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It Gets To Be Easy
We empower women to grow confident in creating their most healthful & joy-filled life with ease.
It Gets To Be Easy
Healing Through Emotional Honesty
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Have you ever felt a heavy weight you couldn’t explain, or found yourself unexpectedly emotional during mundane tasks? Join us as we uncover the power of emotional release and how trapped feelings can impact both your physical and emotional health. In this episode, Katie and Shauna share their insights on how everyday stressors build up over time, creating a burden on our well-being. We’ll explore practical methods to slow down, become more present, and why feeling safe is crucial for processing emotions. Shauna, leveraging her background as a pediatric occupational therapist, offers valuable perspectives on fostering a safe environment to help emotions move through us.
In our conversation, we tackle the hidden effects of suppressed emotions from childhood and the societal pressures that often encourage us to hide our true feelings. Katie shares touching stories about guiding her children to express their emotions freely, highlighting the importance of honesty and emotional ownership. Through personal anecdotes, we discuss how acknowledging and processing these pent-up feelings can lead to profound personal growth. Whether it’s sadness, anger, or joy, embracing our emotions can create a more harmonious and fulfilling life. Tune in and discover how embracing emotional release can transform your well-being.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Emotional Liberation with Raj Jan - Biohacker Babes
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Welcome to it Gets To Be Easy Podcast where you're granted permission to live your most healthful and joy-filled life with ease.
Speaker 1:We are your hosts, katie and Shauna, and together we've been cracking the code to creating our own realities with ease, and now we've set out to help you grow confident in this too.
Speaker 2:Hey friends, welcome back to the show. Thanks for tuning in again. Of course you know we love having you here. If you've been hanging with us the past couple episodes then you're looped in. You know that we've been expanding on this topic of body messages. We started with an episode where we introduced you to listening to your body's wisdom and how just being mindful and intentional with this has been key in connecting to our intuition more and really just finding that we feel more harmony in our days when we do this. Definitely head back to that episode if you're feeling the need for permission to not be the same every day.
Speaker 2:Then last week we dove into a little deeper with this body message thing and we started talking about the body keeping score and we also decided to dig in on how the mind actually hides it and we chatted about some tools that we have found effective to really go internal with it versus external. And now today we feel like there's this opportunity for us to go even a little deeper on the subject. So let's chat about something that we think actually most humans share in common at one time or another, but especially for those of us busy women leaders who have really honestly gotten good at stuffing those emotions away and just powering through. So, katie, kick us off. Let's talk about how trapped emotions are, really bound energy within us bound energy within us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the best way for us to really feel this conversation is to think back to a situation where it felt heavy, like you were in an awkward, tense situation or your in-laws are over for dinner and they're fighting. Like that heavy feeling is what we're talking about today. It's like when you have these big emotions or you have, I mean, even little emotions, like little stressors can add up but you can feel them physically in your body, weighing you down and that saying of like I felt like a thousand bricks were released or a thousand pound weight was taken off my shoulders. That's that feeling of allowing your emotions to be felt or let go of. And when we don't do that, they get stuck. And a lot of this inspiration came from, of course, the podcast. And when we don't do that, they get stuck.
Speaker 1:And a lot of this inspiration came from, of course, the podcast. Where we listened to. It was the Biohacker Babes, and I found this podcast because I had worked with one of the gals through some coaching and they brought on someone to talk about emotions and he said that, basically, like, emotions are energy and they need to be energy in motion, and when we don't allow them to move through us. They carry weight and they went so far as to have this analogy of they weighed someone when they were alive and then they weighed them when they passed, and they weighed so significantly different. And he was talking about it's like how it's like emotions can do that to our body. They weigh us down physically, not just metaphorically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was wild when they were saying that. I couldn't, I really honestly couldn't believe it, but I was like, yeah, I mean this is really cool that they're going to that level to kind of look at that physical implication of it. Because I think really what it's telling us is like it's time to glue in on that Right. Like I mean, let's be honest, like the world of weight loss has been in something that people have been trying to conquer for an eternity, right, and if we get down to the root of it, I bet you, more often than not, there's a lot of emotional storage, there's a lot of stuck energy that's going on there, and so then we could talk about spirals happening with that right. You think you're supposed to be doing X, y, z and it works for a little bit and then it doesn't. And why isn't it working? And oh, my gosh, gosh, I failed myself when actually it was that you had these other emotions that were getting stored and weighing you down.
Speaker 1:That's a big deal, wow yeah, it's so powerful and I, like I said, like even these small stressors are impactful just as much as the big trauma can be impactful.
Speaker 1:And so, when we're linking these three conversations together, it's really important to go back to this concept of if you are in tune and you are aware that is the key to preventing this stress buildup, the wear and tear on your body buildup, and here, if you are aware of your emotions, then you're going to be able to allow them to move through you and that, essentially, is calving your nervous system, making you healthier, taking you out of fight or flight.
Speaker 1:And I think this is one of those things where you know a lot of what you and I have seen in terms of messaging for us right now is that slowing down is actually speeding up, and he talked about that in this podcast episode. But we were already on this path. We're already firm believers in this fact, and the more you're slowing down, the more you can be aware and feeling frustrated and feeling happiness, even like allowing yourself to stay in the present and soak up whatever it is you're experiencing. That's what's meant for you and you can truly start to tap into that authentic self if you allow yourself to feel. But he talks a lot about how you have to feel safe to feel your feelings. So I want to hand this back over to you because I know this is something that you are very passionate about.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a big one. And it's so interesting because a lot of times, as a pediatric occupational therapist, for almost two decades, so much of my life has been around helping children be aware of their bodies and regulate their bodies and be safe in environments and be safe to access play and learning and all of those things. And time after time, it never fails where I have this like laughing aha moment, where like, oh hi, mir, this was actually for me, this is actually for the adults that I'm also engaging with, because, honestly, it's a human thing, right, we want to feel safe and the thing is, when we have rushed through life and we have pushed these emotions, we've stored them, we've allowed this weight down on it, we have coerced our nervous system to just stay activated in a way that is survival versus truly feeling safe, and that is something that you know really does take the inner work. That is something that I know, personally, is really working. Well. I will say, like, as I was thinking through some of this and what Raj was talking about on that particular episode of that podcast, you know what was coming through for me is this contraction and resistance to actually going there with this emotional storage is actually protection mode and so we do.
Speaker 2:Like you said Katie, we have to allow this amplified awareness, said Katie.
Speaker 2:We have to allow this amplified awareness that that actually is what's been going on, like that really truly is kind of you know. Once you're starting to recognize that you have body messages, maybe you're, you know, really starting to use some tools, um, but really that awareness piece, that waking up to the fact that, okay, you're right, I have been in protection mode, I have been in. My nervous system has been in fight, flight, freeze, fawn, which is that people pleasing mode, right, all in the pursuit of safety and just wanting to feel normal and just wanting to move on and honestly not feel it. Let's be honest about that, right, like some of that, is that you get really good at hiding it and, damn it, you actually survive it, but at the expense of it's still you being there in your body. If you're not aware that you've stored that energy and it will time and time again come back up in one way or another. If we're not going there, we're not allowing that flow, that movement of it like you started at the beginning.
Speaker 1:The thing that's coming up for me right now is the conversation around crying, and as a little girl it was I mean I don't know that I was like soft by any means or that like I cried a lot about little things, but I remember specifically being told like, unless you're bleeding, no crying. And I think back to that. I remember one time I fell on my bike and I was trying to hold back the tears and my friend's, like why are you? Like you can cry? And I was like no, I can't, there's no blood. And she goes yes, there is. And I start sobbing. And she goes yes, there is. And I start sobbing and we talk about like, why does our body do those things? It's almost like asking like, why does your body sweat? Like, or like, why does your body do whatever it is?
Speaker 1:Crying is meant for our best good, like our highest good. It is meant to help us process, and I think that there is such a negative connotation around crying that we instantly forget that there's a reason our body does that, and I thought that that was so impactful for me because I'm like oh my gosh, that makes complete sense Like or even laughing. They were talking about like we don't have our apologies for laughing. I mean, maybe we do if it's inappropriate, but then again, why is it inappropriate? Because it goes back to societal expectations. And one of the things that I didn't talk about in our last episode that I think draws back here is those feelings of tension in our body when we are doing something that is not accepted by the norms air quotes for those who can't see me, because this is a podcast but when we do things that are against norms, we start to feel this tension of I have to hide this and I think that is linked to not feeling safe, and I know for a fact that that is such an accurate statement.
Speaker 1:And I have felt, lived, have that lived experience where I did not feel safe to have opinions that I had or have feelings that I had, and therefore I hit them and then they just keep coming tumbling out years later and it's so easy to be like why am I triggered by this? And at least now it's like we have this conscious awareness where we can ask ourselves those questions Like what am I really upset about? Oh, this XYZ thing that made me really upset that I didn't pay attention to. And now this is triggering me and it's completely unrelated. But we as a society, even that we don't talk about that. And so drawing this, like when you have these intense emotional experiences, they're going to get bound in our body, and when we don't allow the feelings, they have to go somewhere. So it goes back to our linking, goes to your hips, goes to your shoulders, goes to your neck, goes to your gut. This is just like it's wild.
Speaker 2:Holy smokes, it's wild. I just can't believe that you. It's so funny that you started talking about the crying thing, because this has been a big deal in my life personally as I've allowed this amplified awareness. So same thing, but different.
Speaker 2:You know, as a kid, like yeah I, I cried, like crying was my thing. I was emotionally sensitive, like I'm empathetic, I'm a super aware of other people, right, and so like, yeah, I was, and you know I've said this before, I think on an episode early on where you know there was this joke in my family like, oh, your bladder is just too close to your eyes because I was always crying, right. And so, over time, what I also realized in thinking about this lately has been that instead of crying being a release which is what it actually is, right, it's allowing the movement to flow out. What I actually decided crying was and I didn't know it at the time, but now, in reflection, decided crying was and I didn't know it at the time, but now, in reflection, I can say this is what I decided crying was was that it was me dealing with pain, and so I actually created this relationship with crying that I hated, that I would stop myself from crying because I didn't like how it physically felt. I didn't like how it physically felt. I didn't like getting stuffy face, I didn't like getting puffy eyes, I didn't like all of those things. And so I brought myself to this place of like let's not cry, because it's more associated to pain and I don't want to be in pain. And so that's what it became for me.
Speaker 2:And now, wildly enough, right in the previous episode I talked about you know how I'm doing these visualizations of allowing myself to go back to parts of my childhood and rewrite and do that.
Speaker 2:And what I'm noticing is happening that if I'm around the house and I'm just allowing some of that to come up in the moment whether I'm cooking dinner and washing dishes or whatever, I'm just allowing it to come in in those moments, I'll just start crying and it actually doesn't feel uncomfortable, it actually just feels what it's supposed to feel is a release and it's actually like really quick.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I don't even like realize it's happening, until I'm like my face is wet, like what's going on here, and so I just my mind is blown that you brought up that crying thing, cause I think this is a big deal and I think it it really truly hones in on what we're talking about in this episode is being able to release what's bound up, what's weighed us down. Being able to release what's bound up what's weighed us down and really like, then you get to move into this happy like he talked about that on that podcast how, like, when you allow that, you get to move so much quicker into, like, all of these happy things that are intended for you in these now moments. So, yeah, that's a big deal, and I think that societal pressure, part of it that you started talking about too that we're encouraged in one way or another to hide it so that we're not judged or it doesn't feel good or whatever is a big deal that we have to continue to be aware of and be conscious in allowing ourselves to shift that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh my gosh. There's like so many, so many things, and I think one of them is when, as a parent and raising these kids and I try so hard to make sure my kids know it's okay to feel their feelings Like that there's no inappropriate feelings and it's it's a challenge, because there's part of me that's also in this old way of like why are you crying, like come on? And I'm like wait, no, no, come on. Nope, you're here to make them feel safe, that it is okay and it's. I think it's one of the things that I pride myself on as a parent. It's like when my kids are hurt or they're feeling away about something, I just hold them, I just let them cry. I don't try and shush them, I don't try and make it stop, I just let them be, and they totally move through it more quickly, all of it. And do I still find myself snapping at them to get it together? Sometimes Absolutely Like. But I think, too, that's more of a reflection on me than it is on them in terms of like I don't want to feel uncomfortable with their discomfort, and I said it to McKenna last night. I said, you know, sometimes I get really frustrated because I don't want you guys to fight with each other and I go and then I remember that you have to fight with each other in order to learn how to come back to each other. And we you know we're talking about crying, but I think it goes with anger too, and there's a whole conversation there. So it's like you can be. You've got to take the ownership of those feelings too. And so, when we're angry, realize it's like someone's not making you angry, like you're allowing yourself to feel your anger, and that's okay, and I think it's what you said it before. It's like holding up a mirror to what you need the most. And oftentimes I do feel like the resentment or that anger is really coming from a place of like wow, like wow. I wish I could do it that way, or I wish that I could feel that free to not make those decisions, or whatever it may be. I'll think of some examples, but those are the ways that we can allow ourselves to feel feelings and then allow the people around us to feel them too, because if we're making it safe for them, we can make it safe for ourselves.
Speaker 1:We'd like to take a break from our show to invite you to learn more about our digital course, shift from Hustle. Are you tired of pushing to make things happen? Are you tired of comparing yourself to others? Are you ready to feel inspired to take action on only those things that feel good in your life? If you're nodding yes, then this course is for you. This four-week course is self-paced and has incredible resources to guide you through that shift from hustle culture. Head over to our Patreon, where you can learn more about our pricing and how this course is so full of ease. You'll want to take it over and over again. Now back to the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, as we are talking about crying, it is pouring rain outside of the winter.
Speaker 1:Not really dark.
Speaker 2:And I just have to say that, because I was like, let's talk about release here. It is literally just the sky is crying now, but so much you said there too. I think that ownership piece of it so something also that I have found very powerful is and I've said this time and time again when I'm going back to things and re-looking at them or rewriting them or addressing them, it's not to blame, shame or judge even what my parents did or grandparents did or all of that kind of thing, because what I want to say there is I truly believe that they did what they could, what they had with, what they knew, what society was telling them to do, what their parents was telling them to do, whatever was in their DNA Right All of those kind of things that we also are working through ourselves too, but we also are working through ourselves too, and so I think that I just say this because why we got to come here and be honest about it is that we are in a place that we get to evolve this, and so we have to be honest about it and we have to say that those things actually happened in our life, and it's not because we're pointing a finger, but it truly is to just say that we're realizing that those things went on. We're looking at the root of them some of the time, but more often than not it's what you said. We're going to that ownership of it and knowing that, whether it was something I was taught or it was something that I decided to do In my notes here, I had something like I wanted to share that I was.
Speaker 2:Something that I know and have realized over the past couple of years is that one of my coping strategies was to disassociate. I chose to do that right. And then, you know, I truly don't blame myself in the sense of like that, that was wrong. But now there's this evolution, now there's this allowing those flashbacks that I call them Sometimes. I call them time travels because it just feels like little bleeps of going to different you know, a previous timeline or a future timeline, and re big part of that has been letting the grief, letting the abandonment feelings, letting all of that come up and flow, versus restricting it. Whereas the disassociation was to allow the survival, it was protection mode, it was to just get through it, to power through, to be resilient, to be strong, to be who I am.
Speaker 2:I'm honest today, right, but now this amplified awareness is allowing me to see that I get to go back there, because what disassociation actually did for me was that I couldn't access good or bad memories. Couldn't access good or bad memories, so disassociation took me to a place in my mind where it just went away. And so now being able to amplify the awareness of it, like yeah, I'm looking at some of the things that maybe might've been termed bad or little T, trauma type of things, but now I'm able to go there and look at that, observe that in a different way. But then I'm also actually starting to see those positive memories, those things that actually, you know, did happen in that timeline, and so I think that's key. If anyone listening, I just feel like I should say that if you're in a place where you've disassociated as a coping mechanism, allowing yourself to go there and allowing this flow is going to be an ultimate healing tool. I can tell you that's what's happening.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a big share, thank you, and I think that leans well into that. When we allow our body to do what it needs to do, like it's such an intelligent thing, it's really working for us. And so this we have this belief and our beliefs you just said it's like do I believe I can be safe to go through this? Or the beliefs around how we are safe to feel can impact the expression of the emotions. We've really covered that in this conversation. So linking emotional health to physical health and our beliefs that emotions can be felt is really key because we are seeing it more and more throughout.
Speaker 1:You know, it's not mental toughness, but when you're just like, oh, I'm sick, and you fight being sick I think you sent me an article months ago You're like people who fight this feeling like, oh, I'm sick, this is so annoying, they're sick longer.
Speaker 1:And it's the same thing here where it's like, if you say, oh, I don't want to deal with this right now, emotionally, like you're going to deal with it later, so might as well deal with it now and you're going to move through it quickly.
Speaker 1:But keeping this connection of emotional health and physical health are so intertwined is really what we're trying to get across today and because we truly believe that when you are in that safe space, when you are not in the fight or flight or survival mechanisms are in place, that your health will be better off, you'll feel lighter physically, you will find more joy and you'll call in more joy, and so it's just like Sean and I are just really encouraging you that this can be really overwhelming and hard and you're really undoing some patterns that you've probably had in place for a while, but just starting back to awareness and start back at the beginning of this little series that we've built out and say like, how's my body feeling right now? What's going into that, and then kind of move through that. So I hope that this has been helpful. I really this is such a good conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really is, and you know, so much permission, like we said in the very beginning of this little series, was just don't expect yourself to be the same every day. You know, and I think about this sometimes too, when it's like, you know, it's actually pretty cool to see that I'm allowing these things to happen and I'm still doing those other things that are part of my every day, because I think a lot of the fear was like how am I going to sit with my emotions and support that and go work 10-hour days at my job outside of home and prepare the podcast and be a part of that and have my home life and all of these things? And I'm in this space right now where, like, yeah, it's actually still happening, you know, because there's so much power behind not expecting it to be the same every day and not, you know, pushing yourself through that when it does feel like hard, and just those little tiny pause moments, those little recognitions of like okay, there's something here I need to take a moment, and allowing it is letting you kind of come back to that, and so I think that that's the encouragement for our listeners here, because we know a lot of you are busy women leaders too, and we want you to know that you can continue to be who you love to be in those spaces, while still making sure that you're going there and that you're allowing your body to have this healing that's going to allow some of this to release and flow so that you're not experiencing those symptoms that are coming up so frequently. Even are coming up so frequently even yeah, just wild, I will say.
Speaker 2:There was this quote that I read about mind-body symptoms that really hit, and it said that mind-body symptoms was equal to being hurt and that hurt never got a chance to resolve the wounds that were created. Like that's really what we're saying here. Like that's what those symptoms are they're just messages from a wound that didn't get the awareness and attention that now we're beckoning so super powerful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man. So we just really want to encourage you to keep this series on body messages on replay for a bit, and we know that the inner work isn't a one and done kind of deal, but we also believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is totally worth it. Going there with our stored emotions is the key to integrating them and evolving, and guess what? We aren't getting stuck there. We want you to feel empowered by this too, so make sure you jump into Patreon for extra support tools along the way. And, as always, we'd love to hear what parts of paying attention to your body messages and allowing emotional integration are getting sticky, because we know that it does. We feel it too, and we also want to celebrate with you. So come over, let us know how it's going, but clue us in. Keep the messages rolling in.
Speaker 1:We love getting the feedback on these episodes and, by the way, we are so close to our one year anniversary it's just blowing my mind so clearly. We are constantly working through this, but it's so rewarding to us to have you here and that our episodes are reaching more and more women looking for community like ours. So forward this message to one friend. That's your takeaway too. So let's keep coming together to feel empowered as we create and live our most joy filled realities with ease. So make sure again, share this episode with a friend, and we're sending you so much love. Look forward to chatting again soon.
Speaker 2:We want to welcome you, to tune in, stay close and grow with us. Come feel empowered, inspired and connected.
Speaker 1:Check the show notes to follow us and, of course, we'd love for you to tag us on social media and you share what lands for you.
Speaker 2:Until next time, breathe on purpose, stay curious and trust your intuition.