Navigating the Waves of Difficult Emotions in Life with Emotional Awareness.

In this episode, join us on a journey of self-discovery and emotional resilience as we explore the art of navigating the challenging waves of emotions in life through the lens of emotional awareness. Life often presents us with tumultuous seas, filled with a spectrum of feelings that can be overwhelming to navigate. Discover how cultivating emotional awareness becomes your compass, guiding you through the storms with mindfulness and strength. We'll share practical insights, strategies, and personal stories to help you sail through the highs and lows, empowering you to surf the waves of difficult emotions with grace and authenticity. 


If you've been following my journey you know I started my self-help journey 5 years ago by going to therapy while I was very unhappy with everything in my life.

Since I wholeheartedly believe in the benefits of therapy I have partnered up with them to give my listeners 10% off their first month by using-http://www.betterhelp.com/selfmasterywithmaria

Remember Self-Mastery starts with the decision to take ownership of your life and I believe therapy is the BIGGEST step you can take towards achieving that.

Connect with me on Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/_maria.fuentes_/

Transcript

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we have those beautiful gift from God. That was given to us of emotions and feelings. And yet we resist them so much or we lack awareness and knowledge onto what it is we're actually feeling. Become your own subject For years, I struggled with toxic relationships and understanding my own emotions. I found myself repeating the same cycles with different people and living in victimhood. I am Maria, your host, and I specialize in self mastery coaching. I've spent the last few years working with various therapists in order to heal my own traumas and help others. This podcast is your dedicated resource for gaining emotional intelligence, nurturing self awareness, and cultivating healthy relationships. If you're prepared to master your emotions, improve your relationships, and create captivating self confidence. Then this podcast is for you. Thank you for listening and welcome to this week's episode. Hey guys, welcome to this week's episode. This was going to be short and sweet. Because I want you to come back to them anytime there's a short and sweet episode, or like 10 to 15 minutes long. In my podcasts, like history. I want you to come back to these because if I make them short and sweet, you'll listen again. Right? They're easy to just pop on while you're driving while you're walking or doing anything else. And this one is going to be about processing difficult emotions, because sometimes as women, we don't even realize. There's in that there's an underlying emotion that needs to be processed. While we're going through difficult times. And so I want to give you some awareness first on how that even feels right. How do we get stuck into these emotions and how do we learn to process them? So if you've been listening to me for a while, or you've been any part of my world, whether it's on social media or on my podcast, I always say, first, you have to be aware of the emotion. What is it? What is it there to teach you? What lessons is that there to show you, but just watch it right. We have to watch our emotions. Something comes up. We feel that we feel it physically. We feel it in our gut. We feel it in our heart. Our stomach tense up. W our hands get clammy. Our anger starts up. Like we feel a rush of blood surging through our body. Like our bodies show us when emotions are coming to the surface to the surface. But emotions are like waves. And when we realized that waves just come and go. And they come and go and they come and go. So whether it's good emotions. Quote-unquote good emotions or quote unquote bad emotions, which I don't believe that there's any bad emotions. Every emotion is beautiful. But whichever it is or you're feeling right now, if you're stuck in a bad one or you're, you're high in a high with some great emotions, they're all temporary. Or we get to choose how long we want to write the wave for, right. Or we fall, or we resist the wave. And every resist the wave. It almost feels like the emotions are just like pounding at us and we're like fighting against the wave. We're going against the current. It feels like these emotions are just so heavy and they feel so heavy. And so if right now you're going through some heavy emotions and it feels. Like you're stuck. It feels like you're not sure where to go next. You feel uncertain, you feel any of those emotions that doesn't feel freeing, aligned? Wanting mental. But it doesn't feel great if you're feeling in a low vibe energy, right. Those. I want you to. Realize and have acknowledgement to what emotion you're feeling. Because there's always an underlying emotion. Most of it's fear, usually right when we're stuck in something. The underlying emotion that we're really stuck in is fear. Doubt insecurity. Uh, stress, anxiety. Depression, even though anxiety and depression are in clinical terms, diagnosis of symptoms, they are emotions because of symptoms or emotions. You know, you feel like back of energy, you feel all these things like it's your, it's your body. The symptoms are your body. I'm trying to process what you're feeling, where you're feeling is. Anxiety and stress depression. But underneath it all. There's some underlying emotion. So, what is it? If you're feeling stress, you feel like there's so much going on. You're being pulled it out thousand million directions and you're not doing good enough at anything. What is the fear under there? The fear is that you're not doing good enough. They're shamed. There's some guilt probably in some way, shape or form. Shame and guilt are two emotions that I am going to master for you. And we will master together because shame and guilt, whether it's with myself, with clients, with friends, with anyone that I talk to, are there such heavy emotions? And so. The underlying fear is let's say you're not good enough. Let's say the stress is I'm just feeling shame and guilt that I'm not doing good enough. I'm not good enough. Everyone's just tugging at me. I'm not feeling like I can do it all. I, I feel stressed out. But the fear is that you're not doing good enough, but why hoop that fear in your heart who put that fear in your body? Right. When we start to just see things for what they are and the emotion that it really is. Let's say you're anxious when we're anxious. It really is just fear of the future. When we're anxious, we're not sure what's going to happen next. So we're anxious. We're fearful of the future and the future is unknown and the unknown is scary to us. Why is it scary? Because if you look at your past for all the instances that you were anxious, they were stressed or you were depressed that you were. Any of these emotions. And you go back and look for proof and how you overcame it. How it didn't kill you. How this thing that we're so afraid of, whether it's a future or not being good enough. Or feeling stuck when we're depressed, we're feeling stuck where. I remember I saw a quote from Jim Carey and it said when we're depressed, we're sick of playing a role in a character that we're not, we're sick of not being ourselves. Right. So all these feelings that we get, there's an underlying fear. And so when we started looking at the past, we're proof that we've overcame every single. Scenario situation, feeling emotion. We get to really just process that difficult emotion a lot quicker. You start looking in the past. Because you could either look at the past for proof that it did work, that you are resilient, that you can get through it, or you can look at the past and say, oh my God, I'm here again. I did this again. There's shame. And there's more guilt now. I'm just going to add on more difficult emotions to process because I should've known better. Why am I here again? Why am I stuck here again? Instead, you could say. All right. I'm feeling this. What is he here to teach me? What is the underlying true emotion that I'm feeling? And have I felt this before most of the time. The emotions that we feel. We felt before to some degree, maybe not to the same capacity, maybe. You don't no one had ever died before. Now. You're feeling heavy grief and heavy sadness, but you felt sadness before. So look for proof that you got through the sadness. Maybe it's opposite. You feel so happy right now. You're so joyous. You're so excited. You're so happy. Like there's, you've never felt this much happiness. This, this much excitement, you don't even know what to do with yourself, but you felt happiness before. You've been there before. And the only reason I'm giving both examples is that we've, as humans have felt an array of emotions, our whole entire life we've been angry. We've been sad. We've been happy. We've been miserable. We've been depressed. We've been anxious. We. We felt them all at some point. But when we don't sit down and say, what am I truly feeling? Not the superficial surface level emotion. I'm not angry. I'm not angry. I'm not frustrated. Was underneath there when you're frustrated, you're usually trying to be perfect at something, or you think things should be a certain way. You're frustrated that things are not working that way. And, and the underlying reason behind, that is that your fear, that there's fear that if it doesn't happen perfectly, it doesn't happen at all. And that's going to mean something about you. There's always an underlying reason to why you're feeling that emotion. It's never the true emotion. That's just what we feel in our bodies. And when we get to have to the layers of what it truly is, we're like, oh, I've been here before. I've seen this. I felt this before to some degree. I have proof that I overcame it. That I've done better. And so, as simple as this sounds, it does take practice. And then not only does it take practice, but when you're feeling those heavy emotions, Of anger, those difficult emotions of anger, frustration. Sadness, all those difficult emotions, not reacting to them. Just letting them be. Right. You wouldn't react to the wave every time you're in the ocean. Let's say the wave comes you wouldn't just like react and panic every single time a wave comes. And you're just like, ah, get me out of this. I don't want us to feel this wave and you're going to go against it. And you're going to fight the wave and the wave is just going to come and. It's going to hit you and it's going to push you down and then you're going to be under water. You're gonna feel suffocated. You're going to drown in that ocean. If you do that. So see them for what it is. It's beautiful. Emotions are beautiful. It's actually in our, when we feel the heaviest most difficult emotions in our lives. It's when we feel the most. They say some animals don't have emotions. They say some animals don't feel the way we do. So we have those beautiful gift from God. That was given to us of emotions and feelings. And yet we resist them so much or we lack awareness and knowledge onto what it is we're actually feeling. Become your own subject, become your own test. Dummy. What are you feeling today, Maria? What are you feeling today? So-and-so ask yourself and then ask yourself, well, I'm angry. Why am I angry? What is the truth? Why am I really angry? And avoid making any projections, outwards, no one made you angry. No one is responsible for your frustration, your anger, your sadness. Your depression, your anxiety. Not your job, nothing outside of you is you are responsible for your emotions. You get to decide what you do with them. They're just there. You feel them? They're a part of you. That's what makes us human, but they're not who we are. We're not frustrated, angry human beings. We're not sad. Mopey human beings we're meant to live. A huge big abundant. Life with lots of love and happiness. And because of those great emotions that we're all meant to experience in this lifetime, it's going to come with some difficult ones because you can't appreciate the big, amazing things without the lower vibrational emotions. And so instead of resisting them, letting them get. A moment in time, not getting stuck, not going against the waves, not punishing yourself or feeling shame or guilt because you're feeling these difficult emotions. You allow that space, you allow that ocean. To settle because what happens, waves, aren't all the same. There's big waves. There's little ways. The waves. Sometimes there's no wave. Sometimes the oceans just really calm. But if you resist it, you'll panic in two feet of water or 20 feet of water. You'll panic and all of it. You will fight all of it. You'll fight when the water's calm. You'll find what the waters, when the waves are huge. You'll fight. When the waves are small, you'll fight it all. And so allow yourself and give yourself the gift of processing. The one thing that we're giving there were, that was given to us, which is emotions, the ability to feel. And so when you start processing them with yourself and that's just, well, I'll leave it at right now. We're not going to talk about being vulnerable and opening yourself up. Just really processing what, that difficult emotions there to teach you. Why is it there? Let's say somebody does something and it made you angry, make you feel angry. Why didn't it make you feel angry? While that person, you know, yelled at me in the street. And they, they said that I was a bad driver. Well, do you believe that you're a bad driver? Well, no, I think I'm a great driver. So are you angry? Well really it's because I've had a rough day actually. I woke up late. I, that my kids were a mess and, you know, I don't feel my best because yesterday I said I was going to do something for myself and I'm carrying the shame and this guilt from yesterday. And so it translated into my morning. And then this person on the street. That has nothing to do with everything else. That's going on. So that I'm a bad driver and it made me so angry and so frustrated. It really just irked me. Okay. That's all it has to be. Right. How beautiful is it that you're able to process? And walk yourself through that. You're able to coach yourself and mentor yourself through that process. Let's say your partner, your, your, your spouse, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, whoever. They didn't do something, that they said that they would, they did something that hurt your feelings. Okay. It hurt my feelings. I am sad now because of this one thing, an incident that happened in my relationship. Okay. I'm sad. What is it there to teach me? Why am I really sad? Well, I'm sad because I had expectations. I'm sad because I wanted that person to do X, Y, and Z. And they didn't. Okay. So it's my own expectations. Okay. So I'm sad because I had expectations. Well, why did I have expectations? Well, I had expectations because if I feel like I have expectations and I can. Assume what someone's going to do. It gives me a false sense of control and I feel better about it. And so holding these expectations without even telling the person that there's expectations on them makes me feel better, but it's an uneven playing field for them, but they don't even know it. And now I'm disappointed and I'm sad. Oh, wow. Think of how I just walked you through all of that. You're sad. So, so this is where I say. I don't project outwards. It's never about people. It's always about us. And when we start really getting down to the nitty gritty of why we feel the things we feel. Sure. The person might've triggered that in us. Sure. That person might've pushed that button. Maybe it's the last button you had for the day. Maybe it was your last job, the last thing you needed today, it was the last thing that you. Needed to just blow up and be explosive or be mad or be angry or be extra sad. But it all starts with you. And so when you give yourself that beautiful, Gift of processing that emotion. You release it. You let it go. And you wait for the next wave and the next wave will be. Calmer and more beautiful because now you're in a holding onto this. What happens when we don't process emotions, we don't release the emotions they compound. If I'm sad because my partner didn't do something expectation not to even tell them. I'm sad. I'm going to carry that on to the next day, the next day. Now they do something else. Two weeks later. And I'm sad again, and I'm frustrated even more because this is the second time that they've done it. Three men know that they're doing it. Or maybe I did tell them that they did something that hurt my feelings, but they, they got defensive. And now that they're doing it again and now I'm compounding it can't believe that this happened again. Now I'm frustrated even more and you've created this whole convoluted. Emotional mess. When it could have just been a moment in time, you release it and you let it go like a conveyor belt. I want us all eventually to be an emotional conveyor belt where you see the oh, You see it like, okay. Like pretend there's like little elves. I don't want to give you the weirdest thing. Analogy beforehand this, but pretend there's little else in your system and your nervous system in your body and your mind in your heart. And all these things and they're like, okay. Maria is going to feel angry today. Let's throw this anger a little box into the conveyor belt. I'm want you to see as like a manager or a supervisor of these little elves and how they kind of just like throw these emotions at you. And you're like, oh wow. They're throwing anger. Okay. Why are they throwing anger at me? I mean, there's a movie. I'm getting this from a movie. Is. Not in this context, but it was, I don't remember what it's called, like wish or something. And probably not getting right. So there's a kids movie. That I recently saw and it had to do with this. Right. And then you're able to just watch them like, okay, they're, they're putting anger in the conveyor belt. Hmm. Wasn't I going to teach me, why am I feeling angry? Oh, it's because it's coming from here. There, there, there. Okay. Bye. And then you're able to just process it. All right. Goodbye. You get got to see it in the next time that you see anger on the conveyor belt again, and you're like, Hey, wait a minute. Been here done that. I've seen this anger one before. What is he here to teach me again? We become the masters of our emotions. They don't dictate us. We, we just see them for what they are. We don't control them. Uh, we don't try to manipulate them. We don't try to avoid them. We don't try to numb them. We see them for what they are and we release them. We process and we release. And so again, if you ever need this, when you're feeling difficult emotions, because we all go through it, I go through it. I should probably listen to my own voice when I'm going through a difficult emotion, because when you're in the midst of it, nothing makes sense. Your nervous system shuts off because your prefrontal cortex is in fight or flight and can't even think straight. And when we're emotional, we have blind spots. We don't see things objectively and for what they are. So that's why I want you to come back to this because I want to open up. That prefrontal cortex for you and be like, okay, I've got this. I can see things clearly now. And I love you all. Thank you so much for listening. And I cannot wait to talk to you guys next week by.