Welcome to episode three of Up and Not Crying. This is your host, Beth Repp. I am an MD and certified life coach. In this podcast, you will learn self-improvement and coaching tools to engineer your mindset, your mood, and your schedule. We're going to make your real life feel better. In this episode, we're gonna talk all about emotions, how to recognize, how to process, how to allow them and not avoid, resist, and distract yourself from them and create a much larger problem than simply allowing the emotion. So let's start out by talking about what is an emotion. If you were to try to describe to a four-year-old child what emotions are, what feelings are, how would you do it? So it might just be worth taking a minute to think about that. Like, how do you describe emotions, anger, frustration, joy, excitement, sadness, happiness? How do you describe what is actually happening when you have one of those? Well, it turns out nobody has a really good definition yet. When you look up the definition of emotions, Wikipedia describes them as a physical and mental state brought on by a neurophysiological change that's associated with thoughts, our behavioral responses, and degrees of pleasure or displeasure. And here's the key. There is no scientific consensus on a definition, and there are many fields of science working on this which are all fascinating and I would love to delve into each one further with really knowledgeable academicians. But for now, I will just say that there are active areas of research in biochemistry, neurobiology, pharmacology, and nutrition, to just name a few. There are many. The Huberman Lab podcast, has some pretty extensive talks about this. There are Ted Talks online that go into the scientific basis of emotions, which are all fascinating. I'm not gonna delve into all of them. I'm just bringing this up to let you know that it's complicated. We all know what it feels like to have emotions. We all know what they are. But to actually sit down and talk someone through what is physically and emotionally or mentally, I should say, what is mentally and physically going on in your person when you're having an emotion is still a little bit elusive. Reading about this, I found this bit really fascinating as an ophthalmologist. Our emotional tears, tears that are shed when we're crying from sadness or frustration, are different chemically than tears that we shed when we're just tearing. So if you get something in your eye or you go outside and it's windy and your eyes start to tear, the tears are composed of different substances. There are different hormones and chemicals in emotional tears compared to regular tears. So we know that there is not just thoughts going on. There are very complicated biochemical cascades going on in the body to make you feel a certain way. No wonder we have a hard time accessing our emotions. No one knows yet clearly exactly what is going on. So for the average person to try to deal with emotions, it's still a little bit of a black hole. So even though we don't have a really technical description of exactly what's happening in the body, we can still get really good at identifying and allowing emotions, and that's what I'm gonna teach you in this episode. I'm gonna teach you how to identify what's going on, where it's going on in the body, why it might be there, and how long it's gonna last. I have kinda come up with this little algorithm called what, where, why, how long when it comes to emotions. As a caveat to this, I just wanna stop right here and say if you have a history of significant trauma, that would be abuse, assault, living in a war zone, having significant, food shortages, I would encourage you to find a therapist to guide you through this. You really need a trained therapist, and specifically one who has trained in trauma. Not just a life coach like me. You need someone to safely and carefully guide you through this. My role for you here today is to let you know that that is available to you, to very much encourage you to use that, but also to guide you through just processing the emotions of our average run-of-the-mill daily busy lives, our average frustrations and stressors related to work and home life. Okay, so let's get right into the meat of it. Let's talk first of all about what the emotion might be. So as you're going through your average day-to-day life, and you're in your car feeling something, the first thing to ask yourself of the what, where, why, how long algorithm is what is it? What am I feeling? And you might not even have an awareness yet of the different types of emotions that you can feel. One way to get really good at this is to look at a feelings wheel online, so go to Google and- Type in feelings wheel, and you'll find many different examples of these. So they're, a wheel with a few different emotions at the center, and just for our purposes, you can think of them as mad, sad, glad, right in the center. And as you kinda go out peripherally in this wheel, the emotions will get more and more specific based within those categories. So you can, start with mad, sad, glad, work yourself out to indignant, fragile, cheeky, silly. You can think about, how specific do you want to be with it? And when you're first starting out, you can certainly just start with the three main ones. But over time, it really does help to really hone in on a very specific emotion, okay? So we're gonna identify it. You're driving along, and you're saying, "Ugh, I'm feeling really off. I'm just... I'm, I'm off. What is going on with me? Okay, I'm feeling anger. I'm feeling anger. That's what it is. It's anger." Our next, topic is where is it? So we know it's anger. Where is it? Where is it in my body? If you are not familiar with this, it might be helpful to start out by doing a body scan, where you just kinda go head to toe when you're starting to identify and feel emotions. You go head to toe and say, "What's off? What's different?" So anger, for me, shows up as a very clenched jaw. I'm very tight. My shoulders get really tight. I can feel it in my abdomen and my stomach. So everything kinda gets tight and, really tense. So we know it's anger. I can identify where in my body it is. And when you're first doing this, do a body scan head to toe. What's different about around my eyes, my face, the, my neck, the back of my head, my shoulders, my torso, my abdomen, my arms, my hands? All of it. Just go head to toe. What feels different or unusual? And then you start to locate where that emotion is manifesting in your body. If it helps you, you can take it one step further and describe- The emotion, by more adjectives. This is sharp pain in my chest. This is aching pain in my shoulders. Get very descriptive. If it helps you further, you can describe it as a metaphor or a simile, something like, "I feel a rock in my chest. I feel a tennis ball in my stomach." That helps some people, it doesn't help other people. But the more specific you can get about the location and the quality of the sensation in your body, the better. So we've gone through what and where. The next question is why, and why is always because what you're thinking. What is going on in your brain? What thought preceded this feeling, or what thoughts are co-occurring with this feeling? So the thought might be, "They don't respect me. They don't respect me." And you can take it one step back further to say what circumstance occurred. Maybe you're coming from work and a situation happened where words were exchanged, and your thought is, "No one respects me. They don't respect me," and you have this anger. So the why for your emotion is, again, let's go back to previous episodes, it's not the circumstance. It is not the facts or what was exactly said. It is your thought. The thought that no one respects me is causing that feeling. Okay? Now, you might not be wrong. You might be totally right about that, but just recognize I am having this thought which is causing my emotional state. That's causing my world right now to have this thought, no one respects me, and then I have this feeling of anger. That's the reason you're having it, is the thoughts going through your brain. Okay, so you can really work through what events or circumstances preceded all this, and what thought, what am I making those events mean? What am I making those words, those circumstances, those facts mean? And again, you might not be wrong about that. They might have been, really disrespectful, but just recognize I'm having these thoughts, this is the emotion that I'm having. You might want to start to think about changing your thoughts about it. You might not. The... In fact, the best thing you could maybe do in that situation is just really recognize what you're thinking and how all of this is making you feel, and then start to think about how you could- Either change the situation, change your location for work, change how you work, change your boundaries, all sorts of things. But the first thing to recognize is what the emotion is, why it's there. It's always a thought that you're thinking. I'm not saying that thought is right or wrong, but just recognize your thoughts and start to recognize what's happening in your body. Okay, so we know now what it is. It's anger. We know where it is, in your jaw and in your abdomen. We know why it's there. We're thinking the thought, "No one respects me." How long is this gonna last now? What, where, why, how long? Typically, a wave of emotion, you can set your clock by. It lasts 90 seconds, okay? So I'm gonna just read to you something that I read in an academic article. "The natural physiological lifespan of an emotion in the body is about 90 seconds. Once triggered, the chemical flush, like noradrenaline, peaks and washes through your system. If an emotion lasts longer, it is typically because your mind is replaying the story that triggered it, effectively re-stimulating the cycle." Okay, so 90 seconds. Now, if you're having anger, you can set your clock. "Okay, just let this wash over me. I'm just gonna feel this intense anger for 90 seconds." That does not mean that after 90 seconds it's gonna totally go away and the rest of your day is gonna be peaches, okay? Because just like the article said, you're gonna keep replaying this and keep thinking about it. So you probably will have more episodes throughout the day, throughout a few days, of that anger. That's okay. Just recognize that each wave is gonna last 90 seconds, and if you fully allow it, if you fully allow yourself to just marinade in that anger, it gets less intense with each wave, and it lasts less time each time. So I really wanna emphasize this 90 seconds because we can spend decades of our lives binge eating, drinking alcohol, shopping, smoking, e- all sorts of self-medicating behaviors to desperately avoid feeling any discomfort of emotions. And I'm telling... You're s- you're riding in your car right now saying, "You're telling me I have spent decades of my life overeating to avoid 90 seconds?" Yes, that's what I'm telling you, 100% yes. So 90 seconds, if you are aware that that's what it's gonna last- You can get through anything, okay? And even intense, intense waves of emotion like grief, shame, sorrow, rage, they're gonna last 90 seconds. Okay? Now again, it's not gonna be over and gone in 90 seconds. You're probably gonna have another wave that comes after a while, and another wave. But the more you allow it, just say, "Okay, this is anger. This is anger. I'm feeling it in my body. I'm just gonna allow it. I'm letting it pass through me. I'm letting it happen," the better it is. Now, in a future episode, we're gonna get into what's called buffering, which is everything we do to try to avoid feeling any discomfort. The, kinda self-medicating behaviors we turn to when we don't want to feel anger, frustration, boredom, shame, any slightly negative emotion that we try to avoid by overeating, overdrinking, overshopping, over-Facebooking, all of these different things. We're gonna get into that more in detail in a future episode. But just let me tell you that if you allow yourself to feel these emotions in real time, just allow them, you will have far less problems in your life than by desperately trying to avoid those emotions and creating a secondary problem of overeating and having weight and health problems, overshopping and having financial problems, overgambling and having financial problems, overdrinking and having health problems. All of those things can also lead to relationship problems. The effects of buffering can be way more detrimental in your life than the effect of simply allowing emotions and starting to ask yourself the questions of, "Why is this there? What can I do about it?" Negative emotions are like The Wizard of Oz, okay? We think that they're gonna be these really horrible, scary, intense things, and when you pull back the curtain, it's 90 seconds. It's 90 seconds of a biochemical response in your body. So just pull back the curtain and see The Wizard of Oz for what it is. This is anger. This is in my jaw. It's gonna last 90 seconds. Okay, so we have what, where, why, how long. What, where, why, how long. Emotions are incredibly useful. These can be your compass. They can guide you away from what is not serving you in your life and towards open, creative questioning about what might be better for you. If you're chronically bored and sitting on Facebook for hours a day, start to ask yourself the tough question: What is this? This is boredom. Where is it in my body? Why am I having it? And then start to ask yourself: What can I do about it? What maybe should I start to change about my life? Maybe you are recognizing that you are dealing with resentment, and perhaps it's chronic resentment. The question to ask yourself is, why? What am I thinking that's causing me to feel resentment? You might be thinking, "I do everything. I do everything either at work or at home. I do everything." And you can think back to the circumstances, which are leading you to think, "I do everything." Now, you can start to question those. You can start to ask yourself, "Okay, is this really true? So am I just making a big story out of minor things, or is there pretty substantial evidence to show that perhaps I'm taking on more than what is really healthy for me?" We can start to work through those in future episodes, how do you know if you should change a circumstance or if you should just change your thoughts about it? We can work more through that. But let's just take resentment, for example, and you can start to ask yourself, "Is this really true, what I think is happening, which is I do everything? Is that accurate, or am I telling a big story about it?" Okay, so say you're telling a big story about it. You can start to recognize the drama in your own brain, and you can start to, like we said in previous episodes, sprinkle a little fairy dust on your day and recognize your painful thoughts and start to adjust those to equally believable thoughts. Or say you really do have three times the work burden of someone next to you at work. Instead of living in chronic resentment and frustration, what can you start to do to change that situation? What boundaries can you set? What meetings do you need to schedule? What do you need to say to your boss or your supervisor? What do you need to do to start to change these circumstances and the thoughts and the feelings and the, experience in your body and in your life? Now, you might be riding in your car or on a walk thinking, "Oh my God, that sounds awful." That sounds really awful to go in and have these conversations or to set boundaries or to reduce my work schedule or to quit my job or to move. I can't do that. Okay, but let me ask you this. Is it better to live in chronic years-long resentment, frustration, and try to avoid those feelings by causing a much bigger secondary problem? Is it better to be overweight or in debt from gambling? Is it better to constantly deal with these nagging emotions in your body that can cause long-term changes in how you feel and in your health? Is that better? Or is it better to start to ask the question, what do I need to do? As uncomfortable as that might be for a brief period of time, as uncomfortable as it is to go in and have this fear and anxiety about talking to someone, is that gonna lead to a much better situation for everyone involved? These are the questions to start to ask. But for our purposes in this episode, what I want you to do is just recognize and allow the emotion. This is anger. What is it? Anger. Where is it? It's in my jaw and in my abdomen. Why is it there? Because I am thinking the thought, "No one respects me." How long is this wave of anger gonna last? 90 seconds. All right, friends. What, where, why, how long? That is how you start to feel and allow an emotion. Until next week, stay upright, find the good, and if you can't find the good, at least make it funny. You can find me on my website at bethrepp.com. That's B-E-T-H-R-E-P-P.com, P as in pizza, P as in pizza. hello@bethrepp.com, or on my Facebook page, which is Beth Repp Coaching. And finally, the legal disclaimer. The content presented in this podcast is for general information only. Reliance on this information is done at your own risk. Until next week, everybody. Bye.