The Blueprint for Emotional Health at Christmas

The Blueprint for Emotional Health at Christmas

It's been a moment since we last connected my loves - and as we prepare a stunning Spring Season of interviews for you, it's time for a little Solo. On a theme that fills my inbox and client calls at this time of year: how to successfully navigate Christmas. 

Somehow, we're here - at the tail end of an incredibly full year, on the cusp of deep transition for many, and in the days running up to family, socialising, rest (theoretical & practical) and reflection. It is for many an important and sometimes confronting season, where much is expected, tested, raised. So, we're diving into the challenge themes that are most pertinent; the parts of you / others that you may find activated; and how to find your way to balance, quiet & deeper self-compassion. For anyone feeling a flutter of anxiety in anticipation of the weeks to come - listen in. Let this be your blueprint on how to carve out your own needs, priorities and equilibrium in the bustle and busyness. While, lovingly and with detachment, allowing others to do the same. 

Remember to share this with a friend if you have found it supportive, re-listen as you need to, and reach out to the team here with any specific questions we can support you with. 

Sending love,

A x

For more on Finding Your Way Home, including events and learning programmes: 

 - Visit @ab_embodiment or www.ab-embodimentcoaching.org
- And if you've enjoyed the episode, remember to Subscribe and share it with a friend - you couldn't imagine the profound ripple effect of sharing what guides you with someone you love.
 
From my heart to yours listeners, 

A x

Transcript

Anthea: 0:14

welcome to Finding Your Way Home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell, movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean. How to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in.

1:09

Beautiful reaches. Welcome to this week's episode of Finding Your Way Home. I have been wanting to reconnect with you all for weeks, and I find myself at the end of movement practice this evening with that deep, deep, deep, deep nudge to share and to feel into what's alive and present. For all of you that are listening, and I'm leaving this on the dusk slash dawn of Christmas. Somehow we've got the, the edge between 2025 and 2026, and from what I am seeing in the practice and from the atmosphere that I am experiencing on a day by day basis in London, it's a busy time. This has been one hell of a year. Most of the people that I know in the spaces that we are in, that I'm in and that you guys listening are in, have had really quite a ride this year. A lot of expansion, a lot of dynamism, a lot of pushing beyond our perceived limits. Um, things coming. Into a level of cohesion and clarity. But there's been work, there's been work to sift through some of the confusion. There's been work to let go of things that have no longer been in alignment. Uh, there's been some surrender in leaving spaces, some courage in entering spaces. Courage is probably one of the key words for this year that's gone by. And courage is also a relevant word for many as they go into the week to come. I'm leaving this on Thursday evening ahead of next Wednesday's Christmas day. And as much as I'd love to think for all of us that going into the family and socializing season is replete with all of the calm and the self-development and the joy and the peace of everything you've learned over this year. And as much as I know that you guys are rocking that learning and really being so dedicated and diligent in. Moving into greater levels of emotional neutrality, emotional release, um, identifying the difference between you and the other person. Finding ways to see the other from a space of deep compassion, lovingly holding your inner vulnerability, your inner parts, your inner child, all of that, all of that, all of that. And yet, this is a tricky time, often. You gather together a lot of people with very high expectation, and there just is friction, not everywhere, but in some places and in some moments, and. If you add to that the sense of often by this point, afraid fatigue of, uh, feeling as though it's been churn after churn, after c churn, if that's your perspective. Everyone is really desperate for release and relaxation and to be met in their need by the other person. And of course, because everyone is going into that same space wanting to be met in their own need, there can be this tendency to forget the collective need. And not to be quite awake to what's going on in front of you. Add to that, the tendency for expectation. We must all have a really nice time now. We must all entertain the children. We must all make peace with the in-laws, et cetera. And what you find is that a lot of people are living above. Their own depths, they're living in some form of role or artifice or, um, just the, the posturing that's so normal. Right? And I say none of this because I think that we should be above and beyond these patterns necessarily. They're adaptive for a reason. They grow for a reason. Each of us, when we go back to our family home, we have a way of being in those homes. It, and it just, it slides in so quickly before you've even noticed. And then suddenly the person that's moving your body and speaking with your voice is an older, different person than the one that you know yourself to be on a day by day basis. It's really tempting to guard. It's really tempting to be hard on yourself. It's really tempting to criticize others, whether inside yourself or outside of yourself. It's really tempting to put way too much pressure on this thing that is Christmas. And so my first point in leaving this little love note for you guys is just a reminder. Please go gentle. You are probably entering this period a little tired, a little in need of connection and tenderness and care and love, and you could just decide, I'm gonna give myself that this season. Irrespective of what is around me, what is floating towards me, what is potentially flying at me. Irrespective of that, I'm just gonna be in loving, caring, connection with myself. I'm gonna take the moments out to leave the kitchen and go for a little breath of fresh air. I'm gonna go and sit in the bathroom and pray. I am going to give myself a break if I feel like I overindulge or I under indulge. Whatever your ism is. Could you just smile for a moment at the sweet part of you that's trying to make it all? Okay. Because, and I share this a lot with clients, sometimes the best that we can do is just accept, okay, well this is my reality right now. And if we can let go of resisting it, let go of judging it. Let go of thinking that it in any way in this moment, it's gonna define the next moment or the next. Then could that sense of coming to terms with coming to peace with ourselves and others and the present context that we're in, could it lighten the load? I've been thinking this a lot recently, particularly around scenarios where you are really wanting to create a certain impression. Or let's say negotiate a deal or socialize in a way that feels really representative of the total value that you have for the other human being involved. These contexts where we effort, we try, we, we just try a little bit harder than we need to. And in most of those contexts, the reason that we try is either because we're unwilling to accept our humanity. Our fallibility. The fact that there is in all of us, myself included some room for improvement or it's because we've placed the power, often unintentionally in the hands of the other person to decide seemingly our value, our qualities, our deservingness of visibility, our lovability, our inclusion, our belonging. Even if you think about that in a working context, we might not be having those thoughts explicitly, but the reality is that a lot of the time we are thinking, if I don't get this particular job, then on some level my future fortune is jeopardized. Which means, in other words, if this person does not choose me, then my fate is ruined. It's a really understandable and amazingly shortsighted, inaccurate belief that we go back to and all of us do it. We'll be at a networking event and suddenly notice that the body goes into contractile tension and we're desperately agreeing with the person in front of us and really trying to make them pleased and dissolve any capacity that they have for social anxiety. And you walk away and you think, oh my God, that I'm so relieved. That I can now pop to get another drink or, uh, head home in my taxi. And we are relieved because in that moment we've just forgotten to be human. We've made this thing of interacting with another person about something completely other than factually what it is, which is a meeting of two people and a realistic assessment of whether in, for example, a business context, what you have to offer is a good match for what they want to receive. Fundamentally, that's all that's happening. We're just looking to find the match. And that person that you interact with socially or professionally, they might have the time to spend to get to know you at that moment in time when you need a bit of time to be getting, getting to begotten known, uh, or they may not. They may be under very time pressurized circumstances. They may have a limited amount of emotional capacity. They may be right in their adrenal response, sympathetic nervous system firing away, and they may have a pre-designed idea of what they're looking for, and you may not immediately seem like a match for that. And the lesson there is great if what I am bringing out in this season of my life is not a match for what this person is looking for, even in a. Very, um, short, rapid quickfire dialogue, then the like, it is that I probably wouldn't have been a good match for the role anyway. I really like to think that an initial meeting with someone can be quite a good indicator actually of your content meets their content and identifying whether there's gonna be anything beautiful and generative to you. Two, spending more time together. We are so programmed, many of us, to perceive loss even before something has happened that we forget the usefulness of a no, the usefulness of rejection. The usefulness of redirection, which is what I used to be told rejection really meant. And it can mean redirection when we don't take it too seriously, when we don't make it mean something about us. So that kind of goes also for this Christmas season in the socializing that you're doing in the dating that you're doing, in the moments where you're meeting a family member and you just don't know if they like you or not, you could decide that it doesn't really matter if they like you or not, that you could be safe and loved and have a really rich and fulfilling night, week, month, year, life. Even if they don't, you could decide that they're not liking you or your perception of they're not liking you is much more about what's alive and present in them meets you than it is about the truth of you. You could decide in fact that, and this is simple and radical, your liking of you is more important, and I know that we've talked about that before and maybe there is never going to be a time where I don't reference that. Because by and large, the people that you admire, you pedestal lies you want to be in with the thing that you're noticing in them, either is your perception of their power, which often means their control, their discipline, perhaps even their emotional withholding, or it's your perception of their confidence and their self-love, their containment, self-fulfilling. Self-fulfilled. And when that's a mirage, when that's a surface identity or image that someone's putting on, you can feel it. And it might tempt you for a little moment, but it won't really be the thing that you truly admire. But when it's really quite deep in someone, it's unbelievably tantalizing. And in my life and in my. Mm, gorgeous crew of people, the people that have that, but really have that with a generosity and a compassion. They give in their warmth and their energies to others. They really are a beam to be around. They love themselves and they love you as you are not perfectly. But in their essence, in their quality, you can feel it and it makes you feel at peace, seen and held like you are basking in some Mediterranean water somewhere. So I really want to remind you that you have the capacity to cultivate that with yourself and more than anyone else, actually, it's your responsibility to do it for yourself, with yourself. Because the experience of that, the impact of that, the place that that takes you in your life is beyond anything that anyone else could give you. It's also your key defense. When you find yourself naturally encountering your perception of dislike, your perception of not belonging. If we stay in this place where we are desperate to convert others. Personally or professionally, we stay in a state continually of giving away our power and my loves. I say this to you as someone that did this for decades. I just did not understand that that was what was happening. I didn't understand that that was a transaction, and actually, ultimately, I didn't understand that, that for another person who's a little bit more centered or even has less emotional bandwidth, that for someone else to be around is really challenging. Because they feel your need. They feel the need that you place on them for them to give you something that has to come from you only and they recoil from it, not consciously, but you'll feel it in their withdrawal or you'll feel it in their tone or in all sorts of small and and, and nuanced ways that we can sense someone shifting in their way of relating to us. And of course, because we're so deeply attentive to what they think and feel, as far as we know it, we get wounded very easily. And so this place where we come back home and we come back to self and we really invest in what do I feel, uh, what do I believe, what do I value? What can I offer myself? Who am I really, can that be enough for me? That's not a place of being infallible, but it's certainly a place of huge resource. You know, if I think about all of the women that I've been inspired by over the course of this year, and there have been a huge number of them, their stature, because they all sort of have that in common, their stature fundamentally comes from a really healthy degree of self-respect. They're at the stage, most of them, where they've learned over time that they will not bow in excess humility not to please another person. They'll absolutely acknowledge and apologize when they've done wrong. They will hold up their hands with radical responsibility, but that's very different from making yourself beholden to another person. And so if we come right back to that question around Christmas, I'd love for you all to see if you could be more beholden to yourselves than to others. This season. If you can treat all of the events and the experiences and the dynamics around you with a quality of lightness that says, okay, this stuff kind of just happens this time of year. And I could decide how deeply I allow it to go in, how meaningful it becomes. You know, we're, we're maladaptive, meaning making machines, and the meanings that we make are habitual. They're negatively tainted. They are protective. They're gonna be massively influenced by whether you are in your sympathetic nervous system, whether you are deep in the freeze response in, uh, parasympathetic, dorsal vagal. You are influenced in what you think. As much as we like to believe what we believe, it's worth questioning and the easiest way of getting back into a state where your mind is spacious and you are able to healthily question the ideas that float into the front of your brain is by taking time to decompress, to disconnect, to go into some quiet, it's the most useful tool. It is why I meditate once a day, twice a day. It's why when I go into practice with clients, I really drop into a state of witnessing. It's why I go for walks. It's why I leave my phone behind. Not always, but often. And it's why when I notice that as I'm consuming something, the television, another hot drink, uh, even an excess serving of cacao, when I notice that I'm. Moving into that space where I'm dissatisfied and I just want more, it is my sign that I am over full. And so I need to go to something that helps me to reduce my contents, to let them dissolve. And so that's why I got onto the mat this evening, and that's what stimulated me when I was more empty and I'd wriggled the tension out of my body. To come and connect with all of you. So this is not by any means gonna be my last message this season, but it is an important one. It is one that is sent with profound love for all of you listening, wherever and whenever you do. And please know that I will be thinking of you even if we've never met because you listening to this is like a heartbeat that I get to connect to and I will be forever grateful. Night team.

Anthea: 19:46

Gorgeous listeners. I hope. You enjoy today's. today's. episode. To find. More about our. Featured guests. Have a look in the show. Notes.