Hello, and welcome, everyone, as I sit down to record this, there’s a lot of unrest in the United States. By the time you listen to this, it’s likely that even more unsettling events will have occurred. It’s just looks like the right now. So as I sat down to write my notes for today’s episode, I knew I just wanted to talk about how to manage negative emotions. We all have positive and negative emotions coming up all the time. But in this time, when we are in a heightened state, of alertness, of so many things going on that feel unsettling. I really think it’s just so important. It affects ourselves as humans, it affects our relationships, it affects our marriages, when all these emotions are coming up, what the heck do we do with them? That is the question we will answer on the episode today. So we’re gonna do a dive into a simple way to think about and process negative emotion. And as I was thinking about today’s episode, I found a fabulous article, I will link to it in the show notes called “Feeling Okay About Feeling Bad”. Feeling Okay About Feeling Bad, is good for your mental health, and is from Harvard Medical School, which I think is so fun. And here’s one of my sort of secret notes to myself that I will share with all of you. Whenever I want to make a point about something, I will check if someone at Harvard has written about it already. And if they have, I will quote them. Because rarely do you meet a person who will argue with Harvard. They do exist, but they’re rare. So we can go back and forth about a lot of things. But here’s the data. Here’s the research, here’s what has been reported and studied and you know that I am here for that. And so I love mixing intuition with data. It’s so powerful to do that in your own life, I highly, highly recommend it. So listen to that wise inner voice and let’s check the data points too.
Okay, before we dive in, I have an exciting announcement to make. Take a moment, take a deep breath, prepare yourself. I have been behind the scenes prepping a very special live virtual event. And you can buy tickets starting today, I am hosting Marrige Makeover Live – Five Days To A Better Marriage. And we start on February 11 2021. So if you’re listening to this at some other time, the event has passed. But if you’re listening to this, as this episode goes live in February of 2021, you are definitely going to want to join us. I will be teaching once a day for five days live in a pop up Facebook group that I am opening just for this event, it’s going to be super powerful. I want to give you a little taste of what happened last time I ran this event. Here’s my very favorite testimonial from the last time I ran it from Jennifer in Vermont. She attended all five days online and she said, I have learned so much I can honestly say more than either time I went through marriage counseling with either husband and she had a funny emoji face on there. She said you gave me tools to implement into my life to make things different. I was just talking with someone about how you live the life you know how to live, until you learn a different way and I love that so much.
You live the life you know how to live until you learn a different way. I am more positive and more appreciative towards my husband. I always attached he doesn’t love me or care to anything that he did wrong or that I thought was wrong. And I can see how my perceptions determine my life. Now I stop and think, am I creating this problem? I express gratitude towards my husband and he sees the difference. And this is the start of us building back our foundation and seeing where things go from here. She continues on to say I love the idea of the emotional bank account. You have to make deposits to be able to make withdrawals. And yes, I will be teaching the concept of emotional bank account during Marriage Makeover Live. Thank you so much Jennifer for that beautiful testimonial. So inspiring. So I will teach about that. That is a concept from the Gottman Institute that I love to quote, and I love their teaching and their research, remember mixing the intuition with research. So I will be teaching about that on day one. If you want to make your marriage better this year, if you’re ready to make your marriage stronger, definitely join me for this event. When you sign up, you get your tickets, you will get a workbook to follow along every day of the week, there’ll be a PDF that you can download super simple. And I have designed the event so you really learn the basics of what you need to know, to make over your relationship by the end of the five days, you will definitely have some tools that you might not be familiar with, or that we might go deeper into. If you’ve heard of the emotional bank account before you’re gonna hear me teach it the way that I teach it. And you also will get an even deeper feel for what it’s like to apply the concepts I teach on the podcast every week. And if you want to go deeper into your own relationship mastery, and have my support for the next six months, we will be opening enrollment for Marriage MBA, at the end of the event. Here’s what you need to do. To register, you have to buy a ticket to attend. It’s MaggieReyes.com/marriagemakover. You will see all the details there and how to register and we will put the link in the show notes as well. Okay, now, let’s talk positively and powerfully about negative emotions today.
If you don’t know if that can be that done, we do know that can absolutely be done and we’re gonna do it. Okay. If you listen to the episode on the myth of feelings immunity, you already know that there is no vaccine for feelings. That’s how I like to talk about it. Feelings immunity is a myth, and there is no vaccine. We will always have feelings, emotions pop up. And our job is to become emotionally literate humans and recognize a feeling when it happens, be able to label it, name it when it comes up. And then emotional mastery comes after emotional literacy. And that comes when we know what to do with a feeling when it occurs. And that’s what we’re diving into a little bit today is to really learn how to process an emotion we’re born knowing how to do this. So it’s kind of a paradox, I don’t know if that’s the right thing to say, the right term that I’m looking for. But we already know how to do this, but we forget. And so I’m going to teach you how to do something you already know how to do, I’m going to teach you one way to do it. Okay. One of the concepts that I teach is called the self coaching model. And I use it extensively in my coaching, I will be talking about it in Marriage Makeover Live as well. And the basic outline, the basic idea is that our thoughts, create our feelings, and our feelings, create our actions, and our actions and our non actions, the things we do and start doing and stop doing, ultimately create our results. Every result we have in our life can be traced back through that loop of activities, that relationship between our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions and non actions. So when we have an intense feeling about something, we always want to check in and see what was the thought that inspired that feeling. But even though we want to question the thought, even though we some thoughts are accurate, and some thoughts are not accurate. And so, like the example from Jennifer that I mentioned earlier, she was having the thought he doesn’t care all the time, whether whether it was actually true that her husband cared or not, she was still having that thought, right. So we question the thought, is that thought really true.
I always teach my clients feel the feeling, and then go back and question the thought. So the feeling produces a chemical reaction in our body. And once that chemical reaction has been activated, we need to deal with it, we need to manage it, we need to figure that out. So as humans with both thoughts and feelings, we know we have good thoughts or bad thoughts, thoughts that are useful, or thoughts that are less useful. All of our thoughts produce results. It’s just that some of them produce results we want and some of them produce results that we do not want and you all listening to me know this but I just want to sort of establish how we’re thinking about thoughts and feelings right now as we think about managing intense emotions. Now I like to think about life as one big burrito. We get the good we get the bad the indifferent, the spectacular all rolled up into one we get the beans with the rice we get the pork all of those things rolled up into one right. And to give you an example from my own life, I met my husband in December of 2005, which was wonderful. That was amazing. One of the greatest blessings of my life without a doubt. In February of 2006, my grandmother, who I was very close to grew up with who was just absolutely a major influence in my life, she passed away. And that was absolutely awful. And I still get sad about it sometimes, whenever I think about that she never met him, that she would have absolutely adored him. And it just touches my heart. It’s just a tender place that will always be tender. And so I remember my burrito, because it makes me laugh, and it helps me with the tenderness. And I remember that everything is rolled up together, the good and the bad. On any given day, or in any given year, it’s just rolled up into one. Now, what happens online now that we have this online world that we all live in, is that sometimes we see only good things, or a disproportionate number of good things as compared to bad things. And then we start thinking there’s something wrong with us when bad things happen. And it’s really because of this sort of optical illusion that everyone else’s life is just filled with cupcakes and unicorns, right. And that over on our side of the table behind the scenes, we’re having bad hair days, and we’re having flat tires, and we’re having things go wrong. But the truth is, we are all having bad days at times, and we all have cupcakes at times, right?
And I try to get these like wacky examples, just because we’re talking about negative emotion and want to make it fun, right? Okay, so a very ambitious, my goal today is to talk about something that sucks and have fun doing it. Hopefully that’s working. So life is happening, just as it always does, right, with the good and the bad, all mixed up together, this big bowl of experiences for us to live through and learn from. Sometimes we celebrate, sometimes we accept, sometimes we let go. Sometimes we take a long, deep breath. Sometimes the win is just making it to tomorrow. Right? My husband and I ever since COVID started, we joke, you know, we try to joke about something so serious and awful. And we say, you know, our one goal is to stay alive, like like that is it. There’s nothing more important than that, right. And so, just to give you that moment of sometimes we take a deep breath, and we make it until tomorrow. And that’s the win, right. And all of that is part of life. And the number one point that I want to get across today is that while we all know that all of what we experience in life isn’t rainbows, Kit Kat bars and all that, we can get into major emotional pain when we think it should be, right? When we think that everything should be better than it is then we get sad about the fact that it’s not better instead of just accepting, this is the way life works for everyone. Right? And it’s so important. And the reason I talk about it on the podcast on a regular basis is that it’s okay to be mad to be sad to be disappointed to be angry, right? Especially if you listen to the episode on healthy anger that I did with Karen Anderson, who’s brilliant, we will link to that episode in the show notes. Women, in our current society are discouraged from expressing anger, right? And it’s okay to be angry. We’re all human, we all have all the feelings, right? So it’s totally normal for something awesome to happen and something terrible to happen and something totally unimportant to happen all at the same time. And as I thought about this, I don’t want you to think of life. like one big Facebook feed. Right? Those are the highlights. What really matters in life. What really matters is what happens in between, in between Facebook updates, or in between tweets or in between Instagram posts in between major milestones, right? As in the wedding was awesome, but the marriage is better right? In between enrollment and graduation. You get an education. So it happens in between, in between ordering dinner and having the best meal of your life. Right. Lots of chopping and sauteing, and mixing and cooking happens and fun and laughter and joy and all of those things and great conversation can happen, right? So in between the heightened moments of happiness, let’s just acknowledge that there’s also crappy and it happens to all of us and it’s normal and nothing is wrong with you and nothing is wrong with me. Life is just happening, the good and the bad and the truly annoying and the truly distressing all rolled up into one big beautiful experience with tons of highs and lows in between.
Okay, now for my in between, I’m gonna tell you a little story about something that happened to me a few years back to really kind of highlight how sometimes the things you see publicly and the things you see behind the scenes are so different. Now in my case, I’m really committed to just sharing the stuff. So you just know, all the stuff that’s going on the highs and the lows. But I just want to give you an example. So back when I was a blogger, I blogged for many years, I wrote over 150 articles on marriage. And the biggest thing that can happen in your blogging career is to have your articles read by a lot of people, right? for singers, it’s to be on the radio for bloggers, is to be read and shared and like clicked and all that. So a few years back, I had an article in the top five on the brides website. And one of my other articles was named top 10 in what was at the time, the number one marriage blog in the world. And it was really like the blog equivalent of being number one at the box office in the movies, right? Like, my online life was blowing up big time, right? At the same time that that was happening, okay? I sprained my ankle, and I had to wear a brace for a week. And if I remember correctly, and I think I do, the way I sprained my ankle is highly embarrassing. I was giving a presentation in front of like, 200 people and I fell. So I’m here, right, big success online, fell in front of like, I don’t know, a couple 100 people and sprained my ankle. I got bursitis in my arm. And I had to take a lot of Advil and I had to sleep in sort of odd positions until my arm got better. I had the worst jetlag ever and I was waking up at all hours of the day and night. And I still back then I worked in HR during the day and I would come home and blog at night. And they still had to go to work and sound professional and avoid yawning in the middle of meetings, like kind of stuff. Then I got a cold. And it was the kind of cold where like, like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, right, like, I looked like I belonged in the circus, or something. So my online life, right was brides it was top 10. And like all these things going on, and it’s my life life, right? Like it was just me and Kleenex and a pillow was what was going on. Right? While that all was happening, the highs and the lows, someone who I deeply, deeply trusted did some things that really freaked me out. And I got really mad, very angry. And I like to describe it as if my blood could boil. It would be a volcano. Like that’s how mad I got. Now, due to my natural enthusiasm and zest for life. I do not like getting mad it is I get annoyed when I have to get mad about something. And that actually made me even angrier. Right.
So what does a life coach do? I started using all my coaching tools on myself to help myself think more clearly. To try to find another way to feel I really wanted to jump from volcano levels of anger to the sweetest chocolate of mental gooey and delight. I wanted to jump too far. Right? And if you’re wondering how that worked out for me, it did not. I went through what I call a mental roller coaster. And I’m sharing this because I know all of you have had these moments at times as well. Where I was thinking to myself, I don’t want to feel this way. I want to feel something else. This is awful. And then I started thinking I am not my circumstances, my circumstances will not define me. And I was really sort of at war in my brain with what was happening, right. And then one of my favorite questions when I’m in high high distress. It’s kind of an odd question. It’ll make sense in a minute. I will ask myself, what if this is happening to bless me. So when something awful is happening, I think well, what if it’s happening to bless me? What if I can’t see the blessing right now, but it’s actually happening to me. And every other time in my life that have been that level of angry, I have used that anger as a fuel to create something even better, even more amazing, even more awesome. So I kind of remembered that sometimes. Just like I use gratitude as fuel. Sometimes they use anger as fuel and we can really use any emotion as fuel, if we’re a little creative about it. And so I asked myself what if this is happening to bless me. And I still was not back to center, I was still very distressed. So I decided to beat up a pillow. So I went to my bedroom, where I have many pillows available to choose from. And I picked the fluffiest pillow.
And I just took a whack at it like I just let it all out on that pillow. It was really the safest way that I could find to really let it all out in that moment. And I remembered or I realized that I wanted to make too big of a jump from point A from anger where I was to point z, right for total, like bliss and joy without actually processing how I was feeling. And it really was only by pausing and practicing my coaching tools, things like breathing, noticing my thoughts, labeling my thoughts, asking myself power questions, that I realized that I needed to let myself feel the full emotion that I was feeling instead of running away from it, instead of trying to change it, instead of trying to minimize it. Instead of trying to make lemonade out of it, right. I’m that person that always looks for a bright side. And that has been a coping mechanism that has been very helpful through many chapters of my life. But in that moment, trying to look for a bright side was not useful. The most useful thing that I could have done was just feel the emotion of anger and frustration that I had at that time. Just feel it fully. And so when I beat up that pillow, and I just let myself let it rip, I fully felt it for like a minute or two. And fascinatingly, paradoxically, it started dissipating on its own. Right. And I like to think about when babies are crying, you know, there’s, they’re super loud and crying and wailing. And then that happens for like, one minute. And then the next minute, they’re smiling, like they won the lottery, and they’re just smiling at you and playing with you. I like to think that we are born as babies, if we look and observe babies, knowing how to fully feel our emotions. And then we’re socialized and become, quote, unquote, polite. We learn to pretend or stuff down, or smile, when we’re really dying inside because something happened, right, that we’re upset by, right. And so I really believe that we collectively need to re-learn how to feel our feelings. We already know how to do it, right? We already did it as babies, but we have to relearn on purpose, how to do it, so that our feelings don’t overtake us so that they don’t overwhelm us or so that we don’t spend so much time pushing them away that we get distracted from what our real goals and priorities in our relationships and in our life are. So we can feel the good ones, the bad ones, the really ugly ones. And we can know that they’re all part of the recipe that makes us, us. Okay, so why did I tell you the super long story first, in the interest of keeping it real, I always want to make it super clear that I go through all these things, and go through all these things. I use all the tools and they just do the best I can with where I’m at.
I do have a very positive mindset. And it does take sometimes like earthquake levels of emotional intensity to shake me. But I still get shaken and I still have to actually use the tools. Right? I still have to apply the things just knowing the things is not enough. You have to use the things. So I always quote, my very first coach Christine Caine, taught me this Asian proverb that I always teach all my clients. I probably mentioned it on the podcast before but it’s just one of my most favorite things is to know and not do is to not know. Right? So there’s things we know. But we actually have to use and apply in order to really know in the cells of our body. So I’m very passionate about teaching my coaching clients and teaching you on the podcast, how to self coach, how to ask powerful questions, all the different topics that we talked about here, learning what to do, when you have feelings that freak you out. That is what gives you ultimate power and ultimate peace in your life. Which by the way, if there’s something going on this freaking you out right now in your marriage, and you know that it’s time to get deeper support, definitely sign up for Marriage Makeover Live that will give you a taste of the type of work that we do in a marriage breakthrough program, Marriage MBA. So if you know you want support, definitely, you’re gonna want to join that, okay. Now the other thing though, the other reason that I share that story is I really want you to learn from my experience. So when it happens to you, and we know that it will, you’re even more prepared. So the most essential thing to remember when you’re feeling anything other than your super fabulous, grounded centered, powerful self is that it is normal to feel all the feelings and it is okay, and it will pass. The second most essential thing to remember is that if you’re feeling anxiety, anger, disappointment, resentment, any kind of emotional pain, the worst thing that you can do is pretend it’s not there. And the best thing you can do is beat up a pillow, but not literally beat up a pillow. Really, it’s whatever lets you completely feel that feeling. For me, that day was beating up a pillow for you, it’s gonna be something else.
But just whatever helps you let that feeling wash over you completely, so it can go away on its own. I like to imagine the rise and tide of the ocean, right. And sometimes it’s hitting something like I did, or it’s working out, or it’s cuddling with a cute cat or dog or calling a bestie or holding your honeys hand. My hubby used to have a boxing bag out in our yard. And one day many, many years ago, I was so upset about something that happened at work that I still remember this, I asked him if I could beat up that bag with a stick. And I did. And it felt so good. And when I was done, the feeling was done like the emotion was consumed and completely dissipated with that action of beating up that boxing bag. So when a challenging emotion comes up, pause and ask yourself, what do I need to do to feel this all the way through and let it go? Let the wisdom of your highest wisest self help you process that feeling? Just pausing and asking yourself the question can be immensely immensely powerful. Now here’s something you may not realize. But the more you learn to process negative emotions, you pause, you ask, whether it’s beating up a pillow, taking a walk, whatever it is that comforts you in that moment, this actually has a really direct impact on the quality of your relationship. And the more you do this, the better your sex life can become. Because you cannot have glorious, hot, delicious sex when you’re in the middle of a stress cycle. Right? What do you need in order to have great sex, you need to feel safe and open to the experience of the present moment, right. And when you’re completing an emotion, letting it wash through you feeling comforted by whatever activity you use to dissipate the emotion. You get to feel open and safe and back into the present moment. And when it comes to sex, specifically, it’s being open to give and receive touch and joy and pleasure, right? It’s connecting. And you cannot deeply feel all your good, happy, sexy emotions. If you’re not feeling your ugly, annoying bad ones, you cannot turn the switch only one way.
So the more you learn to feel all your feelings and come back to center, the more you can connect sexually. And I just think that’s so fun to think about. I love it as motivation to feel the annoying feelings. It’s like oh, I get to feel and then I get to enjoy sex more. So it’s done. Where do I sign up. So if you’re feeling disconnected in any way from your spouse, that person that you truly in your heart, love and truly, in your heart know that they love you. And you want to love them the best that you can. Search for the clues in your life about any emotions, that you’re not feeling that you’re pretending right there that you’re unwilling to look at in the mirror. Right? And here’s what I invite you to do. I don’t like you this is what you’re saying to the emotion right? I don’t like you. But I know you’re here. And I want to say goodbye. So come closer. I want to say goodbye. So come closer it sounds counterintuitive, right? And yet it is completely the best way to say goodbye to those emotions that are getting in the way of the relationship you know you want to have. So avoiding how we feel we’re living in shades of sort of beige, emotion neutral. It’s not emotionally healthy and the idea of being emotionally healthy brings us to Harvard that I mentioned in the intro to the podcast, I will link to the full article in the show notes. But here’s the part that matters to me. And that matters to you. And that I think is so important. So in this article, they quoted a study from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. And in this study, they looked at the mental health of people who accept their feelings, instead of judging their feelings, right? So I was, remember when I was angry about being angry, right, I was judging how I was feeling instead of just letting myself be angry. So here’s what they found inn the research, and I’m going to quote the article. It says, people who habitually accept their emotional experiences, were more likely to report greater psychological health six months later. And this was true, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or socio economic status. Okay still quoting, further, it says, people who accepted these emotions were less likely to respond negatively to stressors.
So I’m going to pause on the quote, so we accept the emotion, we accept what’s happening. And then other stressors happen. Sometimes the stressor comes in the form of the hubby, right? Sometimes the stressor comes in the form of someone you love, right, or project at work, or something that’s going on. The people who accepted their emotions were less likely to respond negatively to stressors. And to me, that is a very clear connection that if I’m not responding negatively to the person I love, that means I’m not causing more stress in my relationship. Right. Okay, back to the quote. So they said that people who routinely accept their emotions and thoughts when under stress, experienced less daily negative emotion during these times. This, in turn is associated with increased psychological health six months later, so they tracked the people for six months. And they found that the more that they accept the emotions, like this has a lasting effect that can be tracked even six months into the future. So thank you, thank you Harvard Health Blog. Accepting feelings instead of avoiding them, battling them or letting them consume you is totally the way to go. And as usual, for anything I share in the podcast, Don’t believe me, just try it. Right? Here’s a little experiment that we’re gonna do right now we’re going to do it together. I’m going to call it the wave of emotion exercise. Okay, super simple. I’m gonna guide you through it right now. And you can keep it in your back pocket forever. First, imagine something good, something that you love that inspires feelings of delight and joy in your hearts. You can think of the love that you have for your hobby, or the passion for a perfect sunset, or your favorite dessert, something just delicious and amazing, how much the people that you love, feel your heart, like anything that just makes your heart sing. Imagine that thing. And if you’re in a place where you can close your eyes, close them. And if not, don’t worry, just follow along, keep them open. Be safe, always.
And imagine that thing that makes your heart sing and then feel that fully that connection or that thing that makes your heart sing. And whatever the feeling is whether it’s delight, whether it’s love, whether it’s expansion, whether it’s joy, let that feeling wash over you like a wave, think of the thing. Think of a feeling that inspires and notice that you can have a good feeling totally wash over you, just by thinking a thought. Right? And you don’t have to hold on to it. You can bring it back whenever you want. You can also let it go. Right? That’s why it’s a wave of emotion. Now, hopefully this will empower you to realize that you can do the same thing with a negative feeling. That thing you’ve been avoiding forever. If you’re in a place where you can close your eyes, close them if not leave them open. But connect with the thing that feels either loud, ugly, pimply just nasty thing that you’ve been avoiding. And let yourself feel that whether it’s disappointment, anger, resentment, annoyance, sadness, and imagine that you’re letting that wash over you. Just like a wave in the ocean. It washes over you and it keeps going. It keeps moving and you can let it go. Just for you, I’m going to take a deep breath too. So inhale, exhale, just come back to center. You don’t have to jump to replace it with something nice or shiny or good. Just be with the idea that you can experience the good and the bad, fully and completely like the waves in the ocean. And, and love to think about feelings like water, water is wonderful when it’s flowing and deadly when it’s stagnant. The same happens with feelings. They’re wonderful when they’re flowing, and they’re a big problem when they get stuck.
So your goal with feelings is always to let them flow in and out. Just like a wave in and out, up and down, rise like the tide, just like the ocean, you can turn towards it, fully feel it and then watch it float away. Right? Try to avoid it and watch it get bigger and more unruly. So you know that I encourage all of you to speak love and power into yourselves and love and power into your marriages into your partners. So here is a reminder in case you need one today. You are capable, you are strong. You do not have to be perfect to have an amazing life. Nothing in your life has to be perfect to have an amazing life. You can do hard things. And you can also do easy things and the harder things get easier with practice. Okay. That is a wrap for today. Remember to get your ticket to Marriage Makeover Live over at maggiereyes.com/marriagemakevoer. I am so excited to host this live virtual event and I hope to see you there.