Episode 166 Transcript
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You are listening to episode 166 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 wanna 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.
Well, hi there. Welcome back everyone. I'm so glad you're here. I hope that you are having a lovely springtime and the fact that you saw the title to this episode and still clicked on and wanna hear what I have to say is amazing because the title, how to Get Good at Feeling Bad would have a lot of people running the other way, right?
Like, who wants to. Okay, good at feeling bad because who wants to feel bad? Well, I wanna tell you that I hope that after listening to this episode today, that you feel like you are someone who wants this exact thing, this skillset that has you not being afraid and running straight towards negative emotions and, and feeling.
because guess what, everyone, it is a part of this earthly life. We were not promised a trouble free world. And if you haven't noticed already in your life that yes, there is so much wonderfulness and there is a lot that has us feeling bad, there is the negative emotion. When I say feeling bad, I'm talking about our feelings.
Also, we can talk through it regarding emotions. And really what these are is their vibrations in our body that are created when chemicals are released that are first triggered from thoughts that we think in our brain. And that isn't 100% the case all the time. There's so many other factors and, you know, deep medical things that I don't know and quite understand that have to do with things like releasing chemicals in our brain, but in general, the simplification, but very true reality of.
Thinking patterns and the sentences and phrases that we latch on and connect neural pathways to of thoughts. They are what create our feelings and. The idea of always feeling good might seem at first pass something that you are trying to attain, but as I give you more and more tools and strategies on this podcast to help you moms in your busy, overwhelming at times filled with worry and guilt and anxious anxiousness, motherhood, that.
This is a strategy and a tool and a skill that will, underneath that first initial, initial fear of it, does show you that there is a different way to live that will be more peaceful. And I wanna offer that learning to be someone who doesn't shy away from feeling bad or to, to. it out that something has gone wrong or that there's something wrong with you if you can't stop feeling bad.
So let me just jump into it. And I wanna start out by, by letting you know a little bit about why I thought about this episode, because it pertains to what's going on in in my life. I have been for the last six months in a very. Creative mode of building some assets. And really what they are is their books and two books.
Two books. I'm birthing two books. I birth two babies at once and now I'm birthing two books at once and I'm also creating a course. So if you've been listening or seeing some of my social media, you will know that I have a time management solution for you. Busy moms that is going to. what I think revolutionary.
And there, you know, there's a, there was a point when I didn't, none of these things existed in my world and I knew that in order to get to the. Place where I additionally, on top of coaching the group program, coaching my one-on-one clients, taking care of me and my family, and other things that are going on in my life, as well as adding on these books and courses that I know are going to just be so helpful for other people's lives.
It took me. Leaning into relaxing, into opening up to being willing to feeling bad. And I knew that if I got to the other side that what it would take in order to have these, these creations of mind out there in the world, it would take a lot of feeling negative emotion. Yes, there's been some amazing. You know, feelings that I've had doing it, especially when I keep you all in mind.
Those moms who are out there suffering now, it definitely motivated and deepened my commitment to getting these things out in the world, but I also knew that at the end I would have felt a lot of negative emotion. , which was from me, like questioning myself or late hours or frustration with it not being right or having to over, you know, always facing my perfectionism and, and maybe criticism if it wasn't something that somebody gave me a positive feedback on.
But I knew that at the end. Would be so much stronger on the other side and that it would take feeling bad to get there. So a few things that I've talked about on the podcast before that I'm also gonna weave into this episode is just the reminder that life is 50 50, or at least that is what you want the goal to be.
So in creating my books, I definitely. Have lived the 50 50. And what this means is, is that we will be balancing days and, or weeks or months, whichever way you're gonna look at it, that if it all kind of washed out. And so if we did the math that we, if we can say that we. Experienced about 50% positiveness and 50% negativeness.
Then we are doing it right and we are putting ourself out there and we are challenging ourself and growing, and we're also enjoying and having fun and being excited. So those are. Some of the emotions, but there are so many to choose from, and I want you to say, what would my life be different? How would it be different if I wasn't scared of feeling bad, if I didn't worry that I would be embarrassed if I didn't mind being vulner?
If I was okay with being scared sometime and I didn't let it stop me if I had, you know, if I was bored sometimes. Do you see how I want you to think, how would your life be different? If that was something that you were no longer trying to avoid or resist that existed in your life, tired, exhausted, right?
What if you like, what if that just was not a problem for you? What if you knew that you knew how to handle that and then you worked through it, and then on the other side you were good? That is what I want you to kind of open yourself up to. So I'm actually gonna read a little bit that is from one of my books, right?
I mentioned the 50 50, and there are episodes about that before that tool of the 50 50, and I've mentioned it in my book as well, but I just wanted to focus a little bit today on how, how do you process. Negative feelings when you have them. How do you not make it a big deal? How do you not resist that it's happening and really go into like fixing mode to change it and to get out of it?
And the answer that I have for you is the simple process that we call processing negative feeling. And in a simple way here on the podcast that is just like the surface area I'm gonna walk through, is that it? It happens in about five steps. The first step is that when you recognize that you are feeling negative, that you are feeling bad, you wanna pause, you've gotta take a pause, take a breath.
Put some kind of space in between you and that feeling and what's going on. And in step two, you wanna name the feeling, what is it? There is a plethora of negative feelings and there is more there than just like, I feel good and I feel. Is it anger? Is it resentment? Is it overwhelm? Is it guilt? Is it confusion?
Is it boredom? Is it lost? Is it pressured? What is it that you're feeling? Name it. Okay. Before you go into fixing mode, step one, pause, step two. Then step three is for you to describe it. Describe the feeling in detail. Now, this will feel a little weird, but that's okay. Just give it a try. Describe it. If an alien came down and said, what does feel annoyed, feeling annoyed?
What is annoyance? How would you describe it? Like, you have to kind of think the, the alien is not gonna know if you're saying, well, it's when you just cleaned up the kitchen and then the kids come back, you know, you come back in the room and the kids have left their dishes everywhere and the sink is all piled up again.
He's, the alien is gonna ask like, okay, what's a kitchen, what's a sink? What's kids like? All that kind of stuff. So you wanna describe it like you would be describing, Something in, in details of adjectives, like how, what color is it? What does it feel like? What's the surface like, where is the location exactly like in your body?
Is it sharp? Is it rough? Is it swirling? Is it a constriction? Is it an openness? . And so that is what you wanna do. And notice that if you are describing the feeling, if you're naming it and describing it, what are you not doing? You're actually not getting all caught up in the negative emotion. The next step, step four, what we wanna do is you wanna then question the feeling.
Interesting. Where is this coming from? What exactly do I think is going on here? Why do I think it's this feeling? What are the actual thoughts that I'm thinking right now that are creating this feeling? You just step into curiosity and, and get really detailed again. All like the possibilities coming from this really like detective and experimental kind of scientist.
Huh, interesting. This is fascinating. I wonder, I wonder, and then when again you might in this. Step, be able you, you are still separating yourself from actually feeling this feeling. And at this point, I believe that your body should be coming into a little bit of a calmer state as you go through this.
And the last step is to lean into it, relax into it, release the res, any resistance to the fact that you're feeling bad at this moment. And again, Breathe. This in general is I want, want this podcast. The takeaway is this last step, can I be someone who leans into and not run away from negative emotion? So let's just explore these steps with an example.
Okay? So you're stressed about an unexpected bill that came in the mail, and then your lower brain, right? Your survival lizard brain. This, you need to avoid pain. This is pretty bad, right? This unexpected bill, and you need to go seek pleasure. So go grab yourself some cookies out of the pantry. But on your way walking to the pantry, you actually take step one and you pause.
Then you go into step two and ask yourself, what am I feeling right? Is it stressed? Is it angry? So at that point, you name it, and at first there may be many names that fit, but I want you to just pick one. One emotion that you deem is like the biggest and the most problematic emotion for you in that moment.
We often have more than one emotion, but in this instance, to learn and to give it a try on how to process emotion, let's just pick. Then we move into describing where do you feel it in your body? How does it feel? Is it a dropping sensation in your stomach? Is it a shaking in your arms? Is it a sharp feeling in your heart?
And notice that if you're naming and describing what are you not doing, you're not actually getting caught up in the swirl of, I'm terrible. I should have known better. This is awful. It's all my fault. So this process, this helps you get outside of your head for a moment and instead it puts awareness in your body and that is where you can best process it.
So we can clearly question this feeling now, why am I feeling this way? We know that a thought's causing it and creating it so we can work backwards and identify the thought. That are triggering this vibration in your body and you can lean in, breathe, process, breathe and process it, and breathe some more.
This could only take you a few minutes or sometimes we have to repeat these steps for a couple days, but I promise that it will you. It'll eventually pass and you will feel. As opposed to the alternate and the alternate is that you are going to increase your negative emotion, lower your emotional wellbeing.
You're gonna become more dissatisfied with your life and the circumstances that are going on if you resist, react, or avoid feeling bad, it's just part of the human experience. . So some other ways that I just want to, to kind of help you get good at feeling bad is to know that we wanna acknowledge our emotions.
We don't wanna just cover them up and put them under the rugs. This human beings, all of us feel a spectrum of emotions and we just wanna accept that experiencing. And understanding it is that it's normal to feel this way and that life isn't meant to be perfect all the time. I wanna give you permission to start feeling your emotions today.
Permission granted. Allow yourself to experience feeling bad without judging or criticizing yourself that you are feeling bad, thinking that you shouldn't, or that you should know how to get out of it, or, again, to feel happy all the time, which so many people that thought trips them up. Nothing has go wrong.
This is a natural part of the human experience. I know I'm repeating that, but it bears repeating, so I, I, I also, I gave you the process, but even if you don't remember the process, if you can just take a moment and reflect even afterwards, after, you know, something went down where we didn't hold our emotions and process it very well, and, and we did go into fixing mode and we did actually make things worse on ourselves.
Let's just reflect, right. What do we think might have triggered it and just understanding. The cause and just trying again with the process that I laid out with you. Just trying, knowing you're learning, you're learning how to do something new, a new skill. I'm always wanting to remind you throughout all of this, when you are feeling negative, when you're feeling bad about something.
To practice self-compassion, treat yourself with kindness and understanding. Just as you would a close or best friend or family member, remind yourself that everyone goes through difficult times and it's okay to feel bad. Seek support when needed. Reach out, friends, family, and of course if you have a coach, that's where you can go, and that's what I help my clients with.
I help them to learn how to process their negative emotions. We learn more about the 50 50 tool and we learned to give ourself. about what's happening and that it's a normal part. And we practice, we practice together. We go out and we put put it to practice in your life, and then it doesn't go perfectly, which is fine, and you bring it back and then we work through it together, seek support.
We all need help with our mental and emotional wellbeing and wellness. So besides that of having. The community. I'm seeking support in that way. Find healthy outlets for your emotions. I know when I think they talk about, you know, screaming into your pillow or beating up on your pillow, , you know, that's what always comes to mind when someone's like, find a healthy outlet.
But there are so many things, journaling, doing art, exercise, meditation of. Prayer is a healthy outlet for your emotions. God can handle it. Take it to Christ, lay it at his feet, tell him everything. Be angry about it. He gets it. Remember, he created you and he created the way that our brain and our hearts work.
I want you to practice gratitude. There are a lot of times some terrible things happen and I feel negative. and I go to gratitude even for the fact that I'm alive or experiencing something challenging and I'm able to feel a negative emotion and just the last step I, or just I. Kind of thing I wanna remind you is that I want you to, again, embrace this process.
The whole title was how to get good at it, which means you're going to have to try and fail, and then you're gonna have to be resilient, and then you're going to grow and then you're gonna try again. And so we're not gonna make failing. We're going be the the end all of trying again. And we are gonna celebrate each little success along the way.
When you're like, look at me, I was feeling bad today and I did a good job at leaning into it and not making it a problem for my life. And I want you to celebrate that because that is a really, really big. So totally acknowledge and celebrate the progress that you make and the results that you create.
Create from realizing that you are getting better and better at feeling bad. Because on the other side of doing things that are hard and challenging is such rewarding personal fulfillment and success, which will then ultimately lead. to then creating another goal, and that other goal is going to also be the same, where it will take you feeling negative emotion to reach a higher level.
This is why we wanna get good at it. All right everyone. Thanks so much for clicking on the episode, regardless of the title, and I hope that you take on this notion, this skillset to get good at feeling bad. And if you want my help with this, do not hesitate to reach out. I have a process and a program that will help you for sure, cross the finish line with this skillset.
All right, everyone. Thanks again for joining me. Have a beautiful week and I will talk to you again soon. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of The Peaceful Mind Podcast. Are you ready to take everything I teach you here and put it to work for your own life? To really learn how to have peace of mind no matter what is happening around you.
If so, I'd love to have you as a client, as your coach. This is where you'll get personal and focus time on your own mind, using life coaching tools, concepts, and proven life, transforming wisdom, all through a faith-filled lens. To learn more about how we can work together, come on over to daniellethienel.com
there you'll see how to sign up for a free coaching consult and learn how to get started. Until next time, peace be with you always.
