Have you ever been caught in the whirlwind of emotions, wondering if they're the truth or just a passing storm in your mind?
In today's episode I share with you a personal story about how quickly we can get swept up in our emotions and how to find grounding.
Exploring nervous system regulation tools, I'll show you how to quiet the emotional noise and clarify your thinking, emphasizing that our emotions are experiences, not definitions.
Get in there and give it a listen for more!
Resources:
Manage Your Stress Mentorship
Discovery call
You can find more about Brain-Body Resilience and JPB:
On the BBR Website
On Instagram
On Facebook
Sign up for the BBR newsletter
Have you ever been caught in the whirlwind of emotions, wondering if they're the truth or just a passing storm in your mind?
In today's episode I share with you a personal story about how quickly we can get swept up in our emotions and how to find grounding.
Exploring nervous system regulation tools, I'll show you how to quiet the emotional noise and clarify your thinking, emphasizing that our emotions are experiences, not definitions.
Get in there and give it a listen for more!
Resources:
Manage Your Stress Mentorship
Discovery call
You can find more about Brain-Body Resilience and JPB:
On the BBR Website
On Instagram
On Facebook
Sign up for the BBR newsletter
What is up? Hello there. My name is Jessica Paching Bunch, you can call me JPB, and this is Brain Body Resilience. This is a podcast dedicated to growth, human development and stressing a little bit less so you can go ahead and live a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Brain Body Resilience podcast. I'm your host, jpb, and this is episode number 173. Today we're talking about how feelings are not actually facts, and this episode is brought to you by my own little men TV, as the kids say. Today I actually had to google that to make sure I don't know that it was what I thought it was, which is a delightful reminder of my departure from youth. And when I googled that, it told me that a men TV is a colloquial term for predominantly that is, predominantly used on social media to refer to a mental breakdown. It captures moments of intense emotional stress or psychological strain where an individual feels overwhelmed. And so I can confirm it was in fact a day of men TV, a tale I will tell.
Speaker 2:I started my day feeling good. Just it was a normal day, feeling alright, and then, somewhere in the middle of making breakfast, I started feeling like I don't know, like nothing matters, and questioning what I'm doing with my life. And what is the point? Why are we all here? What's it all about? It took a real turn there during breakfast and continued with I'm almost 40, which is not at all old, but about middle aged if we consider that the average age is 77 years old, average lifespan, I guess, is 77 years old here in the States anyways. And if I'm going to live this life as my own main character and create the life that I actually want to live, what the fuck am I doing? Getting up every day, going to this job that I mostly don't care about, which is my day job, not this one, because I love this and then I go to the gym and then I go to sleep and that's kind of it. And so I spiraled into. I never have time to do all the things I want, and if my non-negotiables are caring for myself, how the fuck am I going to have time for all of the other things? So I went to the gym, I went to work, then I went to the gym because movement is one of my non-negotiables, and my workout did not feel great. I felt so uncomfortable in my body and that helped me spiral into the familiar. I'm working so hard and it's not doing anything, and what is the point? Which spiraled me back into? Nothing matters. And while intellectually I know the benefits of exercise and that is why I do it consistently, whether I feel like it or not, because it is always beneficial, no matter how I'm feeling.
Speaker 2:Big feelings make it hard to step back and have any sense of objectivity. Emotional stress and overwhelm make it hard to access our thinking brain, where we can give things a view that is rational and have some emotional regulation and reason. Metacognition also comes from our frontal lobe and gives us the ability to reflect on our thought process and then choose actions accordingly. Feelings are not facts, but our emotions are the core of our motivations. What we feel is good, what doesn't feel good. This directs most of our actions, and sometimes our emotions aren't communicating the truth of the present moment, and when we have a sensation in the body, the brain immediately wants to make sense of it and tell a story about what it is. Is it good, is it bad, is it threatening, non-threatening, does it resemble any previous experience and what was that situation? What was our reaction? Is that needed again, and so on.
Speaker 2:This is what creates the emotions that we have vocabulary for, and so sometimes feelings come from the stories that we tell ourselves and we assign meaning to these sensations, to these feelings. This means I'm not good enough. This means my body isn't right. This means I'm never going to make it. This means nothing. I do makes a difference, and these stories that we make up aren't harmless. Our imagination creates signals in our brain that communicate down the nervous system accordingly. So if we are using our imagination to tell ourselves about how we are trash, how life is trash, everything is awful, nothing is great. I will never be able to do this. I'm just like this, and it's never gonna change. These are all stories that signal threat and activate that stress response.
Speaker 2:And so you're walking around feeling miserable about a miscommunication with a friend or something, and now you think that they're mad at you, or your partner is in a hurry and is short with you on the way out the door and you perceive that to mean something about the state of your relationship. And now you're feeling sad or you make up whatever other shit and then live in that lie that you've created for yourself. And those feelings are very, very real, but not based in shared facts. There's something that comes from whatever we have made up in the first place, and so we need to feel that feeling in order to get curious about them. We can't just push it down and pretend it's not there or try and move on. We have to give that feeling space to be processed so that we can get curious about where they are coming from. We have to feel the feelings and process so that we have a better access to our metacognitive skills, to be able to get curious and consider what stories we are telling ourselves and reflect on our thought process and then choose actions accordingly.
Speaker 2:And big feelings make it hard to step back and have any sense of objectivity, because emotional stress and overwhelm make it hard to access our thinking brain where we can view things rationally and have some emotional regulation and reason. This is where your nervous system regulation tools come in handy so that you can downregulate and calm your nervous system enough to gain clarity to recognize the experience of these feelings. And that's the magical part To be able to recognize that it is in fact an experience that you are having. The feeling is the experience. You are not that feeling. You are not angry, you are not overwhelmed, you are not even joy. These are things you are experiencing. When we can learn to separate ourselves from the feeling, we are much less likely to get sucked into a depression or hopeless state or long-term anger or anything like that. This is why it is so important to have the space to create the space for curiosity, to have access to the parts of your brain that help you get curious and not just to judgements.
Speaker 2:And one way to help yourself find some objectivity is by keeping track. Keeping track of emotional events and knowing what's going on. A journal is great for this Writing down facts, not what you think it means or why you think something is happening. Sick to the facts what happened? How does it feel? What tools helped bring clarity? Was there an outcome? And there doesn't need to be. It's just another data point.
Speaker 2:And so, bringing this back to my day of distress, I know that in the luteal phase of my menstrual cycle, I feel like crap about my body, I feel hopeless about my efforts in life, I feel apathetic and generally just like shit for a day or two and then everything evens out and feels relatively normal again and I go about my business. This happens every single month, every three weeks. This is. I know that there are these two days and I plan for them. I see them coming and still, they still affect me greatly. But knowing this helps me to keep in mind, when I am in this state, that it is not forever, it is not a permanent state, it is likely not based in fact, and that makes it easier to just let it be a day that sucks and feel the feels. It doesn't change it, but it helps me to be in that space where I can let it feel shitty and process.
Speaker 2:And so, my friend, feelings aren't always based in facts and for those of us who have any history of trauma where we needed to protect or defend ourselves, the stories can be more aligned with that past, that need to protect what happened if we had these feelings before and where you were in that state. And we have to be intentional about recognizing the present moment circumstances, and that can take a lot of work with a mental health professional, some trauma work if necessary, and sometimes not. But understanding that this circumstance right here is what we're dealing with. Even if there are stories that are similar from other experiences, feelings are just that. They are feelings. They are meant to be processed and move along so that we don't get stuck in the story.
Speaker 2:That's all I've got for you today. Thank you for being here, thank you for your time and your attention and thank you for reaching out to communicate and share what lands with you. I truly love that and it helps me to know what it is that's useful for you and ask if you found this episode useful. Please do share it with a friend so that they might, too, find it useful, and I don't ask for reviews very often, but if you would be so kind and take just a couple of seconds to leave some stars five would be great and or a couple of words, it will be endlessly appreciated. That does help helps other folks to to find the podcast.
Speaker 2:Also, a reminder I am currently enrolling for the Manage your Stress Mentorship, which is a six-week one-on-one guided mentorship where I will support you and hold space to help you learn science-based techniques to navigate your nervous system, to learn to calm immediate stress and anxiety and how to start preventing the stress overflow so that you can stop living like stress is your full-time job. I will be here to support and encourage you through the process of building your own routine that fits your life so that you can get out of survival mode and step into building your best life. You can find all of the information for that in the show notes. I am always available on Instagram, so you can find me there. Send me a message, send me an email. I am here if you've got questions. Alright, that's it for today, wishing you a beautiful week. We'll do this again Until then, peace.