24. “I Don’t Know How To Feel Better”

Sep 29

The steps you need to take to choose what feelings you feel:

Recognize and call out your feelings
Reframe your thoughts into beliefs
Make a choice. Are you staying in this emotion or moving on?
Own that choice

We all find ourselves feeling bad sometimes and just not knowing what to do to even start feeling better. Well, guess what? It is actually possible to learn how to change your feelings! And that’s what we’re talking about in this episode.

Listen to Episode 24 Here

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The Chief Complaint: “I Don’t Know How to Feel Better”

Did you know that it’s actually possible to control how you’re feeling? I’m not saying you shouldn’t feel your entire range of emotions, but knowing you have the ability to bring yourself out fo a low mood is a game changer!

Recognize and Reframe Your Emotions

First of all, how often do you sit with your emotions and recognize them? I mean, really get right in there and understand how they actually FEEL within your body. What they look like, where they are, what their texture is.

Now that you know how these emotions exist in your body, when you start to feel one of them, you can recognize it. I mean, truly acknowledge it. Sit there and say, “I’m feeling confused.”

Naming your emotion takes away 50% of it’s power. Made up stats that are still 100% facts.

Now, it’s time to reframe where this emotion came from. What lead to it and what can you feel instead?

Your Emotions are in Your Hands

In this episode, I explain how you can transition your emotions from the negative one you’re feeling into a more positive, but related, one.

A good example is confusion: When you feel confused, it’s so easy to turn to blame. How can it be your fault, am I right? But what if, instead, you find the source of your confusion, understand the problem, and lean into certainty.

The choice really is yours, now. Do you want to stay in the negative emotion? Or would you rather head into positive territory?

I know what I would do (well, most of the time. Looking at you, anger!). I always choose to have more calming, positive emotions.

Finally, I want you to own that choice. Own the emotion that you’ve decided to feel.

Homework for Women Physicians

What emotion do you struggle the most with? Sit and feel how that exists in your body. Now, I want you to tell me what emotion sits on the other side of that for you? Let me know in the comments below!

In This Episode

How to identify what your emotions look and feel like [6:00]
How to start training yourself to recognize and feel more positive emotions [10:30]
What magical thinking is and how you can figure out when you’re doing it [11:45]
How confusion, blame, and certainty relate to each other [17:45-23:00]
Why you should pair anger with compassion [28:40]
What happens when we find compassion for ourselves [29:00]

Quotes

“Just by saying out loud, ‘this is how I’m feeling! I’m overwhelmed!’ you automatically take the intensity and the power out of that feeling by at least 50%.” [8:17]

“Now that you understand the difference between the opposing feelings overwhelm versus content, we have a choice of what to do next.” [13:07]

“For high achieving women, when we have these emotions, POWERLESS is not one we want. We spend so much of our lives trying to gain our power and show our worth that when this happens, it’s a whole huge can of worms opening. We don’t like it.” [20:00]

“When you can start to see glimpses of compassion for another person or in a situation, it feels pretty darn amazing. It absolutely is something that is a great place to go to after anger.” [28:44]