Episode 313 Transcript
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[00:00:00] You are listening to episode 313 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast.
Welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place for creating the peace of mind you need to be the best mom you are created by God to be. If you want to bring more balance, more joy, and more peace to your motherhood, this is the place for you. I'm your host, certified life coach at Catholic Mom Danielle Thienel.
In the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Let's get started.
Hello, beautiful mamas and welcome back to the Peaceful Mind Podcast. In my last episode, we talked about healing, yelling, and what's really underneath that. How your emotional state plays a key role in how you respond [00:01:00] to what sometimes we label as the chaos of motherhood, but today we're gonna go into deeper part of one of those steps that I offered last week.
Okay. Because one of the most transformational skills that I teach inside my coaching program is this. How to actually feel your feelings, not avoid them, not resist them, not react to them, which is what last week's episode was about. When we have this reaction of yelling, right? But instead on purpose, we're gonna feel our feelings on purpose.
And I want you to hear me when I say this is a superpower. My signature process called the Cyclone Mom Method is the way you transform [00:02:00] yourself from someone who's always caught up in the swirl and the chaos and the changes and the hard situations of your life that we're all caught up in. To the person who knows how or sees those things as just part of this human earthly experience that we have that is full of lots of good stuff and bad stuff.
And it's always gonna be that way. And so we wanna step into our God-given power to be able to remain calm in control and confident no matter what happens. And when you are someone who has this skill, this superpower of feeling your feelings, you a hundred percent are gonna be in that calm, empowered eye of the storm.
Way more often than not because when you master this, when you'll start to feel a new steadiness [00:03:00] inside of you that you didn't know was possible. Not because life got easier, but because you got stronger in this subject, a feeling, your feelings. Now I'm always helping moms retrain their mindset, uplevel their emotional system.
And some of the most beautiful skills are things like managing your mind and making strong decisions. This is another one that goes into that pile of superpowers that can help you. When you strengthen these, when you learn them, when you get better at, if it just becomes who you are and part of your skillset, you will be able to create way more peace in your life no matter what's going on.
And like I said, this is a core skill of my Cyclone Mom method and a cyclone Mom isn't calm because life is calm. She's calm because she knows how to stay [00:04:00] with herself when life is not. In my group life coaching program, I had recently run a challenge to be able to grow in this skill. I offered my members what they could do or to make it be a focus for them to actually watch in the next couple weeks that were happening to when they were hitting negative emotions for them to be somebody who actually felt their feelings.
And when we circled back after the challenge. This is a couple responses I heard from some of my clients. One said, I realized I've always been afraid to cry. I thought if I started, I wouldn't be able to stop. But then I. Just allowed it and processed through my emotion, which meant the tears just came.
And I sat there with my hand on my heart and I [00:05:00] let the sadness be there. I didn't try to fix it. I noticed it. It just moved through me and I realized like. I didn't break by letting that happen, I actually felt okay. I then felt a peace even while I was crying, and that's never happened before.
Isn't that awesome? And another one shared. I thought feeling disappointed meant I was doing something wrong, but when I stopped trying to push it away and I just let myself feel it, it didn't grow. It actually passed. I didn't get stuck in it like I thought I would. I love it. I love to hear that kind of response.
This is what I want for you all in today's episode. These, and these weren't moments that these women were falling apart. This, these were moments of them becoming coming back to [00:06:00] themselves, becoming back to more whole in those moments. And they learn. They learn what So many of us don't get taught that emotions are not emergencies.
Though your brain wants you to think that they're just experiences and they move when we allow them to. And that is what I want this episode to bring you closer to. I want you to experience firsthand that allowing emotions doesn't mean you're gonna stay there forever, so we don't need to avoid them.
Okay, so if you're someone who's afraid of getting stuck in a negative emotion and you've been taught to like really move past things quickly or maybe to just jump already automatically to looking on the bright side of things, then today's episode is, especially for you, I'm. Let's start. [00:07:00] I wanna walk you through simple, powerful process that helps you become someone who feels your feelings all the way through without spiraling.
Or without stuffing them down. Because if you don't spiral on negative emotions and you don't stuff them down, you will have a whole bunch more peace of mind in your life. And of course, that is the purpose and mission of this podcast is to help all you mamas have more peace of mind in your life. Okay, let's begin here on why we don't actually let ourselves feel our feelings.
Why do we react to them? Or why do we distract ourself from them? Or why do we judge ourselves about having negative emotions in our life? It is because we've been taught that emotions are a problem. We will hear things like, calm down, don't cry, [00:08:00] shake it off. Or even be grateful instead. We're not taught to actually witness our emotions and do so with a curiosity and definitely like with compassion.
So when frustration, anxiety, grief, or disappointment shows up, we end up doing what most of us have practiced for years. We resist it, and that looks like thinking this shouldn't be happening. We react to it. We say, I can't believe this is happening, or we numb it. Where are the snacks or the wine or my phone because I gotta get rid of it.
And then we judge our emotions. I shouldn't feel this way. What's wrong with me? I know that. One of those things, if not all of them, resonates with you [00:09:00] listeners, it does with me again, how many times are we saying this shouldn't be happening? I can't believe this is happening. I shouldn't feel this way.
What's wrong with me? Okay. But all those responses to your negative emotions that you have in this life keeps us stuck. They actually add layers of suffering. There's unnecessary suffering going on out there that when we don't learn how to actually take some suffering feelings and feel them, we are then layering and adding more suffering to our life.
So what that looks like is that the emotion then stays in our body, right? And then it builds tension. It clouds our judgment. It often erupting later in ways we don't like. Instead, what I wanna offer you is a new way. Allow the emotion, [00:10:00] actually feel the feeling. And it's not because you love feeling sad or angry.
I know we don't, your brain definitely doesn't want you to feel that way in your body, but I want you to allow the emotion. Because that's the way you heal from it, that you move more quickly from it, that you get back to where you wanna be in a positive way. This is how we teach our internal system, that it's safe.
It's safe to be a human with feelings. It's safe, it's normal. And this is how you actually access the strength and calm of the cyclone mom that is inside of all of us. I do truly believe that this is the skill that changes [00:11:00] everything, and I want you to think about this. If you were not afraid to feel fear.
If you were not afraid to feel disappointment, if you were not afraid and avoiding feeling grief, shame, or anger, then there is nothing that you wouldn't actually attempt or try. Can you just think about that? That is the reason why we don't do things. Maybe things that are like desires of our heart or things that we feel like, we wanna go after.
It's because we're avoiding those big negative feelings. But what I'm offering you today is to imagine if that just wasn't a thing. It just, you were like, oh, the thing that I wanted to go after, that's gonna, that's really scary and I have a lot of fear about it. And then you were like, oh, but no problem.
[00:12:00] I like, fear is just a feeling and I know the skill of feeling it and just processing it through. And the same thing for disappointment, for shame, for anger. What I'm. What I want you to open up to is on the other side of you learning how to feel your feelings is everything you want. It's that business you wanna start.
It's the forgiveness you wanna offer to yourself or others. It's the leadership you wanna step into. It's the peace that you want in your home. All of it becomes possible when you stop avoiding discomfort. And you start building this emotional muscle. Okay, but let's talk about what happens when we numb, which is what a lot of us decide and choose to do, besides feeling our feelings.
We just want to avoid it altogether. And so we numb out, right? We overeat, we [00:13:00] over scroll, we overwork, we over shop, we overdrink. We look for something to take the edge off of the emotion because we think the emotion is dangerous. Your brain definitely thinks, and then we believe our brain, but those numbing behaviors never solve the emotion.
They just delay it. And often they create that second layer of shame or guilt on top of it. So then you're left feeling worse, not better. But when you learn to stay with the emotion instead, okay? When you name the emotion, when you feel it, when you allow it to be vibrate in your body, something beautiful happens.
You realize that you have this power that you haven't tapped in, tapped into, and you realize that you are separate and [00:14:00] stronger than. The actual feeling that you're feeling, you realize that you are just, you are the container. You're not the chaos itself. You realize you can trust yourself even in hard moments.
And I briefly touched on this in the last episode, but I wanted to go a little bit deeper and that is that. The steps, the actual, how do you do it? How do I process a feeling? Okay. And here is the process. I teach it to all my clients. It's something I invite them to practice daily, especially during emotional, heavy seasons.
And we know that. We know that it's like the end of the school year, back to the school year over the holidays, while we have all the kids home in the summer. Whenever we're going into a new stage of [00:15:00] motherhood, right? There's lots and lots of opportunities for us to process our feelings, and this is how it is simple, but it does take attention and practice.
It takes doing these actions. So when a strong emotion hits. Frustration, anxiety, overwhelm. This is what I'm offering you all to try. Can you be able to pause and stop and realize I'm not feeling great right now? It would be beautiful if you could take yourself somewhere by yourself. Sit down and go through these steps, and I know that won't always be so if you can even just do some of it.
If it's only in your head, maybe you take it to pen and paper. But this are, here's the steps to how to process a feeling. Number one, you name it. So for example, once you've paused and you [00:16:00] realize, and you tell yourself, I'm gonna actually, I'm not feeling great and I'm actually gonna learn and focus on feeling, this feeling, you would name it.
And so that you simply say something like, this is anxiety. Or you would say, this is disappointment. Or this is anger. So pick one of those, right? Then the second step is you find it that the way we do that is we ask ourself, where is it in my body? So let's just say you've said this is anxiety. AKA, right now I am feeling I am vibrating.
Because an emotion is a vibration in your body. I am vibrating in the feeling of anxiety and then I go find it. Where is it? Is it in your chest? Is it in your throat? Is it in your shoulders? Is it your stomach? Is it your head? [00:17:00] Okay, then step three. Is you wanna describe it. So now you take it once, wherever it is in your body, and you're taking your mind and focusing there.
You want to describe how the anxiety is showing up in that place in your body. This is where you wanna ask is it heavy? Is it light? Is it tight? Is it fast? Is it slow? Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it blue? Is it gray? Is it spiky? Is it smooth? Do you see how like you're taking a visual and you're like taking this actual emotion and describing.
The next step is to breathe through it. I would really physically love for you to [00:18:00] take deep breaths and when you are taking your deep breaths, what you're like taking your mind to focus where that, what it, the where it is in your body and actually what the descriptions are and you're just letting it sit there like you're not.
Fixing it. You're not saying oh, it should go away. You're just breathing and noticing it and just saying there it is. There's anxiety. There is that, buzzing purple, like spiky thing right there in my stomach. Or wherever it is. And then the fifth step is to remind yourself.
Now you wanna take your brain in it. So you notice how most of the time we were in our body, we wanna now remind ourselves, this is just a vibration that I'm having. [00:19:00] You wanna say anxiety is a feeling. It's just a feeling that is caused by my thinking, my thoughts. You can say things like, nothing has going wrong here.
You can tell, you can say, this is not an emergency. This is you like talking back to yourself in your brain. Okay? And then you just stay with it. You don't resist it, you don't react, you don't numb. You just stay. And what I'm offering, all of you who, where this is just like brand new to you, is that what you will find is the feeling will pass.
It always does, right? Think about it like were you frustrated last week, but as you're listening to this episode right now, you're not frustrated like, oh, it did pass, right? But this process, when you do it, it can help you process it. [00:20:00] Faster, quicker can help you get more awareness about the which emotions are the ones that are just like your regulars that are in your life all the time.
Yeah. And each time you do this, each time you stop and you say, I'm not feeling great, and you notice it and you decide to process a feeling, and you go through the five steps of naming it, finding it, describing it, breathing through it, and reminding yourself about it. When you stay with it and you choose not to resist, not to react, not to go numb, okay?
Each time you do this, you will build a trust with yourself and you will get better at it. You will then be someone who learns how to create a safety inside of your body. Each time you do this, you become more calm, you become more grounded, and. And it's not because of what the old ways, where you're trying [00:21:00] to like just control everything outside of us, control of our environment and to change things real quick and to hurry up and get back to feeling better.
But it will be because you've learned to master your internal world. And this is a practice, let me be clear. This is not this is not something that, like you have this total like overall epiphany the first time you do it. Now sometimes you can get a lot of satisfaction after realizing, wow, my gosh, like that really worked, or, that was easier than I thought.
And sometimes it might take you doing it repeatedly if it's like a heavy emotion, like it might stay, around a day or two, but you keep coming back to those steps. But every time you remember and you choose to be more present about your feelings instead of panicking over them, every time you choose and do this process you are like stepping into like grace and compassion about a [00:22:00] human with big emotions instead of judgment.
And anytime you like decide to do the process over like numbing and escaping, you will change your life. You'll become someone who can feel hard things without crumbling, and that mama is power. That is what allows you to stop yelling, to stop numbing, to stop second guessing yourself, to go after those dreams and the hard stuff that requires negative emotion.
Like for myself in the example of like even just deciding to become a coach and all that goes with connecting with people and having, an online system in place I've had to feel fear, I've had to feel rejection, I've had to feel vulnerability. Those are just and fear. There's, those are just like four heavy emotions and so I didn't let it stop me.[00:23:00]
I was, someone was like, okay, yep. Gonna have to be vulnerable. There's some scary things, right? You're gonna have to like, feel, rejection sometimes, but since I'm so much better and have the skill of feeling those feelings, I just, I feel the fear and then I'm like, let's go.
Let's do it. Okay, and this is what makes you like the eye of the storm, the calm part in your home. And this really matters, this skill because here's the truth, every time you feel your feelings on purpose, you are like regulating your emotional wellbeing. You are increasing your emotional resilience.
You're reducing your reactivity. You're building compassion for yourself and others. You're creating space for more peace to grow in your life, and it's not about fixing yourself. [00:24:00] It's not about staying positive all the time, and it's not about never feeling frustrated, angry, sad, anxious, or overwhelmed.
Those things are gonna be part of our life. Again, it's about building a skill. A skill to feel your feelings, to allow them. Your body to process them through and it will serve you in every area of your life. And I hope I wanna just give you all a little challenge this week to practice it. Just notice the next time you feel a negative emotion bubbling up.
And can you run through the five steps? Name it, find it, describe it, breathe through it, remind yourself and go back to the section of this episode where I expand on those steps. And as always, if you want more support with this, if you wanna actually guarantee that you will become somebody better and build this skill.
And this is the exactly the kind of work that I do with you. [00:25:00] Okay. We practice emotion work. We build this kind of like emotional safety. We learn to lead ourselves first so we can lead our families with more clarity, more peace, more faith. And so as always, if you want to see if that can be something that fits into your life at this time, then schedule a free peaceful mom strategy call.
And I'll help you see how this applies to your life, right? And what's possible when you begin to feel your feelings on purpose. Alright, mamas, that's what I have for you this week. And until next time, may peace be with you. Always. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of the Peaceful Mind Podcast.
If you found value in today's episode, I'd be so grateful if you could subscribe and leave a review. It not only supports the podcast, but ensures you don't miss out on future [00:26:00] episodes packed with insights and tools. To create peace of mind in your busy mom life. And if you're of the Catholic faith, like me or any Christian mom seeking to feel better in any area of your life and to show up more calm, connected, and confident, I can help become an empowered mom who knows how to bring about the changes you desire, no matter the circumstances.
Whether you need one-on-one guidance to get there, prefer a group coaching program with like-minded women, or a self-study course I've got you covered explore my private one-on-one packages. Join my Busy to Balanced group life coaching program or delve into my signature course Divine Time to find out which path is right for you.
Let's meet and see what's the best fit. Schedule a free call with me at daniellethienel.com or send me a direct message on Facebook or Instagram @daniellethienelcoaching, and also don't forget to get your [00:27:00] copy of my book, the Cyclone Mom Method, How to Call On Your God-Given Power to Remain Calm, In Control, and Confident as a Busy Mom.
Dive into the digital and bonus audio version when you go to book.daniellethienel.com/new-book. You'll find all the details in the show notes too. Until next time, peace be with you always.
