In our latest podcast episode, we embark on an intimate exploration of emotional invalidation, its origins in childhood trauma, and the pathway to resilience. We delve into the intricacies of emotional suppression, its long-lasting effects, and the means to foster a nurturing environment for our emotional well-being. This is a narrative that speaks to the heart of many, as it reflects on the complex relationship between the experiences of our formative years and the patterns we carry into adulthood.
Our discussion begins by unraveling the concept of emotional invalidation, a common but often unrecognized force that shapes our responses to our feelings. Many of us have experienced moments where our emotions were disregarded or dismissed, leading us to internalize a sense of insignificance regarding our feelings. We dissect why we habitually respond with “I’m fine,” despite the turmoil that may lie beneath the surface, and how this tendency stems from childhood interactions where emotions were not properly acknowledged.
The role of parents in this dynamic is a focal point. We consider how their reactions to our distress can imprint a pattern of emotional suppression. It’s crucial to understand that owning and recognizing our emotions is the first step toward healing from the effects of emotional invalidation. This recognition enables us to move away from the dissociation that often accompanies a history of emotional dismissal.
The conversation transitions to the concept of the ‘wise mind’ from Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a tool that aids in navigating our emotions without being overwhelmed by them. We highlight the difference between acknowledging emotions and being defined by them. The episode also dispels the misconception that understanding our feelings means agreeing with them, emphasizing the profound impact of validation in building emotional resilience.
A significant portion of our dialogue is dedicated to the postpartum period, where we examine the hormonal upheavals and the resultant mental health challenges. We underscore the importance of maternal wellness, not just for the mother but for the baby’s development and the parent-child connection. Acknowledging and accepting the complex emotions that new mothers face is crucial in breaking the generational cycle of untreated mood disorders.
As we move forward, we share personal stories and the critical need to challenge stigmatized narratives surrounding mental health. The recognition of our internal struggles is a pivotal step toward well-being. We explore how grounding techniques can offer immediate relief and foster profound personal growth, which, in turn, nurtures the parent-child relationship.
To close, we reflect on the importance of emotional development in childhood and how it informs our adult lives. We introduce our free course on grounding skills and emotional regulation, designed to support personal growth like meditation or mindfulness practices.
This episode is not just a conversation; it’s a journey of understanding and compassion. It’s a guide for those looking to understand the ‘why’ behind their emotions and behaviors. For anyone who’s ever felt the sting of emotional invalidation, this episode is an invitation to begin the healing process and build a future where emotions are recognized, validated, and embraced.
Join us on ‘Why Am I Like This?’ as we navigate the intricate pathways of emotional well-being and resilience. Remember, fostering awareness today is the cornerstone for a healthier, more connected tomorrow.
Read the full transcript
Laura: 0:00
Hello and welcome to. Why Am I Like this, the podcast? For those who didn’t get enough hugs as a child, I’m Laura Wood and I’m a trauma therapist.
Michaela: 0:10
And I’m Michaela Beaver. I’m a psychiatric nurse practitioner
Michaela: 0:17
I’m so glad you asked. We want to help you understand yourself a bit better how the things you learned about yourself and the world in childhood are still affecting you today. We want to figure out why are we like this those random things about ourselves that we wonder about like am I so jumpy? Why am I so anxious? Why do I take everything personally? Why are my thoughts so negative? Why do I feel like I have to fix everything all the time?
Laura: 0:46
So we are thinking about why we invalidate our emotions today. So why do we always just say I’m fine when we’re clearly not fine? We’re going to try to answer the following question what does emotional invalidation even mean? How does emotional invalidation affect us and our children? Or how did emotional invalidation affect us as children, and how do we recognize when we’re doing it and what do we do instead?
Michaela: 1:37
So let’s start. What is emotional invalidation? Own thoughts, feelings or behaviors? It’s that I’m fine, or someone saying your feelings really don’t matter, or your feelings are wrong.
Laura: 1:51
Yeah, so not only I’m fine, but you’re fine, right? Exactly how often is that helpful? Oh, you’re fine.
Michaela: 2:00
Never, Never helpful. Really not that helpful at all. Yeah for sure.
Laura: 2:04
No. So why do we do that? So, emotional invalidation we basically are saying I’m not, I’m not experiencing any emotions, like I’m not a real human, I don’t exist, I don’t have the right to exist. Um, when we are going through something, but we’re minimizing it inside, we’re minimizing our own emotional experience thing, but we’re minimizing it inside, we’re minimizing our own emotional experience. One of the reasons why we do this is because we don’t know how to tolerate our emotions, so we don’t know what to do. If we’re not fine, I supposed to do. I have to keep going, I have to get on with my day, I have to raise these kids, I have to go to work, right? So if I’m not fine, well then, what? Right? I can’t do all of those things. And so it’s sort of this disconnect between knowing that your emotions are allowed to exist without you having to be sort of run down by them and without you having to sort of express down by them and without you having to sort of express all of them.
Michaela: 3:27
You know you can experience emotions without them taking over, and I don’t know that everybody knows that I don’t think that everybody knows that and I think, like what I was thinking when you were describing that it’s like this an emotional disconnect, right it’s. Dissociation, right it’s. We cannot be connected to our emotions because if we are, then we won’t be able to keep pushing through, keep, keep going, keep going, keep going, or at least that’s what we believe, and I really that goes back to probably childhood, and it’s a combination of probably we weren’t allowed to have emotions, our emotions weren’t accepted well as a child. Therefore, I can’t, I shouldn’t, express them.
Laura: 4:16
Yeah, that’s a really good point. So if our parents didn’t know what to do when we were not fine, that sends signals of fear, right. So we’re in, we’re phobic of our emotions, so that’s a whole. That’s a whole nother level. So not only do we not know what to do with them, but they seem scary and bad.
Laura: 4:36
And so with a child and I can understand this as a parent your kid’s in distress and you’re like crap, I don’t know what to do. How am I going to help this kid? Why are they so upset? Like I have to, you know, get to work. But this kid’s having a meltdown and won’t put his shoes on, like. So now I’m getting all worked up and I’m telling the kid you’re fine, you’re fine, just put your shoes on, we have to go. We have to go. And I’m completely ignoring the fact that they’re having some kind of emotional experience, because I can’t tolerate that right now.
Laura: 5:11
And so when your parent can’t tolerate your emotions, you basically learn that you can’t tolerate them either, and that they’re scary and bad and that they shouldn’t be happening, and that if you’re having an emotional experience, there’s something wrong with you, because everything’s fine around you, right? How many of us have heard from our parents you have nothing to be upset about. You have a great life. Like other people have a much worse life than you. You should be happy, you should be grateful. A much worse life than you. You should be happy, you should be grateful, you should be doing like living your best life and knowing how good you have it because I do all these things for you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Laura: 5:56
And then the kid is just like but I’m not feeling that way right now, and so what’s? There’s something wrong with me. I’m broken, I’m damaged. I can’t deal with this. I might as well just disconnect from my emotions. And that is where the dissociative process really starts from disconnecting from our emotions and saying these aren’t mine, these aren’t mine, they must not be mine, because I don’t deserve to have them, because there’s nothing bad about my life, and so these emotions are faulty.
Michaela: 6:29
I hear a lot of parents coming in too and they’re like their response or why they’re there with their kid is because I just need my kid to be okay, I just need them to be like, I need them fixed right, like there’s something wrong with them, that they have these feelings and they have these emotions and it’s not okay and I don’t know what to do with it. And they and so then they try to. They’re trying to fix the emotions or they focus so heavily on the behavior and the behavior is the problem and fix this behavior. But what they really need to understand is why the behavior is happening. What is the feeling, what is the thing that’s causing the behavior? But so often we focus on the wrong thing. What’s the problem, what’s the real problem? But we don’t actually focus in on what the real problem is. So we spend all this time and all this energy trying to fix these big emotional feelings and trying to fix them and make them be quote fine and that’s not the problem.
Laura: 7:36
No, it’s not the problem. You know what we’re saying when you were saying that is, why isn’t my kid better at stuffing their emotions down like I am, and why can’t they just pretend like everything’s fine so that they don’t bother anybody, which is what I have to do all the time? Why aren’t they better at this? Why aren’t they better at this dissociative process that is completely unhealthy and that is breaking my own self-esteem and my own body and my own happiness level. It’s breaking my stuff down, but I need them to do it because that’s what I have to do and basically, they’re inconveniencing me with their emotions. And so, as adults listening today, I want to encourage everyone to really reflect. Like are those messages what you got from your parent? Did you get that message? Like, why aren’t you better at stuffing your emotions down to make everybody else happy?
Michaela: 8:35
Yes, I think we all got those messages, because I think that that’s just what we keep replaying, and we keep replaying over and over again, you know, cycle after cycle, generation after generation, and I think that on some level, it is not intentional. We’re not trying to hurt people, no, we want them to be okay.
Laura: 8:57
right, that’s a noble cause, but I don’t think we know what we’re really saying. I think, like you said, what problem are we really solving here? What does them being okay really mean? Does that mean that that means I can be okay and I can feel like I’m an accomplished and good parent and I’ve done the things that I’m supposed to do and that I’m doing a good enough job? Is that what me wanting my kid to be okay really means?
Michaela: 9:23
How many times have you been in public and your kid acted a fool and you’re like I’m the worst parent in the world. Everybody’s judging me. I can’t. I need to get out of here. This is uncomfortable and, like you know, we have to learn to be able to be okay and know that our kids’ actions don’t mean that we’re bad parents. Learn to be able to be okay and know that our kids’ actions don’t mean that we’re bad parents.
Michaela: 9:51
I don’t know if I’ve told you this story, but we Grayson was doing, my oldest was doing flag football and we were at the park and Beckett was there, our youngest, he’s three and he went and he ran to the sprinklers and, in front of all these parents sitting there at this flag football, he runs into the sprinklers and he turns the sprinklers, he shoots me with the sprinkler. I’m soaking wet, it’s cold and he’s still running around. I can’t get him and I’m like you know what? This is a kid. He’s in the midst of being three. He’s trying to figure out the world and it doesn’t mean anything bad about me that he’s not listening. No, it doesn’t. I really don’t want to be soaking wet right now. So I take a step back. I let him do his thing and I’m like, all right now you’re wet and you’re cold, and now we have to go to the car and I’m like I just shake my head and I’m like this is my child.
Laura: 10:49
That shrug face emoji, right, like I think that’s such a perfect example, right, because kids are so embarrassing and they really, if we are feeling insecure already going to a place where lots of other parents are going to be with their kids and you know, if you don’t have kids, I wonder if you can relate to this as a child of a parent at some point maybe, who was like, like you have to look presentable, like how are we showing up? What’s our family brand right Of, like how we sort of seem to the public and the drive to be seen, well, I think gets in our way of being honest with ourselves and being honest about, like, what you just described as a kid doing kid shit. That is exactly what that is. And you know, I think culturally we really don’t have a lot of tolerance for emotion, right, I think we don’t think emotions are very good. We downplay them constantly In our culture. We tend to focus on what logic and cognitive ability and intelligence and facts and data and achievement, all of these outcome-based experiences that are like showy, right they’re like I can demonstrate that I did something. Those are the things that we really prioritize and we not neglect but like actively reject the idea that emotions are part of the human experience and that they’re a good thing and that they are not something to be afraid of.
Laura: 12:39
Right, and I always say that feelings are not problems to solve. I love that. Feelings are not problems to solve and feelings are not facts. I don’t have to take this feeling as a fact, this feeling that I can’t do it, this feeling that I am being judged, this feeling that I am not good enough. I don’t have to take that as a fact. I can recognize that I’m having this feeling and I can say, oh, hey, feeling, yep, that’s coming up for me right now. And I can then say and I’m going to continue to go on and do this anyway, and I’m going to use my wise mind, a DBT skill, which is to take that feeling, assign it a place and allow it to exist. And then also I’m going to say, like, what are some of the facts, what are some of the evidence that shows that maybe that’s not true or not necessarily relevant in this moment?
Laura: 13:30
Right, like, sure, Maybe all those parents were judging you, yeah, but that’s not a problem you can solve either. Yeah, you can’t control other people, no, and if they’re judging you, it’s because they’re mortified that their kid would do the same thing and that they would look foolish, right. And so what we want to be able to do is hold both at the same time, like, hold this emotion of like this is kind of a nightmare and that’s okay. Yeah, it doesn’t mean anything bad about me. Doesn’t mean anything bad about me. Yes, that’s everything. And so one of the things that I think about with emotional invalidation is that we’re afraid to validate emotions, because maybe that means we agree with them. Tell me more about that.
Laura: 14:18
Okay, my kid’s having a meltdown and doesn’t want to get his shoes on and I’m late and it’s a whole problem, right? What if I stop and I bend down and I say, hey, I can see you’re really frustrated right now. Am I rewarding bad behavior, michelle? Am I saying, hey, it’s okay that you’re having this meltdown right now, by validating that they are, by acknowledging the fact of the matter, which is that they actually are having a meltdown? No, I’m acknowledging present reality, I’m just stating facts.
Laura: 14:52
I see that this is difficult for you, right? I’m not saying, yes, it should be difficult. You should be having a hard time. This is very difficult. I’m saying I see that this is difficult for you. So I’m I’m just simply allowing the present reality to exist as it does, and then I’m going to say and we’re going to be able to get through this together. So we’re going to get our shoes on even though we’re upset. We can have both, we can do the thing while we’re having a hard time, and that’s going to let us move forward. I wonder if people who are dealing with adults or themselves are feeling the same way. Right, if I validate the fact that I’m feeling judged? The same way, right, if I validate the fact that I’m feeling judged, am I agreeing with it? Am I allowing it to take over? Am I accepting too much? Right, like I think we have this misunderstanding of what’s agreement and acceptance, what’s validation versus agreement, and that’s not necessarily the same thing.
Michaela: 15:53
No, it’s not the same thing and you can acknowledge that someone might be judging you and that you might be judging yourself, oof, and that you might have the thought I am the worst, I can’t get my life together, I can’t do this, and you can’t stop those thoughts from coming, but they, like you said, they don’t have to be real, they don’t have to be true. We can choose to tell ourselves a different story. We don’t have to go with that. We don’t have to stick with that. We can say, hey, yeah, I am struggling right now, but I’ve done a lot of really good things, I’ve done a lot of really hard things in the past and I’ve been able to overcome that and I can do that again. Yeah, I love that.
Laura: 16:51
You don’t have to go with that. You can say like, yeah, somebody’s probably judging me, somebody’s probably judging me right now. Right, okay, that’s probably true, but I don’t have to let that be the primary sort of backdrop of my experience right now or of my choices moving forward. Right, that’s not the problem that I need to solve. I can continue to address whatever’s actually going on and I can continue to move forward in a way that is thoughtful and mindful and intentional.
Laura: 17:26
But I cannot be mindful if I’m not connected with what’s really going on, if I’m not acknowledging the present reality and just accepting that that is objectively what’s happening, which is that I’m freaking out right now or that I’m feeling totally out of control, or I’m feeling like I’m a mess, like if I don’t acknowledge that objectively, like that’s true, I am feeling that way, there’s no chance I can mindfully move myself out of it. What I will do instead is completely spiral and solve the wrong problem and dissociate and just power through and what I call bulldoze my way through my experience and completely ignore myself and my feelings and basically say like I’m fine, I’m fine, you should be fine. Why, why am I even upset about right Like now? I’m going to go on this rabbit hole of like self-deprecation and like self-hatred, of like that. I’m even upset in the first place, but it’s like that’s not helpful either. There’s really no room for shame and blame.
Michaela: 18:27
No, well, and I I love the phrase like, um, what we resist persists Right. And so we’re resisting this anxious feeling, this sad, depressed feeling. We’re like I, this isn’t me, I can’t have this, this means something bad about me, so I’m going to not be that, I can’t, I can’t do that. But you’re constantly engaging it and therefore you just keep perpetuating it. And then, essentially, this emotional invalidation, it, and then essentially, this emotional invalidation I’m fine worsens our symptom of anxiety, our symptoms of depression. In the end, it just continues to perpetuate it until it becomes. If it wasn’t a full-blown disorder, it can become that.
Laura: 19:11
You know what I’m thinking as we kind of talk about what we resist persists the postpartum period. So this is a time where I know we have a lot of intrusive thoughts. This is a time where we have a lot of shame feelings coming up. This is a time where we have a lot of insecurity coming up and this is also a time where a lot of people around us are telling us how great everything is and how wonderful we should feel and how happy we must be and how right, like there’s a lot of people on the outside who are well-meaning people but they’re sending us messages that if we are feeling not okay on the inside, that something’s wrong with that and we need to hide it.
Michaela: 19:56
Sure, yeah, this is a huge time where I think that we invalidate ourselves and I think that we want to hide because we are shameful or we believe that people think we should be okay and we may not be okay. And our bodies are doing things. Our bodies are going through things like pregnancy changes our hormones and in pregnancy there’s a hormone called progesterone, and progesterone is kind of considered an anxiolytic. It helps protect against depression, it’s kind of like a natural valium, if you will, and so it does a lot of really good things for us, but it’s it’s really known as the pregnancy hormone. And so what happens is, you know, when we get pregnant, we have this dramatic increase in this progesterone which can lead to us feeling nauseous and that’s why we don’t feel very good. And so this dramatic increase in this progesterone and it helps stabilize and keep us pregnant right. But then what happens is in that postpartum period, our progesterone the thing that’s making us feel really happy, that’s giving us that pregnancy glow it dramatically decreases, and that dramatic decrease of progesterone can be one of the contributing factors. We don’t know this, like all the things, but it can be one of the contributing factors. We don’t know this, like all the things, but it can be one of the dramatic factors that contributes to postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety.
Michaela: 21:26
And that connection and that maternal wellness, or the primary caregiver’s wellness, is a very important thing to their connection and their development and their brain development. And so it’s really important that we have wellness in that postpartum period because our babies need us to be there for them and it’s not. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad parent, it’s not your fault that you’re having these feelings. I remember when I, after I had Grayson, I was so anxious that I would just his cry would make me jump up out of bed, you know, and it would scare me, would startle me so badly, and that that’s not my normal state, right. But that was just such a it’s such a change, it’s such a dramatic change in your life and you have this infant that needs you to take care of them and your wellness matters, right.
Michaela: 22:20
And so that connection is important and if you downplay what you’re going through in that period of time, you’re not giving yourself what you need, You’re not giving yourself grace that this is hard and you’re not giving your baby what they need, you’re not as able to stay connected to them, that eye contact right. You’re going to be more distracted, You’re going to be feeling anxious, it’s going to be harder to connect with them in that period, and so it is important you know us as providers. We need to be screening for these things, right, but we can only know what we know. We only know what you tell us, and so we can ask. It’s what we know. We only know what you tell us, and so we can ask. It’s our job to ask and to recognize nonverbal and verbal cues of it. Right, that’s what we’re here for. But also, like, if we’re downplaying it, if we’re saying I’m fine, I’m good, I’m great, this is what I should be telling you, then you’re not going to get what you need.
Laura: 23:13
That’s very, very interesting and it has me thinking about. I wonder how many of us as adults know whether or not our mothers had postpartum depression or anxiety. I wonder how many of us really know that and if that understanding could help us recognize why we have some of these thoughts about ourselves, like you know, as a child of a mother with postpartum depression or anxiety. Does that mean we are more likely to dissociate our feelings, disconnect from our needs? Because we had to, because our mom was struggling so much and not getting the support that she needed to support us? Maybe as babies we had to quiet our own sense of ourself and we had to sort of push ourselves aside. And this is not abuse, this is not neglect, this is pain, right and this is true suffering. And this is what we need to acknowledge in order to help heal and in order to repair those relationships and in order to repair our relationship with ourselves.
Laura: 24:20
Because, as a mom, if you’re feeling that you are doing a bad job, what you’re really doing is you’re getting in the way of your ability to connect with your child.
Laura: 24:33
And if you’re hiding that, if you’re pretending it’s not true, then that becomes the hub of the wheel.
Laura: 24:41
So every single interaction that you’re having with every single person, including yourself, is about I’m not doing a good enough job, right.
Laura: 24:48
And that’s the thing that’s the center of your universe and that transfers to the people around you through subtle cues, through your language, through your behaviors, and so, acknowledging I don’t feel good, I need help and support.
Laura: 25:05
Getting that support and help that you need from the people who love you is incredibly restorative and reparative, and we need that repair in order to say I do feel this way and it’s not true. And I know that it’s not true because I have all these people around me who love me and support me and who are sharing this burden with me and who still accept me anyway because I am acceptable and lovable and good enough, even though I don’t feel that I am right now, and good enough even though I don’t feel that I am right now. And so basically, what I’m doing by accepting that I don’t feel that well, is I’m allowing my community to feel better for me and transfer that to me right. So the same way that I can transfer my negative feelings about myself towards my relationships with others, others can show me that support and transfer that goodness to me and say I know that you don’t believe this about yourself right now, but I believe it enough for us.
Michaela: 26:05
I love that. I think too. I see that you know, we were talking about that dissociative state, right, and that disconnect, and when we’re in a stressful time, we may not even know that we’re not coping well, right? I’ve been in stressful times where I thought I was doing it, I thought I was going, I thought I was handling life, and then my husband was like, hey, you’re a little on edge, and I was like, oh, I am, I’m really sorry, I didn’t know, I didn’t realize.
Michaela: 26:38
I thought I was doing it, I thought I was handling and I know I’m under a lot of stress right now and accepting others’ view of the situation and trying to be introspective of that and being like, wait, is there something going on for me? Am I just checking out? Am I handling it? Well? What can I do to actually spend some time and connect with myself, be mindful, grounding ourselves back into the presence, so that we can connect back with those emotions and know that we can handle it? Because I think that that’s a lot of what anxiety is. It’s a lot of what stress is. It’s us saying I have all these things and I’m making it a big deal, I’m worried about the worst case scenario and I’m downplaying my own personal ability to cope with it. I can’t handle it. It’s too much.
Laura: 27:28
It’s too much. Yeah, that’s absolutely right, and I think you know, as you’re talking, I’m remembering. So I’m writing a workbook with my coach, allison, and one of the pages of my workbook is how do I even know if I need to take a break, how do I even know if I’m in distress? And I went over these pages with my clients and you know I’ve been using this language for a long time, and so I’m finally sort of like putting it on paper. And essentially, the most recent time I went over this with a client I can just kind of share as she’s reading it, she’s like oh, I think I’m doing this stuff a lot more often than I noticed, and so it turns out that I’m dysregulated, like 80% of the time, and I should probably, you know, address that. But what I’m doing, instead of recognizing my dysregulation or my distress, is I’m pushing it away. I’m saying, oh, no, no, no, no, I’m fine, I’m fine, this is fine, but the reality is it’s not normal to feel like you are underwater, like you are underwater.
Laura: 28:46
I’ll share a personal story. I know, michelle, you and I have talked about this before, but I’ve struggled with depression my whole life. I recently was able to change a medication for my depression. I’ve always taken an antidepressant. I’m a therapist, I’m not a prescriber, but I’m a big advocate for using all the resources and all the tools at your disposal, and so I always still had this underlying hatred of the morning. Yeah, and so every morning I would wake up, my alarm would go off and I would just be so like, oh, I would just have this sense of dread in the morning and I always just thought I’m just not a morning person and that’s normal, and people feel that way. And so I lived like that for for decades. That’s my story. I’m just, that’s who I am. And then so I was able to start taking a different medication. And now, when I wake up, I’m not like singing with the birds or anything, but I’m. I’m awake and I’m not mad about it.
Michaela: 29:46
I love that for you.
Laura: 29:47
And I don’t know how better to describe it, but like I’m just awake and it’s like like I’m like, oh, I guess it’s time to get up and I’ll just like, live my day, whereas in the past I just was like I don’t want to have to wake up right now, and I didn’t know that that wasn’t normal. I didn’t know it wasn’t normal to just not want to have to wake up. I thought that that was just some people, not morning people, and I do this for a living. I do this all the time, and I might even have probably pointed that out to a client, that that wasn’t normal and that they don’t have to feel that way and that they can feel better. But somehow for me I didn’t make that same connection for myself, and so I think that’s such an interesting point is that we don’t even recognize half the time that when we’re not fine, we really need to start to understand ourselves better and start to really like, dig in, like why am I like this?
Laura: 30:46
What is happening for me, and is this something that is not? Do I have to live like this? And the answer is almost always no, you don’t. You don’t have to feel that way. There are solutions. You know, there is therapy, there are medicines, there are supplements, there is exercise, there’s all these things that go towards our wellness that we want to embrace the whole toolbox and not not sort of say, oh well, okay, everything but this, because of some story that I’m telling myself about, how, like this is probably fine.
Michaela: 31:23
Right, or that’s just not for me.
Laura: 31:27
Right, that’s not for me, that’s for everyone else, and I think we do that so much. I think that’s such an invalidating thing that we do is we invalidate our deservedness, our worthiness to become okay, truly okay, and we still have distress. I still have distress. Life is distressing, like, let’s be honest, the world is a distressing place. It’s never that we can’t have emotional distress. It’s only that we can acknowledge that it’s there. We can recognize that we can move through it. We can recognize that it’s okay and that it’s not going to break us and that we can keep going and that we can seek support and that we deserve to have a full, dynamic experience. And that does include emotional distress.
Michaela: 32:15
Right, even though that’s not the story we heard as children, right, like as a child we heard get over it, suck it up Like you’re going to be okay, right, even though that’s not the story we heard as children, right, like as a child, right, or get over it, suck it up Like you’re going to be okay, right. So maybe, if you’re trying to support someone and you’re thinking I want to be helpful for them, but I don’t know the right words, right, and I know I’ve, I know I catch myself doing these things all the time. They’re ingrained on us. We know we hear it all the time. Right, it’s not that bad. It could be worse. Right, you’re overreacting. How about we say things like? That sounds frustrating. I can see you’re upset right now. What can I do to help? I really care about you. How can I be there for you? I’m so sorry that that happened.
Michaela: 33:01
You know, let’s, let’s come up with different language, let’s practice different language. And if we start catching ourselves saying the thing that we don’t really mean, right, I’ve gotten down on the kids level and said, hey, it’s going to be okay, you’re okay. And then I’m like wait, I’m telling them they’re okay, but I’m like, then I’m them, they’re okay, but I’m like, then I’m like okay, but, and then I, I say the wrong thing, right, but then I follow it with like, because I got you, because I’m here and we’re going to get through this together, right, so we can. We just have to start recognizing that that language is part of the problem and that we can make a mistake and say it, but we can also say, say something different. We can choose to say, and that we can make a mistake and say it, but we can also say something different. We can choose to say something different. We can fix that language and try to work on what would be more helpful for this person.
Laura: 33:52
As you’re using these words. I’m looking at my handy dandy co-regulation and attunement language cheat sheet that I give to parents and it’s all of those words that you’re using is everything that I would say to say so like we need. We have a certain number of you know, really deep emotional needs and we have these deep emotional needs that we often, that often, go unmet, and so there’s emotional safety, encouragement, attachment, support, acknowledgement and acceptance, and really what that acceptance says is it’s okay that you feel this way. It’s I accept and love you even though you’re struggling. I accept and love you even though you’re upset. Being upset or angry doesn’t make you unlovable. I love that, and so we can say things like it’s okay and understandable to feel how you feel. I get that.
Michaela: 34:53
And.
Laura: 34:53
I felt that way too, and we’re going to get through it together. And this is not just for children, no, for adults too. How many times do I say to you guys and my team and everybody at work, like, hey, I’ve got you, like I see you, it’s okay. Like what you’re feeling is totally normal. It doesn’t make you a bad therapist to have fears and negative feelings and distress that you feel like you can’t handle. Like, as a therapist, I can relate to. Like well, what would you tell a client or how would you?
Laura: 35:27
You know, people say things like well, you’re a therapist, like you know what to do, you know, and I’m like what, I’m not my therapist what are you talking about? Like, that’s not helpful for me right now. What that really does is that sends this message of shame like well, you shouldn’t be fine, right, because you know how to help other people. Be fine, and you understand this on a different level. So like somehow you’re like supposed to be immune from all distress. That’s not okay. And so we want to kind of allow people to understand that like, hey, what you’re going through is a hard thing, it’s a hard thing, but it’s not too hard because you’re not alone and we’re going to get through this together.
Michaela: 36:07
On your side, Right, yeah, and when you were talking, a couple of things came up for me, like one of the things that I so appreciate about you is that, like you can always catch, you’re so attuned to people’s shifts in in their facial expressions and you’re always like what, what just happened for you, right, like you know, acknowledging that there was a thing that happened, and no, and being, and that, like just that shift and just that comment helps people to um know that it’s okay to feel what they’re feeling and open up about it.
Laura: 36:46
Yeah, you’re a dynamic person with dynamic experiences and so you know, when we’re talking and this isn’t just about me, but, like everybody can kind of notice, everybody notices like subtle shifts in people as they are experiencing each other, right.
Laura: 37:03
So when you’re talking to someone and you see them sort of have a thought, right, maybe their eyes change or they’re, they make a face or something, something changes in their facial expression or whatever, or their body language, I always just say what’s just what just happened for you right now, what did you just notice, or what just came up for you? And what that does is it invites that experience into the conversation and it allows it to be acceptable in the room, right, and so, whatever that was, sometimes it’s if you’re having a difficult conversation with a loved one or you’re having a conflict, right, it could be maybe that response, if someone’s open and you have a very trusting relationship and can say, like I just felt myself get really defensive, right, oh, okay, what, what was that for you, right, what did you feel like you were defending against? Like can we know more about that? And that’s like we’re just allowing the experience to be true. We’re just allowing what’s real to be real instead of hidden and pretend and we’re being authentic.
Michaela: 38:10
Well, and then I can see how, like, if that, like that dysregulation is allowed to fester and they’re like I am mad. And then that kind of grows and grows and they think about it and they perseverate on it. If you talk about it in the here and now, you can repair in real time, and then there’s no disconnect that ever actually gets to happen, right, if we’re just really aware of the people that we’re talking to.
Laura: 38:38
That’s such a good point, and I think we can do that with ourselves too, right? So let’s say, I am, you know, working and I get an email and it bothers me, you know like from my boss or from a coworker that I have a hard time getting along with, or whatever. Right, yeah, and I noticed myself getting anxious. I can do the same thing that I did for the other. If I’m really connected with myself. I can say, you know, oh, I just noticed myself get really mad about that email that my boss just sent me. I just got really defensive. Okay, Right, like let’s just let that be true. And then, um, what we can do is we can say why did I get defensive? Like what was that for me? Or if it’s so distressing that I’m still in this spiral, then I need to use a grounding skill before I reflect on why that happened. Right, so, I can choose to reflect on it if I’m okay enough, but most of the time I want to use a grounding skill first. So I just noticed myself get really defensive and now I’m feeling anxiety. Okay, let me just take a second. I’m gonna look around the room. I’m gonna find three triangles. Okay, I just found these three triangles in the room and I just noticed myself. I’m calm now, right, I’ve calmed myself down because those grounding skills and you can find these on our website these grounding skills are really easy to utilize in the moment because they have nothing to do with what caused the distress.
Laura: 40:14
It’s not about figuring out what caused the distress during the distress. We figure out what caused the distress after the distress is over. Yes, and that’s how we become honest and validate our emotions, instead of pushing them away and trying to fix them and trying to solve them. Because when we go into, when we get distressed and we say like I’m fine, I shouldn’t even be mad, and we start to like yell at ourselves about it on the inside, or we start to say like why did that even make me so upset? Like what’s wrong with me, right? Like when I’m doing that, in that analyzing, I’m escalating.
Laura: 40:52
And so, you know, a lot of times people talk about that analyzing your feelings, whatever. That’s a reflection exercise, that’s not a do it during the distress exercise, Because what we’re really doing in that moment is we’re trying to get rid of it, right, is we’re trying to analyze it so that it never happens again or so that it you know, so that we can feel better. But we don’t need to do that in order to feel better. We don’t need to address it. In order to feel better, we need to get centered and get present with ourselves and get present in the room in order to feel better. Then, once we feel better, we can decide what to do about it.
Michaela: 41:25
Well, and I have young kids, so I think that this is I don’t know. Maybe this is silly, but I always say, like our what’s happening is our spidey sense is going off. Right, like we start to get that like spidey sense tingles right, we’re like okay, something’s wrong.
Michaela: 41:42
I’m mad at that. Right, spider-man has it. We’re okay with him having it. It’s a good thing. It protects him. Yes, it’s helping us recognize that there’s something wrong. We can’t be mad at that. We’re like okay, thanks, body. Thanks for letting me know there’s something wrong. Let’s use our nervous system. For those of you that think it sounds silly to look at three triangles in the room or wiggle your toes or whatever it is, it’s not silly. It’s actually literally pulling your nervous system into rest and digest. You can’t be in rest and digest and fight or flight at the same time. You’re literally actively moving your nervous system away from that. You’re helping get rid of the chemicals that cause dysregulation, that cause fight or flight, so your brain can think straight again. It’s a physiological thing that you’re doing, even if it seems like it doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t sound like something that’s going to work. Try it.
Laura: 42:34
It will work if you let it, it will work if you let it. And PS, people tell me that these are stupid all the time. Right, and I’m like that’s okay, I can let them be stupid, but we’re going to do it anyway. And so people are like this is dumb. I’m like I know, just let it, just do it anyway. My kids tell me it’s dumb. My clients tell me it’s, it’s fine that it’s dumb, it just is that’s, it’s just a thing that we’re doing in order to, like, help ourselves feel well, it works.
Michaela: 43:11
And so but I think that’s also a defense against right. It’s right Seems silly, it seems like it shouldn’t work. Right, I get that, I’ll acknowledge that. Right, but you’re also trying to put a barrier between you and doing the things because it’s scary and it’s hard and you want to just keep doing it the way that you’ve always done it.
Laura: 43:37
I think, because if we try it and it doesn’t work, then what? Right? I think there’s fear there and I think there’s a fear of disappointment that it didn’t work. I think it’s a fear of that I won’t be good enough at it, right, like I’m doing it wrong. But the way that I talk about this kind of thing is let’s pretend that you had to write with your non-dominant hand every single time you went to write anything for the next month. You’re. Every single time you went to write anything for the next month, you’re not going to do it very well, yeah, you’re going to forget half the time and it’s going to take you a lot longer to be successful at it than it would to just write with your dominant hand, yeah, so validating your emotions after spending decades invalidating them is like writing with your non-dominant hand. Just let it be hard, let it be weird, let it be uncomfortable, let it be not that successful every single time.
Michaela: 44:34
That’s it. That is so good. I’m going to steal that from you.
Laura: 44:38
You can have it. You guys get this for free. Well, and I think you know one of the things that we were talking about with the grounding skills. On our website, we have a free course that it’s called neuroception and it’s about how we make sense of the world and it’s about how our emotional experience is really tied to all of our experiences. It’s a free course, it has these grounding skills, and so we’re going to link to it in our show notes and I really encourage everyone to go and download it or create a login so that you can take the course and then you can download the grounding skills.
Laura: 45:12
You can also download the grounding skills as audio, so if you don’t hate the sound of my voice, you can have them be sort of read to you. It’s almost like a meditation or a mindfulness exercise. You can save them to your phone, add them to a playlist, whatever you want, and then you get the videos of like how our emotional experience sort of develops in childhood and affects us throughout our entire adulthood, and so this episode just really reminds me of a lot of the stuff that we talk about in that course, and it’s definitely going to link it in the show notes for everyone Awesome, yeah. So I think that’s a good place to land today. This was a really good conversation and thank you so much, michelle, for all of your insights. I really love it and hopefully it’s helpful for everyone.
Michaela: 46:00
Yeah, thank you so much. This is, as always, such a good time to just talk through things.
Laura: 46:13
I learn something every time I talk to you. I know I do too. I love it, so thank you so much for listening to. Why Am I Like this? If you like our show, please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Follow the show and share it with your friends. This episode was written and produced by me, laura Wood and Ms Shayla Beaver. Our theme song is Making End Me by Thick as Thieves, and a special thanks to Benavari Counseling and Coaching and Active Healing Psychiatric Services for sponsoring our show.
