Ep. 12 Moving Thru Emotions

This is Lacey Jones and this is episode twelve Moving Through Emotions. All right, I am excited to jump into this topic today, moving through our emotions. When I write the podcast each week, I like to pull from inspiration in my life or the life of my clients as we go through the model and this one of processing our emotions. Basically, this has come from my certification class. I'm currently in the program with Jody Moore to complete my advanced certification. It's a faith based program, and each week we get to listen to different calls. Sometimes we're in the hot seat, sometimes we're not. And it was my turn to be in the hot seat to highlight one of my coaching calls and to look at what went well and what can take my coaching to the next level. And I brought a call to class that was one where I felt there was some pretty strong emotions, emotions from the client, but also I myself was feeling pretty strong emotions based off of what was being told to me by the client. And I wanted to understand if a client brings something to me and if it triggers a thought process that then creates an emotion in me, how do I process that from my side of the call while I'm trying to guide a client? So we talked a lot about emotions during this conversation with my lovely mentor, Ms. Jody Moore, and I really, really appreciated some of the guidance that she gave me. So I wanted to share some of that with you today on our podcast as we kind of dig into emotions and how we come to accept and understand really that our thought process and our stories, they're either creating emotions in our life that we want or ones that we don't want. And we have this kind of bucket of emotions that we need to process. So when we talk about processing emotions, one of the most helpful tools is to kind of personify that emotion and notice how it shows up in our body for us. Not only just like how it shows up, but when it shows up. And as you come to notice when it shows up, you can expect it in certain situations, kind of eliminating the complications that come from resisting that certain emotion. Because when we resist emotions that we don't want to feel, it's like taking all of that energy that comes with the emotion and shoving it away and pretending that it doesn't exist. It's what children do when they are asked to clean their room, right? And they don't really want to clean their room, so they take all of their stuff and they shove it in every nook and cranny and closets and under the bed and in between the bed and the wall, like that little gap right there. They'll shove things in. Well, eventually, mom, who knows better than the dear, sweet children will come in and may look and say, oh, surface level, it's clean, but let me just check the nooks and crannies, right, to see what's going on here. And when that mom goes to open that closet door, can't you just picture it? We've seen this in so many cartoons. They open the closet door and everything comes spilling out with more force than it was put into. And so I like to kind of think that's what happens with our emotions when we bottle them up, when we shove them deep down and we refuse to process them and work them through, because that emotional energy, it has to go somewhere. And if we don't take the time to work it through our bodies, it's going to find a way out, often at the expense of our own health or relationship with others. When our words and our actions don't honor who we want to be in a certain situation. Situation. So when we talk about processing emotions, I'm not suggesting that you go get your nails done and you're going to feel better and all will be well. I'm actually suggesting that you start noticing how the emotion shows up in your body. Where does it show up? Is it in your neck, your stomach, your shoulders? Is it heavy? Does it seem fast or slow? What color is it? I once had a client, when I asked her what color the emotion was, she couldn't tell me. It was just it was clear. And that was such an interesting concept for both of us to process. Okay, what does that mean? What does that look like? If an emotion is clear in your body, and what we determined was that she was in a state of transition from one emotion to the next. It was so cool. All right, so I kind of geek out on some of this stuff, but if you had to give your emotion a name, what would that name be? Frank Esmeralda. Right. Are you going to label your sadness? You're like, all right, here comes Susan, my sad emotion. She shows up all the time when A, B and C happens. Welcome, Susan. Glad you showed up again. All right. When I first started listening to the coaching podcast, it was really during kind of a tumultuous time when I was experiencing a lot of emotions due to several different relationships and new responsibilities and different circumstances in my life. And I remember talking with a friend and just being like, what is it with all of these emotions? And why am I having to experience so many right now? Through the years, I had obviously experienced more emotions with all the changes that life has brought. And more recently, the past couple of months, I've made a lot of intentional changes in my life to kind of better align with my personal goals and our family goals. And as a result of that, it's brought new emotions, emotions that maybe on the surface level I've felt before, but ones that I haven't taken a lot of time to process and get to know, really? So one of those is loneliness. Several months ago, you've heard me talk about this before I changed jobs. Really? I went from in a corporate job, being surrounded by these awesome, amazing people and talking to my clients all the time, right? 40 hours a week, talking to someone. And then suddenly I put an end to that because I wanted to build my coaching practice, and I no longer had those daily conversations and interactions with that with a large number of people. And it started to feel really lonely as my network of people changed. And then there were personal experiences that happened in my life with different relationships and extended family members that all of a sudden, I started buying into this story that I was alone, and I know better than to resist an emotion. And so I took the challenge of, all right, let's lean into this, right? Let's feel it. Let's just allow it. Let's just do some ugly crying. Not just like, oh, soft little tears. Let's actually cry about this. Yes, let's accept the fact that I am alone right now. What does that feel like? And my dear, dear husband, bless him, he just let me cry, come and check on me and make sure I was okay. Just gave me the space that I needed to kind of work through that. That really is not something that I'm comfortable with. I am a strong woman. I am in control of my emotions, right? These are the stories I like to tell myself. I am put together, and I don't need to feel these strong things. But reality check, I'm human, and I do get to feel these strong emotions. And I'll tell you, it was so healing. It seriously was. And as I processed that feeling of loneliness through so many tears, I really was better able to get to this place where I saw the new connections that I was building. And I gave myself kind of some grace for feeling that way in this moment of transition from one kind of network of friends to a new one. It was inspiring for me. It's. Why I share it? And I'll occasionally share that with my clients as we're working and talking about these emotions. And once I was on the other side of processing that emotion, I was able to better intentionally work towards the goals in my life rather than just resisting the emotion and shoving it down. Now, another one came up recently of feeling judgmental, right? And again, as I feel these emotions come up, I know in my head, logically, that this is a feeling that is created by a story. And if I wanted to change my feeling, I could very quickly change my story. But in this case, I decided to feel judgment, and I got curious as to what does it feel like? How does it show up for me? What does my body feel like? What is my body language? What do I want to say? What do I want to think when I'm feeling judgmental? And that was an experience where it really lasted for probably 1015 minutes, where I allowed myself to feel very judgmental towards a person and something that they had said. And once I was done, I moved through it, and I was ready to progress forward rather than stuffing it down and having it come back to haunt me in a week or whenever it wanted to pop back up into my life. So this intentionality of working through our emotions so that we can move forward to our goals, I want to focus on that today. And as we come to understand the value of processing our emotions as we move forward with our lives, we're really better able to move forward and not get stuck by certain emotions. Because, like I've said, when we attempt to resist those emotions, oftentimes we'll seek to mask them or cover them up with actions that provide temporary relief. This is what we call buffering. It's when we seek activities that provide those quick hits of, like, dopamine, because we want to feel good, we want pleasure in our life, and we don't want to feel the full experience of the negative emotion because we're trying to avoid it. We just want to feel pleasure. And we live in a society that is full of things and experiences that provide quick hits of pleasure. Well, this can really complicate things. So let's look at buffering and what it is and how it prevents us from moving forward. And what we mean, again, by buffering is this use of external things to change how we feel emotionally. And thus far, in our coaching journey together, I've shared how in the Ctfar model, circumstance, thought, feeling, action, result model, that our feelings are created by our thoughts that we have about certain circumstances or people or words in our lives. And buffering goes against this model. It seeks to create certain feelings by our actions. It's almost like going backwards up the model in an attempt to change, like, our circumstances. But this leaves us at the mercy of outside objects and people, and it's completely disempowering. So, for example, how many times have we sought to take away the painful emotions of an experience by eating our way through it? Like eating our way through a tub of ice cream or peanut M and Ms. This can be described as emotional eating, and it's a desire to change our emotional state through an action rather than by processing that emotion. And it's an avoidance tactic, and it's an attempt to cover up that emotion, right? We're looking for that quick hit of like, okay, I feel sad or I feel lonely. Some negative emotion we don't want. But over here, when I need to eat ice cream. That's a quick hit. That's a quick fix of feel good emotions, right? I'm going to go for that. I'm going to eat the whole tub because it's quick, it's quick, it's quick. But what happens when you get to the bottom of the tub of ice cream? It just compounds the issue. And we haven't really done anything with that negative emotional energy. It still needs to come out somewhere. And then, oh, by the way, we've just dumped a whole new pile of probably shame onto the melting pot of emotions because now we can't believe we've eaten a whole tub of ice cream, and now we feel sad and depressed and ashamed that we would do a thing like that. So have you ever reacted to someone's comments or actions maybe a little more powerfully or out of congruence with how you felt towards that person or their actions, only to quickly apologize and say something like, oh, I'm so sorry, that wasn't about you. I'm just going through this. I'm tired, I'm frustrated, and I am so sorry I'm taking it out on you. In a perfect world, we might be able to identify that, to quickly apologize and realize what's going on. But honestly, how often does that happen? Do we truly see when our emotions are bottling up and our actions don't honor who we want to be and how we want to feel and act in a situation? All right, so let's look at some other forms of buffering that are really prevalent in society right now. I think our society has made so much money off of buffering activities because there's a lot of emotion out there right now. And in today's world, we can quickly seek to solve for discomfort in temporary, superficial ways, right? Scrolling through our phones and social media, a quick hit of funny and feel good and ahah, and it takes us away from maybe a negative emotion that we're feeling in our life. Pornography use can be a form of buffering. It's something that provides a very strong quick fix of dopamine and pleasure. Drugs and alcohol can also be used to buffer. Sometimes these actions may start out innocently enough just in the beginning, due to their nature providing a quick fix and quick hits. And our brains and bodies are developing a strong desire for more. This is why it can be so dangerous to buffer with addictive like substance or behavior, because we can so quickly move past buffering into an addiction, and then we move into a different type of work to overcome that addiction versus the work of processing our emotions to eliminate the need for buffers. But I want to tell you something and offer you something. When we do the work of processing our emotions, the results are real pleasure, real joy. It's work and results that last that move us in a more positive direction. And it's better than the quick fix of our previous buffer and when you trade in that false pleasure in your life of the buffer that you're using and you do the work to process your emotions, you gain confidence. Confidence in your ability to handle what life throws at you, confidence to go after your goals. And it's empowering. And the more well being you have and the more you have to give and offer the world, this is where your true happiness can come from. This is where your best self comes from. And then you present yourself to the world in a more confident, capable state. So I want to challenge you this week to identify an emotion that you have been avoiding, something that you've been seeking to buffer away from. What is that emotion, and what is your buffer, and what are you afraid of feeling? Push. Pause. Identify the emotion and how it's showing up for you. Identify what triggers that emotion so that you can be better prepared the next time you experience that same circumstance. Process your emotions, and you'll find lasting joy. All right, friends. Have a good week. We'll talk to you later.