Ep #63: Seesaw of Emotional Wellness

Welcome to More Than Mindset, the only podcast that bridges the gap between spirituality and success. Go beyond the mind with clarity and confidence coach, Kim Guillory, and learn how to integrate your passion to serve with your skills and experience to create a business you love. Let’s get started.

Hey, guys, and welcome back. Hope all of you are chilling out, enjoying this downtime, and making the best of the situation. I have to tell you, it’s a little tough sometimes. My week has been filled with some intense coaching. It’s like all of the stuff is coming up. Even last week, the last two weeks I would say, but for sure this week, has been very, very deep, intense, old emotional trauma.

I think maybe it’s so much downtime and not having our buffering resources, and by that, I mean not shopping, going out to eat, going to the ballpark, being distracted, going to the, I don’t know, the bars, the casinos, the away to work, travel, whatever it is. We are basically just at home sitting in our own crap, and that’s really what I want to talk about today.

So, we have flattened the curve. I’ve used this example all week. Imagine a seesaw, and we were at risk physically, the physical body from the virus, and so we have taken every precaution to protect us from physically getting this. Now, the seesaw is all the way up in the air. It’s way down on the other side. What has happened is we’ve protected the physical part, but now, the mental and emotional part is really what’s at risk.

I am hearing some really, really intense stories of people who are having a hard time trying to deal with just everything that has changed. Not going to work, the kids being home, not sure about the economy or about their next paycheck. It’s like sitting in this ball of unknowing.

But here’s the part that I really think is making the difference. If we had the coping skills in every household prior to, I think it would have been a game changer because I am so fortunate, so blessed, appreciative, grateful for my coaching community. Guys, we are a strong tribe. My clients, coaches that I’ve trained, as well as our more than mindset Facebook group. We have so much support. We meet on a regular basis. We talk daily. We just got off of a two-hour just come and let’s wash all of this out.

I looked at them, and I was like, “I can’t even imagine what it must be like not to have this kind of support.” If I wouldn’t have the understanding that I have today, and this would have happened 10 years ago when I was in crisis, I really don’t know how I would’ve handled it, or even 15 years ago, 20 years ago, maybe even 8 years ago. It’s big stuff.

So, I hope you are giving yourself a lot of grace, and compassion, and gentleness for this stuff that is coming up. It’s not easy. I’ve talked to quite a few people who are just not used to having so much interaction at home with the kids and for such a long time because it’s not even like summertime where you would be going to the park, or you’d be going on vacation, or you would be playing All-Stars.

We’re so used to distractions, and we don’t have that access to any of that. I’m thinking of even households where the husband was away at work a lot, or the wife was away at work, and there’s no more going away, and suddenly, you’re sitting in the same house day after day, and it’s kind of foreign.

If you don’t have the mental management, the tools, to really understand that your thoughts are so powerful, and you don’t have the coping skills for the emotional stability to be able to regulate the emotions that are coming up, the fear, the doubt, the anger, the hate, the rage, all of the things. I’m saying this from a very real perspective. All of those emotions are valid. Resentment, annoyance, regret. So much raw emotion without the tools. I’m really sad about this.

I’ve talked to I don’t even know how many extra people this week. My schedule was completely booked out. I might’ve had a two-hour break throughout the whole entire week, and it was really helping people shift through this. They have an idea of the work. So, they’ve been following the podcast. They are in the More Than Mindset Group. Maybe they were my coach, client at one point, or maybe it’s someone that I peer coach with, but regardless, it’s across the board, guys.

It doesn’t matter how intelligent you are. It doesn’t matter how rich you are. It doesn’t matter how desperate you are. None of it matters right now. What matters is this stuff is coming up, and it feels really real. Without the understanding that the thoughts are creating these sensations, without really and truly knowing that, you will feel like a basket case.

Even at one point earlier in the week, there was just a lot of processing happening around me. So, I was taking a lot of clients through what I call the emotional processing technique, which is a very gentle approach to calm the nervous system down and to be able to go in and have accessibility to the root triggers, and to diffuse them, to dismantle, pull them away so that they would have the awareness, so then we can soothe that wound and bring in this more calm essence, I would say. I hope I don’t lose.

I feel like when I started like sharing stories and expressing, but this is exactly what it’s like. We calm the mind down so that it’s not so defensive, so it’s not blaming, pointing fingers, screaming injustice, and hate, and rage. We have to get beyond that. Those are just emotions that are coming from a thought.

This is not fair. This shouldn’t be happening. They shouldn’t be doing that. This is not how it’s supposed to be. Those thoughts will create all of these emotions. There’s a chemical release, and it oozes sensations through the body, and that tells your brain it remembers a time where you felt this way, where you felt this injustice, where you felt things were unfair, and it reignites that old wound.

So, if you could recognize that it’s coming from a thought, then you can simply process, allow it to pass, and then change the thought, but most people don’t know that. We weren’t taught that. That’s actually something that we’re teaching in the here and now. I know for sure I didn’t know how to teach it to my kids. It was not taught to me. I’m just so grateful that we have access to this now.

What I’m seeing is as we neutralize this, then they get this liberation Like you can’t even imagine. Typically, when someone goes through this process, they’ll say, “I’ve never, ever felt this way. I have never felt such freedom. My mind has never felt so clear. I don’t remember ever a time. Even when I was a kid, I used to worry about stuff, and I never remember feeling this clear.” That’s the sort of things that they’ll tell me.

The beautiful thing about this is physical pain is released through this process. What typically happens is you have the trigger, and you either process the emotion or you keep it buried, and if you keep it buried, then the brain actually turns on trigger spots in the body, and so those areas kind of become the chew toy. It becomes the thing that the brain creates as a problem so that it has something to solve. Super powerful stuff.

We get a lot of resistance when we’re teaching this. It’s actually coming from the TMS world. If you follow Dr. Sarno’s work, you can reach out to the More Than Mindset Facebook Group and say, “I want the list of books that you’re talking about,” and I will get that for you.

The concept, it’s basically the human condition. It’s just the way the human brain works. Its job is to keep you safe and to protect you, and it will do whatever it has to do in order to do that. So, if it feels like you feeling this emotion is going to be super painful, or it may get you in trouble, or it may kill someone, or you may kill yourself, or you may hurt something, or you may do something that’s very scary. If your brain is not allowing you to go in and access these emotions that are really, really sad, really, really scary, they’re triggered by anger. Typically, it is rage. It begins with rage, and then our whole array of emotions come from that.

So, the brain is like, “No, we can’t let you go there because then you will hurt yourself or someone else,” and so it builds up this wall to protect you from going in there. I call this a shadow. The shadow is the part of yourself that you cannot go and experience because it is just too shameful and too painful, and you will risk your whole entire life just not to let people see that part of you which is behind the mask.

That’s why I’m really careful about teaching this mental bypassing, spiritual bypassing, pretending like things are okay, spitting out positive affirmations, or walking around with a smile on your face just looking at sunny side up, everything is great when it’s really not. Most of you guys who do that have physical pain. Lower back represents feeling ungrounded, insecure. There’s different areas of the body.

I talk about this a lot in the earlier podcast. You can go back and check those out. We will be doing some live conversations on this in the upcoming weeks. We’re already scheduled out. We’ll be doing them through Zoom. We’ll be doing them through YouTube and on social media. It’s really important that we educate on this right now.

So, I hope you guys who are listening are at least willing, willing to just open your mind to the opportunity that it could be true, that these repressed emotions are really causing a lot of damage in your body. They’re creating illness and disease. They’re creating chronic pain. Our bodies are not meant to function under this chronic state of stress, fear, worry, and all of the media, and worrying about financial status, worrying about the kids being home. When will they go back to school? Are they ever going to go back to school?

Not being able to buffer or to hide this emotion, or I’ll call it emotional discomfort, what typically happens is say you’re antsy, and you’re just kind of nervous, and so you go into the pantry and you grab some food, and you start eating, and then your brain gets this release. It’s like, “Oh, thank you. Oh, it’s so good.”

The same thing happens when someone goes to the casino, or when they’re drinking alcohol, or sugar even. All of these things are stuff that occupies the mind for a little while, but it’s willing to take the risk just to be occupied for a little while. There are positive ways that you can do that, but we have not been trained in those. That is basically what we’re trying to teach right now.

So, for this particular episode, I really just want to bring it to your awareness and know that if you are feeling really agitated, annoyed, you’re wanting to give somebody the boot. Get away from me, you’re sitting too close, you’re breathing on me, you’re breathing too loud, all of this stuff, that just give yourself from grace and be willing to feel that discomfort, and question the source of it.

See if you can find that poisonous thought or that suffering thought that is actually creating that agitation. Is it, “I told him not to do that, and he’s doing it again. He’s so annoying, and he never listens to what I say”? What is the story that you are constantly repeating? If you were going to tell your best friend why you’re aggravated, what would you do? Write that down.

Then go to work and investigate that, and figure out where it is actually inside of you and ask yourself, “Where am I not doing that? Or where am I doing that?” See if you can turn it around and do some self-inquiry, and be sure and do it with compassion. Don’t beat yourself up. There’s no win or lose here. It’s all the game of awareness, and through awareness, you will receive the healing.

If you are struggling with not having coping skills, and not knowing what I’m talking about, and maybe you’re seeing us on social media, and you see the coaches and I really got it together. We’re doing a lot of laughing. We’re doing a lot of visiting. We’ve got this thing under control, and I have to tell you, we’re not all in a position. Very many of them are not working or have some really stressful situations going on in their life, but we’ve learned how to manage our thought process and how to regulate our emotional process.

With those tools, we always have each other’s back. We’re watching and reaching out to each other, doing a lot of peer coaching, and every single day, we are coaching and teaching. In the More Than Mindset Group, we’re teaching about presence. I’m offering the group coaching. I was like, “Let me help you. Let me teach you these skills.”

Then the coaches are actually doing their own sessions on their private groups and in their personal pages. So, there’s plenty of opportunity if you are feeling isolated, if you are feeling a little lost, out of control, you’re feeling maybe there’s just so much information online, and it’s confusing, and you want a place to come and allow this dialing down space.

I would suggest that you maybe turn off some of that stuff that you’re following. I for sure had to do that. I only follow my coaching group, and then the group that I coach. Does that makes sense? The one that I am a part of and the one that I lead. I’ve been really strict about that this last week. I had to turn everything else off.

I have an accountability group for my personal self-care, and then I have my business group, and then we have the More Than Mindset Group, and I’m really just not paying attention to anything else. That’s a couple of hints that I can give you. Here’s something that you can do for yourself, is get your paper and pencil, number one. I call this dumping.

When you wake up in the morning, very first thing, take out your paper, take out your pencil, and just write exactly what is in your mind. Just take the thoughts out for a walk. By doing paper and pen, it’s like you’re taking them out of your head, and they’re walking through the pencil onto the paper.

Imagine just like you take your first dump of the day. You drink your coffee, you take a dump. This is your brain dump. It’s just something that needs to leave the body. No residue. We want to clean out what was there the day before. Even if you went to bed with a clean state of mind, what happens is when we’re sleeping, things come in during the night.

We dream, we have shifts. We think about things before we go to bed. So, when you wake up, you’re not clear-headed anymore. So, do yourself a favor and dump all of that stuff that is in your brain onto your paper. You don’t ever have to read this again. It doesn’t even have to make sense. If you have a hard time journaling, and you’re like, “I don’t know what to write. I don’t know where to start.” I’ll tell you how I started.

When I was young, way back when, it was always, “Dear God,” or, “Oh, Lord,” or, “Oh, my God.” I always started writing to my creator, to my God, to spirit, to soul essence. That’s just my habit. You don’t have to do that, but I’m just giving you an opportunity. You could write to yourself, “Hey Betty. What’s going on? What did you dream about last night? What’s happening in your body today?”

Then you just start asking yourself questions, and then you start answering them. When I was dealing with the TMS stuff, and I was having severe pain, and I was writing about it, I was cussing the paper out. I was so mad. I couldn’t figure it out. It wouldn’t stop. It wouldn’t go away. No one could help me. I didn’t know what to do about it. I wrote all of that. “I hate this. I hate the way it feels. I hate that I can’t move. I hate that I’m limited and no one can help me. There’s no one who can figure it out. I don’t know how long this is going to last.”

I would seriously write all of those words down. You want to get it all out. Like, “I can’t stand when he breathes on me, and he chews too loud, and his feet stink, and I don’t even want him to be home right now. I wish he wasn’t here.” Write all of that out. Do not hold back. Just dump. It’s going to feel so good. I promise you, it’s going to feel really, really good.

What you’re doing is you’re going to create some space in your brain. Your brain is a processor, and it problem solves. That’s its job. It’s like, “Hey, give me something to do. I’m going to go and solve for it.” Or right now what you’re giving it to do is to worry. You’re like, “Hey, chew on all of these problems, on everything that’s going wrong,” and so your brain is really busy being confused.

So, you want to dump and get all of those worries out on the piece of paper. Write, write, write, cuss, scream, scratch, holler, whatever you want. You can throw it away when you’re done. You can burn it. You can keep it in the notebook. It does not matter. You may want to read it again. It doesn’t matter though. Seriously, there is no rural here.

The only rule is to do it by paper and pencil or paper and pen, and get it out of your head, put it on the paper, take a few breaths, let it go, and then notice the clarity that you have. Because what’s happened is all of those thoughts were basically like imagine that on top of your brain you had this desk, like the desk you work on, and it was just full of stacked papers, and files.

Like, “I need to remember this, and I need to remember that, and I need to make sure that this protects us.” We get all of these thoughts all day long because we’re so over sensitized. We just leave them hanging out in our head. We don’t even notice that they’re there anymore, and now, you don’t have access to your processor. So, once you’ve dumped, it’s cleared your mind. You take a few breaths. You feel the clarity in your brain. You feel the clarity in your mind.

You’re like, “I’ve released all of that.” You can go to the meditation if you’re having trouble doing this. There’s a 22-minute meditation on my website. Once you dump, and then you breathe, and then you have the clear head, take your breath down into your heart, right at the center of the heart, breathing into it, and imagine you can expand it and blow it up like a balloon. Right in the middle of the heart, breathe and release.

Breathe and release. Coming center of the heart. You want to connect each breath with the heart. It’s like heart coherence. You have your mind. You have your breath, and you have your heart, and you went to integrate that together and see if you can find a rhythm, find a flow. This is going to help you reconnect to your heart center.

Take a couple of breaths here. Now, you’re grounded and ready for the day. It doesn’t take long. Just takes a couple of minutes. You can really just clear the mind, release the files, release the thoughts, and come to heart center. That’s presence. You have all of the answers whenever you’re in presence.

So, these are some of the things you can do. The other thing is really take note of why am I aggravated? When you’re feeling annoyed, when you’re feeling frustrated, when you’re feeling sad, ask yourself, “I’m feeling sad because,” and then just write out the answer. “I’m feeling annoyed because. I’m feeling depressed because,” and write out the answer, and don’t judge it. Just write it.

Then notice when it’s really, really triggered, and you’re not able to let it go, ask yourself, “Where am I doing this? I’m angry because he…” If you don’t release it, and you keep asking the question, you can’t let it go, then ask yourself, “Where am I…? Where am I doing this? Where am I holding back? Where am I not showing up? Where am I not being supportive?” I’m serious, guys. This is golden.

This is just a touch of what we teach in the coping skills. Just a touch, but it is so powerful. You get in the habit of asking yourself every single day, “What does this have to offer me.” When something is happening like Corona, “What does this have to offer me? What can I learn from this? What is this teaching me? How am I growing?”

Really ask yourself these great questions, and listen for the answer. You can do it in paper and pencil, or you can just by saying it aloud. Just play around with it. If you need support, come over to the More Than Mindset Group.

If you are a health and wellness practitioner, and you want to learn about emotional processing technique, or you went to learn a simple business strategy of how to create a viable business with your healing tool, come on over to the website or just email kim@kimguillory.com. You know I like to keep it simple and say, “Kim, I want to apply for the Mind, Body Business Mastermind,” and that is what I’m teaching there. I teach you how to discover your unique gift and monetize it by helping other people.

So, if you’ve always had this passion to serve, you know it’s just in your DNA. You’re like, “I know I’m supposed to help people. I don’t know what it looks like. I don’t know how to create a business out of that.” If you’re a massage therapist and you’re like, “I am just tired of this unpredictability. I really want to help people heal their lives, and I know that there’s a better way than the way I have been doing it.”

I invite you to reach out for a consultation. I’d be happy to talk to you to hook you up with some of the massage therapists that I’ve already trained, or yoga teachers, or Reiki masters. You can get at least some information about how there could be something more for you. There could be more potentiality and possibility for you to take your business out into the world and help more people, make more impact, and to create a viable income through a very simple business strategy.

This is not your typical coaching business kind of mastermind. This is very unique and different to every single person who comes in. You’re all treated as your own entity. I don’t treat you as a group, as a whole, but yet the community is very supportive.

All right, guys. I’m going to keep this one pretty short. Until next week, I really want you to give yourself some grace, some patience, some gentle compassion. Give yourself a hug. Lighten up a little bit. See if you can just trust. If you can take yourself to presence. Take yourself to heart center. Release those thoughts. Drop down into your belly and really trust life. Life has your back, boo. You’re here for a reason. All right. love you all.

Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than Mindset.