92. Emotional Backpack === When I was younger, I used to love going to cheer my grandpa on as he would run the local marathon. He would always ask me, when are you going to come out and start running with me? And I would always tell him, grandpa, there is no way I could ever keep up with you. I only ever knew my grandpa as a marathon runner. But he actually didn't start running until after he retired. The thing about running marathons when you are over the age of 65 is that there is a lot less competition. So his house was full of trophies and medals from all of these different races he had run. He and my grandma used to travel all over the world to run marathons in cool places like the Czech Republic and Alaska and Disney World. My mom is a runner just like her dad, and she has also run many marathons. But when she married my stepdad, they started getting very into triathlons. And so the two of them have traveled all over the place doing full ironman triathlons. Now you will never find me running a marathon or competing in a triathlon, at least Not in any world I can imagine because that is not the way I like to exercise, but I have spent my fair share of time cheering people on from the sidelines. I love to cheer people on as they do the hard things that I can't even imagine doing. Watching people do the impossibly hard things always gets me emotional and always brings tears to my eyes. Which brings me to what I want to talk about today, which is emotions. A few months ago in my Enjoy Coaching community, we spent an entire month talking about emotional resilience. And we learned about what emotions are, and what we typically do with our emotions and healthy ways to manage our emotions because So many of us are not actually allowing ourselves to feel emotions. And there are some pretty negative side effects that come when we don't allow ourselves to feel all of the human emotions. And as I have continued to ponder on emotions and the impact they have on our lives and on our teenagers, there's this beautiful analogy that came to my mind that helped me to better understand what is happening with our emotions and I want to share that with you. Now this analogy ties right back to the beginning of this podcast episode where I told you that I have spent many years on the sidelines cheering people on in races. I want you to imagine with me for a minute that you are getting ready to run the marathon. You're there at the starting line and on your back, you have a backpack. We are going to call this your emotional backpack. The race starts and you take off running. And as you are running along, you notice a water station, but this water station is a little different than what you might expect. Instead of having those tiny little paper cups of water that you can drink and crush and toss to the side, they have water bottles. And every time you pass a water station, you are required to take a water bottle. At that point, you have two choices. You can drink the water bottle, or you can put the water bottle in your backpack. These water bottles are like our emotions. As you go along the path of life, you are going to have emotions. And when those emotions come up, you have a choice. You can either allow the emotion, process the emotion, feel the emotion in your body, or you can put it in your emotional backpack. At some point, the emotion has to be processed, or you cannot put it down. You cannot let it go. And so many of us have been running for so long on this trail of life. And we've been gathering these water bottles at every station. And instead of drinking the water, we've been putting those water bottles in our backpack. We are walking around with a backpack that is loaded down, heavy with emotions that we have not been willing to process. And not only are we carrying around this heavy emotional backpack, but we are fully dehydrated because we haven't been drinking the water that was there to sustain us in the first place. Whether you like it or not, your body will keep the score. Your body will hold onto every emotion that you are unwilling to allow and process. If you feel like you are constantly trying to pour from an empty cup, that you have nothing left to give at the end of the day, that your life is just exhausting and you don't know how to get on top of it, it's very likely that instead of drinking the water you need to sustain your life, you have been putting those water bottles in your backpack and carrying the heaviest imaginable load. If you are listening to this right now and thinking, yes, you are describing my life right now. I want to tell you that there is hope, but the only way to get the water bottles out of your backpack is to drink them one at a time. You have to actually be willing to feel all the feels that you haven't been willing to feel. And the way you do this is so, so simple. In fact, I have a free mini class on how exactly to do this and a little cheat sheet that you can download so you can practice it over and over and over again until all those water bottles are out of your backpack. I will put the link for that in the show notes so that you can go and grab that resource for free and start taking those water bottles out of your backpack and drinking them. But you also have to know how to stop putting the water bottles in your backpack in the first place. There are three things that we do consistently when we don't want to drink the water bottle, when we don't want to feel the emotion: we either react to the emotion or we avoid the emotion altogether, or we resist the emotion. In the moment, these things feel very productive because then we don't have to feel the feels that we don't want to feel. But in the long run, they leave you feeling completely drained and they make your life feel exhausting and so much harder. So let's talk a little bit more about these three things so that you can know how to stop doing them. We'll start with reacting because this is actually what most people think is the process of drinking the water bottle, of feeling those feelings. You think you're getting hydrated, but you're not. You're just making your backpack heavier and heavier. Reacting to an emotion is what we do on the outside to avoid feeling an emotion on the inside. This could include crying, yelling, arguing, losing your temper, or even withdrawing. When we think that the outward expression, the outward reaction to the emotion is what it means to feel our feels, it's no wonder we don't want to do that because often those things create distance in our relationships and problems in our lives. Another thing we might do is avoid our emotions altogether. This is so easy to do in our world today. To avoid our emotions, all we have to do is find something else to do to get our mind off the emotion. We spend hours scrolling on social media so we don't have to feel the feelings that we don't want to feel. Our kids spend hours on video games so they just don't have to feel their feelings. We go raid the pantry or go for a soda run. Anything we can do that feels better than feeling the emotions we don't want to feel. I found myself doing this just yesterday because I was paying some doctor's bills and there was a problem with the insurance and so I had to wait on line with the insurance and work out the conflict with the doctor's office and I started to feel stressed and annoyed and irritated that I was even on this phone call. And so what did I do? I went to the fridge and I got myself my favorite drink and a little snack, because then I could distract myself from all those negative emotions that I didn't want to feel. Addictive behaviors like drugs and alcohol and pornography and even self harm are all ways that people try to avoid feeling their emotions. And finally, we resist our emotions. Now, I think this one is particularly challenging for women because society has taught us that we should be kind and polite and accommodating and sweet and patient. And that is what it means to be a good woman. And so when we find ourselves feeling frustrated or disappointed or impatient or angry, we push those emotions down because those emotions are not acceptable. And so often we unknowingly do the same thing to our kids because we don't want them to feel anxious or lonely or selfish or angry or worthless, and so those emotions are off limits. So when those emotions come up for our kids, which they will because they're part of the human experience, they push them down. They pretend they're fine. And that they don't have those emotions. And every time they do, the backpack gets heavier and heavier. In order to drink the water and not put it in the backpack, what we have to do is feel our emotions on the inside. To allow ourself to sit with the uncomfortable emotions. And when you do that, your backpack gets lighter. You're going to have to do it over and over and over again because you have put a lot of water bottles in that backpack. But as you start to process your emotions one at a time, I promise that backpack will get lighter and I promise you will get rehydrated and you will feel more alive. I want this for you, and I want this for your teen, and I am here to support you however I can. Make sure you grab that free resource so that you can learn how to really feel your feelings inside of your body so that you don't have to try to distract yourself from them or avoid them and pretend you're okay when you're not, or have them come out in unhealthy ways that damage relationships and make you feel terrible. I am on the sideline cheering you on while you do the hard things, and I know you can do it.
