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Was buggering around trying to get my
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my Instagram and Facebook to work so that I could talk to you on both platforms. I hope you're all well, um, so today we are going to talk about emotions and the impact that emotions have on us. I'm talking about things like getting triggered or getting activated behaving in a reactive manner. To talk about the concept from compassion, from self compassion, called Backdraft, which came and hit me in the face. But is, you know, something that continues to you know, something that happens to us. So Backdraft, as you know, from any shows with, hold on a second. My
Unknown Speaker 0:58
take my notifications off.
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Any shows with fire involved. I think there used to be a movie. There was a movie called Backdraft, isn't it? And it's when, hi Marcia. It's when the fire has been starved of oxygen. And then I guess somebody opens the door and whoosh all the well, the fire comes out and greedily guzzles up the oxygen again, and it can be a very dangerous thing for people, because it gets is very, very sudden. And similarly, Backdraft in terms of emotions, and this is some talking here from Kristen neff's Wonderful work, self compassion. Backdraft is a similar to things. So it's, you start feeds a lot of us. You know, if we've closed ourselves off to our emotions, a lot many of us. I mean, for those of us who've dieted, restricted those kind of things in life, it's, it's, it's very easy for us to push down, suppress our emotional experience, because that's kind of what we've been taught to do. So we've been taught to Hello, hi. VIX, how are you?
Unknown Speaker 2:11
We've been taught to keep our emotions
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under wraps, and that's what we tend to do. And so what happens is, if we open the door to our emotions and we offer ourselves some self compassion. We spend some time sitting with our emotions. We notice where they are in our bodies. What can happen is we can get a really massive flood of emotions, because it's like the Backdraft with the fire. It's like we've suddenly opened the door to this, this thing that we've been trying to keep suppressed for a really long time. And I know for me, it was really interesting. What can happen is, like, all of a sudden you'll be crying, or all of a sudden you'll be angry, and you're like, where's this come from? I don't know. I am feeling so emotionally. I mean, for a lot of us women, it's often quite hard as well, because we're going through perimenopause and menopause as well, and those things can all be contributing factors as to why we might feel more emotional than normal. So talking about emotions, talking about discomfort, because I know that my experience of working with people with alcohol is that generally it's difficult emotions, and often we don't even realize it's difficult emotions that kind of cause us to drink when we didn't want to, or drink more than we wanted we wanted to, but this is just as applicable for anything else we do. I mean, one of the great ways that I tend to distract myself when I'm feeling some kind of discomfort is, you know, picking up the phone, getting the dopamine hits from social media, from checking my emails, from, you know, that kind of thing. It can be online shopping. It can be, you know, for some of us, it's things that to all the intensive purposes to society condones so
Unknown Speaker 3:56
tidying, obsessive cleaning,
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anything where we we're trying to take ourselves away from the experience that we're having. And often when people stop drinking, or are thinking about stopping drinking, we don't realize that for me, for example, I had absolutely no idea that the things that I was doing and drinking as part of I didn't actually enjoy. I thought I really enjoyed them. I thought that they were who I was. And it was only when I stopped drinking and took a little bit of time that I realized that I was drinking in order to in order to be able to do those things. It wasn't the other way around. It wasn't like the thing was so brilliant and alcohol enhanced it, which is what I thought it was. It was this is the thing that's expected of me as a human being, and I find it hard. Didn't know this. This is all some kind. Just I find it hard. Alcohol makes it easier. Thanks, thanks. Marcia, alcohol makes it easier
Unknown Speaker 5:09
for me and
Speaker 1 5:14
and to a certain extent as well. It's one of those things. One of the main reasons people end up going back to drinking as well can be because we have idealized this idea of this human being that we're supposed to be this fun, gregarious, outgoing human who likes to party, life and soul of the party. Hi, Miss Henny Penny I lost to do We? We? We think, and we think that person is us, because that person gets a lot of love and a lot of validation for being who she is, because she's behaving in the way that acceptable human beings behave in our society, in our culture. And so when, when we decide that we're not going to go out drinking, or for periods of time, or for, you know, stay long, a long time at parties, and we no longer going to be, you know, we might be a bit socially awkward, we might, you know, be a bit self conscious, a bit shy. We might some, you know, one of the things that quite often, because I've got people say, Oh, I'm so serious, everyone tells me I'm so serious when I'm not drinking, and it's like there's part, you know, for me, there's a sort of rejection of self as well, because we sort of reject ourselves again, because we reject the person that we authentically are, because it's not something, because that person perhaps isn't what society deems to be. You know, how we should be? You know, I find for myself I can be very intense, especially when I'm talking about my specialist subjects and the things that I care about. And that isn't, you know, most people just want to have a slight conversation that's fairly superficial. And just, you know, when they when you ask how people are doing, they just want you to say, Fine. Thanks very much. And so, you know, you can get a bit of a reaction, which can make you feel a little bit like you're, you know, perhaps, you know, not necessarily everyone's cup of tea. And so there's all this other stuff that comes up we're drinking. Of course, we grieve the simplicity of life when we were able to perform the human being that, you know is what society says is normal. And often you hear when people are talking about stopping drinking, one of the main reasons is, you know, I don't want to be none of us want to stick our head above the precipice. And often, food, wine, design, hello. And often we're, we're, it's funny, because we think that actually we're being kind of rebellious and cool by drinking, because that's kind of what got us into it in the first place. But in reality, the opposite is true. In reality, we're being kind of very we're trying to fit in and behave in the way that is acceptable and is approved of, and, and, you know, it can feel very unsafe for us. And I know, as I'm getting older, I think, and more becoming more attuned to the human being that I actually am, and and harking a lot best, a lot more back to the young me, you know me, who was, you know, I abandoned, you know, five or six years old, you know, because I knew that she wasn't what was acceptable, like she was okay, but she wasn't, you know, if I was going to get the, you know, be light and be shown to be good by other people, which is what most human beings want. We want to be seen as good. And I don't necessarily mean good as in good and bad, but like as as worthwhile human beings on the planet, then we have to behave in a certain way. It's quite interesting. I was talking recently about my daughter, and, you know, being sick and not being able to go to school and and, you know, be able to keep her this kind of friendships and everything was saying, it's interesting, isn't it? Because we know that, if we don't, I don't know about you guys, but when I was young, or in my 20s, daughters, there was a lot more involvement in my my culture, my family and my culture of origin, there was, you know, I remember this things being frustrated. You know, if you don't go, if you don't go, you won't get invited again. You know, if you don't go to the party, you won't get invited again. So you have to accept every invitation in case you don't get invited again. Because if you don't get invited again, then in a story, I guess that we've, all, you know, taken into our brains, is that if we don't get invited to things because we're not part of the crowd, and because we're not behaving in a way that's seen as normal, then we will be rejected, and that we won't no longer be part of the tribe. And of course, evolutionary wise, we've been, you know, that's where how we how we made we. Made to try and fit in and be part of the crowd, so that back in in caveman days, we wouldn't get we wouldn't get left on the outskirts of the camp and eaten by the saber toothed Tiger. And that's the sort of level of lack of safety, that being different, that being authentic, as opposed to going along with the thing that everybody else is doing, that's, that's the risk, right? And we can say there's no risk, but there is risk. It's like, we know there's stigma, right? There's stigma about weight, there's stigma about not drinking. There's stigma. There's and stigma is scary, right? It's unsafe, and it is unsafe. You know, people get bullied because of their weight. People get, you know, people are mean to people because they don't drink. It's, it is stigma. People think, oh, you know, they make assumptions about people, oh, you're an alcoholic, or you must have a problem. Or judge judge judgy. Judgey, judgey. So there's all these things that we have to take into account. And, you know, I think it would be a lie to say that those things are not true. And so, you know, is a I always say to people when they stop or take a break or reduce their drinking, it's incredibly brave. So one of the bravest things that you can do similarly, you know, if you decide to go against the grain and not buy into diet culture, and you know, not be, not, not be trying to
Unknown Speaker 11:30
be part of that kind of
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cultural conditioning that we have to be a certain way in order to be loved and in order to be validated. If you it's it's scary, it's difficult, it's hard because, not just because of the thing, but because of the meaning that we make about the thing. So, you know, we talk about emotions when we're talking about emotions. Emotions are we feel our emotions seven seconds before our thinking brain comes into play, and most of the emotional reactions that we have to things are programmed. There are interpretation of events based on stuff that's happened mainly in our childhood. And so what happens is some a situation happens, we have an experience, and our brain kind of goes through its little Rolodex and kind of works out, what is the reaction that we have about that sort of situation happening, and this can really influence the way that our subconscious brain based on the experiences that we have in our life, interprets the world has a massive impact on our life. And this is why this stuff is really important. It's not just about drinking. It's really about everything. Because you know, thinking about that Shakespeare play, is it as you like it? So he talks about all the words of stage, and everyone's just players, and the sort of concept that we are, who we are, right? We and who we are actually has nothing to do with how other people perceive us, because other people have their everyone's we are saying to my daughters the other day, we were at the ice skating wing, and she was like, you know, people are looking at me. I'm like, honestly, people are not looking at you because people are just, everyone's just in their own stories. They have no interest in you. And the way that they relate to you is only to do with how you know you're a player in their story. You know, it's and this is why, and for me, one of the biggest parts of one of my biggest learnings, Damien and I went to an ecstatic dance. It's actually five rhythms, I think, which is slightly different, but same sort of concept. It's like dancing for it's no alcohol, no drugs, and it's dancing, you know, it's like a spiritual thing, and it's also a healing way of processing emotions, because we know that in indigenous cultures, there's a there's a I remember reading something on social media where they were saying, in Africa, we don't know what. You know, depression isn't a thing, because I'm sure this is a massive over generalization and probably completely inaccurate, but the gist of it was, because we dance in community, the stuff that's really hard we get to process. And that side of it kind of makes sense to me. It's like what Damon and I went and did on Sunday, which was really brave of him. Actually, there's quite a few guys there, so it was good to see lots of young people, which is cool to see as well. I was like, oh my god, he I wish he, like, I wish I'd learned to do
Unknown Speaker 14:43
all this stuff back then, but I wouldn't feel interested in it.
Speaker 1 14:48
But it's this idea of working through and sometimes I have some of the most incredible sort of, like, visions and flow bits of information. You know, when you you've got an idea about something, and then. Suddenly everything's kind of popping and telling you it's like the sort of internal, universal messages coming to us from,
Unknown Speaker 15:08
from the world, you know, because we know, I mean, it's, it's,
Speaker 1 15:12
it's like physics. I think it's like quantum physics that, you know, what we look for, what we you know, we get what we expect. So, you know, we're looking for stuff, and then we see the other things that relate to it. So you don't like that whole yellow card that you're looking for, the yellow cards, and you see the yellow cards, there's nothing woo, woo about it, particularly it's kind of more factual and scientific. But we know that with trauma and with emotions, the issues in the tissues, right? So this is why the somatic practices are so important for working with ourselves when we're in discomfort, and most people who drink drink, as I said, because there's something's happening for them that they're uncomfortable with, or there's an emotion coming up that they is causing them discomfort. There's a meaning that they're making about an experience that they're having that is causing them to see themselves in a way that they don't want to be seen. And look, I think for me, this is huge, because I'm really working on this concept of not being defensive, and I think it's kind of interesting as well, looking at it all from a certain neurodiverse perspective as well, because I don't know about you guys, I was writing that in my newsletter. So do you know this, the one of the things saying that's been around for a long time, and don't think it's attributed to anybody, is this, you know, let other people be wrong about you. You have nothing to prove. And I think for those of us who've grown up and who are sensitive, there's all these and which is most people, right, there's all these protective parts of us that are trying to keep us safe. Usually they're doing a lot of damage. They kept us safe for quite a long time, especially when we're children, you know, for things like, I'm a simple one, the simplest one is that people tend to think that they're the problem. So for example, if you're one of the biggest reasons we know that your stage drinking more than you want to stay drinking is because you think you're the problem. Because it brings with it. That belief brings with it a whole load of other stuff, right? It brings with you sort of drama, self flagellation. It stops you from actually looking at the scientific facts around why you're drinking, what your children it stops you from being able to actually deal with what's happening for you and why you're drinking. Because you're so busy, it caught up in this emotional energy of, I'm so awful. And the reason we do this a protective mechanism to keep ourselves safe from childhood. Because what if a child looks around and the environment they're in, their parents, their caregivers, are not looking after them in the way that they are meant to. And I don't mean necessarily neglecting them or abusing them. I just mean perhaps, you know, putting them down to cry and closing the door and leaving them to cry until they cry out, not picking them up, telling them, you know, getting cross with them for feeling emotions, all this stuff that culturally, our families were brought up to because we, you know, our parents and our parents, parents, and to a certain extent, our generation as well. And I'm talking about the 50s, people in their 50s, you know, we did things like, you know, don't Molly coddle and, you know, they've got to learn how to self soothe and all this stuff, which is all well and good. But you know, all the research has been saying since the 1950s and 1960s that that's not the case. And there's a whole nother piece of work that we could do and talk about that, but let's not talk about that. Now we're talking about emotions. And we're talking about we experience a situation that makes us feel bad about ourselves, and therefore we drink. So it might be and again, these are sort of ones that you don't even you're not even conscious of, right? So when I go to a networking event, when I go out with people, that first half an hour that I'm there, feels really awkward. I don't know what to say. I feel like I'm going to say something stupid. I'm really self conscious. I feel on the outer, you know, all this stuff is actual common humanity. Everyone feels this, but we all think we're alone. We all think we're the weirdo in the corner. And so we drink, right? So we drink because until everyone's like, well, you know, I drink when I go out, because it's fun. It makes everything more Sparky people a bit. What's really happening is we have low self worth, and we don't think that we are good enough, and so we're drinking to get rid of that feeling. So, you know this, it's so interesting, because people have all these like it, but it's so fun. And we said, like, is it if the wedding with the alcohol was. So much fun. If the wedding was so much fun, you know, if the experience was so much fun, we wouldn't have to drink to get through it. You know, this is where we know, like, when we like, I can't possibly go to this thing without a drink. It's like, well, then the thing isn't fun, right? The thing isn't what you think it is. There's something else going on here we need to look at. But what happens in and this is, you know, particularly happens for those of us who are people pleasers, who we've been brought up to put everybody else's experience of the world ahead of our own, often for those of us who are sensitive, who are neurodivergent, who've had trauma, we and by trauma again, I still, you know, it's interesting. I was chatting to a friend of mine on Saturdays. Didn't realize quite how many people still don't understand that trauma isn't just these huge, monumental life changing events, you know that trauma can that can be that, yes, but it also can be, you know, not getting what we needed as a child from our caregivers. And by that, I don't just mean, you know, I don't mean not getting dinner, I mean not being held and seen for our value. So for example, I give you a silly example. And this is not blaming anybody, because this is our culture, right? So for example, if we are really excited, and we're running around and we're like, Oh, I'm so excited, we're little, and our parents will be said, can you stop doing that? Can you just sit down and Shush, you know, or, you know, we're upset, we're crying, and we're in it, you know, someone in our parent goes, come on now, you know, put yourself here. You're right. You're fine, aren't you? You know, I even had someone doing it to me to say it, but you beautiful kind person. I was telling her about the experience that I'd had with my neighbor, and she was so beautiful, she but she just wanted to move me on. She was just like, yeah, and, but yes, it's all right now, no, fresh start now, isn't it? And it's like, well, actually, no, actually, I've still got three court cases to go to, but, but but people don't want you. People don't want to be in that vulnerable situation with you, because, you know, this is very much a neurotypical way of of you know, we all everyone just wants. Everyone has to be fine, and we can all just get on with our lives. You know, no one actually did deal with any of the messages, right? So, emotions. So when we feel an emotion, it's usually because there's a meaning that we're making about a situation. So for example, it might be that we don't feel seen, we don't feel valued, we don't feel loved. You know, I had a situation. I made a meaning out of something. So when my husband and I were at this dance workshop, we were supposed to be doing this thing, and it was lovely, lovely exercise. I'm just giving it as I'm not again, like I'm not blaming this. It's just, you know, how life is, right? And just a similar one, a dance workshop that I went to up in Uluru with my friend Rivka, who's actually running the same thing against called grounded
Unknown Speaker 23:00
Absolutely. It wasn't in earlier. Actually, was in, I've
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forgotten the name of the place, but it's in the northern territories. Beautiful place, very spiritual. Lots of indigenous elders and leaders involvement as well to make sure that it is really ethically appropriate. But gosh, Atlanta, some massive, incredible power. Anyway, I've digressed. But is, is this concept of being held by another human, human being? So in when we were in Uluru, which wasn't Uluru, the place in the northern territories, I can't remember the name of we did this thing where we split into two groups, and half the group, the group would as the group would dance, there'd be a new leader each a few every few minutes, and the new leader would take on a new dance. And then the people in the group, the idea was that they followed that person's dance. And so all the time, whatever happened, whoever was the leader was being followed and supported and held through their decision of how they were going to move their body. And it was such an incredible experience, because it doesn't happen to us very much in life, especially in the workplace, you know, be like, I've got this idea. And half the people like, oh, that's shit. And half the people are just trying to, you know, make their own name for themselves. And there's all this, you know. And it very rarely have a group of people about behind you, saying we're fucking behind we've got you, mate, we're 100% with you, and we're going to do this together. And it was so powerful just to have that experience and then move on and have so, you know. So there's no questioning. No, I'm going to do it a little bit different. It's like, No, this is the leader. We're following her, and we're, we're holding her, you know. And similarly, when I was dancing with Damien on Sunday, what we we did was we done a whole lot of work on this sort of particular what, how do we want to I can't remember what the question was now, which is embarrassing, how do we want to be this year? It's like, what? What orders this year calling us to be right. How does that feel in our body? There's those two questions. And so working through that in dance workshop, just basically dancing and thinking about it. And it's something I've been thinking about, you know, generally, about sort of idea of defensiveness and the things that make me feel like called to act is often when people don't perceive me the way that I want to be perceived. And this particular dance anyway, so at the end, so we were with partners, and I would I chose to be with them because we were going to sing together, and I wanted it to be something that we both knew kind of where we were going for the year, so it could be something that we did together as a relationship and as a partnership. And so anyway, the directive was that one of you dances and the other one just watches the other person, like holds them, sees them while they dance. And so I was dancing, and I was like, really, like, getting into it and doing my, you know, interpretation of whatever it was anyway, just dancing music, basically. And I turned around, and Don wasn't looking at me. He was looking somewhere else. And I was like, Oh, that's a shame you haven't kind of gone. That was all that and then. But it was just interesting, the two differences. It was like one's being hold, and then one's being not, you know, not. They're not paying you any attention at all. So the whole purpose will of the exercise will see you're supposed to hold the person. Now, why am I talking about this? Talking about emotions. I'm talking about being held. So I'm talking about what can happen these little tea traumas, not being seen, not being held, not being validated, not being comforted in our distress. And one of the biggest ones, you know, if your parents don't hold you with empathy in your distress, which most of our parents didn't, because it wasn't culturally conditioned at the time. And you know, again, to give them their due, they were trying to keep us safe
Unknown Speaker 26:43
from, you know, being,
Speaker 1 26:46
I don't know, making all about us being all these things that society deems is unacceptable in this sort of society that we live in. But these things traumatize kids, right? Little tea traumatized and over a period of time, you know, I see so many people coming to work with me around alcohol, and could be around anything, and
Unknown Speaker 27:12
the underlying
Speaker 1 27:15
reason that people are struggling with stopping drinking is because it numbs the pain. And most of the time, we didn't realize that we had pain. And I think that's the first thing is, you know, we're talking about awareness couple of weeks ago. First of all, it's realizing there is actually a pain. Secondly, it's realizing it's not actually you. You're not the pain. Yeah, the pain is an experience that you're having based on certain set of circumstances, and then it's like, so last week, we're talking about resistance. So instead of resisting the pain, which is what we do when we go on social media, when we have drink, when we eat a bar of chocolate that we didn't mean to eat, when we go internet shopping, when whatever is a is a reaction. Because what we're trying to do is we can try and get the dopamine high from that activity. It could be watching porn, playing computer games, whatever it might be, but it's something that basically is taking us away from the experience that we're having. And so, you know, and again, these can be things that we perceive to be, you know, things in our society is perceived to be good, so tidying, cleaning, doing excessive exercise, all these things. And the problem that we have is, if we don't process the emotion, and we don't get to the core wound, and we won't always be doing this fast is, you know, this is something has to be taken, take we have to take time. We have to create a sense of safety in ourselves, because a lot of the time it's so unsafe to live in our bodies because of the narrative or and it's not just the narratives. I know we can get people can get hung up on this. It's not necessarily about like, because some people I know don't have that sort of that voice in their head, but they must still have the feeling, you know, feeling of shame, a feeling of anxiety, a feeling and they feel that in their in their in and they might not even be able to determine what that feeling relates to in terms of but you could still feel that your tummy hurts, right? It's your tongue. So this is where it comes at, intercept awareness. Alex Athenia comes into play as well. So it's understanding what the sensations that we have in our body, what they're calling us to do, what information they're trying to protect, to to impart on us. And often, we find that very difficult, both neurodiverse people and people who've had trauma. And we find that very difficult because, you know, it's it, there's, there's very good reasons like this. These, these things are just quite not off a little bit connections, right? These connections are off a little bit. And also, to certain extent, some of this stuff keeps us safe as well. So having a bit of a disconnection as well from self, from body, can help us keep safe too. So everything's there for a reason. None of. Anybody's fault. It's all totally fine, but it does lead us to do things that we don't want to do, and it does keep us stuck in patterns of behavior that we don't want to be in. And it also does things like, you know, if we're feeling lonely a lot of the time, loneliness comes from the meaning that we make about being alone, and that tends to have a societal sort of conditioning part of it as well. It's a bit like, you know, we talk about being childless, similar sort of thing. Is, like, these things that society judges to mean this thing, and we don't want to be seen as that thing, yeah, because, you know, we want to fit into the crowd. And so these things can cause us so much unhappiness. It's not just about drinking. It's about, it's about, it's never about drinking, right? It's always about disconnection from self. And to me, life's goal is reconnection to self, like reconnection to self, and nurturing, loving, reparenting Self, so that we can show up as our authentic selves and know that we are loved, yeah, not by anybody else. So we're not a part with a an apple with a bite outside looking for another apple to plug our another bite sized chunk of Apple to plug our a hole. We are a whole complete individual able to plug our own holes. And only then can we actually because we're plugged, because we're not walking around with our gaping wounds, losing all over everybody. Then bit like I was at the beach when I was talking about my experience with my neighbor to this morning, but, but then we can get connection, because then we're not because it's like, you know, I was talking about, I spoke about a bit, but you know, when teenagers break away from their parents, and I remember, you know, as a teenager, as a young adult, and I mean, I don't, I genuinely don't think that I matured emotionally until I stopped drinking to a level where I could even perceive some of this stuff. Because we say, you know, they get stuck at the age that you you either that you had some trauma or that you started drinking tends to be the emotional age that you and I started drinking about 11 so
Unknown Speaker 32:07
but basically we,
Speaker 1 32:10
we, while we're walking around like the wounded and we and we're seeing everything through this lens, this perspective, and this one talking about all the world's a stage, and we're men, Just players, many women, just players in that everyone else's drama. And this is this idea of, you know, for me, when I get triggered lots of time, it's it's doing something. Somebody sees me not has a how I want to be seen. And I would say this is very common. Someone, one of my friends, was telling me about a new male, male, probably Robbins book called let them, which sounds like it's about a similar sort of thing, which is this sort of idea of allowing other people to be wrong about you, not trying to persuade, not wasting your energy trying to persuade. Like it's like, you know your parents to look at you with love in their eyes. You know with validation doesn't matter what you do. And the thing is, as children, none of us really got unconditional love in our society, because that wasn't how things work. Because what our parents had been brought up to believe is that we had to behave in a certain way in order to be acceptable. And so they didn't want us to be bullied, they didn't want us to be hurt, and so they would be quite harsh with us around. You know, what's acceptable, what's not? You know, I was thinking back at my sister, little sister, my sister having to go, you know, the things that used to be said because she didn't want to go to school when she was young. She wanted to stay at home with my mum, and it'd be like, you know, come on, Kate. And it always be a laugh and a joke. But actually, the little girl was a sensitive little girl, like my kids are. And, you know, she was afraid, and we mocked that. We made it bad, and then we made it, you know, it same with me, with being disorganized. And now I know I have ADHD, but I didn't, and so I thought, and it was only always done lovingly and with a bit of fun. And, oh, look at Emma. You know, these jokes this, this way we interact with each other. I saw it this morning, actually, at the beach was really interesting. I noticed a group, and one of the guys, he ever had a spot or a bruise or something on his head, and everyone was like, What is that on your hair? It was just like, you could see it hurt. He was like, No, I'm hurting, but this is hurting me. But everyone carries on, and then everyone's got to pretend it's funny and it's just mean. And I see that a lot in, you know, a lot of guy conversations, only my husband talks about, and I've been had a great interview once with the guy who run an Andrew, I can't remember surname now, but he ran a pub that sold a lot of alcohol free drinks in Seddon, which is closed now, the Queen Vic in sudden, Andrew Hammond, And he was talking about how a lot of male conversations can be very sort of, sort of about putting each other's down and showing off. And that's the sort of like banter, I guess. But actually it's, it's actually just being mean to somebody. And when you're a bit sensitive, that can, that can be really, really hard. So. So again, so we've been talking about emotions. We're talking about where they come from. We're talking about why we have them. We're talking about what, you know, what they can what most of us are terrified of feeling them, right? Most of us are terrified of feeling, you know, I'm socially awkward. I've got anxiety with the biggest discomfort comes from not the feeling of the emotion, because discomfort comes from avoiding, trying to avoid feeling the emotion. And then we keep pushing the emotions down, and then they keep popping up because they go, I need you to deal with me. Because actually, we have to process our emotions. We have to let ourselves not be forced through our grief, not be forced through our sadness, allow ourselves to do what people hate. Oh, I'm having a pity party. We say being so horrible to ourselves when we're actually, genuinely, just fucking sad. You know, we're upset about something, and we're not allowed to be, because it's not how our society allows us to be. You know, as soon as you start crying, someone's getting the tissue. Oh, here's a tissue. Oh, why that? Oh, no, we don't want to see that. So we don't want to see other people's pain, right? Because it makes us it's actually repugnant to us, and this is where I was talking about teenagers spitting away from their parents. When we see other people's pain, it's repellent. We don't want to see their pain. It makes us all feel vulnerable. Fuck, if they're in pain, then we're all in pain. Oh, my God. What do we do? Get into this stuff, but it's true. And so, you know, we've been made to feel like showing our emotions, being authentic, being truthful, being sad, grieving, being ecstatically overwhelmingly happy is it's all frowned upon. Oh, you're such a show off tool pit poppy syndrome. Oh, look at her asking for a non alcoholic drink. Oh, who does she think she is taking up so much space, so many people don't drink end up having a drink because there's no non alcoholic alternative, and they feel awkward taking up space, making it in this concept, make it almost making it all about her, and most of the time nobody else is thinking that it's just all in our brains, but we end up sabotaging ourselves and sabotaging ourselves because of all these wounds from being children. So what do we do? And you know, I'm going to do a lot more work on this this year with people, because I think this is the sort of missing link. And you know, there's so many alcohol programs are all about like, you know, this is what we need to do. When you go to a party, you stay for two hours, you take your drink, you know what you're going to ask for when you get there. You know something to me, yes, absolutely, all those things are very useful. But what's more useful is learning how to be with our emotions and learning how to build our window of tolerance for our emotions, and this is particularly hard for those of us who are neurodivergent, who are sensitive. And sensitive people can present in two different ways. Sensitive people can actually present as if they're not sensitive at all, because we're almost disassociated. And I know that was for me for a very long time. I didn't even realize, I think until working with I did some work with my brain, my friend who isn't how I quit alcohol, Danny, Danny Carr and we were doing an interview together, and she was, she was questioning me on something I was saying about how I didn't feel anything about particular thing. She was like, Are you sure you don't feel anything, or do you think that might have been a protective mechanism that was coming up to so coming up to because we're both trained in compassionate inquiry, so we can kind of have these conversations with each other, which is the Gabor Marte way of working with people with trauma, which is absolutely fantastic, but so often we can be sort of hypo So we almost become like shut down, because that keeps us safe from feeling all these overwhelming emotions. Or the other one is, do we become hyper? So we are hyper, so we feel everything. And for those of you who are a bit like me, I used to feel everything as if, and I was doing a bit of research on this over over the weekend. And funny enough, very interesting that there's two parts of the brain that have empathy, and particularly autistic people have the first part of empathy, which is comes when it develops when you're very young, and it's more to do with actually feeling other people's so it's really a safety thing. So no wonder it develops first, because it would be a survival thing is that we, you know, we feel other people's emotions. So, you know, a lot of people who've suffered, suffer from trauma, feel, feel other people's emotions, very porous. And we can say, oh, you know, it's trauma, it doesn't matter. It's what happens, right? Whether it's trauma, whether it's neurodivergence, none of these things actually really matter, in terms of the fact that it feels to our body, unsafe and and for me, one of the main reasons I drank was because I just could bear feeling everybody in, you know, everybody's experience, and feeling responsible for everyone's experience in my body. So when I drink, it shut that down for a little bit. So this is why people talk about busy brain. And some people are like, oh, and I don't have busy. Brain, because I don't have that narrative going on in my head. But it's not necessarily a narrative. It's a way you feel right, and it's overwhelming sense of, you know, somebody's like, if people are angry and stressed, especially men, feel it my body so badly. It was one of the reasons the issue that we had with the neighbor was so damaging for me, for my emotional for my nervous system, because I'm very sensitive nervous system, as I now know, and this is where, you know, feeling emotions in a very big way sometimes, you know, other people don't really understand that. It can be really, really, very, very hard for us, very overwhelming. It's really important skills to learn that, and they're definitely linked to interception, definitely linked to self compassion, so you know. And in my bigger the lighthouse program, which is my membership program, which is it runs all the time, every year, all the time, it's for people who are interested in stopping drinking or taking a longer break from drinking. It's not really for people who are just like, Oh, I wonder 30 day break. That's what the alcohol experiments for. But for people who are more like long term want to want to stop or want to cut down. One at what it's really, actually want to stop or want to stop for a long period of time. But in there I talk, and we do quite a lot of work. It's a lot of coursework there about working with emotions, you know. So we talk about also in child work and the different class of characters that we have inside our brains, but this particular is when you're working with emotions about we have to make it safe, and for everyone's amount of safety will be different, and so first of all, we have to start sort of cultivating this culture of safety inside ourselves. So we're talking to ourselves, and I don't necessarily mean talking to us with narrative, but feeling nurturing, reparenting ourselves, making it safe for us to make mistakes, showing ourselves that we're loved whatever we do, and keep reminding ourselves that it's okay to feel the way that we're feeling, and notice where we're feeling it in our bodies. This is part of the work. And then, you know, secondly is to you know, I did the ice cube exercise
Speaker 1 42:05
last week, which I found absolutely fascinating, where you hold them. And instead of resisting the ice cube, you start describing how it feels to hold the ice cube in your hand, where you feel it in your body. And this is exactly what we do with emotions. So instead of, you know, your boss has been an asshole, your sister's been a pain in the bum, your mum's nagging you about something, and it's making you that all these different things are making you feel bad, your automatic reaction will be, you've had a really hard day, a retard, and you still got loads of chores to do. You want to open the fridge, pour yourself a glass, fine. But instead of doing that, we're going to try and disrupt that neural pathway, and I'm going to be working with my my Lighthouse group on this in more detail tonight. But really what we're trying to do, and this is what all the somatic experiencing, most of the great people that we listen to, Tara Brach, Stephen Porges, Bessel van de cult. What we talk about is with with emotions. We lean in, and then we lean away, and we keep going from our safe places. So when we set when we orient ourselves, so when we sort of establish ourselves in the space that we're in, there's just certain things that we can do, like we can hold our head like this, look
Speaker 2 43:26
up to the left hand corner, and just stay like that for 30 seconds, or until we sigh or we yawn.
Speaker 1 43:32
That does our nervous system I've talked about, intercept awareness, where we squeeze our hands for 30 seconds, open them again, and then we go feel into the emotion again until it feels too much. And then we come out and we do another exercise. So it might be putting our hand on our tummy, a hand on our chest and breathing. Might be noticing the way that our feet might be even going for a walk, and really paying attention to the way that our feet are on the carpet, on the tiles. And it's through this is that we start to build up this window of tolerance. And we say we start, instead of going to escape and control the experience that we're having, we start to be able to take a bit of time. We start to be able to think about, you know, where has this come from? What is the wound? What did I need? I mean, a lot of what? When Tara Brock talks about alchemy, emotional alchemy, she talks about. So, first of all, it's like working out what it is we're what. So, first of all, feel the wanting. So, so something happens, you have a trigger and you feel the wanting. What's What is it, you know, what does it feel like in your body to want? I'm wanting. I'm wanting. I'm wanting. It's like, you know, it's burning a hole in your pocket. You can't I used to always feel like that with cigarettes. It's like, you know, it's like, you know, it's burning a hole in your pocket. You You need to have the thing. You need to escape the thing. And sometimes it be so overwhelmingly powerful. So you feel the wanting, and then, and then you under you work out what it is that you would be getting at the end of it. And then it's, it's about feeling that getting. Right? So experiencing that getting and you can sit in it, and you can imagine, you know, imagine that, for example, when you have a glass of wine, you might feel, it's a warm sensation going down your body. You might feel your nervous system relax, you might feel and you can start to sort of imagine it. And then you start to actually become this Alchemist of your emotions, because you can actually give yourself what you need, because everything that you need is inside of you, is never outside of you, never is always inside of you. Anyway, I'm going to leave it there, because I'm 45 finish, which is really, really long, but I've got a few things coming up. I encourage if any of you are interested in joining, be the lighthouse. If you join by the end of January, then you get as part of your membership, you get access to my Great Aussie alcohol experiment as part of your membership. So you just get that, which is normally about 900 $900
Unknown Speaker 46:01
900 I think about around that, around about that amount,
Speaker 1 46:03
because it's basically you get 30 days of coaching. So we come so you get videos, you get learning, and then you also get 30 days of live coaching every single evening for 30 days with me in a very small group. Absolutely fantastic program. But you get that as part of your membership as well. So if you are actually interested in being alcohol free, you've had a little bit of time alcohol free, and you and you're keen to be part of a community working together, because CO regulation is so important in this and learning these kind of things, like, how do we how do we sit with our emotions? How do we create emotional safety for ourselves and so on? Then I encourage you to join that this month, because basically, then you'll get everything else that I do for free.
Unknown Speaker 46:49
But after February,
Speaker 1 46:51
it works a little bit differently, because otherwise people will just come and join to to pay for the alcohol experiment. But whereas this group is much more about like I just I want to. We're not arming and owing. Am I going to drink? Is drinking what I want or not? It's much more okay. So I've decided I'm going to take a break from drinking. This is how I need to. I need to learn how to, to not to not have that feel bad for me, I don't want to feel like I'm desperate to drink it or, you know, and I wish I was, I feel like I'm on the losing team with all the losers. I want to feel like I'm making a choice, and it's my choice. It's not something I have to do. It's something I'm choosing to do. So it's changing that sort of mentality. So if you're interested in that come and reach out, or just go onto my website, hoperising coaching.com, and sign up for the for the be the lighthouse. We meet every Monday at 730 apart from during the alcohol experiment. And we have Marco Polo app as well. So we talk in between times too nice little group, about 10 or 11 people in there at the moment. And then also we've got the virtual retreat is coming up, which is all about everything that I've talked about, but basically it's five days working on your relationship with alcohol. You don't even have to stop drinking. It's purely about because there's a lot of things that you can do without stopping drinking are really, really helpful for reducing your the amount of alcohol that you drink. So that's more like it, you know, reducing and then then the Great Aussie alcohol experiment is literally about taking a 30 day break, doing the work, so that then at the end of the 30 day break, you can make a decision. It's not about stopping drinking. It's about awareness. It's not actually an abstinence program, although you're more than welcome and you're invited to try and do 30 days, but it's very intense. And you know, with me, it's not, it's not top 10 tips, it's always going to be a lot deeper, a lot juicier than that, because that's what interests me. And I think, you know, you attract people who, who like the same things as you, anywho. I'm going to leave it at that. So the apple experiment this year is in March. That starts, I think on the third of March. It's a Monday. And of course, there's one to one coaching. If you want to do that, I do my MG in my pocket, which is a if you want to do personal 30 day program with me, there's that. And then I've also run a 12 month, 12 months, 12 week program as well, one to one program. But again, just check out my website or reach out to me directly, and I can point you in the right direction. I hope you're all well and take care of yourself, and thanks so much for listening to me.
Unknown Speaker 49:30
I really appreciate it. If you're able to
Speaker 1 49:33
write, you know, give me a good rating or write me a little review on Apple, I'd really appreciate it. It makes a big, such a huge difference to a little person like me. No worries. Karina, a little person like me, I don't mean in size,
Unknown Speaker 49:47
no problem at all. It's just lovely to have you on here
Speaker 1 49:51
and to be with you and to share all this stuff, because it's stuff that I find absolutely fascinating and I'm so passionate about. So I appreciate you being here. Thank you. So much take good care. Lots of love. Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
