Can Venting About Work Ruin Your Relationship? w/ Raven Shamballa

Do you vent to your partner or to other close relationships in your life about work? You may think this is harmless. After all, you’re just letting off some steam but it could have a long term affect on your relationship.

Raven Shamballa is a Master Energy Healer, a spiritual counselor and senior yoga teacher for over 25 years. She holds a master’s degree in counseling and is formerly a marriage and family therapist. She has a unique perspective on psychological disorders and believes that clearing the energy body of discordant energy can heal most psychological ailments. Raven has authored four books and her most notable title is the 100 Chakra System, An Introduction to Negative Energy Release Work.  

The 100 Chakra System book describes an expanded perception of the energy body up to 100 Chakras, and discusses different types of negative energies that can invade the chakra system.  Her other titles are 10 Cosmic Dimension, A Spiritual Guidebook to Ascension, 3 Pendulum Languages, and 7 Primary Chakra System.

Join Amy and Raven in this episode as they delve into how bringing your work home can affect personal relationships. 

In this episode, you will learn: 

• How to make the shift from the workplace to home life at the end of the day
• Why you should limit how long you vent to your partner 
• How leaders can reframe employee complaints into a more positive conversation
• How to eliminate toxic workplace energy

Quote from the show - ‘‘Keep venting to 15 to 20 minutes. And if you need to vent longer than that, seriously, find a life coach and save your partner because what is it your partner wants? They want the beautiful person they fell in love with. They want the beautiful side of them. They know that work is challenging and they want them to release that, but they cannot be the only vehicle of release.  That will end up destroying a relationship.’’

About the host: 

Amy Lynn Durham is the Founder of Create Magic At Work™ and an Executive and Spiritual Intelligence Coach.  She uniquely blends the ethereal and the tactical to get maximum results for her clients.

Connect with Amy: 

• Sign up for: Spiritual Intelligence for Integral Leadership
• Free Activity: Three Steps To Love Your Job & Life Today
• LinkedIn: Amy Lynn Durham
• Instagram: @createmagicatwork
• Website: https://createmagicatwork.net/

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Transcript

Amy Lynn Durham: 0:05

Hey everyone, it's Amy Lynn Durham and you're listening to Create Magic At Work. Create Magic At Work is on a mission to equip senior leaders with tools they need to be a true servant leader and actually understand what that means. Improve employee engagement, retain top talent, and transform your workplace culture to have less stress and drama. So, let's start making magic! Hi, everyone, welcome to another episode of Create Magic At Work. Today. I'm so excited to share this individual with you. She's been a longtime friend of mine, and her name is Raven Shamballa. She's a master energy healer, a spiritual counselor and senior yoga teacher for over 25 years. She holds a master's degree in counseling and is formerly a marriage and family therapist. She has a unique perspective on psychological disorders and believes that clearing the energy body of discordant energy can heal most psychological ailments. Raven has authored four books, the 100 chakra system book describes an expanded perception of the energy body up to 100 chakras, and discusses different types of negative energies that can invade the chakra system. Self healing methods for staying clear are given in the book. And the audio can be found on YouTube. Raven clears depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and a host of other psychological issues through her style of deep trance meditation, called negative energy release work, which is described in the"100 Chakra System". I asked Raven to join us today on Create Magic At Work because there's a lot of anxiety in the workplace and I wanted to bring her unique perspective to this. Also, she has some really great insights on relationships at home, and how they pertain to the workplace. So we're going to get into that today. Raven, welcome to Create Magic At Work. Thank you for being here.

Raven Shamballa: 2:04

Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm super excited to be here!

Amy Lynn Durham: 2:09

Awesome. Let's get right into it. Because what really intrigued me when you and I were talking on our own, were the insights that you had in regards to when someone is off of work? Or how do we, I believe you were calling it the next part of your day or the second shift. I know, the second shift is often referred to women when they have to go home and do more work. But for you, you were talking about when, for example, I get off work, and I go home, and I want to relax, but then my partner is venting to me about their day and they're emotionally hijacking me. Different concepts like that. So I wanted you to elaborate on that for the listeners and talk about what are the parameters around venting to your partner, when you're off work, about work?

Raven Shamballa: 3:04

Good, very good. So as a marriage counselor, I do call it the second shift, whatever gender you identify with, there's this concept that we have, that we just spent 8, potentially 9-10 hours with commute at the office place, and then we're going to go home to unwind and relax. But instead of unwinding and relaxing, we're met with a partner that we don't know what their temperature check is, in terms of their emotional state, we're met with bills, we're met with problems that occurred with the kids, we're met with a messy home. So we walk into a situation where we had the expectation that this is going to be my time to relax and wind down. Instead, we are met with the second shift, which is my home life. And instead of being able to relax, I have to come into attention, I have to deal with disciplining, I have to deal with bills, I have to deal with a partner. So first of all, coming into acceptance with that is really important. And I talked about where can we find the time to transition and prepare ourselves for the second shift. And for most people that's on the commute from office to home. If you're commuting 15 to 20 minutes or longer, that can become an ideal space for you to energetically shift, ground, center and prepare for the second shift with the consciousness that you are going to get some alone time but it may not be until eight or nine o'clock. It's probably not going to be right when you walk in the door. Giving that consciousness to people in and of itself will help them shift their mindset in terms of how they're dealing with this second shift. So that's one thing. I want to talk about venting and rules around venting. As a marriage counselor, I would say this, do not vent to your partner for more than 15 or 20 minutes, and watch the clock. And I would also say, if a couple comes in for marriage counseling, then I'm going to talk to both of them. So both people are on the same page with the, "I know you had a terrible day, sweetie, but I need it to not be more than 20 minutes". Energetically, if you could see the vibration, the color of the vibration of angry words coming out of your mouth. Okay, it's invisible, that spectrum is invisible. When we start to talk about the chakras and energy body, we're going to go into biofeedback or we're gonna go into all kinds of areas that are literally invisible, so we can't really see it. But you can imagine it, I want you to imagine that you had the ability to see what these angry words look like when it's coming out of your vocal cords and directed at another person, if you could see it, that person would look red, irritated, their vocalizations would be coming out very fast and strong, and they would be hitting the person. And that person would be absorbing all of that uncomfortable energy, from complaints at work, over work, whatever the situation is that they feel like they want to release. I've heard in marriage counseling lots of times, "but I want my best friend to know me, and I want them to understand my day." And I do think that's important. I do think that people in intimate relationships should share. But when the partner is in the routine of experiencing themselves in the place of a therapist receiving a lot of uncomfortable emotions at them. They're not trained to handle that. It could bring them down, it could put them into a very depressed state. And the person that's communicating, they're just releasing, they're just talking about what happened at work. But the person who's receiving is literally receiving a lot of this annoyance, irritation, or "Red", frustration, energy, and then that's going to affect your partnership. In a coupling relationship or a roommate situation, everybody is sharing the energy. So if you know, if you or your partner is in a really great mood, you walk through the door, and you bring them down, now we've got two people that are down, and then that affects the children. And now the second shift has just gone south. So if people could just be conscious about the vibrations of their voice when they're complaining, right, that's venting, you're releasing a complaint? If they could just get conscious about that, and how do they really want the second shift to go? I mean, what is it that they're trying to create, if they're trying to create harmony, a nice dinner, hugs, venting becomes something that works against them. And this is the role of the Life or Executive Coach or the therapist, they are trained. Hopefully, they're trained to receive that negative energy without it affecting them personally, your significant other is probably not trained to receive that energy and doesn't know what to do with it. And a lot of times, it just causes a big fight. And now, the whole relationship is going in a direction that you or them did not intend. So, keep venting to 15 to 20 minutes. And if you need to vent longer than that, seriously, find a life or executive coach and save your partner! Because, what does your partner want, they want that beautiful person they fell in love with. They want the beautiful side of them. They know that work is challenging, and they want them to release that but they cannot be the only vehicle of release that will end up destroying a relationship.

Amy Lynn Durham: 9:30

The other day I asked a friend I said, "Can I just vent for 10 minutes?" I just need to get get this out with someone. And they're like,"yeah," and they held space for me to vent. I was conscious of not making sure it went over a specific timeframe, because you and I had had that conversation before. Is it okay for venting, if you ask permission? Then there's another thing I recommend with Create Magic At Work, where this happens, just some thoughts that came up while you were sharing. This happens a lot in the workplace with Leaders. We talk about skill 19 in (SQ) Spiritual Intelligence, it's making wise and compassionate decisions. And oftentimes, leaders aren't making wise and compassionate decisions for themselves. And they are confusing leadership with being an open ear to venting all day, because they're really empathetic leaders. And then I think by default, they end up taking that home to their partners and their families. So let's take it all the way back into the workplace. What would you say to that executive leader that is going above and beyond to be a listener on the phone to employees and their complaints and letting them vent? How can they create boundaries for themselves in the workplace to even maybe stop from having to take it all the way home?

Raven Shamballa: 11:14

Okay, to your question, is it okay to ask permission before by they vent? Definitely, in a partnering/personal relationship, I think that's a really good strategy. You know,"I had a really bad day today, are you willing to hear me? Just could you give me 15 or 20 minutes?" I think that's appropriate. And in the terms of leading to a divorce is when it becomes a habit. And it happens every day, and the person's venting without consciousness. So if we can vent with consciousness, that will help the situation a lot, getting the buy in from your partner, "I'm here, I'm available, I'm ready to listen to you." In terms of managing employees, listening to employees vent all day, I would absolutely put that into a timeframe. I would also try to reframe, you know, the purpose of the conversation, I might even say, I understand that the purpose of this conversation is that you have a complaint, and you'd like to see some changes done, I would like for you to focus on the changes. And I would like for you to speak about the complaints in the most positive way that you can. And I am not here to be yelled at. So that's one thing I would say to if I were an executive, I'm here to hear your complaint, you've got 20 minutes, let's focus on the positive. What is it that you would like to change? In psychology, we call that reframing. I always say this, state the obvious and be upfront, know what you're getting yourself into. As a leader, what's appropriate is to say, I know that we're here for an uncomfortable subject, I know that this meeting is going to last 30 minutes. I want this to be positive. The outcome of this 30 minutes should be what we would like to see improved or changed. And if you don't get it all out, fill out the form and put it in my inbox. Go!

Amy Lynn Durham: 13:21

Oh, I love how you're saying you're stating the boundaries before the discussion is starting? Correct? And reframing is huge in coaching as well. So to me, just to echo back what you're saying, you're talking about setting the boundaries before it starts and making sure everybody understands the ground rules of how the conversation is going to go, so it doesn't go in the wrong direction.

Raven Shamballa: 13:48

And focusing on the positive. Focusing on, "What is the positive outcome you would like to receive?"

Amy Lynn Durham: 13:55

Yes, architecture, right, not archaeology, we want to build instead of dig up. And then also in the beginning of our conversation when you were talking about the words that we're using, words are very powerful. And that's why you're stressing all of these points in our conversation. When you were talking about the colors and the way angry words look energetically and things like that. It reminded me of a scientific study, I want to share with the listeners that I've talked about before, where they had two plants in the study and one plant, everyone had to speak hateful words to the plant, and then the other plant, everyone had to speak beautiful, loving words to the plant. And of course, you can probably deduce what occurred, the plant that had the hateful words spoken to it just shriveled up and died. And the one that had the beautiful words spoken to it just grew and flourished. I want to tell that story and paint that picture as an analogy to what you were saying in the beginning of the conversation. Next question, let's say you forgot to set these parameters or let's say (we want to talk about radical self forgiveness too.) If you're making a mistake and you vented all over your partner or you let an employee, just, you know, go at it with you. How do you eliminate the toxic workplace energy or that toxic energy? What can you do?

Raven Shamballa: 15:23

There is a concept in spiritual counseling and spirituality called attunement. Attunement is when you attune to somebody else in the room. Whoever has the highest power. In the case of spirituality, we want to attune to a very high spiritual being and when we do that, it lifts us up to that frequency. It's called attunement. Now, attunement is happening all the time. We can attune to sports, we can attune to a horror film, we can attune to the strongest leader in the workplace, what I normally say is the strongest leader in the room, okay, there will be one person that will be stronger. Normally it's the leader, right? That's why they're in a leadership position. Leading the group, everybody will attune to that person, everybody will attune to the emotional qualities of your leader. So a lot of it depends on the emotional awareness of the leader. Because if they're having a really hard time, if they're really stressed out, if they're really being pulled off, and a whole bunch of different directions where they can't focus, and then that comes out in a angry comment to somebody who then goes, "Oh, my gosh, that guy's angry today." And then that becomes a gossipy item, "so and so just yelled at me", that goes all around the work room. The quality and the emotional state of the leader is just as important as their academic skills, and all of their other skills, because the whole organization will attune to that leader. So leaders, really, that's why your work is so important in terms of "where can I improve myself?", if you're a strong business leader, you should be in the habit of taking and receiving feedback. And one of the feedbacks is"where am I in my emotional state?", as a marriage counselor in Southern California for 15 years, more than one C level person has come into my office, so overwhelmed with stress and anxiety that they've got negative coping skills going on. Could be alcohol, right could be some other vice that distracts them from the agitation at work, but then produces a side effect, like a standing joke when I was doing corporate work setting resolution was you never know who's the functioning alcoholic in the room. People drink a half a glass, or a half a bottle bottle of wine, you know, they wake up the next morning, they got to be at work at eight. They'll be "awake" by 10. You know, but what kind of mood does that cause? So the emotional state of our leadership is so important. What comes forward is what are you going to choose as your positive coping skills? And, when are you going to take those skills? For example, what can we do after work or before work that's a positive coping skill. There's not that many, I mean, we can exercise. Most corporate leaders will exercise and it's one of the best things they can do to let off steam and let off venting. So you know, when you're on that treadmill, maybe that's your relaxation time you're listening to relaxing music to bring you down. Maybe that's your motivation time you're listening to Tony Robbins or something that's gonna motivate you to motivate your team. Maybe you're listening to just some positive vehicle that says, You know what, for whatever reason, I am placed in this leadership position, how am I going to guide my flock? And whatever habits or energies you put out, to your assistant or to other people you feel are peers. It goes all over the office. Come on! You do a self reflection right now, if you are in a leadership position. What would my employees say about my person? What would they say about me? I just saw a story in the news about a CEO who decided, he was running a credit card data center. And he had a bunch of customer service reps making between $35k and $40,000 a year, this CEO decided to cut his income and give everybody in the company $70,000, double their salaries, and reduce his own. Now that created a happy workforce, a loyal workforce, people feeling like, I'm never going to leave this company, this company values me, it allowed people to feel like they were making enough money to support children. How many people don't have children in our world, because they don't feel like they're making enough money to support a child? A lot. A lot. We need leaders to think about "what energy am I personally putting out?" And then how am I assisting my employees in creating that balance, so that they feel loved and nurtured and supported, that they want to come to work every day, and they're like, this is the best place to work, I would never leave the situation. And when you have employees that feel that way, your corporation is going to soar. It's going to soar because everybody is working as a team and everybody loves to work there. And everybody wants to see it happen for themselves and everyone else and they feel like it's fair. They feel like it's fair.

Amy Lynn Durham: 21:36

Hey, everyone, Amy here, are you looking to create a life with more inner and outer peace. Regardless of the situation you find yourself in. Gain unexpected insights into your leadership strengths. You can expand your understanding of your leadership skills, like being a wise and effective change agent, servant leadership and get tips to operate from a place of peace and wisdom with my SQ experience. It allows you to examine where you are today on developing the skills of spiritual intelligence. I'm a certified SQ 21 Coach. And I now offer a 3 month, 1:1 SQ experience that helps you have less stress, more balance and brings value and meaning to your work and life. If you're interested in joining me on this transformational journey, and you're open to doing the work, please reach out to me and let me know that you want to get started on the SQ experience. You can go to www.createmagicatwork.net and click on work with me. That's me, Amy. Or you can just direct message me on any social media platform under create magic at work or on LinkedIn under Amy Lynn Durham, I look forward to hearing from you. Sending magic your way! And they feel seen they feel valued. They feel heard. They feel like they matter. And that creates an engaged workforce. And you know some of that I have to share with the listeners because we talk about sq a lot throughout the create magic at work podcast, when you're talking about attunement, in SQ talk, that's maybe accessing your higher self to that place within you that comes from wisdom and compassion and love and putting your ego aside. And there's data backed points to what you're saying, as a leader, the way you're holding yourself ripples out to your team 10 times over. So if we're talking about angry agitation, you can multiply that by 10 with your team, if that's the way you're holding yourself as a leader. And then we get into, well how can I be a calm & healing presence, you just shared a ton of great tips. And really in SQ, wrap all those tips you just shared up, and if I can show up from my higher self as much as possible, and skill build in that area, then others can show up as their higher selves in my presence, because they'll operate from that space if I start to operate from that space, right? that 10 time ripple effect. So really great stuff that you shared. This episode has been so valuable with tips to just operate from that space. With every guest, I pull one of my journal prompt cards and they get a question on the fly. But before we do that, I also ask every guest What does servant leadership mean to you?

Raven Shamballa: 24:34

Servant leadership to me means you find a way to give back to your employees and your community and in a genuine way, in a genuine way, not in a fake way. It means that you find others that are inspired to serve and you put them in charge of a project. Let's feed the homeless for Thanksgiving and put the new committee out there and foster a service project, you know, getting people together to serve the community. And right now, there's some kind of bottleneck going on in corporate America, I don't really understand it. I used to work for IBM but no longer. I don't really understand the bottlenecks there with why it's not more fair, why people feel it's not more fair, or why there isn't more service. But I know corporations do try to give back to the community. I think that's a great idea. Just make sure it's genuine and find those people within the organization that will really benefit from service, put them in charge of those little projects and see how far it will go within your own organization.

Amy Lynn Durham: 25:48

Yeah, I love how you took it out from the company and the employees to also the community. Often when we think of servant leadership, many leaders think, Oh, I'm serving my employees, I'm serving my customers, I'm serving my shareholders. But we also have to take it out a step further into what's the impact that is rippling out into the community, like you just said, or the impact that we're leaving on the planet with my decisions that I'm making today? What's my breadth of time perception? And how is this decision that I'm making today, affecting generations down the line? So thank you for pointing that out. All right. I'm gonna pull a message for you today Raven from my journal, prompt card deck. This is a deck I designed for the workplace. Each card has an affirmation, and then two questions for you to answer. We can take one or two depending on how lengthy they are. But for anyone listening, no matter when you're listening to this episode, this message is for you as well. Okay, this card is just jumping out at me. So you got Partnership! I think that's a nice one for you and I today. The affirmation is, "The people in my network are supportive and genuine." So great positive framing, we talked about positive framing words earlier,"the people in my network are supportive and genuine." Raven, what are some ways either you or the listeners can create a give and take balance with their work?

Raven Shamballa: 27:29

Well, we already talked about setting boundaries. Other things I might talk about is coming into acceptance with the fact that you and probably all of your employees are not going to get it all done. Ever. And depending on your situation, I've gotten to study broad across markets, you know, there's social workers, for example, they're never going to get through the 200 cases, they're going to get through 40. And then tomorrow, there'll be 250. So coming into acceptance with "what is capable for me to do?" is really important, setting those boundaries, finding those positive coping skills. You know, meditation, exercise, the 20 minutes in the car, preparing yourself for the second shift. There are other positive situations, but we are here on Earth, to be holistic beings. We are here to be artistic, we're here to be creative. We're here, not just to work for profit. And when we start to consider what does a holistic employee look like? What does work balance look like? It's okay for people to say, No, I put in my hours and I need to balance, I need to be with my family. Please don't give me this other project. It would be impossible for me to be successful. And being willing to hear and listen to that. And that's kind of the direction I would go with being willing to allow your employees to create boundaries for work home balance. And again, what are we trying to create? That's the most important thing. We are trying to create employees that love going to work every day, that feel it's a fair situation, that wouldn't want to work anyplace else, they definitely would not want to quit working for you, and call your competitor because they have loyalty to you. And if you can generate that through balance, a more balanced employee, you're gonna have a lot less, you know,"he didn't care for me. So I'm just gonna hang up with this software company and take all of my connections over to that software company." The way in which we're treating our employees, caring for our employees, giving our employees opportunities to balance, creating that loyalty, that is what's going to keep the business functioning well and accelerating in profits.

Amy Lynn Durham: 30:18

Really great. Thank you for sharing that insight. I think anything if you think about it in life, anything that's not in moderation or in balance, ends up costing us in some way. The World Health Organization just released a few weeks ago that working more than 55 hours a week shortens your life by 10 to 15 years, because it causes heart disease later in your life. And then just all the wonderful tips you shared about releasing some of that energy. You don't have to meditate, right? You can do exercise. As a corporate leader, I remember when I was traveling, I was so exhausted, I started boxing, because it just for some reason, it just got all of that off me, whatever I was carrying around. I was exhausted from traveling, you would think I would want to maybe get a massage or get a meditation or do a meditation, but no, I started boxing and it really changed things for me. So whatever your self prescription is, and what works for you. Go out and do it. I do have one more question. Normally, I don't ask a question after the journal prompts, but I have to bring this up. We talked about your commute home and hitting that reset button. What about the individuals that are in a hybrid workspace or working from home? Can you offer one more tip for them? As far as shifting that energy before they log off Zoom or something like that.

Raven Shamballa: 31:50

Absolutely! Tell your family, you're off at 6pm. And that's when you're going to start dinner, you clock

off at 5: 31:55

30pm. And you take 5:30pm to 6pm in your office relaxing, Getting on your elliptical that's in the corner. You know, whatever it is that you need to do that's positive and constructive. That's what you do. You just adjust your work schedule to accommodate your 20 or 30 minute shift time.

Amy Lynn Durham: 32:19

Perfect. Thank you so much for being a guest on Create Magic At Work. You've brought so much value to the listeners as far as how they can operate from their higher self as leaders. If someone wants to get a hold of you. How can they reach out?

Raven Shamballa: 32:37

My website is ravenlightbody.com. Or you could just Google Raven Shamballa & I come up all over the place. My most notable book is the 100 chakra system and I consider myself a yoga teacher. So if you cross over into pilates or yoga, you might really resonate.

Amy Lynn Durham: 33:02

Awesome. We'll put all of the links to contact Raven in the episode notes of the show as well. Raven, thank you so much for helping to Create Magic At Work and take care!

Raven Shamballa: 33:15

Blessings, see you and everyone else. Thank you~

Amy Lynn Durham: 33:18

Hi everyone, it's Amy here. Thank you for listening to the latest episode of Create Magic At Work and please come back often and subscribe, rate and review the podcast. Keep joining us for more exciting episodes where we help you transform workplace culture to systems that create less stress and have high productivity and profitability. You can get your own tools for the workplace at www.createmagicatwork.net I have a new Create Magic At Work "The Journal" that just released and it invites you to reflect about different themes for work and your career. Each section of The Journal contains a topic, an affirmation and two prompt questions to help you journal your thoughts. Topics are like, Inspiring Others, Mentorship, Expansion and Productivity. So connect with me at www.createmagicatwork.net. Also connect with me on LinkedIn under Amy Lynn Durham, sending magic to everyone and see you next time.