salty bake club

Emotional Layering

• sara grace • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Here is where you get in touch. Work with me, share your experience or requests > this is how to reach me. Love, - Sara

Dive deep beneath the surface of your emotional layers in this vulnerable exploration of what happens when we finally allow ourselves to feel. Drawing from personal experience, I share my journey from emotional armor to authentic connection, revealing how hyper-independence became my shield after heartbreak and the painful yet necessary process of dismantling those walls.

What would happen if we stopped intellectualizing our emotions and instead honored them as physical experiences living in our bodies? Science confirms what many of us sense intuitively—suppressed emotions don't simply disappear but accumulate like unpaid bills, eventually manifesting as stress, illness, and disconnection. While most adults can only name three or four emotions, researchers have identified at least 27 distinct emotional states that blend together like colors, creating the rich tapestry of human experience.

This episode offers practical guidance for expanding your emotional vocabulary beyond "tired," "stressed," or "okay," introducing tools like emotion wheels and mood meters that can transform your self-awareness and relationships. We explore the critical distinction between emotions and thoughts, the connection between trauma and physical sensation, and why feeling safe is essential for healing. Whether you're working through past wounds or simply seeking deeper connection, consider this your permission slip to be fully human—to cry, dance, shake, or scream—whatever allows your authentic self to emerge. Remember, you're not too much; you're beautifully, perfectly imperfect, just like the rest of us. Ready to peel back those layers and discover what's been waiting underneath?

Speaker 1:

Hey, suga, pull up a chair, snuggle onto your couch, grab a tea and take a deep breath with me, because today I'm going to take you to a place most of us were told never to go. I'm speaking of the wild and mysterious world of emotions. Imagine biting into the perfectly flaky and crunchy croissant. As your teeth sink in and the buttery taste lingers on your palate, you notice the many, many layers. And, just like that, croissants, us humans, have so many layers, but instead of celebrating them, most of us strip a lot of them away and hide them, and that annoys me so very much, and my theory is that this is an avoidance strategy that is linked to not being able to process and experience our own emotions. So, yeah, it would be totally perfect if I would serve you a perfect croissant, but the day that I bake croissants is somewhat far in the future, because I think it is gonna be my biggest challenge. Instead, I have a perfectly. Let me set this straight I am not here as your teacher, your guru or some guiding force. I am here as the wise granny that you wish you would have had when you were six years old, because guess what? The things that you thought you buried. Your body remembers and, oh honey, your heart has been weeping all along. So, while I am talking, there is an invitation to deeply reflect on the meaning of my words for you personally. So let us go there with a little bit of science, with a lot of soul and, hopefully, a pastry by your side.

Speaker 1:

I want to start with a personal story. My current and my last really big relationship were seven or eight years apart, and the last one resulted in quite a big heartbreak. In those seven or eight years I was alone a lot. For the first five years I didn't really date much. I didn't really go out much. I mostly worked on my self-healing. I really enjoyed having a lot of time alone and focusing my entire energy on myself. I built a lot of strength, a lot of courage. I explored myself in a totally different way and all the while I felt more independent. And that independence felt so, so good that I started nurturing it, that I started nurturing it.

Speaker 1:

After about four years I have been the most healthy, the most yogic, the most spiritual I have ever been. I felt like I was on top of my game and all of a sudden I started encountering really weird experiences. There were numerous people, a Bali healer, weird experiences. There were numerous people, a Bali healer, a random woman at an airport in Turkey and someone who was really close to my heart, who kept saying the same thing. You have to work on your heart, chakra. Imagine standing at the terminal waiting for boarding and a random woman walks up to you and be like excuse me, miss, may I say something? I don't want to intrude, but I have a deep sensation, a deep feeling that you have to open your heart.

Speaker 1:

And for a time I was in denial. I was brushing it off. Something lingered and after a lot of full moons, a lot of new moon journaling, a lot of therapy, to be honest, I noticed that my independence grew into something that experts call hyper-independence. I started being so, so freaking good at being with myself that I didn't let anybody in anymore and I built an armor. Brick by brick, it grew and it protected me. It shielded me from that heartbreak that I experienced. It shielded me from the loneliness. It shielded me from that feeling of neglect.

Speaker 1:

For about a year it was in denial and then it took two to three years to really soften, and that softening was so hard. I had a year where I was not myself. I cried so much, I felt so, so unwell in my body and I felt like that whole that confidence that I had built was stripped away from me. Now I know that was healing, and healing is not a linear path. Now I know that was landing back into my body. Now I know that was the harsh lesson that I had to learn in order to integrate those emotions, that I stuffed down and open myself to the world again, and I'm so, so glad that I did that work. I'm so freaking happy that I listened to that inner call and that I didn't neglect it, because now I'm in the most beautiful relationship that I ever could have imagined. Now I want to set something straight.

Speaker 1:

We all live in a world where we often intellectualize emotions and I want to distinguish right away that your mind layer, the mental layer, your thoughts, your intellectual layer right, that happens here. That is streaming from your brain, those electric impulses that we can call thoughts. That is something vastly different than an emotion. An emotion lives in the body. An emotion is something that your body experiences, not your mind. So you cannot intellectualize emotions. Once you've started doing that, you dissociate from your body. What happens is that you don't feel at home in your body, you are not familiar with your body's reactions to the world, you have a lot of stress factors, you live in constant fight or flight.

Speaker 1:

And I'm going to go one step further and say this is the state of being where most people live in, because once again in our world we have not been taught. Growing up you didn't have that wise granny that told you what you're experiencing is fear or shame, and it is something that your body goes through and it also will fade if you allow it to pass through your body. Most people do not allow those emotions, allow those experiences, and that is why they get stuck in the body. Now, eastern philosophy and Eastern anatomy even acknowledges emotions in a very interesting way. While in Western medicine we only look at the body layers that we can measure, as in, we only look at the body layers that we can measure. When we live like that, when we suppress our emotions or even think they aren't important, we build those armors around our world and what they do is they distance us from ourselves and others.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you live with an armor like that after years and years, that's going to be your normal, and here is where I want to refer back to my patriarchy the boot on our neck episode where I said if you have somebody in your field that isn't able to experience their own emotions, they will never and I repeat, never be able to understand or fully accept yours. What happens is we rationalize, we intellectualize, we deny our emotions, we project something completely different. That is a big one in our world, but it is a problem that doesn't go away, because the body remembers. The weight of the armor is too heavy to bear. The body's natural response Illness. And modern science backs up that.

Speaker 1:

Suppressed emotions don't just go away, they file up like unpaid bills. They have found that it leads to higher blood pressure, chronic fatigue, more cortisol release, so higher stress levels. They also and when I say they, I believe it was the University of Texas suppressing your emotions leads to over-activation of the amygdala that is the fear center of the brain, but also the part of the brain that is relating to emotions, and I don't want to go down that spiral too far. But if you are interested in the science of it, there's a ton, just go do your research. But it should be clear that it's not just boohoo emotional, it is physical, it is chemical, it is science that we have to allow our many layers, our many emotions into our body and also out of our body again. And, as my own story shows, you can green shoes your way through life, you can do yoga every damn day, but if you're still emotionally shut down, your body is carrying that weight.

Speaker 1:

And yes, I get it, we didn't learn how to feel emotions, we learned how to exile them. Now let's set the basics straight. Right, we have six or seven core emotions. You have those emotions already as a baby. Six or seven because it depends on who you listen to, who you believe, because, once again, that science of emotions is super young. For the longest time we didn't even care. I mean, we were able to send rocket ships to other planets, but we weren't, and we still aren't, able to name more than three emotions. Now, if you follow Paul Ekman, then there are six core emotions Fear, anger, happiness, disgust, surprise and sadness. Think of a baby. A baby already experiences all of them. But as your brain develops, you get more layered, your complexity grows and so does your palette of emotions.

Speaker 1:

Topic to me Dr Mark Burkett created the mood meter, which allowed me to understand, comprehend and express more emotions Meaning. Due to that guy, I got more emotionally intelligent. Now I'm a better partner, a better friend, and it begins with finding words for what you feel, because if you don't have words, you can't express it, you can't communicate or live life with another, because they will never be able to understand you. I think it's also Dr Mark Barquette who used this example in his book Permission to Feel, where he says imagine going to a doctor and you have this excruciating pain. But once the doctor asks you what's bothering you, you all of a sudden have no language. That shock makes you tick out and you try to rattle yourself. You use your hands, you make big gestures, you're getting angry because you can't help yourself. And that is how most grown-ups react when they're overwhelmed by emotions, simply because they can't name it, simply because nobody told us what anxiety is, that anxiety differs from fear in terms of that. Fear is now. There's a tiger behind me and I fear that tiger that is behind me now. And anxiety is worrying about the future, worrying about something that doesn't exist yet, but the cortisol release in your brain is the same. That's what makes it so tricky. That's what gives us the same feeling.

Speaker 1:

Emotional intelligence allows you to differentiate between guilt or shame and, believe me, it changes the outcome of a discussion with, let's say, your friend, when you know that you feel shame and not guilt, differentiating. Shame is I am bad, guilt is I did something bad. That's that inner talk, that monologue, that voice in your head. What does it tell you? Does it tell you yes, I'm aware, I did something bad, that sucked, I'm sorry. Shame is I am bad because of what I did.

Speaker 1:

Emotional intelligence allows you to open up a world of more connection, because when you come home from work and your spouse is waiting there asking you how you are, and you say the same three words over and over again, which, for most people, are stressed, tired, okay or good, yeah, let's say four. Well, that's going to be a boring life. If you're all of a sudden able to dive into the nuances of your life, love the world is going to get so much wider. So here's some homework. You probably know the emotion wheel. Maybe you go on Dr Mark Parkett's website and check out the mood meter to learn vocabulary around what you feel and once you have that in front of you, look at it daily, look at it multiple times a day. My god, maybe even pin it onto your bathroom wall and challenge yourself that when somebody asks you how you are, you do not use the word okay, stressed, tired or good anymore, because, love you are better than that. You are more complex, more layered, more colorful than that. So, yeah, this is the grown-up work that we all have to do Become that person that is able to sit in and with difficult, difficult and ecstatic feelings, I get it. I get it. That is hard, and for healing to happen, one thing is required, and that is safety. You have to feel safe, you have to be in a safe environment in order for growth and healing to happen. So if that work doesn't work, ask yourself what makes you feel unsafe and try your best to change it. Trigger warning Emotions are also closely tied to the trauma that you hold in your body.

Speaker 1:

And yes, you hold trauma in your body Exactly you, because we all do. We just have to differentiate between capital T and lower T trauma. Extremely big trauma that shaped and molded your character structure happens due to abuse, war, violence in any kind, and the lower T trauma is what we all have. It might happen when we pee ourselves in middle school, when we get dumped by our first boyfriend, or when we face a life situation we don't feel equipped for. But instead of trying to silence your body's reactions, you need to feel through it. Otherwise it gets stuck and the trauma is going to be stored in your tissue for the rest of your life and, once again, that armor is too heavy to bear.

Speaker 1:

Know that there is not only one emotion that you're feeling. Currently. Modern neuroscience suggests that we, as humans, cycle through a multitude of emotions at the same time. According to a 2017 study by Cohen and Keltner, humans are able to experience 27 distinct emotions that are blending together like colors, and it would be so much easier to have that clear emotion. But just like colors, they are blended together by various shades.

Speaker 1:

Now your limbic system, especially the amygdala that we talked about. That's quite an older part of your brain. The newest part of your brain is your prefrontal cortex. Right, that allows us to make decisions and think in such a complex way. But your limbic system is old. We have had to deal with such emotions for a long, long time. Just that complex world and that prefrontal cortex makes it so much harder, and the emotional processing in your brain starts with 200 milliseconds of a trigger. Now this shouldn't make you feel defeated or numb, because you have that body that is helping you to notice, even though all these signals happen so, so fast. You have agency. You are not bound to your feelings and, yes, even though you have to process them, you have to let them live through you. You also don't have to attach to every emotion so in the moment that it comes up. If you have enough emotional intelligence and awareness of your system, you can certainly differentiate and allow certain emotions into your body, and others will just be flushed out of your system immediately. In order to get to that point, a ton of reflection and curiosity is mandatory.

Speaker 1:

Therapy helps If you find a compassionate and competent no BS therapist, and I know therapy is expensive, but in our modern world there's so many options. I'm not being paid for this, but I genuinely want to share the resources that I have. If you're interested but struggle with the payment of regular therapy sessions, check out betterhelpcom. I've used that service for a long, long, long time. I found a really good therapist that I continuously worked with and it is only, I think, about 50 euros a week. So for 200 euros that is usually what one therapy session costs, you have a counseling every week, you can text your therapist, you can do those sessions via video, via audio only, and your therapist is able to give you really cool tools and little homeworks. I loved those homeworks.

Speaker 1:

So what do I want and why do I make this episode? I really urge you exactly you who's listening to that, and, yes, everybody else in this freaky world of ours to become more emotionally nuanced. In fact, you are already. I just want you to be aware of it. I believe if we would be aware of the complexity of a single human, we would have so much more compassion and our lives with each other would be more heartfelt, open and colorful. So, love, if your body has been whispering, aching and maybe even weeping, it's not broken. It might simply hold treasures that your mind is too scared to see.

Speaker 1:

You do not have to have it figured out right away or at all. You just have to stop pretending, because underneath the numbness, the clenched jaw, the constant doing, there is a voice and it sounds a lot like you, your real self, before the world told you to be less. Let this be your permission slip to scream out into the wide open, to cry if you want to, to dance it off like nobody's watching. By the way, that's exactly what animals do they shake when they have lived through something traumatic. So do that Whatever is necessary to feel and to embody yourself. So until next time, be tender and remember you're not too much. You are perfectly imperfect, like we all are. If anything in this episode resonated, please write a comment or share this podcast with somebody who you think could profit from it. I'm your host, sarah, sarah Grace, and I'm so freaking excited for us to hang out a little bit. I'm gonna have my rhubarb muffin now and I wish you a lovely week ahead. Thank you, I love you.