E 186 Dive into Emotional Acceptance

This week's episode is all about quieting your anxieties and focusing on what matters!

Imagine your brain has two screens:

Front Screen: Shows your goals, what you're working on, and things you're excited about.
Side Screen: Displays worries, fears, and negativity.
The problem? We often get sucked into the side screen, letting anxieties control us.

But fear not!  This episode teaches you how to:

Allow uncomfortable feelings without judgment.
Redirect your focus back to the front screen (your priorities).
Create an "anxiety plan" to tackle stressful situations.
We even explore a technique called the "welcoming breath" to help you process those unwanted emotions.  ‍♀️

Plus, you'll learn:

How to identify your values and use them to manage anxieties.
Why feeling responsible for others' behavior can fuel anxiety.
How to retrain your brain to focus on the positive (the front screen!).
Feeling overwhelmed? This episode is your guide to inner peace!

Find my podcast
Email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com
Text me: 785-380-2064
More information

Transcript

00:00:00] Hi, everyone. I am glad you are joining me again this week for another episode. Now, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the two screen method where in front of you is a screen. This is like in your brain, in your mind, in front of you is a screen that has all the present things that are going on, the things that you're going towards, the things that you like, you're excited about what you want to do.

And over to the right, just in the corner of your eye, you can see a screen that has all your worries and fears and the tragedies, catastrophes, diseases, all the things that we worry about. And I made a little video of that that I put inside my YouTube videos. You'll have to look at that. But it's not.

Like, you know, studio quality or anything, but it's like my rendition of what I think that looks like. Because in, on my actual desk, [00:01:00] I have a laptop in front of me and then over to the side, I have a monitor that I put other things on. And so I did a little video of what it would look like if on the right side was all these things.

And then I'm looking over here instead of looking to the present and what's in front of me and what I want to do. So we're going to continue on with that. So I want you to remember that we have those two screens and. That episode, you'll have to go back and, and listen to that to find out how you energize this right screen that's in the corner of your eye, but it has to do with paying attention to it, energizes it, fighting against it, ignoring it, resisting it.

Those kinds of things actually make it stronger. And I know that that is true. That doesn't feel like that would be true because it feels like if we don't want something we should get away from it or we should ignore it or we should fight against it, but that actually energizes it. So today we're going to be talking about [00:02:00] how to allow that screen to be going on because we're not going to turn the screen off.

We can't, and it's going to continue to try to get our attention, but how do we just allow it to be there? without looking over to it. So some a situation happened with one of my clients this week and I was like, well, this is perfect. I'll tell the story and how it relates to these two screens. So this week when I met with one of my clients, I always, you know, I always start with like how the week go.

Cause you know, who knows what happens in a whole seven days, like lots of things can happen. And my client was, was complaining about how the week was rough. And I was like, okay, tell me all about it. What was going on? And she said that she's in this class with these really annoying classmates. They're really loud.

She can't get her work done. The teacher is having trouble controlling it. So then, you know, she can't even look to the teacher to help her [00:03:00] with that situation. And then she just went on about it's prom time and she's on this decorating committee and people aren't listening to her about she.

Feels like the size of some things is not going to work out. And when she tried to explain it, kids weren't listening to her. They said they didn't care. She's tried to tell the classmates that are in the class, that's loud to be quiet. And then they just get worse because of course they think it's funny that she says to be quiet.

She's even talked to the teacher about how the class is going. And the teacher said, Hey, I know how to run my class. So don't worry about it. She has a good friend and that good friend is talking all the time and not allowing her to have time to do her homework at school. It was just like lots and lots of like, this happened, this happened, this happened.

And so we were talking about [00:04:00] like, okay you know, we meet for anxiety, but you know, how does this fit into anxiety? Because really it just sounds like, well, you're annoyed with peers and classmates and friends and teachers and just, you know, situations or whatever. And It was funny how we could relate it back to anxiety and when she realized how it was connected, it was just, it, it went really well.

So I'm, I'm wanting to kind of like go through all these pieces so you can kind of see how it worked. But we talked about how we cannot control anything outside of our self. So she cannot control that the teacher. She isn't correctly teaching the class according to her, and she can't control that peers don't care about the prom decorations or they're going to make mistakes in creating these prom decorations and they're going to maybe turn out [00:05:00] terrible.

She can't control that her friend doesn't understand social cues. She can't control that kids are going to act bad in classes and maybe even fail classes or get in trouble in the classes because they're acting so crazy.

We talked about how can we make a plan for how you're going to deal with it in the next week. And so since we can't control I mean, like the perfect plan would be, well, these kids will be quiet and the teacher will take care of it. And my friend will be quiet and the prom decorations will be perfect and you know, all the things, but we can't do that.

So how do we plan for this week? This situation and I make anxiety plans with all of my clients and that's actually what we're going to do that day anyway, is come up with a situation that we were going to plan for. And what I love about the anxiety plan is that the situation that we're planning for, we call it [00:06:00] an opportunity for growth.

So I said, okay, let's think about all the things you complained about today and what would you like to work on as your opportunity for growth? And we kind of finally got down to the thing that bothers her the most is these noisy classmates. So we decided that her opportunity for growth. In that situation is that they're going to be loud students in the class, and she's just going to allow them to be loud and she's not going to get upset about their behavior Now.

It's best if you just pick one thing to work on. So even though in that situation, the teacher is also something that's annoying to her right now, she's just going to focus on the students being chaotic and that she's not going to allow that to dysregulate her during [00:07:00] the class because it's affecting her grade and her getting her work done.

We, we talked about this emotional allowance. We're going to emotionally. allow uncomfortableness in our body. And we're going to allow thoughts that are not comfortable and we're just going to let it be there. So when we go back to this two screen idea, where there's the screen in front of us and the screen to the side, the screen in front of us is the teacher teaching the class.

And Maybe the grade that I want to get and the homework that I need to be doing all that steps in front of me. That's where I need to be focusing. And then when students are loud in the past before she was looking over here, getting all upset about all of that. When in this technique where we're, that we're going to allow that uncomfortableness and [00:08:00] keep redirecting ourselves towards the front.

So.

With this client, she has to be in this class every day. She has to be around these classmates and feelings of annoyance are going to come up because these kids are going, I mean, they've been acting bad now. We're in the fourth quarter of the school year. And so I'm sure that, You know, it's not going to change at this point and the teacher's not all of a sudden going to get it figured out at this point.

So her second screen to the side in the corner of her eye is going to light up and it's going to say, these kids are terrible. You need to do something about it. This teacher's terrible. She needs to do something about it. And then those thoughts are bringing up all this like heart race, heart rate racing, maybe tightness in the chest, jittery maybe heat in her face.

I mean, just think about all the things you feel when you are annoyed [00:09:00] and then getting angry. Like, what does that feel like? You know, feel like in the body and she's just going to allow it. And remember, I think it was in episode one 35, we talked about how to process uncomfortable emotions. And again, that's something that I teach my clients in my program.

And so I've already taught her that before it's called welcoming breath. And you breathe in and you imagine that your breath is going to wherever The uncomfortableness is in your body and you just imagine that it's healing it and it's comforting it and it's allowing it to be there and you're not fighting against it.

You're not getting tense. You're, you have your palms open. You're just allowing this flow of breathing and the flow of that emotion to move around and eventually, and hopefully in a quick way, move through your body like that. Tunnel where it's going in might be rumbling around in [00:10:00] there and then it's going to go out the other side of the tunnel.

So This emotional acceptance is like processing or part of it is like processing the emotion so she's going to allow the thoughts about the students to be there and that screens gonna light up and say these kids are terrible and this is ruining everything and You know, instead of her getting lost and all that, she's just taking a breath.

She's not getting upset about all the students. And then she's redirecting back to the front. She's redirecting to the teacher. She's redirecting to if she's doing her homework and it's going you know, seat work time or whatever. She's redirecting to her homework. She doesn't agree or disagree or fight with any of these thoughts or feelings.

You know, if they're saying the teacher's terrible or these kids are terrible, she's not, she's just neutral. Okay. Thanks for the news. [00:11:00] You know, whatever. Thanks for letting me know. I'm just sitting here allowing this to flow through me and we're allowing the students to just be whoever they are.

We're not going to worry about trying to control them or control the teacher and each breath. She just allows And, you know, she's probably gonna get distracted where, you know, that screen's gonna be trying to pull her in and she's just gonna redirect back to the, to the front, to the teacher, to her work, to eating her lunch, to planning the prom.

You know, like we, our opportunity for growth in this situation is just the students. But when you think about how do you create a plan for all these situations, you know, you're gonna, she's gonna have a plan for. When she's in the prom committee and people are not listening, you know, she's going to redirect herself back to whatever she's supposed to be doing, not what other people are saying or doing.

And you're just gently redirecting yourself. You're not getting [00:12:00] mad. You're not getting frustrated with yourself. You're just allowing the uncomfortableness. Allowing the feeling. You know how when you first get into a pool, and maybe this doesn't happen to people as much as it does me, but every time I get into a pool, it doesn't matter probably how warm it is unless it's a heated pool, which, you know, most pools aren't.

When I get in, I think it's freezing and it takes me forever to get into the water. Like I'm going down one rung of the ladder or one step into the pool and I'm just staying there for a while and then I'm taking another step or taking, you know, some people just jump in and just, you know, allow the shock.

I cannot do that. I don't like it. So I'm just like slowly going in, but no matter how cold I think it is at that beginning, if I just keep You know, keeping my body in the water, going down a little lower, going down a little lower. At some point, the water feels fine. It feels normal. It feels like a [00:13:00] regular temperature.

And sometimes it even feels warm and like getting out feels cold. And so Okay. The, when you allow the feelings and you just allow them to be there and you just sort of get washed over by them and let the waves come and go of those feelings, you get used to it too, just like when you're getting into a pool and you get used to it.

And so I just want you to. Let that feeling get used to that uncomfortableness and then it doesn't feel so jarring or so upsetting because you've gotten used to it. And

so if we're not energizing this other screen, we're not fighting against it. We're not getting frustrated. We're not Trying to, you know, close the door on it and ignore it. We're just, we know it's there. We, we allow the screen to be there. We allow it to be showing us things and telling us things. We allow the students to continue their [00:14:00] behavior and then we just keep redirecting back to the front.

The second screen is always going to be there. And we can always see it out of the corner of our eye. We can't move it into the closet or somewhere. It's always there. And it's kind of like just carrying around this heavy backpack. Sometimes it's tiring. Sometimes it, it does feel really heavy, but we're just going to allow it because her setting in that class with annoying students is not life or death.

Her brain is telling her it's life or death possibly because It's just making it such a big deal. It's dramatizing it so much, but she will not die because she has to sit in a class with annoying people. If annoying people killed us, I don't think anybody would be alive. There are annoying people everywhere.

And the, the quicker we can allow them to be them, allow them to be wrong, allow them to make mistakes. And we're just. Staying with the present with what we're wanting to [00:15:00] do, then that stops making so much being such a big deal. We're kind of starting to change the relationship we have with the second screen.

Most of our lives, our relationship with the second screen has been one of You know, more fear and anger and frustration, and I hate this and I don't want to feel that and I wish I didn't have this problem or whatever, but the screen is going to be there. So we just change our relationship with it so that we really care more about the front screen and being in the present than we care about what's going on over here.

And we're just going to allow ourselves to ride the wave of sensations. I love that thought of that it's like waves and everything in our life is like waves. There's times where we're up. Pie. And it's great. And there's times when it's really low and we feel terrible and that's all normal. There's nothing has gone wrong when it's like that.

And when we have these annoying people in our class [00:16:00] and we're having to allow it and those feelings and deal with it, there's going to be another class somewhere where we're having an amazing fun and we really like it or people that we really enjoy being around. So we just have to, that's just one of the lower times.

So when, when making an anxiety plan, we first decide. The opportunity of growth. So I told you that her opportunity of growth is she's going to allow the students to be whoever they are, as annoying as they are, and she's just going to not get upset when they're doing these things. And then we identified the values that the client needs to use in order to allow that.

So some of her values are love and connection. And if someone has a value of love and connection, they really want to be connected to human beings. And so she is like feeling some loving thoughts towards them, even though they're not doing the things that she would like them to do. She's thinking about [00:17:00] their humanity and the part that she does like being connected to people.

She also values compassion, which would mean that she would care about how they're feeling. And maybe, maybe she has compassion for maybe their behavior is coming from something that's upsetting or something that happened to them. And so she is thinking about all the reasons why they might be having that behavior.

She also values happiness. If you're somebody who values happiness in your life, you're going to be looking for ways to. to keep up your happiness and help you to stay in the happy state more often. And so she can be thinking about things that keep her in that elevated energy instead of, you know, feeling angry.

And maybe the teacher is doing the best that they can do. That's part of her connection and our compassion. And then. Then we identify what is the mindset that's getting in the way that was causing us to get upset. [00:18:00] So when we looked at this, we found out, and this is how it relates to anxiety, that remember one of the mindsets for anxiety is over responsibility.

She was actually feeling responsible, not necessarily for their behavior because knows that she's not in control of their behavior, but that You know, she's thinking about, well, why don't they know that they're not supposed to be doing this? Or why don't they know to be quiet? Or, you know, so she really was feeling like responsible for the rules of the class or responsible that these other students weren't following the rules.

And so when we talked about that, she was like, I do kind of get how in all those scenarios that she was complaining about, it was kind of like that control of. I'm responsible for the outcome of this and these other people are getting in the way of letting the outcome be the way it should, should be. So we thought that was interesting once we really started digging into that.[00:19:00] 

And so then we look at what behaviors did we have before we started working on it and then what behavior do we want to have? So before she was getting mad and letting it upset her and she was yelling at the kids to be quiet. She was Complaining to the teacher. She sat in the class and instead of focusing on the teacher or her work, she was thinking about how terrible everything was and how terrible these kids were.

And now she's going to use, and that was before, now she's going to use the welcoming breath. She's going to allow those thoughts and feelings to be inside of her. She's going to pay attention to the teacher. She's going to pay attention to the lecture, the homework, whatever it is she's supposed to be doing, whatever's on her front screen.

She's going to be, and she's going to be. gently redirecting herself each time. And this is a better use of her time. Instead of being focused on what's wrong with the class and what's going wrong, she's going to be focused on what [00:20:00] she's being taught and what she's working on at the time. And then we talk about what feelings.

What uncomfortable feelings are you going to have to feel and go through and get through in order for this opportunity of growth to happen? And so she said, I'm going to have to feel annoyed and I'm going to have to feel frustrated and tired and worried because she is worried about students consequences to their behavior.

And so we talked about how you're going to have to feel those feelings and that's okay. You're going to allow those feelings to be there. So, don't get angry or frustrated that you need to keep accepting and redirecting because our whole lives we're going to have to keep accepting what's there, allowing it to be there and redirecting back to the front screen.

Everyone else has to do this in their life too. It's not just you. It's not just me. We all have to do it. And even after we, we kind of get good at it, we're like, Oh, I don't have to worry about that anymore. Something's going to come up at some point [00:21:00] that'll really draw you back into that. And you'll have to just sort of reteach yourself this very same thing because we want to be in control of our brain.

And managing our thoughts and feelings and not let our brain just take control and not letting, let also let our anxiety to take control because when that happens, then it takes a lot of things away from us that we really want to be doing. And we have to create new pathways in our brain where we don't pay attention to the screen anymore and we're redirecting back to the front screen.

And our brain's not used to that. Our brain is stuck on this. mode where we're looking over here all the time. And now we need to retrain our brain that it's just going to keep redirecting to the front. You are teaching your nervous system not to be afraid of the side screen, because the reason we get so caught up in it and stuck in it is because we're afraid of the things that are on it.

And if we're redirecting, we're training our brain that it's [00:22:00] okay that all that stuff's happening. And we're not Well, you aren't getting involved in it. The pathway to freedom is emotional acceptance. And today you learned a little bit about what, how to do that. And it's just being able to process those uncomfortable emotions.

I think I've told you before, that's the secret sauce to life. So I will see you in two weeks cause next week we're going to have another guest. And I can't wait to introduce you to him. So be looking for that and I'll see you soon.