence, asthe phrase was coined a while
back.
I think it was, maybe it wasStephen Covey phrase was coined
a while back, I think it was..
(04:07):
.
Anyhow, as a type ofintelligence, our ability to
navigate emotions, both torecognize and name them in
ourselves and to recognize andname them in others, is a skill.
It's a skill that we'reprobably born with some natural
level of ability in, like somany other skills and levels of
(04:28):
intelligence, and it's a skillthat we can develop and get
better by way of understandingit more, cultivating habits,
just like maybe one of myfavorite mentors is Jim Kwik.
He had a traumatic brain injury.
Jim Kwik, he had a traumaticbrain injury.
He really struggled to learn toread, to learn to comprehend,
(04:48):
to learn to remember things, andthen, with lots of practice and
structured skill set building,he's now known as, like, the
memory guru I forget the term,but anyhow I'm you know I'm
paying him for a course, as dohundreds, if not thousands, of
(05:09):
others, for helping us improveour reading skills, specifically
because he figured out how toovercome that limitation and
transcend it and, in fact, usethat barrier as motivation to
become extra good at it.
So that's one of the little keypieces that I am trying to get
(05:29):
across and, as you may be ableto tell, I sometimes get a
little lost in the weeds.
So I'm gonna keep coming backto my notes and try not to get
too far out on that and justfocus on the emotional fitness
component, because that's reallythe first part that we need to
get.
If we cannot learn to recognizewhen we're dysregulated and
(05:52):
re-regulate ourselves, then wedon't have much hope of then
coming to the first step, sortof learning to get to know our
feelings, learning how to feelour feelings, name our feelings,
express our feelings in healthyways.
Right now our society is reallynot good at this at all, to say
(06:12):
the least, to put it mildly,and in fact our current system
seemed to be really justencouraging us to fall into that
dysregulated state every timewe try to pull ourselves out of
it and then maybe to numbourselves, distract ourselves
(06:33):
and while that might keep us atthis low level, easy to control,
sort of half alive state, it isnot our full, full capacity,
it's not the best we can be andit it makes me sad a lot.
So one of my greatestmotivators in this life and on
(06:56):
this channel and right in mybook, is to try to wake us up a
little bit myself, you and keepwaking us up, because it's an
ongoing process to not fall intothat unconsciousness that
happens when we suppress ourfeelings and our emotions, and
the reason, one of the biggestreasons why I feel like this is
(07:19):
more pressing than ever is wehave AI on the horizon.
Actually, I get paid currentlyto train large language models,
so I'm pretty submerged in thatwork and I see how quickly
they've evolved just in the oneyear I've been working with them
and we got robots on the way,and when we combine those two
things, the one thing that we'regoing to have that they don't
(07:42):
have is our ability to use ourfeelings, our intuition, which
is really a lot of data.
That's not just our own datacollected from our own
experiences, but actually thedata that's in our DNA, the data
(08:03):
that's in our society, our youknow, our psychological means,
our archetypes, gets complicated.
And it's also very simplebecause, simplistically, you
really can't do anything aboutthe external, at least from
where most of us are right now,but you can do something about
the internal, and if we allfocus on up, leveling our
(08:28):
internal capacity, mastering ourown emotions, getting more fit
both physically and emotionallyand mentally, then we will have
more of a capacity collectivelyto do that.
So that's why I'm so passionateabout this and I really do feel
like the time is ripe.
(08:49):
The time is always now, butreally we are ripe as a species
to transcend our current levelup level, at least a little bit.
Maybe just a couple of points onDavid Hawkins'.
Maybe just a couple of pointson David Hawkins' consciousness
scale.
If you're familiar with that,if you're not, look it up, it's
(09:10):
pretty good stuff.
I'm going to include a littlereference to that in my book,
but it's really a whole lifetimebody of work.
The cool thing is, these daysyou can listen to a string of
audio books and in a day,acquire their whole lifetime of
work.
(09:30):
So that's what I've recentlybeen doing with David Hawkins
and I will say also that I'vevisited his work before and
through my lifetime.
I get this sense of the thepeeling an onion or layering a
parfait or however you want tothink of it, where, um, there's
(09:50):
these.
Well, I like the simple, thisuh, spiral of life, wheel of
life symbol, because there'sthis iteration quality where,
where you're circling backaround, but maybe expanded or
contracted just a little bit inthe next iteration to learn the
lesson with a little bitdifferent nuance or from a
(10:11):
little bit different angle.
Anyhow, back to emotionalintelligence, or EQ as it's
often abbreviated.
This includes learning torecognize more dysregulated and
I will remind you that includesboth that running amok emotions
that we're more familiar withrecognizing and that suppression
(10:33):
, that going numb, that runningaway, that retreat, which I
think way more people are doingright now and we seem to be less
conscious of.
But it's really one of the mainthings that I want to address in
the work that I'm doing,because I know it's scary to
feel we're all afraid of thatoverwhelm, going overboard,
(10:56):
expressing too much, and indeedsometimes we're going to have to
have grace and patience andcompassion with ourselves and
with each other, because it doesget messy sometimes as we learn
.
You know, if you think aboutyour favorite toddler, you can
think about how they throwtantrums, and we're often, you
know we call it the terribletwos right as an expression,
(11:20):
because we're all familiar withhow toddlers have a hard time
handling their emotions.
Well, many of us as adults andmyself I am certainly in this
camp where I've not come veryfar from that toddler phase in
my ability to handle my emotions.
I've learned to suppress themmore.
(11:40):
And that brings me to the nexttopic that I want to get to,
which is that that suppressionmight initially seem like it's a
better solution because it doescalm the situation, and in an
actual emergency it's alwaysbest to keep calm.
And many of us have learnedearly in life perhaps you know
as early as the first day, ormaybe even beforehand, where we
(12:05):
have to learn to suppress ouremotions to survive, because
maybe we have an oversensitiveor overreactive or traumatized
caretaker who doesn't know howto handle emotions.
And unfortunately, this cyclethat's how this cycle of neglect
and abuse continues and, I feellike, has gotten a little bit
worse in my lifetime.
Of course, I only have mylifetime for perspective, so I
(12:30):
am aware that that perspectivemight be completely wrong and I
don't think that part reallymatters so much, because,
whether it's getting worse ornot, it's still a prevalent
issue and one that has had anegative impact in my life and
has a potential to have greatpositive impact in my life and
in yours.
(12:50):
So that's why I'm excited andpassionate about diving into
this topic.
So I was diagnosed withautoimmune issues uncurable
systemic inflammation that wouldprobably kill me by age 50,
when I was like 12, right beforepuberty, and I'm about to turn
54, still alive and kicking,although I had my turbulence, my
(13:14):
waves.
I do still contend withautoimmune issues but I have
managed them much better than Ithink I would have if I'd have
gone the conventional you knowcurrent much better than I think
I would have if I'd have gonethe conventional you know
current industrial diseasecomplex route.
And instead and you know to befair, I would have gone that
route if they would have had anysolutions for me that had
(13:34):
helped.
But being that they didn't,that really inspired me to have
to take my own healing into myown hands.
My own wellness journey hasbeen one of exploration and, you
know, personal trial and error,much error and much trial and
some success.
So I really have come to believe, understand, and my current
(13:58):
belief is that the suppression,the suppression of emotions is
what is leading to thisescalation in autoimmune disease
.
And I want to pause there andadd that's not the only thing.
I mean you could circle thatargument around and get it to
maybe include everything, butthere's chemical toxicity which
(14:23):
you could again relate back to,that unconsciousness which comes
from emotional suppression.
But I also want to say that Ithink we're you know we talk
about the neurology, the brain,or some of us do.
I'm fascinated by the brain andI spent a couple of decades
learning more and more about itas best I can, both anatomically
(14:47):
and neurochemically, andpsychologically and socially.
And in my studies I've come tounderstand that the brain is
plastic, that it changes, thatit's fallible, that it fools
itself, that it's changeable andthat it's creating the
(15:14):
chemicals, or at least largelyit's.
Pardon me, I'm getting parchedover here, talking nonstop.
It is really the thing thatcreates the bulk of the
chemistry that goes on in ourbodies, even when we take a drug
(15:36):
.
It's really the reaction, ourbrain's reaction, to that drug
and then the chemistry thatcascades from that to that drug,
and then the, and then thechemistry that cascades from
that that then gives us thefeelings that we have, or the
lack of feelings that we have.
Um, so I got I know I went offon a tangent, got a little bit
(15:58):
lost there in the brain stuffwhich is a whole world in and of
itself, for sure, or actually,you know, all of our world is
really in this dark bony box wecall the skull, or in the mash
of the brain inside that.
But to get myself back on track,the brain's job is to respond
(16:21):
to input data, and that datacomes in many, many forms, from
chemicals that we ingest andnutrients, you know.
However, we want to label themto electromagnetic waves, some
of which, many of which arecoming from other humans and
also from our devices.
(16:41):
Like, there's a lot to it and Iam not at all claiming to, you
know, have my handle, have ahandle, anybody's handle on all
of it by any means, but I havecome to a pretty good
understanding of some basictools that all of us can use and
(17:01):
that actually humans, otherhumans, have come to this, you
know, similar conclusions forthousands of years now.
So it gives helps, give meconfidence, because these are
tools I came to in my ownpersonal journey, really the
hard way, in many, in many cases, as as many healers, for
whatever reason, seem to do, um,and those tools include the
(17:24):
mindset, they include breathing,they include moving, they
include um rhythm touch.
I'm kind of all over the placenow because I'm lost my.
I lost my note, my place in mynotes, but um, let me just
overarchingly say there are manytools and that's what I'm
(17:47):
trying to organize in this bookthat I'm writing that we all can
use for free, anytime, quiteeasily and in just a couple
minutes in most cases.
That can help re-regulate usand then also that can help us
build more emotionalintelligence, more intelligent,
(18:08):
more awareness and moreresilience and more.
Because as soon as we feel anyfeelings we're dysregulated, we
can build resilience and likeexpand that bandwidth, our
(18:28):
capacity to feel our feelingswithout becoming dysregulated.
And some of the tools forbuilding that resilience include
learning to name your feelings,learning to express your
feelings.
Some art therapy techniques thatI've used have been very
helpful.
Art therapy techniques thatI've used have been very helpful
.
Meditation helps pretty mucheveryone, or nearly everyone who
(18:54):
finds a modality that's helpfulto them.
I like moving meditations, likeQigong and Tai Chi and yoga.
Sound healing has been greatfor me Learning about the vagus
nerve, which you can accessright here near the neck, and
just if you put your hands whileyou're talking or humming,
you'll feel that vibration inyour vocal cords that is
vibrating your vagus nerve.
(19:15):
And your vagus nerve is attachedto every one of your organ
systems in a way that helps snapyou back into that
parasympathetic nervous system.
So there are real ways to.
I don't want to quite say hackthe system, but trigger the
system, trip the system, flipthe system back over into the
(19:38):
parasympathetic from thesympathetic or the fight, flight
or freeze nervous system, whichare literally two different
systems in our body.
So even though of coursethey're interconnected and
related because they're part ofour body, but really when we
(19:59):
switch into the fight or flightor freeze or I like to add fuck
to that, because I think it'sunderappreciated how much our
hormones, especially ourreproductive drives, actually do
play into that but that's atopic for another podcast, I'm
sure.
But in any case, when we flipover into that parasympathetic
nervous system, our sympatheticnervous system is switched off
(20:22):
for the most part and we nolonger.
We're just doing our primalbasic needs you know our
breathing and our heart rate andwe're no longer.
We no longer have access to ourhigher thinking capacity.
So when we're kept in thatstate, that's a place where we
are very easy to manipulate andcontrol and program and a place
where we don't make our bestdecisions.
(20:45):
We aren't our highest, bestself.
So again why I'm passionate onhelping myself learn to
recognize when I'm flipped overin the parasympathetic and get
myself back into the sympatheticas quick as possible, and then
also learning to build thatresilience so that I can expand
my capacity, my bandwidth, myability to handle navigating
(21:10):
different emotional you know myown different emotions and other
humans' different emotionsbecause we humans are very
contagious to each other.
We're very receptive to oneanother's energy.
We've all experienced whathappens, like at a concert or at
a church when we sing together.
(21:30):
It's a very profound collectivegroup experience that we are
capable of having, like someinsects and birds and fish but
again a topic for anotherconversation perhaps.
But I do think that it's worthmentioning that to me that is an
aspect of consciousness, thatability to have like a
(21:53):
collective consciousness, and wealso have this individual
consciousness capacity thatwe're developing and when we
combine those two we have somepretty exciting, fascinating
potential.
So I ask you to keep that inmind and to also remember that
(22:13):
because of this tendency to becontagious to each other I'm
sure you're familiar with thephrase hurt people hurt people,
and that is true.
And also, healing people helppeople heal.
So I want to say it like that,because I don't really think we
can heal each other usually,although there's some, there's
(22:37):
some exceptions and caveats tothat but what we can do is
create openings and space ofpossibility for ourselves to
heal, for each other to heal.
So, and we do.
There is a profound healingeffect in the human touch and
many of us know right nowthere's this huge loneliness
(22:59):
epidemic and many of us justneed a long hug, like probably a
few a day for a while, and thatwould help us heal.
Now is it the hug healing us oris it just re-regulating our
system so that it can healitself?
I don't know, I'll let you bethe judge of that, because it's
probably a little of both, butfrom my perspective.
(23:20):
But in any case, it's true thathealing happens when we get out
of the way, or when we allow itor when we support it, and it
happens faster when we're in thecompany of other people who are
healing or having a higherfrequency, and it happens slower
when we're in a lower frequency, around other people who are
suffering and you know,wallowing in self-pity or the
(23:45):
victim mentality or all of that.
So one of the great tools forbuilding resilience is learning
to what I call tune myself orraise your frequency.
So, just like tuning a radiodial, you can learn to tune your
body so that it's more coherentand harmonious with your
(24:11):
current, with the natural cyclesaround you and in your own body
, which is part of the naturalcycles around you.
Um, yeah and again, that's apretty vast topic and I'm yeah
and again, that's a pretty vasttopic and I'm fairly much a
beginner slash, just like abeginner novice in so much of
(24:32):
this work, so I'm a littlehesitant to dive into that right
now, but it is a topic that Iintend to dive into a lot more
in the future, so you can lookforward to that.
Yes, there is hope and researchis showing that there are many
(24:55):
old, tried and true ways thatare now getting proven and some
new ways, like we have some newdevices.
I have this heart coherencedevice I'm looking around but
it's not right here that helpsme measure, like the regularity
and variability I'm touchinghere because it's a clip that
goes on my ear and it gives mesome biofeedback on my heart
(25:15):
rate and the variability andthat's helping me to recognize
when I'm more coherent or lesscoherent.
And I've also worn a glucosemonitor.
That's helped me recognize someof the metabolic dysfunction
that's going into my body, whichis a topic I'm going to get
into a lot more deeply becauseit's something that's been a big
(25:37):
influence in me.
So and I'm on the way, I havesome ketone blood and urine
strips on the way because Ithink again, that metabolic
piece is a big piece of thisescalating dysregulation that's
going on.
So when you talk about the sideof dysregulation, that is the
(26:01):
side most of us recognize whereemotions are running amok.
I think we reallyunderappreciate how much
hormones, which are especiallyprevalent in women and
especially during puberty,pregnancy and perimenopause,
which are getting sort of notsort of very much disrupted by
(26:23):
so many endocrine disruptors andso many things in our diet and
in our environment.
And then there's exercise,which has been decreased
dramatically in our currentculture and has been shown to be
as effective as the majority ofmedicines out there, or
medications I don't really wantto call them medicines drugs
that are available, pharma drugshave a pretty dismal success
(26:48):
rate and many of them alsocreate more problems than they
even potentially help, even ifthey work well.
So I urge you, um, to look intoother solutions, and I'm not
saying they don't have theirplace.
I've taken many myself and Iprobably will still.
You know, I've got someibuprofen here.
That's a pharma drug, eventhough it's not prescription
(27:10):
anymore.
But, um, I am by no meanssaying I will never take a
prescription drug.
I really appreciate that theyexist, they have their place,
but they're being overused andthey're being used for chronic
disease where they don't reallyhelp is the thing.
And with chronic disease, a lotof times, a lot of times, if not
(27:32):
all the time, there is anassociation to mismanaged stress
or stress that's causedemotions that haven't been
processed in a healthy way andinstead have been suppressed,
repressed and eventually createstagnation and disease.
That little knot of emotionthat you press down and just
(27:54):
swallow and, you know, breathetill you cannot feel it anymore.
Or take a shot of whiskey, oror turn on the tv to distract
yourself, or eat that cupcakeand stuff it, stuff it down.
All those modes are creatingdisease in the body.
You could look at it like theobvious way by sitting too much,
(28:15):
by thinking negative thoughts,by, you know, self-harming, by
poisoning ourselves.
There's all these physical waysand they're all interrelated
with these mental and emotionalways.
There's really not they'rereally not separate things, but
I think we tend to think of themseparately in an interesting
(28:35):
way or kind of compartmentalizethat thought, just like we
compartmentalize our emotionsand act like it's not really,
you know, not really having aneffect, but they are.
And again I want to reiterateour emotions are one of the most
valuable, amazing, beautifulthings we have.
People who can't feel emotionswant to die, they want to kill
(28:58):
themselves, or even people whocan't make any sense of their
emotions apraxia where they'reall confused.
I think it's called apraxiaForgive me if that's an
incorrect term, but in any case,the ability to feel emotions
and even our ability to createstories about our emotions,
those electrochemical, magneticdata that's going, you know,
(29:23):
data transfers that are going onin our bodies, that then we
interpret as feelings and tellourselves stories about, stories
about I think we misinterpretthem often and we're telling
really shitty stories, but itdoesn't mean that that's not
valuable and that we couldn't belearning the language of our
body's emotions and thenlearning to tell much better,
(29:46):
more empowering stories aboutthe effects of those what we
call feelings.
So I know I kind of went allover the place with that.
I tend to go far out, trying tokeep, trying to keep bring
myself back, wax and wane.
So you can let me know ifthere's any of that that is
(30:06):
confusing or went too far out orthat resonates with you and
you're like, yeah, I hear you onthat, or you have something to
add.
With you and you're like, yeah,I hear you on that, or you have
something to add.
One thing I want to add is thatdysregulation is not like a
total dysfunction, even thoughit can lead to dysfunction or
seem that way.
It can spiral out of controlfor sure.
(30:29):
But it's an alarm system andit's there for a reason and good
reasons, and so you know, whenthe alarm first goes off,
there's a reason.
Maybe it's that the alarm ismalfunctioning.
Even that you need to look into, you know.
So if your system, your nervoussystem, is setting off an alarm
(30:49):
, the first thing to do is tolike make sure you're not being
poisoned or in danger andactually I think a lot more of
us are being slowly poisoned orby watching catastrophes and by
getting riled up in fear andanger.
That is flipping our bodiesover into that parasympathetic
(31:22):
nervous system, and so that istripping that alarm system and
that's creating that chronicsense of anxiety that so many
people are experiencing.
And rather than think thatthere's something wrong with you
and that you need to drugyourself or distract yourself or
kill yourself because you're sodysfunctional, please I urge
(31:46):
you to consider that that's ahealthy response to an unhealthy
environment.
And there are things you can doto change both your immediate
environment and your exposure tothe broader environment.
And there's things you can doto, like I mentioned earlier,
(32:06):
expand your bandwidth so thatyou have a greater capacity to
handle toxicity in yourenvironment without becoming
overwhelmed by it, without beingflipped over into that
parasympathetic nervous system.
And I'm sure you know peoplewho are much better at handling
things and you probably knowpeople who are really terrible
(32:28):
at handling things, and most ofus are somewhere on that
spectrum in between thoseextremes, and most of us have
probably experienced, you know,a further end of those, both of
those extremes.
I personally have certainly hadtimes where I really didn't
handle things well and I've hadthings where I was, you know,
cool as a cucumber, as they say.
(32:51):
And I've also done a lot of work, some of it quite painful and
some of it quite joyful, tolearn healthier ways to express
myself.
This podcast is one of them.
Learning ways to express mythoughts and feelings through
writing, through talking tofriends, through writing songs,
through art, is a big one for me.
(33:12):
I love neurographic art.
Therapy has been helpful, soundtherapy, as I mentioned, both
in singing and in more specific,like chakra-focused,
intentional sound healing.
Again, there's a whole world ofhealing modalities.
It's really I have a list, anongoing list of over a hundred
(33:34):
that I'm putting in alphabeticalorder that I have looked into
and most of which I've at leasttried so, and I'm sure there are
many, many more.
So, yeah, I urge you toremember that there's nothing
wrong with you that can't healor at least get better.
Maybe you can't fix somethingcompletely, but you can shift
(33:58):
your focus from the worst ofwhatever is the reality you're
living in to something better inthe reality that you're living
in.
So, again, I'm not asking youto lie and in fact I'm really
big on honesty because lyingweakens our whole system, and
that's another topic I'm goingto get into, because I do think
(34:18):
that is part of what's creatingthis chronic, dysregulated state
that so many of us are sort oflooping in and out of or just
chronically stuck in a lot ofthe time.
Yeah, vagal tone is a real key.
Um, yeah, vagal tone is a realkey.
(34:39):
Learning to name more of youremotions and being okay with
learning to feel your emotionsand that might take, you know, a
partnership with a specialfriend or I'm building a
community.
I've had some great coaches andgreat friends to help me with
that and I want to be a supportsystem and create safe spaces
for you and others.
If you're looking for that,there's me and there's lots of
(35:01):
others in this expanding spacewho are creating more and more
ways for us to help each otherlearn these skills, develop
these skills, heal from ourcollective and individual wounds
and move forward into this newera.
It's 2025.
It is a new era.
(35:24):
I'm not just speaking somehoo-ha out my hoo-ha.
It is true, I might be speakingout my hoo-ha.
My brain, my brain, gets easilydistracted.
You may have noticed and I'd bespeaking by hoo-ha.
My brain, my brain, gets easilydistracted.
You may have noticed and easilyentertained, which I appreciate
.
And I do want to add that, eventhough, as I mentioned, healing
(35:44):
can be hard work and it can bescary and painful, it can also
be very fun and joyful.
Painful, it can also be veryfun and joyful, and the best
healing work is laughter andlove and touch and true
connection and communication,and so if we can all remember
(36:06):
that, then I think we couldactually get to it a lot quicker
, because it doesn't have to besuffering.
The suffering is actually madeup, the majority of and I'm not
saying there isn't pain, thereis, but the vast majority of the
pain that we are currentlyexperiencing is in the form of
self-created suffering orcollectively created suffering,
(36:29):
you know, like wars and disease,and not death.
I want to put the asterisk thatdeath is actually a beautiful
part of this process that wecall life, and at least my
current understanding is suchthat I would not, you know, if I
(36:52):
had infinite wishes with no badoutcomes, I still wouldn't wish
for no death, because, eventhough it is hard for the living
to deal with, I believe it's abeautiful reset in a way.
But I don't really know, andthat's one of the beautiful
things about it as well.
(37:13):
But I don't really know, andthat's one of the beautiful
(37:40):
things about it as well it'sthis great mystery that keeps us
, keeps making meaning in thismoment, in this life, relevant.
I think if we took death away,it would be, life would become
less meaningful and, yeah, wewould be less driven to find a
purpose.
And I want to wrap up, if I can, on that point, which is that
in my research and study ofother people's research, I have
really gotten a oh gosh, I lostmy train of thought.
I looked at my notes.
That was something we call thatthe ADHD brain.
(38:03):
We'll see if it comes back tome.
Well, I'll get back to justtalking about summing up that I
think metabolic disease is ahuge key.
I think, um, learning to feelour feelings and really express
(38:25):
them and expand that bandwidthis what's going to lead us to
lead a richer, more vibrant, um,more healthy and happy life.
So I'm here for it.
I'm still working on it.
I do believe there's not adirect correlation between
(38:50):
effort and output.
So if we can learn to ease upwhen it's getting hard and it
doesn't mean don't work hardthere's a difference between
joyfully working hard, like inthe way that we build muscle, we
build strength through practicesuch a beautiful thing and I
(39:12):
really love it and we get betterand better and better by those,
by those iterations, doing a,doing a thing that's just a
little bit harder than we'reused to, and then coming around
again, resting, coming aroundand doing it even better,
resting, coming around, doing iteven better, resting, coming
around, doing it even better.
That's a beautiful, amazing,wonderful thing and I want more
(39:32):
of it, and that's different fromefforting and coming around and
doing the same thing again andjust getting older and beaten
down and trying harder andtrying harder and getting
further and further away fromour goals, or, at least you know
, coming around and realizingwe're no closer to our goals and
(39:53):
we've just been like spinningour wheels.
And ask me how I know aboutthat feeling.
I know because I have done it alot, so you're not alone if
you're out there doing that.
In fact, as I mentioned earlier,there is a loneliness epidemic.
Suicide's on the rise,dysregulation is on the rise.
(40:14):
Anxiety is on the rise.
Lack of focus is on the rise.
All sorts, all the disorders,all sorts of D words and C words
are on the rise, and some of myfavorite C words, though, can
also be on the rise, and thoseare creativity and courage and
(40:35):
curiosity and community andconnection and communication and
coherence and calming, andcoherence and calming.
I'm going to wrap it up there,because I could go on.
Hey, hit up our sponsors.
(40:56):
That's the Sleeping DragonsCompany, over at Etsy right now,
and maybe on my website again.
Sleeping Dragons Company, myown company, where we carry lots
of great phthalate-freefragrances and essential
oil-based aromatherapy perfumes,heart-shaped stones, natural
(41:18):
pigments, all sorts of thingsfor your creativity and
self-love needs.
So awaken your creative spirit.
Over at Sleeping Dragonscompany.
Today you can find them bygoing over to Etsy and over at
Sleeping Dragons Company.
Today you can find them bygoing over to Etsy and looking
for Sleeping Dragons Company ortyping in
wwwsleepingdragonscocom.
(41:41):
That should get you there.
The Authentic Action Academy thesister invention or seed to
this podcast, the AuthenticAction podcast, both of which
(42:01):
are aimed at creating morecreative community, helping
humanity evolve into moreconsciousness, more kindness and
more curiosity.
I want to add courage in there.
I already mentioned my favoritec words.
(42:22):
Let's wrap it up with that.
I'm going to do a quick skimhere and see if I forgot any key
points.
Yeah, some of these things arequite simple.
Like you could be breathingwrong or just be eating the
(42:44):
wrong things at the wrong time,or many, many, many of us are
just eating too much of too manythings.
So less really could be more.
In many cases, the news, theprogramming, is designed to keep
you dysregulated, numb and dumb.
So turn off that television,find something better.
(43:08):
Remember you could be speakingfor yourself If you find
yourself repeating phrases thateveryone around you is repeating
, which I'm hearing a lot of.
Check yourself you might bespeaking someone else's program,
just saying I'm saying and I'msaying there you go.
(43:29):
Yeah, vagal tone, tapping,humming, drumming, singing All
of those are great, greatwindows or doorways in to the
healing process.
So I urge you to find somethingthat you love laughter and put a
little bit more intention orfocus on it.
(43:50):
Find yourself a coach.
Join a community.
I have a couple.
You are welcome to join me andI hope that you do.
I have lots of ways in that arefree.
I have other ways in that youcan help support me so that I
can keep supporting myself, andhowever feels right to you is
perfect.
So I hope you will do that.
(44:11):
I didn't even write my jokedown, I just left it up over
here, so that means I got to getto it over here.
Let's see if I can find it.
It's under the very bestpsychology jokes of today.
What's the difference between apsychologist and a magician?
(44:35):
A magician pulls rabbits out ofhats, whereas a psychologist
pulls rabbits out of rats.
There you go, peace.
(45:00):
Till next time.
I'll be seeing you.
Stay courageous, ciao for now.
What's the difference between a psychologist and a
magician?
Hi, welcome to the AuthenticAction Podcast.
I'm Angel, your hostess, andtoday's topic is emotional
fitness.
Have you been feelingoverwhelmed, chronically ill,
(00:22):
unclear about your purpose?
Well, you might need moreemotional fitness.
Emotional fitness is the topicof my upcoming book.
Hopefully-- not hopefully,definitely-- it will be done
soon, and so it's a topic freshon my mind.
And well, the reason I'mwriting the book and that it's
(00:45):
fresh on my mind is becauseemotional dysregulation seems to
be increasingly a problem inour world.
So many people think that beingtoo emotional is the problem,
(01:09):
too emotional is the problem,and so they tend to want to numb
themselves, or, you know,suppress the emotions, repress
the emotions, distract ourselvesfrom our emotions.
But actually that suppression,that numbing, is another form of
dysregulation, anddysregulation makes us subpar.
We are these phenomenal superbeings, these, uh, human
(01:36):
thinking, self-awareconsciousness, expanding meat
machines, and so we're doingourselves and each other a
disservice when we go through somuch of our lives in a
dysregulated state, and I thinkmost of us recognize when
(01:56):
someone is overly emotional andwe think of that as just plain
emotional.
When people are dysregulated,however, this is really the
point that I'm trying to drivehome is that suppression, being
unemotional, being numb, is notequivalent to really being
(02:19):
emotionally fit, reallyunderstanding how to feel your
feelings.
Express your feelings inhealthy ways, navigate them.
You know when they're coming up, recognize when you're becoming
dysregulated.
Re-regulate yourself before youwrecking ball your
(02:39):
relationships or, yeah, ask mehow I know about all of that.
Anyhow, I'm looking at my notesover here.
You can't master yourselfunless you master your emotions,
(03:02):
and this does not meansuppressing, gaining complete
control by repressing orsuppressing.
Repressing is just unconscioussuppressing, really.
And that's not the same, justabout just as bad as allowing
them to run amok, amok, amok,right as allowing them to run
(03:24):
amok, amok, amok, right.
And I don't think this istalked about enough.
In fact, many of the leadersthat I follow and who I respect
greatly, still promote this ideaof suppressing emotions, not
bringing emotions to yourdecision-making, you know, not
(03:45):
showing your emotions, andthere's aspects of that that are
true, and so I want to navigatethe nuances of all of that a
little bit, if I can, or try to.
So, emotional intelligence, asthe phrase was coined a while
back.
I think it was, maybe it wasStephen Covey phrase was coined
a while back, I think it was..
(04:07):
.
Anyhow, as a type ofintelligence, our ability to
navigate emotions, both torecognize and name them in
ourselves and to recognize andname them in others, is a skill.
It's a skill that we'reprobably born with some natural
level of ability in, like somany other skills and levels of
(04:28):
intelligence, and it's a skillthat we can develop and get
better by way of understandingit more, cultivating habits,
just like maybe one of myfavorite mentors is Jim Kwik.
He had a traumatic brain injury.
Jim Kwik, he had a traumaticbrain injury.
He really struggled to learn toread, to learn to comprehend,
(04:48):
to learn to remember things, andthen, with lots of practice and
structured skill set building,he's now known as, like, the
memory guru I forget the term,but anyhow I'm you know I'm
paying him for a course, as dohundreds, if not thousands, of
(05:09):
others, for helping us improveour reading skills, specifically
because he figured out how toovercome that limitation and
transcend it and, in fact, usethat barrier as motivation to
become extra good at it.
So that's one of the little keypieces that I am trying to get
(05:29):
across and, as you may be ableto tell, I sometimes get a
little lost in the weeds.
So I'm gonna keep coming backto my notes and try not to get
too far out on that and justfocus on the emotional fitness
component, because that's reallythe first part that we need to
get.
If we cannot learn to recognizewhen we're dysregulated and
(05:52):
re-regulate ourselves, then wedon't have much hope of then
coming to the first step, sortof learning to get to know our
feelings, learning how to feelour feelings, name our feelings,
express our feelings in healthyways.
Right now our society is reallynot good at this at all, to say
(06:12):
the least, to put it mildly,and in fact our current system
seemed to be really justencouraging us to fall into that
dysregulated state every timewe try to pull ourselves out of
it and then maybe to numbourselves, distract ourselves
(06:33):
and while that might keep us atthis low level, easy to control,
sort of half alive state, it isnot our full, full capacity,
it's not the best we can be andit it makes me sad a lot.
So one of my greatestmotivators in this life and on
(06:56):
this channel and right in mybook, is to try to wake us up a
little bit myself, you and keepwaking us up, because it's an
ongoing process to not fall intothat unconsciousness that
happens when we suppress ourfeelings and our emotions, and
the reason, one of the biggestreasons why I feel like this is
(07:19):
more pressing than ever is wehave AI on the horizon.
Actually, I get paid currentlyto train large language models,
so I'm pretty submerged in thatwork and I see how quickly
they've evolved just in the oneyear I've been working with them
and we got robots on the way,and when we combine those two
things, the one thing that we'regoing to have that they don't
(07:42):
have is our ability to use ourfeelings, our intuition, which
is really a lot of data.
That's not just our own datacollected from our own
experiences, but actually thedata that's in our DNA, the data
(08:03):
that's in our society, our youknow, our psychological means,
our archetypes, gets complicated.
And it's also very simplebecause, simplistically, you
really can't do anything aboutthe external, at least from
where most of us are right now,but you can do something about
the internal, and if we allfocus on up, leveling our
(08:28):
internal capacity, mastering ourown emotions, getting more fit
both physically and emotionallyand mentally, then we will have
more of a capacity collectivelyto do that.
So that's why I'm so passionateabout this and I really do feel
like the time is ripe.
(08:49):
The time is always now, butreally we are ripe as a species
to transcend our current levelup level, at least a little bit.
Maybe just a couple of points onDavid Hawkins'.
Maybe just a couple of pointson David Hawkins' consciousness
scale.
If you're familiar with that,if you're not, look it up, it's
(09:10):
pretty good stuff.
I'm going to include a littlereference to that in my book,
but it's really a whole lifetimebody of work.
The cool thing is, these daysyou can listen to a string of
audio books and in a day,acquire their whole lifetime of
work.
(09:30):
So that's what I've recentlybeen doing with David Hawkins
and I will say also that I'vevisited his work before and
through my lifetime.
I get this sense of the thepeeling an onion or layering a
parfait or however you want tothink of it, where, um, there's
(09:50):
these.
Well, I like the simple, thisuh, spiral of life, wheel of
life symbol, because there'sthis iteration quality where,
where you're circling backaround, but maybe expanded or
contracted just a little bit inthe next iteration to learn the
lesson with a little bitdifferent nuance or from a
(10:11):
little bit different angle.
Anyhow, back to emotionalintelligence, or EQ as it's
often abbreviated.
This includes learning torecognize more dysregulated and
I will remind you that includesboth that running amok emotions
that we're more familiar withrecognizing and that suppression
(10:33):
, that going numb, that runningaway, that retreat, which I
think way more people are doingright now and we seem to be less
conscious of.
But it's really one of the mainthings that I want to address in
the work that I'm doing,because I know it's scary to
feel we're all afraid of thatoverwhelm, going overboard,
(10:56):
expressing too much, and indeedsometimes we're going to have to
have grace and patience andcompassion with ourselves and
with each other, because it doesget messy sometimes as we learn
.
You know, if you think aboutyour favorite toddler, you can
think about how they throwtantrums, and we're often, you
know we call it the terribletwos right as an expression,
(11:20):
because we're all familiar withhow toddlers have a hard time
handling their emotions.
Well, many of us as adults andmyself I am certainly in this
camp where I've not come veryfar from that toddler phase in
my ability to handle my emotions.
I've learned to suppress themmore.
(11:40):
And that brings me to the nexttopic that I want to get to,
which is that that suppressionmight initially seem like it's a
better solution because it doescalm the situation, and in an
actual emergency it's alwaysbest to keep calm.
And many of us have learnedearly in life perhaps you know
as early as the first day, ormaybe even beforehand, where we
(12:05):
have to learn to suppress ouremotions to survive, because
maybe we have an oversensitiveor overreactive or traumatized
caretaker who doesn't know howto handle emotions.
And unfortunately, this cyclethat's how this cycle of neglect
and abuse continues and, I feellike, has gotten a little bit
worse in my lifetime.
Of course, I only have mylifetime for perspective, so I
(12:30):
am aware that that perspectivemight be completely wrong and I
don't think that part reallymatters so much, because,
whether it's getting worse ornot, it's still a prevalent
issue and one that has had anegative impact in my life and
has a potential to have greatpositive impact in my life and
in yours.
(12:50):
So that's why I'm excited andpassionate about diving into
this topic.
So I was diagnosed withautoimmune issues uncurable
systemic inflammation that wouldprobably kill me by age 50,
when I was like 12, right beforepuberty, and I'm about to turn
54, still alive and kicking,although I had my turbulence, my
(13:14):
waves.
I do still contend withautoimmune issues but I have
managed them much better than Ithink I would have if I'd have
gone the conventional you knowcurrent much better than I think
I would have if I'd have gonethe conventional you know
current industrial diseasecomplex route.
And instead and you know to befair, I would have gone that
route if they would have had anysolutions for me that had
(13:34):
helped.
But being that they didn't,that really inspired me to have
to take my own healing into myown hands.
My own wellness journey hasbeen one of exploration and, you
know, personal trial and error,much error and much trial and
some success.
So I really have come to believe, understand, and my current
(13:58):
belief is that the suppression,the suppression of emotions is
what is leading to thisescalation in autoimmune disease
.
And I want to pause there andadd that's not the only thing.
I mean you could circle thatargument around and get it to
maybe include everything, butthere's chemical toxicity which
(14:23):
you could again relate back to,that unconsciousness which comes
from emotional suppression.
But I also want to say that Ithink we're you know we talk
about the neurology, the brain,or some of us do.
I'm fascinated by the brain andI spent a couple of decades
learning more and more about itas best I can, both anatomically
(14:47):
and neurochemically, andpsychologically and socially.
And in my studies I've come tounderstand that the brain is
plastic, that it changes, thatit's fallible, that it fools
itself, that it's changeable andthat it's creating the
(15:14):
chemicals, or at least largelyit's.
Pardon me, I'm getting parchedover here, talking nonstop.
It is really the thing thatcreates the bulk of the
chemistry that goes on in ourbodies, even when we take a drug
(15:36):
.
It's really the reaction, ourbrain's reaction, to that drug
and then the chemistry thatcascades from that to that drug,
and then the, and then thechemistry that cascades from
that that then gives us thefeelings that we have, or the
lack of feelings that we have.
Um, so I got I know I went offon a tangent, got a little bit
(15:58):
lost there in the brain stuffwhich is a whole world in and of
itself, for sure, or actually,you know, all of our world is
really in this dark bony box wecall the skull, or in the mash
of the brain inside that.
But to get myself back on track,the brain's job is to respond
(16:21):
to input data, and that datacomes in many, many forms, from
chemicals that we ingest andnutrients, you know.
However, we want to label themto electromagnetic waves, some
of which, many of which arecoming from other humans and
also from our devices.
(16:41):
Like, there's a lot to it and Iam not at all claiming to, you
know, have my handle, have ahandle, anybody's handle on all
of it by any means, but I havecome to a pretty good
understanding of some basictools that all of us can use and
(17:01):
that actually humans, otherhumans, have come to this, you
know, similar conclusions forthousands of years now.
So it gives helps, give meconfidence, because these are
tools I came to in my ownpersonal journey, really the
hard way, in many, in many cases, as as many healers, for
whatever reason, seem to do, um,and those tools include the
(17:24):
mindset, they include breathing,they include moving, they
include um rhythm touch.
I'm kind of all over the placenow because I'm lost my.
I lost my note, my place in mynotes, but um, let me just
overarchingly say there are manytools and that's what I'm
(17:47):
trying to organize in this bookthat I'm writing that we all can
use for free, anytime, quiteeasily and in just a couple
minutes in most cases.
That can help re-regulate usand then also that can help us
build more emotionalintelligence, more intelligent,
(18:08):
more awareness and moreresilience and more.
Because as soon as we feel anyfeelings we're dysregulated, we
can build resilience and likeexpand that bandwidth, our
(18:28):
capacity to feel our feelingswithout becoming dysregulated.
And some of the tools forbuilding that resilience include
learning to name your feelings,learning to express your
feelings.
Some art therapy techniques thatI've used have been very
helpful.
Art therapy techniques thatI've used have been very helpful
.
Meditation helps pretty mucheveryone, or nearly everyone who
(18:54):
finds a modality that's helpfulto them.
I like moving meditations, likeQigong and Tai Chi and yoga.
Sound healing has been greatfor me Learning about the vagus
nerve, which you can accessright here near the neck, and
just if you put your hands whileyou're talking or humming,
you'll feel that vibration inyour vocal cords that is
vibrating your vagus nerve.
(19:15):
And your vagus nerve is attachedto every one of your organ
systems in a way that helps snapyou back into that
parasympathetic nervous system.
So there are real ways to.
I don't want to quite say hackthe system, but trigger the
system, trip the system, flipthe system back over into the
(19:38):
parasympathetic from thesympathetic or the fight, flight
or freeze nervous system, whichare literally two different
systems in our body.
So even though of coursethey're interconnected and
related because they're part ofour body, but really when we
(19:59):
switch into the fight or flightor freeze or I like to add fuck
to that, because I think it'sunderappreciated how much our
hormones, especially ourreproductive drives, actually do
play into that but that's atopic for another podcast, I'm
sure.
But in any case, when we flipover into that parasympathetic
nervous system, our sympatheticnervous system is switched off
(20:22):
for the most part and we nolonger.
We're just doing our primalbasic needs you know our
breathing and our heart rate andwe're no longer.
We no longer have access to ourhigher thinking capacity.
So when we're kept in thatstate, that's a place where we
are very easy to manipulate andcontrol and program and a place
where we don't make our bestdecisions.
(20:45):
We aren't our highest, bestself.
So again why I'm passionate onhelping myself learn to
recognize when I'm flipped overin the parasympathetic and get
myself back into the sympatheticas quick as possible, and then
also learning to build thatresilience so that I can expand
my capacity, my bandwidth, myability to handle navigating
(21:10):
different emotional you know myown different emotions and other
humans' different emotionsbecause we humans are very
contagious to each other.
We're very receptive to oneanother's energy.
We've all experienced whathappens, like at a concert or at
a church when we sing together.
(21:30):
It's a very profound collectivegroup experience that we are
capable of having, like someinsects and birds and fish but
again a topic for anotherconversation perhaps.
But I do think that it's worthmentioning that to me that is an
aspect of consciousness, thatability to have like a
(21:53):
collective consciousness, and wealso have this individual
consciousness capacity thatwe're developing and when we
combine those two we have somepretty exciting, fascinating
potential.
So I ask you to keep that inmind and to also remember that
(22:13):
because of this tendency to becontagious to each other I'm
sure you're familiar with thephrase hurt people hurt people,
and that is true.
And also, healing people helppeople heal.
So I want to say it like that,because I don't really think we
can heal each other usually,although there's some, there's
(22:37):
some exceptions and caveats tothat but what we can do is
create openings and space ofpossibility for ourselves to
heal, for each other to heal.
So, and we do.
There is a profound healingeffect in the human touch and
many of us know right nowthere's this huge loneliness
(22:59):
epidemic and many of us justneed a long hug, like probably a
few a day for a while, and thatwould help us heal.
Now is it the hug healing us oris it just re-regulating our
system so that it can healitself?
I don't know, I'll let you bethe judge of that, because it's
probably a little of both, butfrom my perspective.
(23:20):
But in any case, it's true thathealing happens when we get out
of the way, or when we allow itor when we support it, and it
happens faster when we're in thecompany of other people who are
healing or having a higherfrequency, and it happens slower
when we're in a lower frequency, around other people who are
suffering and you know,wallowing in self-pity or the
(23:45):
victim mentality or all of that.
So one of the great tools forbuilding resilience is learning
to what I call tune myself orraise your frequency.
So, just like tuning a radiodial, you can learn to tune your
body so that it's more coherentand harmonious with your
(24:11):
current, with the natural cyclesaround you and in your own body
, which is part of the naturalcycles around you.
Um, yeah and again, that's apretty vast topic and I'm yeah
and again, that's a pretty vasttopic and I'm fairly much a
beginner slash, just like abeginner novice in so much of
(24:32):
this work, so I'm a littlehesitant to dive into that right
now, but it is a topic that Iintend to dive into a lot more
in the future, so you can lookforward to that.
Yes, there is hope and researchis showing that there are many
(24:55):
old, tried and true ways thatare now getting proven and some
new ways, like we have some newdevices.
I have this heart coherencedevice I'm looking around but
it's not right here that helpsme measure, like the regularity
and variability I'm touchinghere because it's a clip that
goes on my ear and it gives mesome biofeedback on my heart
(25:15):
rate and the variability andthat's helping me to recognize
when I'm more coherent or lesscoherent.
And I've also worn a glucosemonitor.
That's helped me recognize someof the metabolic dysfunction
that's going into my body, whichis a topic I'm going to get
into a lot more deeply becauseit's something that's been a big
(25:37):
influence in me.
So and I'm on the way, I havesome ketone blood and urine
strips on the way because Ithink again, that metabolic
piece is a big piece of thisescalating dysregulation that's
going on.
So when you talk about the sideof dysregulation, that is the
(26:01):
side most of us recognize whereemotions are running amok.
I think we reallyunderappreciate how much
hormones, which are especiallyprevalent in women and
especially during puberty,pregnancy and perimenopause,
which are getting sort of notsort of very much disrupted by
(26:23):
so many endocrine disruptors andso many things in our diet and
in our environment.
And then there's exercise,which has been decreased
dramatically in our currentculture and has been shown to be
as effective as the majority ofmedicines out there, or
medications I don't really wantto call them medicines drugs
that are available, pharma drugshave a pretty dismal success
(26:48):
rate and many of them alsocreate more problems than they
even potentially help, even ifthey work well.
So I urge you, um, to look intoother solutions, and I'm not
saying they don't have theirplace.
I've taken many myself and Iprobably will still.
You know, I've got someibuprofen here.
That's a pharma drug, eventhough it's not prescription
(27:10):
anymore.
But, um, I am by no meanssaying I will never take a
prescription drug.
I really appreciate that theyexist, they have their place,
but they're being overused andthey're being used for chronic
disease where they don't reallyhelp is the thing.
And with chronic disease, a lotof times, a lot of times, if not
(27:32):
all the time, there is anassociation to mismanaged stress
or stress that's causedemotions that haven't been
processed in a healthy way andinstead have been suppressed,
repressed and eventually createstagnation and disease.
That little knot of emotionthat you press down and just
(27:54):
swallow and, you know, breathetill you cannot feel it anymore.
Or take a shot of whiskey, oror turn on the tv to distract
yourself, or eat that cupcakeand stuff it, stuff it down.
All those modes are creatingdisease in the body.
You could look at it like theobvious way by sitting too much,
(28:15):
by thinking negative thoughts,by, you know, self-harming, by
poisoning ourselves.
There's all these physical waysand they're all interrelated
with these mental and emotionalways.
There's really not they'rereally not separate things, but
I think we tend to think of themseparately in an interesting
(28:35):
way or kind of compartmentalizethat thought, just like we
compartmentalize our emotionsand act like it's not really,
you know, not really having aneffect, but they are.
And again I want to reiterateour emotions are one of the most
valuable, amazing, beautifulthings we have.
People who can't feel emotionswant to die, they want to kill
(28:58):
themselves, or even people whocan't make any sense of their
emotions apraxia where they'reall confused.
I think it's called apraxiaForgive me if that's an
incorrect term, but in any case,the ability to feel emotions
and even our ability to createstories about our emotions,
those electrochemical, magneticdata that's going, you know,
(29:23):
data transfers that are going onin our bodies, that then we
interpret as feelings and tellourselves stories about, stories
about I think we misinterpretthem often and we're telling
really shitty stories, but itdoesn't mean that that's not
valuable and that we couldn't belearning the language of our
body's emotions and thenlearning to tell much better,
(29:46):
more empowering stories aboutthe effects of those what we
call feelings.
So I know I kind of went allover the place with that.
I tend to go far out, trying tokeep, trying to keep bring
myself back, wax and wane.
So you can let me know ifthere's any of that that is
(30:06):
confusing or went too far out orthat resonates with you and
you're like, yeah, I hear you onthat, or you have something to
add.
With you and you're like, yeah,I hear you on that, or you have
something to add.
One thing I want to add is thatdysregulation is not like a
total dysfunction, even thoughit can lead to dysfunction or
seem that way.
It can spiral out of controlfor sure.
(30:29):
But it's an alarm system andit's there for a reason and good
reasons, and so you know, whenthe alarm first goes off,
there's a reason.
Maybe it's that the alarm ismalfunctioning.
Even that you need to look into, you know.
So if your system, your nervoussystem, is setting off an alarm
(30:49):
, the first thing to do is tolike make sure you're not being
poisoned or in danger andactually I think a lot more of
us are being slowly poisoned orby watching catastrophes and by
getting riled up in fear andanger.
That is flipping our bodiesover into that parasympathetic
(31:22):
nervous system, and so that istripping that alarm system and
that's creating that chronicsense of anxiety that so many
people are experiencing.
And rather than think thatthere's something wrong with you
and that you need to drugyourself or distract yourself or
kill yourself because you're sodysfunctional, please I urge
(31:46):
you to consider that that's ahealthy response to an unhealthy
environment.
And there are things you can doto change both your immediate
environment and your exposure tothe broader environment.
And there's things you can doto, like I mentioned earlier,
(32:06):
expand your bandwidth so thatyou have a greater capacity to
handle toxicity in yourenvironment without becoming
overwhelmed by it, without beingflipped over into that
parasympathetic nervous system.
And I'm sure you know peoplewho are much better at handling
things and you probably knowpeople who are really terrible
(32:28):
at handling things, and most ofus are somewhere on that
spectrum in between thoseextremes, and most of us have
probably experienced, you know,a further end of those, both of
those extremes.
I personally have certainly hadtimes where I really didn't
handle things well and I've hadthings where I was, you know,
cool as a cucumber, as they say.
(32:51):
And I've also done a lot of work, some of it quite painful and
some of it quite joyful, tolearn healthier ways to express
myself.
This podcast is one of them.
Learning ways to express mythoughts and feelings through
writing, through talking tofriends, through writing songs,
through art, is a big one for me.
(33:12):
I love neurographic art.
Therapy has been helpful, soundtherapy, as I mentioned, both
in singing and in more specific,like chakra-focused,
intentional sound healing.
Again, there's a whole world ofhealing modalities.
It's really I have a list, anongoing list of over a hundred
(33:34):
that I'm putting in alphabeticalorder that I have looked into
and most of which I've at leasttried so, and I'm sure there are
many, many more.
So, yeah, I urge you toremember that there's nothing
wrong with you that can't healor at least get better.
Maybe you can't fix somethingcompletely, but you can shift
(33:58):
your focus from the worst ofwhatever is the reality you're
living in to something better inthe reality that you're living
in.
So, again, I'm not asking youto lie and in fact I'm really
big on honesty because lyingweakens our whole system, and
that's another topic I'm goingto get into, because I do think
(34:18):
that is part of what's creatingthis chronic, dysregulated state
that so many of us are sort oflooping in and out of or just
chronically stuck in a lot ofthe time.
Yeah, vagal tone is a real key.
Um, yeah, vagal tone is a realkey.
(34:39):
Learning to name more of youremotions and being okay with
learning to feel your emotionsand that might take, you know, a
partnership with a specialfriend or I'm building a
community.
I've had some great coaches andgreat friends to help me with
that and I want to be a supportsystem and create safe spaces
for you and others.
If you're looking for that,there's me and there's lots of
(35:01):
others in this expanding spacewho are creating more and more
ways for us to help each otherlearn these skills, develop
these skills, heal from ourcollective and individual wounds
and move forward into this newera.
It's 2025.
It is a new era.
(35:24):
I'm not just speaking somehoo-ha out my hoo-ha.
It is true, I might be speakingout my hoo-ha.
My brain, my brain, gets easilydistracted.
You may have noticed and I'd bespeaking by hoo-ha.
My brain, my brain, gets easilydistracted.
You may have noticed and easilyentertained, which I appreciate
.
And I do want to add that, eventhough, as I mentioned, healing
(35:44):
can be hard work and it can bescary and painful, it can also
be very fun and joyful.
Painful, it can also be veryfun and joyful, and the best
healing work is laughter andlove and touch and true
connection and communication,and so if we can all remember
(36:06):
that, then I think we couldactually get to it a lot quicker
, because it doesn't have to besuffering.
The suffering is actually madeup, the majority of and I'm not
saying there isn't pain, thereis, but the vast majority of the
pain that we are currentlyexperiencing is in the form of
self-created suffering orcollectively created suffering,
(36:29):
you know, like wars and disease,and not death.
I want to put the asterisk thatdeath is actually a beautiful
part of this process that wecall life, and at least my
current understanding is suchthat I would not, you know, if I
(36:52):
had infinite wishes with no badoutcomes, I still wouldn't wish
for no death, because, eventhough it is hard for the living
to deal with, I believe it's abeautiful reset in a way.
But I don't really know, andthat's one of the beautiful
things about it as well.
(37:13):
But I don't really know, andthat's one of the beautiful
(37:40):
things about it as well it'sthis great mystery that keeps us
, keeps making meaning in thismoment, in this life, relevant.
I think if we took death away,it would be, life would become
less meaningful and, yeah, wewould be less driven to find a
purpose.
And I want to wrap up, if I can, on that point, which is that
in my research and study ofother people's research, I have
really gotten a oh gosh, I lostmy train of thought.
I looked at my notes.
That was something we call thatthe ADHD brain.
(38:03):
We'll see if it comes back tome.
Well, I'll get back to justtalking about summing up that I
think metabolic disease is ahuge key.
I think, um, learning to feelour feelings and really express
(38:25):
them and expand that bandwidthis what's going to lead us to
lead a richer, more vibrant, um,more healthy and happy life.
So I'm here for it.
I'm still working on it.
I do believe there's not adirect correlation between
(38:50):
effort and output.
So if we can learn to ease upwhen it's getting hard and it
doesn't mean don't work hardthere's a difference between
joyfully working hard, like inthe way that we build muscle, we
build strength through practicesuch a beautiful thing and I
(39:12):
really love it and we get betterand better and better by those,
by those iterations, doing a,doing a thing that's just a
little bit harder than we'reused to, and then coming around
again, resting, coming aroundand doing it even better,
resting, coming around, doing iteven better, resting, coming
around, doing it even better.
That's a beautiful, amazing,wonderful thing and I want more
(39:32):
of it, and that's different fromefforting and coming around and
doing the same thing again andjust getting older and beaten
down and trying harder andtrying harder and getting
further and further away fromour goals, or, at least you know
, coming around and realizingwe're no closer to our goals and
(39:53):
we've just been like spinningour wheels.
And ask me how I know aboutthat feeling.
I know because I have done it alot, so you're not alone if
you're out there doing that.
In fact, as I mentioned earlier,there is a loneliness epidemic.
Suicide's on the rise,dysregulation is on the rise.
(40:14):
Anxiety is on the rise.
Lack of focus is on the rise.
All sorts, all the disorders,all sorts of D words and C words
are on the rise, and some of myfavorite C words, though, can
also be on the rise, and thoseare creativity and courage and
(40:35):
curiosity and community andconnection and communication and
coherence and calming, andcoherence and calming.
I'm going to wrap it up there,because I could go on.
Hey, hit up our sponsors.
(40:56):
That's the Sleeping DragonsCompany, over at Etsy right now,
and maybe on my website again.
Sleeping Dragons Company, myown company, where we carry lots
of great phthalate-freefragrances and essential
oil-based aromatherapy perfumes,heart-shaped stones, natural
(41:18):
pigments, all sorts of thingsfor your creativity and
self-love needs.
So awaken your creative spirit.
Over at Sleeping Dragonscompany.
Today you can find them bygoing over to Etsy and over at
Sleeping Dragons Company.
Today you can find them bygoing over to Etsy and looking
for Sleeping Dragons Company ortyping in
wwwsleepingdragonscocom.
(41:41):
That should get you there.
The Authentic Action Academy thesister invention or seed to
this podcast, the AuthenticAction podcast, both of which
(42:01):
are aimed at creating morecreative community, helping
humanity evolve into moreconsciousness, more kindness and
more curiosity.
I want to add courage in there.
I already mentioned my favoritec words.
(42:22):
Let's wrap it up with that.
I'm going to do a quick skimhere and see if I forgot any key
points.
Yeah, some of these things arequite simple.
Like you could be breathingwrong or just be eating the
(42:44):
wrong things at the wrong time,or many, many, many of us are
just eating too much of too manythings.
So less really could be more.
In many cases, the news, theprogramming, is designed to keep
you dysregulated, numb and dumb.
So turn off that television,find something better.
(43:08):
Remember you could be speakingfor yourself If you find
yourself repeating phrases thateveryone around you is repeating
, which I'm hearing a lot of.
Check yourself you might bespeaking someone else's program,
just saying I'm saying and I'msaying there you go.
(43:29):
Yeah, vagal tone, tapping,humming, drumming, singing All
of those are great, greatwindows or doorways in to the
healing process.
So I urge you to find somethingthat you love laughter and put a
little bit more intention orfocus on it.
(43:50):
Find yourself a coach.
Join a community.
I have a couple.
You are welcome to join me andI hope that you do.
I have lots of ways in that arefree.
I have other ways in that youcan help support me so that I
can keep supporting myself, andhowever feels right to you is
perfect.
So I hope you will do that.
(44:11):
I didn't even write my jokedown, I just left it up over
here, so that means I got to getto it over here.
Let's see if I can find it.
It's under the very bestpsychology jokes of today.
What's the difference between apsychologist and a magician?
(44:35):
A magician pulls rabbits out ofhats, whereas a psychologist
pulls rabbits out of rats.
There you go, peace.
(45:00):
Till next time.
I'll be seeing you.
Stay courageous, ciao for now.
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