Have you ever found yourself laughing through tears, or smiling despite a wave of sadness? It's a complex emotional dance that Megan MacCutcheon, LPC, and I explore in our latest episode. Megan, a specialist in perinatal mental health, joins us to discuss the profound ability to experience multiple emotions at once and how acknowledging this can be especially vital during significant life transitions, like motherhood. Our conversation provides insightful guidance on processing each feeling as a signal that something within us needs care and attention, and we navigate the waters of emotional complexity that often go uncharted in our binary view of feelings.
Motherhood can feel like a rollercoaster, with high peaks of joy and deep valleys of guilt. Amidst the laughter and chaos, we confront the ubiquitous 'mom guilt' head-on, discussing strategies to ease the self-judgment that comes with parenting. We share personal stories and tackle reframing our internal narratives, underlining the importance of compassion when facing our perceived shortcomings. Megan's enlightening advice on fostering a more understanding self-view offers a path toward self-kindness that resonates with anyone juggling the emotional demands of raising children.
We wrap up the episode with what I like to call Megan's 'truth bombs,' nuggets of wisdom that reverberate long after our talk. Her insights are like beacons, illuminating the continuous journey of emotional and mental well-being. Whether you’re a new parent navigating the postpartum period or simply someone seeking to better understand the intricacies of your emotional life, this episode is an invitation to embrace the full spectrum of your feelings with empathy and grace. Thank you, Megan, for bringing your profound expertise to our heartfelt discussion.
Medical Disclaimer: This podcast is intended as a safe space for women to share their birth experiences. It is not intended to provide medical advice. Each woman’s medical course of action is individual and may not appropriately transfer to another similar situation. Please speak to your medical provider before making any medical decisions. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that evidence based practice evolves as our knowledge of science improves. To the best of my ability I will attempt to present the most current ACOG and AWHONN recommendations at the time the podcast is recorded, but that may not necessarily reflect the best practices at the time the podcast is heard. Additionally, guests sharing their stories have the right to autonomy in their medical decisions, and may share their choice to go against current practice recommendations. I intend to hold space for people to share their decisions. I will attempt to share the current recommendations so that my audience is informed, but it is up to each individual to choose what is best for them.
Have you ever found yourself laughing through tears, or smiling despite a wave of sadness? It's a complex emotional dance that Megan MacCutcheon, LPC, and I explore in our latest episode. Megan, a specialist in perinatal mental health, joins us to discuss the profound ability to experience multiple emotions at once and how acknowledging this can be especially vital during significant life transitions, like motherhood. Our conversation provides insightful guidance on processing each feeling as a signal that something within us needs care and attention, and we navigate the waters of emotional complexity that often go uncharted in our binary view of feelings.
Motherhood can feel like a rollercoaster, with high peaks of joy and deep valleys of guilt. Amidst the laughter and chaos, we confront the ubiquitous 'mom guilt' head-on, discussing strategies to ease the self-judgment that comes with parenting. We share personal stories and tackle reframing our internal narratives, underlining the importance of compassion when facing our perceived shortcomings. Megan's enlightening advice on fostering a more understanding self-view offers a path toward self-kindness that resonates with anyone juggling the emotional demands of raising children.
We wrap up the episode with what I like to call Megan's 'truth bombs,' nuggets of wisdom that reverberate long after our talk. Her insights are like beacons, illuminating the continuous journey of emotional and mental well-being. Whether you’re a new parent navigating the postpartum period or simply someone seeking to better understand the intricacies of your emotional life, this episode is an invitation to embrace the full spectrum of your feelings with empathy and grace. Thank you, Megan, for bringing your profound expertise to our heartfelt discussion.
Medical Disclaimer: This podcast is intended as a safe space for women to share their birth experiences. It is not intended to provide medical advice. Each woman’s medical course of action is individual and may not appropriately transfer to another similar situation. Please speak to your medical provider before making any medical decisions. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that evidence based practice evolves as our knowledge of science improves. To the best of my ability I will attempt to present the most current ACOG and AWHONN recommendations at the time the podcast is recorded, but that may not necessarily reflect the best practices at the time the podcast is heard. Additionally, guests sharing their stories have the right to autonomy in their medical decisions, and may share their choice to go against current practice recommendations. I intend to hold space for people to share their decisions. I will attempt to share the current recommendations so that my audience is informed, but it is up to each individual to choose what is best for them.
Speaker 1:
Hello, today I have with me Megan McCutcheon, lpc. Megan is a therapist specializing in perinatal mental health. You can connect with Megan at BeHiveWellnesscom. She also offers a birth bundle for pregnant moms, coaching for new moms and a course called Empowered Motherhood. Megan is the mother of three and she's here today to talk about holding various emotions at the same time. Megan, welcome and thank you for coming back.
Speaker 2:
Thank you so much. I'm always so happy to chat with you, so I'm glad to be here again.
Speaker 1:
So this is a complex topic that I was in adulthood when Daniel Tiger taught me that I can have two emotions at the same time and that that is completely valid. So if this is new to some people, especially if they're in my generation, how would one begin to unpack some?
Speaker 2:
of this? Yeah, so this is a topic I talk about a lot with my clients, especially during pregnancy, during postpartum. There's so many different things that can happen that can cause us to feel a few different ways at the same time, and I love Daniel Tiger and his lessons, and now I'm trying to rack my brain and think of exactly the song he sings about it.
Speaker 2:
I know what you're talking about, but it's interesting because I think that in society, and especially maybe in past generations, we're taught of emotions as opposites. I think of these books that I have at home and it talks about what's the opposite of hot, cold, what's the opposite of heavy light, up down, and then it's like sad, happy, mad, glad. So I think sometimes we're really taught that emotions are either ors, and the reality is that that's not always the case. Yes, there can be an opposite feeling to you know, whatever feeling, but you can hold these opposites at the same time and and that's not, I think, always well communicated, and I think a lot of times we don't really wrap our brains around that until we are older and are in experiences where we're like, okay, how am I supposed to be feeling this or that?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely yeah, and it's not necessarily always a this or that. It's like you actually have to sit with your emotions and really kind of break down and peel back the layers on what exactly is happening to trigger all of those feelings and what you can do about it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and be able to see each as really valid. And that's a lot of the work that I do with clients is helping them to see OK, there's a part of you that's showing up here that is really scared. I just worked with someone this morning who is pregnant and got pregnant very quickly, very much quicker than she was anticipating, and so this was something she wanted, but she didn't think it was going to be this soon and you know so she's holding both this excitement and also this fear and also a little bit of anger around, like I don't think it's going to happen this quick and I'm not really prepared, and I think I just see that so commonly with people, and it's really important to not dismiss your feelings, to know that there's space for all of them and we can kind of look at each of them one by one and then also how they all interact with one another.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So I've heard people say that your emotions, like, mean something or are trying to tell you something. There's lots of different language around that, like what is the wisdom that they're trying to impart? Or what is the emotion trying to protect your brain from? Your emotions usually are trying to protect you from something, so it's like your brain trying to protect you from something. So those are some of the schools of thought that I've heard. So then, how do? If someone's trying to work through some things and trying to figure out what all of these emotions mean, or what to do about them, or how to handle them or how to sit with them however, I mean, each emotion probably is going to require some different plans of action, like how, how do they start to sift through that?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's interesting. I'm thinking about that statement that you said about. You know our emotions. It's our brain trying to protect us, and I do think that's true in a lot of cases, and I think sometimes also it's more like our brains our brains telling us or our body sometimes it shows up more physically there's something there that needs to be processed, needs to be acknowledged, and there's that quote what we resist persists. So I was just talking to another client today who was sort of trying to avoid her anxiety, kind of push it away, be like, okay, stop thinking about that, stop thinking about the what ifs, and we were talking about how the more you persist it, the more it's going to grow. So that emotion is there to tell you okay, there's something here that needs to be dealt with or that needs to be processed, and so I guess in that way, our brain is trying to protect us, trying to say, hey, you need to, this needs to show up, you need to deal with this. So I think just having space for and acknowledging each emotion One of the examples that's coming to mind is people when they experience loss, oftentimes they feel a lot of grief as they're processing through, moving through what happened.
Speaker 2:
And then all of a sudden they have this like moment of joy where you know something comes in and they laugh, somebody tells a joke and they feel happy, they laugh, and then all of a sudden they feel guilt, like, oh my gosh. I stopped grieving for a second, I stopped feeling sad about this loss and just being able to recognize that we're allowed to feel all these feelings and it's normal. And just because you feel one thing, it doesn't take away from the other.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I've experienced grief where I really it's like you want to just live in that. I think of the time of mourning, you know, like where some cultures they'll have you dress in black and you have to for three months or whatever. You're not allowed to do certain things or you're encouraged to do special rituals, and I feel like that's kind of what comes up for me when I think about I'm supposed to be grieving right now. So how dare I do anything that would bring in joy or make me feel like things might be able to go back to normal again? Because if you're grieving, there's never a normal or it's a new normal, and so trying to figure all that out, yeah, and it feels like a real betrayal.
Speaker 2:
I think we feel like, oh no, did I somehow betray this person? Because I stopped thinking about that moment but rationally that's not realistic.
Speaker 1:
Right, yeah, Because everybody always says you know that person wouldn't want you to grieve this, they wouldn't want your life to be ruined for that. So when we are trying to process or hold space for an emotion, I think a challenge, at least that I have had as a busy mom, is finding the time to actually sit with some of those emotions, figure out where they're coming from, what needs to be processed and worked through. I'm the type of person that's I like to go, go, go. What might it look like for someone that's not really inclined to sit and process? What would be some thoughts about how they might be able to do it effectively without feeling like they're taking time away from their normal coping skill of going all the time?
Speaker 2:
Well, I think it really starts with acknowledging the feeling. I think. The other thing about feelings too is I think we also tend to like label them negative or positive, you know, like angry is bad, happy is positive. But just looking at these feelings without judgment and when you feel that emotion come up, instead of thinking like oh no, I'm angry and I don't have time to be angry, or I'm sad and I don't have time for this, I don't have time to process it, just acknowledging being like huh, I notice I'm feeling sad, I notice I'm feeling irritated or irritable. Just that noticing, I think, that acknowledging piece, I think like feelings bubble up because they want to be dealt with and they want to be acknowledged. So just by noticing that they're there, giving name to it, holding space for it, allowing it to be there rather than fighting it, I think that can be helpful. And then from there it just really depends on the situation and the extent to which you need to process it. Sometimes all it is it's like huh, I feel this, okay, now I can move on. But other times it's like well, wait, this nagging feeling just kind of keeps coming back, keeps coming back, and then maybe we do need to find time or take some space out of our day to cope with it, to deal with it.
Speaker 2:
For me, I so resonate with what you say about being a busy mom and it's like, okay, I don't have time to feel my feelings, I don't have time to deal with what's going on. But how can you find space in your day? Sometimes I'll just kind of file this away, like, okay, I noticed somebody said this and it was kind of triggering and I felt a certain way. If I'm, you know, trying to go to bed at night or something like that, I'll just be like, okay, I'm just going to take a moment here and just think about that. Huh, what might that have meant Without the judgment? We get into trouble when we judge our feelings. So how can you just give space to it, acknowledge it and then maybe just process, think through it a little bit, without making it feel like you're fighting it?
Speaker 1:
And I think also the stuffing down is really easy for the busy mom as well. So if we are noticing the emotion that's nagging and you're trying to figure out where it's coming from, I guess where my brain is going or what comes up for me is maybe sometimes that busyness is the reason that you're having those thoughts, or the feelings, and so there's also this balance that needs to happen sometimes, and I know that there's a lot of like, for instance, right now, I just got through Girl Scout cookie season.
Speaker 1:
It was like, okay, when this is over I will be able to have more time for these things. But I and my family noticed that I was beginning to feel stressed out, burnt out, a little bit irritated. I just didn't have the bandwidth for everything. And so then at the end of that, I knew that I had to take some time to sift through all that, because there was a lot of emotions that were coming up for me that I didn't get a chance to deal with. So I feel like, at least in my life, there's kind of a cycle where you have to like stop and then start to go through all of those things and then move forward Like what did I learn from all of this? What was going on? How could I do this better?
Speaker 1:
How can we, as moms, or pregnant people that are becoming moms and working through all of that, decide when it's time? Are there typical signs of when it's time to slow down and maybe stop pushing through, even if you know you're like I just need to get to this end point. Are there little tricks? I mean you mentioned the sleeping before you go to sleep end point. Is there a little? Are there little tricks? I mean you mentioned the sleeping like before you go to sleep at night.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think you kind of mentioned it, that that irritability like that when you start.
Speaker 2:
For me, I know.
Speaker 2:
When I start feeling irritable, when like I start getting like my body hurts and I feel like, oh my gosh, I haven't worked out, or I just feel like tightness, there's some physical symptoms and signs for people and then also some of the irritable emotions.
Speaker 2:
I think, as moms, we so often, you know, put to the back burner the self-care and the taking time out and taking time out to deal with some of these emotions, process, some of these things going on in our lives and that's kind of what I preach all about is how do we make time in our life to do that?
Speaker 2:
Because if we don't, it really does. It leads to burnout, it makes us cranky, we end up yelling at our kids when we really didn't want to, and then we feel guilty and that cycle sort of continues. So one of the ways that I like to think about it is sort of like from an energetic perspective, kind of like the woo around, like there's energy in everything and all of our different emotions have like an energetic feel to it. And so how can we try and stay in the positive energy If we start feeling ourselves like being pulled into some of the things that feel like more negative, what can we do to sort of reset, to kind of constantly be bringing us back to the sort of baseline so that we're not getting overwhelmed?
Speaker 1:
and dragged down.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, and, like I said, one of the things that I like to do is like think about this at bed, right before bed or first thing when I wake up. Like first thing when you wake up, to kind of set the tone of the day, like, okay, I'm going to try and think of something positive before I get out of bed and then going to bed at night. You know, I think some people would kind of argue that like, oh, I don't want to like, if there's negative emotions, I don't want to think about it, and you have to sort of balance it. If there's certain things that are really going to kind of tip your emotions over the edge, maybe that's not the best time. You don't want to interrupt your sleep.
Speaker 2:
We also know that the brain processes information throughout the day when we're sleeping. So that's a good time to just acknowledge. Like you know, I felt kind of mad today and I'm just going to let that be there and sort of see where it goes. Like your brain comes across a bit while you're in your unconscious sleep state.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, like what's going on there. Where'd that come from? So I'd like to go back to grief for a little bit, because I love the mad, let's touch on that later. I want to go back to grief.
Speaker 1:
That is a, I want to say, hot topic for me personally as a labor and delivery nurse and I think for some people to experience the joy of having the baby that they desire, and I feel like there's a lot of just like an internal battle that comes up when, for instance, you've had a loss and then you have the baby that you desired, and there are thoughts that come up a lot like I wouldn't have this baby if it weren't for this past loss. There's just so much internal conflict that comes up when I help moms that have experienced a loss, or a big one is if you have a set of twins and one of them doesn't make it, either before the due date and then you deliver the other twin, or if just during childbirth one twin doesn't make it, it's very complicated to try to hold the joy of that baby and the loss of the other. So do you have some guidance on how to work through those two very overwhelming emotions when?
Speaker 2:
it comes to childbirth. Well, the first thing that I'm thinking about is you know, a lot of times we talk about grief as an emotion, and it certainly is, but I also want people to think about it more as a process.
Speaker 2:
So, when we are grieving we're feeling a whole myriad of emotions and they come and go in waves. So if anyone's familiar with the stages of grief, you know it talks about first we're in denial, there's anger, there's depression, there's bargaining, there's all these different stages and we don't go through them in a linear fashion. They come and go. So grief is sort of an umbrella emotion that holds a lot of other emotions, so kind of like an onion, you know, sort of peeling back the layers of an onion. We have to look at processing each piece of that grief, and it's not just this one emotion, it's a whole package of emotion.
Speaker 2:
So I think that's important, first of all, that anytime there's grief, allowing yourself to know that there's going to be a lot of different things that come and go in waves, and then with the idea of how do we hold the two different things, the joy and the grief again just recognizing that it's really important to give space for both and one doesn't outweigh the other. They just simply are there at the same time. And again, just like more onions, you know, you're peeling it back with the joy that might trigger the grief and the guilt of well wait, how can I be happy if I'm also grieving. You can grieve, you know, this life that is here and that's present and that you've been wishing for, that you've been waiting for, or the life of the baby that makes it, while also feeling very devastated and sad about maybe a miscarriage in the past or maybe a twin that doesn't survive. And just giving yourself permission that because you feel one doesn't mean you don't honor the other. It's kind of a both and situation.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I hear moms that have experienced this talk about every milestone of the baby that is with them as bittersweet. So you have the intense joy of seeing your baby take their first steps and the intense grief of knowing that you'll never see that other baby take their first steps and the intense grief of knowing that you'll never see that other baby take their first steps, and having that at the same time and having to work through both emotions at the same time. So what I think I hear you say is holding space and trying not to just push away that very valid feeling of grief, because now that that has come up in this milestone, this joy has come up, it is also reminding you to process that grief that maybe you hadn't processed when you thought about missing out on that other baby's first steps and the joy that you should have had with that experience.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, and just allowing all of that, yeah, allowing all of that, rather than comparing or judging or thinking, okay, if I'm celebrating this milestone with this baby that I have in my life, does that mean I'm forgetting about the other? No, you can celebrate and you can feel sad, and again, that idea that grief is a process, so it's going to come up at anniversaries, it's going to come up at different milestones, and if you can just not judge it and just be like, oh, okay, there you are, grief, there's the sadness and what is the sort of silver lining in that? So you acknowledging that there was a special connection with, maybe, this baby that's not here and my grief is painful, but it's also like my point of connection.
Speaker 1:
I remember I don't know if this is something that I learned in a book I read or something like that there was a part in my life where I had one traumatic event after the other and I was working through the losses of multiple people at the same time, and I noticed a tendency when you go to sleep at night, you've kind of processed all the things that you could for the day.
Speaker 1:
You go to sleep at night, you've kind of processed all the things that you could for the day.
Speaker 1:
There's relief in that, being able to kind of check your mind out and go to sleep. But then when you wake up in the morning, I feel like there's a time period where waking up in the morning is the hardest thing, because you wake up and have to re-remember what your new reality is. So then I think I read somewhere that the best thing you can do is to allow yourself, like set a timer and just have the biggest cry, just like let every single emotion out, feel as much as you possibly can in that moment, and then, once the time, in order to not get caught up in that, and like wallow in it all day. Once the timer goes off, pull yourself together, wash your face and move on. Allow yourself that space every morning as you're working through the grief, and then you'll notice that the new normal starts to feel normal. I'm wondering if you have any other guidance around that or anything else that might come up to help people through that process.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, no, I think that's really good. And I think that really relates to what we were saying before about how important it is to acknowledge and allow space for this feeling. So that's saying, okay, I've got this feeling and I'm going to allow it, but I'm also going to put a time limit on it so that it doesn't consume me, so that it doesn't overcome my day. And I think this shows up so much in motherhood. I think of times where I get super frustrated with my kids. They're not listening, whatever, and I'm like, okay, I just I'm going to step in the bathroom for a minute, close the door, take a deep breath and be like, okay, I'm really irritated. Just by being able to give a second to allow that emotion, it sort of takes care of it and it allows it to be there and then you can move on from a better place. And then the same with kids too.
Speaker 2:
I'm thinking of when a toddler has a meltdown. We often jump to console them and to shift them out of it. But can we for a moment just acknowledge you know, wow, you're really mad, you're really upset, you're really upset that your toy broke or whatever the situation is. Just let them be there for a moment before we go on with our day. So I think what you're saying is really important in that anytime we have an emotion, letting it be there, giving it some time, you know, if it's one that has the potential to overwhelm us, setting the time limit on it. But so often we just try and push past it or rush through it, or we get annoyed that that emotion's there, or we feel somehow inadequate or like, oh my gosh, I'm a failure because I'm stressed, because I can't handle this. So it really is all about just allowing and acknowledging.
Speaker 1:
I want to go back to the guilt that some emotions will bring up. So I think that you touched on a bit how to not judge yourself when you have certain emotions and we did talk a bit about trying to figure out where they're coming from. But some of the mom guilt comes from some of these emotions that we have like irritated, mad, annoyed. I think we all struggle as moms how to try to push away the guilty emotions. Do you have any suggestions or guidance on how to reframe some of those emotions and or work through them and hold space without judgment?
Speaker 2:
I think one of the things is just normalizing mom guilt. It is so common, it's here to stay, it's not going anywhere, so we can't necessarily talk ourselves out of it, but we can acknowledge it. And I think a lot of times when we talk in the therapy world about reframing things, sometimes there's a step that's missed, which is the acknowledgement.
Speaker 2:
Say, for example, I have done a lot of work in the past with, like self-esteem, so say, your sentence is oh my gosh, I'm so stupid, I suck, we can't jump to, I'm wonderful, I'm great, I like myself. We have to just stop and acknowledge hey, look at that, I was beating myself up, okay. And then you can try the shift. And I know it sounds so simplistic, but that acknowledgement piece is so big. And so when we feel, okay, here's the mom guilt. I was angry, I was irritable, I snapped at my kids. Now I'm judging myself because I'm being an impatient mom, I'm a terrible mother, just stop and be like wait, there's that mom guilt. This is so common, we all have this, I'm normal. And from there, from that acknowledgement that this is a really common, normal experience, I think from there you can have a little more compassion for yourself. And one thing that I always say is put yourself in somebody else's shoes, like if it were somebody else that had that, had this situation, how would you be judging that?
Speaker 1:
Because we always judge ourselves. Yes, we would never say some of the things that we say in our own life You're a failure. That's really funny.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, if your best friend, you know, got angry and snapped at her kids and was like, oh my God, I'm the worst mom, you'd be like no, you're a normal, you're a mom. You got frustrated. So how can we give ourselves that same acknowledgement, compassion.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think it's funny because one of my coaches, my personal coaches. Every time I tell her all the things that I've been telling myself, she's like so cool, how does it feel to be an asshole to yourself? And I'm like it always puts it into perspective for me. I'm like I am being an asshole to myself. Why, why am I doing that? This makes no sense. And then so if I reframe it and look at how I would be speaking to, how I would be evaluating another person in the same situation, I'd be like, oh my gosh, you're a rock star. Of course you're having normal human emotions. We all do.
Speaker 2:
Right, you're a human, yeah Right, you're a human. Rock star human.
Speaker 1:
So, yeah, I love that and it's a. I think that a lot of what we're saying might be stuff that people already know, but even for me and you and people that talk about this regularly, literally I need that mirror every single time. I mean, honestly, I'm an asshole to myself every single day, and I think we all are, and I think we all need to remember and hear over and over again how to evaluate ourselves by the same metric that we would use to evaluate and help others. And, yeah, I just think we're so hard on ourselves.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and that's one thing that we can choose to shift. We can't choose to not have grief, we can't choose to not feel joy and then feel guilty, but we can choose to not be so harsh on ourself for having all of those emotions.
Speaker 1:
I think another part of the reframe is to try to figure out where it's all coming from as well and learn from it, you know, and ask ourselves how it's serving us in the moment, and is this causing a cycle that goes back to the undesirable outcome? You know like are we beating ourselves up and then getting irritated and angry and shame, and then it's like this whole spiral that turns into more yelling at our kids because of our internal processing of all of this guilt. And so if we're able to look at ourselves from the outside and evaluate what's going on as if we were caring for another person, I think that we would do a whole lot better for ourselves and there would be less mom guilt and less yelling and whatnot, right, yes, can we just take a neutral approach to looking at ourselves, looking at our emotions, exactly?
Speaker 1:
I think we covered most of what we had planned to talk about, but or at least I don't have any more questions that I can think of. Was there anything that you wanted in particular to address that we haven't talked about yet?
Speaker 2:
Not that comes to mind. I guess I could just go back and probably just end up saying the same things over and over again.
Speaker 1:
That's okay, because we need to hear them all the time, right yeah?
Speaker 2:
Just knowing that it's completely normal to have multiple emotions at the same time, when we can take the judgment out of it, when we can just be curious about huh, why is that emotion showing up now? How can I best support myself through this emotion in this moment? That's when we can move through them and that's another good sort of therapy. Thing is like it's not just like an on-off switch on emotions. You have to move through them, you have to process them, you have to feel it to heal it. So allow yourself to be in these emotions and if you're having a difficult time doing that on your own, that's where a therapist can come in to help. You know, ask the curious questions to help you move through it.
Speaker 2:
I guess, one other thing I'd love to add because this is so important to the work in the work I do, is the somatic component. Let's just touch on that for a moment is how so many of these emotions show up for us physically and for people who weren't really like emotions, weren't really talked about in their family of origin or there was like kind of a belief system in the house. You're not allowed to feel angry, you know. You're not allowed to feel sad. Sometimes these emotions are really hard for people to get in touch with and they'll come out in other ways, like headaches or muscle aches or you know, all kinds of different physical ailments and situations. So also be paying attention to your body.
Speaker 2:
When you are feeling a particular emotion, notice where do you feel it in your body. This is something I do, emdr, which is a somatic therapy that really gets into the physical sensations as well as the thoughts and the emotions, and so I'm constantly telling people okay, if you're feeling grief say, you did have a miscarriage or you lost a baby and you're sad and you're grieving, like, where do you physically feel that in your body? A lot of times for people it's like a lump in the throat or a tightness in the chest. So the more we can be aware of that mind-body connection, the better we can deal with it and process it. So if somebody is telling me you know, okay, I have this heaviness in my chest, we'll just notice that. Put your hand on it, just breathe through it a little bit, see how it shifts Again. These, just like the emotions, the sensations that go along with them, need to be acknowledged.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think that's that's very important and very interesting because I think, talking to you the first time, I knew in my brain that the emotions were showing up in my body, but being able to find it and feel it and know that when I feel that sensation again, it may just be my body telling me that I'm feeling that emotion, so that may be. That emotion manifests in that feeling before your brain even registers consciously, absolutely so I just think that that's so interesting because of the whole trauma lives in your body and your emotions can show up as somatic feelings. I think that all from what you have told me and what I've learned, it all goes together and so that when we can be more in touch with our bodies and feel those feelings and respond to them because we feel them in our body, I find that incredibly helpful as well.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, and for some people they notice it as an emotion first, some people notice it somatically first, but what we do know is that it gets stored at a cellular level, physically in your body. These emotions, these experiences, these memories. And if you don't deal with it, if you don't do what we're suggesting here, which is acknowledge the feeling, give it space, process through it, your body will start to develop physical things that will literally be like okay, you need to deal with this this is going on.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, and I think that that's like you were talking about. In your family of origin, you grew up learning to suppress emotions. It may show up very symptomatically because the shame is actually acknowledging the feeling of the emotion. So you may have been shamed growing up for being angry or being sad or whatever it was, and so, because your brain doesn't want to process it because of the shame, that shows up as that lump in your throat, or is that chest pain or whatever it is that? For me, it's a lot of shoulder tension. So, yeah, being able to figure out what those emotions are is the first step to actually working through them, right, yeah, well, megan, if there's nothing else, I always enjoy having these conversations. I always learn something. I always I'm like.
Speaker 1:
I think I know it all. And then Megan comes with a truth bomb. We learn a whole lot more.
Speaker 2:
It's always so great talking to you and. I love the work you do and I think you know the more people that can just hear these messages in different. I think you know the more people that can just hear these messages in different ways and over and over, the more we can get better at managing our own emotional and mental well-being. Yeah, absolutely Well thank you so much for joining me.