A Step-by-Step Process to COPING with EMOTIONS

Shelley: Today I'm gonna guide you through a process that you can use to help you with any difficult feelings. Hi, I'm Shelley Treacher from Underground Confidence. In the latest podcasts, I'm talking about how to cope with the feelings that might lie underneath your comfort eating. This four step process that I'm gonna share with you today is something that I've shared with you before, but today I'm gonna guide you through it a little bit more. The four steps in this process are, one, becoming aware of or sensing your body's experience. Number two, naming and labeling the sensations that you are having and the feelings. Number three, bringing compassion to and honoring your experience. And number four, redirecting your body's energy to something more positive or resourceful. This is a really good guideline for working through anything that's troubling you or as a process to use when you are in the throes of an emotional eating episode. And actually, you might like to work out what happened there. So for the purpose of this experience, please get yourself as physically comfortable as you can possibly manage Wherever you are. I'd recommend that you don't listen to this part while driving. It may be very absorbing and you may wish to close your eyes. So having got as comfortable as possible and making sure that you have all your basic needs met, that you are comfortable enough, you are warm enough or cool enough, you're not gonna be interrupted. You have water or tissues or app, penant, paper, whatever you might need. Then when you're ready, close your eyes if you are willing, knowing of course that you can open them whenever you need to and start to notice your breath. You are just taking inventory here. You're just noticing whether your breath is shallow and high up in your chest, or whether you're breathing quite deeply, much lower in your torso, in your chest, in your belly, in your sides, maybe even into your back, and without judgment, just follow your breath for a couple of rounds. Noticing your in breath, the pause, and your out breath, and then when you are ready, allow your breath to help you locate a feeling. For the purpose of today's exercise, I'd recommend not choosing anything too traumatic. Rather than trying to ignore this feeling, which most of us do as comfort eaters, when we're comfort eating, you are encouraged to acknowledge it in your body, just in your body. To be interested in where this actually is, if you can locate that and what it feels like Physiologically, emotions begin in the body and they come with all kinds of different sensations. As you begin to stop doing things and slow down, you might feel all kinds of things. You might feel a tightness in your abdomen, tension in your shoulders. Tightness in your jaw or a clamping down fizzy sensations in your legs. In your body. You might feel pain or maybe you feel numbness. Your heart might be racing. You might feel hot or cold. Or you might have shivers on your skin. Pins and needles, a aching fatigue. Anything that you feel is normal at first. People are often quite self-conscious when it comes to talking about this In sessions, they start using words that they don't usually use in their everyday language. Words like fizzing and popping. So don't be surprised if you start coming up with things that you are not used to. The second stage in this process is to name and label the sensations that you are having and the feelings that you are having. Sometimes just staying with this feeling or naming it can of course calm the nervous system down, as I've been saying, and it can help it to shift because it's often the fear of the feeling rather than the feeling itself. Actually, that is the difficulty. So see if some words just come up naturally to name these feelings and experiences that you are having. If you felt some tension or some difficulty in your chest, you might be feeling anxious. So here are some words for feeling anxious or afraid. So, Frightened, mistrustful, panicked, scared, wary, apprehensive. If you felt a heaviness, you might feel fatigue, exhausted, lethargic. Sleepy, weary, depleted, or you might not be feeling much at all. Disconnected, apathetic, bored, detached, cold. You might find this excruciatingly embarrassing, ashamed, guilty, self-conscious, flustered. I'm gonna name another few words in case they speak to you. Please do tune out any words that just don't match for you. Cranky, frazzled, perplexed, puzzled, mor mortified, fragile, helpless. Leery sensitive, and just to go to the other side for a while because this is vital. Let's try quiet. Relaxed, sympathetic, open-hearted, amused, eager, tranquil, amazed, safe, enchanted, thankful, serene. Bringing compassion to and honoring your experience is stage three. Understanding and bringing compassion to a feeling what it wants, and meeting that need is the most important and pivotal skill for the comfort eater to learn in recovery. Your feelings always have a message. Uncomfortable feelings like frustration, irritation, upset, hurt, worry, and shame are always pointing to what you really care about in life. They are also what needs compassion and possibly deep healing. So this is entirely missed through comfort eating. It sounds counterintuitive, but what it's actually really helpful to do is to complete something called support the defense. This is where if you feel resistant to something, For example, if you want to avoid practicing mindfulness, you might need to allow and get curious about your block before you can remove it. In the case of practicing mindfulness, you might assume that this is gonna take hard work. You might think that you'd rather rush about cleaning the house or sit down and watch TV on further exploration of your situation. In your states. You might realize that you actually need to let go and to relax, but you are afraid that you won't be able to do that. This might be your block to mindfulness. Really, this might be because it would put you in touch with how you feel, which you might be scared of. It's the same as comfort eating itself. You need to understand and be as kind as possible to the fact that you want to eat before you can know how or exactly what to stop. I know much of this is very frightening for the comfort eater. Like I said though, it's often fear of fear alone most people who come to me say at some point that they're frightened that the feeling they're afraid of will last forever. And it's not that we're breaking it down here or breaking you down into being vulnerable and feeling, I should caveat this by saying it isn't always best to stay with your feelings. Some feelings are designed to protect you. It's just that later in life that protection gets stuck inside us and it isn't really relevant anymore, often. So this process is about trying to understand and be compassionate about what you've been through and how you got to this place and what you're still holding. Ask yourself what kind of state that you are in, what state is this? What emotions come along with this, and what is your body expressing in this state? You may even ask how old you feel right now, or even what earlier situation seems connected to this state, So here we come to part four, redirecting your body energy to something more positive or resourceful. This is an essential part of this four step process. Sometimes this will happen naturally when you stay with a feeling and when you understand what's going on for you, you'll just automatically come up with a better solution, a more mindful way of behaving or feeling or reacting. As I've often said, when you give yourself a pause, it gives you time to calm down. And to find your way forward in your own way. I've given you a lot of podcasts and information about how to regulate your feelings. So look at the podcasts on self-regulation, on regulating the autonomic nervous system and. Unself soothing and embodiment, but here are three other ways that you can try Whatever feeling you came up with today, you can try exaggerating it as an example of resourcing. You can exaggerate a critical voice until it is ridiculed out of holding so much meaning. Another thing you can try is to have a dialogue between your kind adult self, the part of you that knows better, and your inner child, the emotional part, and another thing you can try. Is taking your mind to a safe place, person or object? Try doing that now. Allow yourself to remember what it was like. Be safe in this place or with this object that you can see in your room, perhaps. Or with the person that you feel safe with. I know a lot of people don't have someone that they do feel safe with. So don't let this one be triggering for you. Find something that does make you feel safe. Look around your room and see an object that's just has a lovely meaning for you. Often what people come up with here is a photograph of a holiday, a happy time. Or a peaceful feeling or experience embodying that good experience is another great way to resource. What I've done today is taken you through the four step process that you can use when you know that you have a feeling that you're finding difficult, That four step process was, one. Becoming aware of and sensing your body's experience. Two. Naming and labeling the sensations and feelings. Three, bringing compassion and honor to your experience. And four, redirecting your body's energy to something more positive or resourceful to you. I would love to hear how you got on with this process, and if you're gonna use it away from here, I'd love, love, love to hear how that goes for you. If you need more personal help with this, Please keep in touch via my blog at www.undergroundconfidence.com. I do have several things in the pipeline that could come out. Any second. So please stay in touch. Thank you so much for making it to the end today. Next week, I'm gonna show you how I deal with feelings. I'll see you next Wednesday. This has been Shelley Treacher from The Underground Confidence.