April 16, 2024 • 28 mins
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(00:00):
Hello, everyone.
(00:00):
And welcome back to real, braveand unstoppable.
This is episode number 122.
All about feeling big emotions.
As I record this, my daughterand I are going to be traveling
to Italy in two days.
it's mid-March right now.
So, yeah, we're going to go toItaly.
(00:21):
We're flying into Venice.
And then we're going to Tuscany.
We're going to make a stop inSiena, which is my daughter's
name.
And that's where her name camefrom.
Her name has one N not two.
So like Sienna, Italy.
And then we'll, we'll spend acouple of days in Tuscany
staying in a hanging out, seeingthe pretty beautiful countryside
(00:43):
and then we will finish up ourtime in Rome.
Because you need to go to Rome.
When you're going to Italy.
So, yeah.
So we've been planning this tripsince November.
And it's hard to believe.
It's finally here, time flies,right?
So, we're talking about emotionstoday.
So like this, this trip isexciting.
(01:05):
Like, we tend to kind of hang onto those types of emotions.
Right?
Excitement, joy, happiness, thatsense of looking forward to
something like we like thoseemotions, right?
Yeah.
We love them.
And then, you know, in contrastthe quote unquote negative
emotions...
don't like them so much.
So recently I was actuallythinking about a time in my life
(01:27):
where I was really consumed bysadness and depression, and it
just seemed to spiral deeper anddeeper all the time.
So for a long time, I've hadthis sort of fear about getting
really sad.
Like every time I start to feelreally sad and unsure about
something I kind of would panicbecause I had this scary story
(01:49):
about the sadness.
you know, that it was going toturn into like the severe
depression and ultimately nevergo away.
Yeah.
So I didn't want to feelsadness, so if those are my
thoughts, Of course, I'm notgoing to want to feel sadness.
Well, no emotion stays forever.
It's just not how it works.
And actually the chemical partof an emotion like that happens
(02:12):
in your brain, in your body onlylasts, like it's less than 60
seconds.
I think.
It's something like that.
It's.
I've heard 90 seconds.
I've heard 30 seconds.
So somewhere it's short.
And anything longer than that isjust our mind perpetuating it.
We've talked about thoughts,creating feelings on this
(02:32):
podcast before.
And so like when we have athought about something and then
we have an emotion, it canspiral because then we have a
thought about the emotion andthen we have more feelings that
come from that thought and thenso on and so on.
So it's easy to see how our mindcan keep it going.
But I've done a lot of work onemotions and they're still
(02:55):
challenging for me because I'msomebody who tends to feel them
really strongly, like I get bigemotions.
And I have a hard time beingreally like, pragmatic about
them.
and there's yeah, there's stilltough sometimes.
So today I'm going to talk aboutfeeling big emotions and yes, it
is hard.
(03:15):
You'll learn about emotions, howthey're related to our thoughts,
how they can fuel our actions.
You'll also learn how topractice feeling them and to
release yourself from thosescary stories that you have
about them.
So that you can be moreintentional in how you show up,
even when you don't feel likeit.
I'll share some of my favoriteways to really like stick with
(03:37):
an emotion and like, let it movethrough me, or like to process
it at the end of today'sepisode.
So stick with me.
So, first of all, let's justtalk about what emotions are.
I always love to start withdefinitions, from Merriam
Webster.
An emotion is a conscious mentalreaction, like anger or fear.
(03:57):
For example, subjectivelyexperienced as a strong feeling
that's usually directed toward aspecific object and it's
typically accompanied byphysiological and behavioral
changes in the body.
So, what that says is that thereis something that happens.
And we subjectively experienceit.
(04:17):
So that means we have thoughtsabout it.
We perceive it in a certain way.
And then we have a feeling thatcomes from those thoughts.
We experienced the thought asthe feeling, right?
That's that's our experience.
And usually that feeling...
it comes it's from acircumstance, right.
Or we feel it towards the thingthat happened.
(04:38):
And we also have a physicalcomponent, physiological
component, and it fuels ouractions.
So that's how that all fitstogether.
So just a little bit more aboutit.
there's an article on very wellmind online that I, I liked
this.
They suggest that emotions arecomplex psychological states
that involve three distinctcomponents.
(05:00):
So this is similar to what Ijust said earlier.
One, a subjective experience twoa physiological response, three,
a behavioral or expressiveresponse.
So that's thoughts...
subjective experience.
Emotion and physiologicalresponse and it leads to
behavioral response.
(05:21):
Another little bit aboutemotions.
in 1972 psychologist, Paul Ekmansuggested there are six basic
emotions that are universalthroughout human cultures.
Fear, disgust, anger, surprise,joy, and sadness.
In the eighties, Robert Plutchikintroduced another emotion
classification system.
(05:42):
I hope you're finding thisinteresting.
Cause I'm getting to the coolpart.
But that was known as the wheelof emotions.
I love this thing.
The wheel of emotions.
is it's a, it's a big circle andit has those six I think he
might've added another one.
So there might be seven in themiddle of the major emotions.
And then you go out of thespokes of the wheel and it has
(06:03):
more like nuanced emotions.
Most of us don't have a hugeemotional vocabulary, so it's
really helpful and kind ofmaking sense of what your
emotion is.
highly recommend visitingfeelings, wheel.com and printing
it off.
But really knowing those nuancedemotions help you, it matters.
Like it helps you make sense ofthem and when you can make sense
(06:23):
of them, it just helps youprocess them.
A little bit better.
So looking at the threecomponents that we talked about.
So first the subjectiveexperience, I mentioned it's
subjective because we have astory about the circumstance.
Or the experience.
And that comes in the form ofour thoughts.
(06:44):
There's also a physiologicalcomponent.
Like I mentioned, which comesfrom our sympathetic nervous
system.
So think about your stomachsinking or your chest
tightening.
So then we experienced thisemotion and then we express it
or decide what to do with it.
And that happens, subconsciouslya great deal of the time.
(07:04):
So we feel the emotion, weinterpret it and then express it
in the form of a behavior oraction.
Sometimes that's like aknee-jerk reaction where we
don't really think about it.
We also have primary emotionsand secondary emotions.
So primary emotions are the onesthat we experience universally.
Like the one that we feel first.
Basic emotions like happiness,sadness, fear, disgust, anger,
(07:26):
surprise.
And secondary emotions stemfrom, and they're also
variations of primary emotions.
And sometimes we have thosesecondary emotions in response
to our primary emotions.
For example, we feel sad, andthen like, we're we have
thoughts about being sad.
We're mad at ourselves forfeeling sad.
And then those thoughts createnew feelings or more of the same
(07:50):
feeling.
But, like I mentioned earlier,it's easy to get into that, like
spiral kind of.
So emotions, like I mentionedbefore, they don't last long,
but they can be really intenseand we don't really like that
because they're uncomfortable.
They're also likely to have adefinite cause that you can
pinpoint and identify.
But the important thing to takeaway from all of this is that
(08:12):
feelings are influenced by ourperception of the situation.
Our thoughts about acircumstance that's really
neutral.
So the thing about emotionsthough, is that they actually do
serve a purpose.
Because they prepare our bodiesfor action.
You know, they influence ourthoughts and they can be felt
they can be motivators of futurebehavior.
(08:32):
But we also work really hard,most of us, to avoid strong
negative feelings, like whowants to feel anxiety, for
example, So, let me give you twoexamples.
First, this is an example in myown life.
When I have some kind ofconflict in my relationship, or
if I'm feeling insecure in therelationship, like I need some
kind of validation.
(08:54):
I get anxious.
And that feeling for me isreally awful.
Like I know for me, I get thisburning sensation in my chest.
I get a pit in my stomach.
And I can't focus on anything.
So, of course, of course.
I want to avoid that.
So personally, how do I do that?
(09:15):
Well, this is what gets me intotrouble.
I will send a message to mypartner.
I'll fish for some kind ofvalidation in a text, or, you
know, maybe he sends me amessage or, and I knee-jerk
respond to something.
It temporarily relieves thatemotion that I don't like, like
anxiety, I reach out forvalidation, I might get that
(09:37):
validation.
I might not, but just sendingthe message, like, okay...
I'm going to get this.
It temporarily relieves thatemotion.
Another example is people who.
Emotionally eat.
They might feel an emotion likesadness or depression or
(09:57):
something like that, or maybeit's anger or frustration or
stress.
And then to avoid that theymight pull out the Ben and
Jerry's or the cookies orwhatever.
In both cases, we're avoidingthe uncomfortable emotion.
The problem with that is that inavoiding it, we get this
temporary relief.
(10:18):
But the temporary reliefreinforces the avoidant
behavior.
So we get stuck there.
And we never actually learn howto feel the emotions.
And then the behaviors we getstuck in don't really get us
closer to being who we reallywant to be, or like, you know,
living the life we really wantto live.
We get stuck over in thatpattern.
(10:40):
So recall.
I'm going to say this again.
It's important.
emotions really start when weperceive a neutral circumstance
in a certain way.
So then it becomes thissubjective experience because we
have thoughts about it.
And then our thoughts create anemotion and then our emotions
fuel our actions.
(11:00):
And we can have secondaryemotions and thoughts about our
thoughts, emotions, and actions,which can, like I mentioned
before, can create this funlittle spiral.
I'm sure that resonates withsome of you.
I know for me, totally.
I have that happen too.
So there are a couple of thingswe can do to work with emotions.
And one is working onidentifying unhelpful or
(11:20):
limiting beliefs and thoughtsand finding something new to
believe.
The six, a lot of practice.
And a lot of times it's easierto like, get at with coaching.
It's hard to see some of thesethings on your own.
Especially because our brain iskind of wired to want to avoid
that discomfort.
So like looking at the thingsthat are creating it can be
(11:44):
difficult.
And also believing new things.
your brain will want to trickyou out of that.
So having someone to kind ofkeep you on course is super
helpful.
The other thing to do is to workon really allowing yourself to
process emotions.
So we'll talk about that.
Emotions are really just likeenergy and they're there in your
(12:05):
body.
And, you know, a lot of timeswhen we don't like them, we kind
of contract, we tense up like,oh, I don't like this.
I don't want it.
I don't like it.
I don't like it.
But what happens is when we dothat, like we're not really
allowing them to move through.
I saw this thing on Facebookonce that was the pictures, like
a cartoon body or something.
And then there's like a hole inthe, the figures chest- stomach
(12:29):
area.
And then there was this likerainbow thing that was just
going through the whole.
And the thing said, emotions arejust flowing through.
there's just experiences movingthrough us.
So let them.
And I love that because it'slike totally true.
They have to have somewhere togo and they will go.
(12:53):
At some point.
They come and they go.
So we just have to kind of letthat energy move through and
that's processing emotions.
So why do we work so hard toavoid emotions?
The negative ones, quote,unquote, the only reason
negative emotions are hard tohold is because we've labeled
them as feeling quote, unquotebad.
(13:13):
We have scary stories about theemotions.
And addressing these stories isreally important and it also
helps us allow ourselves to goto the negative emotions.
If we don't address thosestories, we might not ever feel
calm or confident enough toactually experience the negative
emotion.
(13:34):
So let's go there.
Why is the negative emotion orproblem?
Some of mine personally arelike, it won't go away.
It'll last forever.
I'll keep feeling bad.
I don't like feeling bad.
I won't be productive.
I'm weak.
I'll go back to how it wasduring my divorce.
It'll ruin my life because Ican't do the normal things to
(13:55):
take care of myself.
So, of course, of course, I'mnot going to want to feel
negative emotions if those aremy stories about them.
So then we got to ask.
What if the stories aren't true.
They're just thoughts.
What then?
Like, I mean, is it possible mystory's wrong like that?
(14:16):
It's never going to go away ormy life will be ruined.
Is it possible that's not true.
What evidence might I have thatI've been ignoring that
contradicts the story.
Well, I mean, I can tell youthat there's no emotion I've
ever had this lasted forever.
So there you go.
(14:37):
So, yeah.
What if it's possible that itwon't last forever?
And this is also one of the mostcommon, scary stories about
feeling an intense emotion.
So then it would probably beeasier to make that emotion
neutral.
We could let those emotions comeand go like waves and we just
see the bigger picture.
Like what if my story was, oh,here's anxiety, for example.
(15:00):
This is just an experience I'mhaving like any other emotion,
like joy or peace or whatever.
It's just moving through me.
Like, what if I could see itlike that?
So that brings me to anotherpoint, which is everyone has a
mix of both positive andnegative emotions.
We really have to feel all ofthem.
So.
(15:21):
It would be weird if likesomeone died, for example, and
you weren't sad.
If someone close to you died andit would be weird if you weren't
sad.
They serve a purpose.
And also like if we take likehappiness and sadness, for
example, like, um, withoutsadness, we wouldn't know what
happiness was.
There's no.
It's a comparative thing.
We just wouldn't know.
(15:42):
So.
If negative emotions are alwaysgoing to be part of the human
experience like, and they are,they just are.
How will you get practice,feeling them?
And navigating them moreeffectively if you don't ever
come across them.
Okay.
Yeah, I know.
You're going to say, well, if Idon't ever come across them,
then I'm not going to need topractice.
But, you know what I mean.
(16:04):
Negative emotions.
They can also tell you somethingfor me.
Like anxiety can tell me to slowdown and look at how I was
looking to other people forvalidation, instead of giving it
to myself.
You know, it was showing me whatI needed to work on, so that
emotion, like it was on my sidein a lot of ways.
And then we can ask ourselves,like, who would we get to be if
(16:26):
we didn't have the scary storiesabout negative emotions?
So for me using my example, Ithink I'd probably have more
confidence in myself.
I'd feel stronger, morerational, pragmatic, empowered
and like probably more at peaceoverall.
And less stressed, which is soimportant.
Yeah.
(16:46):
So I know that you're probablywondering like what you're
supposed to do though, whenyou're in it.
Like when you're feeling thosereally awful emotions and just
want to get out of it.
Yeah.
So I've got some good ideas foryou.
Okay.
So first of all, It's importantto accept them.
So emotions just when they comeinto our being, like, we can't
(17:09):
really control that.
They pop in.
We can't control that initialhit of emotion.
We can control what we do withit.
Right.
But what, with acceptance, itmeans that the things that are
out of our control.
We make space for.
We are open to feeling themwithout making them bad or wrong
or having to fix it.
(17:31):
It's just kind of, we take thatstance of like, okay, this just
is, it doesn't mean you like it.
But you just like, you makespace for it because you can
still do things...
even when you feel shitty.
All right.
You can still do the things thatare important to you, even if
it's harder when you feelshitty, but you can still do
them.
(17:51):
So acceptance of those emotionsis really important.
So it's a lot easier to say thatthan it is to do it.
So I'm going to just kind of gothrough some things.
And when I say acceptance of theemotion too, it's almost like
what I said earlier aboutprocessing it.
You're making space for it tomove through you.
You're not judging it.
You're just sort of like, Heysadness.
(18:14):
How's it going?
Come on in.
I'll show you the door whenyou're ready, That's what it's
like.
So a few things that I reallylike to do too...
Like it involves sticking withthat emotion and a few things
that I really like to do arefirst of all, what I call the
three Ns.
The first N is notice.
(18:35):
So you're just mindfullynoticing, like what you're
feeling.
The second N is naming it.
So, this is important becausethe language is important here.
Like if you're feeling.
Let's say you're feelingsadness.
When you name it, you want tosay, I notice I'm feeling
sadness.
It's not, I'm sad.
(18:58):
Because you're not sad.
You're just experiencing sad.
It's moving through you.
So, if you say, like, I noticeI'm feeling sad, it just creates
a little space, creates a littledistance.
It kind of gives it a transientfeel.
I guess it's moving.
So that's important.
The third N is normalize.
Or neutralize, however you wantto think about it, but it's
(19:20):
totally okay to feel what you'refeeling.
You know, you can kind of askyourself, like, why am I feeling
this way?
Oh yeah.
It makes sense.
Why I'd feel this way.
Other people feel this way too.
So you're not like shitting onyourself for feeling it.
Right or you're not, you know,you're not, you're taking the
judgment out of it.
so that is a good way to kind ofjust welcome in the emotion.
(19:43):
Other things that I really likewhen it's really intense and it
just, it's not really a pass, aquickly passing emotion.
The first thing I'll suggest isjust like observing the emotion
in your body, describing it.
So that looks like maybe closingyour eyes, taking a couple of
deep breaths and just noticingwhat your body feels like.
(20:07):
So like I'm doing it right nowas I'm talking.
I'm feeling a little tense, liketightness in my chest.
And.
I'm cold.
I don't know why.
I mean, yeah, it's cold outtoday.
So you just kind of do a littlescan, like notice it.
and then like, let's just say,I'm feeling I'm going to run
with the example of sadness.
So I'm just going to like scanthat I'm not feeling sadness
(20:30):
right now.
But I'll just kind of, if I was,I would scan my body and see
like, okay, where does sadnessshow up?
If I had to locate it, wherewould I find it?
So let's just say I noticedsadness in my stomach.
So, okay.
I'd kind of imagine looking atthis, something object in my
(20:51):
stomach.
And then like, you can pretendyou're a little scuba diver or
something like that, orsomething like that.
And you're inside of your bodyand you're going to look at
this, whatever it is.
That's in your stomach, like,what would you see?
Like if it were an object, theemotion, the sadness, what would
it look like?
(21:12):
Is it big?
Is it small?
Does it have a shape or color?
Just to have a texture.
Is it moving?
If it's moving, is it movingfast or slow.
If it had a taste, what wouldyou taste or a smell?
Is it squishy?
Is it.
Like a lot of times when I askpeople what they notice, they'll
(21:33):
be like, oh, it's just a blob.
So like, however you want todescribe it, but like, get
curious about it.
Like, what does this thing looklike?
But it kind of depersonalizes ita little bit.
So you're just observing thisthing.
And you want to watch it heretoo?
Like, do you notice judgmentabout it?
And if you do.
(21:53):
It's okay.
Just notice it.
But our goal here is to benonjudgmental about it.
It's just a thing that we'reexperiencing right now.
For some people, it helps toimagine taking it out and
setting it next to you.
So it's just kind of hanging outwith you while you do your
stuff, while you do your thing.
But I really like that.
(22:14):
It's helpful for a lot ofpeople.
It just kind of it makes youstick with it, and then you're
able to observe it kind ofmoving and doing something.
Um, another one that I reallylike is journaling while you're
feeling it.
So like, same thing as what Ijust kind of described, but
you're just gonna, you justnotice what are all the
(22:35):
emotions?
Do you notice anything besidessadness?
For example.
Like write it down and then lookat like, what are my thoughts?
What's what's in my head writeall that down.
And then start to connect like.
What thoughts are creating whatfeelings.
And while you're doing thatthough, You do really want to
also take note of what theexperience of feeling the
(22:58):
emotion is like.
Okay, so next thing is, this islike one of my favorites.
You take a, take a piece ofpaper.
And this one, you want a pieceof paper that you can destroy.
So just any piece of paper,notebook, paper, or whatever.
Get a pen.
And what you want to do is sitdown and you want to just like
(23:20):
scan again, notice, like, whatis the emotion?
And you want to just write...
Stream of consciousness.
Describing it, like, what do younotice?
Where do you notice it?
Like what I talked about withthe observe and describe, you
can do that.
You can ask yourself, like, isthe emotion trying to tell you
something you're just going towrite without picking up your
(23:43):
pen or pencil withoutstopping...
Until you feel something shift.
As you do this at one point, youwill feel a shift in the
emotion.
Who knows what it'll shift to,but you will feel a shift.
And when you feel the shift,then you can stop writing.
And then what you do is you gotear that piece of paper up.
(24:05):
I did this a couple of weeks agoand I burned it, but I don't
really recommend that cause.
Can be dangerous.
So just tear it up.
And then once you dispose of it,wash your hands.
Wash your hands.
So you're kinda like, okay.
Done with that.
Yeah.
other things that I like to youcan go on like insight timer or
(24:29):
something like that, and find,meditations where it helps you
like process the emotion.
So check out things like that,too.
Any kind of journaling is great.
You can get creative, you canlike, I haven't really done
this, but this could actually befun too, is like, if you're, if
you like to draw or paint orwhatever, doodle, draw or paint
(24:53):
the emotion or like, my mom'sreally into mixed media type
stuff.
Do something like that with it.
Like what would the emotion looklike?
That can be really healing.
You know, however you like toreally express yourself, but
that's the thing is that theemotion has to be expressed.
So remember that.
Yeah, so that is really all Ihave for like the, like, those
(25:14):
are some great ways to reallylet that emotion, that energy
really move.
You gotta let it move.
So.
I do want to say that it is noteasy to do this.
Cause it's not supposed tonecessarily help you feel
better.
Cause it's acceptance of anemotion, right.
(25:35):
So we're not trying to get it,get rid of it.
We're accepting it.
We're saying, okay, fine.
Fine.
You're here.
Okay.
What I find is that it kind ofhelps change your relationship
with it.
And if your emotions are reallyintense, You know, it might not,
it might not feel better, but itwill eventually.
(25:55):
So you got to kind of stick withit.
But remember if you're onlydoing this to make it better,
you're not really accepting it.
And it is like, we've got tojust let go of the need to
control those emotions.
And then, you know, when you canreally handle your emotions, it
leads to emotional maturity.
Like you, then your actions areno longer dictated by your
emotions.
(26:16):
So you're able to be moreintentional and more rational
about things and like it's.
Yeah, it's hard work, but it'sdefinitely worth it.
So.
Go try those things and let meknow how it goes.
I hope that was super helpful.
before I go, I just want toinvite you to, or ask you to...
hop on over to my website and goto the link.
(26:37):
Courtney revard.com/love life.
And there's a great freeworkbook.
It's not related to emotionsnecessarily.
It's about creating a life thatyou love.
And to do that, you'lldefinitely need to process
emotions because you know, weall have them.
I mean, that's just life, right.
But how about over there?
If you haven't downloaded thatyet?
go check that out.
(26:57):
And also I also, as always, Iwould love it.
If you would go leave me arating and a review.
That helps other people find theshow.
And then share it with a friend.
If you are getting some valueout of this.
All right, friends.
Thanks for listening.
And I will see you next time.
Hello, everyone.
(00:00):
And welcome back to real, braveand unstoppable.
This is episode number 122.
All about feeling big emotions.
As I record this, my daughterand I are going to be traveling
to Italy in two days.
it's mid-March right now.
So, yeah, we're going to go toItaly.
(00:21):
We're flying into Venice.
And then we're going to Tuscany.
We're going to make a stop inSiena, which is my daughter's
name.
And that's where her name camefrom.
Her name has one N not two.
So like Sienna, Italy.
And then we'll, we'll spend acouple of days in Tuscany
staying in a hanging out, seeingthe pretty beautiful countryside
(00:43):
and then we will finish up ourtime in Rome.
Because you need to go to Rome.
When you're going to Italy.
So, yeah.
So we've been planning this tripsince November.
And it's hard to believe.
It's finally here, time flies,right?
So, we're talking about emotionstoday.
So like this, this trip isexciting.
(01:05):
Like, we tend to kind of hang onto those types of emotions.
Right?
Excitement, joy, happiness, thatsense of looking forward to
something like we like thoseemotions, right?
Yeah.
We love them.
And then, you know, in contrastthe quote unquote negative
emotions...
don't like them so much.
So recently I was actuallythinking about a time in my life
(01:27):
where I was really consumed bysadness and depression, and it
just seemed to spiral deeper anddeeper all the time.
So for a long time, I've hadthis sort of fear about getting
really sad.
Like every time I start to feelreally sad and unsure about
something I kind of would panicbecause I had this scary story
(01:49):
about the sadness.
you know, that it was going toturn into like the severe
depression and ultimately nevergo away.
Yeah.
So I didn't want to feelsadness, so if those are my
thoughts, Of course, I'm notgoing to want to feel sadness.
Well, no emotion stays forever.
It's just not how it works.
And actually the chemical partof an emotion like that happens
(02:12):
in your brain, in your body onlylasts, like it's less than 60
seconds.
I think.
It's something like that.
It's.
I've heard 90 seconds.
I've heard 30 seconds.
So somewhere it's short.
And anything longer than that isjust our mind perpetuating it.
We've talked about thoughts,creating feelings on this
(02:32):
podcast before.
And so like when we have athought about something and then
we have an emotion, it canspiral because then we have a
thought about the emotion andthen we have more feelings that
come from that thought and thenso on and so on.
So it's easy to see how our mindcan keep it going.
But I've done a lot of work onemotions and they're still
(02:55):
challenging for me because I'msomebody who tends to feel them
really strongly, like I get bigemotions.
And I have a hard time beingreally like, pragmatic about
them.
and there's yeah, there's stilltough sometimes.
So today I'm going to talk aboutfeeling big emotions and yes, it
is hard.
(03:15):
You'll learn about emotions, howthey're related to our thoughts,
how they can fuel our actions.
You'll also learn how topractice feeling them and to
release yourself from thosescary stories that you have
about them.
So that you can be moreintentional in how you show up,
even when you don't feel likeit.
I'll share some of my favoriteways to really like stick with
(03:37):
an emotion and like, let it movethrough me, or like to process
it at the end of today'sepisode.
So stick with me.
So, first of all, let's justtalk about what emotions are.
I always love to start withdefinitions, from Merriam
Webster.
An emotion is a conscious mentalreaction, like anger or fear.
(03:57):
For example, subjectivelyexperienced as a strong feeling
that's usually directed toward aspecific object and it's
typically accompanied byphysiological and behavioral
changes in the body.
So, what that says is that thereis something that happens.
And we subjectively experienceit.
(04:17):
So that means we have thoughtsabout it.
We perceive it in a certain way.
And then we have a feeling thatcomes from those thoughts.
We experienced the thought asthe feeling, right?
That's that's our experience.
And usually that feeling...
it comes it's from acircumstance, right.
Or we feel it towards the thingthat happened.
(04:38):
And we also have a physicalcomponent, physiological
component, and it fuels ouractions.
So that's how that all fitstogether.
So just a little bit more aboutit.
there's an article on very wellmind online that I, I liked
this.
They suggest that emotions arecomplex psychological states
that involve three distinctcomponents.
(05:00):
So this is similar to what Ijust said earlier.
One, a subjective experience twoa physiological response, three,
a behavioral or expressiveresponse.
So that's thoughts...
subjective experience.
Emotion and physiologicalresponse and it leads to
behavioral response.
(05:21):
Another little bit aboutemotions.
in 1972 psychologist, Paul Ekmansuggested there are six basic
emotions that are universalthroughout human cultures.
Fear, disgust, anger, surprise,joy, and sadness.
In the eighties, Robert Plutchikintroduced another emotion
classification system.
(05:42):
I hope you're finding thisinteresting.
Cause I'm getting to the coolpart.
But that was known as the wheelof emotions.
I love this thing.
The wheel of emotions.
is it's a, it's a big circle andit has those six I think he
might've added another one.
So there might be seven in themiddle of the major emotions.
And then you go out of thespokes of the wheel and it has
(06:03):
more like nuanced emotions.
Most of us don't have a hugeemotional vocabulary, so it's
really helpful and kind ofmaking sense of what your
emotion is.
highly recommend visitingfeelings, wheel.com and printing
it off.
But really knowing those nuancedemotions help you, it matters.
Like it helps you make sense ofthem and when you can make sense
(06:23):
of them, it just helps youprocess them.
A little bit better.
So looking at the threecomponents that we talked about.
So first the subjectiveexperience, I mentioned it's
subjective because we have astory about the circumstance.
Or the experience.
And that comes in the form ofour thoughts.
(06:44):
There's also a physiologicalcomponent.
Like I mentioned, which comesfrom our sympathetic nervous
system.
So think about your stomachsinking or your chest
tightening.
So then we experienced thisemotion and then we express it
or decide what to do with it.
And that happens, subconsciouslya great deal of the time.
(07:04):
So we feel the emotion, weinterpret it and then express it
in the form of a behavior oraction.
Sometimes that's like aknee-jerk reaction where we
don't really think about it.
We also have primary emotionsand secondary emotions.
So primary emotions are the onesthat we experience universally.
Like the one that we feel first.
Basic emotions like happiness,sadness, fear, disgust, anger,
(07:26):
surprise.
And secondary emotions stemfrom, and they're also
variations of primary emotions.
And sometimes we have thosesecondary emotions in response
to our primary emotions.
For example, we feel sad, andthen like, we're we have
thoughts about being sad.
We're mad at ourselves forfeeling sad.
And then those thoughts createnew feelings or more of the same
(07:50):
feeling.
But, like I mentioned earlier,it's easy to get into that, like
spiral kind of.
So emotions, like I mentionedbefore, they don't last long,
but they can be really intenseand we don't really like that
because they're uncomfortable.
They're also likely to have adefinite cause that you can
pinpoint and identify.
But the important thing to takeaway from all of this is that
(08:12):
feelings are influenced by ourperception of the situation.
Our thoughts about acircumstance that's really
neutral.
So the thing about emotionsthough, is that they actually do
serve a purpose.
Because they prepare our bodiesfor action.
You know, they influence ourthoughts and they can be felt
they can be motivators of futurebehavior.
(08:32):
But we also work really hard,most of us, to avoid strong
negative feelings, like whowants to feel anxiety, for
example, So, let me give you twoexamples.
First, this is an example in myown life.
When I have some kind ofconflict in my relationship, or
if I'm feeling insecure in therelationship, like I need some
kind of validation.
(08:54):
I get anxious.
And that feeling for me isreally awful.
Like I know for me, I get thisburning sensation in my chest.
I get a pit in my stomach.
And I can't focus on anything.
So, of course, of course.
I want to avoid that.
So personally, how do I do that?
(09:15):
Well, this is what gets me intotrouble.
I will send a message to mypartner.
I'll fish for some kind ofvalidation in a text, or, you
know, maybe he sends me amessage or, and I knee-jerk
respond to something.
It temporarily relieves thatemotion that I don't like, like
anxiety, I reach out forvalidation, I might get that
(09:37):
validation.
I might not, but just sendingthe message, like, okay...
I'm going to get this.
It temporarily relieves thatemotion.
Another example is people who.
Emotionally eat.
They might feel an emotion likesadness or depression or
(09:57):
something like that, or maybeit's anger or frustration or
stress.
And then to avoid that theymight pull out the Ben and
Jerry's or the cookies orwhatever.
In both cases, we're avoidingthe uncomfortable emotion.
The problem with that is that inavoiding it, we get this
temporary relief.
(10:18):
But the temporary reliefreinforces the avoidant
behavior.
So we get stuck there.
And we never actually learn howto feel the emotions.
And then the behaviors we getstuck in don't really get us
closer to being who we reallywant to be, or like, you know,
living the life we really wantto live.
We get stuck over in thatpattern.
(10:40):
So recall.
I'm going to say this again.
It's important.
emotions really start when weperceive a neutral circumstance
in a certain way.
So then it becomes thissubjective experience because we
have thoughts about it.
And then our thoughts create anemotion and then our emotions
fuel our actions.
(11:00):
And we can have secondaryemotions and thoughts about our
thoughts, emotions, and actions,which can, like I mentioned
before, can create this funlittle spiral.
I'm sure that resonates withsome of you.
I know for me, totally.
I have that happen too.
So there are a couple of thingswe can do to work with emotions.
And one is working onidentifying unhelpful or
(11:20):
limiting beliefs and thoughtsand finding something new to
believe.
The six, a lot of practice.
And a lot of times it's easierto like, get at with coaching.
It's hard to see some of thesethings on your own.
Especially because our brain iskind of wired to want to avoid
that discomfort.
So like looking at the thingsthat are creating it can be
(11:44):
difficult.
And also believing new things.
your brain will want to trickyou out of that.
So having someone to kind ofkeep you on course is super
helpful.
The other thing to do is to workon really allowing yourself to
process emotions.
So we'll talk about that.
Emotions are really just likeenergy and they're there in your
(12:05):
body.
And, you know, a lot of timeswhen we don't like them, we kind
of contract, we tense up like,oh, I don't like this.
I don't want it.
I don't like it.
I don't like it.
But what happens is when we dothat, like we're not really
allowing them to move through.
I saw this thing on Facebookonce that was the pictures, like
a cartoon body or something.
And then there's like a hole inthe, the figures chest- stomach
(12:29):
area.
And then there was this likerainbow thing that was just
going through the whole.
And the thing said, emotions arejust flowing through.
there's just experiences movingthrough us.
So let them.
And I love that because it'slike totally true.
They have to have somewhere togo and they will go.
(12:53):
At some point.
They come and they go.
So we just have to kind of letthat energy move through and
that's processing emotions.
So why do we work so hard toavoid emotions?
The negative ones, quote,unquote, the only reason
negative emotions are hard tohold is because we've labeled
them as feeling quote, unquotebad.
(13:13):
We have scary stories about theemotions.
And addressing these stories isreally important and it also
helps us allow ourselves to goto the negative emotions.
If we don't address thosestories, we might not ever feel
calm or confident enough toactually experience the negative
emotion.
(13:34):
So let's go there.
Why is the negative emotion orproblem?
Some of mine personally arelike, it won't go away.
It'll last forever.
I'll keep feeling bad.
I don't like feeling bad.
I won't be productive.
I'm weak.
I'll go back to how it wasduring my divorce.
It'll ruin my life because Ican't do the normal things to
(13:55):
take care of myself.
So, of course, of course, I'mnot going to want to feel
negative emotions if those aremy stories about them.
So then we got to ask.
What if the stories aren't true.
They're just thoughts.
What then?
Like, I mean, is it possible mystory's wrong like that?
(14:16):
It's never going to go away ormy life will be ruined.
Is it possible that's not true.
What evidence might I have thatI've been ignoring that
contradicts the story.
Well, I mean, I can tell youthat there's no emotion I've
ever had this lasted forever.
So there you go.
(14:37):
So, yeah.
What if it's possible that itwon't last forever?
And this is also one of the mostcommon, scary stories about
feeling an intense emotion.
So then it would probably beeasier to make that emotion
neutral.
We could let those emotions comeand go like waves and we just
see the bigger picture.
Like what if my story was, oh,here's anxiety, for example.
(15:00):
This is just an experience I'mhaving like any other emotion,
like joy or peace or whatever.
It's just moving through me.
Like, what if I could see itlike that?
So that brings me to anotherpoint, which is everyone has a
mix of both positive andnegative emotions.
We really have to feel all ofthem.
So.
(15:21):
It would be weird if likesomeone died, for example, and
you weren't sad.
If someone close to you died andit would be weird if you weren't
sad.
They serve a purpose.
And also like if we take likehappiness and sadness, for
example, like, um, withoutsadness, we wouldn't know what
happiness was.
There's no.
It's a comparative thing.
We just wouldn't know.
(15:42):
So.
If negative emotions are alwaysgoing to be part of the human
experience like, and they are,they just are.
How will you get practice,feeling them?
And navigating them moreeffectively if you don't ever
come across them.
Okay.
Yeah, I know.
You're going to say, well, if Idon't ever come across them,
then I'm not going to need topractice.
But, you know what I mean.
(16:04):
Negative emotions.
They can also tell you somethingfor me.
Like anxiety can tell me to slowdown and look at how I was
looking to other people forvalidation, instead of giving it
to myself.
You know, it was showing me whatI needed to work on, so that
emotion, like it was on my sidein a lot of ways.
And then we can ask ourselves,like, who would we get to be if
(16:26):
we didn't have the scary storiesabout negative emotions?
So for me using my example, Ithink I'd probably have more
confidence in myself.
I'd feel stronger, morerational, pragmatic, empowered
and like probably more at peaceoverall.
And less stressed, which is soimportant.
Yeah.
(16:46):
So I know that you're probablywondering like what you're
supposed to do though, whenyou're in it.
Like when you're feeling thosereally awful emotions and just
want to get out of it.
Yeah.
So I've got some good ideas foryou.
Okay.
So first of all, It's importantto accept them.
So emotions just when they comeinto our being, like, we can't
(17:09):
really control that.
They pop in.
We can't control that initialhit of emotion.
We can control what we do withit.
Right.
But what, with acceptance, itmeans that the things that are
out of our control.
We make space for.
We are open to feeling themwithout making them bad or wrong
or having to fix it.
(17:31):
It's just kind of, we take thatstance of like, okay, this just
is, it doesn't mean you like it.
But you just like, you makespace for it because you can
still do things...
even when you feel shitty.
All right.
You can still do the things thatare important to you, even if
it's harder when you feelshitty, but you can still do
them.
(17:51):
So acceptance of those emotionsis really important.
So it's a lot easier to say thatthan it is to do it.
So I'm going to just kind of gothrough some things.
And when I say acceptance of theemotion too, it's almost like
what I said earlier aboutprocessing it.
You're making space for it tomove through you.
You're not judging it.
You're just sort of like, Heysadness.
(18:14):
How's it going?
Come on in.
I'll show you the door whenyou're ready, That's what it's
like.
So a few things that I reallylike to do too...
Like it involves sticking withthat emotion and a few things
that I really like to do arefirst of all, what I call the
three Ns.
The first N is notice.
(18:35):
So you're just mindfullynoticing, like what you're
feeling.
The second N is naming it.
So, this is important becausethe language is important here.
Like if you're feeling.
Let's say you're feelingsadness.
When you name it, you want tosay, I notice I'm feeling
sadness.
It's not, I'm sad.
(18:58):
Because you're not sad.
You're just experiencing sad.
It's moving through you.
So, if you say, like, I noticeI'm feeling sad, it just creates
a little space, creates a littledistance.
It kind of gives it a transientfeel.
I guess it's moving.
So that's important.
The third N is normalize.
Or neutralize, however you wantto think about it, but it's
(19:20):
totally okay to feel what you'refeeling.
You know, you can kind of askyourself, like, why am I feeling
this way?
Oh yeah.
It makes sense.
Why I'd feel this way.
Other people feel this way too.
So you're not like shitting onyourself for feeling it.
Right or you're not, you know,you're not, you're taking the
judgment out of it.
so that is a good way to kind ofjust welcome in the emotion.
(19:43):
Other things that I really likewhen it's really intense and it
just, it's not really a pass, aquickly passing emotion.
The first thing I'll suggest isjust like observing the emotion
in your body, describing it.
So that looks like maybe closingyour eyes, taking a couple of
deep breaths and just noticingwhat your body feels like.
(20:07):
So like I'm doing it right nowas I'm talking.
I'm feeling a little tense, liketightness in my chest.
And.
I'm cold.
I don't know why.
I mean, yeah, it's cold outtoday.
So you just kind of do a littlescan, like notice it.
and then like, let's just say,I'm feeling I'm going to run
with the example of sadness.
So I'm just going to like scanthat I'm not feeling sadness
(20:30):
right now.
But I'll just kind of, if I was,I would scan my body and see
like, okay, where does sadnessshow up?
If I had to locate it, wherewould I find it?
So let's just say I noticedsadness in my stomach.
So, okay.
I'd kind of imagine looking atthis, something object in my
(20:51):
stomach.
And then like, you can pretendyou're a little scuba diver or
something like that, orsomething like that.
And you're inside of your bodyand you're going to look at
this, whatever it is.
That's in your stomach, like,what would you see?
Like if it were an object, theemotion, the sadness, what would
it look like?
(21:12):
Is it big?
Is it small?
Does it have a shape or color?
Just to have a texture.
Is it moving?
If it's moving, is it movingfast or slow.
If it had a taste, what wouldyou taste or a smell?
Is it squishy?
Is it.
Like a lot of times when I askpeople what they notice, they'll
(21:33):
be like, oh, it's just a blob.
So like, however you want todescribe it, but like, get
curious about it.
Like, what does this thing looklike?
But it kind of depersonalizes ita little bit.
So you're just observing thisthing.
And you want to watch it heretoo?
Like, do you notice judgmentabout it?
And if you do.
(21:53):
It's okay.
Just notice it.
But our goal here is to benonjudgmental about it.
It's just a thing that we'reexperiencing right now.
For some people, it helps toimagine taking it out and
setting it next to you.
So it's just kind of hanging outwith you while you do your
stuff, while you do your thing.
But I really like that.
(22:14):
It's helpful for a lot ofpeople.
It just kind of it makes youstick with it, and then you're
able to observe it kind ofmoving and doing something.
Um, another one that I reallylike is journaling while you're
feeling it.
So like, same thing as what Ijust kind of described, but
you're just gonna, you justnotice what are all the
(22:35):
emotions?
Do you notice anything besidessadness?
For example.
Like write it down and then lookat like, what are my thoughts?
What's what's in my head writeall that down.
And then start to connect like.
What thoughts are creating whatfeelings.
And while you're doing thatthough, You do really want to
also take note of what theexperience of feeling the
(22:58):
emotion is like.
Okay, so next thing is, this islike one of my favorites.
You take a, take a piece ofpaper.
And this one, you want a pieceof paper that you can destroy.
So just any piece of paper,notebook, paper, or whatever.
Get a pen.
And what you want to do is sitdown and you want to just like
(23:20):
scan again, notice, like, whatis the emotion?
And you want to just write...
Stream of consciousness.
Describing it, like, what do younotice?
Where do you notice it?
Like what I talked about withthe observe and describe, you
can do that.
You can ask yourself, like, isthe emotion trying to tell you
something you're just going towrite without picking up your
(23:43):
pen or pencil withoutstopping...
Until you feel something shift.
As you do this at one point, youwill feel a shift in the
emotion.
Who knows what it'll shift to,but you will feel a shift.
And when you feel the shift,then you can stop writing.
And then what you do is you gotear that piece of paper up.
(24:05):
I did this a couple of weeks agoand I burned it, but I don't
really recommend that cause.
Can be dangerous.
So just tear it up.
And then once you dispose of it,wash your hands.
Wash your hands.
So you're kinda like, okay.
Done with that.
Yeah.
other things that I like to youcan go on like insight timer or
(24:29):
something like that, and find,meditations where it helps you
like process the emotion.
So check out things like that,too.
Any kind of journaling is great.
You can get creative, you canlike, I haven't really done
this, but this could actually befun too, is like, if you're, if
you like to draw or paint orwhatever, doodle, draw or paint
(24:53):
the emotion or like, my mom'sreally into mixed media type
stuff.
Do something like that with it.
Like what would the emotion looklike?
That can be really healing.
You know, however you like toreally express yourself, but
that's the thing is that theemotion has to be expressed.
So remember that.
Yeah, so that is really all Ihave for like the, like, those
(25:14):
are some great ways to reallylet that emotion, that energy
really move.
You gotta let it move.
So.
I do want to say that it is noteasy to do this.
Cause it's not supposed tonecessarily help you feel
better.
Cause it's acceptance of anemotion, right.
(25:35):
So we're not trying to get it,get rid of it.
We're accepting it.
We're saying, okay, fine.
Fine.
You're here.
Okay.
What I find is that it kind ofhelps change your relationship
with it.
And if your emotions are reallyintense, You know, it might not,
it might not feel better, but itwill eventually.
(25:55):
So you got to kind of stick withit.
But remember if you're onlydoing this to make it better,
you're not really accepting it.
And it is like, we've got tojust let go of the need to
control those emotions.
And then, you know, when you canreally handle your emotions, it
leads to emotional maturity.
Like you, then your actions areno longer dictated by your
emotions.
(26:16):
So you're able to be moreintentional and more rational
about things and like it's.
Yeah, it's hard work, but it'sdefinitely worth it.
So.
Go try those things and let meknow how it goes.
I hope that was super helpful.
before I go, I just want toinvite you to, or ask you to...
hop on over to my website and goto the link.
(26:37):
Courtney revard.com/love life.
And there's a great freeworkbook.
It's not related to emotionsnecessarily.
It's about creating a life thatyou love.
And to do that, you'lldefinitely need to process
emotions because you know, weall have them.
I mean, that's just life, right.
But how about over there?
If you haven't downloaded thatyet?
go check that out.
(26:57):
And also I also, as always, Iwould love it.
If you would go leave me arating and a review.
That helps other people find theshow.
And then share it with a friend.
If you are getting some valueout of this.
All right, friends.
Thanks for listening.
And I will see you next time.
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