Are you addicted to drama? How to process those sh*tty emotions

In today's episode I am going to talk about how to process those deeper emotions under the surface.

 In this episode we discuss:

• When you're distracting yourself with other emotions
• Why you're doing this
• How to get to the root emotion and move forward

Show notes and the transcript can be found here: https://michellekevill.com/podcast

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Transcript

00:00

Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. And if not, I got you at least you are here. My name is Michelle Kevill. And I help high achieving corporate women feel passionate about their job again. So today's episode, it's, it's so funny because I'm, I'm literally doing it, I've literally doing it, I just finished, like doing some thought work in a model and was like, Oh, I'm doing this now. And it's the topic of today's episode, I'm still gonna figure out a title like I always do. But it's basically how you might be using other emotions, to distract yourself from truly feeling how you want to feel. Now, this is a little bit of like an introspective like deepish episode. But if you feel like you're always feeling something, but there's like something else missing under the surface, like it's like a surface feeling. This is definitely for you. We do it all the time. Our brains are very, like they're really stupid, but really smart at the same time. And it really is about how do we get to the real feelings and process that. So I want to give you like a little bit of a backstory, I'll use myself in these examples. So basically, I have had so much growth. So like we have the worryfree weekends program on at the moment, which is where you get to work with me for weeks one on one for free to trial out coaching, you know, just to see what it's like. And it's been growing like people have been signing up, I've been working with lots of people, I've been very, very busy. And all of a sudden, my brain has just gone straight into like maladaptive daydreaming, which if you don't know what that is, it's just the way you just daydream for no reason, not even just for like a little bit, but like a lot. And I usually only do this when like crap is hitting the fan. But it's so interesting how so many good things are happening, whether it be my corporate career and my business. And even my personal life. As you know, I'm getting married, and I'm organizing a wedding. And my brain has all of a sudden been like, I want to completely disassociate. And it has been feeling weirdly a lot of stress. And I feel like it's been trying to create drama, out of almost what feels like nothing. And I couldn't figure out what it was. And then it wasn't until and I really didn't want to do this like today, I felt so cranky, so angry, so low, even there's loads of good stuff happening right now. And I'm like, What the hell is going on. And then when I really dug in deep, at the end of the day, I just don't feel safe. I do not feel safe in my environment right now I do not feel safe. And I thought, Oh my God, because I actually planned to do this episode like a week ago. And I was like, you know, I'm doing the thing I'm actually talking about. And it is so common for us like as humans to do this, right. Like if we take a work example, what I see a lot in my clients who are also doing the same thing is that they're doing a ton of work. And I talked about this a lot in my really earlier episodes. workaholism is sort of flex. And they are working so much and they are taking on all this work, but they don't want to as well, like they're coming to me like I'm taking all this on blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, we teach them how to get out of that pattern, etc. But there's almost this deep part that wants to go back into that, or use something else to feel that coping mechanism. And what is actually happening if this is something like you if you always are feeling stressed in your job, even when things are going like okay, but all of a sudden, like things will just feel stressful. And sometimes it's just out of the blue. It doesn't even have to relate to work. It could just relate to like home life, but things are going well. Things are going well in your life relatively well. Right. But then you will all of a sudden feeling really stressed or feeling really disorientating. What is likely happening, your brain and body are not used to things being this calm or being this okay or being this safe. It only knows those ups and downs, those cortisol peaks and highs. So it will try to recreate that because that is safe. And it's crazy because subconsciously your brain is actually searching you could say it's searching for drama, and it will look for it. Please don't use this to now gaslight yourself and then look back and all the times and pinpoint where you are making it worse for yourself. You do not know that this is happening even me I'm a fucking coach. And I literally just figured out now what is going on. This is why like this work is so powerful because I would have just kept existing like this not knowing what is happening, which is why you shouldn't 100% Sign up for the worry free weekends program because there's the exact stuff you will learn in those four weeks seeing really shitty patterns for what they are being able to get out of them. Being able to enjoy your weekend being able to do the thing that you want to do and not create more drama for yourself. And for me and for a lot of my clients. When they're sitting there being like, oh my god, like, I can't believe I'm doing this. Like, why am I doing this? I asked the question I want you to tell like go back to your childhood go back to school. What was her Putting in that environment, what environment were you growing up in what felt safe for you? And for me, it was a pretty emotionally chaotic one with lots of peaks and troughs of cortisol and just being on like a hiker cortisol high all the time. So of course, right now, when things are going well, like really well, my business, corporate is pretty good. Relationship is good. Marriage getting married, exciting thing is happening. I'm not having like, like, you could say, my stress hormones are chill, my body is freaking the fuck out. It's like, whoa, right? This isn't what we're used to. I don't like this, I need you to create some drama. For me. I laugh about it, because it's just like I say brains are the smartest things ever. But they're also the most stupid things ever. It is only used to that environment. So we're going to want to recreate that environment for you, even though it is fucking painful for you. And it sucks. But that part of you like the piece of advice I can give you right now, if you are in the thick of this and you had this realization, while listening to it, do not get angry at the part of you, that is wanting to like look for drama or stress you out. It is like a tiny child, it doesn't know any better. It is not your thinking brain, it is not your prefrontal cortex, okay, you objectively know that things in your life are relatively okay and safe. That other part of you does not. It is why when my clients are working on like, you know, lessening your hours and not overworking all the time. They are blast, we do it in like really, really small increments, all of a sudden, they want to like eat more takeaway or drink more wine or something like that, which again, is nothing wrong with that. But just noticing where this is coming from is your brain now looking for something else. To create that high as such, you need to get yourself used to things being like you need to create safety, with things being okay and carbon, your life. Now your life doesn't have to be exactly like calm or perfect, they can still be kind of some chaos going on around you. Even with that what will sometimes happen is your brain may not want to process that deeper emotion that is sitting under at all. It's like anger, for example, they say, anger underneath anger is actually sadness. But it's, for me, anger, my anger pops up. Because I was never able to truly process that sadness, that deep sadness that I have, it was either not safe for me, or I do not want to touch it. Hence the anger just boils up. It's kinda like that, what emotions are you having right now that are surface layer emotions that are there to protect you from a deeper level of trauma. You hear sometimes on the podcast, I use a little bit of humor for me, I also like to use humor to avoid my feelings. And the problem is like, it might not sound that bad, but you then just go through life. Not being able, like you wonder why you can't achieve those like goals that you want, why you keep like to an extent pulling yourself back, well, you can't go do that thing. Or you're too scared to try that thing where you're, you know, you don't want to go after that promotion, you don't want to take on that new project. And you keep wondering why that is. And your brain gives you all these excuses. It's because you don't know how to work with your brain. And when you learn how to work with your brain and with your nervous system, you can kind of I like to say retrain, but it is in a way going against your wiring as such, to do the things you want to do, because anything that is challenging goes against anything that is comfortable for you. And think about it, you're always expanding your capacity, right? Like when you left, like college uni, whatever it is, you went to a corporate job, you expand your capacity and completely new environment, you're always and it was like the stressful and you had to figure things out. And for some of you it is still stressful now because you don't have the emotional tools to manage all that type of stuff you are making work I mean so much about you as an individual, you're making any failure mean something wrong with you and your capability versus sometimes just shit happens at work for some of you a bit further along, you're doing the work, you're doing the emotional work to get all through this. And now you're faced with all this like deeper emotions that were you kind of never saw before. And then now they're lurking beneath the surface and you're just like, oh, this is not fun. So if you feel like you are avoiding any kind of deeper emotions, I would just ask yourself, like, what emotion could

09:37

I be hiding from right now? I'd really and this is where like the model and the two key things that I always talk about is even if you want it if you can't even do that if you're like No, maybe your body is blocking you just ask like do a frickin thought download off that thing that is actually annoying you or whatever it is or however however you're feeling etc. And ask why or why is that a pro alum and keep going deeper because it's like a wormhole. Like it's so weird even when I just did this now how it was just something like I don't feel happy right now no near and it just went down to like, you know, I kept going it didn't matter for download and it just ended up popping up being like I don't feel safe. It's like, oh, wow, there you go. And it takes practice to do that. So you need to keep practicing that. Secondly, do not fucking shame yourself if you are thinking that you might be doing this right now and that you're using another emotion to avoid the real emotion and that you are seeking out drama. You're like, you really have to view it like a tiny inner person that doesn't know any better. And you've got to give it compassion, you got to give yourself compassion because getting angry at it. Again, you probably just learnt that shit as well. It's probably your other defense mechanism coming in to be like, You know what we'll do to stop it. Well, we'll get angry at you. If I'm angry at you, then it will stop. But what does anger do? Think about it? What does anger do for you? Other than make you feel ashamed of yourself shitty and depressed? You really need to be practicing that. Yeah, you do. I'm doing this we're doing this right now. It's okay, this is allows happening. We'll figure it out together like I love you, etc. It sounds fucking wishy washy, but it is so true. Because it's likely the shit that you didn't get as a child. And then you were just repeating what works for you. And what did work was very likely someone berating you, and pushing you and like, you know, really high expectations. Hence, you know, high achieving, it's like the same trend. If you can accept that I guarantee you, you're going to feel so much more better. Because once you just accept that this is what you're doing right now you're using other shit, to feel other things to not feel the real feeling. What you're doing is you're creating a level of awareness but also safety with yourself because your brain and body don't want you to touch it because they think it's dangerous. And the only way to move forward is by creating safety so that immersion can pop up. And that's literally just by like feeling how you feel right now feeling it feels right now with that surface level immersion, not being addictive yourself showing yourself Self Compassion and seeing then and what happened is didn't like, what happened this for me, like a good wake up in feeling like this. But I was able to kind of just deep dive into it within an hour and really surface it up and really figure out what it is. And I My body feels so much calmer because it feels like yes, I'm being listened to right now. And I will do the fucking work that I need to do to continue to create that safety when things apparently when things are stable, it feels a little bit unstable. And just accepting that that's okay. That is okay, right now, a lot of this, especially when it comes to distracting emotions. Some people are like, right, how do I fix it? What do I do? And I'm like, it really is just a level of acceptance. Because you're not ready, like the other stuff which you learn again in the program about like changing your thoughts, etc. Seeing those patterns, that's, yes, that's doable, you can do it, etc. But you can't quickly skip to that part without accepting where you're at right now, creating safety is a completely different ballgame. It is really at a deep level, accepting that you are a bit of a dick to yourself and that there's a part of you that is causing a little bit of drama, and that's okay. We just need to teach it better. It's a lot of it is honestly like reflux and parenting yourself as well. Well, that's all for today's episode, a bit of a like a, I don't even say wishy washy. It's kind of just like a deeper one. It's something I've been observing myself and with some of my clients and I wanted to do an episode to kind of help you with that. So yeah, I'll see you next week. Bye.