Latest / Healthy Happy Wise Wealthy / The Art of Being Present: Kara Stoltenberg’s Guide to Listening and Navigating Tough Emotions Pt 1

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The Art of Being Present: Kara Stoltenberg’s Guide to Listening and Navigating Tough Emotions Pt 1 · Healthy Happy Wise Wealthy

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Hi everybody. Mary Meyer with Healthy, Happy, Wise, Wealthy here with
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Kara Stoltenberg. She is host of Stepping in with
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Kara podcast. She has a
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coaching business that she's been doing for a very long time
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and I have worked with her personally for years.
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It seems like in lifetimes past at this point.
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But since our podcast so far, the first 10
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episodes, Erika and I were realizing we talk so much about listening
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and breathing are topics that came up. Whether we were talking about
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physical health, mental health, about leadership, about
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entrepreneurship, all these different things were coming up about listening.
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And for you, that is one of your signature topics,
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which you call holding space for people, which is
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very, very active listening, basically.
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So I want to hear more about that and tell
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us a little bit about your. Because your podcast is also a really good example
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of that holding space model. Yeah. So.
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Hi. It's so good to be back.
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I'm so happy to be here talking about listening. It's one of
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my favorite topics and breathing is one of my favorite topics as well. I love
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to breathe. Ah, me too. So good. It's
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like so life giving. Exactly.
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Yeah. So I'll start just even by saying my podcast
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title. I was, I, seven years
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ago, was in a hit and run bicycle accident
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and I was left on the side of the road unconscious to die. As you
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know, Mary, and you know,
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I. I have spent the last seven years recovering
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and fighting for my life and fighting to
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have more life within the life I'm living currently.
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And that's a long process. And it's one of those
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things that it's never going to go away. It's
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certainly changed in the last seven years,
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but along that journey there have been spaces that have been
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very weary. Right. And one of the
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things I started noticing was that people have a very hard time
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just stepping in to whatever you're
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going through. Which is why I named my podcast Stepping in
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with Kara. Because I wanted to create a space
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in which, number one, I'm holding space for
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other people's stories. So I'm modeling what does it look like to just
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be with someone and let them just tell their story
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and hold space for them without the need
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to have answers. Solutions like you don't need
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to fix it, you can just be present with them,
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comfortable with emotion and that
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I want to come back around to that, but I don't want to get too
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far off track. But that is one of the pieces of holding space.
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Being comfortable with someone having emotion and emotion can
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run the gamut. Right. Of from sadness to
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anger to anxiety or fear.
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Guilt. There's so many ways a person can feel.
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And again, to not feel like you have to have the answer,
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but to just be with someone and be in
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it with them. And so,
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yeah, there's a lot to that skill, and I think
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that it's unnatural. And, yeah, that's why
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we're here. We're going to talk about it today, right? Well,
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absolutely. And to give everyone a background. You were the very first. One of the
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very. The first episode of this podcast I had you on.
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And in part, even when I was deciding what to do with
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this podcast, it was to give people a
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platform who I know have an exceptional amount of wisdom for
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the world who aren't internationally or
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nationally known. So, of course, I was thinking about you during that.
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And just as a. As a backstory, we're not going to go into all the
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things, you know, today that we worked on. But, you know, I.
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I had, you know, my history. And we aren't going to go into this today.
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We will go into it more later on. But I want to give people just
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kind of a context of everything that you know so much
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about so many things. And so I know I stand here today as someone who
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probably wouldn't be alive had I not worked with you. And that's just a reality
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because I was. I had at that point. I know when I started working with
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you, I knew you a little bit before that even. But I have seven children.
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Four were adopted, and I had had Lyme's disease without knowing it for
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I don't know how long, let's say 14 years, before
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I came to you. And in a matter of a couple minutes, through
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the different testing that you had, you realized that's what it was. And we spent
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a year detoxing on that and two years detoxing,
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everything physical. And then we started detoxing emotional stuff
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along with that. And so this is where I first learned the terms
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holding space. I had never heard that before, but I also experienced it with
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you to the point where it was a surreal
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spiritual experience, actually, to be in the room with you and you're
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my friend, even. But like to. And, but like the.
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When you're with you in a setting where you're working with you
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one on one, it is like you really do feel like there
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is nothing else in the world going on. You're not thinking about anything
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else. You are so tuned in
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to the person in front of you in a way that I've. I've
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rarely have ever seen anyone do. So I want to give
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that as a backstory to all of this also. Wow.
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Yeah. Well, and in addition to that, you know,
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is that's when I learned the way that there is such a
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connection between physical and emotional. Physical, emotional, spiritual,
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mental. Everything is so tied together in our bodies.
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So if we're going to be healthy, we have to have an
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understanding of listening to other people,
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listening internally to ourselves. We need to. We need to be
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able to listen. Listen, you know, to the larger to God universe. We
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have to have an ability to listen and all those things, but we
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rarely do in a way. Right. And.
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Well, what you just touched on there is what I almost got sidetracked
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on. So now I'm going to come back around to it because one
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of the reasons I think it's hard culturally for us to step
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in with people, to really hold space is because we're
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not in the habit of doing it for ourselves.
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Yeah. So, for example, if you're not comfortable
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allowing yourself to feel sad or. Or angry
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or afraid, it will be very hard for you to hold
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space for someone who's sobbing. If
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you can't go to sad within yourself and allow that
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emotion to course through you,
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it's very hard to be comfortable with someone else being sad.
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And it's. I mean, what does everybody say on. On your podcast? I
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don't know if people cry, but most of the time on my podcast, people cry.
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When they do, what do they say? I'm so
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sorry that I'm crying. I sometimes still say that I'm
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like, oh, my gosh, you never need to be sorry.
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If we just give emotion a little bit of space.
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In fact, two things about emotions. One,
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a true emotion that is just happening in the moment takes about
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60 to 90 seconds to be felt
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and then released. If you find
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yourself in a spiral of emotion that's going on and on and on and
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on, it probably isn't just about the thing right in front of you. There's probably
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some buried old emotions stuffed down in
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you that needs space. And this
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is like, as we get comfortable holding space for ourselves
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and letting ourselves feel what we feel,
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express what's in us, and find people who are
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comfortable, whether that's friends or professionals
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who are able to create, because you have to have
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safe space to really feel comfortable
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expressing and feeling what you feel and thinking what you think,
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and, you know, just being totally honest.
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But I do find that people generally are either more comfortable, like,
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sad and angry has been a funny kind of case study
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for me. And the whole time I've been working with people, which has been over.
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It's been over 20 years in different capacities. And
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I watch sad and angry.
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Usually most people are pretty comfy with
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one of those. And one of the first times I
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recognized this was in myself. I noticed, like, I'm
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comfortable with sad, I'm okay with sad. But I
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had been hardcore trained, not in my family system,
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but in my marriage to my son's
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dad to be happy all the time. I would,
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I could be raging mad inside and I would be like,
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I am very mad. That's how I would express anger.
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Like coming out of that marriage because I felt so
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uncomfortable with the expression of anger. I
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had somehow bottled it up so hard. And when you
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bottle anger, what happens? Every once in a while you're going to have a blow
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up. That's what generally happens. But,
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you know, I started watching people around me who had
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productive, like they could feel anger and
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knock out a wall to do reconstruction in their house or
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scrub a tub or do something that was like productive to
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move the anger through them. And I was like, well, these are great
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ideas. I'm gonna start trying this. And like, cleaning is my favorite one now because
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it's like I am now comfortable feeling anger. I don't
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like feeling anger, but it's a necessary emotion.
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We all need to be comfortable with anger,
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sadness, fear.
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And I remember having those conversations with you at some point because we've been friends
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for so long now that I'm like, I really want you to be angry
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saying that. And you're like, I just don't feel anger. I just don't feel
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angry. I'm like, well, I feel rage about what's happened
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to you. So. Yeah, and it
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was, it was interesting too. I think you're referring to
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my childhood trauma when you say that. It's like for other things
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too. Other things too. Yeah. It's like I could come into
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touch even with terror. I could. I felt more terror
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about things than I did anger. But when I finally got
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to that place where the
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anger could. I could add the capacity for it.
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I think that's what it was. And I felt safe enough. Like
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I was safe and supported and I could
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allow myself to feel angry. It's still not my
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first go to. It's just not the way I'm wired. But
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I am a lot more comfortable with it now.
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And I grew up in a house where we are comfortable
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expressing displeasure. Like, you know, like
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it wasn't. There wasn't a lot of fighting or yelling all the time,
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but there was the occasional, like, Raised voice because someone was upset.
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Like, anger was allowed in my home growing up. So
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that was definitely like a later thing for me. And also as a
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woman and as a wife, learning that to, you know, sit
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pretty and be calm and patient and not get
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angry, which was a misdirection
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because anger is not bad. It is not
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indesirable, undesirable. It's part of our natural
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spectrum of human emotions, and it gives us very
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important information. Right. And I think
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one of the things I know I learned from you is, well,
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first of all, anger is a way to say it's just. It's a boundary. Right.
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It means, like, if you're. Something's happening that's making you angry, it's stop or
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stop now. Yeah. So the way I. When
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I feel angry, I ask myself and I teach people to ask
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themselves, what's not okay?
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So usually when you feel angry, it's a little like engine light
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that says somebody's crossed over a boundary and is. Is
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violating you or something's not okay with you.
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And another way you can kind of angle that question is, what
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matters to me,
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anger fuels action. So if someone
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is doing something that's not okay and you need to
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create a boundary, the anger is what gives you the
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fuel to create that boundary.
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If something is a passionate cause for you, it's like, this
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matters to me, and I'm angry that this is happening.
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That anger fuels you. Taking action toward that
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passionate cause, standing up for whatever you're
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angry about, it. Can also be the fuel
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that, you know, if we look at it, I think I've probably learned this stuff
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from you, but like, freeze. If you're in a traumatic situation or a
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traumatic relationship, you can go to anger, or you can go to freeze, you can
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go to flight. So if you've gone to freeze, that's like cold, right? Cold. You
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can't move. So the anger can be like the heat that moves you and gets
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you moving and makes you make that change that you have to. You have to
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take action in order to be safe. Like, freezing is what you think would
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keep you safe in a. As an example, a traumatic relationship. But it could be
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an incident too. Like, and you're in the middle of a traumatic incident
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where you need to move fast. So well, and
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anger as a nature, it's hot, it's
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physical, it needs to move. So here's the other thing I was going to say
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about emotions in general. They are emotions,
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energy in motion. I've been saying this for 20 years. I know you've heard
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me say this. Yeah, they're meant to be transient.
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They come in. I like to think of them as a little three part.
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You feel them and most people don't have. They
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get stuck in one of the three parts or they're good at two, but they
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forget about the third. You feel them. A lot of people don't feel
14:41
emotions. They think about them. Yeah, I'm feeling sad,
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I'm feeling angry. And this is why. That's the
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processing part. And as humans, I think
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that generally is an important part
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of really getting an emotion to release.
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But I do think you can bypass the thinking about it. I
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think you can feel it and release it. I don't think you
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can think about it and release it. We are bodies. We
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are soma. We have to feel.
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We are meant to feel emotions. That's what they are.
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They're energy. And if you don't feel, feel
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it. It's like the energy of that
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emotion hangs out in your field.
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And in your energy field. Right. Over time, you have all
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these emotions hanging out in your energy field. And the energy field
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affects the matter in the field. That's your body.
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Yeah. So if you're not. The third part is
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you feel it, you process it, and you invite it to
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release. Because energy or that energy isn't made to
15:52
stay within us. And, you know, if you don't do
15:56
anything, if you just feel emotion and then you just kind of, okay, stuff it
15:59
down, whether that's sadness or grief or fear, you're
16:03
literally just collecting all this energy and carrying
16:07
all this weight. And
16:10
it's. It's affecting your life. Not just in a mental or
16:14
emotional. Like it's affecting your health. It's affecting everything.
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It's affecting quality of life, your ability to make decisions.
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Everything. Yeah. And I think, you know, because we grew up, of course, in an
16:25
era where we were trained to. We're told to not
16:29
be emotional, not making a decision based on emotion.
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Be rational. You're taught, I mean, you go to
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church and you're taught that, you know, don't anger is bad
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and that kind of thing. But. And I think vented anger, which
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is, you know, that's when someone is, you know, throwing
16:47
punches or something like that at people or screaming in rage at people because
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they're mad. Someone come, you know, a parent comes home from work,
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something was bad there, and starts screaming at everybody. Vented
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rage is bad. Yes. So there's
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distortions of any emotion. And we're going to just stick with anger because
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we could do a whole deep dive on every one of them. Right, right. But
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rage would be a distortion of anger, passive
17:14
aggressive behavior, silent treatment, that's another
17:17
distortion of anger. It's right, it's uncomfortable in a
17:21
very different way. But emotion, again
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is meant to be dealt with in house. If you feel your emotion,
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process it, consider it. You're digesting
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the actual emotion and then you're releasing it.
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Now you can interact around whatever that
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I, I like to think of emotions as friends. They're informants. They give us
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information about what's going on in our world and the environment.
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And if you don't digest anger and then you go try to
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have a conversation, you're going to have an angry conversation and it's
17:56
going to be tense. And the only thing the other person really hears
18:00
is the anger. They may not even be able to hear what you're saying.
18:03
And that causes them to get defensive or hurt or
18:07
many. And, and we are all imperfect at this, you know that.
18:11
Very imperfect. Yeah. There's mastery is
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continuing to try to engage with these emotions
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and in our intimate relationships, you know, finding a way
18:23
back to love, finding a way back to forgiveness. Like that's
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true mastery, you know, trying to do our own
18:30
work and digest the emotions.
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I find personally, like on social media, when
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people are really worked up about things, I
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feel there's a social media has created this space in which people are
18:45
just sort of venting anger a lot rather than
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digesting the anger and then talking about the thing.
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The passionate. Remember I said anger can fuel taking action
18:55
toward a passion, something that matters to you. Right. But when you're
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venting, like you said, even with your voice, all
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people are hearing is the anger. So generally speaking, people who agree with
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you are going to hear what you're saying. People who don't know what you're talking
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about just feel like, oh my gosh, that's a lot of anger coming at me.
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Or like you said, vented anger. If you don't deal with your anger,
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it can come out sideways, you know, whether that's yelling at your
19:22
kids or like you said, physical violence.
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Or the, the other way, where it's, where it's basically, you know,
19:30
psychological abuse, you know, where it becomes very mental. I'm not
19:34
going to physically show my anger. I'm just going to make you
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suffer for anything that I feel like making you
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suffer for. By giving you the silent treatment, by being
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passive aggressive, by, you
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know, just abandoned abandonment kind of thing. They're just gonna
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abandon you, whatever it is. All those Things are also you not
19:57
dealing with your anger? Well, yeah. And people
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think they are, they're, they're academic. Oh, I'm not, I don't
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rage. I just, I just become sociopathic.
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Well. And I want to clarify that
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I work on these things all the time in my life. I
20:16
mean, I practice what I preach and with my clients.
20:19
Right. So the things we're talking about,
20:24
I mean passive aggressive, for example,
20:28
these are the kind of things that we have to get
20:32
honest about. If those things are showing up
20:36
in little ways, that's not one of my personal
20:39
go tos, but I just know like, oh, at
20:43
least 80% of my clients, like there's that passive
20:46
aggressive streak and it, it's
20:50
sometimes it's motivated by like compliance. Like I'm trying to be the
20:54
nice person, I'm trying to be what you know. But when we can
20:57
identify that's actually passive aggressive.
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And here would be a healthier alternative.
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And if you digest this anger and communicate in this way,
21:09
you might actually create more intimacy and
21:13
feel better than when you say in this
21:16
pattern. It's, it's being able to recognize those
21:20
patterns in our, in our existence
21:23
and then doing something about them, you know, that's
21:27
the fun of the kind of work I
21:31
do. Yeah. And no one, I don't know that anyone has it, you
21:34
know. Well, maybe some of us do have it completely dialed in
21:38
on anger. But I would, I would, I feel like the healthiest thing
21:42
to do with anger is to, to do what you're saying, digest
21:45
it quickly, realize what is making you angry and then being able to
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speak what is making you angry in a way to the other person where
21:53
you're not, where you're calm about what's about
21:57
the boundary that you need. Yeah. And you know, when
22:00
you're, when there is something at stake, when you might lose a
22:03
relationship, you might get screamed at, you might get hit, you might lose your
22:07
job, you might lose the income. It's very hard to make the
22:11
boundary because there are boundaries can cause
22:15
real damage in your life. So that's, I think, why
22:18
it's so hard to do it. And it's so easy to go to some of
22:22
the other things like fawning or freezing
22:26
or passive aggressive behavior or avoidance,
22:30
you know, those are easier because then we won't take
22:34
the. Necessarily take the hit. Yeah. Quote as
22:37
quickly. Yeah. I remember, you know, in
22:41
my own journey, you know, so much is. Information
22:45
is more readily available. Now in my own journey, when I first
22:49
started understanding my nervous system
22:53
and people would talk about fight or flight. And I remember just thinking, like,
22:58
I don't really relate to either one of those. I'm kind of
23:01
confused. And then probably 10 years in,
23:05
finally, I don't even. It. It hasn't been that long. Somebody started talking about
23:09
freeze the first time I heard that. I'm like, that feels
23:12
familiar. I think I'm frozen. I've been frozen for
23:16
decades. So let's talk about that
23:20
for a minute. Fight is when.
23:24
Now. And I'm gonna say sympathetic nervous system. Parasympathetic nervous
23:28
state. It's a state of arousal that your body goes.
23:32
I'm gonna move toward the thing that feels
23:35
threatening and deal with it. Yeah. Flight
23:39
is when your body goes. I'm gonna get away from this thing that feels
23:43
threatening. That's what feels safest.
23:47
Freeze is when you feel like you've tried one of those
23:50
or you just know, like, nothing. Nothing is gonna work. And so you,
23:54
like. Like an opossum. You go into freeze,
23:58
thinking that might be what keeps you alive. Right.
24:02
Then years later and not so distant
24:06
past, they started talking about fawning and,
24:09
oh, it might be my favorite one. I'm like, now that I
24:13
have mastered. And so I say
24:17
that tongue in cheek, because I think it's really important
24:21
to recognize that in your journey of personal growth, it's really important to be
24:24
able to realize, like, oh, that's a habit that I learned for
24:28
survival. And it pops up every once in a while when I feel
24:32
unsafe. Right. And fawning is basically people pleasing. It's
24:35
basically, it's my job to make sure everybody's happy and comfortable,
24:40
and I'm gonna contort myself into whatever position
24:43
necessary to make sure you're good. Right? To
24:46
keep peace. Keep the peace. To.
24:51
Don't make it worse. Yes. Yeah.
24:55
Yeah. We are both grew up in the Midwest. We're good Midwestern
24:58
women. We are going to comply, and we're. Well
25:02
trained, darn it. And, you know, when you
25:06
start, I think for me, I definitely feel like I'm at
25:10
a level of mastery where if
25:13
that shows up as an instinct, I
25:17
recognize it immediately. And I'm like, oh, wow,
25:21
I must be feeling a little bit unsafe right now,
25:24
because I can feel myself wanting to
25:28
fawn to make the other person and, you know, you're kind of building them
25:31
up or something. Here's the thing. I'm. I'm a naturally very
25:35
complimentary, encouraging person. I want to reflect
25:39
people's value to them. So that is something that I do
25:44
just in my person. It's something that I. I do.
25:48
So. But there's a difference when, when you
25:52
recognize, like, oh, wow, I'm. I'm feeling
25:56
like fawning to stay safe. And I think just
26:01
when you realize those moments can happen
26:05
throughout your lifetime. This is one of the things I run into
26:08
with clients all the time. They're like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I'm still
26:11
dealing with this. Which is why I'm making the comment, like, I like to put
26:14
myself out there on the plate sometimes and be like, yeah, you're gonna keep dealing
26:18
with this. Like, you were trained hardcore in
26:22
this. It might take the next 30 years to be
26:25
completely well. And I think we get better at
26:29
choosing our surroundings and choosing people to do
26:32
life with, you know, as we're. Growing or
26:36
choosing to be alone. Yeah, well, not alone.
26:40
I. There's a lot of people to do life with. Yes. Yes. But,
26:43
yeah, and I. Well, and I, I do want to bring up like, we're not,
26:47
we're not down. Looking down on people who are
26:50
in terrifying situations currently or
26:54
in an abusive relationship.
27:00
Yeah. When you can't get out. Right. So we're not looking down. We're both in
27:04
a place right now. We're in. We're in relative safety and
27:08
have done years of processing and healing both of us.
27:12
So we feel the most dangerous time
27:17
to leave an abusive relationship. Well, the most dangerous time is when you're leaving.
27:20
Right. That's what I'm trying to say. That's when. That's when people get killed.
27:25
So. Which is another reason why you step in with people. So if you've been
27:28
through something and, and you might not be the
27:32
capable of protecting someone, but you might be capable
27:36
of knowing what the signs are
27:40
and when you might need to call
27:43
police, when you might need to just show up and listen when
27:47
you might need to go, no worries, I understand what you were going through and
27:52
now you're past it and come on back. Let's. Let's go
27:56
talk. Let's. Whatever you need to process, which is usually shame.
27:59
If someone has found themselves in an abusive relationship, the next step,
28:03
as they get out of it is feeling shame that they were ever in it,
28:06
is what I've found. Shame, confusion. There's
28:10
so many. Yeah. There's so many grief. I know. I
28:13
just, I almost want to say that just in case anyone's listening, going,
28:18
what about, you know, because we do look down at people who've lived through.
28:22
Through hellish situations, like it's. Like it's all their fault. Instead
28:26
of going let's hold space for this
28:30
and go, maybe not. I
28:33
don't. I don't look down on people in circumstances.. I
28:37
think that's one ways that I look at the world that is so
28:41
different and Right. Honest. I don't know. It
28:44
blows my mind because I'm like, okay,
28:48
anybody who's thinking that, have you never been through something really hard that you
28:52
didn't actually plan on or call into
28:55
your life? Like, I think it takes one kind of hard
28:59
knock situation to realize, gosh,
29:03
anything can happen to anybody. And
29:06
compassion is a real key piece
29:10
to being a human. I have a lot of
29:13
compassion for humanness.
29:18
Even choices we make or
29:21
beliefs that we hold that later we go, oh,
29:25
I wouldn't do that again. Like, I. I think there's
29:28
so little room to judge when you've
29:32
lived much time on the planet and you realize
29:36
it's hard. It's hard to be in good alignment and make good
29:40
choices. And that's what we want.
29:44
Right. That's. That's what I work with people to help people get
29:47
into really good alignment. Like, really true about. This is where
29:51
I am. And here are ways that I'm functioning
29:54
that are keeping me from really going where I want to go or creating what
29:58
I want to create. Yeah. But
30:02
no matter where you are, you can find your
30:06
way from really hard circumstances
30:11
into I am okay.
30:15
Yeah. And I think about the number of times
30:19
I've done that in my life, in my journey, and that is
30:22
not a quick thing. That's a. That
30:26
can take years to go from. I am in this circumstance. I am
30:30
not okay to really do the work to cultivate.
30:34
I am okay in my body. And let's
30:38
come back to this topic of listening and
30:42
listening to your body. Like, it takes a lot of listening
30:46
to be able to take yourself from. I'm not okay. Maybe that means
30:50
getting out of circumstances. And I'm broadly talking about many different
30:53
circumstances or an injury or an accident like I went through
30:57
more recently in my life.
31:02
Or incredibly intense grief surrounding a traumatic
31:06
loss. Yes. Relationship. You know, which could be a physical.
31:09
And however, if it's. Even if they're alive, it can still be a
31:13
traumatic loss. If. If they pass, then it's a traumatic loss. So
31:17
that. That season of grief is another one. Yeah.
31:20
Anything that makes me feel like I am not okay. Right.
31:24
Like, I always have
31:27
emphasized our circumstances do not define us.
31:31
Right. But sometimes it feels like they do.
31:36
And I think when it feels like your circumstances define you
31:39
and you're like, I can't get out of this, I feel so stuck
31:43
to me. That's when you may. You may need some support
31:47
to get to go from there to, I'm listening
31:51
to my body. Let's talk about some ways that you can listen to
31:55
your body. I think, you know, like, one way even
31:59
just,
32:02
you know, just kind of like doing a scan
32:06
and imagining you could feel into, like,
32:10
where am I holding things? Where do I hold tension? Or
32:14
if. If there's something you're feeling, where do I feel that in
32:18
my body? And sometimes that can be. You can be
32:21
like, I have no idea. So don't be stressed if you can't
32:25
figure it out. But if there's an emotion or something going on in your
32:29
life and you're just like, where do I feel that in my body?
32:33
And just giving some attention to that space, allowing
32:36
for emotion, is one of the ways to listen to your body. Like,
32:41
what do I really need right now in this moment? So
32:44
when you're not okay, or it feels like you're not okay, or you feel
32:48
stuck and you can't even see to a
32:52
brighter future, you can't even see a light at the end of the tunnel. You
32:56
don't even know if you're going to be able to create one. But something inside
32:59
of you believes there's more. It's about all you need.
33:03
Or maybe I could partner with someone who could believe more for
33:07
me. Like, all you need is that little generation of, like, I'm
33:10
determined to find a little bit more.
33:14
And, you know, you don't look ahead
33:18
to the end when you're. When you feel not okay,
33:22
you look in and you go, what do I need right now? Do I need
33:26
a walk? Do I need a glass of water?
33:29
Do I need to put lemon in my water because it makes me drink it?
33:34
Do I need to talk to a friend
33:37
Because I feel lonely and my heart aches? Do I need to
33:41
connect with someone? Do I need
33:46
to put my feet on the earth and ground
33:49
myself and feel the electromagnetic frequency of
33:53
earth coming through my body? Whether or not you feel
33:57
that it's happening right? Stabilize myself. Do I need to
34:01
be in nature? So go on a hike? I couldn't
34:04
drive for seven years, so I. Some of my default
34:08
things that I did to be okay were taken away from me.
34:13
So I created a garden around me. I started gardening
34:16
and planting flowers. And so that for
34:20
me, deadheading my flowers and watering them is my
34:24
meditation. It's my. I don't put my earbuds in. I
34:27
don't really. I really Tune in and be in nature
34:31
during that time.
34:35
Yeah, there's so many ways in which we're just like the
34:38
basics. Do I need a nap? Right?
34:42
Yeah, just sometimes sleep will help a lot. Yes, unless
34:46
you're totally in freeze and then you're sleeping too much, but.
34:50
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So
34:54
once we get to that place of I'm okay,
34:59
you know, then there's the next of like, okay, now from here,
35:02
things are changed. You know, whether your body has changed or
35:06
someone's no longer in your life through a divorce or death
35:10
or, you know, whatever has happened that has changed you. Then
35:13
there's that path of how do I build from here?
35:17
So that's the place where it gets a little bit fun because you get to
35:21
explore what am I actually doing in my day
35:24
to day in this mind, in this body, and how do I want to
35:28
use my time intentionally? So this is the listening
35:32
in order to create the life that you really want.
35:35
Absolutely. When you're doing that for yourself,
35:39
that's when you're able to do that for other people.
35:44
Right. Hold space for what people are going through.
35:47
Yeah. And you and I talked about this and I think it's important to
35:51
bring this up when we talk about this concept of holding space.
35:58
You know, it's a. It's a listening without judgment.
36:02
It's a listening and a being present, fully
36:06
present, without
36:10
feeling like you need to fix anything. Right.
36:16
With my friends, with, with clients, it's a
36:19
little bit of a different dance. But with my friends,
36:24
a lot of times, if someone is expressing something really hard to me as a
36:28
friend, I will say,
36:33
tell me where you are. Do you need me just to hold space for you,
36:37
to feel this and be here with you? Do you want to brainstorm
36:40
some ideas for solutions? Like,
36:44
and sometimes people are like, I don't know, both.
36:49
But if you don't want solutions, it actually hurts
36:53
when someone shows up with solutions. Like, I just want you to listen to me
36:56
or hold me or whatever. And so I think even being brave enough
37:00
to say, say, tell me how I can support you, I can, I
37:04
can help you think about ways to make this better,
37:08
or I can just listen and let you feel what you're feeling and
37:12
be here with you as you feel it. That to me is what holding
37:15
space is. I am okay with you feeling whatever
37:19
you feel. And the important thing
37:23
here is let's come back to this concept of boundaries.
37:27
Yes. Boundaries. Yes. Because it all goes together.
37:31
It's not, let's say you have a friend who's
37:35
in an ongoing long Time, difficult
37:38
situation and he or she is doing everything they
37:42
can to heal the situation, to get better, to
37:46
find help, to resource themselves, right? And
37:50
you are one piece of the puzzle of support for
37:53
them, right? You are not
37:57
responsible for them,
38:00
you are holding space for them within your own capacity. So
38:04
you have to not martyr yourself or
38:08
feel like you have an obligation to always show up every
38:12
single time whenever someone needs you. This is part of
38:15
that codependence that we're, I think trying to find the balance
38:19
in it is. Okay, let's say you
38:23
had a 14 hour day at work, right?
38:27
And you're crawling into bed because you are
38:30
completely done and you have
38:33
nothing left, right. You are probably not
38:37
resourced to sit on the phone for an hour and listen
38:40
to a friend, right? And so I think it's important
38:44
like for us to have healthy expectations of one another
38:48
in our relationships. If we have more than one
38:52
person, we want to resource our own lives with more than one person,
38:55
whether that's a professional person, a couple of friends that we feel
38:59
comfortable talking to. This all takes time.
39:03
I mean it's not like to find those safe people that
39:07
we know we can be so vulnerable with. And
39:10
you know, I want to just kind of insert here too. It's like both
39:14
Kara and I, as we were dealing with physical issues,
39:18
we have had different things we've dealt with in our lives but, or you know,
39:21
relationships or how that's affected us. We have
39:25
paid a lot of money to go have professionals and work with
39:28
professionals both to help physical health, mental health, emotional
39:32
health. So we are not in this thing at all saying, you know,
39:36
the only thing you do is go find some good friends, a piece of the
39:40
puzzle. Even more importantly, if you are the
39:43
person who is, you're, you're not, you're not in the, you're
39:47
not the professional, you're just a person who's in someone's life,
39:51
whether it's a relative, friend or someone. You're just that came in your
39:55
path that you want to help. You have to know that you,
39:59
you have to have boundaries and you have to have proper
40:02
expectations that you are not trained professionally to help
40:05
this person. So that what you can do is limited. It's
40:09
still powerful what you can do to a certain degree. But we
40:13
are not in this thing saying it's, you know, hold space for people and then
40:16
everything's going to get fixed because you did the right thing.