What is Emotional Fitness?

Ever feel like your feelings get so big so fast and you're not sure how to handle them? This week I'm sharing a lesson I taught about emotional fitness (aka emotional regulation). Hit play for the full conversation!

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Transcript

Welcome to regulate, and rewire and anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong. And I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. 

Hi, friend. Like I said last week, this week's episode is actually going to be just audio that I'm pulling from a lesson I filmed a few years ago on emotional fitness or emotional regulation, I use these terms pretty interchangeably. And I'll give you the context before I play this audio that there are some aspects of this conversation about emotions that I would and do teach a little bit differently now. But I think there's still so much value that can be taken from this lesson, and especially with the backdrop of the last few weeks of conversations. 

So what you'll also find is in the show notes, I am going to link the worksheets that accompany this module in the course, if that feels supportive for you in any way. And the only other additional context I will add is that emotional regulation is almost impossible, without some nervous system regulation. If your body is stuck in an activated sympathetic state, your emotions are going to reflect that. So what this module is missing in some ways is that nervous system layer in the conversation about emotions. And that's something that I've offered pretty heavily in other places in this podcast. So hopefully, you can fill in some of those blanks. But without further ado, let's dive in. 

And this lesson, we are going to talk about how to become emotionally fit human beings. And I love the term emotional fitness because it draws us parallel to physical fitness. And we understand if we want to be more physically fit, there's things we have to show up for on a consistent basis to build that skill. Well, emotional regulation is the same way. It is a skill, it is something that you can build over time. And in this lesson, we are going to look at just how we can do that. And we're going to do that primarily by answering these three questions. So first, why do we even have these pesky feelings? How do I regulate emotions in a helpful way? And how do I create more fun and helpful emotions? And this is such an important skill to cultivate because it is foundational to resilience. And everything we're doing here is to become more resilient human beings and resilience. I like to look at it as how good is our bounce back? How quickly can we come back to a regulated state when life kind of knocks us down? How rooted and grounded Can we stay amidst the chaos going on around us. And emotional regulation is how we are able to kind of calm our inner storms, because they are inevitable they will come feelings are part of being human. 

So let's for a second just explore what are feelings? When I ask you that what comes up if you had to describe what feelings are to somebody? What are feelings? All feelings really are are sensations in your body? So here's what I mean by that. I want you to think about anger. If you had to explain anger to an alien who had never felt a human emotion before, how might you explain it? For me, my ears get a little hot. If I had to give it a color, it would be red. The temperature would definitely be hot. Or think about being embarrassed. Right? Feels like knots in my stomach. If I had to give embarrassed to color it might be green. It makes me want to shrink. Or joy, how would you explain joy to an alien who had never experienced didn't know even what feelings were? Right? I feel like a buzziness in my body when I feel joy. I feel maybe like I'm floating I'm airy. And so when it comes to feelings, feelings are nothing more than chemical reactions in our body. We think a thought that thought releases chemicals in our body and we feel that somewhere in our body. If we are feeling a feeling it is because our brain created that feeling. And you can handle that feeling. So often we shrink away from making space to feel our feelings because we're so afraid that they are going to overwhelm or consume us. And so how Hopefully by the end of this lesson, you feel a little bit more confident being with specifically uncomfortable emotions. Because ultimately, the degree to which we allow ourselves to experience the less desirable emotions, the harder emotions, also becomes the degree to which we can experience the more elevated, happy wanted emotions. 

And so the goal with emotional regulation and emotional fitness is to just broaden the spectrum of emotion, emotional intensity that we can handle with confidence. And when it comes to the feelings that we feel, just like everything else we've learned about, there can be a top down and a bottom up, cause for our feelings. Here's what that looks like, from the top down, like we just talked about, you think that neurotransmitters are released. And those are what we feel as our feelings, or from a nervous system standpoint, right? Our nervous system picks up something from our environment, our brain adds meaning to that based on our past, and we have a feeling. And this is really to show because I think a lot of times in the therapy world, especially in cognitive behavior therapy, or in traditional like life coaching realms, this top down approach is the only thing we get introduced to right, if you can change the thought you can change the feeling change a thought change the feeling. But a lot of times our feelings come from this unconscious nervous system space. And so we also have to have awareness that we can also change what we're doing how we're somatically being in our body, changing our state can also change our feeling. So recognizing that there is both a top down and a bottom up approach to feelings work as well. 

Now I want to share with you just five facts about feelings that we all need to get on the same page for the rest of this lesson. So the first is that it's going to be 50/50, your life is going to be an average of 50% of the emotionals. You don't want to feel and 50% of the emotions you do want to feel. And I want to come back face to face to talk to you about this really quickly. Because so often is when we start making this bargain for well, if I get healed enough. And if I do enough of this work, or whatever, then it can be 60/40 For me, right or 80/20. For me, I can feel good 80% of the time and only have to feel bad 20% of the time.

And there in lies, the biggest kind of like Crux for emotional resilience, emotional fitness is that we think there are good and bad emotions. And so you're going to see feeling, feeling factor number two is that there are no bad emotions. There are ones that are more empowering, and less empowering. They're ones that are more comfortable and less comfortable. But we have to get out of this loop that there are bad emotions, because when we have a willingness to feel whatever comes, we can feel it more intentionally and oftentimes less intensely, if it is an unwanted emotion. And the really cool thing is that when we are willing to feel any feeling we often feel the wanted emotions more intensely. Well, we'll talk a little bit more about that later. 

But here is Fact number three, and this is that you can be both, you can be both sad for you and grateful for somebody else. You can be both annoyed and loving. You can be both whatever I think so often, we add these qualifiers of well, like my life isn't that bad, right? Because somebody else has this or you can feel frustrated, and still have compassion for somebody else. So just remembering that you are a complicated human, and you can be both something wanted and something unwanted. something helpful, something unhelpful, something that feels good, and something that feels bad, and that can coexist. 

The fourth feeling fact is that feelings are always valid. This doesn't mean that your interpretation of somebody's intentions was correct, but your feeling is valid. I want you to think about feelings as messages to get your attention. If you're feeling hurt, that feeling is valid even if that person didn't mean to hurt you. Or even if you miss understood what they said, being hurt has a message of a place for healing. So your feelings are always valid. 

And this feeling Fact number five is that resistance makes them bigger and feeling fact five kind of echoes wanting to write, life is going to be 50/50 We just got to get there some seasons of your life we're going to feel like 80/20 in either direction. But accumulatively there is equal place for both camps of feelings in our life. And this idea that there are no bad emotions can Allow us to not resist the hard ones when they show up. Research shows that an emotion when not added to gets fully processed from our body and 90 seconds. So fear, frustration, anxiety, anger, 90 seconds is all that emotion needs to kind of process. But we're humans, and we feel anger. And then we sometimes tell ourselves, we shouldn't, or we add a story to justify why we feel angry, more thoughts, more feelings, or more escalate Ed, a higher escalation of that existing feeling. But the bottom line here is that feelings have functions. And they are all okay and valid to feel. 

So let's take a second and talk about what the function of some of the most common feelings may be. So first, the actual function of feelings are to prepare us for behavior. Right when we are triggered, emotions orchestrate systems in our body, things like perception, attention, inference, learning memory, our goal choice motivational priorities, physiological reactions, especially when right from that bottom up approach, the way our body works with those motor behaviors and our decision making. So our emotions are designed to get our attention and to prepare us for behavior. And so this chart and I know the text is a little bit tiny here in the presentation, but you have this in the workbook as well. Right? If we look at fear, the function of fear is to protect, to defend, to get us to right, fight or flee when we feel afraid, we're almost always going to go into that fight or flee. But that overreaction of the feeling of fear causes that freeze that shutdown. Hurt, right the function of hurt is to invite us to protect ourselves to soothe to be careful when we escalate hurt to an overreaction. We maybe don't take take risks, we isolate ourselves. We are over protective. Going all the way down to sadness, right? Sadness invites us to reflect what's making us sad. Sadness also might invite us to distract or to become more reserved to be reflective. Sadness in excess, can cause depression, maybe self abuse, withdrawing or isolating behavior. This also goes for the purpose of more desirable emotions, things like happy, right, this encourages us to be energized and enthused and fun, in excess happy can cause us to become euphoric to take really big risks. 

And you can take a look at that chart to explore some of the other emotions. But then I also want to invite you to explore it in your own personal experience, as you start to become more aware of your feelings. Asking yourself What could this be preparing me for? What behavior do I want to take from this emotion? What message does this emotion hold for me? And so we've talked about lots of facts about feelings, the function of feelings, but how do we feel our feelings, and here are a couple really simple steps that can help you to be open and feel more safe feeling your feelings. So the first step obviously, is just to notice to notice that you're feeling a feeling, then to name it, allow it. And then this last step is really optional, if you would like to explore it. So noticing it is just oh, I'm feeling feeling. There's something happening in my body. You'll sometimes hear when we talk about emotional regulation, you name it to tame it. Again, really cool research that shows us that when we can name a, I'll call them kind of a negative emotion and not feel good emotion. It helps us to experience that with less intensity. So if we can, oh, I feel something this is anxiety. This is anxiety helps us to feel less anxious, name it to tame it. And here's where it gets cool. Research shows us that when we name positive emotions, this is joy. This is excitement. It actually magnifies. So we get to feel more joy and more excitement. So on both ends of the spectrum, getting good at noticing and naming your emotions is really, really helpful. 

And then what comes next is allowing it. Yeah, this is just part of being human where I feel sad. This is just part of being human where I'm really curious part of being human right, get to be excited. And making the narrative about all of those emotions, neutral narratives. This is the part of the Being Human where I experienced anxiety. And then once you can kind of get regulated within that emotion, or if you notice, this is an emotion that comes up for you regularly and you want to explore it outside of that emotion. So what that might look like if you know you experience anxiety a lot, you might want to explore anxiety when you're not feeling anxious. And so exploring an emotion outside of that emotion is can be really helpful for what I would call kind of like your top three hits of spiraling emotions. But if you want to explore within that emotion, it would be to give extra attention to what are these sensations in my body so that I can notice this emotion when it shows up a little sooner next time. What happened just before that got me to this place, what could be happening externally or internally in my environment, what is contributing to me feeling this feeling. So notice it, name it, allow it, and optionally, you can explore it both within or outside of that emotional experience. 

And to illustrate this a little bit more, I want to talk about the difference between layering emotions, versus allowing emotions. So this is a visual that represents what happens when we layer emotions, when we create the story about how we should or shouldn't feel in a particular moment. So at the top, what happened is the kids are playing really loud, and you're annoyed, and you notice that you're annoyed. And when you notice you're annoyed, you think this that they're just being kids, stop thinking this way. You shouldn't be annoyed with your kids for just being kids. And now you feel guilty. And then when you notice that guilt, you have this thought of, right, because guilt triggers thoughts as well, you're a bad mom, you're a bad mom for being annoyed. And now you feel ashamed. And once that, if you notice that shame, it layers that back up to this thought of, you'll never be more patient, you're always going to be like this, you always are like this, that all or nothing black and white thinking. And that creates hopeless. 

So now instead of being at the top, and just saying this is annoyed, this is part of the experience of parenthood where I'm annoyed. Now we have annoyed, guilt, shame, and hopelessness all layered on. So this is an example of how we kind of go beyond that 90 seconds of, of an emotion kind of processing itself, by layering on with our thinking, and making it so so much heavier for ourselves. And so in contrast, here's what this could look like, by getting really good at that allowing step. So the kids are playing really loudly, you still feel annoyed. And you think the thoughts I feel annoyed. And you take a deep breath because you know that helps regulate you. You maybe take a moment to observe in your body? Where do I feel this? What does it feel like? How can I manage somatically these sensations? And then maybe you ask yourself, you know, what might this feeling be here to tell me. 

Because through this neuroscience lens, we understand that that feeling of annoyed might be showing up to tell you, you're stressed buckets pretty full, you need to take a moment and go regulate you need to care for yourself. And so our state determines our story, our ability to regulate ourselves, helps us to allow and de escalate feelings. Because we don't have a story. being annoyed with our kids doesn't make us a bad parent. It's just part of being human. And why might annoy be showing up? Well, when my kids play loudly. It doesn't always bother me, but it's totally bothering me right now. Which could be a message to me of, I need to take a moment and go regulate. 

So all of these different skills really contribute to emotional awareness. emotional awareness is just the ability to be aware of your emotional experience, and to know what the helpful and unhelpful ways of regulating that experience look like. So typically, when we experience feelings, we move into three, one of three different directions. And here's what those look like. So the first is that we avoid this is where we try to hide from or shove away our feelings with absolutely no intention of going back. I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to feel this. And so this is used to numb, suppress, deny or avoid the fact that you are having an emotional experience. The second way we usually manage emotions is through distraction. And initially, you might think distraction isn't helpful, but it can be because distraction is sometimes how we just initially press pause, so that we can deal with whatever this emotion is at a more appropriate place or time. So if you are at a 10 out of 10 on your anger scale, that is probably not the time to have a conversation. about it. So think about distraction as sometimes we just need to distract ourselves when our emotions or situations are too intense, and distraction is conscious and intentional, avoidant. And it's intentional with the with the intention to come back and revisit that emotion. So when we avoid, we are absolutely numbing, we have no intention of coming back to this experience, when we did distract, it is an intentional pause for that experience, so that we can come back at a more appropriate, you know, regulated state or place. And sometimes what we what we use to avoid and distract could be the same right? Turning to your phone could be avoided, right, I'm scrolling on social media until I feel numb, and I don't have to deal with this. I also have intentionally turn to my phone, I need a moment, I need to just distract. And then I'm going to come back to the situation. And then the third way is to deal, right. Once the heavy heated and intense part of that emotional experience has subsided, then it's time to come in, do some exploring about what got you there, maybe work with your coach or a therapist to shed light on that original thought, belief or triggering state that led to that feeling. So when we think about dealing distraction might be an initial way to deal with whatever emotion comes up. But eventually comes the feeling the processing and the releasing. 

And so when it comes to emotional fitness, we need to feel and deal in order to heal. So we need to make room in our life to feel deal, so that we can heal. So much of our healing comes from allowing this emotional experience. And one of the things that we know about our nervous system is that it loves predictability. It loves having a sense of control. It loves having plans. And so one of the really, really, really powerful practices that we can do, or activities that we can do to help us cultivate more emotional fitness is to create what we call an emotional gameplan. So here's what that looks like with an emotional game plan, I want you to choose a particular emotion that often causes you to spiral out. So maybe that's anger, anxiety, overwhelm, putting that emotion up there at the top, and you can make 15 emotional game plans if you want. But definitely sit down and try to make an emotional game plan for whatever emotion trips you up the most. So what you're going to do is you have these two columns, in column number one you are going to reflect on what are the thoughts that you think the feelings that you have the body sensations you experience, the behaviors? What is it that you do or don't do, when you are at a level one have that emotion 2, 3, 4, 5. And the goal of exploring it on this escalating scale is that we can build more awareness around let's say, an emotion like anger. And we can start to recognize it showing up at a level one or two or three, maybe right now you only recognize anger when it's explosive, or you only recognize anxiety, when it feels like when it's outside that window of tolerance and you feel out of control. And then what you're going to do is you're going to come and create a game plan. What are the skills, the strategies, the resources, right, this is that reactive skill set to help you manage that emotion. And so what this emotional game plan helps you do is to just become so much more emotionally aware of the spectrum of that emotion, and what you can do. 

And you can also think about this kind of like your nervous system mapping, right, the triggers and the glimmers, what are the things that trigger you further and further into this emotional experience? And what is that experience feel like so you can recognize it. And then those glimmers is your plan, your skills, your tools, your resourcing, that help you to either just not escalate, just stay right where you are, or hopefully to de escalate the negative emotional experience. 

Now the last concept I want to introduce you to in this lesson is this idea of also creating feelings. So a lot of this lesson has been spent on how to manage mostly right kind of the negative or disempowering emotions that show up for you. But we also know that there are ways to create emotions for ourselves. And we can do that with both top down and bottom up approaches. And so when it comes to creating feelings from this kind of bi directional approach, right, we know now that our thoughts create our feelings, so changing your thoughts about a situation can help you change your feelings as well. Right if you look in the mirror and you have certain thoughts about your body, you are going to feel very differently than if you practice lay down new neural pathways, thinking different, maybe more neutral or helpful thoughts about your body. Same thing when it comes to behaviors, right, this kind of that action based body based up, doing certain things, taking a deep breath, going outside behaviors can create feelings as well by changing our state. So if you change your behaviors in a way that helps you to change your state, you can also change your feelings. 

Now, taking this action of changing your behavior or changing your thoughts can only happen if you are aware and regulated. So again, this foundation of awareness and knowing what helps you to pause a downward spiral so that you can make a different choice. So when it comes to creating feelings, I want to invite you to ask yourself these, these five questions. What feeling? Do I want to feel more of? So What feeling do I want in this moment? Question number two is what feeling would be useful in this situation, or this upcoming week? So if you're looking at your week, and you say, Okay, what what do I need to feel to really get through this week? If it's a busy week? Maybe it's I need to feel determined. Okay, what thoughts do I need to think what behaviors do I need to engage in to help me feel and cultivate and create this feeling of determined, because if I leave my mind to wander on its own, it'll likely wander towards feelings of overwhelm. So I got to put my brain to work for me to help create this feeling of determined, question number three is what thoughts are available to me that can generate that feeling, right? We can't jump from I hate my body to I love my body, or from my life is so overwhelming to I can handle my life with a breeze. So we need to be able to identify thoughts that are currently within our realm of reason to help bring us closer to that feeling. And then what behaviors can I do to help generate this feeling? Again, also looking at behaviors that are within reason? And finally, how can I remind myself to practice generating this feeling? 

So maybe take a minute based on what you learned and just reflect? How would you rate yourself? If you had to give yourself a score on how emotionally fit you are? What would that look like? How big is that spectrum of emotions that you can handle? Do you feel comfortable allowing yourself to feel deep grief? Can you get triggered into a state of anxiety, and instead of meeting your anxiety with anxiety, you say, Oh, I feel anxious. Okay, I know what I need to. If you can do those things, you probably have a pretty high level of emotional fitness, keep doing what you're doing. But if more often than not, you don't let yourself experience these big emotions, because you're afraid you're gonna get lost or to drown in them. Okay, there's work to be done. And the good news is that, again, this is a skill, it is something that you can learn to do. 

So reflecting back on this lesson, what are your beliefs or your thoughts about feelings, that maybe aren't helpful, right? Coming back to those five facts about feelings, just acknowledging it's going to be 50/50, there are no bad feelings, every single one of your feelings is valid. And there's room for it in your human experience. And so what is going to help to support you feeling safe and connected and grounded in those big feelings? Right learning to recognize, to notice it, to name it, to allow it, and then to explore it both in and out of that feeling. And that emotional gameplan is such a powerful tool in practice. And it's something that you can come back to again and again for the rest of your life, because the flavors of these emotions are going to change. And then also knowing that once you become a little bit more emotionally regulated, you have access to also create very intentionally. So when every single one of these skills that you're learning there is a spectrum that can take you from, you know, kind of sick to Well, right? And then from well to thriving, how can we get to a place where we feel pretty regulated? And then how can we also use these skills to optimize our well being and our life to create something that is, we're so excited to live in every single day. 

And so the final reflection I want to leave you with is to reflect maybe on what for you, is your most empowering and disempowering emotion. So when you feel blank, you have a really hard time getting into action, showing up in the world in the way that you want to. For me, that is overwhelm. If I'm feeling overwhelmed, all bets are off. You my self talk sucks, my, the way that I show up as a as a parent, as a partner, as a friend, it also sucks. And so for me, that may be a good indicator, take that one to your emotional gameplan first. And then I want you to think, what is your most empowering emotion when you feel this? You can tackle just about anything. And for me, believe it or not, that emotion is actually curiosity. If I can get to a place where I am curious, and usually I have to do that through self compassion. So I would say maybe my two most empowering emotions are self compassion and curiosity, where I can look at anything in my life and say, what can I learn from this, instead of ruminating on how it should have been or how I should have showed up? That is a really empowering emotion for me, I can look at any problem that would maybe overwhelm me. And if I can get curious about it, I can be really empowered to move in the direction that I want to. 

So being able to identify what is my most disempowering emotion, let's workshop that with an emotional game plan. And then what is my most empowering emotion and thinking about what helps you to be able to create that feeling and that emotional experience for yourself more often? And how do you build more of that in to your life? 

Awesome. Thanks for being here for stepping into this courageous work. And I'll see you in the next lesson. 

All right, friends, I'm sure you figured that was the end of the audio from this module. I don't have three tangible takeaways for you today. But hopefully, you're able to pull at least something helpful from that. 

And what I will actually also do for those of you who are a little bit more visual, this module also had slides that went with it, the way that I teach, the content that I create is always mixed between me being on screen and then mixing in slides. If you want to go and rewatch or revisit parts of that lesson in video format, I will link that also in the show notes along with the worksheets to go along with it. 

Alright, that's it. Thanks for being here. And I'll see you next week. 

Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside Rhys, my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here. And I'll see you next time.

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