September 21, 2024 • 23 mins
Welcome to a new episode, where we dive deep into the powerful role our emotions play as guides in our lives. We'll explore how emotions send us constant messages and the importance of truly feeling them to understand and transform our experiences.
We'll discuss the common issue of intellectualizing traumas without fully feeling them, and why it's essential to connect with our emotions. From the fear of failure to the complexities of anger and sadness, we'll uncover how to build a healthier relationship with these emotions.
Join us as we learn to listen, understand, and embrace the messages our emotions are trying to convey, creating a path to personal growth and healing. Stay tuned for insights, personal stories, and practical tips to help you navigate your emotional landscape.
If you're ready to dive deeper into understanding your emotions, consider scheduling a free discovery call. Let's embark on this journey together!
https://calendly.com/innerblisstravels/free-discovery-call
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello loves, welcome back to a new episode.
I am so ready to dive into this topic because it's a topic that comes up in
my sessions a lot and honestly I just love talking about it.
This episode is about how our emotions are our guides in this life and how our
(00:20):
emotions are giving us non-stop messages throughout the day.
Oftentimes when I start working with new clients and we dive into the roots
of people's anxieties or fears or et cetera, et cetera.
I hear, I already knew a lot of this. However, this session brought so much
more awareness. Why is that?
(00:41):
It's because there's a big difference between knowing what is actually going
on at the core of you and feeling what is going on at the very core.
It's a difference between knowing something, but not knowing what to do about
it and actually understanding what's going on and being able to transform it.
We might intellectualize what's going on with us, but until you start to allow
(01:04):
yourself to actually feel it, knowing will bring you nowhere.
Now, why is that? It is because you can't fully understand what you're not willing to feel.
So you might think you understand, but until you start feeling it,
you actually really don't.
By the way, there's some rain in the background, so you might hear some raindrops.
(01:26):
Still in Amsterdam, so some rain here and there.
So why is it that so many of us are able to rationalize our traumas or so-called
issues without actually being able to transform it?
It's because we can transform what we don't fully understand.
And there's a reason you are intellectualizing your traumas and your so-called issues.
(01:49):
It's scary to actually start to feel it.
Unfortunately, so many of us have not learned how to feel our emotions.
In fact, most of us have learned to fear our emotions.
Of course, the adults in charge of teaching us were fearing emotions as well.
You often see people being comfortable with certain emotions and then fearing another.
(02:13):
This all can have different reasons. For example, when you've learned as a child
that being angry is an ugly emotion that you shouldn't feel,
chances are you won't know what to do with anger as an adult. And of course not.
Our emotions are complex. We need guidance to teach ourselves to start listening
(02:36):
to the messages of these beautiful emotions.
And here when I say beautiful emotions, I say this while I also deeply,
deeply know that so many of us have different feelings towards our emotions.
Most of us feel fear, disgust, annoyance when certain emotions start to come up.
(02:59):
All because we've never properly learned how to listen to the message of our
emotions, and in some cases, how to guide your emotions.
One of the emotions that most of us welcome is happiness.
But I also deeply know that if you don't allow yourself to feel the full range
of emotions, you will never know or understand the true depth of happiness.
(03:22):
Now, here we are as adults.
It is up to us to teach ourselves. or get help with that.
How to be able to hear, learn from, and feel our emotions.
Now where to start? Because emotions can be scary.
Especially if we're seeing our parents mirror to us that certain emotions are
(03:44):
a taboo or bad or simply just scary.
We'll start with fully and deeply understanding the purpose of our emotions.
All of our emotions are messages.
They are constantly trying to communicate something to us. Let me start with
a beautiful but also intense emotion.
Fear. This always comes up in a lot of my sessions. People fear fear.
(04:10):
Avoid it like the plague.
And I often say to my clients, if you don't become best friends with your fears,
your fears will start to control you and your life.
Because if you don't consciously feel it, it will start to communicate with your subconscious.
It will start to communicate to avoid certain things or to start to do certain
(04:31):
things in order to stay safe.
So you better start connecting with your fear and hear what it has to say and
see what kind of ideas it has planted in your head.
Because more often than not, it has ideas that are so far from the truth.
Let me start with giving an example about my own life. Starting my own business
(04:53):
was the catalyzer for my fears, for me.
I had to become really close to my fears in order to even be able to do what I do today.
For example, for me, showing up on social media was surrounded by fear.
Putting myself out there to leave to the judgment of others was deeply scary for me.
(05:13):
Now, before I really sat down with this fear and had a talk with it,
this fear was actually controlling the way I was, or better yet,
wasn't showing up on social media.
It was subconsciously controlling me with multiple excuses.
Not now. It won't work anyways. What do we even get out of it?
(05:34):
You don't know enough, etc, etc.
Until I decided to actually start listening to my fear instead of letting it
control me in the background.
When I listened to my fear. I let it speak. I let it tell me what it was above all fearing.
Being looked at as a failure, not getting enough responses, not getting enough positive feedback.
(06:00):
If I was going to show up on social media, it would need to be from a space
where I had the guarantee it would be wildly be successful from the start.
And if not, I would be looked at as a failure.
And even worse, I feared getting the confirmation that I was indeed the failure
(06:21):
I was already fearing that I was in my business.
So there it was, me and my fear looking each other straight in the eye.
There was no way around it. This was in fact my deepest fear in this topic.
I actually felt like a failure in my business and was fearing that that would
(06:41):
be confirmed by external feedback.
When I realized that this was in fact my biggest fear, I started looking at
the idea that was behind this.
Seeing myself as a failure in my business. Was this even correct? I asked myself.
This self-belief I had made up. What made me look at myself like that?
(07:01):
What did I expect my business to do without actually even showing up for my business?
I came to the conclusion that I I was a little bit harsh on myself.
I looked at the expectations I had in order to look at myself as successful in my business.
And I came to the conclusion that these were not realistic expectations for
(07:22):
a successful starting business.
I came to the conclusion that I have a steady group of clients and have been
able to generate an income every month that allowed me to travel and live in
the most beautiful countries.
Perhaps I was a bit harsh on myself.
Now, don't get me wrong. There's still a million goals I had back then for myself
(07:46):
and a million more I have on this current day.
But I stopped taking the fear serious that I was only allowed to look at myself
as successful once I completed these goals.
I changed my definition of successful in my business and started to feel successful on that day.
Now, this was what my fear was actually asking for me, to identify a deep-rooted
(08:10):
fear that I was a failure in my business and that I would get the confirmation
by others who might be looking at me.
This was the actual message of my fear. And I took my control back and decided
I would start showing up on social media simply because this was what I wanted to do,
because I had messages to share and that needed to get out there in the world.
(08:34):
Now, fears can show up in so many different shapes and forms.
A fear I see often with my clients is the fear of disappointing others or having
other people being mad at you for whatever reason.
And ultimately behind that, the fear of not being good enough and being abandoned.
This is a fear people often tap dance around.
(08:57):
They tap dance by pleasing, by not speaking up, by abandoning self,
by ignoring our own boundaries, etc, etc.
All signs that you are being controlled by your subconscious fear.
I often say to my clients, invite your fear over, just like with all other emotions.
Offer it a cup of tea and start talking to it.
(09:20):
Now, this part is important, not with the intention of sending it away,
but with the intention of understanding it better.
Now, a lot of us have a deep fear or our emotion fear. We avoid it with a reason.
Complex emotions and confronting ideas we might have might come up.
(09:40):
And how do we deal with those?
For example, for me, it was painful to see that I felt like a failure in my
business because I hadn't reached certain goals yet.
And with this particular fear, well, let's dive to the root of it.
If you would invite this is fear over fatigue, and you ask it what it is afraid
that will happen, it will probably tell you that it's afraid of disappointing people.
(10:05):
But why would it be afraid of that? What does your fear, fear will happen if
you disappoint other people?
Your fear might say, I fear that they might get mad at me or not like me anymore.
So, you might ask, what would happen then if Someone will get mad or doesn't like me anymore.
(10:26):
And here it can get tricky. If you notice you start running out of answer,
this is a sign you might be getting close to the actual painful stuff.
So keep on asking, even if it's the same question with a different angle.
What will happen if someone will not like you anymore? Or someone will get mad?
More often than not, we will get to the point where people are fearing the confirmation
(10:48):
of their deep-rooted belief of not being good enough.
That people might find out that they are actually not good enough because all
that pleasing that self-abandoning etc etc is for the purpose of hiding how
you actually feel about yourself.
Unworthy not good enough etc etc now this is one example your root belief might
(11:13):
be completely different the trick is to keep asking until you get to the root
and this root belief this is what needs your attention.
This is what needs your focus and needs to be worked with.
Not the fear of disappointing others. That's just a deflection of a deeper fear.
Or for example, in my case, the fear that I had about showing up on social media.
(11:38):
It's a deeper fear that's underneath that.
That's the fear we need to work with. Now let's dive into some other emotions
that might not be your favorite to experience.
For example, anger. And this is such a common one.
Anger is such a misunderstood and judged upon emotion.
(11:58):
My theory is that it's misunderstood and judged because when not dealt with
the anger in a healthy way, it can be quite destructive.
So the representation presentation of anger has been getting a bad reputation.
But unhealthy expressions of anger have nothing to do with the actual emotion of anger.
(12:19):
The destructive forms of anger are explosions caused because anger hasn't been
properly listened to in earlier phases.
So your body can literally create this pressure cooker until anger is boiling
out of you without any control.
A way of your body to say enough is enough. Now, I've been trying to get your
(12:41):
attention, but we cannot also keep on holding this in for you.
This alone is already a good reason to start from a deep and good relationship with your anger.
I often see during my sessions that people judge themselves for their anger
and actually judge their anger themselves.
Well, anger is nothing more than emotion alarming you when something doesn't
(13:02):
feel right, when something is wrong.
But because our body remembers how our caretakers responded when we got angry
as a child, we have the association that anger must be bad.
Or we've seen our caregivers have an unhealthy relationship with anger and only
seen the explosive side of anger.
(13:23):
Our association with anger is one of fear and unsafety.
It's time to change that. Anger is a beautiful emotion and a beautiful guide. There, I've said it.
When I say this in my sessions, I often see a mixture of relief and confusion in people's faces.
The relief because, okay, I might not be as bad as I thought I was,
(13:47):
as anger comes with a lot of self-judgment.
And confusion because that has been the only association with anger.
Anger is an emotion telling us something, an alarm system built into our body.
If we identify it early enough without actually suppressing it,
(14:08):
we are able to get a lot of wisdom from this beautiful emotion.
First off, most of us can feel anger as a very physical emotion.
As all emotions are, but anger can be more easily identified by some.
Feel for yourself, what parts of your body tense up when you feel anger?
Your jaw, your shoulders, other muscles in your body, your fists.
(14:33):
Your body is getting ready to physically start to protect your territory.
Anger is an energizing emotion. So for some people, it is easier to feel anger
and even stay stuck in feeling anger.
It doesn't feel as vulnerable as sadness or hurt.
So in order to not get stuck there, we want to invite in anger. We want to welcome it.
(14:58):
Ask it for tea again. Why are you angry?
You often see that your anger is telling you that something happened that didn't feel right.
That someone overstepped your boundary or that you felt threatened and you had to protect yourself.
You see? Good thing we have this alarm system, right?
(15:18):
Telling us when we need to step up and, for example, put some boundaries down.
Now, we can stay here and just respond to what is making you angry.
Or we can even go that layer deeper.
Because in my experience, there's almost always something underneath anger.
As I expressed before, anger is a very physical emotion, just like all.
(15:43):
But it's easier to feel with anger. So anger needs to have an outlet.
It needs to be released physically.
So one of the things I always recommend when someone is angry is start exploring
physical ways to release your anger. Get yourself in a room where preferably nobody can hear you.
(16:04):
Then start hitting a pillow, scream in a pillow, shake your body,
grunt, verbally express your anger, or start dancing on angry music.
These are just a few ideas, but there's a million more.
Experiment with what feels good for you.
After that, see if there are some more questions left to deeply understand your
(16:27):
anger. Why did it make you feel this angry?
Oftentimes, after releasing your anger physically, you'll see that there are
other emotions present, like hurt or sadness. I'll give an example.
One of your parents said something to you that made you upset.
You started talking to your anger and found out that you felt disrespected by
(16:49):
your parents. So you started to physically release your anger.
After that, you ask your anger, why did it make me so angry that my parent disrespected me?
By that time, your answer might be because it reminded me of all the times in
childhood where I wasn't able to stand up for myself and how it was hurting me.
(17:09):
Or because I didn't feel seen or heard by my parents. Do you see how there's
already a softer emotion present?
You might even be able to release some tears.
Now, sadness is something that some people can feel very vulnerable with,
Especially if you experienced in childhood that showing your vulnerable emotions wasn't safe.
(17:33):
Because you weren't hurt, seen, or just punished for them.
As an adult, you might now experience that it's easier to just protect that
vulnerable feeling and cover it up with, for example, anger.
It is an art to be able to allow your sadness or hurt to be present.
It takes guts and courage.
It is so much easier to hide behind anger.
(17:56):
Well, for some people. For others, sadness and hurt is an easier emotion to hide behind than anger.
And for them, it takes a lot more courage to actually express and allow their
anger to have a space in their life.
And for them, expressing healthy anger is an art form.
Do you know which one is easier for you to express?
(18:18):
So how to allow yourself to feel sadness or hurt?
Especially if this wasn't an emotion that was very welcomed in your childhood,
or when you grew up with caretakers who also
were feeling unsafe with the motion of sadness or hurt
so they mirrored back to you that this is an emotion that is safer to avoid
first off there is the acknowledgement that sadness and hurt comes with the
(18:44):
feeling of unsafety the first emotion that comes up is your protection mechanism activated.
So you stay safe and it helps you to avoid feeling sadness or hurt.
So we want to ask that first emotion that is the safest to feel some questions.
This can, for example, be anger or fear or any other emotion that might come
(19:08):
up for you. We'll go with the example of anger.
Why are you feeling angry, for example? Give that emotion motion a safe space
to be expressed, often physical, and then keep asking it questions.
Then after expressing that initial emotion, create some safety for yourself.
This can be in a form of blankets, a room where you're by yourself,
(19:30):
affirmations, or by hugging yourself.
Whatever you need to create the safety.
Then, find a way that is easiest for you to understand these emotions.
They require different skills than, for example, anger.
It is asking you to slow down, soften up, and listen more carefully.
(19:51):
So while you're asking your questions, like, for example, why does it make me
feel this way? Or what did it remind me of?
Or what would I have liked instead? And why? There are a million different questions
you can ask. Be creative.
You can do this by asking this in your head or by journaling,
(20:11):
for example, or even by dancing, whatever works for you.
Now, for some people, there is no other emotion that comes up to be expressed.
So they go into avoiding and suppressing, not acknowledging an emotion,
even being present and distracting themselves with other things to do or telling
themselves it's not that bad.
(20:33):
These are other protection mechanisms, also in place to not have to feel hurt, pain, or sadness.
Also coming from the same root belief, it is unsafe to feel sadness, hurt, or pain.
The first step here is to start to observe how your body is feeling.
Your body won't be able to hide that feeling. It doesn't want you to.
(20:55):
It is constantly communicating to you.
So start with observing if you're holding some tension in your body after something has happened.
If that's the case, start asking that tension some questions.
Literally start asking these body parts some questions. For example,
what are you holding? How are you feeling?
(21:16):
How was that experience for you?
Know that a disconnection from your body is formed as a way to keep you safe
and is created as a protection mechanism.
But it also causes dissociation, a disconnection from your body and its messages.
We do that by first observing our bodies, recognizing when tension is there,
(21:38):
and asking many questions.
We want to start to teach our body safety and let our body know that we're ready
to start listening and we are ready to dive into feeling emotions.
Now, this is the big difference between talk therapy and what I do.
During my sessions, we go into the body.
(22:00):
As our body remembers everything and stores everything, our brain only knows a little bit.
This is also why I often hear people say, I've never been able to go this deep before.
It is because it became so normal to exclude our bodies from this type of work.
(22:20):
Work we can't heal what we
don't want to feel I'm going to repeat that we
can't heal what we don't want to feel
now if you're ready to dive deeper into understanding your emotions and being
able to connect with your emotions instead of letting your body hold attention
for you you can schedule a free discovery call with me this month before I close
(22:45):
my agenda we'll dive deeper into the roots of it all.
And we'll find out what it is that you would actually need and if there's ways
for us that we can work together.
I'll place a link to that in the show notes. For now, thank you so much for listening.
I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas about this episode and how it inspired you.
(23:07):
I send you so much love and until next episode.
Hello loves, welcome back to a new episode.
I am so ready to dive into this topic because it's a topic that comes up in
my sessions a lot and honestly I just love talking about it.
This episode is about how our emotions are our guides in this life and how our
(00:20):
emotions are giving us non-stop messages throughout the day.
Oftentimes when I start working with new clients and we dive into the roots
of people's anxieties or fears or et cetera, et cetera.
I hear, I already knew a lot of this. However, this session brought so much
more awareness. Why is that?
(00:41):
It's because there's a big difference between knowing what is actually going
on at the core of you and feeling what is going on at the very core.
It's a difference between knowing something, but not knowing what to do about
it and actually understanding what's going on and being able to transform it.
We might intellectualize what's going on with us, but until you start to allow
(01:04):
yourself to actually feel it, knowing will bring you nowhere.
Now, why is that? It is because you can't fully understand what you're not willing to feel.
So you might think you understand, but until you start feeling it,
you actually really don't.
By the way, there's some rain in the background, so you might hear some raindrops.
(01:26):
Still in Amsterdam, so some rain here and there.
So why is it that so many of us are able to rationalize our traumas or so-called
issues without actually being able to transform it?
It's because we can transform what we don't fully understand.
And there's a reason you are intellectualizing your traumas and your so-called issues.
(01:49):
It's scary to actually start to feel it.
Unfortunately, so many of us have not learned how to feel our emotions.
In fact, most of us have learned to fear our emotions.
Of course, the adults in charge of teaching us were fearing emotions as well.
You often see people being comfortable with certain emotions and then fearing another.
(02:13):
This all can have different reasons. For example, when you've learned as a child
that being angry is an ugly emotion that you shouldn't feel,
chances are you won't know what to do with anger as an adult. And of course not.
Our emotions are complex. We need guidance to teach ourselves to start listening
(02:36):
to the messages of these beautiful emotions.
And here when I say beautiful emotions, I say this while I also deeply,
deeply know that so many of us have different feelings towards our emotions.
Most of us feel fear, disgust, annoyance when certain emotions start to come up.
(02:59):
All because we've never properly learned how to listen to the message of our
emotions, and in some cases, how to guide your emotions.
One of the emotions that most of us welcome is happiness.
But I also deeply know that if you don't allow yourself to feel the full range
of emotions, you will never know or understand the true depth of happiness.
(03:22):
Now, here we are as adults.
It is up to us to teach ourselves. or get help with that.
How to be able to hear, learn from, and feel our emotions.
Now where to start? Because emotions can be scary.
Especially if we're seeing our parents mirror to us that certain emotions are
(03:44):
a taboo or bad or simply just scary.
We'll start with fully and deeply understanding the purpose of our emotions.
All of our emotions are messages.
They are constantly trying to communicate something to us. Let me start with
a beautiful but also intense emotion.
Fear. This always comes up in a lot of my sessions. People fear fear.
(04:10):
Avoid it like the plague.
And I often say to my clients, if you don't become best friends with your fears,
your fears will start to control you and your life.
Because if you don't consciously feel it, it will start to communicate with your subconscious.
It will start to communicate to avoid certain things or to start to do certain
(04:31):
things in order to stay safe.
So you better start connecting with your fear and hear what it has to say and
see what kind of ideas it has planted in your head.
Because more often than not, it has ideas that are so far from the truth.
Let me start with giving an example about my own life. Starting my own business
(04:53):
was the catalyzer for my fears, for me.
I had to become really close to my fears in order to even be able to do what I do today.
For example, for me, showing up on social media was surrounded by fear.
Putting myself out there to leave to the judgment of others was deeply scary for me.
(05:13):
Now, before I really sat down with this fear and had a talk with it,
this fear was actually controlling the way I was, or better yet,
wasn't showing up on social media.
It was subconsciously controlling me with multiple excuses.
Not now. It won't work anyways. What do we even get out of it?
(05:34):
You don't know enough, etc, etc.
Until I decided to actually start listening to my fear instead of letting it
control me in the background.
When I listened to my fear. I let it speak. I let it tell me what it was above all fearing.
Being looked at as a failure, not getting enough responses, not getting enough positive feedback.
(06:00):
If I was going to show up on social media, it would need to be from a space
where I had the guarantee it would be wildly be successful from the start.
And if not, I would be looked at as a failure.
And even worse, I feared getting the confirmation that I was indeed the failure
(06:21):
I was already fearing that I was in my business.
So there it was, me and my fear looking each other straight in the eye.
There was no way around it. This was in fact my deepest fear in this topic.
I actually felt like a failure in my business and was fearing that that would
(06:41):
be confirmed by external feedback.
When I realized that this was in fact my biggest fear, I started looking at
the idea that was behind this.
Seeing myself as a failure in my business. Was this even correct? I asked myself.
This self-belief I had made up. What made me look at myself like that?
(07:01):
What did I expect my business to do without actually even showing up for my business?
I came to the conclusion that I I was a little bit harsh on myself.
I looked at the expectations I had in order to look at myself as successful in my business.
And I came to the conclusion that these were not realistic expectations for
(07:22):
a successful starting business.
I came to the conclusion that I have a steady group of clients and have been
able to generate an income every month that allowed me to travel and live in
the most beautiful countries.
Perhaps I was a bit harsh on myself.
Now, don't get me wrong. There's still a million goals I had back then for myself
(07:46):
and a million more I have on this current day.
But I stopped taking the fear serious that I was only allowed to look at myself
as successful once I completed these goals.
I changed my definition of successful in my business and started to feel successful on that day.
Now, this was what my fear was actually asking for me, to identify a deep-rooted
(08:10):
fear that I was a failure in my business and that I would get the confirmation
by others who might be looking at me.
This was the actual message of my fear. And I took my control back and decided
I would start showing up on social media simply because this was what I wanted to do,
because I had messages to share and that needed to get out there in the world.
(08:34):
Now, fears can show up in so many different shapes and forms.
A fear I see often with my clients is the fear of disappointing others or having
other people being mad at you for whatever reason.
And ultimately behind that, the fear of not being good enough and being abandoned.
This is a fear people often tap dance around.
(08:57):
They tap dance by pleasing, by not speaking up, by abandoning self,
by ignoring our own boundaries, etc, etc.
All signs that you are being controlled by your subconscious fear.
I often say to my clients, invite your fear over, just like with all other emotions.
Offer it a cup of tea and start talking to it.
(09:20):
Now, this part is important, not with the intention of sending it away,
but with the intention of understanding it better.
Now, a lot of us have a deep fear or our emotion fear. We avoid it with a reason.
Complex emotions and confronting ideas we might have might come up.
(09:40):
And how do we deal with those?
For example, for me, it was painful to see that I felt like a failure in my
business because I hadn't reached certain goals yet.
And with this particular fear, well, let's dive to the root of it.
If you would invite this is fear over fatigue, and you ask it what it is afraid
that will happen, it will probably tell you that it's afraid of disappointing people.
(10:05):
But why would it be afraid of that? What does your fear, fear will happen if
you disappoint other people?
Your fear might say, I fear that they might get mad at me or not like me anymore.
So, you might ask, what would happen then if Someone will get mad or doesn't like me anymore.
(10:26):
And here it can get tricky. If you notice you start running out of answer,
this is a sign you might be getting close to the actual painful stuff.
So keep on asking, even if it's the same question with a different angle.
What will happen if someone will not like you anymore? Or someone will get mad?
More often than not, we will get to the point where people are fearing the confirmation
(10:48):
of their deep-rooted belief of not being good enough.
That people might find out that they are actually not good enough because all
that pleasing that self-abandoning etc etc is for the purpose of hiding how
you actually feel about yourself.
Unworthy not good enough etc etc now this is one example your root belief might
(11:13):
be completely different the trick is to keep asking until you get to the root
and this root belief this is what needs your attention.
This is what needs your focus and needs to be worked with.
Not the fear of disappointing others. That's just a deflection of a deeper fear.
Or for example, in my case, the fear that I had about showing up on social media.
(11:38):
It's a deeper fear that's underneath that.
That's the fear we need to work with. Now let's dive into some other emotions
that might not be your favorite to experience.
For example, anger. And this is such a common one.
Anger is such a misunderstood and judged upon emotion.
(11:58):
My theory is that it's misunderstood and judged because when not dealt with
the anger in a healthy way, it can be quite destructive.
So the representation presentation of anger has been getting a bad reputation.
But unhealthy expressions of anger have nothing to do with the actual emotion of anger.
(12:19):
The destructive forms of anger are explosions caused because anger hasn't been
properly listened to in earlier phases.
So your body can literally create this pressure cooker until anger is boiling
out of you without any control.
A way of your body to say enough is enough. Now, I've been trying to get your
(12:41):
attention, but we cannot also keep on holding this in for you.
This alone is already a good reason to start from a deep and good relationship with your anger.
I often see during my sessions that people judge themselves for their anger
and actually judge their anger themselves.
Well, anger is nothing more than emotion alarming you when something doesn't
(13:02):
feel right, when something is wrong.
But because our body remembers how our caretakers responded when we got angry
as a child, we have the association that anger must be bad.
Or we've seen our caregivers have an unhealthy relationship with anger and only
seen the explosive side of anger.
(13:23):
Our association with anger is one of fear and unsafety.
It's time to change that. Anger is a beautiful emotion and a beautiful guide. There, I've said it.
When I say this in my sessions, I often see a mixture of relief and confusion in people's faces.
The relief because, okay, I might not be as bad as I thought I was,
(13:47):
as anger comes with a lot of self-judgment.
And confusion because that has been the only association with anger.
Anger is an emotion telling us something, an alarm system built into our body.
If we identify it early enough without actually suppressing it,
(14:08):
we are able to get a lot of wisdom from this beautiful emotion.
First off, most of us can feel anger as a very physical emotion.
As all emotions are, but anger can be more easily identified by some.
Feel for yourself, what parts of your body tense up when you feel anger?
Your jaw, your shoulders, other muscles in your body, your fists.
(14:33):
Your body is getting ready to physically start to protect your territory.
Anger is an energizing emotion. So for some people, it is easier to feel anger
and even stay stuck in feeling anger.
It doesn't feel as vulnerable as sadness or hurt.
So in order to not get stuck there, we want to invite in anger. We want to welcome it.
(14:58):
Ask it for tea again. Why are you angry?
You often see that your anger is telling you that something happened that didn't feel right.
That someone overstepped your boundary or that you felt threatened and you had to protect yourself.
You see? Good thing we have this alarm system, right?
(15:18):
Telling us when we need to step up and, for example, put some boundaries down.
Now, we can stay here and just respond to what is making you angry.
Or we can even go that layer deeper.
Because in my experience, there's almost always something underneath anger.
As I expressed before, anger is a very physical emotion, just like all.
(15:43):
But it's easier to feel with anger. So anger needs to have an outlet.
It needs to be released physically.
So one of the things I always recommend when someone is angry is start exploring
physical ways to release your anger. Get yourself in a room where preferably nobody can hear you.
(16:04):
Then start hitting a pillow, scream in a pillow, shake your body,
grunt, verbally express your anger, or start dancing on angry music.
These are just a few ideas, but there's a million more.
Experiment with what feels good for you.
After that, see if there are some more questions left to deeply understand your
(16:27):
anger. Why did it make you feel this angry?
Oftentimes, after releasing your anger physically, you'll see that there are
other emotions present, like hurt or sadness. I'll give an example.
One of your parents said something to you that made you upset.
You started talking to your anger and found out that you felt disrespected by
(16:49):
your parents. So you started to physically release your anger.
After that, you ask your anger, why did it make me so angry that my parent disrespected me?
By that time, your answer might be because it reminded me of all the times in
childhood where I wasn't able to stand up for myself and how it was hurting me.
(17:09):
Or because I didn't feel seen or heard by my parents. Do you see how there's
already a softer emotion present?
You might even be able to release some tears.
Now, sadness is something that some people can feel very vulnerable with,
Especially if you experienced in childhood that showing your vulnerable emotions wasn't safe.
(17:33):
Because you weren't hurt, seen, or just punished for them.
As an adult, you might now experience that it's easier to just protect that
vulnerable feeling and cover it up with, for example, anger.
It is an art to be able to allow your sadness or hurt to be present.
It takes guts and courage.
It is so much easier to hide behind anger.
(17:56):
Well, for some people. For others, sadness and hurt is an easier emotion to hide behind than anger.
And for them, it takes a lot more courage to actually express and allow their
anger to have a space in their life.
And for them, expressing healthy anger is an art form.
Do you know which one is easier for you to express?
(18:18):
So how to allow yourself to feel sadness or hurt?
Especially if this wasn't an emotion that was very welcomed in your childhood,
or when you grew up with caretakers who also
were feeling unsafe with the motion of sadness or hurt
so they mirrored back to you that this is an emotion that is safer to avoid
first off there is the acknowledgement that sadness and hurt comes with the
(18:44):
feeling of unsafety the first emotion that comes up is your protection mechanism activated.
So you stay safe and it helps you to avoid feeling sadness or hurt.
So we want to ask that first emotion that is the safest to feel some questions.
This can, for example, be anger or fear or any other emotion that might come
(19:08):
up for you. We'll go with the example of anger.
Why are you feeling angry, for example? Give that emotion motion a safe space
to be expressed, often physical, and then keep asking it questions.
Then after expressing that initial emotion, create some safety for yourself.
This can be in a form of blankets, a room where you're by yourself,
(19:30):
affirmations, or by hugging yourself.
Whatever you need to create the safety.
Then, find a way that is easiest for you to understand these emotions.
They require different skills than, for example, anger.
It is asking you to slow down, soften up, and listen more carefully.
(19:51):
So while you're asking your questions, like, for example, why does it make me
feel this way? Or what did it remind me of?
Or what would I have liked instead? And why? There are a million different questions
you can ask. Be creative.
You can do this by asking this in your head or by journaling,
(20:11):
for example, or even by dancing, whatever works for you.
Now, for some people, there is no other emotion that comes up to be expressed.
So they go into avoiding and suppressing, not acknowledging an emotion,
even being present and distracting themselves with other things to do or telling
themselves it's not that bad.
(20:33):
These are other protection mechanisms, also in place to not have to feel hurt, pain, or sadness.
Also coming from the same root belief, it is unsafe to feel sadness, hurt, or pain.
The first step here is to start to observe how your body is feeling.
Your body won't be able to hide that feeling. It doesn't want you to.
(20:55):
It is constantly communicating to you.
So start with observing if you're holding some tension in your body after something has happened.
If that's the case, start asking that tension some questions.
Literally start asking these body parts some questions. For example,
what are you holding? How are you feeling?
(21:16):
How was that experience for you?
Know that a disconnection from your body is formed as a way to keep you safe
and is created as a protection mechanism.
But it also causes dissociation, a disconnection from your body and its messages.
We do that by first observing our bodies, recognizing when tension is there,
(21:38):
and asking many questions.
We want to start to teach our body safety and let our body know that we're ready
to start listening and we are ready to dive into feeling emotions.
Now, this is the big difference between talk therapy and what I do.
During my sessions, we go into the body.
(22:00):
As our body remembers everything and stores everything, our brain only knows a little bit.
This is also why I often hear people say, I've never been able to go this deep before.
It is because it became so normal to exclude our bodies from this type of work.
(22:20):
Work we can't heal what we
don't want to feel I'm going to repeat that we
can't heal what we don't want to feel
now if you're ready to dive deeper into understanding your emotions and being
able to connect with your emotions instead of letting your body hold attention
for you you can schedule a free discovery call with me this month before I close
(22:45):
my agenda we'll dive deeper into the roots of it all.
And we'll find out what it is that you would actually need and if there's ways
for us that we can work together.
I'll place a link to that in the show notes. For now, thank you so much for listening.
I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas about this episode and how it inspired you.
(23:07):
I send you so much love and until next episode.
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