Two weeks ago today, I was in a ski accident and you all know how excited I was to be learning how to ski. I always think goals are linear, and I'm sure you experienced that as well. There might be a couple obstacles, but we'll work through that and then we'll achieve our goal.
But in reality, yes, that does happen, but more often than not we'll experience large detours along the way and it's very easy to become disappointed, discouraged and feel a lot of despair in those moments when the detours happen. I myself felt that way.
In this episode, I will share with you how we can take care for our emotional well-being when they do happen.
What you'll learn in this episode:
Featured on the Show:
Click HERE to watch this video to learn The 3 Things to Avoid When Reading Self-Help Books
How to Connect with Lara:
Web: www.larajohnsoncoaching.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/j.lara.johnson/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/larajohnsoncoaching
Work with Lara: www.larajohnsoncoaching.com/work-with-me/
Two weeks ago today, I was in a ski accident and you all know how excited I was to be learning how to ski. I always think goals are linear, and I'm sure you experienced that as well. There might be a couple obstacles, but we'll work through that and then we'll achieve our goal.
But in reality, yes, that does happen, but more often than not we'll experience large detours along the way and it's very easy to become disappointed, discouraged and feel a lot of despair in those moments when the detours happen. I myself felt that way.
In this episode, I will share with you how we can take care for our emotional well-being when they do happen.
What you'll learn in this episode:
Featured on the Show:
Click HERE to watch this video to learn The 3 Things to Avoid When Reading Self-Help Books
How to Connect with Lara:
Web: www.larajohnsoncoaching.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/j.lara.johnson/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/larajohnsoncoaching
Work with Lara: www.larajohnsoncoaching.com/work-with-me/
Welcome to the Mom on Purpose podcast. I'm Lara Johnson and I'm here to teach you how to get out of your funk, be in a better mood, play more with your kids, manage your home better, get your to-do list done, and live your life on purpose. With my proven method, this is possible for you, and I'll show you how, you're not alone anymore. We're in this together.
Hello, welcome back to the Mon on Purpose Podcast. I am excited to have you here with me today. So I want you just for a second to imagine you are in my home and we're sitting on the couch and we're talking and I'm pouring my heart and soul out to you over the challenges I've had over the last couple of weeks. And the reason why I want to share this with you is to demonstrate that regardless of where we're at in our life, we are human and have big emotions. And one of those big emotions that we experience is disappointment, especially when we're working towards our goals. I guess in my mind, I always think goals are linear, and I'm sure you experienced that as well. We're going to set a goal, we're going to work towards it. There might be a couple obstacles, but we'll work through that and then we'll achieve our goal.
When in reality, yes, that does happen, but more often than not, we'll experience large detours along the way and it's very easy to become disappointed, discouraged, and feel a lot of despair in those moments when the detours happen. It's a lot of D-words there, but what I want to share with you today is how do we emotionally process when those detours do happen? Because it's very important for us to plan on them happening and to have some kind of plan to care for our emotional wellbeing when they do happen. So two weeks ago today, I was in a ski accident and you all know how excited I was to be learning how to ski. It was so stressful, but I was excited. I was proud of myself. I was going up by myself. I was doing lessons and it really... You know how much I love the mountains. I love being in the mountains and I craved that in the winter.
So it was a lot of fun to be actually in the mountains and getting some amazing fresh air, doing something active. And at one point, it was the last run of the day. I could feel that my legs were tired, I was still in my lesson, but we were just doing one more run before we finished for the day. And I had turned to the right and as I did the left back part of my ski, clipped the snow and got stuck. And as I went down, I heard a very loud pop in my knee. It was one of those where instantly my brain went, oh, that's surgery. And I was so bumped, but I was like, okay, maybe not. So somebody from the ski resort was there. My instructor was down aways, but I think he may have saw me fall.
They have people on the runs all the time helping people. So he helped me. He's like, "It's okay, let's just stand up." And I was like, "Okay, maybe it's not that bad." So I go to stand up and he goes on, he's like, "You good? You're standing." I'm like, "Yeah, I think so." And I go to ski and I just fell over. It was like, there was nothing there in my leg. It was the strangest feeling and I was so determined. So they have... I don't know how familiar you are with ski resorts, but they have what they call the toboggan.
And the toboggan is basically somebody that's an expert skier. They have a sled hooked to the back of them and they fold you in like a burrito. They strap you in and they ski you down the mountain and it is like the sled ride of shame. You're like, "No, I don't want the toboggan." So I take my skis off, I'm like, "Fine, I'm going to walk down this stinking mountain." And I take my skis off and I go to walk down the mountain and I just flopped over. I just fell over again. I'm laughing about it because it was horribly embarrassing. So of course they have to... My poor ski instructor had to take his skis off. The other person that was in my class, he was gone. He was at the bottom. He was meeting up with other people. So I don't even know if he knew that I got hurt.
He was significantly more advanced than me, even though we were in the same class. And so my ski instructor's walking off the hill, and I think it trips people out sometimes because I'm a pretty jovial type personality. So when they see me and I'm smiling, I think sometimes it trips people out when I say, "No, actually I'm in pain. This is just my natural face." You know how some people have RBF, mine's like the opposite of that. And so to really get people to hear me sometimes, especially medical professionals, can be very challenging. So I'm telling them, "Yeah, I can't stand up. I can't move." And so they're having to radio somebody in and they get there and they're standing with me and I can start to immediately feel my legs swell. Long story short, I had the toboggan ride of shame down the mountain since I couldn't stand up on my leg.
I'm having all these adults lift me up with a blanket and put me on the stretcher and roll me into the urgent care that they have that are onsite, and I am up there by myself. My husband was flying home from the UK on a work trip, so he had just barely landed, like literally had walked in the house and immediately turned around and walked out to drive up. Well, he had my dad drive up to the ski resort so he could drive our car home because I couldn't drive. So at that point, that started a really challenging week of doctor's appointments and meeting with surgeons, and the official diagnosis was like I fractured my tibial plateau. I tore some of my MCL, I sprained my FCL and I completely blew out my ACL, which is super fun, right? I was in here, like I'm gritting my teeth, so freaking mad about it.
And I think that's been the hardest thing with all of it, harder than not being able to take care of my kids, the pain, even harder than that. It's like the sheer frustration and anger that I finally was recovering from postpartum with my body has the challenges after, and I finally was feeling really good. I was being really active. I was really enjoying learning something new. I was working towards my goals and to feel like I had the biggest detour slapped on my schedule. And I've been mad. I've been really mad and I even was Googling yesterday, depression after an injury. Apparently it's a real thing. I didn't actually know that. So all of that to say there are major detours that happen in life and there will be times where you are legitimately mad and that's okay to be mad. I think what's most important is when these times happen, that we understand what's happening inside of our body and we are working to process those emotions, and we've talked about this before where I've got a really strong mind.
I can think really positive thoughts. I can see the silver lining. I can see how this can be a blessing almost instantly. It was harder this time because I was so mad, but I could still see silver linings. I have a firm belief that God is aware and is taking care of me and that there will be things that happen and that I can take and learn lessons from them. I have a very strong belief in those things and I have big emotions as a human that requires me to stop and to process those. So that's really where I wanted to spend today on is how do we deal with the disappointments of life? How do we process those emotions so that when it happens for you in your own life, whatever that thing might be, that you'll know exactly what to do with it.
So this is going back to some of the very beginning episodes where I talk about emotions and I use emotions and feelings interchangeably. So when we're talking about emotions and emotion is a physical vibration within your body that it will come on like a contraction, where it will come on really slow, sometimes really fast, and you'll get to the very peak of it, and that's the most painful part to your body and to your mind. Now at this point, just like we know with the contraction, it will start to come down and I use contraction, you can think about it as a wave. You can think about it as the bell curve. Whatever image helps you when we're talking about it, that's what I want you to think about. I like thinking about it in terms of a contraction because it feels very concrete in my body.
I know what that contraction feels like. So at this point, when we get to that very peak of our emotion, there's typically four things that I've identified. There may be more, this isn't a comprehensive list, but I feel like there's four categories of things that we do during this. So I call it the RARA, the first. And I will say that as I described this to one of my clients once she's like, "Hey, that spells RARA." I was like, "Actually you're right." So if she's listening to this... You know, this was years ago, she's listening to this, then she'll remember this. But the rah, rah steps of the things we do at the peak, the first is to resist, the second is to avoid. The third is to react, and the fourth is to allow or process. Now, when we're doing something like resisting emotions, we'll use the ski accident that I just had as an example.
When I was resisting the emotions, I was kind of pushing emotions down. I didn't want them to surface. As soon as I got into my car and my husband was there and we were driving home, I burst into tears. That's an example of I resisted, I resisted, I resisted, and then it popped up with so much force, and that's okay. Sometimes there are times where you may not want to show those emotions. I didn't want to lose it in the urgent care. Okay, that's okay. But over time, if you're consistently resisting emotions, it will start to bleed and cause problems in other areas of your life. So that's the first R, resist. The second is to avoid emotions. I feel like... Again, we're going to use the ski accident as an example because it's so recent, I think it illustrates me going through these four things.
So to avoid things, this is probably what I did the first week where I didn't really want to come to terms with the fact that this is going to be a very long-drawn-out process to get back to where I would like to be and there will be surgery involved with it. So I just started binge-watching all the shows. I was very depressed. I didn't want to get out of bed. I have people coming in and having to clean my home and having to take my kids places and play with my kids. And what I can do essentially is I can sit mostly in bed and I always thought that would be a dream until you have to do it, and then it's not so much of a dream. I wanted to do it voluntarily, not to be forced to do it. So I completely avoided all of the emotions for that.
And when I was avoiding these emotions, there was a couple things that started happening. One, it didn't fix anything. There are times and places, yes, where you can binge-watch things, but the fact that I was doing it to run away from what I was really feeling is very different. And in the process where it didn't actually fix things, my body was still feeling intense amounts of stress to the point where my arms, legs, up my neck, on some of my face broke out in stress hives. So I think that's a really good example on even when you're avoiding something, it might be watching a show, it might be scrolling on your phone. It might even be something that seems good like exercise. But if you're doing it to avoid emotions, your body will still have a physical reaction to it. You are still at that peak point and your body and mind know it.
So you are the only one that can really be onto yourself to know if you're avoiding emotions. So the fourth one would be to react. Now when we're reacting to emotions, Brene Brown calls this like chandeliering where you go from the floor to the chandelier with a split second, where all of a sudden you react so big and loud that whatever the thing was, it didn't really warrant that kind of explosion. Now, there again, you're the only one that will be able to know. There are times where yes, you may have a therapeutic yell, there may be times where you've been holding your voice in and you finally speak your truth, and it may come out at a higher decibel than you thought it would. Sometimes that is processing emotions, but sometimes it's also you've been resisting it and then you react to it or reaction is your natural go-to. Now, I would say probably in the last couple of weeks, I haven't experienced that as much because I've had people here in the house and I'm not with my kids as much.
If I were with my kids more during this, like high amounts of stress, it probably would've happened at some point because I wasn't taking care of my emotional wellbeing for a time. So I want you just to stop and think about that for yourself on when are the times that you have reacted? It may be your kid, you're already stressed out, you haven't really been addressing the stress, and your kids spill the glass of milk and suddenly you find yourself yelling over this glass of milk and you kind of step back. It's almost like this out-of-body experience where you're like, it's not that big of a deal. Why can't I stop yelling? So that's just an example of reacting. So when we go through RARA, we have resist, avoid, react. That brings us to our last one, which is to allow or process emotions. So when we get to that final A, the allow or process emotions, I think in the emotional wellness community, we'll hear, we should sit and we should feel our feelings.
And it almost sounds like it's very time-consuming. That was always my initial thought on who has time to sit for 20 minutes and feel mad? I don't have time for that. Well, right now I have time for that. I was choosing not to do. But for the most part, we're busy moms, we're going all the time and we're getting a lot of things done. So this is where I want to get really clear on what this looks like real time for you so that you can have the benefits of being able to process your emotions without feeling like you are losing out or you don't have time for it or whatever the obstacle is in your mind when it comes to your emotional wellbeing. So I think about it in terms of a three-pronged fork. I always think that fork in the road is a funny phrase because usually there's more prongs than just two.
So maybe somebody... Maybe it's not an actual fork, that's just the phrase, but I always imagine a fork. So we're going to think about this as a three prong fork. So when we have each of these prongs, we're going to put one of the prongs is process, one of the prongs as allow, and the last one is mindset prong. So let's start with the mindset. Mindset is when we're doing something like the model that we talk about here on the podcast where you've got circumstances, you've got thoughts, feelings, actions and results. And what we're doing is looking at how else can I think about this? This is a huge benefit. This is an amazing tool that you can use, but if it is the only tool that you are using and it doesn't feel like it's working, there is a good possibility, it's because it's not the right tool for the moment.
So like I mentioned at the very beginning, I for sure can think about the silver lining of all of these things and it would be a way for me to avoid my emotions to slap some happy thoughts on it. But it's essentially like putting really amazing frosting on top of a chocolate cake that's burnt. No matter how great that frosting is, you are going to taste the underlying burnt cake. It just is off. It's just different. It feels different in your body and you've got to be on yourself if you are trying to positive think your way out of something hard. So that leads us to our other two options to process and to allow. When we're allowing emotion, this is what I call the go and feel. An example of this would be you're driving in your car, your kids are losing their mind in the back and you're like deep breathing while you're driving your car or you're wanting to lose it, but you're allowing that emotion to be in your body without reacting to it.
That would be an example of I'm just going to keep going and I'm going to feel as I go. Now, typically when I'm teaching my clients this, they're like, "Okay, well I know I've been positive thinking my way through it, okay, so now since I'm so busy and I've got so much going on, then I'm just going to go on field. That's going to be sufficient." But then things don't actually get better. So this is where you might want to use this tool, but it might not be the best tool for the moment, and you'll know that because you'll find yourself still reacting where you're good and you're good and you're good and then you're not good. When you're not good, it's very loud. When you're not good. That's typically because you have been using the two wrong tools for the time, which takes us back to our very first tool, or I guess depending on which way you're looking at it, we're just kind of moving through all three.
That goes back to our processing of an emotion. Now, when we process an emotion, this is what I call the stop and feel. Most of the time our brain will say, I don't have 20 minutes to stop and feel this, and you're probably right, but what will happen is your brain will shut you down to where it will make the time very quickly. You'll find yourself ending up in a closet crying somewhere. You'll find yourself beating yourself up, and so you're not being productive anyway. You just feel like you're paralyzed and you can't do anything about it. This is a perfect example of how when these things start to happen, your body is showing you that you are using the wrong tools for the time and you've got to go back to process. You've got to go back to stop and feel what you're feeling.
So when you get to this spot, and this is where I really came to this last week where I started to... I was onto my behaviors, I was onto the things I was doing, and I really got to the point where, okay, I recognize that I'm very disappointed. I'm very discouraged right now, and I'm not going to try and talk myself out of it. I'm not going to just keep going about my life pretending that it's not there. I'm going to actually give myself a chance to stop and be in this feeling and to be okay with this. Now, when you get to this spot, it's very different in the sense that you are stopping what you're doing. Sometimes this requires us to walk away from our children, and I know you are thinking, well, my children are just going to follow me. That's okay.
There's been plenty of times I've been in the bathroom with fingers under the door while I'm stopping and feeling. We've all been there. We all go to the bathroom and there are fingers under the door or they're trying to climb on us. But I would really recommend you trying to do this if there is another adult around or that there is a door closed. And even if you're sitting with your back against the door, and they may still be knocking, that's okay. So in this moment, this is where you're closing your eyes. You can even put your hand on your heart and you're just taking some deep breaths. And as you take these deep breaths, you're going on the inside of your body, and as you go to the inside of your body, you're just opening up your mind and kind of asking the inside of your body.
I'm like, "What are you feeling right now? Where am I feeling this? What is it that you're trying to tell me?" So some of the things I walk my clients through and I walk myself through is, where is this in my body? Now, for me, it's been a lot in my heart lately, and I ask myself, "Okay, well what's the color of it?" It's like a really deep red right now, and what's the shape of it? Well, it almost feels like a heart that's drooping or bleeding out. And when I ask myself, "What's the weight of it?" It's very heavy, but the weight is releasing because it does feel like it's bleeding out. So these are the kinds of things that I'm walking my body through as I'm processing this emotion. Now, it will look or feel something different for you. That is okay, that is the point of it.
But what I find is that as I am working through and as I'm processing this, it's moving throughout my body and I'm watching it move and it will feel like that contraction, like it's starting to come on, it will get really strong. It will feel like I'm getting emotional. The emotions will start to rise. I want you to stay with it. It will feel like you're feeling this for a very long time, but I promise you, even five minutes, even three minutes will feel like 20 minutes. But three minutes is enough to really process this. So the wave will come on, it'll get really strong, and then it will start to come down. And as it starts to come down for you, you'll start to feel a little bit of a relief. You'll start to feel your body expand. I want you to stay breathing, and what will happen is two things.
It will start to subside or it will start to build up again like a contraction. I want you to keep feeling those contractions going up and down, up and down. And as you do so, what you're doing is allowing this vibration to move through your body and out your body. This, it will be the most powerful tool you can use for the disappointments in your life, but for any emotion that you have in your life, I would argue more so than even mindset work if you become friends with your emotions and not trying to avoid them or run away from them, but actually allowing them to be in your body and not making it mean there's something wrong with you, that you're doing something wrong, that you even have to believe the stories it's telling you, but just that it can be there for a time and it won't kill you.
That will be the strongest thing that you can do when it comes to processing your emotions. So as I've really spent time doing that this week, I've allowed myself to start writing about it, journaling about it, still binge-watching plenty of things, because there's nothing else I can do, but it feels different. It feels a little lighter. And over the next little while, it may still be pretty heavy in my heart and in my body, but I know that it's there and I know I'm using the tools to be working through this. This isn't to say... Well, I mean I would say some emotions. You're going to actually feel it and it will let up pretty quickly, especially if you've been resisting them for a long time. Other emotions, you may have to ride the wave for a little bit. You may have to learn how to be sad and happy at the same time.
But what I will say is that when you are using this tool, you will bring greater peace and calm and trust in God, in the universe on a much more concrete, committed, solid level within your body. And you won't have to be resisting or avoiding these emotions all the time. You can start making some more conscious decisions about how you want to progress even when you're feeling big emotions.
So there you have it today. There is some more real time stuff for you on what is happening in my life, but I hope more than anything that you can use this as an example and to provide yourself some relief and some peace and some calm with whatever disappointments you are facing today or could be in the future. I hope you know that I love you and I will talk to you soon.
Thank you for listening. Please share, review, and subscribe to this podcast so that together we can live life on purpose.