Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Ready to lose 40 plus pounds without giving up happy hours, weekend brunches, or date nights. Then it's time to uncover the hidden link between binge eating and toxic relationships. And finally, break free from both. Welcome to the Hungry for Love podcast with Jillian Scott. Y' all ready? Let's go.
[00:00:24] Hey. Hey. Welcome back.
[00:00:26] All right, today we are talking about grief, and especially grief during the holidays. Grief and sadness and heartache even after divorce, even after you've left. And today I experienced such a big wave of grief. So I'm going to share a little bit about it and what has triggered it, some of the things that have come up. And also very much trusting and knowing and believing I can feel this. I am safe to feel it.
[00:00:53] I can feel the grief and the heartache and the sadness and the disappointment with how things didn't turn out the way that I really wanted them to and still know that divorce was the right decision, that divorce was the best step, that divorce saved my life. It's added years, hopefully decades onto my life. And it's important that we really learn how to process and feel because so much of what keeps us stuck in a toxic relationship is our unwillingness or inability or just our desire to not feel the sensations in our body.
[00:01:32] And so this is actually quite appropriate. And two years ago at this time, I think it was in November, I did a series on grief and navigating grief. One of them being around the loss of life, one of them being around divorce. And then I think it was like just one of them was more of my overall thoughts and approach to it. So if you are wrestling with this, struggling with this right now, feel free to go back and re listen to those episodes from November of 2024 because they are really powerful. But I want to walk you through, really, how to sit and how to process an emotion today because we don't always give ourselves time and space and energy to do that. And even though it came, I kind of felt like the emotions came out of nowhere. I also recognized they needed to come out, and we don't need to be ashamed of that. I was actually really grateful that I had the time and the capacity to be able to process them in that moment. But even if you have to keep moving on with your day or you have to process for five, maybe 10 minutes and then go on to the next thing, or whether it's a I need to pause and you have to go back to it, you cannot keep shutting it down because these emotions will come out sideways.
[00:02:44] These emotions and this dysregulation in your body. A lot of times tears are how you re regulate. And so if you keep trying to stuff it down, you will always keep trying to re regulate in other ways, whether it's with grabbing food or grabbing alcohol or some other coping mechanism. Okay, so I will bring this back around full circle. But at the end of the day, our overeating, over drinking, over functioning problem is actually an under feeling problem. So we have to talk more and really get better at feeling, at allowing ourselves to actually feel and process an emotion. And I guarantee there are going to be a lot of emotions that come up this holiday season.
[00:03:22] And we also don't want to shame ourselves and be like, don't be petty. You should just get over it. It's not that bad. You know who this person is. You divorce them, you left them, you know that they do these shady things. You shouldn't be surprised. Right? It's like, try not to gaslight yourself, please.
[00:03:39] Be gentle, be loving, be kind and know that we need to let that out. As I say that, I'm thinking back on. Okay, so I'm recording this on a Tuesday and I'm thinking back to the weekend and I'm like, oh, there was totally some things bubbling up over the weekend because it was Caleb's birthday party. So he turned six last week. And I initiated the divorce when he was two and a half. He was so small, and I definitely had a lot of hesitation and reservations around him being that young.
[00:04:08] But to my ex's credit, he really stepped up. And when my ex had his son, he really cared for him. He cooked and he cleaned and he made sure he was clothed and he did so much that I was like, at one point I thought, had you been able to do this in the marriage, we would have been a lot happier. And in many ways I'm glad he didn't. Right. In many ways I'm glad that he didn't do that in the marriage because I think that actually would have made it harder to leave and harder to walk away. I'm grateful, but there was a part of me that had that thought of, you're doing this now as a single man. If you could have just stepped up when we were married instead of treating me like your concierge, your personal assistant, executive assistant, housekeeper, babysitter. The lie is that this could have been avoided. And the reality is it couldn't have been avoided. But it's like we just, we need to be onto ourselves with that. But there was a part of me that was like, we could have been happy, we could have made this work, but our issues went so much deeper, as I'm sure yours do as well.
[00:05:09] So last week I made a video on TikTok and it. This is a different one that I'm going to mention in another video, but I've had several go viral recently, and that's been really cool to see and just to see the impact. And for me, one of my mantras has been, when I speak, I change lives when I speak in my simple words, how have the power to change somebody's life?
[00:05:32] And it's been really encouraging to get such positive feedback. And there are always going to be haters. I think that's just going to be a part of the online world. But there has been such resonance with one particular video that is talking about what it's like to live with somebody who binge drinks and seems to be like a functioning alcoholic. They don't drink all the time. They can go periods without drinking, weeks, sometimes even months.
[00:05:56] A lot of times it's a, oh, I'm not gonna drink this month. And then a few days later, they've started drinking. They don't always take these big breaks.
[00:06:04] And it's like an emotional reliance and an emotional dependence. And this was something that I've helped clients navigate. It's something that I dealt with as well when I was married and just being really aware of that cycle. So, anyways, I made this video.
[00:06:17] I don't think I had a purpose other than just seeing them and being able to be that empathetic witness for somebody going through it. And I'm just explaining and walking people through, here's what happens. Why this hard, why we can struggle to leave and walk away at the end of the day, too. It's like, what can we control? Which is nothing. Well, I wouldn't say nothing. We can control whether we stay or we leave the relationship. That's what we have control over. But we cannot save a spouse. We cannot fix them. And so there was a comment that was something like, you need to stay and help your spouse in their time of need. It's hard, but for better or for worse.
[00:06:53] And I responded back, and y', all, I was feeling spicy. And I was like, absolutely not. No, no. You do not just stay for better or for worse, when there is abuse or there's abuse of a substance. So when there is abuse of you or your kids, mental, emotional, verbal, physical, sexual, spiritual. If there is any form of abuse or abuse of alcohol or drugs, it is no longer for better. Or for worse, that that creates such a visceral response in my chest.
[00:07:27] It's so wild. So I made this video and it's eight, nine minutes long. It's a longer one explaining how like, no, that is such a false premise because we cannot save our spouses from drinking. We cannot change their habit. And at the end of the day, it's like, we can't save them from themselves. We cannot save them. We cannot fix them. We cannot change them. Lord knows we've tried. We have tried for years. For decades, you have tried to change your spouse. And there comes a point where you recognize and you realize, oh, he doesn't want to change. He doesn't want to understand me. He doesn't want to cooperate and collaborate. He wants power and control. And we realize that the only way to break this chain, the only way to break the dynamic is to leave.
[00:08:12] This is how we break generational cycles of trauma and abuse, is we have to be able to leave and we have to be able to walk away. And so I feel very passionate and very empowered by it and also wanting to encourage people because I've had a ton of dms just asking, like, what can I do? How can I support him? What can I do here? And I'm always responding back and I'm like, you may not like this answer. In fact, I probably guarantee you're not going to like this answer. But you can't change him. And if you've already recognized that he doesn't want the help, he doesn't want to change, then there's literally nothing you can do outside of what you can do with your own physical person and your body. Your only option is deciding whether you want to stay or leave that relationship.
[00:08:57] And what's so fascinating, because if somebody was dating an alcoholic, people would be like, oh, honey, just leave. But somehow, if you are married to the alcoholic, you're supposed to stay. There are things that just don't make any sense to me where I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. If we are going to have one rule when it comes to dating and say that this is not acceptable, this is grounds for leaving that dating relationship. It should be the same for marriage.
[00:09:24] So anyways, I was very ranty. And then I've also been seeing there are different trending videos and there are some with couples and families and when they're younger versus now, 14 or 20 years later, and they're so sweet. I look at that, I'm like, I hope that's me one day. I wish I could Post that that wasn't really what kind of brought me to tears. It was really seeing pictures of moms and their little babies.
[00:09:47] And I started looking at pictures of Caleb. And every now and then, some different memories and stuff will pop up on my phone or on my laptop and I'll see these different. These different photos and this sweet little kid. And especially when it's from that time when he's two, two and a half, and when I just think divorce is not what I wanted for him.
[00:10:05] I did not get married. I did not have a baby with the intention of getting divorced. That was never what I wanted.
[00:10:14] That was really the only option. That was the last resort. That was what happened when I realized, this is not changing, this is not going to get better.
[00:10:24] I have got to get out.
[00:10:27] And it's such a hard place to get to. But it just like the grief today that I experienced, like, on behalf of Caleb and knowing that he didn't spend a lot of time with us living together, he did have some memories of us back when we first divorced, because it's been a little over three years now since I've moved out and had my own apartment and we've been living separately.
[00:10:50] And for that first year, maybe even close to two, he remembered our first house. He remembered and was like, oh, I remember when you and my daddy were in the kitchen together.
[00:11:00] He had memories of us in the same house living together.
[00:11:04] And that it's like, yep, I know Bud. And I had to just trust that he was going to get used to this dynamic of us being separated.
[00:11:13] And I also know that that's not what I wanted. I also am grieving the loss of the family structure and the family dynamic that I really wanted, that I thought that I could create at one point. I thought at one point early in the marriage, middle of the marriage, I thought that I could create that.
[00:11:34] And I thought I was choosing the opposite of what I grew up with. I didn't realize I was choosing the exact same thing because it didn't look like what I thought it would have. I think so often we think that it would be easy to walk away from abusers and abusive people, but it's not.
[00:11:52] And when they figure out what buttons in us to push so that they know what emotional needs and wounds they're meeting, it becomes so hard to walk away, because we're not walking away from a person. We are walking away from this core wound, core desire being met.
[00:12:09] And so it is a big thing. But it just. But hearing this song, that is it's one of the trending songs. And people are putting it to pictures of their kids and different things. And it was just like.
[00:12:22] Just this reconciliation and this peace and acceptance, but also this heartache of divorce is not what I wanted for him.
[00:12:31] I wanted something more for him. And from the outside, I bet a lot of people thought we had it. I bet a lot of people thought we could have created it.
[00:12:41] But I also knew, like, I knew deep down. And in many ways, this is, again, what makes me so grateful for my childhood, because it really helped me to see what happens when you stay in that type of dynamic.
[00:12:54] And it really gave me so much more conviction and strength to leave for the kids, to leave for Caleb.
[00:13:02] And so this weekend being his birthday party, and my ex is now remarried, and I actually had lunch with her last week. Super sweet woman, very kind, very loving. And she's also been through a lot. She's experienced quite a lot of trauma.
[00:13:16] But we had a really nice lunch. And then, so Saturday is the party.
[00:13:19] And 1. They had asked me to bring the cake. I asked Caleb what he wanted. I brought the cupcakes, and then they had a cake. And I was like, if you. If I would have known you were bringing a cake, I wouldn't have bothered to do the cupcakes. This doesn't make any sense.
[00:13:34] And so I'm just kind of like, is this on purpose? What the hell? So I'm already a little irritated and trying not to make a big deal about it because it's cake in the grand scheme of things.
[00:13:44] But I would have taken that time energy and just put it elsewhere. And so I was like, okay, whatever. Then there is, like, a dance party happening as part of the day and the function, and there's this slideshow. And the slideshow has pictures of Caleb and then Caleb and his dad and then Caleb and his stepmom, and then all three of them together.
[00:14:04] And there is not a single picture of me in there. And they knew full well I was at the party and that I was coming to the party. This was something that they submitted ahead of time.
[00:14:15] Not one picture of his mother.
[00:14:19] And I'm just like, you've got to be kidding me. And again, it's one of those things where it would be easy to, like, kind of sweep under the rug or to feel like it's not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. But I'm just. But in my mind, too, I'm like, what a dick bag. Move it. Just it. And in many ways, again, it's just like. It reinforces his true colors. It reinforces why leaving Will was the absolute best decision, why I'm so glad I left when I did.
[00:14:49] And it was still hard. And I can still grieve. Caleb's childhood is going to look different than I wanted, than I hoped, and making peace with that and knowing that he's going to be on his own journey. And so, yeah, so I think there were a variety of things. There was some TikTok influencing that. There's some party stuff over the weekend influencing that. But. But overall there was just this wave of sadness and grief. And. Yeah, so there's. I think of grief as like this kind of amalgamation of emotions. Right. So there's like some anger in there, some resentment, some frustration.
[00:15:22] There's also some sadness and some longing. And. And so it's. And I know that I can create a healthy relationship with somebody else and we can create a really amazing life. I know that I can bring a healthy man into Caleb's life as a bonus dad in the future. And like, I. I'm so excited and so hopeful for that.
[00:15:43] And I can still also be grieving and I can have these moments where there are waves of sadness and waves of tears, because the emotion, I would say, started in my chest, but it just came up in tears so quick. Like, I. I'm sure there are other. Other factors, other influences, but it was just this, like, oh, I feel like I need to cry. And then it was just this, like, constant, like 5, 10 minutes of I just need to let it out, and I need that release.
[00:16:14] And so I'm gonna walk you through just a simple process for how to sit and feel the emotion and really encourage you to find some time, if not today, then this week, to be able to do this for yourself. Because this is how we increase our capacity. This is how we tune in and we create better emotional regulation.
[00:16:35] So we don't need other people to regulate us. We don't turn to other people, which means we often aren't staying in toxic relationships because that's often how we learn to re. Regulate. And now we're also now not gonna look to food or to alcohol or to something else, but we have to get better at allowing and letting it be here. Not fighting, not resisting.
[00:16:59] Because the more we fight, the more we resist, the bigger it gets and the more it comes out and it comes out sideways, it comes out when we don't want it to.
[00:17:08] And we just need. We need these times. So whether you are still married or you're in the divorce or you've been divorced for several years, this may still apply in different ways. And it may be grief. It may be a different emotion that you are working and processing through. And. And it's like sadness. And grief doesn't mean that we made the wrong decision.
[00:17:30] It doesn't mean that somehow we're being punished. It doesn't mean that we can't also still experience incredible joy and pleasure and happiness and excitement and hope.
[00:17:42] Because I do have so much hope for my life and my future and my business and future partnership and future family dynamics. There is so much that I'm looking forward to, and I need to also create that space where it's safe to feel and safe to process.
[00:18:02] So I want you to find a comfortable position.
[00:18:05] I feel like I've done this recently, but I don't feel like I've done it on the podcast recently. So if I have, you're welcome. You get it again.
[00:18:13] But I want you to find a comfortable seated position, maybe on the couch, maybe in, like, a favorite chair, maybe you're in your car if you need a little more privacy.
[00:18:25] And if you can wear something that feels very comfortable, very soothing, maybe have a blanket or something nearby, a pillow. It could be anything, maybe even a stuffed animal of you or one of your kids. Something that feels very comforting.
[00:18:42] And I think about. And I often will take myself to a space where in the past, for me, I think about one of my favorite places as a kid and a little girl was sitting on my grandma's lap, and she would tickle my back with her nails. She always had long nails. And she would just tickle my back, and we'd watch TV and she'd tickle my back. And it's one of my favorite. It's one of my favorite places. It's something that feels very safe to me.
[00:19:06] So in your mind, like, close your eyes, and as you start to deep breath in and then release it, just take some slow, deep breaths. I want you to take your mind and envision that safe place.
[00:19:21] Where is it?
[00:19:23] Who are you with?
[00:19:26] What are you experiencing?
[00:19:28] I could also think back to a time when I was sitting, maybe on the couch or even in my bed, and I had Caleb as a newborn baby in my arms. And just the intense love and joy and this fierce protection that I had for him, Right? But this. This sense of safety and also this vow of I will do whatever it takes to protect him kind of thing. So you can go to any time where it feels like you can recreate that same environment in your mind.
[00:20:01] And I want you to focus on your breath, deep breath in and out.
[00:20:09] And we wanna really focus on just filling up the lungs, breathing in and exhale and nice and smooth. And if you can, we want to make our exhale a little bit longer than our inhale.
[00:20:24] I don't prefer to hold at the top or even hold for very long at the bottom, maybe for just one beat, but for me, trying to hold too long without air, I don't like it. I get. I don't know if panicked is the right word, but it just doesn't feel good to me. So this is where it's like, find the pace, but we want to make it rhythmic.
[00:20:44] So keep breathing. And in your mind, I want you to be in that pleasurable, safe environment.
[00:20:53] And I want you to allow your body to feel safe, to feel comforted, to feel loved, or to feel love in general.
[00:21:06] And you keep breathing.
[00:21:14] And we want to spend just a minute or two just sitting with that.
[00:21:19] And you might find that certain emotions start to bubble up. You might find that tears come quick.
[00:21:25] For me, I, like, I didn't even have a chance to like, fully process what I was feeling in my body before the tears came. Okay, so we're not fighting anything. We're not resisting, we're just noticing.
[00:21:40] And we are being there as our own empathetic witness, as our own safe space, as our own safe person.
[00:21:49] And we are going to sit and breathe.
[00:21:54] And if there are tears, you let them come and you can start to explore. Okay, what's coming up for me now?
[00:22:04] No judgment, no shame, just a lot of curiosity of what am I feeling and why?
[00:22:13] And you may need to let this simmer a little bit. You may not always know why, you may not always have all of the dots connected, but I just want you to allow some space here for this process and to let things come up.
[00:22:33] And it's so interesting, this contrast for me, because the video that I had just gotten done, created, creating prior to what was coming up for me in this next image, the post that I was about to make, I realized that I was so fiery and passionate about it's okay to get divorced. And this is sometimes the best option. And the only thing that you can control.
[00:22:58] And also it is so completely juxtaposed is the words that's. That's coming to mind.
[00:23:05] I don't know why it's. But it's feels so completely opposite of this. This grief and this sadness and this heartache.
[00:23:13] Right? And we can hold space for both the Conviction and the passion and the fire of. Yes, it is important that we leave abusive dynamics.
[00:23:22] And it can still hurt and it can still bring grief. It can still bring pain and heartache.
[00:23:29] And we need to allow ourselves to feel it.
[00:23:34] So just notice what's happening in your body and are you feeling anything in your stomach, in your chest, anything in your shoulders or your neck, in your throat?
[00:23:55] And we just sit with this.
[00:23:59] And for me, it was. Today was so quick to tears. A lot of times I feel sensations in my body, usually in my stomach.
[00:24:07] A lot of times there's movement.
[00:24:10] It might feel like rocks in a dryer or churning or something like hard, heavy. It's slow movement.
[00:24:18] Sometimes it's in my chest and it feels restricted.
[00:24:22] That's where I feel like, panic or anxiety.
[00:24:26] But today, it just. It just wanted to come out with tears.
[00:24:32] But when I paused and really reflected, it's because divorce was not my, like, my first choice.
[00:24:39] And divorce was not what I wanted when I had him.
[00:24:44] I wanted to give him so much more. I wanted to give him something different.
[00:24:49] But I just couldn't see how I. I was repeating the same trauma that I grew up with.
[00:24:57] And I let my promise to myself be greater. I think this is an important thing of, yes, I made a promise to my husband with our wedding vows, but before that, I made a promise to myself.
[00:25:10] I made a vow to myself.
[00:25:14] And like I said, whenever there is abuse now at play, whenever there is somebody who is abusing a substance, it is no longer for better or for worse.
[00:25:28] And it is very different if somebody is actively trying to get help versus if they're not. I think for many women who stay in these dynamics, their spouse is not trying to get help. They are not trying to change. They are not trying to decrease. They're drinking. Maybe occasionally they go to the doctor, or maybe occasionally they listen to a podcast, but most of the time, it's like they're not even doing that. They just think they can do it on their own. And they are so headstrong, and they are so much in denial, and I don't have a problem, or it's, you make me drink, you wife, make me drink. So you're the problem, go fix yourself, and then I'll stop drinking. It's such misplaced responsibility.
[00:26:09] And that, at the core, is a huge piece of abuse. That is how I define it. That is one of the definitions in my mind is it's misplaced responsibility.
[00:26:20] And you cannot be with a toxic person. You cannot be with a dysfunctional and dysregulated person and change them and change the dynamic that you're in, because your healthy parts get pulled in to these, like, dark, poisonous parts and everything becomes poisoned.
[00:26:40] And I mentioned this, I think, into a private message to somebody. But I had mentioned we have such fairytale dreams of, like, the good girl changing the bad boy. I don't know if y' all ever watched the movie Walk, A Walk to Remember. I think it's a Nicholas Sparks book. So maybe you read the book or you watched the movie, But I remember the movie specifically. And it's so interesting because here you have the sweet Christian good girl who changes this bad boy, and it's like this boy changes for her. And it is such a romanticized fantasy that so many women, I think, want.
[00:27:15] We want to feel special enough and seen and valued enough that somebody is willing to change for us.
[00:27:23] But them changing has more to do with them and their issues that they are unwilling and not wanting to do, to address, to see they have such fragile egos. They cannot accept any blame, any responsibility. They can't own it.
[00:27:39] It's a beautiful, fantastical idea, right? It's like what we women hope for. And I think part of it is like, we want to believe that we are enough so that they would change.
[00:27:50] When they don't change, we cannot make it mean anything about ourselves.
[00:27:56] And I think this is why so often we stay. It's is. It's like we don't want to accept because in our brain it's, I must not be enough if he's not going to change for me. And that feels like such a painful story and a painful narrative. We don't want to accept that. And so we stay and keep trying to change him.
[00:28:15] Maybe eventually he'll see the light, or you might see progress. You might be like, okay, we've gone through these rounds. I think of binge drinking in particular. And with my ex, it's like we'd go through these rounds where he'd be binge drinking and it would just get progressively worse. And then there would be a moment where it's like, oh, I think he's seen the light. He's figured it out. He's gotten it together.
[00:28:34] But that never lasted. And we were right back in that cycle. And he didn't want to talk to anybody. He didn't want to go see a therapist. He didn't want to talk to a pastor. He didn't want to address any of the underlying things. Because at this time, too, I am a certified, trained life coach. I have healed my binge eating. I understand and I can see so much of what's driving his binge drinking and he just does not want to try any of it. I had to stop trying to change him and I couldn't make it mean anything about me.
[00:29:03] I think this is such an important time of year that we reflect on this too. Because so often our eating and drinking habits for ourselves can really stem from shame and guilt and feeling like we're a terrible person and the self loathing. And at the core it's like we just don't have a strong or healthy self concept.
[00:29:22] We don't have adequate self love. And that's why we kept seeking it from other people. It's why we kept falling into these dynamics and choosing toxic partners. Because in the beginning they would love bomb us. They were starting to meet our needs, but they were meeting a need that we had to do for ourself first.
[00:29:39] That becomes the work. Because when you start loving yourself more, you start realizing yourself, I would never treat me like this. I would never treat him like this. And that is not okay. An ex boyfriend would never treat me like this. And how my husband is treating me now, that's a problem.
[00:29:55] And you love yourself enough to walk away.
[00:29:58] You love your kids enough to walk away. And it's still hard.
[00:30:03] We still have a lot of emotions to process and to get through and knowing that there may be times or situations, conversations, things that maybe even kind of catch you off guard and that's okay.
[00:30:16] Let it be here, be present, be here for yourself, be here for your kids and support them. But most importantly, we've got to support ourselves because we cannot support anybody else if we are not right with ourselves. So to wrap up this exercise because I know I derailed this a little bit surprise.
[00:30:36] But I just bring us back to our bodies of we want to sit with those emotions and sit with those sensations in our body. Because that's all an emotion is. It's just a vibration in your body.
[00:30:45] Allow it to be there.
[00:30:47] And we just wanna notice if, when how it starts to move.
[00:30:52] Sometimes for me, like with anger, there might be specific emotions where you notice there is extra adrenaline or cortisol or extra emotion in your body that you need to release with walking or running or actually physically moving your body. Maybe it's like punching a pillow or a punching bag. Caleb actually now has this inflatable punching bag that is amazing. You can find them on Amazon. They're like 10 or $12, super inexpensive. That is such a great thing to have the big punching bags at the gyms. I do not like those, they hurt my hands.
[00:31:23] So I want this little thing that I can go and that I can get some of that emotion out. And I think that's such a great way, especially if you have young kids, for them to be able to process and get out some of their pent up emotion or even just energy. And so if we think about emotions like energy as well, we don't have to fight it, we don't need to resist it, we don't need to make it go away. We just have to be there and sit with it and allow it to be there. And so then it became a. I'm going to take this with me the rest of the day.
[00:31:51] I don't need to put on a fun face. I don't need to be anybody that I'm not. I might be a little quieter, a little more subdued. I may not be as high vibe as I normally am and that's okay. But I'm going to go about my day and I'm just going to bring this emotion with me throughout the day and I'm going to notice how it dissipates and when I let the tears come and that intensity of the tears and everything at the beginning now I can re regulate. Now my body feels calm and it's going back to normal. And that emotion now is naturally declining and decreasing without me doing anything, without me even noticing or paying attention to it. It's just naturally doing it.
[00:32:28] There are going to be times when we're going to take that emotion with us into our day, into our work, into our evening and not being in a rush to try to fight it off, not having to put on a show. Can you be authentically yourself?
[00:32:41] Can you just be you? I think that is one of the key reasons as to why I have removed people from my life is because I don't want to be fake. I have spent so much of my life, I feel like being fake and putting on a good show and being who other people want me to be and being this chameleon and I don't want to do that anymore when I don't have to. And neither do you.
[00:33:05] Ultimately at the end of the day, what we really want is to love ourselves authentically for who we are and we want to be loved by other people for who we are. Just the way that we are in and of ourselves.
[00:33:18] Not for what we do, not for how we make others feel, but just for who we are and our character and our integrity.
[00:33:25] Give yourself at least five to ten minutes to sit with an emotion. Maybe it needs to be a little bit longer.
[00:33:31] And what I've found too, with I think of them as like waves of the ocean, like these waves of grief, is that because I have gotten so much better at doing this now, waves come in and then they roll out and they really don't linger that long. But you might find that maybe you've got one that lingers for a day. Maybe it's a couple of days, maybe it's a couple of weeks.
[00:33:50] Let it be there.
[00:33:52] You don't have to put on a show, you don't have to put on a happy face. You don't have to pretend like everything's amazing when it's not.
[00:33:59] And we want to be really mindful that we're not stewing in self loathing and judgment and shame and just perpetuating unnecessary suffering.
[00:34:09] We don't need to go there if you have a pattern of doing that and going there. We just want to get better at catching that. We want to feel the clean pain, the clean emotion of what's coming up, but we don't want to dirty it up with, I should have left sooner, I should have known better, I all of these shoulds, all of these expectations, the shame, the judgment, the self loathing, the negative, critical self talk that dirties and muddies the water, in my view, that creates unnecessary suffering.
[00:34:41] So can we feel the clean pain of our emotions?
[00:34:45] Maybe of the divorce, of the grief, of them putting on a show and pretending like they've changed after we've left?
[00:34:52] Whatever might be coming up for you, but allow it to be here and allow that fun and the joy and the pleasure because there will be those times as well.
[00:35:03] We don't have to be super hard on ourselves. We don't have to go out and make sure, now I need to have even more fun to make up for this negative emotion or whatever it is. It's like sometimes we just need to sleep on it, Sometimes we just let it be here and our bodies will naturally reset.
[00:35:20] This is where we wanna prioritize our sleep, prioritize our water. Especially if there's a lot of tears in a particular day, we can get dehydrated, okay? So prioritize your habits, your health, your wellbeing, and know that it is safe to feel.
[00:35:34] This is part of our process for healing. This is part of our process for healing emotional eating, for healing from trauma and abuse, for healing our nervous system.
[00:35:45] And it's part of how we learn to stop abandoning ourselves.
[00:35:49] And it's how we decrease the likelihood of getting into future toxic relationships with friends, with religious communities or churches, with work environments, with potential romantic partners.
[00:36:05] But we gotta do this first.
[00:36:07] If you want some help navigating this season, whether it's grief or divorce or just other hard emotions that you're dealing with, send me a message or schedule a consultation. You can visit bodyucrave.com schedule find a day and time on my calendar and let's talk. This is a no pressure conversation, really, just to explore where you are now and where you want to be next summer, where you want to be by the end of next year. And for some people, a year might feel like too far. It's too much. So we'll walk it back. So where do you want to be the beginning of the summer?
[00:36:40] Halfway through this next year?
[00:36:42] How do you want to feel? What do you want your habits to be?
[00:36:46] How do you want to think about yourself? How do you want to talk to yourself in these moments?
[00:36:50] I think that's an important piece that we can overlook. We can look at all the achievements that we want to make, but an important question to answer for yourself. No matter what is going to be how do I want to be thinking about my life next summer? How do I want to be talking to myself next summer?
[00:37:07] And if you want some help navigating this journey, creating a plan, following through, learning to heal and navigate emotions in your nervous system, even better.
[00:37:15] I'd love to help you.
[00:37:18] All right y', all, that is it for today.
[00:37:21] Here's to creating the life and body and relationships you crave.
[00:37:30] If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free. Free from destructive cycles around food, alcohol and toxic relationships. Your next step Book your free Break the cycle call where you'll finally see why your binge eating and relationship patterns are so deeply connected and how to break free from both for good.
[00:37:50] You'll walk away with fierce clarity and a game plan to step into a life full of fun, adventure and self love.
[00:37:57] Grab your spot now at www.bodyucrave.com VTC.
[00:38:05] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.
