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Emotional Acceptance and Self Compassion for Emotional Simplicity · #BeMoreLobster

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The emotions we contract around are heavily influenced by cultural norms.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Boys learn early to contract around their tears.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Many girls learn to keep their voices quiet so as to not disrupt.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, the behaviors we come to embody reflect the society that we live in.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Contractions like these, when repeated often enough, ultimately change the physical structure of the entire social and emotional sense organ that is your body.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you hold in your laughter all the time, eventually you'll become stiff and rigid, both physically and behaviourally.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: The constellation of sensation, mood, and movement required to stifle laughter, bury anger, or contain sadness gets neuromascularly wired together and put on autopilot.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to this special three-part podcast series where we're talking about emotional simplicity.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And today, in this second part, we're going to be talking about emotional acceptance and self-compassion.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're ready, let's dive right in.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: As you may have guessed, that excerpt at the beginning there was from the incredible book Your Body Is Your Brain by Amanda Blake.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: There is a link in the notes somewhere if you want to go buy it.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Please buy it.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Please read it.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is life-changing, period.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: So let's completely just dive into the topic of emotional acceptance.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to start with a meme or a picture that Serena Petersley came up in my social media feed today from years ago.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it said, most of the time, change isn't painful.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a resistance to change that is painful.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it reminds me that when we when we start with emotional acceptance, resisting emotions is the worst place to start.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we what we resist persists.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you've heard that before.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So why do we resist certain emotions?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think it comes down to judgment.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: We have been taught from our families, from society, that some emotions are good and some emotions are bad.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: The ones that don't make us feel that great, they tend to be bad.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the ones that make us feel pretty good, they're all to be good.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to offer, as I did in the last episode, I hope, a perspective shift around that.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I also just want to add another layer here as well.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: When we think about a lot of us have been through, and maybe we're still going through, like those feelings where like, well, who am I really?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Particularly when we've been through life changes, particularly if you think about puberty and perimenopause or when you've lost somebody in your life, like it can really rock your world and can say, Well, actually, who am I?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it got me to thinking about if we look at our chakra system and the base chakra, the I am chakra.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then directly above that, we have the sacral chakra, which is the I feel chakra.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: We can get so many blockages here because we are conforming.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be, I don't, because when we're younger, we don't know any different.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about the model of the world in the the model, your your model of the world in the last episode.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: But we're conforming because we want to be loved, we want to feel safe, we want to be seen, and so we conform to what we think is gonna bring us those things in.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And within that plan, we're gonna learn that some emotions we're allowed to have and some we really should hide away for whatever reason.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so we become, you know, unbalanced, we start to resist, we start to suppress, we start to depress so that we can be what other people want us to be.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: When I then start to think about likening the emotions on a palette.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think about a colour palette, if you think, if you think about now going somewhere in nature, maybe it's your garden, and you think about the complexity and and the vividness of the colours that are present in nature.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And imagine what your life would be like if, I mean, there are people here, maybe listen to this, who are colourblind as an example.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's an amazing story in the in the book, Your Body is Your Brain, where uh because of um trauma, the guy actually could only see in black and white.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually he ends up seeing in colour after many, many, many, many years.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to read the book.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's how powerful it is.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine that you suddenly the colour gets taken out of your world, and either the colour is dimmed right down, so it's kind of yucky, dirty, or it goes black and white.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: How different would your life be?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: As somebody who loves gardening, who loves, you know, I grow my grow veg and I go out walking the dog every day, it would be soul-destroying to think about never seeing those colours again.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: How can we have that same acceptance and and um what's the word I'm looking for?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Acceptance and um and awe perhaps around the emotional palette, the fact that we have the ability to feel these complexity of emotions.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what if we allowed ourselves to feel all of them without judgment?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got to thinking about how think about some of your most favorite songs or your most favorite movies, movies in particular, the ones that are love stories, the ones where there's tragedies, the ones where there's sadness, and but then they end up a happy ending.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we love them?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because they take us on this emotional roller coaster, they make us feel all of these things.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: The same with the songs.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can't beat a good 1980s love song, right?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we sing it, we feel it, we sing it from our heart because we're like, oh God, yeah, I remember when I was heartbroken, or I remember when that happened.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the songs that people play at their weddings, it makes them cry.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: We can only have that experience because we have the experience of living in and through and with this incredible emotional palette that's available to us on a regular basis.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: I thought about my dad.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: The reason that the grief was so hard and so long is because I love my dad.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I still obviously still love my dad.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love my dad so much.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I miss him every single day.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: He his passing has changed my life completely.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I had that grief, which was so hard, could only happen because I loved him so much, and so that for me was that first thing of being able to be like, oh, my life has become richer, has become deeper, has become more 5D because of my willingness to put myself into situations or navigate situations I have no control of that include all of these very difficult, sometimes drop you to your knee emotions.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that what makes us resist the emotions, and this is my perspective, is because we put so much judgment around it.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: We are bombarded with social media that wants us to be happy clappy all the time, that promotes positive outlook, that promotes um, you know, choosing to be happy, the choosing to be joy, that wants us to believe that when we achieve certain things, we are gonna be living a life where we don't have to navigate these more difficult emotions and it's absolute lie.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: This, this, the, the, the, the, the natural ebb and flow of life means that we're gonna be constantly in a dance with all these different emotions.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps, yes, we all want to be at a stage where we are feeling more optimistic or more resourceful or more positive more of the time.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it shouldn't be from a place of wanting to never feel these other ways again or wanting to avoid them completely.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's about developing when we get into this place of emotional acceptance.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: In order for us to emotionally accept, we have to believe that we have the strength and the resourcefulness and the tenacity to navigate and to manage any emotion that comes, that we can seek help, that we can get support, that we can talk to somebody so that we can navigate these seasons of life without the self-judgment, without the dragging the weight of resistance with us, and we can just be like, oh God, I'm feeling all the feels.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I just don't know what to do with it.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: There were many, many months after straight after losing my dad, where I didn't leave the house, I didn't want to speak to anybody, I didn't want to connect with some of my nearest and dearest friends.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I like completely retreated because in the last episode, I talked about wanting to turn down the volume of the intensity of the emotions, and I didn't know how to do that then.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying I'd know how to do it now if I was put in that position again, if I lost somebody else that I loved, God forbid, if I did, I don't know how I'd feel about that.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm just saying that when we get into judgment and we and we don't accept the emotions, I think it's it's the judgment, but I also think sometimes it's the fear that I won't manage.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: This emotion is gonna kill me.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm never gonna feel any different.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I can totally relate to all of that.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: I can totally relate to thinking I was never going to feel normal again, I was never gonna feel happy again, I was never gonna feel excited again.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: I remember constantly like seeking out people that I knew had lost their dad to be like, oh, are they happy now?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do they look like they're normal again?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because I just didn't think I would get there.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So emotional acceptance, I think, comes from two places.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Let's drop the judgment around the emotions that we have and how frequently we might feel the ones are not deemed as good, and how frequently we have the ones that are deemed like, yeah, we want to be more of this more of the time.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: But also let's develop for ourselves the belief and the faith that we can manage, that we can seek help, that we can talk to somebody, that we can find resources, that we can manage these difficult seasons because we have it within us already to do that.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the really, really important part of it.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the second part of this is really about extending self-compassion.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess self-compassion comes into the judgment.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: How can you, in your in your decision to seek more emotional simplicity, how can you extend self-compassion?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: How can you say, I'm okay, I can be here and I can be here without judgment?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I can be here and say, hey Louise, it's all right that you're struggling.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's all right today that you woke up and you felt like there was a dark cloud.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay that you reacted and got angry right there.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay for you to have this particular emotion.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like when we have self-compassion, it feels like to me, we open up the doors for asking for help.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: We can come from a place of self-love and go, okay, so what's really going on here?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Self-compassion allows us to kind of do a little bit of an internal journey to say, maybe there's something I'm not dealing with, maybe I didn't get enough sleep.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I haven't been eating right, maybe I'm not spending enough time doing things that I love.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I need to spend a bit more time with friends, maybe I need to do a little bit less work, maybe I need to get some more sleep.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Self-compassion allows you to kind of like find yourself on the map.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Go like, where am I?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on for myself?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that self-compassion, like I said in the first episode, allows you to make your decisions around your pathway forward from a place of self-love and already feeling complete versus you know, self-rejection, self-loathing, and thinking there's something about you that you've got to fix because you totally don't.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: We just need to come back home to ourselves.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: We just need to come back to our body.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the second episode, I hope, has helped you understand that we can accept all the emotions because there are some areas in our life where we love it.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: We love I love a good rom-com, right?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like fighty, bloody, you know, movies.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I like rom-coms, I like things that make me feel good.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mind a movie that's make me cry.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: But when we do that, it's because we have had the experience of these emotions already and they make us feel them all again and we love them and watch them over and over again, right?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no good, there's no bad.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's going back to the model that we talked about in the last episode, it's the thoughts and the feelings that we have about the circumstance.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: So here it's the thoughts and the feelings that you're having about that particular emotion.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this may come from when you're really small and you were told this emotion is acceptable, this one's not.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is what you should feel, you should definitely not feel this one.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can articulate this, you cannot articulate that.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And now we can come to a place of self-acceptance.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: We can accept the emotion, we can step into self-compassion, we can ask ourselves what we need, we can ask ourselves how we can create some acceptance around that emotion.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that is it for this episode.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna hit the final one next, and the next one is all about emotional challenge and decision making.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you might want to get your notepad and pen.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, maybe I didn't say this, I can't remember, but what I want you to do by the time you've listened to the third one is to be able to self-identify where you are on the map of this emotional simplicity because you might not be ready for the next episode, you might not be ready for emotional challenge.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay, I wasn't.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've only just stepped back into this place, and I'll discuss that more in the next episode.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know what to do.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you loved it, please do subscribe, leave me a review, that would be really awesome.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Share with your friends, and I'll speak to you again in the next episode of the Seeking Simplicity Podcast.