Modern Body Modern Life
This podcast is for women who want to lose weight for the very last time.
If you know what you should eat, but you can't get yourself to eat it, this podcast will help. If have dieted, lost weight, only to gain it back, this podcast will help.
This is the podcast for women who want to lose weight permanently by learning the mindset & strategy necessary to eat what they know they should eat, and feel in control around food. What you put in your mouth all starts with your mind, and once you learn how to manage it, living in a body you love the look and feel of is so much easier.
Modern Body Modern Life is about so much more than weight loss. It's about learning to calm the war that goes on in your head when you are constantly thinking about your body and food.
I will be talking about the importance of up leveling your self concept, listening to your body, feeling your emotions instead of turning to food. I will teach you how hunger is not an emergency, and although food is meant to be enjoyed sometimes, it doesn't always have to be a party in your mouth.
Most importantly, the theme of this podcast supports the belief that you can lose weight permanently and be in your best shape at any age.
~Courtney
Modern Body Modern Life
Are you Escaping or Avoiding Your Emotions? Or Both?
Learn more or work with me at modernbodymodernlife.com
In this episode, I’m diving into something that impacts every area of our lives — our emotions. I talk about the two main ways we tend to disconnect from how we feel: escaping and avoiding our emotions.
You’ll learn how emotions drive your daily actions and habits, and why understanding them is key to creating lasting change — whether your goal is to feel better in your body, improve relationships, or stop emotional eating. I’ll share how to tell if you’re an “escaper,” an “avoider,” or a bit of both, and give you tools to process emotions instead of pushing them away.
When you understand why you do what you do, you gain the power to change it — and that’s when everything in life gets better.
Listen in, and if this episode resonates, share it with someone you love to go deep with.
Interested in speaking with me about how we can work together? Click here to head to my website: https://www.modernbodymodernlife.com/ and schedule a free consultation with me.
Bob, welcome to modern body, modern life, the podcast for women who want to feel powerful, healthy, strong and confident, inside and out at every age. On this podcast, we talk about becoming a woman who is fully in control of her eating and movement, so weight loss, strength and energy become permanent. We also talk about something bigger, becoming the woman who takes her deepest desire seriously and goes after more in every area of her life. I'm body and life coach Courtney Gray, and I believe you can get in the best shape of your life at any age, and when you do, it becomes a catalyst for everything else, your relationships, your confidence, your joy, because when you feel like you and your body, all of life gets better. Let's get started. Welcome to the podcast episode 105 and I'm not quite sure what I'm going to name this podcast yet, but I believe it is going to be, are you escaping or avoiding your emotions, or both. The reason why I'm a little bit up in the air about that title is it's not sexy. So if you're listening, I think you're an amazing human being, because for many people, they're going to see that title and they're going to be like but this is going to be a very powerful podcast, one you might want to send to someone you love that you talk deep about life and feelings and goals and big ideas and all those things, someone that you talk deep with, it might be a great one to send to them. But this podcast, I think I might even not try to create a sexy title. I never want to like bait and switch anyone I really love to make the titles what I'm actually going to be teaching you, and this isn't sexy, but it's going to be very powerful. So in a fact, it is sexy. First, let me talk about understanding and processing and managing our emotions is very important, something none of us were ever taught. And the reason why it's so important is our emotions directly affect our actions, our our emotions actually determine our actions, meaning what we do and we don't do during the day. All is affected by the way we feel. And then what ends up happening is, is, after a while, these actions we're taking during the day, like our habits, the way we are living our daily lives, becomes habit forming. And so if you have a habit of, let's say you're in college and you're feeling really overwhelmed, and you start living a certain way, even after you're no longer overwhelmed the way you've been living, those habits you formed kind of are set in stone sometimes, until we actually look at our life and go, Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Why am I going to bed so late? I really want to get into bed earlier. Or maybe if you formed habits when you were working, and then you think, Oh, I'm retired. Now retirement is the answer. So many people think retirement is the answer, and then they retire and they realize they're still in the same habit, in the same behavior patterns during the day that were created with emotions that they were feeling when they were working. So it's so important to realize our emotions are really important. They dictate what we do and don't do. Is it time for an emotion upgrade? Do we need to change our emotions, or do we need to process them? Because so many people are pushing those emotions down. Now, on this podcast, I am really going to be focusing specifically on emotions, but if you're a little bit new to me, I have a lot of new listeners. Welcome. I want to suggest you pause and go to Episode 96 It was an amazing episode, and it really breaks down, like where our emotions even come from. It comes from our thoughts, our thoughts, our beliefs, our perspectives, and it really takes you through a beautiful thing I teach called the thought model. It is a coaching tool that you can learn and it will change every area of your life. It's a great podcast, but I'm going to specifically talk about our emotions, because I wanted to just deep dive on that. I've talked a lot this week with my clients about our emotions and their role in creating the results in our lives, the really like the makeup, the blueprint of our lives. That's what our emotions help us do. And for the sake of this podcast, I'm mostly going to be talking about what most of us would consider negative emotions. We're going to save positive emotions for another day, but let's consider one emotion that is very common for a lot of people, and it's overwhelm. If we think about being overwhelmed, probably one of the first behaviors that come to mind is like having a hard time being productive. When I think of myself in the past, when I get overwhelmed, I feel almost like energetically, hands up, like I don't even know what to do with myself, right? And so we feel overwhelmed, and then we have a hard time making a decision. We have a hard time being productive. We have a hard time sticking to the plan. We feel, you know, like we can't even move in any direction. Again, that's kind of what the the behavior is that's associated with being overwhelmed. Let's think of being insecure when you think of. Yourself. Think about a time in the past that you felt insecure. When you're insecure, you don't really act in alignment to who you really are, like maybe you don't voice your opinion, maybe you don't, quote, unquote, put yourself out there. Maybe you don't take the lead. Maybe you people, please, you don't do the thing that you truly if you weren't feeling insecure, that you would do. And let's, let's talk about some positive emotions. If you were inspired or confident, you would act very different. You would behave in a different way than if you were insecure. If you are inspired or confident, you act very differently than you would if you felt kind of depressed. So we know that our emotions affect our behavior. It affects our actions, what we do and what we don't do. But we have so much control over the emotions we are feeling, so much more control than we are aware of most people are living at the whim of circumstances, at the whim of their thoughts and at the whim of their emotions, but you have so much more control than any of us were ever taught. Many people are thinking things like, I wish I felt motivated, and because of that thought, they feel unmotivated. And then they sit on the couch watching Netflix, or they sit on the couch scrolling. They have thoughts like, I just want to be happy. And then they kind of sit around and they're not doing things that's trying to help them be happy, because they're feeling maybe discouraged or depressed. So many people are thinking things like, I can't tell you how many people have said to me, I have so much mom guilt. Of course, when they think they have mom guilt, they're feeling guilty. And because of that, maybe they're, you know, not setting boundaries. Maybe they're saying yes when they mean No, maybe they're overwhelming themselves with doing too much for their children or not doing anything for themselves, taking care of themselves, not being true to themselves, not helping their children be more independent in the world. And so these are all things that we have control over. So again, to dive deep into understanding how our thoughts create our emotions, whatever the circumstances happening in your life. Head over to Episode 96 and then come back to this episode. It really is a deep dive into understanding where our emotions come from, which is mostly our thoughts. And then, of course, we create habits out of all of this. So that's a great episode for you to listen to. So today I want to focus on what I see so often in my coaching practice. After coaching hundreds of women, I've seen two major types of ways we try to not feel our negative emotions, escaping emotions and avoiding emotions. And these are very different. What happens when we are doing either whether you and I'm going to break it up and you're going to be able to see what you are. Many people are either more escape, more of an escape artist of emotions, or more avoidant. And many of us can think of many times when we are both. But I know for myself I'm more avoidant, and I'm going to explain what they are so you can see yourself in how you live. So then you can have the option to change if you'd like to change. But many of us are both. So when we are doing either one of these, when we are escaping our emotions or we are avoiding our emotions, we turn to food to not feel emotions. We turn to alcohol to not feel emotions. We scroll. That's a big one that I don't think five years ago, many people, many coaches like I don't think I really dealt with this years ago, but now it is definitely a big one. We are scrolling to avoid boredom and insecurity and avoid any emotions that come with getting the work done that we said we were going to do it. We are scrolling to avoid having difficult conversations, because that makes us feel nervous all of these things. We are also turning to porn, turning to TV, we are turning to drugs. We are turning to everything, anything, to not feel these negative emotions. Everyone knows what like pushing emotions down means. And oftentimes, as a society, we kind of think of men as being the ones at fault. Oh, he never wants to feel his emotions. He just pushes them down. But I'm telling you, we're all doing this. We are all doing this in some capacity. So it's important that you see yourself in this. So this is going to be a powerful episode, because when you understand yourself at a deeper level, when you uncover why you do what you do, then you have the opportunity to change. And if you want more for your life in any area, if you are trying to up level in any area, this is going to be important that you recognize what emotions are holding you back, and you can really uncover your power to be able to change them or process them and move through them. So I want to start with escaping emotions. This is more of the classic example that many people think of when they think of emotional eating, for example. So let me give you an example of what escaping emotions is like. Okay, so it's been, let's say it's been a day, right? Multiple things happening that are unexpected and you. You're managing all of it because you're an amazing woman. Whether you're working, have little kids, have no kids, whether you retired, it doesn't matter. We women are amazing, and we are doing all the things. So let's say it's a crazy day. You have to remember that the primitive survival part of your brain would rather you not be in any pain, emotional or physical. And when it is an unexpected kind of more wild day, when you have multiple things going on and you're maybe feeling a range of emotions, to your primitive brain that is like emotional pain. And to our primitive brain, that means danger, anything new, unexpected, slightly painful, annoying, you know, any kind of guilt, annoyance, frustration, anything that's emotional pain. And we know what happens when we are feeling any kind of pain, whether it's emotional or physical. This part of our brain wants us to get into pleasure. Wants us to get relief from any kind of pain as fast as possible, and because of the world we're living in right now, it's very, very easy to get out of that emotional pain. In order to not be in any kind of emotional pain, we go to food or alcohol or drugs or porn or scrolling, anything like that, to get a dopamine hit of pleasure and relieve us from the emotional discomfort, the emotional, quote, unquote, pain. This is why there are so many people that are not moving forward in their lives with their goals if they want to, whether it's they want to make more money or have better relationships or take better care of themselves, or eat better or drink less, whatever your goal is. If you feel any kind of negative emotion, your primitive brains like you have your go tos, go for it, and you're reaching for a snack, or you're giving up on your workout, or you're having a cocktail, all of these things, smoking some pot, whatever it is for you, scrolling is a big one. Whatever it is for you that is escaping our emotions. We are in a negative place, and we are trying to get out of that negative place through something that is pleasurable. Again, the classic example, you can think of someone, some woman in a business suit, coming home from a long day and going, Oh my God, just give me. I just need a glass of wine right away. It's like, it's been a long day. I need to get out of the pain of this long day. I need wine. Or you think about yourself like on at a holiday, maybe over the since we're heading into the holidays, maybe over the holidays. You're, you know, there's going to be family members there that you you love them, but you're like, you have a max capacity after an hour, you feel a little bit done. And so what do you do in order to get out of that frustration, or whatever, you have extra food, or you have extra drinks, we're trying to help ourself, comfort ourselves and not be so frustrated or annoyed all of those things. So that is all escaping emotions. Very, very common. It's more of the classic example of emotional eating for a lot of people, but the next one I want to talk to you might surprise you a little bit. It's a little harder to see in yourself, hopefully, until now, this one is called avoiding negative emotions. I want to start with an example of one of my clients from years ago. This might be you, if you are a really positive person, or if your life is pretty easy and you feel like you're in a really great season of life where you don't have a lot of frustrations, this one might be what you experience avoiding emotions might be more. You might resonate more with avoiding negative emotions. So I had a client years ago and very positive, great life. Not a lot of not a lot of things that frustrated her, not a lot of things going wrong, like she was very grateful, very aware that her life was very good. And so sometimes she would overeat, and I was helping her lose weight and up level her life and figure out what she wanted to do in retirement, all of that. And sometimes she would come on a call and say, I did amazing. Things are going great. Other times she would come on a call and say, Okay, I did really great, except for these three days. And here's what happened, and this is a very common story I hear from my clients, is I was happy. The day was going great. I was with people. I loved being around. I wasn't stressed, I wasn't sad, I wasn't feeling guilty. So I don't know why I ate off of my plan for myself that night. And I said, Oh, you were probably eating to avoid negative emotions, because she wasn't escaping any negative emotions. She wasn't in any negative emotions, so there's nothing to escape, but she was avoiding negative emotions. And she said, What do you mean? She didn't understand. So I explained it to her. And so the first thing I did before I explained it to her, and I'll explain to you is, I said, What would have happened if you wouldn't have gone back for seconds after that meal? And she goes nothing. What do you mean? I said, No, think about it. Get back into the feelings from three days ago. You were sitting there, everyone was talking, having a great time. You're not in any negative emotions. And then all of a sudden, you decide, no. I'm sticking to my plan. I'm not going to go for seconds, because that was part of part of her plan was to not to watch her portions. And she said, I think that I would have felt sad. And I said, Oh, interesting. Tell me why she was well, I because we know sadness comes from a thought, right? So I said, tell me why you would have been sad. And she was, I think I would have thought everyone else is getting seconds. Why can't I? Beautiful? Can you see the model here? She has a thought, everyone else is getting seconds. Why can't I and which and when we have a thought, like a question? Basically, what she was saying is, it's not fair that everyone else is getting seconds, right? We can turn that question into a statement. It's like, this isn't fair. And that made her feel sad. And so I said so by eating in that moment, you were avoiding sadness. I want to make sure you really understand that. So to hear it again, rewind it if you need to fully understand it. So again, she wasn't escaping any negative emotion. She wasn't in any negative emotion, until all of a sudden it came time to not eat a second portion, to stick to her plan. And all of a sudden, if she would have stuck to her plan, she would have felt sad, because her thought would have been, everyone else is getting a second it's not fair. By her eating, she was avoiding that negative emotion. So a very positive person, even though they're not walking around doom and gloom, even though they're not walking around stressed, maybe their life is perfect. Maybe they eat to avoid negative emotions. This is more alignment to where I live. I'm a very positive person. I can coach myself out of a lot of negative emotions. I Jive at a pretty positive level. So when I have a tendency to emotionally eat, it's usually because I'm avoiding potential negative emotions. It usually, for me, goes hand in hand with this is so fun, and if I don't eat, it won't be quite as fun. Now here's the beauty. I know that about myself, so when I go to Thanksgiving, I know that about myself, and I know at some point, if I feel like, okay, I'm kind of bored in the moment, or this person's annoying me, or I just got some news that's a little sad, or I'm a little sleepy, or whatever, I know that all of a sudden my brain is going to tell me to eat because it's going to be more fun to eat, and then if I don't eat, there might be kind of like, this is boring, or, Oh, this isn't as fun as I thought it would be, and so I would be eating, possibly to avoid negative emotions. Now, most of us are a combination of both, and for me, sometimes I'm a combination of both. If I have a really stressful day, and I go into the evening, part of me wants to get out of that stress, and then on top of it, I have the I want to get out of the stress, and I don't want to feel the emotions of not having popcorn if my husband is having popcorn, because then I'm going to be like, This isn't fair, right? Have a like, a little toddler tantrum. So most of us are a combination of both, and it's important to see that too. Let me give you an example. Let's say you sleep in late with many of my clients. Right now, I'm working on getting to bed earlier and waking up earlier, and that sounds so simple, but if we can get people to do those things, they really have a more productive day. They feel more empowered. They get more done. They usually get their workout done. They get some journaling done, or maybe they want to med. Want to meditate. It's just, it's a beautiful gift you can give yourself, and it's hard to do. So we're working on that with many of my clients, but so let's say you sleep in late and you're like, shout, I wanted to get up earlier. And then let's say you spill on yourself. And then maybe your son's at college and they text you and they're struggling, whether it's in a class or with roommates or whatever. Maybe you go to work and then your co worker is kind of sassy to you or and then maybe you get home and your partner ate your leftovers, and you're like, what the f? Right? You're stressed and you're irritated. You have an urge to escape these emotions. There's a part of you that wants to go, I'm just going to go out with my girlfriends and have a glass of wine and have a pity party, right? You want to escape those emotions, and then the thought of not eating or drinking something makes you want to avoid feeling the emotions that you will feel, and get even worse, if you stick to a healthy eating plan, so you can definitely be both. I think many people are walking around the world feeling both. And that's why, as the day goes on and there's more things happening that are causing more negative emotions, that's why it's so much easier to stick to your plan at breakfast and even lunch, maybe, but at seven o'clock you're tired. You're tired from stopping trying to feel all these negative emotions. And this leads us to our next conversation, the next question to ask yourself, once you realize what you're doing, what your tendency is, do I need to change this emotion or process it again? I know you think, and I'm harping on you here. Episode 96 will help this as well. Help with this as well. We're. If you can change your emotions by deciding to think differently about something, if someone you love said something that triggered you into feeling irritated, what was your thought? What was the thought that made you irritated? You might think it's what they said. No, it's not what they said. What they said is a neutral circumstance. The reason you're irritated is you had a thought about that. She shouldn't be saying that to me. How could she say that to me? I'm so supportive of her. Why would she do that? There's some kind of thought there that is making you feel irritated. So do you need to change that thought to feel differently? Possibly I'm changing my thoughts and emotions all day, something will happen and I'll be like, I'll feel a negative emotion come up, and I'll say, Hmm, do I want to feel this way about that? Do I want to be jealous? Do I want to feel anger? Do I want to feel worried? Do I want to feel hopeless? Or do I want to change the thought? And I've gotten really good at doing that, and that's what I help my clients do in my program. But there's also another thing we also have an option of doing is processing that emotion. Sometimes we don't want to change our emotion. If someone that we love is really struggling and we are feeling really sad, we might not want to go, you know what? Everything's fine. Everything's fine. I'm going to be happy. Besides the fact that, unless you're good at this work, that might be just pushing the emotion down. But sometimes we want to be sad, sometimes we want to sit there and feel grief. And you need to be able to decide, what do I want to do here? Do I want to change this emotion? I can or do I want to process this emotion? I can do that as well. And processing emotion is actually quite simple. And when, when, sometimes when people hear process emotion, they think that like, that's gonna they're gonna, like, move through it and it's gonna get rid of it entirely. That's not really how I found it works. But what you can simply do, and I've guide you, guided you through this in other podcasts, but I'll tell you quickly here now, is that in order to process emotion, I do it's a few steps of a process. Is the first thing I do is I say, What am I feeling? And that sounds so simple, but for many people, they don't even know what they're feeling. So ask yourself, am I feeling jealous? Am I irritated? Am I angry? Am I guilty? Am I sad? There is hundreds of emotions, even just hundreds of more negative emotions that you could be feeling. And the reason why it's important that you figure out what that feeling is is because it will be easier for you to figure out what thought is causing it and then be able to say, Do I want to change this thought, change this emotion, or do I want to process it? And so again, if you've decided you want to process to process it, you say, What am I feeling? And you might say, I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling sad. And then you say, Where am I feeling it in my body? Am I feeling it in my stomach? Am I feeling it in my chest, the back of my neck? Am I feeling it all over? Am I feeling it in my head, behind my eyes, wherever? What if, and what does it feel like? Can you describe it? And this is, I'm getting a little Woo, I'm getting a little woo, woo with you here. But what does it feel like? Does it feel tight? Does it feel hot? Is it some people feel in color. This is really, isn't me, but many people do feel in color. They'll say it feels red. Does it feel racy like? Is it a moving feeling, or does it feel heavy? The reason why this is important to do is we are so not in our bodies. We've been spending so many years trying to not feel our emotions. Let's just feel it for a moment. How does it feel? And then, instead of energetically pulling away from it, dive into it. Let's just sit here and feel that emotion. So I'll share with you. The other day, my cat was not feeling well, I could tell. And then he went missing. He went missing for like, over 24 hours. And I was like, oh, what? Because he's old, he's like, around 15. And I was like, Oh my gosh, is this it like, like he's gone right now? Am I never gonna see him again? And it was just like, what is happening? And this is the first animal I've ever owned. And so I was sitting here like, oh my god, am I? Am I gonna have to call my boys and say that Ian passed away, or he left, and I think he probably passed away, and and I was sitting there, and I started feeling the negative feelings, and I was in the backyard, kind of looking around for him, and I was by myself, and I just stopped, and I put my hands on my chest, and I just started crying. And I said, What am I feeling? And I'm like, I'm feeling so sad. I'm feeling so sad. And I'm like, yep, just feel it. And I sat down in the backyard in my pajamas, and I just cried, and I just felt like, oh, and I knew all the thoughts creating it, and I didn't want to change all those thoughts. I didn't want to say, I'm sure he's going to be fine. He lived a good life. I didn't want to do that. I just wanted to feel it and say, It's okay that I'm having a moment and I'm being sad. And because I was willing to feel that, I kind of dried myself up. I felt a little release. I cried it out a little bit. I felt a little bit better. And then I started looking around, and I eventually found him. He's still not feeling great, but. That's not the point. The point is, I processed through those feelings, and when you do that, you'll notice it lightens them up a little bit. It feels good to do. It just feels like emotionally intelligent to do and make sure you give yourself that credit, like I'm really glad I did that. That felt really good. But then it releases it. So then you can go the rest of your day and not turn to food, not turn to scrolling, not turn to venting to everyone around you, not turning to just having to watch TV or take a nap for three hours, or all the things that we do to avoid the negative emotion or escape the negative emotion. That's how you process emotion just by thinking, what is the emotion, naming it, how does it feel, and diving into it and giving yourself time to do that, the deeper understanding you have of yourself, the easier it is for you to make permanent changes in your life when you understand Why you turn to any of the things you turn to in order to not feel then you can stop turning to those things. And then that's when your life gets even better. You feel more in control. You feel like you can actually be sad and just be sad without having to eat your face off. Most people don't know how to feel guilty, sad, exhausted and just take care of themselves. It's so interesting too, because I think that when we are having one of those days where maybe a lot of things are going on, and then maybe on top of it, you're not feeling good and you're and it just, you know how kind of one of those days where, when it rains, it showers, when you're having one of those days, your body needs to be taken care of. Even more, it doesn't need shit, food and alcohol. It doesn't need you staying up late on Tiktok. It needs you to love on yourself. Even more, it's so funny, if you think about how how we would talk to our children, if one of my boys came to me and say, I'm really kind of struggling right now. I'm just kind of not happy, and I feel like I'm getting a sore throat, and things are just not going well at work, and I don't even know if I want to do that anymore. And I don't know about moving. I was thinking I wanted to move, and now I don't know. I would not say, You know what, Honey, I'm so sorry you're going through that, but why don't you go and get a bunch of Taco Bell and then go out for drinks, stay out really late and just go to bed. But like, don't take care of yourself. Like, I would never say that. That's ridiculous. We would guide them to take care of themselves. Be gentle with yourself. Do you want me to set you up with a therapist? Do you want me to talk to you? Do you want to talk to your dad? Can I make you dinner, get to bed early. Here's some lozenges, or whatever, the throat lozenges, right? There's so many things that we would guide them to do, but we don't take our own advice. My hope for you, after hearing this podcast is you've really identified. What kind of avoidant Are you like? More avoidant? Or you an escaper of emotions. How can you actually identify that in yourself? And now that you know that you can be in the moment and go, Oh, this is exactly what I'm doing, and how can I do better? Awareness is the first step. Share this podcast with someone you go deep with and have a great Tuesday for information on how we can work together. Head to modern body, modern life.com. To schedule a consultation with me. I'm currently coaching women privately, and I offer group coaching programs you.