you're listening to the Rise up and Shine podcast with Claudine and Ashley as an empty nester and a mom with young kids, we have both shared very similar and very real struggles from chaos to coaches, we now help other women live an authentic and meaningful life. So tune in weekly for girl talk and tips on how you too can rise up and let your light shine bright. This is the Rise up and Shine podcast. Welcome back everyone to another episode here on the Rise Up and Shine podcast. We are so grateful that you're tuning in with us today. I still have lost quite a bit of my voice. So this is still Ashley. If you don't recognize me, I sound great, at least it's kind of coming back, I appreciate that. Well, I want to start us off today with a question actually, are you wanting a life with more peace and joy, More balance?

Are you wanting to thrive rather than just survive in your life, then you must stop doing this one thing. Very critical thing. Stop talking yourself out of your feelings, Oh my gosh, this is something I did all the time. Don't feel that way. I shouldn't feel that way, right, Claudine. Well, it's counterintuitive because you're saying I want to feel more peace, I want to feel more balanced, I want to feel all these things. So if I'm feeling anything that aren't that I should just stop, right. If it's not pleasant then I don't want to feel it. So I'm going to talk myself out of feeling Exactly. So what's the problem with doing that Ashley well let's tell our friends who are listening, there are so many detriments when we do this, right? I mean, other than just stuffing our feelings and eating our feelings or tv binging our feelings away, those are some of the obvious.

If we don't express our emotions and process our emotions, they get stuck in ourselves and this is what has been really fascinating to both you and I that we've learned over the years that we share, share with people, whatever you do, just feel your emotions feel them. And a lot of times we tell ourselves, I don't I don't have time. I can't cry right now. You know, I mean how many moms have I talked to and maybe you especially when your kids were young driving their kids in the car and you're feeling so stressed out and overwhelmed and you're feeling like you're trying to hold the tears back because you have to get to school and you have to get to soccer and I just don't have time for that right now. And I mean it's like then we go on with our day and nothing happens, right? We think oh we're over it, but we're not over it. It's just compounding, you know, there's another layer, There's another layer and layer after layer it causes as in your terms, I like what you would say, disease, right? Disease. So those unpleasant, uncomfortable, quote unquote negative motions that we have that again are all part of the human experience very God given if we deny them and we don't allow ourselves to feel them to process them, then it will cause long term issues over the long run.

We don't realize that. And so that is why expressing our feelings, feeling our feelings are so crucial to having a thriving life. You know, not just surviving. If we are on survival mode, then I guarantee you're not allowing yourself to feel all of your emotions and it takes time, but it affects our health. It really does. You know, I mean, again, for one kind of obvious way, we can eat our emotions, right? If we're stressed out, if we're sad, if we're angry, if we're feeling those unpleasant emotions, we can numb out by food and we'll gain weight, right? Or Exactly. Exactly. A lot of times, it will even bring on more shame, right? It can cause over the long run, this is something that I learned that was really eye opening to me that it can be a factor in Alzheimer's, it can be a factor in autoimmune disorders.

Could be a factor in a whole lot of physical health issues as well. And so not processing our emotions and feeling them, they get stuck and they get bear and they're still in the cells of our body and they are not gone. And then over time they start getting stronger even and then it can either cause us to explode or implode, right? Like the simmering uh emotion emotional outburst or even depression or anxiety. Some of those things that are just simmering beneath the surface for the last straw. So it is very important to feel our feelings. And again, as culture taught us long ago not to feel those emotions right? Like anger is bad or crying as a weakness and there's no time for that. Or uncomfortable feelings hurt. I don't want to hurt right? Exactly. I don't want to feel all those things. So where I wanted to take this episode today is just really thinking about emotions being messages.

You know, they're like our messengers who are telling us there's something going on here that we need to take a closer look at. Yeah, I love that. And and I agree our emotions are messengers, right? If we feeling angry then probably a boundary or something has been violated. Right? And so um or an expectation hasn't been met. So it helps teach us like what do we truly value what's really important to us when we're hurt? You know, something's happened, right? It's a trigger. And so it's great to be able to stop and go, okay, I'm feeling really angry right now let's say maybe my husband said this or one of my kids was disrespectful and and then go back to the root of it is like okay, I value being respected now. How can I have that conversation and you know, just last week we had um how to say hard things, how to have those hard conversations so you can listen to that, but really to honor the value which is respect, right, we want to feel respected. Um I love that and one of the other things when you were talking about why do we do this?

I think for me, I as a christian woman, certainly in the early years I felt like it was wrong, right, It was wrong to be unhappy, it was wrong to be ungrateful, it was wrong to be sad, like it just meant that I wasn't grateful or joyful for everything I did have and then I realized like you said earlier, all our emotions are God given and if we read the scriptures, we see that jesus felt them all. I mean he felt sad when his friend Lazarus passed, he felt anger when he felt that God's holy Temple was being misused right with the money changers, so he felt all those emotions and that he was righteous in all of them. And so that's the tricky part of this too is we don't need to talk ourselves out of feeling our feelings, we, I just need to learn a how to process them and be how not to react in ways that are detrimental that are hurtful or that create more pain and suffering along the way for ourselves and for others, like you were saying like eating, I mean that is a go to for people that don't wanna that wanna not feel their feelings eating huge.

The problem with that is over time, you gain weight which creates more feelings that you don't want to feel eating or you know netflix feels so good in the moment. It does feel so good in the moment. I mean there is nothing that feels better to me than a big bowl of ice cream. I tease my husband all the time, it's like this is better for me, it makes me feel better than a glass of wine, It's just strange, but it really does. The problem is if we can if that's how we continue to pray, process our emotions which is not really processing, it's numbing, denying stuffing. We create more problems for ourselves, more suffering and more issues that now we're going to have to deal with and feel and you cannot heal what you do not feel. I love that, I didn't make it up. It's another bumper sticker. I didn't make that up. I think that's been around a long time but you cannot hear what you do not feel. So we shouldn't stop talking ourselves out of our feelings. We just need to start talking about our feelings and that's one of the most important things you and I do as coaches is we help women get in touch with what it is they really are feeling, learn how to process those emotions so that it doesn't get in the way of the results they're looking for in their life.

It doesn't get in the way of them rising up and shining or living life to the full because our emotions can keep us very stuck. Yeah. One thing that we kind of touched on that I wanted to reiterate is that denying suppressing distracting ourselves from feeling our emotions induces more suffering. And we don't think that's true. We think if I just sit in how I'm feeling, I'm gonna wallow in it, I'm gonna feel this way for so long, right? It's never gonna go away. I'm gonna feel all these negative feelings. But it's when we allow ourselves to feel them to experience them. They actually go away quicker. And if you think of it like waves in the ocean, you know, they come and they go they rise and they fall. If you think of them like that and wave these are part of the ocean, waves will never go away part of how the tide and how God created it. Right? So all emotions again, our God given they're part of our humanity.

And so denying even the uncomfortable emotions are denying a part of our humanity. And so one thing that I thought about for years, as I you know, became much more accepting of this concept of feeling my emotions is that it helps me being able to feel all these emotions also help with connecting with others, it's like a shared humanity. How can I feel compassion for someone when I haven't maybe in the slightest felt what they've been, you know going through or how can I connect to a friend or my child when they're feeling hurt and sad if I didn't experience those, how can I even do teach my Children to process and feel their emotions if I haven't learned that? And so it really helped me accept the feeling of the emotions right? It sounds like so simple and yet so challenging because we didn't really always grow up with doing this right? Yeah we're thinking it was okay but it really strengthens our boundaries, strengthens our calm confidence in who we are X.

Trenton's our relationships with others is being able to experience it. And one thing I've learned to and I've also heard repeatedly is that if we don't experience or allow ourselves to feel those uncomfortable feelings, joy, happiness, satisfaction for film and all those things aren't gonna feel as great even in comparison right now it's just gonna be well that's great. Oh that's fun. You know I feel that all the time. Yeah and but we have this ideal that we should be happy all the time. And I even put that on others. I even expect, you know even my family. Could you just be in a good mood, Can you just be happy and sometimes it's hard to accept other people's emotions as well, understanding that it's part of the human experience, all of them. And so if we allow ourselves to feel even the unpleasant ones, they will come and they will go and we'll get to experience pleasure and happiness and excitement and all these other positive emotions much more well.

And you and I both teach the concept of 50 50 that life is 50 50 right? It's 50% positive, 50% negative. And when we really accept that when we do start feeling discouraged or sad or angry or frustrated, we're like, oh this is part of the 50% it's not something again that we're supposed to stuff or deny or resist but just go, okay. It's one of those I know recently I had one of those days and you know, we teach a lot about thought work and our thoughts create our emotions and I really couldn't find one particular thought. It's just one of those days, and I was just like, okay, this is just one of those days, it's part of the 50 50 and it's okay, this too shall pass. And I think when we resist you, you've already said it, but to say it again, when we resist or deny our emotions, part of it is because we feel like if we give into it, it will never end, it's never gonna end. And then that thought will create more of that feeling, right? But I love there's um there's a thing called the 92nd rule. It's a term used by dr Jill Bolte taylor who is a Harvard trained neuroscientist, so a lot more educated than you and I together here and she specializes in the anatomy of the brain.

But one thing that she teaches is that when a person has an emotion, right, something triggers it could be a thought or perhaps something the environ, There's a 92nd chemical process that happens in the body. After that. Any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop and that's okay. Again, it's a choice and that I think for me, when I start feeling a negative feeling, quote unquote or something that's not pleasant. My fear is oh my gosh, it's never gonna end, I'm gonna feel like this forever. But the chemical reaction in the brain is only 90 seconds. So if I'm continuing to feel that it's because I'm thinking something about that. But if it's like 90 seconds, okay, I'm feeling frustration right now, this is good. Okay, I'm feeling it. Why am I frustrated? Just ask ourselves some questions, process it. Don't try to deny it. Don't make more of a story. I think for me again, the past was as a christian, I should feel these things that I thought would create more emotion, right?

More unpleasant emotion instead of going, okay, God gave me frustration. Yes. And that's what I'm feeling now and why am I feeling frustrated and what can I do about it other than you know, eat binge watch television all that. How can I process this in a healthy way that honors what I'm feeling? Honors my values and really helps me rise up and shine in the long run, right? Yeah. I think it's really important to understand to our distinguished between primary emotions and secondary emotions. Our primary emotion is really the deeper layer. Our secondary emotion tends to be the initial reaction. Yeah. So my family, I've kind of talked about this probably multiple times on this podcast. We kind of coined this term called scam. Angry. A lot of the people in my family, not me included tend to get angry and that's the reaction. That's their secondary emotion. But if we peel back another layer underneath, they are scared about something or they're finding nervous or embarrassed about something.

And so understanding that really helps one to have compassion and not react in response to their anger and also just talk about it, you know, help them process and we do that. We could do this for ourselves if you identify with being angry at times. But I know with my Children sometimes even with my husband, hey, I'm noticing you're feeling more frustrated what's going on, What's going on in your head and we work backwards, right? So we tend to know our emotions and what we're feeling before we know the thoughts behind it. So when we know, hey, I'm kind of running frustrated or just impatient and stressed what's going on. Like a lot of times we don't, we just sit there and we feel that, but we keep trying to go, go, go, go, go, do, do do. And we don't process it. It's just put it away. You can't feel that. But if we work backwards, hey, I'm feeling these um emotions and even label them, label what emotions you're feeling that is super powerful, then you can work backwards.

Hey, what am I thinking? What's going on in my head? And you know, if you might be thinking, well I'm frustrated that the kids are cleaning up after themselves or I'm frustrated that my husband's not helping out more. You know, whatever they thought, maybe those are just some examples and then you can work back even more and be like, oh, I think I'm starting to feel unappreciated or not supported or not heard or you know, dig deeper to figure out what is really going on, not just I'm frustrated, I lashed out, I feel bad and it's cycles. Yeah, I'm frustrated even more and now I even feel shame for lashing out the last time, then I do it again and I keep going in that like you said emotional loop, right, we keep going. We get stuck in this cycle and we keep going and we keep going, but to stop it and get ourselves out of it, we have to choose differently, we have to one, allow ourselves to feel it, feel the emotions I'm feeling really frustrated.

I need to go on a walk, that's okay. If you say, hey family, I love you, I need some time, I'm going on a walk, you know, let yourself process through, pray about it, feel it and then find out where it's all coming from and just ask yourself some questions, Where is this coming from? What am I feeling? What specific emotion is this a primary emotion? Is this a secondary emotion? What's really the deeper layer here? You know, what is this triggering in me? Are there past situations that have happened that are kind of resurfacing? Whatever you may be feeling, allow yourself to go there, right self reflect this is what's going to keep you from hitting depression, hitting you know, having those bouts of anxiety and just feeling numb. And one thing I wanted to say to, I know I'm going off on a tangent because I feel so passionate about this, but one thing we do to, I want you to recognize, do I keep myself busy because that to me was a distraction, I will keep myself busy, I need to just keep do, do doing and so I don't have to feel what I'm feeling and that again is just as detrimental to your your health and your well being and the living your life to the fall If you are constantly distracting yourself with dizziness and just as if you're drinking all the time or just hanging out on the T.

V. All the time or eating your field things away or whatever it is for you. You know Keeping yourself busy is also a distraction from feeling what you're feeling and processing what you're feeling. So you can't allow that chemical reaction to happen in your body be able to move forward. Yeah and there's so many helpful ways right first acknowledging it we don't really have a lot of practical because we don't, the only practical is stop talking yourself out of your feelings right? Like feel them. Feel them and process access them and we'll have a free resource. You can see in the show notes for details on how to process your emotions. Will give you the link to get that resource for free. But even things like deep breathing and like all the things you just shared. Ashley are so helpful to get in touch with. Okay I'm feeling this right now naming it like even being able to name it that was huge for me. I go to emotion was just anger and it took a friend of mine many many years ago to unpeeled that the anger I was feeling actually hurt because I didn't know it just came out as angry.

I was just angry or mad mad. I wouldn't even say angry. I was mad but really I was hurt, I didn't even know how to name my emotions. They just all felt like one thing and really trying to understand what emotion was, What naming it, sitting with it, processing it and then moving on, right. Such good stuff here. And one way we could do that also is even journaling, you know, I mean scheduled it. Like I've even I've I had this conversation, I've had to do with myself as well schedule. You're feeling all the feels time. Yeah, your emotional processing time, whether that's going on a walk, whether that's praying, but that's journaling whether that's crying in your closet or in your car or you know allow yourself there's been times where like I said at the beginning of this episode, right? I mean holding back tears as you're driving in the car now is not the time for me to fall apart. But let yourself come back to that later. Just not come back to it at all because then that is doing that same habit of not allowing myself to feel it and process it and actually really being able to move forward.

It's just well that one stuck now, I wonder if that one stuck in my arm, you know right? Yeah, that's that's so true. I mean I spent years being stuck, right, just stuck stuck not even knowing why I was stuck, just stuck and felt like I couldn't move forward and there was so many emotions that I hadn't processed and it's not a lot of work, I mean it's amazing you and ice coaches, this is what we do with our clients, but it's not like it takes years, just one session can be enough to unloosed sin some of those deeper ones that we really need to release and let go of so that we can rise up and shine and live our best lives and not be stuck in this ho hum you know, just survival mode because you and I both spent way too many years doing that now that talk about a waste of time crying is not a waste of time feeling your feelings is not a waste of time being stuck in that place of unprocessed emotions is the ultimate waste of time.

Amen to that. Alright everyone. Um I just want to leave you with this encouragement to that when you do go to feel your feelings feel your emotions give yourself that compassion, have self love, grace compassion on yourself as you allow yourself because especially you know, it's kind of going 0 to 60 right? You this is again a new skill if it's not in your habit, your healthy habits right now, but this is something to practice and to keep trying at, you know, I mean it's it's going to be hard, it's going to be uncomfortable being able to allow you yourself to feel those things is what's really going to get you there because it's true if you do want to thrive and live life to the full this is a missing piece. You know, not the missing piece of talking yourself out of your feelings and making yourself feel bad about it. There's no shame, there's no shame in what you feel.

And I know we don't always share how we feel with others, even in our friendships, even in with siblings or spouse maybe, but being able to allow yourself to open up and have that compassion and that Grace and yourself is really going to help you here. So we just hope that this encourages you again, Claudine and I are here for you. Please reach out any time if you're interested in having a call and helping you learn how to feel the feels right? Because we see it on sweat shirts and bumper stickers, but how how do I do this? And it's having some somebody to support you walk with you and even help give you the tools to get you to this place where it becomes much more natural and even maybe a place where you look forward to it. Right? So thank you again for tuning in with us this week and we hope this encourages you also feel free to share this episode with a friend. Anyone that you feel can be encouraged by it as well. So we hope you have a wonderful week and we will catch you next time.

Take care. Alright, everyone, thank you for joining in on our conversation today here on the Rise up and Shine podcast. If you haven't already, please take a second to hit that subscribe button. So you never miss an episode. And while you're at it, share this episode with a friend who you know it can bless today if you want to visit us as well on our websites, you can catch Claudine over at Claudine Sweeney dot com and Ashley at mind over chaos dot com. Our links are in the description. We also have some free resources there for you as well. So remember, ladies, no matter what you are facing in life, it is never too late to rise up and shine and live your best life.