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Podcast Episode 10
Emotional Preparation

 Throughout my work, I’ve really sort of zoned in completely on emotional health and what I call emotional richness. I am realizing that there’s such a deep need for this work in the world, and I am loving sharing what I have learned, and the concepts that I’ve been developing for my own life and even concepts others have taught me that have allowed me to create an emotional life that is constantly developing in richness and in complexity and in depth. And as a result of that it’s also developed in joy. Because I have found over the past 10 years or so since I have been doing emotional health work that even though there have been some things that I have had to clear, or some more complicated and complex emotions I’ve had to work through, I have always found better health all around, not even just emotionally but holistically through deepening my capacity to feel my...

I’ll tell you an important secret to making lasting, deep change. The kind of change required to really shake up your identity and call new experiences into your life that you ACTUALLY want.

You have to separate your self-worth from what it is that you’re doing. You cannot link the two together.

First, you accept that you are 100% loveable and worthy and that you are whole as you are. AND THEN… you set about achieving what you desire (healing, emotional health, weight loss, new relationships). 

You’re not healing because it will make you worthy.
You’re not losing weight to make you more worthy.
You’re not getting a new job or starting a business because it will make you worthy. You’re not meditating because it will make you more worthy.
You’re not going to yoga and lifting weights because it will make you more worthy.
You're not working on your communication skills because it will make you more worthy. 
You're not getting...

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Emotional Honesty Podcast
So the past couple weeks we talked about high-functioning anxiety and high-functioning depression so this is really a three-part series. So, if you’d like to you can go back and listen to those two episodes before this one. But this one, as promised is the third part to those and it’s about healing high-functioning anxiety and high functioning depression.

And I believe that emotional honesty is truly what heals us, what helps us integrate our lives, what helps us get out of cycles and patterns and trauma re-enactments. I believe that we spend our whole lives deepening our emotional honesty and our ability to truly be who we are and be authentic which, I mean authentic is like a word I’m starting to hate these days just because it’s such a buzz word now.  But it applies to this conversation that we’ve been having on the podcast about depression and anxiety and healing from these things.

So,...

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Show Transcript Below: 
So… last week we talked about high-functioning depression i guess this is technically part 2 of that so you can go ahead and listen to this one on it’s own, or you can listen to part one after - I’ll leave that up to you. 

So we talked about how high-functioning depression is just when a high-functioning person feels depressed. And so high-functioning anxiety is when a high-functioning person feels anxious. 

And I want to talk for a moment about how we pathologize our experiences. When we pathologize our experiences, we make them abnormal, unhealthy. And there’s almost an underlying belief system like - this “shouldn’t” be happening. I “shouldn’t” be feeling this way and...

When I reflect on the years I have spent at war with myself, at war with what is, my heart swells. I look at myself from a higher plane and send compassion down to those pits of hell. I would be lying if I said I don’t experience that war anymore.  It’s just that now, after making healing my life’s work, I can see it sooner. I can see that it is a choice. And, I can see that it’s not the choice I want to make for my life. And I can let go - again.

It felt like I carried the wounds of 10,000 women as a child. Generations of abuse. My mother’s harsh words, her gaze, her experiences carried within her, were transferred to me. Because she didn’t want them. And so my heart broke every single day as a child, and as an adolescent, and then as a young adult - because I believed her. I believed that I was nothing. That I was lazy. That I wasn’t good enough. That I was too sensitive. Projections, fears. The off-loading of shame.

When I speak to...

High - Functioning Depression Podcast

What is high-functioning depression?

High-functioning depression is essentially when you are a high-functioning person who is depressed.  So you have a life that looks good, and feels good some or most of the time but inside you feel completely depressed and you even have the symptoms of depression.

Symptoms

Pushing your life forward despite feeling disconnected, exhausted, and heavy

• Intense imposter syndrome and fraud complex 
• Working past your limits to overcompensate for a lack of self-worth/emptiness
• Perfectionism 
• Feeling empty, dark, despondent when alone
• Using closet addictions to manage a sense of emptiness, or to run away from pain
• Fear of sharing your emotional world or true self - fear of appearing anything but happy 
• Inner-Conflict - feeling of being at war with yourself 
• Feeling unworthy of life 
• Perpetuating an image of a perfect/put together life. 
• Chronic Fatigue/Brain Fog
• Fear of being truly...

Oh the pressure. 

The relentless pressure. 

To do it "right", to have a life that looks good, to have a better body, to be a better wife and mother, to be successful, to be nice, to be good to quit the bad habits. 

Where does it all come from? Where did this demon arise? 
Is it society's fault? Is it our parent's fault? 

Well, actually, this pressure is SELF-GENERATED. And... it's something we are choosing. 

The relentless pressure we experience is, in fact, traumatic. Of course, we may have learned this as a coping mechanism. As a way to control our lives that felt completely out of control at some point in time. I used pressure to succeed as a way to distract myself from inner-emptiness. 

The gaping hole of invalidation, abuse, and neglect.

I still catch myself taking another hit of pressure from time to time. Snorting the adrenaline rush of putting an intense amount of pressure on myself until I crash and burn and in the wreckage realize that I am...

Well I suppose now is as good a time as any to have a conversation about high-functioning depression. 

High-Functioning depression, is basically pushing a boulder uphill while doing all the life things. Life feels exhausting and hard and draining. And there is a major internal pressure to put on a happy face. 

People who experience high-functioning depression have learned to slap a smile on and grind through life. But not the good kind of "boss-babe" business grind that feels empowering and satisfying. More like grinding right through you until you're raw and there's nothing left but bone (figuratively speaking).  Lots of self-loathing. Lots of self-shaming. Usually there's some serious people-pleasing thrown into the mix and working REALLY hard to make sure NO ONE knows that there's an empty black void which you fear will never truly be filled within you. 

The alarm clock rings... you push past the heavy frozen feeling, slap your make-up on and go FORWARD....

Been doing lots of work on ALLOWING in my own personal life these days.
Stripping back all the chaotic conditioning - deeper and deeper. The work never ends. And I don’t mean that in a complaining, low-energy way. I mean it in an expansive and beautiful way. 

The work never ends - I don’t know why we think there’s a destination where we suddenly know and are everything we “want” to be or THINK we want to be. No no my love. It doesn’t work that way. We’re in this for the long-haul. Always stepping up and meeting our true self at the gate. Over and over. And that’s a GOOD thing. But that’s a different topic for a different day.

Back to allowing.
So I’ve been seeing - or it’s being shown to me - That allowing and receiving in this life has nothing to do with laziness or sitting on your ass and expecting things to come to you.
Allowing is about open-handed trust. 

When you step into ALLOWING your...

That gnawing feeling that you just can't. 
You just can't. 

I remember sitting across from my therapist years ago and saying to her: 
"I just can't... I can't... I can't do this"

I was referring to everything. weight loss. life itself. It felt so real. The paradox of feeling like you'll die if you keep going but also feeling dead because you can't move forward. And then still pushing yourself anyway. 

Horrible. 

In that raw moment together - where I revealed to her my truest sense. My truest emotion - or the emotion that FELT truest, I felt like I was in a pool of liquid and the liquid was me. 

She didn't say much, all she said was "but you can". 

Not sure if it was because no one ever said that to me before, or if it was because I finally let my super-ego guard down and admitted to her, myself, and God how I REALLY felt. Honestly. And truly felt. 

But those three words changed me. They changed my life. The realization came over me like a wave and a...