EPISODE 21: [MINDFULNESS] HOW TO HANDLE DIFFICULT EMOTIONS (LIKE GRIEF)
SHOW NOTES
As a culture, we don’t talk about grief — and from the people I’ve interviewed with who’ve lost someone, who are needing supporting, others around them simply don’t know what to say. According to the founder of Reimagining Grief, Lisa Keefauver, MSW shares, “Our lives are built by the stories we tell of our experiences. A death, a devastating loss (of relationship, ability, homeland, or even dream), or a traumatic event is akin to the manuscript of our lives being torn to shreds and handed back to us with no instructions on how to re-write or live our lives. Grief is the journey we’re on as we re-write and live into the story of our lives.”
Depending on what you feel you’ve lost, whether it’s a relationship, a dream, or someone dear to your heart, today’s mindfulness practice is based on Toni Parker, Ph.D.’s post with The Gottman Institute about “6 Steps to Mindfully Deal with Difficult Emotions.”
Whether your emotions are grief, anger, confusion, fear, loneliness, sadness, or any of the spectrum of feelings you may currently be experiencing from any type of loss, today’s mindfulness practice is for you.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Thank you for listening to this week's episodes, where we talked about suicide, about mental and emotional health, about depression and anxiety, and how to turn tragedy into triumph and purpose. When I first moved back to California after living in Taiwan and then subsequently having to go through the steps of getting divorced.
I ended up going to Hawaii for Thanksgiving and spending time with my friend Charlotte. And during that time we brainstormed about coming up with a company called the women co where we would explore mental, emotional, and physical health. So one of the programs that we offered. Was the heal from a narcissist program.
And in it, it was eight weeks of different topics to help you rebuild your life after being in an emotionally abusive relationship.
Of the experts that I spoke with was Lisa Keefauver. She's an MSW who created a whole company called re-imagining grief after she experienced the loss of her husband and then a friend. And she has this quote, our lives are built by the stories we tell of our experiences, a death, a devastating loss of relationship, ability, Homeland, or even dream.
Or a traumatic event is akin to the manuscript of our lives. Being torn to shreds and handed back to us with no instructions on how to rewrite or live our lives. Grief is the journey we're on as we rewrite and live into the story of our lives. So I feel that as a culture, we are not taught how to grieve, and we're also not taught how to support someone else who is grieving.
So I hope that today's mindfulness practice is an opportunity for you to feel any feelings of grief that you may have for any of the things that Lisa had talked about, any types of loss, of relationship, ability, Homeland, or even your dreams. All of those are, as I've mentioned before, they could be trauma with a lowercase T or it could be trauma with an uppercase T.
So whatever it is that you're going through, I hope that today's mindfulness practice gives you an opportunity to. Be with those feelings to help yourself heal. And if you're not sure how to support someone else who is going through grief, I encourage you to. Look up resources about that from the people that I've spoken with, who've experienced devastating loss.
They really struggle with the other people in their lives saying the wrong things. Not really knowing how to be there for them. The discomfort that happens when you're experiencing hard emotions. And then if the other people around you don't have the capacity to hold those emotions with you, it can be really, really challenging.
So I encourage you to find the resources that you need to show up as the kind of support that you want to be for the people that you care about. Today's practice is going to be based on six steps to mindfully deal with grief from John Gottman and the Gottman Institute. If that's something that you've not explored as well, I highly encourage you to go through some of their resources because they have a lot of great information about.
Relationships when my ex-husband and I were first trying to navigate how to kind of save our marriage or how to just deal with the feelings that we had. We learned about the six horsemen of the apocalypse as they've called it in terms of these. Huge key indicators of when the communication between you and your partner is not healthy, or, you know, they're indicators that there are destructive patterns that are happening.
And just even being able to see that we recognize that we were indeed engaging in those patterns each of us individually or together. So the Gottman Institute is a really great resource to look into as well. So as a brief overview of today's practice, we're going to go through six steps to mindfully deal with difficult emotions, including grief.
And the first step is simply turning towards your emotion with a greater sense of acceptance. The second is to identify and label the emotion that you're going through. The third is to not deny, but accept the emotion. The fourth is to realize the impermanence of your emotions and that things are perpetually changing.
The fifth is to inquire and investigate and the six is letting go of the need to control your emotions. Also one more thing before we begin is the remembering that we are human creatures. We're very connected. We're taking on energy around us as much as whatever we're experiencing within us. So if you find yourself a bit overwhelmed recently, it's helpful to remember that sometimes the collective consciousness can be pretty overwhelmed.
And so you are part of that. We're all interconnected. And so we're taking on some of these things that may not be ours. So at the start of today's practice, I encourage you to find a comfortable space wherever you might be. Maybe you're sitting down, maybe you're lying down. Maybe you're moving mindfully.
But first just taking a moment to call your spirit back. This is a practice that I've engaged in before. And one of our previous episodes where I encouraged you to call your spirit back and return anybody else's that you've picked up along the way that doesn't belong to you. So you're going to find that sense of wholeness.
That sense of coming back into your space and in yourself. And then again, returning anybody else's energy, whatever it is that they need to become whole or whatever it is that you've picked up, that's not yours, it's not your responsibility. And so seeing if you can give that back
and from this space, just taking a few deep breaths to really observe. The place where you are, the space that you're inhabiting. So the space around you, as well as the space within you
observing any sensations that you might be experiencing in your body
and feeling in your physical self, the sensations of simply breathing
beginning to. Bring all of your awareness to your inhalation and bringing all of your awareness to your exhalation. So just breathing with me through three cycles of clearing breath, breathing in deeply
and exhale, letting it go.
Again, breathing in, filling up from the top of your container all the way to the bottom and exhale release, surrender, letting go. And one more deep breath in we'll hold it at the top. This time.
and then see if you can focus on threading that exhale so that it's longer than your inhale, just slowly, gently releasing that breath. And when we focus on the exhalation, we're engaging the parasympathetic rest and digest system. We're helping move away from the fight or flight sympathetic system. So that we can come into more of that ease, awful, calm, rested, safe, and secure space.
Yes.
Now we'll move into the first step of what Gottman encourages, how to handle these difficult and challenging emotions that you may be going through right now. So we'll start by turning toward our emotions with a sense of acceptance. See if you can notice in your body where you're having sensations, so it might be a tightness.
It might be a tension, even a tingling sensation. Sometimes it can feel like a stomach ache, a pounding of your heart, a tightening of your throat.
and see if, as you observe these physical sensations in your body, if you notice that there's any emotion tied to that physical sensation. So some of these emotions might be anger, anxiety, depression, grief, guilt, sadness, shame. Whatever it is without judgment, bringing mindful attentiveness and again, feelings are not linear, so they may not always make sense.
So as you start to associate where in your body you're feeling sensation with a potential emotion that it's connected with, simply observing, noticing.
And the goal is to lean towards the sense of acceptance. So instead of ignoring it, pushing it away, pretending that it's not there, we're creating a sense of allowing gently welcoming that emotion to come through.
you may have heard the saying what we resist persists. So if we try to keep pushing some of these bigger, harder feelings away, they'll continue to show up and they'll continue to call for our attention. So instead in this safe space that we're creating now together, allowing bit by bit that emotion to come through.
you are not alone in going through difficult emotions. And sometimes it can really feel like that, that we are the only person on this planet going through whatever it is that we're feeling, but we're all part of this human condition. So having that sense of compassion as you approach being human.
So again, taking that art of observing, noticing, seeing if just by bringing your awareness to the emotion that you're experiencing, if it shifts in any way. Okay.
So the goal here isn't to change things necessarily it's to be with. What it is that we're experiencing as hard as that might be.
What do you observe now? And if you need to, I invite you to take a few more big, deep clearing rounds of breath, helping yourself process and assimilate.
so the next step we're moving into is identifying and labeling the emotion. It may be difficult to know what it is that you're feeling when I first started therapy. My therapist gave me this list of feelings that I could be going through. And they were categorized by the main emotion at the top. So the main emotion might be anger, but there are different emotions underneath that frustration, resentment irritation.
And I didn't know that you could have all of these gradients of emotion. So right now, Being with your feelings. Let's see if we can identify and label the emotion that you're going through. And instead of saying, I'm angry, you can say this is anger, or this is anxiety by doing this. You're acknowledging that it's present within you while simultaneously empowering yourself to be detached from it.
So going back to the sensations in your body, back to the emotions that you may have become aware of that you're feeling. Can you say this is, and then the emotion.
the more that you can identify and label the feelings that you're going through. The more that you can create a little bit more spaciousness to potentially take some of the pain out of what you're feeling to be present. And instead of moving into future thinking, being trapped in the past, you're being here now.
And in this moment as we're breathing together, we're being together
in this moment, you can move into that sense of calm. Of maybe even safety to be able to handle what it is that's coming up.
so as we move into the third step, which is fully accepting your emotions, we'll also bring in that sense of loving kindness, which we explore in last week. That sense of compassion. Of remembering that we are all human and we're all looking for the same things to be seen, to be heard, to be accepted just as we are.
Oftentimes we can be pretty hard on ourselves, blaming ourselves for things we could've done differently. So for this practice of moving even deeper into acceptance, can you imagine how you would approach yourself if you were one of your friends? What would you say to someone going through what it is that you're going through right now?
Can you start to lean into that acceptance with a little bit more compassion, awareness understanding, and the more that we can do this, the more that we can calm and soothe ourselves.
And to start to understand that we are not the feelings that we're having. We are not the anger. We are not the grief. We are not the fear or any of the other hard emotions you might be going through.
And the next step we'll start to move into the changing feeding nature of feelings, like clouds that pass in the sky, but for now, okay. Perhaps we can bring more of a sense of curiosity to what it is that we're feeling as information.
How would you help someone in your life who you love and care very deeply for embrace and accept this stage, this moment, this memory, or this experience?
if at any time the feelings become really intense. Come back to your breath, bring all of your awareness again to your inhalation and your exhalation use that as this clearing opportunity.
so now we'll move into the changing fleeting nature of emotions that everything is impermanent. Your emotions may arise and live with inside of you for some time and then disappear. But it's easy to forget that things will change that. Hard moments will pass.
So can you bring a sense of patients of kind attention of remembering that this too will be different and a little bit of time, or maybe in a longer amount of time, but that this too will change.
so to help you be with the impermanence of the feelings, you can ask yourself, what is this feeling? Where is this feeling? What do I need right now?
How can I nurture the things that I need?
What would feel very compassionate for me to give myself right now
and remembering that you are not alone, that we all go through these hard feelings. So sometimes it can also be helpful to remember. That other people are also experiencing this hard feeling that we're having and that this too shall pass for them as well.
So continuing with that sense of curiosity. We're moving into step five, which is inquire and investigate. And the first few steps we really aim to be with our feelings and to ideally create a safer space to explore what it is that we're going through. Now you can start to ask yourself what triggered this feeling in me.
What is causing me to feel this way in this moment today?
did I have expectations and that the reality is not matching up to what I had hoped or wanted.
Is this a pattern I'm starting to notice?
And these are some of the questions that you can ask to help you gain a bit more insight into what it is that you're experiencing, moving away from that sense of autopilot or distraction, and being with these opportunities to grow and find wisdom for yourself and even for others in your life. As you move through these difficult experiences learning, what's helping you.
There may come a time when someone else is needing that same support and you can offer this to them.
And before we move on to the next and final stop taking another deep breath in and a deep breath out, observing where you are now. How it feels.
If at any time you need to pause, take a breather and take a break, please honor yourself in that way.
And finally, we'll move into letting go of the need to control your emotions. Instead being open to what unfolds being open to the outcomes that may be different from what you initially expected or wanted. It can be challenging to let go of the sense of control. We think that if we can control things, then we will be safer than we can manage pain or disappointment.
But knowing that control is an illusion. Sometimes we might even experience that sense of control in our bodies, where we're tightening and tensing up, literally gripping and holding on to what we think we want to have happen. So if you observe that these are some of the things that are happening for you, can you use your breath to gently surrender?
To relax and release,
to know that at any moment you have the power to bring your awareness to the situation and that you have the opportunity to choose your response. That that first thought maybe that knee jerk reaction that we all have, but we have the ability to choose our next thought. And letting that next thought be something that does serve us that does nurture and nourish us.
can you acknowledge and be aware that maybe you have wanted to control certain feelings, outcomes, expectations, and that it's a normal human need. To want to feel safe and secure and taken care of that you feel that your needs are being met and that's okay. How in this moment, can you let go? Can you be with what it is that you're experiencing?
And to really honor and acknowledge that you are human, just like everybody else. And that it's okay to go through the low points as well as the high points to need help, to want help, to want love.
What do you need to feel safe? Right here right now.
And as we prepare to close today's practice, you can stay with this as long as you want, continuing to breathe at your own pace in your own space, or if you feel ready to close today's practice. And bringing all of your awareness back into your body, back into this present moment awareness of the space that you're in taking three more cycles of breath to clear and close today's practice.
when you're ready. If it feels good for you, you can place one hand over your heart and the other gently on top of that bowing, your chin to your chest. Taking a moment to honor yourself and every single moment that you've lived through until now,
when you're ready, gently floating your eyes open. If they've been closed this whole time,
Hey, ain't coming back. Thank you so much for joining me in this practice. If you feel that it was helpful, please feel free to share it with someone else in your life. And if you have any other thoughts and suggestions that you'd like to share, you can email me at hello@fcksavingface.com. That's “f*ck” without the “u.” I'd love to continue to have this be of service and a resource to you for whatever it is that you're going through. So you can find that opportunity to step into your light, your wisdom, your healing, and to really help transform the world in the ways that we need by you shining brighter than ever before.
See you next week.
