Tuning into Emotions

What if the emotions rising in you aren’t random at all—but signals asking you to slow down, listen, and respond with more care?

In this episode of Wellness in Every Season, Autumn Carter explores what it really looks like to tune into the emotions that are coming up for you instead of pushing them down, reacting on autopilot, or carrying them until everything spills over. Drawing from her own life as a mom of four, she shares how stress, overstimulation, and dysregulation can build quietly beneath the surface until one small moment feels like the final crack in the dam.

Autumn walks through how to pause and check in with yourself in real time, identify what you’re actually feeling, and notice where those emotions may be living in your body. She also unpacks how present reactions can be tied to past experiences, stored stress, or old patterns that no longer fit who you are now. This episode is a gentle but honest invitation to get curious about your triggers, soften your inner response, and choose reflection over shame.

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, reactive, stretched thin, or like your emotions are louder than you want them to be, this conversation will help you slow the swirl and reconnect with yourself. Because healing often starts by noticing what’s happening beneath the surface—and choosing to meet it with compassion.

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Transcript

Welcome to Wellness

SPEAKER_01 0:02

This is episode 193. This is similar to what we've already talked about, so I'm trying to give you layers here, but this one is about tuning into emotions that are coming up for you. Welcome to Wellness in Every Season. We talk all things wellness to help you align yourself, align with your goals, find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself. If you are listening for the first time, welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. And let's get started in the rest of the podcast. I'm a parent of four little kids. So let me tell you, I get triggered often.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Real here.

Name Your Emotions

SPEAKER_01 0:51

But the amazing thing is when I take space for myself to decompress, like I did over the weekend. I had I was in some situations where I had to be super social. And I am somebody who can handle it for a couple hours and then I seriously need a break. And orchids, I need to take breaks. So during the summer, I get very dysregulated from that. And then if I am at retreats where there's a lot of social interaction, especially if they're not my own retreat, or conventions, or networking events, or church events that are longer, bigger, I get dysregulated. So for me, it's taking that time out for myself and then afterwards decompressing and what came up for me, what's going on? Kind of that idea. So let's start with backing up. And this is the way I start my newsletter a lot of the time is take a minute to really take stock of how are you right now in this minute? What's coming up for you? What are you feeling? What kind of emotions are you feeling? And I can name some off for you using my trusty dealer over here. You're feeling respected. That sounds like a great feeling. I'll take that one. Maybe you're feeling empowered, confident, important, determined.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Yay if you are, share those. Maybe you're feeling passionate, enthusiastic, bliss, amused.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

I'm gonna repeat these. I'm gonna take this with me so that hopefully you can hear me. Okay, maybe you're feeling proud, determined, successful, worthy, and I know you can't read these words if you're watching the video. You also can't see my face, but you can hear me. Maybe you're feeling pleasure, amused, enthusiastic, satisfied. These are great ones. These are under strong and happy. Maybe you're feeling that thing, sentimental, trusting, relaxed. Love that one.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

That's under calm. Or maybe you're feeling hostile, grumpy, jealous, annoyed, rage, especially if you're driving. If you're feeling that, take some extra XL.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Disgust, aggressive, frustrated, under the anger category of the if you're wanting a wheel like this, just look up a motion wheel and you'll find it.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Maybe you're feeling stressed, shock, worry, panic, nervous, insecure, confused, paranoid, overwhelmed, tension, skeptical, anxious.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

I feel like a lot of people feel more of the fear area side. I've named off all of the areas. Everything in that area for you. Maybe you're feeling isolated, ashamed, neglected, lonely, weak, hurt, disappointed, unmotivated, hopeless, betrayed, helpless, rejected.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

And maybe you're feeling like a swirl of all of them. Like the chocolate vanilla ice cream swirl.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

You're welcome if now you're craving ice cream. Do you know it's normal to feel that? Sometimes they can oop.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Sometimes they can be very conflicting emotion. Like the sad side of the wheel and the strong side of the wheel. So what's coming up for you? What are you feeling in this moment?

Somatic Body Check

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Not have you been feeling will you be feeling, but right now. And then let's go a little somatically. Where is that feeling residing in your body? And sometimes the answer is everywhere. Duh. But go a little deeper. Where does it feel like the pressure point is that's letting that's then making it expand out?

Find the Why and Safety

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Can you maybe breathe into that area? What is now let's go back. What is the emotion that you feel most of the time? Is that stress one? If it is, you're my person. Let's talk. Let's go into the why. Here's the tuning in. Why is this happening?

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Is this maybe a trigger of something that happened in your past? Are they actually related? Or is this where your body is storing this information going into the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response? And they're trying to connect them, but they're not really. Because sometimes you can feel that nerve-sided, nervous and excited energy, and it brings you back to this time when something bad was actually happening. You had similar emotions. That's really frustrating when that happened. Kind of like that weird spider web. Here's where the power comes in and tuning into those emotions because then you can kind of snip them. Snip those connections and be like, those aren't related.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

I'm okay right now. Bring in your sense of safety. And if any of you have done therapy, this is the beginning part of therapy of remembering your safe space. And you can do this right now. When was the last time you felt totally safe? Maybe it's an experience or a person, but bring yourself back there.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Maybe you just need to go back to what we talked about a couple episodes ago where you're just clenching all your muscles and then you relax them.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Especially if it's in a certain area. Think about that for a second. Maybe practice it. Okay. Now what else is coming up? Where is that deeper layer?

SPEAKER_01 7:36

And if you need to be able to do this every night or certain times a day, several times a day, whatever. Go back to a previous episode that is called the nightly check-in.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

It's amazing. I use it. And it is a somatic practice that my somatics coach taught me.

Reflect and Respond Better

SPEAKER_01 8:03

And it's that idea of somatics, and then it's also marrying family systems. So it's that idea of it is really the teenager in me coming out, or the child in me, or the sage in me, the one that knows it all is very peaceful. Like the wisdom. Not the know it all. There's the know-it-all person, but the wisdom person. I think the whole um boot idea, legs crossed, just very, I know the answer to this. I know the answer to all things. I am peaceful. I come from a place of alignment. Is it the one who had felt betrayed at this point? There's so many people that, as I was taught by my somatics coach, that's on your bus, right? Who's in the driver's seat right now? What's going on? Which is a whole deeper level. If you want to get into that really deep somatics level like that, I reach out to me, I'll connect with my somatics coach. But we can go to this basic layer for everybody else who's with me of what's going on right now and start practicing it right now while hopefully you're in a more calm place. So that when you are not, you can start to take care of the situation and then come back. And what came up? What's going on? Is this did I really respond the way that I wanted to? And why not? And not in this judgment place, but or in the should place for sure, stay away from that.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

But in the hey, I'm feeling peace now, and I want to look back and I want to reflect so that I can do better next time.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

And the place of love. I don't know if any of you have had parents like this or had situations like this, maybe with a teacher or anyone else, where you were really frustrated and down on yourself about something, and they told you it's okay. Just that very motherly, even if they're a male, but that it's okay. Let me show you lovingly that there's this other path forward. Know that you also have that person within yourself.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

That's what you're working with is what came up, what can I do differently? And how do I want to respond from now on? Which kind of goes similar to what can I do differently?

SPEAKER_01 10:47

And how do I release this? Knowing that it is for the good of my own body, the stress that we hold in our bodies, and it is for the good of when a situation comes again that triggers me. I have softened that area. Maybe not gotten rid of that little jagged edge all the way, but I'm starting to soften it. And you're doing it for yourself, so you're not holding all that in, and then you're not thinking inside out, exploding with fire out of your head.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Okay. So practice that. Tune in. What's going on?

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Because what I found is when I respond, and it happens to most in parenting. I have one child who is just a very different personality for me. He's the reason why I became a parenting coach on top of everything else that I do. Because he has just been a puzzle piece to figure out does anybody have somebody like that in their lives? I'm sure we all do. They might not be super close in our family, like a child-mother relationship. But just understanding their point of view is foreign to us. And sometimes we have those areas within our lives. So for me, it's when I respond knee-jerk reaction is oh, what's going on? Where did that come from? Have any of you guys just had this response? You're like, that's that's not me. What happened? I wasn't even controlled right then. What happened? This is where this comes in of okay, what came up? Why? Where did the sugar really start from? Maybe I was already feeling super dysregulated, and then something else came up, like overwhelmed dysregulated, and then something else came up, and it was just that what is it called?

SPEAKER_00 12:42

There's several old sayings for this. Basically, that that stick that broke the dam, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

It it was just that one extra thing, and that thing did was not heavy in itself, but it's everything else that I was carrying that once that was set on, it just broke everything. So maybe it's going back far enough to be like, oh, all of this was going on. Okay, what I need to do differently is maybe take better care of myself. That's usually a lot of it, but it's like, okay, but all of this is going on in my life. I don't know how to put this extra thing on the plate. Right? If you're thinking, and this I talked about this in coaching last week too with somebody, of you're at a buffet and you're just adding stuff to your plate, right? And then eventually stuff falls off. Well, maybe it's being more intentional. What do I want to remove instead of waiting for life to just collapse? So that's where it comes into that tuning in with yourself and what's really going on. And then even deeper, okay, but what else is going on? Like, how far back do I need to roll this back and backtrack until I can really see? Okay, this is where the start was. This is what's going on. And honestly, that's part of therapy, of course, but it's also part of coaching of what's going on, tuning in with myself, being in with my emotion before they become something that doesn't even feel like it's attached to us.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Please share this with others, of course.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

We all have people who that we've been around. I was talking to somebody last week again, who was saying that they're a very emotional person, they're very sensitive, they're creative, if that makes sense. And my experience with other people around this person has been that they can be very angry out of nowhere, just explode out of nowhere. And sometimes those people are crazy emotional, crazy sensitive. So it's you feel like you have to walk on eggshells around them, and maybe you are that person. I've been there, I've been that person, and it feels so awful. You feel like you are just this tornado of emotions, and you're almost like fighting, you're fighting yourself, and you just want to be able to get rid of the old parts that no longer fit anymore, these old emotions, but you you can't, it's stuck. I'm pretty sure that's what's going on with this person. They're not ready for coaching it. There were somebody that I met separate from coaching.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

It's better to leave it that way so that there's more um security around the person, but it's hard, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Can you can you think about people like that that are in your life in any way, maybe in the grocery store, maybe in traffic, you know, they're not even really super connected to you. But taking that moment of, oh, it must be really hard for them inside their bodies, what they're living with.

Wrap Up and Disclaimer

SPEAKER_00 16:05

And then you can take that to yourself of okay, where do I have that residing within my own body? What am I willing to do about it? Biggest question of this episode. See you next week.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that you found the answers that you needed and you had some amazing aha moments. Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can seek the healing that we really are looking for. As part of the legal language, I am a certified life coach with a bachelor's in applied health. That is what I am leaning on for this. This is general advice to get us. See you in the next episode.