5. Navigating Hard Emotions [When You're in a Funk]

Ever grappled with intense or difficult emotions, not knowing how to navigate them? Been there, done that. But instead of masking these feelings with false positivity, we're taking a deep breath, acknowledging them, and learning how to handle them. We will pinpoint their triggers and learning to process them in a constructive way. 

Inner conflict impacts your inner peace. We'll explore the power of recognizing these inner tugs-of-war, delving into self-reflection techniques that can help you understand and manage those tough feelings. Whether it's penning down your emotions and their catalysts, or recording yourself as you voice it all out, these strategies promise a stronger sense of self, healthier relationships, and an unwavering allegiance to yourself. The emotional rollercoaster of life is one worth embracing.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:22

Hi and welcome back to Whatever with Heather. Today on the podcast, we're talking about dealing with hard emotions. This past week I've been dealing with a lot of heavy emotions hard emotions just being in a funk, and it's been hard to dig out of it. On that note, about two and a half years ago I recorded a short training on dealing with hard emotions. I was going to re-film this training but realized everything I said then is exactly what I would say now. So instead I'm going to be throwing it back and sharing with you the training I did two and a half years ago talking about dealing with hard emotions. In this training I am actually in the middle of dealing with some hard stuff and I share what I'm doing the mindsets around dealing with and moving through hard emotions. I hope you enjoy the podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:14

The reason I wanted to film this right now is I want to be really present and really centered with y'all in the current emotions I'm experiencing Just a straight on conversation with you and me and how we work through hard emotions. So today I woke up actually feeling pretty motivated and ready to tackle the day and then very rapidly probably within like 30 minutes of waking up, it did not feel that way anymore. I started feeling extra emotions starting to come on and these emotions were heavy and as they all just kept coming on, different emotions piling on top, I ended up just feeling like not great anymore. So in the past I would want to get back to the feeling I had earlier in the day, but I've also learned enough that these hard emotions, these ones that can be really heavy, serve a purpose and if we cover them right. So I feel these emotions and they're all stuck and then I cover them with a layer of happiness I've now trapped these emotions, and trapped emotions are never good. Of course, there's times you sometimes you just got to put on a happy face right and then deal with these later. But right now I have the time and space to deal with what I'm feeling. Or I could just like pretend I'm happy for my family, but I'm not right. Also, acknowledging that I'm not like feeling this like easy ease to life I'm feeling a lot of heavy things also helps me not lash out at my family, because I know they're not making me upset that I am already in a really heavy state, a really emotionful state. I am full of emotions. So let's talk about how to deal with that by not putting on a happy face and like really digging in, and at this point in the day I still feel not 100, so that's why I want to talk about it now while I'm like in it.

Speaker 1: 3:09

So the first thing is to realize when these things start piling on. It might be stress, it might be anxiety, it might be fear, it might be sadness, it might be heartbreak, it might be anger, it might be sorrow, frustration, hopelessness. First thing is figure out what you're feeling. So think of a word that explains it, and it might be multiple words. Ask yourself what am I feeling right now? And hear the words that I'm feeling right now Not one feeling, which is when things get really heavy. Right is like what I'm just that I can like place. That it's easier.

Speaker 1: 3:43

But when I have these multiple emotions, they're usually from different things and they can even be from connecting things, so it gets a little harder to unpack. So right now I'm feeling overwhelmed, stressed. I'm feeling a shift in a lot of relationships, friendships, which is feeling unsettling would be a word. I feel unsettled, I feel a sense of hopelessness, but I don't feel hopeless. But the emotion I would, I would say I'm feeling is like hopelessness and because of all that, I feel kind of like bummed, like sad, and I also feel some anger at the fact that I feel like there's not many people I can communicate with about the way I'm feeling, who won't just tell me everything's fine and it's fine, everything's fine. I feel like my emotions won't be validated by anybody. You may feel like you have these emotions and there's nobody to say, well, shit, that must suck, that must be heavy to carry. You might have people in your life that are just like well, but there's so many things to be grateful for and you should be grateful. Okay, once again, that's covering up all this that you're feeling with false happiness and actually burying emotions inside of you so they're not gone. They're not gone.

Speaker 1: 5:04

The way we process the motion is we start digging them out and we look at them and we deal with them, and when we don't deal with them is when we start to get not feeling good. So the first thing we need to do is just name it. Name what you're feeling. It doesn't have to be one thing, it can be a lot. And as you're naming what you're feeling, it's good to pinpoint, maybe, where that came from. So I feel overwhelmed by the road ahead, I feel stressed about all the things going on. Or, if you can even name a specific thing, I feel stressed about this, this, this. I feel anxious about this, this, this. Really, instead of just, I feel anxious, I feel anxious because of, or I feel anxious when, or because of blank, I feel anxious.

Speaker 1: 5:50

These are good sentence structures to like put your emotion in place because maybe you feel stressed but, like your kids aren't actually stressing you out right now, it's something else. But sometimes in your stress about something else leaches into that relationship. So it's really good to get get specific about where these emotions are stemming from. It's also a good idea to. When I was verbalizing to my husband, I told him that I feel hopelessness, but I don't feel hopeless. It's a distinction, right, but it's a small distinction. There's a difference between between feeling like everything is hopeless and how the feeling of hopelessness One is much more all consuming. So are you feeling consumingly hopeless? Are you feeling hopelessness as a byproduct of something that's going on in your life, but you're not hopeless about everything, right? You just have this undercurrent of this emotion. So name your emotions and then get specific about where they came from my stress.

Speaker 1: 6:52

When does my stress spike? Is it when I go online? For me, that's a heck, yes. Is it when I'm unorganized? For me, it's a heck, yes. Is it when I know it could be planning more and I'm not? That's a heck. Yes, for me as well.

Speaker 1: 7:08

What is creating the stress and is there a remedy? Right? So if going online and scrolling Facebook is making me feel stressed you know, this makes me, going online makes me feel stressed Then what happens here can change the output here. So if going online makes my stress rise, then what do I need to self diagnose and self do? Because I want peace. So if going online makes me feel stressed, then I know what I need to do. I might need to stay offline, especially when I'm feeling a lot of heavy emotions. So now we have our emotions named and we kind of have an understanding of what is the cause effect, right.

Speaker 1: 7:48

What causes this emotion? And once again, it might not be a simple answer. It could be like well, my husband lost his job, my kids aren't in school, my country's a mess, like it could be lots of things, all right. So you don't have to pick just one, list them all out and then start unpacking which of these things you have control over. So if going online makes me feel stressed, I have control over me going online. I do not have control over what people are posting, but I have control over my action of going online. So start breaking these down. What do I have control over and they're going to be things out of your control. Or it might be like my husband lost his job, so our finances are stressed. Therefore, I'm stressed, husband lost his job. No control, finances are stressed. There is some control here. Although we don't like to admit it, we have some control over our spending and we also have some control over our income. If we have a skill, maybe it's well I got them all on now or I got to do this.

Speaker 1: 8:57

Where can we find the control over the things we can change? I find for me, a lot of these things start stacking when I choose to ignore them and not look at what pieces I actually can help control, because it feels hopeless or really stressful because there's a lot of pieces I don't have control over, and so, instead of getting really focused on what I do have control over, I just focus on, like, all the things I don't have control over, which is overwhelming. It just stresses me out because I don't have control over a lot of things, many things, most things but if we can get really specific and see what we do have control over. The other thing that I'm using to make it through this day is I have some people working out is a stress reliever. It is for me.

Speaker 1: 9:47

Sometimes Today is a day where I'm taking it really still and slow because my body is stressed. So getting really honest with yourself Now if you know the best thing for you like tomorrow I'm going to move my body more, because if I still feel cruddy tomorrow, I'm not gonna know if moving my body helps until I try. If it ends up helping, then I need to write it down. Moving my body made me feel proud. So now I can start creating different pathways to create different emotions. But I'm not covering up other emotions, I'm inviting in new emotions to also sit.

Speaker 1: 10:24

If you have some good emotions mixed with some negative emotions, like we like to name them, it's a lot easier to handle the stacking because you have some balance right. This like ebb and flow of I'm stressed but like, oh, this was such a good moment and me. This is kind of how we live, right, we live in this like ebb and flow of emotion. But once things started getting really heavy and really packed in which is how it feels for me today, really really packed in, there's not so much space to invite those good emotions in. So we create space by naming our emotion and seeing what I can control about the situation that is causing this angst.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Our lack of inner peace is due to inner conflict. So the opposite of peace is conflict. So the opposite of inner peace would be inner conflict. There is something conflicting inside of myself that I need to figure out. Like a coach can help you through it, but you can also help you through it. It's gotta like get this understanding of what emotion is sitting with you, or multiple emotions. What is the catalyst to feeling that emotion? What parts of those catalysts do you have control over? Your action, or you can have some control over to lower or move through this emotion. Right, I'm not about just like getting rid of emotions. They move through you, like happiness moves through you, and so the sadness and stress, once they become compacted, gotta deal with it. They're not gonna flow as easily, cause they're all trapped, and get them flowing through you, you've gotta work through them.

Speaker 1: 12:09

Talking about it, maybe you do exactly what I'm doing right now, because I'm starting to feel a little better Cause as I'm talking through this with you, I'm having some of my own libel moments like oh, maybe record a video to yourself. Maybe you have no one to validate your emotion zero people so record yourself as if you were talking to a friend, or even to yourself, and see if some inner knowing comes out, some inner understanding of what's actually happening here to cause these emotions. See if it starts coming out, because I bet you it will. I bet you that by talking to yourself, you'll start to have an understanding that you didn't know you had. Coaches are helpful, but as a coach, my goal is to help you access your inner knowing and trust yourself that it's there, and this is one of the things you can do to do that.

Speaker 1: 13:02

That's all I am thinking about during this train of thought video, in which I wrote no notes and I just came and sat with you just to share that it's okay to be not okay, it's okay to feel a lot of things, it's okay to not cover them with happiness, and then we learn how to process and let these emotions flow through us instead of covering them up. And that's where healing happens. That's where we realize we've put a lot of toxic emotions, we've buried them for so long, and that our healing comes from taking off the fake happiness. Right, and sometimes you're truly happy, but you know what I mean where you're just like I don't even want to deal with it. I don't want to deal with what's down there. That's a lot of work and happiness. I get it. I get it. There are days I don't deal with it, but work through this.

Speaker 1: 13:49

Maybe every time you fill an emotion you write it down and you write what the catalyst was and what you have control over, right, but remove the happiness thing and let's start like taking these things out and looking at them objectively so that we can move through these emotions. They can add to our life because, as I understand where my stress is coming from, I understand myself better. I understand the world better. I understand other people's stress better because I understand my own stress better. We become better friends, better spouses, better parents and, most importantly, better allies to ourselves when we are willing to start digging through these emotions, we're willing to start like looking at them and not judging ourselves for them. You're not a hopeless person because you feel hopelessness and you're not a sad person because you feel sadness. You're not an angry, mean person because maybe you feel anger and maybe you feel mad AF. These are emotions that are not who you are. They're human experience flowing through you. Beautiful week.