Episode 10 - Emotional Preparation

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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 emotions, to be emotionally honest, to take sacred time out daily to be with my emotions through practices that I teach you guys like journaling, and the facing your demons exercise. And so since I’ve really sort of defined for now that my work is in emotional health, I have changed the name of my monthly membership to the monthly emotional health membership program. When I released it last month I called it Transcend but the name Emotional Health feels much more aligned to the content I’m delivering and the work we are doing in that group.

So, I wanted to say that before we get going with the rest of the episode. SO! Let’s get into today’s topic which is emotional preparation. Emotional Preparation. And I believe that emotional preparation is SO important to emotional health overall, and I think if you apply this concept it will really change your life and change your relationships with people around you and create more space emotionally, and energetically in your life overall.

So, emotional preparation, is the idea of looking at the practical things going on in your life, and building in EXTRA time and EXTRA space to prepare yourself emotionally. It’s having the ability to be pro-active about your emotional health rather than reactive. And this is something that I teach my 1-1 clients to do because there’s often some difficult relationships in our lives, or relationships that tend to have quite a bit of conflict and we seem to sort of play out roles in certain relationships that we can’t seem to break out of and I find that using this beautiful tool of emotional preparation can really create the space for improving your relationships in your life and allowing you to show up more authentically in a more emotionally honest way to create a pathway for real connections in your life.

So I’ll give you an example of this. Let’s say you’ve got a boss who you can’t quite seem to get along with. Or a family member who makes nagging comments. And you find yourself emotionally drained after spending time with these people. You find yourself being emotionally on edge, maybe you feel less confident, you second guess yourself. Or MAYBE you overreact and you say things you wish you didn’t say and you find that every interaction seems to be exactly the same – with the same disappointing result, and you feel kind of shitty after each interaction. Maybe you tell yourself before the interaction that you’re going to behave differently, but you can’t seem to do so.

Now, the concept of boundaries has been floating around the collective eco-system for quite some time so maybe you’ve even set an intention before you interact with this person that you’re going to set some sort of boundary but you get around the person and the situation just turns out the same and it’s this sort of shitty rinse and repeat dynamic.

Here is where emotional preparation can come in.  AND THIS can change your relationship with that person, and improve it for you even if that person doesn’t change.  Because I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that you cannot change the people in your life. If we could do that and figure out how to do that, we’d have all done that by now.

So there’s a couple things you can do in practical terms to prepare yourself for seeing and interacting with people that you find yourself being drained after interacting with them or not showing up as your true self around them.

The first tool for emotional preparation is to write this person a letter that you’ll never send. And I want you guys, when you do this, to write them an emotional letter. I don’t’ want you to just list out facts here because this is about EMOTIONALLY preparing YOURSELF. And basically you are clearing up inside of your emotional body all the feelings that are clogging up your emotional body and your emotional field. So what you want to do is share with this person how you feel about them, when you talk to them, how you feel about certain things they do or say to you AS IF they were completely open to listen. AS if They were a compassionate witness to your thoughts and feelings.  OKAY, so if we were using a boss that you have a lot of conflict with for example, you’re going to write a letter telling your boss how you FEEL about your relationship with them. And so you may say in the letter you know I feel threatened by you, or I feel like I need you to give me more compliments on my work, or I feel attacked and hurt by you when you do xxx. And I really wish you could see how hard I try. And you want to make as emotionally honest as possible right because this isn’t for them to see. It’s for YOU to see. And I really want you to connect with the feelings of it. Because when you connect to the feelings of it, and you read it, what you’re actually doing is creating space in your emotional body for those feelings to come up and out so that they are not stuck inside of you and clogging up the space in your body and in your field. So that when you see that person, you can have a clean interaction from the PRESENT moment, without so much stored emotions from the past clogging up the interaction.
Okay.
BECAUSE HERES THE THING most of the time when someone triggers us, when we feel very threatened or hurt by someone and there’s a lot of tension and friction between us and them, what we are experiencing is stuck emotions in US. Right – and most of the time it’s not about the other person and what they need to do to change. Because trying to get them to change is a losing battle. You can’t do it. You’ve got to do what’s right for YOU. YOU’VE got to take care of you instead of running around trying to get other people to change for you and make you feel better right. Remember part of emotional health and having a rich emotional life is being attuned to our emotions AND being responsible for our emotions. By writing a letter to the person we are feeling friction with and getting our emotions out, we are taking care of ourselves and creating space for our emotions. We are being emotionally honest by being vulnerable with ourselves about where we are hurting and where we have some pain, some disappointment, some anger, some fear, some resentment.

And once you’ve written your emotional letter to this person who you have some friction with, what I want you to do is read it out loud. Once you’ve read it out loud – I want you to write another letter to yourself, in which you give to yourself what you feel and believe you need from this other person. So, for example, if you feel you need more validation from this person for your work – say it’s your boss for example. Or say you wish that you mother would stop being so critical and be more gracious and loving toward you, I want you to give yourself that in the letter. I want you to write a letter to yourself saying to yourself what you need to hear and feel from that person.
Because again – we CANNOT change those people, we can only change ourselves. And again, where we have friction with others is often where our own untended and unhealed wounds lie. And so, to prepare for your interactions with people in your life, you want to give yourself what you think you need from that person. You want to give yourself what you THINK you want that person to change right?
And you’ll find that in doing this practice of emotional preparation – preparing for interactions with people, that you will either be less triggered by these people, because you have created space for your own healing prior to interacting them and therefore your emotional demand on those other people are much less right – because you’ve done the work of caring for your OWN emotional world instead of depending on others to do it for you. You’ll find that some relationships improve, and you’ll find that some relationships you will leave behind all together because the more work you do and the more emotional space you make for yourself and the more care you give yourself, the less you’ll need to prove yourself, or engage in the tension and pressure of certain relationships right.

And I want to say a word on boundaries here because I think there’s a really big misconception with boundaries where it’s like – we think that anytime we get triggered someone has crossed our boundaries. And that’s just simply not the case. Right? Boundaries are about you. They are about you. Protecting your energy. And so, you can set a boundary energetically without saying a word at all. Boundaries do not mean you have to grand stand. Sometimes grand standing is appropriate and you’ve got to really directly say like – look I can’t deal with this and if this happens again, this is what I’ll do right. But the thing is, boundaries should not be used a pseudonym for manipulation. Boundaries are NEVER about controlling what other people do or say. That’s a losing game. Boundaries are about you. So, if someone is doing something you don’t like – you don’t have to make them stop. You can simply remove yourself from the situation. You don’t have to engage. You don’t have to respond. You can simply leave – and that’s an energetic boundary right?
And that’s why I love this work of emotional preparation. Because I think it really gives us the ability to see that many times we are trying to control what other people do or say because if they do or say something that triggers us we think we have to change THEM and change what THEY do. But the thing about emotional health and emotional responsibility is It’s a reframe right –  understanding that YOU are the one you are responsible for, means that you need to take a look at your triggers and see what’s underneath.
It’s like if you have a gaping wound right, and someone brushes up against it and it starts bleeding. It’s an indicator that you need to tend to it. You need to care for it. You’ve got to take care of that. We’ve really got to stop making other people responsible for our thoughts and feelings and actions because its creating a lot of unhealthiness and a lot of unnecessary suffering. I really want to encourage you guys to emotionally prepare yourselves using this tool. I think you’ll learn a lot about yourselves, and it will give you room for a lot of exploration in your personal relationships I think it will improve a lot of your relationships and act as a nice filter for some other relationships where you might recognize yourself as a participant in an unpleasant pattern and I think this tool may give you the power to lovingly say goodbye either to those people, or to those dynamics altogether.

So I’ll leave you all with that. I’ll remind you that I AM taking 1-1 clients right now – so if you’re really ready to tend to and care for your emotional health and create emotional richness in your life than I’m inviting you to send me an email at [email protected] we can book a call and you can decide if you’d like me to be your 1-1 coach. I look forward to hearing from you and working with you.

I love you all. Continue forward in healing and I will talk to you next Wednesday.