67 ~ How To Navigate Emotional Triggers (Tool Box)

What if you could transform your relationships by simply mastering the art of honest communication? In this episode, we tackle the often avoided territory of expressing emotions, sharing our personal journeys and struggles along the way. 

Brenda opens up about how concealing her feelings bred resentment, and Catherine reveals her past limitation to a narrow emotional spectrum. Through our stories, we unravel the common responses of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, and provide practical strategies to break free from these automatic reactions. Our aim is to help you express emotions openly, facilitating more honesty with yourself and those you love.

Building trust through self-awareness and emotional honesty is the heart of this episode. We offer practical ideas on how to handle intense emotions like anger, sadness, and confusion while in challenging situations or conversations with others.  The approaches we offer not only defuse reactivity but also deepens respect and investment in those we care about. 

We underscore the importance of revisiting unresolved issues to build trust with yourself and others, ensuring that conflicts are addressed and relationships are strengthened.  Join us as we explore the transformative power of clear and honest communication skills, honoring both personal needs and the dynamics of healthy relationships.

Chapters

• 0:08 Mastering Honest Communication
• 7:33 Building Trust Through Honest Communication

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

Speaker 2: 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life. Motherhood relationships and my business Desire has taken me on quite a ride and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher turned coach and guide of the feminine.

Speaker 1: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married. I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of tired and wired and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker and a forever student, even after decades of inner work.

Speaker 2: 1:00

We are humble beginners on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Speaker 1: 1:12

On the Desires Medicine podcast. We talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire. Welcome back, friends, welcome back. Here we are, we being me and Brenda. Brenda and I are here together today to talk about a great topic around communication, which is ooh, it's one thing. When we want to communicate that things are going really well, it's another thing.

Speaker 1: 1:48

Sometimes some of us will have a completely different response when we're talking about things that are not going really well. Maybe we're angry or sad or confused, maybe activated, and our nervous system is like, ah, and so we want to fight or we want to get the hell out of there, we want to flight or we're frozen worse, right, it's like we're completely it just stuck right. Or we fawn, as in we BS, make the other person think that everything is hunky-dory and they're amazing and inside we're just seething, right. So I have a little bit of experience with emotions, in the sense that I really didn't feel a lot of them for most of my life, so most because I'm 50 and up until about 30 something, I had a very short range of emotional access. I was either angry, sad, happy those were kind of the ones, those were kind of my go-tos or maybe, like every other woman in the world air quotes. I was fine and it was mostly because I didn't allow myself to feel I was so dissociated from so much that was happening, because I just was moving really quickly and I wanted to get to the next thing and there was just no time. Nobody had. I had no time to feel as sort of how it felt for me up until I was in my thirties and then I was like wait, I had a health condition. I was like I guess I need to feel because there are certain things that are potentially toxic in my body, because when we don't feel our emotions, we don't feel our emotions or we don't express our emotions.

Speaker 1: 3:36

Often many mentors of mine would say it's stuck in the body. But what do we do when we're not comfortable saying the thing? For me, if I was upset, I could really say I was pissed or upset. I didn't have an issue saying I was sad. I didn't have a lot of range. If you were to pull up the feeling wheel right now, I only had very few of those little notches on the pie. I could tell you that they were very, very slim and seldom in between, but I was able to speak my mind.

Speaker 1: 4:12

But not all of us have the ability to sort of rage right, or be angry for X, y or Z reason.

Speaker 1: 4:20

Some of us are sometimes maybe guilty, right, and we don't want to take the wrath of someone else, so we don't want to be in conflict of any kind.

Speaker 1: 4:31

Or maybe we feel sad and we don't want to tell the person that we feel sad, that it's about them, because we don't want to get into conflict, and it doesn't have to even be conflict, but it feels like conflict and there's a certain amount of discomfort in sharing the emotion, right? Or sometimes we are the ones that are in discomfort because someone else did something and we don't like conflict but we want resolution. And it means that we're pushing and pushing and pushing to the point that they just lie to us to make it stop. They just want our wrath or our da-da-da-da-da-da, our or weedy, weedy, weedy, as I would say, to just stop. They're all different combinations of that, but hopefully today, with today's episode, you'll be able to walk away with some go-to phrases to help you share of yourself, express of yourself. So that's not just stuck in your body and I'm gonna be passing it to the lovely, my lovely co-host Brenda, because I'm sure she's more than excited to share some go-to phrases with you guys.

Speaker 2: 5:36

So excited to share these go-to phrases because this has been a giant part of my journey of learning to be honest with myself about how I'm feeling and in order to have more honest, fulfilling relationships, it really starts with being honest with yourself. I love how you said you didn't used to feel or you had a short range. I used to hide my feelings. I would hide them and bury them and then I would silently stew and be extremely resentful and then I would withdraw from the person, disconnect, fall, and then I would withdraw from the person, disconnect and then punish. You know how women just punish. That was my pattern and it wasn't fulfilling in my relationships. It just doesn't work. But I had to play it out, I had to be able to see it and I my whole journey has been about learning to be more honest with myself and my partner and I'm just going to say partner, but really all relationships. So sometimes we're angry, we're upset and I want you to just feel into maybe the last time this happened for you, really pausing in that moment, like you can pause and just notice what is true for you right now. Do you have the capacity, with whoever is in front of you, to talk about this, or do you not? And it is very compelling to fight it out, but that's not always productive. Fighting can sometimes be productive, but sometimes we just hit rage or we're just dumping and it becomes a negative cycle and it's not healthy. In your relationship. I have not found that to be healthy. So what I've learned to do is be honest with myself. What is true? What am I feeling right now? What do I have the actual capacity for? Do I have the capacity to talk about this, or am I just too angry, too upset or too confused to even be present with the person in front of me? And what I've learned is, when I'm really angry or upset, that I just need time and space to get it out. Maybe cry, maybe hit some pillows, take a walk, talk to a friend, put on some music, move my body, whatever the thing is like all these tools, and this is all gonna be different for you but say you're super angry. Instead of hashing it out with the person in front of you, you could say something like I'm really angry right now and I need to take a walk and I will be back. Can we please talk about this later? That is possible to say, and it requires taking some space, but it's worth it, because the cost of screaming at somebody that you love maybe it's your child, maybe it's your partner it becomes expensive to do that.

Speaker 2: 8:54

I know I've often woken up the next day or a few hours later when I calm down and I'm like, oh my God, what did I say? And the pain of that caused me to learn this skill that we're talking about. So it's, I am really angry. Right now I can't talk to you. I need some space. And then you go take your space and you come back, say you're super upset.

Speaker 2: 9:24

You can name that. You could just name your emotion. I'm really upset right now. I'm really sad. I just need to lay down. I need to call a friend. Maybe you need a hug. You can ask for that, and it could just be as simple as I'm really sad right now. I need some space to get clear and I'll come back later.

Speaker 2: 9:54

Maybe you don't know what you're feeling. Maybe you've been fighting, maybe it's been difficult, maybe you're upset, maybe you don't know, maybe it's a little of everything you could say. I'm feeling really confused right now. I feel foggy. I feel a lot of uncertainty, whatever the word is that feels true for you. I need some time to get clear and I will come back when I'm grounded and clear and then can we talk about this. Then Maybe you're triggered, activated. That is very easy to do when you're feeling any of these things, so you can say that too. You could say I am having some big feelings right now and I need some time to regulate myself, to get clear, and I will come back when I'm feeling more regulated and ready.

Speaker 2: 10:54

Now I want to say with all of these things, the first few times you do them, they might not come out as smooth as how I just said it. It might come out wonky, and that's okay. Try it anyway. And then try it again, because you're building a muscle here. The first time you go to the gym you don't start lifting 100-pound weights. No, you start with 5 pounds, you start with 10 pounds and you work your way up. So these take time to practice, for it to come out clear.

Speaker 2: 11:35

So, really feeling into what would happen how would it be in your relationships, in your life, if you took the time to say these things? And you could say these things to your children. You could say them to your parents, you could say them to your partner. Even kids will understand this. And what a beautiful thing to teach your children that when you're angry or upset, you're not going to just lash out and say mean things, that you're really taking care of yourself. You're valuing yourself, you're valuing the relationship and you're teaching yourself and your children, your partner, whoever it is, that you're invested, that you're invested in this relationship.

Speaker 2: 12:30

It's a long game. Relationships are a long game. They're not a sprint, they're a marathon, and you're not going to resolve everything right here, right now. And what it mostly requires well, a couple of things is honesty with yourself, willingness to try something new, because the rage and the acting out and the slamming of doors hasn't worked. And sometimes you need to run that enough times where you decide I'm going to try something else, and then you happen upon this episode and you're going to try this stuff out.

Speaker 2: 13:10

And I want to say one last thing before I turn it back over to Catherine, and that is come back to the table. You said you're going to come back, come back. This is how you build trust with yourself and in your relationships. So maybe you set a time, maybe you say I'll be back in an hour. Maybe it's something really big and you say can we talk about this a week from today? Say, can we talk about this a week from today, whatever the situation is. Different situations call for different response times, but come back to the table to resolve it. Okay, catherine, I'm turning it over to you.

Speaker 1: 13:55

It's so good. Yes, we really do want to come back and build trust. We don't want to just like brush it under the rug or ignore it, act like it didn't happen, especially when we're the ones at fault. If we're the ones at fault, I know if I'm at fault. If my partner doesn't come back, I'm like, okay, all good, all good. But we definitely want to build trust, right?

Speaker 1: 14:25

You said something, brenda, like it can be really expensive. How we speak to one another can be expensive. What we withhold from one another can be expensive. An example of that is if you are just raging or wrathing or blaming, guilt, shaming, et cetera your partner or anyone really in a relationship, you're holding them responsible for something that's not really theirs. You can't take it back. It's expensive. You already said it, it's out there.

Speaker 1: 15:02

Not that we're encouraging you to lie, but we are encouraging you to not just dump, to not just say everything that's on your chest, because they don't need to know. Everything that's on your chest, that's for your girlfriend, that's for your therapist, that's for your psychiatrist, that's for someone else, that gets to get all the crap and the matter out of you so that you can formulate your thoughts right, because a life is not a play. You don't get to have the same scene over and over and over again, like it's one time. So we want to be really careful, not because it's scary, but we want to take care of the people that we love. We want to give our loving relationships the attention that they deserve. Right, it's like loving care. So we don't want to just dump on each other. We dump, they dump, we dump, they dump. That's expensive. It's an expensive pattern to be in with another human. We want to be able to build trust. We want to say we're going to come back and we want to come back. We want to be respectful of time. If our partner says they need a week, and we agree, then we give them the week. Right, we're not like in a day going. So what are you thinking? What are you thinking? How about now? How about now? What are you thinking? Well, what are you thinking now? You want to give each other the space to be.

Speaker 1: 16:27

Sometimes, or a lot of the times, we don't know ourselves enough. We can't expect that at the snap of our fingers, our partners are going to have the answer, and we can't expect, for, at the snap of our fingers, our partners are going to have the answer and we can't expect for at the snap of our fingers for us to have the answer. Sometimes we just need to be with ourselves so that we can continue to relate. We don't want to push our partners to the point that they lie to us and we don't want our partners to push us to the point that we lie to them. Time really is our friend. Space is our friend when we want to have honest relationships.

Speaker 1: 17:07

I hope you try these on. I hope you try on. I am blank. I just need some time. I'll circle back. Or I am feeling X and what I would really love is Y, or I am feeling X and what I would really love is Y. I really encourage you to, as Brenda said, fumble, mess it up, say it wrong, try again. Really practice the muscle of communicating when it's uncomfortable, because it's so, so worth it. If you loved this episode, please share it with people that you think would really benefit. Without you, we wouldn't have a podcast. We love you Until next time.

Speaker 1: 17:57

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.