From Reaction to Awareness: Learning Emotional Resilience | 004

Hi friend. We are jumping into episode four, and I just wanted to say thanks for hanging in there. Some of this content I'm sharing is a little bit heavy, so thank you for taking the journey and getting this far. I also want to share too that it's an amazing testament to yourself, of your own healing journey, that you're here and you're doing this work. Super cool. So in the last couple of episodes, we've covered a bunch of content, right? We've talked about the map, the trusted voice, the invisible barriers, how tea starts flowing, and all these crazy things about human behavior that I kind of love to nerd out about. So I just wanted to pause and say, although I would love to happen to, like, 300 different things. I felt like it was really time to start talking about some healing practices and healing concepts. Because I think it's important to integrate both right as I start to surface how and where things come from, I think it's really cool to also start to surface a healing concept that allows us to shut those things down, right? Because I don't want to share 10,000 scenarios and then talk about healing, it's like, let's service a couple and then create a practice for it, and then service a couple more and create another practice for it, just so that we can start to normalize.

Hey, as things pop up for us, we have solutions. So it's kind of an ebb and flow or a yin and yang thing. I also want to share too, that my need to do this and my desire to do this is two fold. So the first one is for all the coaches out there that are listening and or the mental health professionals we're all governed by this idea that the number one rule in coaching is never open a topic with somebody that you can't close. And so I think it's really important to say, hey, if I open something for you, or I vote some awareness around an area that maybe was tender or was unknown before I want to give you a solution to then close that. And so understanding how things surface, when they surface, why they surface, what they're connected to, what they're connected to in our environment, whether it's internal or external. And then what we're making those things mean today is really powerful and necessary and pivotal in the healing journey. And so I know that was a mouthful, but I just wanted to share that all those pieces are important to creating sustainable healing. And so whether you decide to use these practices with your kids, with your students, with your players, your clients, your spouses, your neighbors, whoever it is, or whether you're keeping them for yourself, just know that all of these things work for everyone. And so the second part of that is something that I kind of already shared and said that like sharing and teaching and normalizing healing is a real thing.

We've spent our entire lifetime collecting dysfunctional patterns and collecting coping strategies and adaptations and all these workarounds to try and either avoid, mitigate, or process at some capacity, all these big emotions. And so I want to start to normalize healing too, like let's start to normalize the pause. Let's start to normalize the grace that we're going to give ourselves and give other people. And then let's also start to normalize the space and the time that's needed for both right both of my kids know if they give me an extra 10 seconds in responding, they often get a better answer, but if they're pushing me to answer them right now, they might get a version of mom they don't really want to contend with. And so it's okay to say, hey, can we pause for a second? Or, hey, can we circle back to this in another conversation, because I'm a little bit off right now? Or can we circle back this? I'm a little bit on overload, so allowing yourself the grace and the space is part of the healing journey, and so I'm sharing that and saying that's also why I'm teaching a couple things and then teaching a healing practice, teaching a couple things, and then teaching the practice. So if we understand too why and how we're triggered, and we learn to recognize how to interrupt and repattern the triggers, we're then more in control of the outcome, and we're getting closer to the ideal outcome that we're all striving for. To take it a little bit deeper.

When we learn what the triggers are attached to, we can start to create some super hyper, big perspective. Hey, this is a lot deeper than what I thought it was. And let me go, let me let me search this. Let me take this trigger and whittle it down until I find that seated event so that I can kind of pull the root right. And so when we learn how our. Emotions work, how to get in front of them when they're triggered, why they're triggered? Who triggers them more often than others, and all of the other things that are connected to and live in the space where overwhelm and burnout and reactivity and tap out, and all these other strong emotions live, we're closer to not only a solution, but we're closer to living in a space where we're conscious and present versus disconnected and adaptive. And so in order to normalize these healthy functions, we first have to understand how they work. So you're absolutely going to want a pen and paper this time, and you might also want, like, a quiet corner to vibe out in. So I'm going to give you a sec before you meet them jam about a couple other things. But like I shared before, we've talked about the map, and if you're listening to this and you haven't learned about the map yet, I think it's an episode two. We talked about the trusted voice. Also in episode two, we talked about emotional patterns and the hidden and invisible barriers that really unknowingly attack themselves to our maps and impede our ability to thrive. We talked about all that, and then we've talked about like, the limiting beliefs, the foundational beliefs, the deeply held values and morals, and the thing that I like to refer to as the powerful stories we tell ourselves, right?

That was the original title of my book, Healing your map. It was originally titled powerful stories we tell ourselves, but it got shifted a couple different times, but I think that's still a really valid topic and concept, right? We tell ourselves all these crazy stories, and we don't realize how much power those stories hold and the limitations and the the spaces they prevent us from moving into, but because the energy behind them is so familiar, we lean in right, instead of pausing and taking that that well needed space from them. So all of these things evoke different levels of emotional responses, and I just wanted to create some awareness around when they do, surface what to do with them. And so more often than not, these emotional responses have been normalized, right? We were talking about normalizing dysfunction in the last episode, they've been embodied meaning. They've become part of our nervous system, if you will, and they're part of our physiology to the point that we shift into them. And because they run on a pattern on their own, we don't even realize that we shift into these, I want to say, fight or flight patterns. We don't even realize we're in them because we've so deeply embodied and normalize them. And so they also often lie unconsciously dormant until they're triggered. And so that's the whole goal of this thing. And kind of the whole goal of the podcast is to teach people, why do we have all these feelings, and then, how do we heal them? How do we start to function in an emotionally literate way, or function in an emotionally masterful way, right?

I always say, Whoever has, whoever's mastering their emotion the most is the person that's leading most often than not. And so I just wanted to share too a lot of times these spaces for people feel ineditable or uneditable. I should probably know which one of those words is the better choice. But we don't feel like it's an editable space, and so we contend with this idea of like, well, that's just who I am. And I'm here to say no, that's who you've become over time because of these limiting and hidden patterns that we didn't know were accessible or editable. So if there's a different version of you that you're striving to be, or there's a part of you that you'd like to tap into a little bit more than not, you're in the right place. That's what we're doing here. That's what this is for, right? And so we're diving into these pockets to say, how do I start to tap into that version of Jody? I really want to be not you guys, I want to be Jody, right? I don't know why I'm talking third person. It's kind of weird, right? Not that you're all trying to be me, but, but for real, like, understanding, like, how do I get closer? How do you get closer to that version of yourself that you created the vision board around, or that you journal around, or whatever it is that your practice is right, even if you just drive and you think about, I should be on a beach right now, or I should be doing whatever right now, right? You should be in whatever. I don't want to put words into your head, but in order to become that new version of you, we first have to understand how we became this version that we are today. And so whether through these past couple of episodes, you've envisioned yourself as the person in the ER, the kid in the classroom, the player on the court, or maybe you're the leader in these situations, and you're trying to figure out how to affect change for the player, for the student, for your clients. Yes, I'm going to roll through a little series that I really enjoy, and I hope that you find something from it.

I hope that it helps you uncover some patterns. It's pretty cool. So if you want to find a quiet corner, whether you're chilling in your car in a local coffee shop or maybe you're at home, maybe you're in your room or at a park, or maybe we can all just it's winter time as I'm recording this, it's pretty cold outside. Maybe we can all just envision that we're like, chilling on a beach with our toes in the sand and a notebook, and we're just going to jam through this practice, which is called this practice is called, How do I know? So what's going to happen is I'm going to invite you to draw a line through the middle of your paper. And not that I'm here to assign creativity to the way that you jot down your notes. I just always hate it when somebody starts rifting and I'm like, Oh my gosh, I should have created columns, or I should have done this. So if you're that like OCD note taker, like I am, draw a line in the middle, and we're going to have list a and list B, or whether you want to whatever, I'm not going to assign your creative abilities here, but let's just share that. We're going to write out two lists of questions, and there's a couple different options here. You can either take down all these questions that I'm sharing and then hit pause and then sit back in your quiet space and jam through them, or as I surface a question, you can hit pause and answer them. I think it might be more helpful. This is just my personal take. I'd rather write them all out and then just Zen out for an hour or so. Or however, whatever it's five minutes or an hour for you, I'd rather take my time than hitting pause 1000 times. But the choice is yours.

Okay, so let's start off list A is going to talk about the the second title of list A is, how do I know when I'm not being supported? And I know that that might sound a little bit like, wait, what? So all these questions are going to be related to, how do I know when I'm not being supported? And so I'm going to invite you to write these out shorthand them. Do whatever you do with them. You can always come back and re listen to this podcast again if you want to do it again, either way. But the first question is, what feelings surface for me when I'm not feeling supported? Same question might sound like, what does it feel like when I'm not being supported? And then the second question is, where do I feel that in my physiology, like, where do I feel that in my body, if I'm not being supported? Where do I feel it? And I know I keep hammering these questions out, and you're probably writing, they can slow down Jody, right? But even if you grab I'm saying the same question, like four or five different times, you can just grab the one that fits you. The second one is, what does it sound like when I'm not being supported? So what is the conversation sound like in my head? Do I start telling myself a story, or is it an external sound? Meaning, is it a tone? Is it a voice? Is it a value? What is it that I'm What does it sound like when I'm not being supported, and then a third one, not that there's only three, but a third one would be, what does it look like when I'm not being supported? And I just share that in saying, is it something I'm visually seeing? Is it a picture I'm running in my head? Is it a video I'm replaying? I'm not really sure what that looks like for you. But what does it look like when you're not being supported?

The next question would be, what storyline do I shift into when I'm not being supported? So when I feel like I'm not being supported, or I look like I'm right, I'm in the space of not being supported, what storyline do I start running? And then another question for this would be, what happens in my environment when I shift into that space? So as soon as I feel like I'm not being supported, and I can feel it in my body, what happens in my environment? Meaning, is there a coping mechanism that I shift into? Is there a person I pick up in text or call? Do I jump on social media and Zen out or zone out, or what do they call it? Somebody said it, oh, Doom scrolling. Do I start Doom scrolling? Right? I don't even know if I like that term, but like, what vice is it that I use in that moment that becomes my filler? If I have one, right? Is there a substance that I reach for? I can share with you one of my vices is coffee. So if I'm ever, like, going through a moment and I'm like, super frustrated. I'll go get a coffee, whether I'm making it in my kitchen or whether I'm out and about in the world. I'll just run through somewhere and grab a coffee. And I'm like, Okay, let's get it back together. And so another one would be like, what happens to right? What? What also happens in your physiology or in your environment, as that emotion rises and it feels like it's uncon. Maintained. Couple more questions are here, and then we'll be done with this column. But the last couple are what happens for you emotionally, what happens for you physically, even if you just want to write what happens for me, and then just write three bullets off, emotionally, physically, just kidding, there's four, emotionally, physically, mentally. And then the last one I wrote there was like, spiritually or soulfully, right? So, like, what happens for you, spiritually or soulfully when you're in the stress pattern? So do you shift into prayer? Do you start praying to your higher power? Does it shut your light down? Does it feel like somebody's crushed your spirit, right? What happens for you in that space, and how aware are you of that response? And then I'm going to pause for a second, and I'm going to invite you to write out all of those answers, because the next part of this same column section gets a little bit deeper, and I'm not going to say it's fun. I was going to say it's fun. It's fun. It's fun for me, but I this is the work I do. So the next part of this is, once all your answers are down, you're going to do this next part. So if you haven't done that yet, hit pause.

If you've completed all the questions, I want you to go back through the list, and I want you to make a note of, and this is your list. This is privately yours. I want you to make a note of who are the people in these different spaces that are connected to these reactions. So when you look at the reactions, I want you and this, this is not to assign blame. This is to create awareness around, hey, when I'm around so and so, I tend to get a little fired up, or hey when I so and so, right? Like, let's just start, start to wreck it. And maybe it's a genre of people, right? Maybe it is a every time I see the this is true for me. Every time I see the crossing guard. No judgment on crossing guards, but the one that lives by my house forgets that. I digress. I'm not even going to go there because it's a funny story, and I'm gonna leave him alone, but him and I have a little conversation we need to have, right? But I just share that in saying I chuckle a little bit now when I see him. And so maybe it's not a specific person, maybe it's a genre of people, okay, and so understanding this is a step you want to take. This is a part of this. I promise you, a lot of times people want to skip this step and go, No, I don't need to do that. Yes, you do. It is important to take this step because you're going to want it for the next step. Maybe not the next one here, but you'll understand in a minute. And then the final part to this column to this list, a and this also will take a second, give yourself time, space and grace to do this. Friend.

The next part of it, you're going to say, you're going to go through the list one more time and say, How old was I the very first time I had this feeling, or, how old was I the first time I had that conversation with myself? Or how old was I the first time both of your answers? And you might not have an answer for every single one, but try to create some awareness. And it's not going to be a blanket answer. Like you're going to go, Oh, I was six on the whole list. You might be like, Wow, oh shit, I was three on this one. And then you're like, oh my god, I think this one's connected to middle school and then this one, and just give yourself some time to play with the list. There's no right or wrong answer. The goal here is to create awareness and so understand at that last step, what you're going to do is is really just try and understand how old you were the very first time that response surfaced, the way that it does now, or in the pattern that it does now make sense good stuff. Either pause me while you finish it all, or still go back. But we're going to jump into list B. Okay, so here's list B. List B says, How do I know when I am being supported, right? And so like, what's happening for me when I am being supported? So now that we got all of the the I want to say the feelings out that sometimes don't make us feel great, I want to shift you guys into the opposite of that, right? Think of 180 degrees apart. We're going to go through kind of some of the same, the same questions, but I want you to ask yourself, let's start off with this one that says, What feelings surface for me when I know that I'm being supported? Like, what does it feel like for me inside this world of Jody internally? What does it feel like when I know that I'm being supported. What? Sorry, before I jump. And where do I feel that in my physiology? Right?

Super important to understand where you're like, Oh my God, I feel it in my chest, or I feel it in somebody asked me yesterday kind of a similar question, and I was like, it's all around me, like, I know I have big energy and so. Right? It's about recognizing, how do I feel when I'm being supported? The next one is, what does it sound like when I'm being supported? And I know you guys might think these are all the same questions. They're not, because the feeling is something that we feel, a sound is something that we hear, or it's a conversation that we play in our head, and then I was using look too, right? So look is the visual component. Think about when people say, are you an auditory learner or a visual learner? I hate that question, because I think that we're all all things. It's just that one of them holds dominance in different spaces. So there's nobody that's a visual learner. Across the board, it's not a thing you need all of your senses in order to weave or in order to intake information and build masterful pictures. I digress. Hold that's a whole topic on itself. Different episode. Let me circle back. So what does it look like when I'm being supported, right? So what does it look like in my head? Am I making pictures, or is it I'm visually seeing something? What does it look like for me when I know that I'm being supported, and then I'm going to shift into the environment questions, right? So what happens in my environment when I know that I'm being supported? And so is there a storyline that I shift into? Do I get really generous when I'm being supported, or do I get really generous when I'm not being supported? I just thought about that, like back in the day, when people be like, Oh, buy a round, right? When people buy that because they were feeling great, or were they doing that because they felt left out, just a side note, right?

But understand, what do you do in your environment when you're feeling supported? Is there a coping mechanism that you shift into that you're not aware of, right? Do you high five your teammate? What? What does it look like for you? For anybody that knows me? Maybe this isn't a coping mechanism, but I always say, Hi friend, hi friend. I feel like I do that. Either way, I do that to break the ice and to to lead the energy. I think it's a lot easier to lead positive energy than it is to try and pick up on somebody else's and let them lead. So anyway, so let's go back into is, is there a person that I call do I post on social media? Hey, I just had this great thing. Do I send out a text message to my my group of peers? Right? What happens for you? Do you celebrate? Is it a vice? Do you buy? Buy a drink? Do you enjoy a drink? Do you grab a coffee? Right? What happens with your emotions? What happens when you're feeling supported and feeling validated? And then I'm going to take it back into those four spaces of what happens for you emotionally, what happens for you physically, what happens for you mentally? And then the last one was the like, spiritually slash soulful, right? So do you again, start praying to the higher power. Like, thank you so much. This was amazing, right? Do you let your light get a little bit bigger? Do you let your energy soar a little bit more also, for anybody that knows me, I'm pretty I don't want to say guarded with my energy, but I definitely know there's people in my environment sometimes that try to hijack my energy, and so I feel like when I'm feeling supported, I'm a lot more generous with my energy and with my light and with sharing than when I'm not feeling supported.

Just to share with you a little bit of what happens for me. And so when you're when you feel seen and you feel heard, how does that land for you? Right? Write it all down front. I promise you, we're not quite done yet, but we're close. Write it all down. So once you finish that list, you're going to circle back through again, and I want to kind of ask the same questions as last time. They're tiny bit different. I want you to go back through and say, Who are the people that are usually around me when I feel supported and or, I think it's a little it's not cliche, like it's a bad thing, but sometimes people are not using the term, like, who celebrates me, right? Where can I go that I feel celebrated if I have a really cool moment in my life, who's the first person I tell? And then who are the people that I don't tell because I feel like they probably won't celebrate me. Maybe that's for the other side of the list, right? But on this side of the list, I want you guys to write out who like, who is part of my circle, or who do I jam with that really sees me or understands me or allows me to feel seen and validated and remember, this is a really important step. I know you're going to go, I don't want to do this one. Do it, friend, I promise you, when you can look back at this in a minute and go, Oh my gosh, holy shit, it creates a level of awareness you're going to want. And then lastly, and this one might take some time, which is totally okay. I want you to go back through here. Maybe. With a different color pen. That's what I would do. I would grab a different color pen, and I would go back through the list and say, either you put dates or whatever this looks like, but like, how often am I allowing myself to hang out with people that celebrate me?

Or how often am I allowing myself to be around or be in situations or be in conversations where I'm seen, where I'm heard, and where I'm validated? And really take some really cool notes. I feel like I always annotate everything I write in books that, like, if anybody's ever borrowed a book for me, you already know it's annotated. Like, I annotate everything in different color pens too, right? Just because whatever's handy. But I like ones. I think black ink just fades in the background. I want one that's going to stand out. And so I feel like, if I had this list and picturing the list in front of me, I would either use, like, a pink pen or a red marker, or a green pen or something like that, just so that it really created some contrast, because I would want to know how often, or even if you're like, when was the last time, when's the last time you were somewhere and you really felt seen and validated and heard, right? And then the next step of that is like, how often am I allowing myself to hang out in environments like this, where I'm celebrated. I know that was a ton of content. I know it was a lot, and so I'm going to recap on a couple things from this list, and then we're almost done, but I just want to say this list is really a way to start evoking some awareness around the patterns, the beliefs, the old stories, the old values, and the origin of all of those things, so that you can start to create awareness around what's running interference. Because the more we understand about where the pattern started, the more access we have to the seed or the root system moving forward, right? And we all know that by pulling a weed by its roots has dramatically different results than if I keep trimming the weed, right?

So if I have a weed that comes in the front of my house and I just keep snipping it, I'm going to be out there every other week trimming it off, versus if I just get a little tool and I take some time and I dig out the weed, sorry, and I yank it by the root. If I pull out the root system, I never have to trim the weed again. And so recognizing where the root is and what it's connected to is so much more effective than and for anybody that's ever had a a weed or a wild vine, sometimes you're like, oh my gosh, it popped up four feet over here. Oh my gosh, it's all the way over here, right? Like, we have no idea where some of these seated events, how they attach themselves and weave them into other parts of our lives. It's wild, but you can do this, okay? And then the last part is, I'm pretty sure there's probably a bunch of ahas that are surfacing for you, and I just want you to give yourself some grace and space in those pockets. That's kind of what this exercise is built around. And so if it's pinging for you, like it always comes up for me around, like, Who do I become when this scenario happens, right? Like, who do I become when I feel like my back is against the wall, versus who do I become when I feel really validated and seen? And so whether in this scenario, you're gathering these resources for yourself or you're gathering them for the students and the players and the the clients and the people that you lead, either one of them is powerful. But one of the questions that you could use in this space is, who do I become when x happens right? And it's deeply connected to the way it's anchored on someone's math. And so using this as a tool to unpack that space gives it a whole nother level of awareness. The next one is sometimes people say to me, Jody, how does a memory, an unconscious memory from decades ago, play so much of a role or take up so much energy and space in my world today that I'm not even aware of?

And this goes back to kind of what I was just explaining about. There might be a route that's running wild and it's running interference, and it's hitting three four different parts of your life, yet all of it comes back to the same limiting belief, and that limiting belief could be from when you were two or three years old. And I share that saying I'm always someone that's also always doing my own work. I was working with one of my friends the other day, one of my cohorts, and she found one of my like, I would call it a very deeply seated, what do you call it? Limiting belief, whatever it was for me, but it was from when I was pre verbal, and so it was really hard for me to contextualize. She was asking me all these questions, and I was like, I don't even have words for this. Well, it makes total sense. I didn't have words for it. This is. That happened before I could speak, right? So something happens to you around 18 months old, two years old, and you can't you don't know what it was, right? It's still alive. It's still on your map. And I'll share that story with something light and funny. You guys know, I have two older siblings. It was a funny thing, but the way that it was pinging for me and the way it was lighting my map up like was running interference for me. Okay? And then the third thing on this is, how do I break free from these responses, and how do I start to build new patterns? And so I'm just going to close out that whole practice and say, we answer all those questions through awareness, and I know I keep hammering it down and at risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm going to say it one more time. We can only change the things we're aware of, and so awareness creates access.

So if we're looking to shift into a different space, and you're looking to make a change, the first thing that you have to allow yourself to do is create and develop some awareness around the belief, the pattern, the story, the value, the people, the the responses, the all the things that are now all over your piece of paper. The more awareness we have around those we can then start to shift and make conscious, intentional choices about and I don't want to say about who we want to hang out with, because some people on the list might be your kids, they might be your spouses or your families, but it's about understanding. The more awareness I have around how they show up in my world, the more I can then start to become aware of the old pattern I'm running versus what I want to say here or how I want to feel in this moment make sense. Let me just pause and say, if you want to clean up your notes, or you want to rewrite this, or you want to do this exercise again, I'm going to make this a downloadable PDF that will be available on the website. And the website is called www dot why we feel.com Perfect. Thank you. Friend.