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Soul-Led
A devotional space for raw reflection, soulful inquiry, and the sacred unfolding of self. Here, we explore the mystery of being human through the lenses of spirituality, intimacy, creativity and the courage to be seen. This podcast is not about having all the answers, it's about honouring the questions, the pauses, the breakthroughs and the becoming.
Expect unscripted conversations, intuitive musing, and transmissions from the heart all grounded in truth, reverence, and the beauty of the present moment.
Come as you are, leave a little more you!
Soul-Led
3.The Sacred Art of Feeling Your Emotions: Breaking Free from Busyness Culture
Have you ever felt an inexplicable panic when trying to rest? That strange guilt or fear that creeps in when you finally slow down? You're not alone.
Emma Jones opens up about her recent emotional journey through Father's Day grief, revealing the surprising terror she felt when trying to simply lie down and feel her emotions. This fear—what she describes as feeling like "you've forgotten to pick your kids up from school"—stems from childhood experiences watching her mother struggle with schizophrenia and depression, creating a deep-seated association between rest and breakdown.
The podcast explores our cultural obsession with busyness as a status symbol, and how Emma consciously removed "I'm really busy" from her vocabulary after recognizing its harmful effects. She shares the transformation that came when she discovered "the welcome method"—a practice of opening her arms to uncomfortable emotions instead of running from them.
Unlike spiritual bypassing (which Emma admits she fell into during her early spiritual journey), true emotional processing requires validation and somatic release. She details practical techniques like EFT tapping, physical shaking, and the "morning pages" practice from The Artist's Way that have helped her process emotions without becoming overwhelmed. Even as a parent, Emma's created a system with her children—using the code word "PIP" (pee in private)—to take quick emotional regulation breaks when triggered.
The most profound insight? The behaviors we use to avoid our deepest fears often lead us directly into them. By suppressing emotions to prevent mental health struggles, Emma ironically experienced the breakdown she was desperately trying to avoid. Her vulnerable sharing offers a roadmap for anyone struggling to honor their emotional needs in a world that rewards constant productivity over authentic presence.
Looking for more support on your emotional journey? Join Emma's book club "A Woman's Inner Journey to Becoming Wealthy" on Patreon, where members are currently exploring The Artist's Way together.
Thank you for being on this journey with me 🤍
Links!!
Welcome back to the Soul Ed podcast with me, your host, emma Jones, and for those of you that listened to my last podcast, I am feeling much lighter. Father's Day for me normally is okay and for some reason last Father's Day, which was a couple of days ago now, was really tough for me. I did come on my period the next day, so it did make a lot of sense why I was so emotional. I came on three days early. I was not expecting it and whilst I kind of reflect on those hours and the day of feeling just so low and just so sad and releasing so many tears and really hearing all of the voices in my head that were trying to make me avoid the feelings that I was having, and saw the sunshine outside and the voice said to me you need to get out there, even if you just go and paddleboard, just get out, just do something, go and see someone, go for a walk, do this, do that, and all I really wanted to do was just be at home and be, and I remember lying on my bed and almost like drifting off to sleep and having this fear, this guilt in my solar plexus for resting, and it's something that I have been really working on for years now, because slowing down and the life that I have now did not just come overnight.
Speaker 1:I was your busy body. I used to think that being busy was a flex and when people would say to you how have you been, like how's your week been, and I'd be like, oh yeah, just so busy. I used to think that that was a really good thing and actually probably about two years ago I decided I'm going to remove the words I am really busy from my vocab, because what does that really mean and why are we glorifying being busy? Because really what my body needed at that time was to be less busy and to slow down. But I was finding it really tough because I had conditioned myself into being on the go all of the time and whenever I would have spare time I would be plugging it with a class or meeting people or doing some work on my business, and I felt like I had to be achieving all of the time.
Speaker 1:So sometimes still, when I am led in bed or I try to take a nap or I try to rest in the middle of the day, I get these really strong sensations in my body, almost almost like terror. Sometimes, if I do drop off and have a nap and I wake back up, I have this terror feeling in my body. It's like the only way I can describe it is that you've woken up and you've realized that you've forgotten to pick your kids up from school and it's two hours later than you were meant to, and not that I have ever done that, so I don't really know how I'm comparing it to that, but that is what I imagine. Feeling like, like that absolute oh my God fear, what have I done? Shame, fear, guilt it's all wrapped into one and I realized it not only comes from my busyness, but it originated from my mother's busyness and her never being able to rest, or when she did rest, it was because she was depressed, you know, and she did sleep a lot and she did rest a lot in my childhood and wasn't that present because of her illnesses. She suffers from schizophrenia, manic depression, and is very up and down and was throughout my childhood and I remember seeing her a lot of the time in bed and I would just keep myself entertained. I would play in my room for hours and hours on end and not have anyone to play with. It was quite a lonely childhood.
Speaker 1:So it's something that I am recognizing more as I get older and as I am slowing down. These feelings and these messages that my thoughts and my body tell me when I try to slow things down have been there this whole time. I've just not noticed them. But now my life is very different. Whenever I do go to slow down I'm so much more aware of my inner dialogue and through that I'm so much more aware of my inner dialogue and through that I'm so much more aware of what the inner dialogue makes me feel in my body.
Speaker 1:So, sitting there and witnessing these thoughts and these feelings haven't actually come up for quite some time, I mean I was feeling quite low and quite sad anyway, due my period, which I didn't realize, and was just feeling really sad for the loss of my dad and just in memory of him, and ended up doing a recording which you guys may have listened to, and I was led there and really listening to these voices that were trying to convince me to get up because I'm lazy, or to get up because we haven't got time to be feeling these, and all of the old feelings, the old narrative that I had and those thoughts were producing a really strong sensation in my body of absolute terror, and it feels very legit. It feels like from the thought I'm getting the feeling and so I need to get up. I cannot be lying here. So I resisted it and I kept my eyes closed and I really fell into that burning sensation in my chest and in my solar plexus and soothed the thoughts with thoughts and dialogue like it's okay to rest, it's safe for us to rest now, and the voice would say you're going to slip, you're going to go down a dark hole, you're going to end up like your mother. You're going, you're going to be lazy. You've got so many things you need to do. Think about all of these things on your to-do list that you could be doing rather than sleep. It's such a waste of time and every thought that came up I would sit and I would rewrite and I would say the opposite to it, but not in a way that felt false and fake to my ego and to my subconscious, but almost agreeing with it.
Speaker 1:I read a great book called the Greatest Secret. We read it in the book club. It was actually one of the first books we read in the book club and it transformed the way I now communicate and deal with my emotions and the thoughts that come up, and what it says is the welcome method. Instead of batting the emotions away and just busying yourself and trying to do something so you don't feel it, actually sit with your arms wide open, and I think the arms wide open is a signal and a symbol to your body that we are open. So you sit with your arms open and you welcome the emotion and you welcome the feeling and you say that's okay, you are so welcome, come and sit by me. This that you're feeling and this that you're thinking is so valid and these emotions are valid.
Speaker 1:You know, sometimes we don't know where to pinpoint them and don't know where they've come from, and a lot of the times we're not even aware of all of this self-loathing and this negative talk that thinks it's keeping us safe. Because safety to me, and maybe safety to you, used to be running around like a blue ass fly and never really having time for yourself and feeling quite scatty and quite spread thinly, and that becomes a program and that becomes your safety. So anything that tries to reverse that or slow it down, your subconscious is going to try to counteract that and try to find balance again by bringing you back into what it's familiar with. So that's where these voices come from. It doesn't mean to be cruel, even though some of the voices or some of the dialogue can sound not empowering in the slightest. But it doesn't mean to be cruel, even though some of the voices or some of the dialogue can sound not empowering in the slightest, but it doesn't mean that it's just using all of its tactics to get you back into a program that we've been running for so long, like why would we want to do anything different? That feels unsafe. What are you doing? Get out of bed. Don't go to sleep. That's not safe. What you do need to be doing is thinking about where you're going to be getting your next month's pay, or what clients are going to get in, or the parking ticket that you needed to pay, or the bills that you could be paying up front. But speak to this person. You haven't spoke to that person and all of the things that it tries to get you to do to keep you in that program, rather than actually what your body truly needs in that moment is to feel.
Speaker 1:So I sat there, I opened my arms and every thought that just came through the door I was like, okay, okay, I completely hear you. That is so valid that you think we're lazy because we don't normally rest in the middle of the day Totally valid. But today I think it's really good for us just to sit here and lie here. We don't have to go to sleep. But what we don't really want to do is get up and get dressed, and we don't really want to go out today. We just feel sad and we want to be in that sadness. And so then that feeling will start to dissolve and then the next thought will come and it might say you're going to slip. You know, you're feeling sad and you're feeling low and you might start feeling depressed. And if you stay in bed, then you're going to get depressed and you're going to feel like shit. And so I'm like, okay, again, totally valid. Because there have been times when I've gone through the dark night of the soul, that I have been led in bed, not out of choice, feeling like absolute shit and feeling like I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get myself out of this really low point. So you're right to think that, because not only are you trying to keep me in the familiar. You're also finding evidence from factual points in our journey and that makes sense. That makes sense that that could happen. However, I'm choosing to believe and trust that it isn't that now and I'm going to relax and give myself the space and the time.
Speaker 1:And then the next voice might say you need to get up, you need to clean the house. And so I might say you know what? That's actually a really good idea. I think we do need to clean the house. The house could do with the clean, but we're going to do that in maybe an hour's time. So what I do is first I listen and then I validate what I'm feeling, because that validation, what I find and what I learned from the Great Secret is the neutralizer, instead of going from that thought of you're lazy, you've got things to do and you're like I'm not lazy. It feels too much like you're resisting and arguing against, rather than and initially just saying yeah, you know you're right. Does that not feel soft already? Just yeah, you know you are right, and then just reverse it really softly and say but you know how I'm feeling right now is that we're safe, and I know that probably I do want to clean my house, because I know that it does make me feel better. But right now not in this moment I really want to cry and feel the loss of my dad and feel all these emotions that are coming up, and I choose to do it in my bed, in my pajamas. I've not brushed my teeth, brushed my hair, I've had a cup of coffee, but I'm just sat wallowing in my bed. And that's what I want to do right now and that's what we're going to do, and I'm going to give us both of us permission to do that.
Speaker 1:And naturally, the most incredible thing happens is the hooked feeling. Whatever feeling comes with, that thought just starts to unhook. It's like magic. It's a shift that happens, and it might not be all in one go. Sometimes I might get a little tiny shift. I might then go back in to the emotions with another thought and come back out and go back in, and then, I don't know, get out of bed or walk and go make a coffee, and all of a sudden, bam, it's just a shift, and I feel like then I can clean the house, and then I do want to put on some music, and then I do want to have a shower, and, before I know it, like today, I feel so back to normal and almost like I didn't have that really low day.
Speaker 1:So for me it's a great reminder that it's really important to listen to our bodies, hear what it is saying. Anything that it is saying is true to it. I hear sometimes it says what your brain says is not true and I understand what they're trying to say. It technically isn't the truth. Any negative thoughts that you're thinking technically as a whole isn't truth to source, but it's true to a version of you that still exists in this moment and it is important for you to talk to that inner part of you that still is fearful and still trying to keep you in a pattern that is not serving you and who you want to become.
Speaker 1:So, feeling the emotions, sitting with it and having the welcoming technique really helps you. Just sit it and it will go a lot quicker than it would if I had got myself up, got myself dressed, put on a bit of makeup which I didn't want to do forced myself to go out, go for a walk, and I would have just not been with it. I may have found my shift in the walk. I may have found my shift in another way probably would have. But I find now for me is sit in the ickiness, the bit that you don't want to, that feels disgusting to be in. That's the word that I would describe it feels disgusting, sit in it, open your arms, talk to it, listen to it. It just wants to be heard, it just wants to be validated and then once you validated it, it neutralized it and it's a little bit more open-minded then and it's a bit more malleable. It's a bit more flexible and agile and then you can tell it a different narrative of what you do want to believe.
Speaker 1:I am safe, I'm not slipping into depression. I'm allowed to feel I'm a human being. I'm allowed to feel my emotions and we're gonna let these pass, and if it lasts a whole day, it lasts a whole day. But I'm not running from these emotions anymore. I've done that many times. I've learned my lesson that suppressing your emotions and keeping yourself busy does nothing. Because when I did that in the past, I got to a point where I hit a complete burnout and a breakdown all in one go and I was absolutely fucked for like six months. I had to take six months off work. I just was not in a great place where I had thought I was feeling some of my emotions.
Speaker 1:But I chose a totally different tactic and that tactic was almost like bypassing. I was learning a lot about spirituality at the time and a lot about Dr Joe Dispenser, and the way that I perceived the information meant I was learning a lot about spirituality at the time and a lot about Dr Joe Dispenser, and the way that I perceived the information meant that I was bypassing a lot of my emotions and would feel the emotions come through, feel the negative talk come through, but I would almost not really interact with it and go, yep, no, that's not me. Think positive, positive thoughts only, because if it's negative thoughts, then you know what you think you become. And that is how I lived for so long with my little understanding of spirituality and a very surface level of this knowledge and almost grasped onto what I knew and took it as gospel and really tried to embody that. And it doesn't work because they're all still under there and you might be able to busy yourself and actually tell yourself you are more positive or talk yourself consciously out of it, but you have to somatically feel.
Speaker 1:In my experience you have to get that emotion out some way, whether it's through welcoming and neutralizing it and alchemizing it, or another thing that I find really good is shaking, dancing and shaking and punching the pillow and maybe putting your tongue out. And shaking my tongue for some reason has helped me a lot in the past. When the emotions feel really sicky and disgusting, I always put my tongue out on a shake and just somatically releasing or EFT tapping helps me tremendously. I find that really good if I'm out and about and I can't necessarily run around Starbucks shaking, but I've maybe had a bit of information that's triggered my system I'll go into the toilet, I'll put the toilet seat down, I'll sit on top of it and I would just tap all of the key meridian points and I will just say to myself, even though I'm feeling like I am really low at the moment and I'm feeling depressed or I'm feeling like I might fall into depression and it's really scaring me because I don't want to go back to the place that I've come from, I completely love and approve of myself.
Speaker 1:And then I'll tap on the next point, even though lying in bed is making me feel worse and is reminding me of my mum when I was growing up, being really depressed and sleeping all day, every day, and not being present with me as a child. I completely love and approve of myself, even though I feel like I have a million and one things to do and that this isn't a productive use of my time sleeping and resting in bed and not going out of the house. I completely love and approve of myself and I'll continue with all of the points that seem negative and just validate them and bring them up and then I'll reverse it and I'll normally know the shift point I start to feel a bit better. I might yawn. I read a brilliant book called the solution of tapping, I think it was called, and it said if you have any shifts like yawning, it means that the negative thoughts are almost getting bored and they're losing their power, they're losing their hook.
Speaker 1:So I'll look out for a shift and when I feel that shift, I'll reverse it and I'll say things like I'm doing really well managing my emotions and I completely love and approve myself. I've seen a massive change in the way that I treat myself and the way that I acknowledge my emotions when they arise. And then I might say I am starting to feel a lot better. I'm starting to feel a shift coming through and, even if it takes today to move through this, I'm going to give my body and my mind this time to feel everything, to think everything and to rest, and I'll keep doing that until I feel like I am in a higher place vibration, I'm in a more stable place and it works really well, especially being a parent, because there's so many times that we're triggered as a parent. Maybe you've had a conversation with your ex, maybe you've had something going on at work and you come home and it naturally spills into motherhood, fatherhood, and I can sometimes be a bit snappy with the kids or don't really want anyone around me in these moments when I feel triggered.
Speaker 1:So I'll go into the toilet and I do say to my children because you know what kids are like they just want to know where you are all the time, right? So I'll go into the toilet and we have this little code word now when we need privacy and we say PIP. So it's, I need to pee in private. So I'll say to the girls I'm in the toilet, we've got a little apartment so I'm not ever too far and I'll sit in there and I will tap little points and I might only get a two minute session done where the kids might need something, but I find that in itself is enough time for me to just re-center myself, connect with the awareness of what's going on inside and in my mind and not just bypass it and ignore it, and really hone in on the things it's saying and try to move beyond it and try to shift it through the tapping and bringing awareness to it. I often find the more awareness you bring to something, the quicker it dissolves and the quicker you see or feel clarity, feel spaciousness again, feel back to yourself, and then I'll get back out of the toilet and I'm just much more of a present mom. I'm back, grinded my feet, feel back on the floor. I'm not overthinking in the past or through the moment of whatever it was that just took my concentration or triggered me and it's helped me massively.
Speaker 1:And from reflecting when I was sleeping or when I was resting in bed on Father's Day and it didn't feel really great and I took the whole day to cry on and off, to wallow and sit in my pajamas and then, when I started to feel a bit better, I cleaned my house and that felt so good, that felt great. And then I was like, do you know what I'm actually gonna watch? A series or like an episode of the Kardashians, which I love, it's my guilty pleasure. I absolutely love the whole family. I have watched their series since the day they started and I really like seeing how they all flourish in business and how all their personalities are very different and how they parent. And especially for me, because I don't have a big family, I think it's really interesting to see how a huge family operate and how they run and all of the kind of complexities and all of the love and the things that happen in a really big relationship. So I watched that. I watched two episodes of that and that made me feel so much better. And then the next day I woke up absolutely fine, and then I came on my period and I was like, oh my God, I feel like I am reborn.
Speaker 1:So it's a reminder to me and to everybody else that when we try and rush these emotions, when we try and move beyond these emotions too quickly, we are doing ourself a disservice and chances are that one day that could have been spent if you can, or that half an hour tapping, or even down to the 10 minutes of just feeling into that emotion will transform how you feel the following day, the day after that, the week after that. Rather than just not really looking into what it is that's coming up, not looking into the voices, not trying to neutralize them, not trying to validate them in any way, you will find that gets carried into your week, your next week, your month, and it will just follow you almost in the background until something else re-triggers you and it comes back up. And I find that sometimes the same thing comes up over and over again. But what I do find is it's never as dense. Every time I do this work, every time I follow the Greatest Secret and everything that I learned in that book, I find that it gets a bit lighter and I feel I have more strength and more trust in my ability to sit in the emotion rather than where I used to be at a few years ago. It would terrify me One of my huge fears in life that I'll end up with mental health that is so severe that I have no friends and I push everybody away and I just sit in my home doing nothing, having no stimulation and no quality of life, and so that deep root of fear of mine is very valid.
Speaker 1:It's come from my childhood, I've witnessed it and I am still witnessing it. My mum doesn't really have too much of a social life, and that's something for a whole other podcast that I definitely am gonna go into, because there is a lot from my life that I think would be great to share and I think could really help other people when dealing with parents or in relationships with people who have got severe mental health issues like schizophrenia, bipolar or manic depression. It's so valid for me, this fear of mine, that it then has these knock-on effects with behavior that try to make me avoid any emotion or any feeling that could lead me down a route that looks like that makes total sense. I understand that my body is just trying to keep me safe from the thing that I say I fear the most, but what it doesn't know is the route that it's taking is probably the route that would get me to the fear anyway. Suppressing your emotions, not feeling how you feel, not talking about it, journaling about it, meditating on it, somatically releasing your emotions would mean they're stored up and at some point, like I experienced, those emotions will build upon one another and you will end up with burnout and breakdown and that's not something or somewhere I want to revisit. So just micro feeling, when you can, communicating how you feel is so important as well.
Speaker 1:I must say I really struggle communicating to my partner how I was feeling. This time I've gotten really great with communication. My throat chakra, I feel, is so much stronger. I communicate pretty much everything and anything with him. At this point I don't feel embarrassed or resistance or blockage. Now we've got to a really great place. Even when they're things that my brain tries to tell me don't make me sound put together, I still share it anyway.
Speaker 1:But for some reason yesterday this was really tricky for me to know how to communicate what I needed. I probably would have liked him to be around yesterday, but I didn't know how to communicate it, and I think I'm so used to when I feel really strong emotions. I have had a long time now where I've dealt with them on my own, and that in itself is a beautiful thing. I think having that power is brilliant because it means that you can work through them on your own. But I do also think that we should be able to reach out to our loved ones when we're feeling like we're having a wave of something quite dense, and ones when we're feeling like we're having a wave of something quite dense, and so I struggled to communicate it, but I did communicate it in the end at the end of the day, and he was absolutely lovely and we ended up going out the next day. He booked something really sweet for us, a really lovely meal, and we spent some really beautiful quality time together. And it's exactly what I needed Just someone to acknowledge and listen and just be there and say like this day must be so hard for you, it must be so hard to have lost your parent and lost your dad, and get to these days and see where you are in life and wish they were here to witness it with you, but they're not.
Speaker 1:And so just feeling heard and seen, and then for him to book something really lovely. I just felt so loved and cared for and it was just so, so, so great. So it was a whole reminder to me that feeling your emotions is really important, taking the time for your body to sit in it, to wallow in it, to lie in it and to give yourself the self-care and the love that you would give any child that was upset, you wouldn't tell your child. Here's the list of to-dos that you have to do today. Come on, fix up. You know you would hug them and you would validate how they feel and you would make them feel that it's a safe place to release the emotions. And so that's something that I'm trying to do for myself is treat myself sometimes like that in a child and give myself the space that is needed. And then a couple of days later I feel incredible again. I feel back to my usual self.
Speaker 1:I hope this episode has helped you reflect on the ways maybe you support yourself through any tough times or any emotions that are coming up. If you're going through a period in your life at the moment that just feels like you're trudging mud consistently and you're in the trenches and you're not sure how you're going to get out, the best thing you can do for yourself in those times is use it to dissolve and alchemize all of the thoughts and all of the emotions or most of. They're not all going to go, but use it to alchemize what is coming up. The way you're feeling is coming out and up because you're ready to feel it. The emotion is coming up to be looked at and the thought the narrative is coming up to be witnessed. So have a look at what's being said. Even write it down can really help sometimes, because it means that you are able to get it down on paper and see it clearly, so that with your eyes you now have the written version that is floating around in your head and it almost allows you to become more aware of that narrative when it pops up, because not only do you have almost the sound of it in your head, you now have the visual of the words itself on a book. I personally find that that's worked for me quite well.
Speaker 1:Journaling for me has been a huge healing modality and I return to it all the time. We're doing a book at the moment in the book club and, if anyone wants to join the book club, the book club's called a woman's inner journey to becoming wealthy and it's on the patreon. I will link the details at the bottom of this episode. But we're doing a book at the moment called the artist way and one of the things I love about that book we're on the last two weeks now is that we are doing morning pages, so we write three pages a day, just brain dump of anything and everything that is going on in our minds and nobody reads it. It is completely secret for us and I must say that is helping me massively. I had a little break from journaling and I've come back to it now and it's clearing me out consistently. Every single day. I do that and I feel so much clearer. So I came on here to share that with you from my experiences of the last couple of days, and I'm now going to go and get my gym gear on and take a nice coffee to the gym, ring my friend on the way and then go and see my coffee girls. So I will leave it there.
Speaker 1:Have the most amazing day today and if you're going through really tough emotions at the moment, like I said, try and sit with them.
Speaker 1:Try and be with them if you can I know it can be really challenging and really tough and communicate it with someone that you love, someone who feels safe to you, someone that wouldn't judge you for where you're at or think that you're spiraling or even put any label on it other than just to listen and have open arms, and sometimes that's all we need. Sometimes we just need to communicate it, sometimes we just need to be in our house and feel it. So it's just so important from my experience to feel into what is going on in that head of ours. Everything is so normal, everything is just trying to keep us safe. You know, all of the thoughts are just there for their duty of service and they think they're doing the right thing. But we know better, being conscious human beings, that there is a version of us that doesn't think these. But to get that and past and through that point, we have to feel them. So thank you for listening and I will see you for the next episode of the Soul Ed podcast. Bye.