368. What to Do with Emotions with Chantel Allen

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 368: What to Do With Emotions with Chantel Allen.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Did you hear my voice cracking? Don’t adjust your volume, don’t adjust your sound, it’s not you, it’s me. I got a really bad croupy cough that may or may not be COVID. But I’m going to be just fine. I sound way worse than I feel. Thank goodness I already recorded this episode so you don’t have to listen to this voice for very long. But I am going to be occasionally over the next few months bringing on some of my coaches for you to hear on the podcast because we have – did you know this?

We have a team of coaches that works here at Jody Moore Coaching that helps out with coaching calls in Be Bold and other such things. They’re helping out at the VIP event. We have the most amazing coaches. I love them all so much. There are eight of them, here’s how I know they’re super amazing. We recently had a project where they were going to be working in pairs of two and I said, “Do you guys want to let me know who your preference is to work with or do you want me to just match you up?”

And they said, “Just match us up, we all love everyone.” Can you imagine a group of eight adult women and they’re just like, “I can work with any of them and I’ll love it”? That’s pretty unusual because they’re amazing people. At any rate, Chantel is one of those amazing people. She also happens to be a student in Business Minded. We’re going to talk about emotions. She specializes in helping people with anxiety and so I asked her if she would come on and we’re going to have a little discussion here about what to do with your negative emotions.

Spoiler alert, it’s not eat them or buffer them away. It’s not resist them or push them away. Here we go, let’s take it away, Chantel.

                                                                                                                   

Jody: Okay, so, Chantel Allen, tell everyone who you are and all your darkest secrets to begin with.

Chantel: I don’t think you want to know my darkest secrets.

Jody: We do, I do but maybe they don’t.

Chantel: No. So yeah, I live in Arizona in a tiny little town in Arizona but I grew up in Phoenix. So, I came here because I got a scholarship to this college that is here, met my husband at a [crosstalk] meeting.

Jody: What is the town called?

Chantel: It’s called Thatcher.

Jody: Thatcher, okay, I’ve heard of Thatcher.

Chantel: Yeah, I know, President Kimball, his house was here just down the street from us.

Jody: Is that why I’ve heard of it?

Chantel: Maybe, yeah. And then the Gila Valley Temple’s here too, so it’s [crosstalk]. And then I have four kids, they range, one’s almost 16 and then my other one, my youngest is 11 tomorrow, my Cinco de Mayo baby. So, it’s kind of fun, so very close in age but yeah, so life is very busy right now but we have fun, yeah.

Jody: And as a little girl did you want to be a life coach when you grew up?

Chantel: No. When I was a little girl I wanted to be a wedding planner.

Jody: You did?

Chantel: Yes, and I became a wedding planner. I got to be certified as a wedding, I wanted to be J Lo, you know that movie, Wedding Planner?

Jody: Yeah. I was just going to say J Lo.

Chantel: Yeah. So, I watched that movie a million times, I interned as a wedding planner and did that for a couple of years. And yeah, so that was my dream. So, I have a little bit of a planner in me, I love to plan things. So, then I became a preschool teacher, that fulfilled a lot of those dreams because I got to plan a lot of stuff. But no, life coaching was not ever in the – I mean I don’t think that was a thing. Was it even a thing back?

Jody: No. I was kidding because none of us even knew what that was. It sounds weird, even now it sounds weird.

Chantel: It does sound weird, yeah.

Jody: Okay. But what got you into coaching?

Chantel: So, actually about, so now it’d be eight years ago, I was in church and I passed out and had some seizures. And they at the time didn’t know what it was. I’m a classic busybody, go getter, have to do everything. They flew me from my small town because our hospital’s not very equipped down here. They flew me to Phoenix and they started doing all kinds of scans because I was also experiencing tons of migraines at the time and they thought maybe I had a tumor or something else was going on.

And everything came back clean which sounds lovely, no, you want an answer. You want to have something wrong. So, they came back and said I had anxiety, my seizures were induced by stress and anxiety and I wasn’t dealing with it correctly. And if I didn’t figure that out I was probably going to end up back in the hospital with either a heart attack or something else. And I had tons of little kids at the time, I was doing my preschool. I would never ever have told you I had anxiety. I really wore my busyness like a badge, no, I do this very, very well.

And so, I was really, really adamant that that was not my problem. But I had a listen a little bit, so I started searching on podcasts and I found you. And I can’t remember what episode it was, but it was about anxiety and it was just, this is what it is, this is where it comes from. And it just blew my mind. And so, I started doing that, joined Be Bold, and I just fell in love with it and everything in my world started to change. And it just, in my mind, I’m like more people need to understand what is going on for them.

Because I wanted to blame my life on my in-laws, not paying attention to me, or the finances, or the job market, all of these things which just left me helpless and hopeless. So, I think there’s a lot of people that are kind of in that place where they just feel life is happening to them. They don’t get to have a choice in that. And so, I wanted to help more people with that so I became a life coach because I wanted to help more just like me.

Jody: That’s so amazing. And that was how many years ago did you get certified?

Chantel: 2018, I was the last class.

Jody: Oh gosh, four years.

Chantel: I know. It was the last class to be in person and I was so lucky enough to have you as my coach.

Jody: That was fun, okay. So, you’ve been coaching mostly women with anxiety for the last four years?

Chantel: Yeah, they don’t know they’re anxious though. That’s what’s been so kind of fun, because I would never have classified it as anxious. I’ve had to figure out how to kind of call to those people. So, it’s more the busybodies, I coach busybodies that went to get more done.

Jody: Say just like, “Listen, I am just like J Lo. I’m a wedding planner.”

Chantel: Exactly. We get everything done, we can do everything. We’re the magic.

Jody: And I mean we’re joking about it but it’s interesting how in our society we wear busyness like a badge of honor and we even say it to people as a compliment. “I know you’re really busy.” As though that’s a way of saying, “I know you’re really important and you have a lot of amazing things going on in your life.”

Chantel: Yeah. That’s how we relate to each other too, it’s not like, “How is it going?” It’s not like we say, even how we started our calls, like, “Things are so busy.” We don’t say, “Everything’s fantastic. Everything is great.” That’s not how we talk.

Jody: I do actually.

Chantel: See, go Jody, she’s the example that we all want to be.

Jody: Well, no, here’s the thing though, even as a young girl, my mom will tell you this, even when I was a young girl and I watched my friends who were in piano, and dance, and running track, and they all had a bunch of things going on. And for some reason I’m sort of the opposite of you whereas you sort of realized I’m good at planning and I can get a lot done. That’s all coming from a strength. But I realized as a young girl, I remember telling my mom, I don’t like to be in that many things. I just never liked being busy.

I never liked feeling like I had to go from one place to the next and that I had a bunch of things that I had to get done. And even now, we were just talking about this that even with my kids when they do want to be in classes and activities and whatever, I have limits. I’m like, “You get to do one thing outside of the church activities and things that we do as a family.” You get to be in one class or sporting event, or whatever only because that’s all I can handle. And I don’t think it’s good for them. And I don’t mean that to be a rule for every family.

I just think knowing me and my kids, I’ve never liked the feeling of being busy, probably because I’m not very organized. I’m not great at planning. I could do more, I mean in my business I’m good at it but anyway it’s just fascinating how like you said, there may be people listening, my guess is there are a lot of people listening to this who wouldn’t identify as someone that has anxiety but they feel overwhelmed, they feel stressed, they feel busier than they want to be, yeah?

Chantel: And I also think that busy, we sometimes use it as a buffer. And that’s when I started to learn what a buffer is and what that looks like, that totally resonated for me because I’m like, “That is what I’m doing, I’m using this busyness to not sit quiet and to feel, and to acknowledge my thoughts.” That was the way I was kind of escaping myself. So, when I realized that, that’s when I was like, “This could be a problem.”

I think busy is a beautiful thing, that’s how people get things done but if it’s to escape your life that’s where we have to take a look at it.

Jody: Oh my gosh, don’t you think we saw that when the pandemic hits?

Chantel: Yes. That’s when I got the most clients, by the way. I’m like, wait a second, I have to slow down and they didn’t like that slowing down, that slowing down was so uncomfortable for them. So yeah, I find that’s something we really need to take to heart and understand, what are we escaping?

Jody: And I thought it was an interesting insight into our kids too, what a poor job that we’ve done teaching how our kids how to feel emotions and how to just be in the world because I think a lot of moms maybe even felt busier during that time because you had to manage online school with your kids and everything. But my kids are so anxious because they don’t have anything now. They don’t have anything to go to. They don’t get to go to school. And of course, that was an extreme. Anybody I think would struggle with that.

But it was eye opening to me how many of my friends told me that their kids were severely depressed or anxious. And it just makes me wonder, do we need to slow down a little for our kids’ sake? Or help them slow down a little and teach them how to be with their emotions.

Chantel: Yes. Well, and I find too because we are such an instantaneous society, we want to think through everything, we want science to back things up all of the time. We’re really good, or most of us are really good at thinking. We want to think through problems. We want answers to problems. What I think a lot of us lack is that ability to connect with our emotions. So, it’s kind of becoming a buzzword right now, that heart brain coherence thing. Yeah, I think so many of us and that’s why I find sometimes even thought work can be used against ourselves because we want to think through the problem.

And it’s no, sometimes you need to just feel your way through and see what’s on the other side of that. But for some people that have been busy for so long, that feeling process is very uncomfortable and sometimes we’re like, “What’s the how? Give me the how and how to do this.” We don’t have the rules, there’s no rules to feeling your emotions.

Jody: Right, oh my gosh, so good. Okay, so I’m so glad we’re going to dive into how to do that today. But I think it does sound a little buzzword ish, or it’s self-help, or life coach or whatever to be like, “Process your feelings, allow your feelings.” But there is actually a lot of research to back up the importance of it. But we are going to try to take a really practical here’s how you do it approach today, yeah.

I feel like whenever I teach or speak somewhere, I always throw this part in as a little PS, and don’t forget to feel your feelings. But it needs more than that. It needs its own time on the stage, so that’s what we’re going to do here today. Okay, so how would you describe it, in a way that doesn’t sound – I think that people have a hard time if it sounds too woo woo or whatever. And I know you’re very good at logical descriptions. So how do you describe how to process emotions?

Chantel: So, the way that I think for my thinking brain because I’m a very analytical, like you said, logical thinker. The way that I like to describe it is when we were younger, if something happened and we kind of told our emotions to go play and hide and seek and we forgot to go seek it. Because it’s hiding someplace, it’s in a closet, it’s underneath the bed. So, what we have to do in this stage is be willing to go find those emotions that are probably, they’ve fallen asleep, they’ve just, you know, they’ve kind of checked out.

Jody: They don’t think we’re coming back for them.

Chantel: Yes. Well, they’re afraid to even come out because maybe they’ve tried to come out in the past and we’re like, “No, go back in, go hide some more.” Because we’ve been taught through programming or something that you shouldn’t feel your emotions, that’s not welcome here. So, when I talk about processing your emotions I say that, “You’ve got to go inside and go searching through your body to find out where it could be located.” And we want it to be simple sometimes. We want it to be like, “Yeah, I found it. I found it right here.”

But I have this experience where one of my neighbors lost her son, was playing hide and seek and he hid a little too well and he fell asleep and she was frantic. Could not find him anywhere and called the cops and was sure that he had been taken, I mean searched everywhere. And they had, everybody inside their house and he was just underneath the pillow, he had just fallen asleep. But she had searched there probably 20 times. And that’s what I kind of feel with like with ourselves.

We get so frantic in this process sometimes where I’m like, “We’ve got to slow things down. We’ve got to trust this process.” You may have to go searching for these emotions a couple of times because there’s a relationship with these emotions that we’ve kind of shut down too, you’re not welcome here. So, we’ve got to change that a little bit and kind of tell it in a quiet voice maybe at first that, “You’re welcome to come out here. It’s totally fine for you to be here.” Because those emotions have a purpose here, we’ve just forgotten that.

So that’s kind of what I like to explain to people. I’m like, “That’s all we’re doing, we’re just going to go hide and seek, we’re going to seek those emotions and see what’s behind that door, what’s behind that bed and see what it looks like.” And that’s how I start that process.

Jody: Okay, I love that. So, what do you say to someone who says, “Okay, but Chantel, if I open that door or look under that pillow, it’s going to just take me over. It’s intense. It’s big.” Like you said, we’ve been socialized to push away emotions but also we’re sort of afraid of them, especially the really intense ones, right?

Chantel: Yeah. And I think again, I love analogies and I love pictures because that’s what sits with me the best. If you remember in cartoons they have those little, tiny creatures that are big bad creatures. And they have a shadow on them that makes people, it appears so much bigger and scarier than it actually is. And then when they take the spotlight off it’s this teeny, weeny little thing, that’s what I kind of what I think with our emotions, the stories and our experience with it has made it this big, huge monster.

And when we actually go inside it’s not actually that big, it’s this tiny little thing that we just have to acknowledge and kind of go inside and take a look at. But you have to be willing to do that. And I think that’s the first step, is just like, okay, I’m willing to kind of open that door and see what’s inside.

Jody: And I have found that to be true. For anybody listening that’s not sure, this is what helps me to think about is literally we find it in our bodies sometimes. We’re just challenging, like you said, it’s not simple, because it moves around and is it in my chest? Is it in my gut? Is it in my throat? Maybe it’s a little bit of all those places. Now it’s gone, I don’t feel it at all.

My husband sometimes watches TV shows that I’m like, “I can’t watch this.” Because anything where people are being tortured or very dramatic violence, I’m just no, I’m out. But I’ll catch glimpses of it and it’s like we hide from emotions as though somebody’s going to be torturing us. It feels that way. This is scary but the truth is, that’s what helps me to stop and slow it down. Just go, “Wait a second, okay, so what’s an emotion I really don’t care for? Fear.” Okay, that tries to come up pretty regularly. There’s emotions like terror that I don’t like.

But I don’t have very many occasions where my brain is tempted to go to terror. But fear, or worry, or anxiety, pretty frequently. And it feels so scary to just, what are you saying, just open it up and allow fear, allow anxiety? But again, it’s actually not that big a deal. It’s not like somebody is wedging a knife underneath my fingernails like they do in a torture scene. But that’s the way we talk about it. It’s really not. What does anxiety feel like? Tell me, what do you think?

Chantel: To me what I’ve noticed, it’s all in my chest. And I love to go inside and to me I have to name my anxiety because that helps me separate me from my anxiety but it’s this red hot fast prickly sensation that’s in my body. And it makes my heart beat faster and it makes my throat tighter, more constricted.

Jody: Okay. So, everybody listen, now, your experience of anxiety may be a little bit different than that. Maybe you feel it more down in your gut or something but probably some similar things to what Chantel just described. So, when clients tell me that, they’re like, “It’s like my heart is beating.” I’m like, “Okay, but are you going to have a heart attack?” No, it’s just my heart has sped up a little bit.

Same thing that happens when I get on the rollercoaster at Disneyland. And I’m not upset about it then. I’m just like, “Oh my gosh, my heart is totally beating. I feel this lump in my throat. My chest is kind of tight.” But we’re happy about it, we’re at least not mad about it. It’s still uncomfortable but we’re just not resisting it because we don’t think there’s some outside thing that we have to solve in order to get rid of it. And like Chantel’s saying, I like the analogy of the little monster with the big shadow. They’re actually just a little bit uncomfortable, they’re not a big deal.

When we resist them and push them away, that’s when they feel intolerable because they keep trying to pop up. It’s like when you talk about hide and seek, my kids when someone’s hiding for a while and the other person can’t find them they start going, “Beep, beep.” They try to give the person hints. And I feel like that’s what your emotion does. It’s like, “Beep.” It gets louder, it’s like don’t forget about me. It feels intolerable.

Chantel: Yeah. Well, and even with a two year old, you know how a two year old like, “Mom, mom, mom.” And they get louder and louder until you give it attention. That’s the same thing that your emotions are trying to do. And if you just acknowledge it, it actually makes it quieter. It actually kind of helps it to dissipate a little bit. But it’s just so funny, that fear that we have with just processing and feeling emotions.

Jody: And you kind of have to just test it out. I don’t know about you but when I first learned all of this back in coach training I was like, “Okay, I’m just going to try it.” And I was like, “Whoa, this is really something to this.”

Chantel: Yeah. Well, and I think there is also knowing because this is how I was when I first started doing it is I almost had this belief that okay, I’m going to process this and it’s going to go away. And I had to really understand, processing doesn’t mean it’s going to go away, processing is the acceptance of it, that it’s going to be there for however long it needs to be there. And that was really, really hard for me to do because I’m like, “So what’s the point of this then? Why am I doing this if it’s just going to stay here?”

So, I really did, I think about we have relationships with everything, kind of what you talk about all the time. We have relationships with our emotions. And that’s something that we have to work on is like the relationship with anxiety. You can have a bad relationship with it where you’re resisting it or you can just say, “Hey, you know what, anxiety is my superpower, let’s go, let’s have you here for however long you need to be here.”

Jody: That’s a really good point because I do get that question all the time too. The clients will say, “Okay, so how long do I have to process it before it goes away?” And you and I know now after making that mistake ourselves too that another word for processing, a more accurate description is actually just allowing emotion. You’re just allowing it. So, by definition if I’m allowing it, but once again, it’ll be gone. That’s not allowing it, that’s still wanting to get rid of it. That’s still resisting it.

But you asked a really interesting question when you said, which by the way does go away, it doesn’t last forever. But if we’re not going to worry about that part, if we’re just going to allow it as long as necessary. And you said, “Then what’s the point of it?” What’s your answer to that, what is the point of it?

Chantel: The point of it is, I always think of the thoughts are the language of our brain. The emotions are the language of our body. So, your emotions have a message that is trying to give us some answers but that’s the whole point. And that’s why you kind of go inside and do that hide and seek. Go find out what that message is. We want to think our way through this and go to someplace different. I’m like, “Sit with this emotion, see what it has to tell you.”

Another thing that I like to do is picture it as a smaller version of myself, whatever the emotion is. And ask that smaller version of myself, what is it that it’s trying to tell me? And then me respond and give it what it needs. So, with anxiety sometimes I find when I ask that question and everybody’s different, and that’s the thing is you have to be patient with this because you may not get an answer right away. But sometimes I’ll ask it, “What do you need?” And sometimes just to be heard, or just to be seen, or just to be acknowledged.

And I picture me now kind of comforting that anxious part of me and just giving it a big hug, putting a big warm blanket around it. And it’s crazy how that just helps me relax and melt into it and realize there is nothing to be afraid of here. This is truly just a message that needs to be heard and acknowledged. So that’s I think what emotions are.

Jody: Yes, that’s so good. The other thing I think is you’re going to probably have emotions so our choices are basically either we make it more tolerable and we like you said, use it as possibly useful information. Or we make it less tolerable, those are the choices as far as I know. I haven’t found the option other than keep yourself on drugs all the time. Or I haven’t sort of a healthy option that we would want, that is available. So yeah, that’s interesting.

Okay, I wanted to ask you about something you said. You said, “Use them as information, what am I needing?” Do you find both for yourself and with your clients ever that we are taking them too seriously? I feel like there’s this tendency sometimes to go, “Okay, yeah, I feel afraid. So maybe I should turn back or maybe I should not try to build this business, or maybe I should. Something’s really wrong, my kid is really in trouble.” Talk to me about that.

Chantel: Yeah, because I do. I think that again goes back to relationship with the emotions. If we have one that’s very tense and very scared of the emotions, I think that would be the reaction to it. But that’s why I love to use that smaller version of me. So, I think of, I mean if you have kids you know this, your little two year old version of yourself is pretty cute even when they’re upset. So, I think of it that way. So, I listen to it. If it’s saying, “Something’s wrong with me, there is something going on.” Then I really do picture myself talking to my two year old.

I wouldn’t be like, “No, but really, you really need to listen to me.” I wouldn’t be panicked about it. I’d just like, “It’s okay, it’s totally fine.” I love to think of that compassion. We don’t have to operate from the messages that it brings up or think we have to turn around. It’s just again, giving it airtime. It needs the microphone, I think of just give it the microphone, let it get out what it needs to get out but we don’t need to react to it. We don’t need to respond to it. It’s just acknowledging it. Of course, you’re thinking and feeling that way. It’s totally fine.

Jody: I love that example. If I think of it like one of my young kids, I still want to hear out my kindergarten daughter. And she might have some valid things that I want to look into but a lot of what she says, I’m just like, “It’s okay, don’t worry. It’s going to be fine.” I want her to feel heard but I also am not like, “You’re right.” Because I think as members of the church, as we both are, I think there’s a temptation to confuse our human brain emotions with the spirit. It’s like, how do I know? Maybe this is the spirit trying to tell me something.

Or for people even that aren’t religious it’s like maybe this is my intuition. I mean how do we know?

Chantel: To me it is based off the feeling that you get, if it’s the spirit I don’t think it operates out of fear. I think it operates out of love. So, if it’s coming from this fear place then I’m like, “It’s probably more likely your thoughts that are giving you something that’s making you operate that way. I don’t see the spirit ever operating out of that place. So that’s how I choose to see it. Now, that’s again, everybody has their own opinion about that but to me that’s the most useful for me to think.

And that’s the same way I think for truth, when people talk about what is truth, I’m like, “Truth is based off of a feeling. If it feels true to you, if it feels good to you that’s truth.” But it comes down again to that feeling. And so many people want to think through that, they want to think through the intuition or the spirit. And that’s where I think so many of us have it backwards. The spirit operates from emotion.

Jody: That’s so interesting. I was talking to Anthony Sweat who’s a professor at BYU about this topic. And he was saying that in the early days of the church that people didn’t attribute all of their emotions to the spirit like we do today. They weren’t just like everything that happened and were like, “And then the lord told me to move here or the spirit told me not to do this.”

They’ve understood that personal revelation was like, not that it’s not available all the time, it is but it’s kind of few and far between that the lord is actually going to intervene and really try to direct you because it really doesn’t matter in the end. And so, he said, “It’s only in modern day that we attribute emotions all the time, we just label everything the spirit.” And it’s tricky. Chantel and I don’t know the right answer to when is it the spirit and when is it your brain? But I do think that a lot more of it is just our brains than we give credit to.

Chantel: Yeah. Well, and we sometimes want to let it be the spirit so that we don’t have to have the agency and making a decision.

Jody: Accountability.

Chantel: Yeah, the accountability there. So, I think that’s part of it too is that relationship with your decision making. And you’re trusting yourself that no matter what decision is, it’s going to be the right decision for you and not need that.

Jody: Well, and I see people do that same thing you’re describing with the adversary. They’re like, “I have all these negative thoughts about myself, I judge myself.” That’s Satan. And I mean there’s some truth to that, that the adversary wants you to judge yourself and all of that. And he’s trying to influence you but the problem is that leaves us somewhat powerless if we give him the credit. He can’t come in and control your brain and your thoughts. You can, you can control your thoughts.

So, when you keep the ownership, that’s just my brain offering me a bunch of stuff, I think I will not choose to think that. I think I will not choose to focus on that, then you become empowered around it. So just be careful about delegating everything to the spirit or the adversary, you have a brain, you have to learn how to manage that brain. And you won’t ever do it perfectly so you’ve got to learn how to process emotions along the way.

Chantel: Well, that’s it. It’s both things. We need thought work and we need the emotion work. I think so many times we want to just use the model that you teach so much, just that’s all people want to do is they notice the model and then they want to switch to a new model so I can change my thought so I can change everything. Stay in that model. Stay in that first initial model, feel the emotions, process through it. The more we actually do that you don’t need that second model. You don’t need even a new thought because you’ve accepted that initial place that you were at.

Jody: And that’s when the work really happens. That’s when you truly change your perception of yourself or the world, or whatever is when you’re willing to stay in that model and know that you’re creating it but just process the emotions, observe yourself. It sort of just fades away, that’s why you don’t need a second model. Okay, so this is another question I get all the time and I want to hear how you answer it.

I hear what you’re saying, I should find it in my body, take deep breaths, relax, just allow it, just be with it. And all the time women say to me, “That sounds nice but I have four kids, eight kids under the age of five, or whatever, a bunch of little kids at home all the time, they always need me, somebody’s always crying, or there’s a crisis happening, how in the world am I supposed to do this?”

Chantel: Yeah, I love that question because it goes back to who I help, the busy. So, I’m too busy, this emotion stuff is just we don’t have time for it. So, there’s so many ways and I think again it goes back to every individual. Every person is different and so I think there is these tools that we’re given all of the time, it’s learning what is working for you but you have to be willing to try a whole bunch of different things to see what works for you first.

So, if you just first say automatically, “I’m too busy to do this.” You have just basically thrown out all possibility for you to try and figure out what works for you. But some of the ways that I offer up to my people is, basically I will set aside emotion time. So, if you know, I think of witching hour and be like five/six o’clock is when it gets crazy and anxiety, overwhelm. Then I set aside time before that happens to let myself preemptively kind of go through that emotion. Alright, we know anxiety’s coming, I’m not trying to resist it, I’m not trying to say think my way out of it.

I’m kind of welcoming it and thinking it, letting it open the door and saying, “Come on in, I know you’re going to be here, let’s do this.” And sometimes it’s a longer process than other times. But sometimes just me acknowledging and saying, “I know you’re going to be here, it’s totally fine.” Just kind of what you’re saying, taking those deep breaths, just slowing things down, that’s maybe sometimes all that I need.

If I notice that it keeps repeating itself, it keeps showing up and I’m like, “What in the heck is going on?” Then that’s where I offer, maybe you do need to do some deeper work. And maybe you need to spend five/ten minutes at the end of the day or at the beginning of the day. And kind of going inside and doing that whole process of where is it in your body? What is it looking like? How does it feel? Breathing into it, relax into it, listening to it, what message are you trying to run away from.

So again, it goes based off of your situation but try different things. You’re never going to know until you try.

Jody: That’s good, I like that. One other thing and I just really thought about this as you were talking because I’m putting myself back in that situation where my kids were younger and I was trying out these things. I agree, if you can get into your bedroom for five minutes, or go for a drive or have a minute alone, do that. But also, I think you can do it while you’re taking care of the kids and making dinner. And here’s the thing I just thought of. We’re already multitasking, while we’re cooking dinner, the kids are crying or whatever, we’re still having thoughts.

We’re still instead of processing emotion we’re just resisting emotion but we’re still doing something with it, and making dinner, and changing the diapers. It’s just that usually the thoughts are escalating and making the emotion even worse, at least when I flash back to that time in my life. It was like, oh my gosh, this is so ridiculous and I have to do everything and I can’t believe. And then beating myself up. And the thoughts run away. And we resist the emotion while we’re changing diapers, making dinner, etc.

So, what we’re saying is instead of letting your mind run away with those thoughts, I remember distinctly this time I was stirring a pot of water or probably making macaroni cheese or something really fancy like that. And I had kids crying at my feet and I had emotion about other things, not even my kids, just stuff going on with my husband at work and stuff. And I remember being like, okay, I’m just going to do worry right now. And it was breathe, there it is, that feels funny in my chest, that feels heavy right here. I didn’t notice it does that before.

Breathe, breathe, meanwhile I’m stirring the pot, meanwhile the kids are crying. And then it’s sort of gone. And then a minute later, I feel it come up again. And I’m like, “Oh, okay.” And I just breathe, okay, what do I feel in my hands? Do I feel it in my throat? Do I feel it in my head? All the while still taking care of the kids, still doing this stuff. We’re doing it anyway. We’re in our heads and in our bodies anyway. And I like what you said about prepare ahead of time.

Okay, so if emotion comes up for me, if negative emotion tends to come up, I’m just going to remember to breathe and relax and feel what it feels like to be a woman feeling this emotion.

Chantel: Yeah. Well, if you say you don’t have time, it’s the buffer again. You’re just buffering away with it. It’s like, no, if you say you don’t have time to feel your emotions, that’s a big indicator, you’ve got to make the time. And show yourself you can do it in those times it feels super chaotic. That’s when you need it the most is when you’re feeling that way. So that’s just another place to watch.

Jody: It’s such good stuff. Okay, anything we’re leaving out here? I feel like we’ve covered a lot.

Chantel: No. Yeah, I think we’ve gone through it. And I think again it’s just being patient with yourself, I think especially if you haven’t been in the practice of feeling your emotions, it feels so unknown and I don’t know if I’m doing this right. I don’t know if this is even working. And I think it’s just like you’ve got to make sure you’re just being super compassionate with yourself and just slowing down. And knowing it is a process. It’s a skill actually to process and allow your emotions just like anything else.

You may not understand, the very first time we’re like, “I don’t know if I did that right.” Just keep doing it, just keep processing it.

Jody: That’s right. And we’re not trying to suggest that there is a right way to do it either. Please don’t think that’s what Chantel or I are saying. We’re just offering these are tools that have helped us but you might find a slightly different approach. What we do know is that feeling your feelings is much healthier than what we mostly do, resist, avoid, buffer or run away from them. And actually, not even that painful, not that big of a deal.

Chantel: No. You might notice too when you’re resisting it. And that’s what I’m learning more and more, just because of my situation, if you resist you actually create more complications for yourself. Our bodies are not meant to hold in our emotions. And so, it really is taking care of you when you feel your emotions. I notice for myself, migraines that I had all the time previous, I don’t even have them anymore. And I used to have two to three a week. So, it’s like, no, really our emotions are meant to be felt, they really do need to be allowed.

And you might find your health improves, your relationships. I mean so many things are going to improve the more we can actually process because we were given these emotions by Heavenly Father for a reason. They are here. They’re not a problem. So, it’s just letting them be there.

Jody: Yeah. And even an emotion like anger because this is the other one I get people, well, I remember I had a client once. I was teaching her, “You’ve just got to process and allow emotions.” And then she came back the next session, she’s like, “Well, my husband doesn’t like it.” I’m like, “Well, tell me, what happened?” And she’s like, “Well, I was really angry and so I came home and I slammed the door and then I threw the garbage across the floor because I was so mad that no one had taken it out.”

And I was like, “Oh, wait, that’s acting out on your emotions. That’s not processing. Processing emotions is something that happens internally. It’s very different than acting it out.”

Chantel: Yeah. Well, anger, you want it to be more powerful like that. It’s a lot of emotion that’s behind it, a lot of energy that’s behind that.

Jody: And I do think there may, with strong emotions like that, you might need a release of that energy. You might need to go outside and run round the block for a second. Or I used to tell my kids, you know when you hit your toe or something and it’s that zing of pain? Emotions can feel like that too and I always tell my kids, “Just go swear into the pillow and you’ll feel better.” And they always look at me like I’m crazy, that is not what they want to do but I’m like, “That’s what I like to do.” You might need a release of the energy like that.

There are healthy things you can do though, you don’t even have to swear into a pillow, you can find something out there.

Chantel: It’s a good one. I think that’s awesome. But I think it’s true, we need to go through the emotion and it’s action oriented. We have to kind of expend that. Because I think about any – why do we have anxiety sometimes? Back in the olden days it was to run, it was for safety. And so, we have a lot of adrenalin builds up in our bodies that does need a way out. So yes, you need to process it but then it is move, go move with it, go take a walk. Go run, do something with that emotion.

But I would say make sure you’re acknowledging that’s what the movement is. If you are moving with it, it’s like, okay, I notice you, anxiety, let’s go. Let’s go move with you. You’re bringing it along and kind of saying that is what you’re doing, is you’re processing the emotion as you run.

Jody: That’s the difference between buffering away from it or avoiding it is you’re telling it, “Okay, let’s go.”

Chantel: I don’t know if you saw that on my thing but I created a calm method of kind of going through the steps of the emotions just for that very reason. Because the different steps all the way down is C for calm, is to confront it, kind of we were saying, notice it, name it. A is to allow it, that’s to go inside, feel it, where is it at? L is to listen to it, so that’s where we’re talking about, go inside, listen to it and M is to move with it. So M is that last step, it’s so important to do that but we’re not putting it at very beginning where so many people think.

You’ve got to do all those steps preemptively before that and then move with it. Because so many people are like, “I’ve got to wait till I take action, I have to feel better first.” I’m like, “No, do all that and then bring it with you.”

Jody: That’s so good. I love that. Okay, Chantel, where can people go to get more help and all of your goodness?

Chantel: Well, I have a podcast as well, it’s Living and Loving Your Life. And then also just I’m on Instagram, chantelallencoaching, they can come and find me there.

Jody: I love it. Thank you for your time today.

Chantel: Yeah, thank you, I appreciate it.

                                                                                                                   

Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.