Episode 9 Emotional Honesty

Show Transcript Below: 

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, what is emotional honesty?

On my Instagram, which if you’re not following me on Instagram go ahead and do that I post lots of goodies on there for you. I’m @growhealchange on insta.

But on my Instagram I posted a couple things about emotional honesty that I will share with you here as well.

Number one is: Learning emotional honesty is learning a new language, the language of living and moving from the heart, the language of living as who you are. This, in and of itself has thousands and millions of layers. And, because of that it is enough to heal everything.

And Number Two is: Emotional Honesty is the courageous practice of bringing your whole self into the frame. When we allow ourselves to be ALL that we are, we energetically trust that who we are is enough.

Okay there are so many places we can go with Emotional Honesty – there are so many layers. But today I want to teach you about a concept I have developed called The Frame.

The frame is a way for you to sort of visually map out how you are being emotionally dishonest with yourself. So, I want you to imagine if you were to just draw out a rectangle on a piece of paper. And inside of that rectangle, inside of that frame is everything that you feel good about yourself, everything that you are okay with other people knowing about you. Everything that you accept about yourself. So, these are the happy shiny feelings and things in your life that make you appear good, or make you maybe feel good about yourself. Things that other people would look at and go oh isn’t she awesome. Or I look up to her. Or, where you would um maybe really appreciate and respect these things about yourself.

So, you may put your career, your career accomplishments, your health and fitness, your parenting, your family life if you feel really good about that, and your house and how you’ve decorated your house, and you might put you know your marriage or your relationships and for everyone it’s going to be different. Right, you might put characteristics of yourself in the frame um so if you’re hard worker, or you’re very compassionate, you always show up for others and you patient, you’re assertive and ambitious, or you are great communicator, or you’re an awesome artist and performer, I’m just sort of rattling off ideas for you.

And so inside of that frame you have put your “good” things in your life, and “Good’ things about you. And then outside of the frame, I want you to imagine all the things that you don’t want people to know. You could call this your shadow self- things you’re ashamed of, habits, personality traits, things you’ve done, secrets you’re keeping, weight, career, could be characteristics about yourself, your relationships your marriage anything that you feel ashamed of. Things that maybe you’ve wrestled with. Things that are complex and complicated that you feel others might not understand that others may not GET or may not like, or may shame you or alienate you for. And I also want you to put any feelings in there that you feel an urge to hide, to push down, to run away from. So if you feel a lot of grief, or sadness, or rage, or desperation, or shame, guilt, embarrassment, self-criticism and judgement, people-pleasing all the things about yourself that you really would rather not be there that you would rather hide or just kind of go away.

I want you to put those outside of the frame. And all around it.

And when you’ve done that. I bet you that you will notice there is a lot more outside of the frame than there is in it. There are a lot of things about yourself that you don’t like that you’ve labelled as bad or wrong or stupid and judged yourself for. And as a result of that judgement you have sort of banished those thoughts, those feelings, those pieces of your life and you’ve split them off right and you are only comfortable with the small amount of things inside the frame. Okay.

This is a very literal display when you draw it out like this – it’s a very literal display of how split ourselves off. We split our psyche off. And we wonder why we feel depleted and we lack energy and we can’t seem connect with ourselves and others right. It’s because we do not accept all of who we are. We shame and criticise and push down all of the things that are a little more uncomfortable to look at. Maybe they bring up some fear and sadness and rage and desperation and we don’t like that. So, we push and we push and we push down. And we live our lives with a smile on our face but on the inside we feel this splitting. This disconnection.

And so emotional honesty is about learning to invite all of it even the stuff you label as bad and not good enough into the frame. And learning to be honest with ourselves about what we think and what we feel and to allow ourselves the gift of feeling it all. Even if it’s a little uncomfortable for the purpose of integrating all of that stuff. So that we don’t have to live in this split off, fractured reality. Where only the good stuff – the stuff we’ve labelled as good, is allowed in. We want to be able to see all of ourselves with love, with compassion, with acceptance. We want to stop pushing our shadows away, running from them, and start looking at them honestly, with love, and with neutrality. And I know it’s going to be challenging at first, if you’re used to maybe growing up in a family where only the shiny happy good things and feelings and achievements were acceptable. And you know if you’ve internalized that belief system that only the good stuff is worthy and presentable then ya, it’s going to be challenging at first. Because what you’re learning to do is to separate your thoughts, and your feelings, and your actions from who you are.

Part of the reason we suffer so deeply when we’re dealing with high-functioning anxiety and high-functioning depression is because we believe that our thoughts and our feelings, and what we do is WHO WE ARE.  So when you believe that, you don’t give yourself permission to be anything but perfect in the world. Because if you make a mistake, if you have some uncomfortable feelings or thoughts, then you make that mean that there is something wrong with you right?

And so the work we do with emotional honesty, and with bringing all our thoughts and all our feelings and all of what we’re dealing with into the frame, is the work of loving yourself no matter what. Unconditional love, compassion for yourself.

It’s an understanding that your thoughts and your feelings and your actions are not you. They are just your thoughts, and your feelings, and your actions. Okay, so this gives us the freedom to bring it all into the frame and to stop torturing ourselves with our criticisms and judgements of ourselves. And to learn to finally be honest with ourselves about the pain we’re feeling as a result of torturing ourselves.

You’re not meant to be half a person. You’re meant to be whole. And having uncomfortable thoughts and feelings and sensations is part of the human experience. And when you push down your pain and you try and run and hide from it and act like it’s not there you are splitting yourself off. You’re alienating yourself and you’re sending yourself a message that “we can only accept happy shiny thoughts and feelings and ANYTHING else means you’re broken and damaged and flawed and there’s something wrong with you” And that messaging kills the spirit and breaks the soul and it’s really wounding. And this is I believe really the root of a lot of the pain we are in when it comes to emotional health and having a life that doesn’t just look good on the outside with the career and the marriage etc but a life that FEELS good from the inside.  Where you’re not perpetually feeling on the emotional edge right.

Part of doing the work of emotional honesty is also having the courage to see with clear eyes that we are the ones who perpetuate a lot of our own pain. And there are many reasons for that. But the important thing to know is that if you are the one who is perpetuating your own pain in a lot of cases, then my darling you are the one who has the key to healing.

Doesn’t make it easy. It’s a process. But it IS simple. And this is a place of radical ownership of your life. When you’re willing to bring it all into the frame and face your demons, and feel your feelings. And when you’re willing to make the powerful choice to stop torturing yourself and judging yourself, and beating yourself up, which is really just self-loathing, which is really just a form of self-harm. When you’re really willing to integrate and accept all of yourself, and have your own back, you can start to free yourself from that prison of overwhelm and fear and anxiety.

So, I will leave you with that right now. Do the frame exercise and see how much of your thoughts and feelings that you exile and banish and push down and away. And start working with one of those things outside of the frame – one of those things that you believe makes you unworthy and bad and worthless, and just see if you can work with your thoughts and feelings about one of those things that you’ve kept outside of the frame.

I’m sure you guys will have questions about this.

You can email me at [email protected] with your questions. Love hearing from you all.

But we are also doing work on this inside my monthly membership program, the Transcend membership program. For the rest of November, we are going much deeper into Emotional Honesty and The Frame to help you really see yourself with new eyes.

Also, if you’re benefiting from this podcast will you please leave a review and a rating for me?

Thank you so much. I see you all, I love you all.

Continue Forward in Healing and I will talk to you next Wednesday