Welcome to this week’s podcast, I am going to talk to you all about your emotions.

Now, please don’t switch off, if you’ve just heard that word. The fact that you are a human listening to me right now or watching me if you’re on YouTube, or Instagram. The fact that you are a human being means you have human emotions. You can’t get around that fact.

First of all, let me describe to you what an emotion is. Because no one actually teaches this stuff. No one actually says to us, Hey, this is an emotion. Here’s how you process it, here’s how you deal with it. And that’s what I’m going to do in today’s episode.

So an emotion is a very harmless vibration that you feel in your body.

The emotion is there because of thoughts you’re having in your head. If you haven’t listened to my last podcast, please go back and listen to it because it explains all about your thoughts in that in that set in that podcast. So your thoughts, create your feelings.

Now, just because your thoughts create your feelings, that doesn’t mean to say you’re gonna feel happy and positive all of the time. That’s impossible. And actually, neither do you want to be happy, joyous and positive all the time.

If something if you experience a bereavement, you don’t want to feel happy about that. You want to feel grief, you want to feel sadness, because you’re thinking I’m going to miss them. I’m not going to see them again. If you listen to the news, and you hear some news about what’s happening in the world, you might choose to feel horrified, because of your belief that that shouldn’t happen to children, or that shouldn’t happen to people, or that’s a terrible thing to happen to humanity.

So just because your thoughts create your feelings doesn’t mean to say you’re always gonna feel positive. And I think one of the most toxic things we say to ourselves is I just want to be happy, I just want to be happy all of the time. Or I just want my children to always be happy, or I just want my friends and my family to always be happy. And I think this is one of the most painful things we can try and tell ourselves because we can’t be happy all the time. Life is 50/50. We’re designed to have positive emotions just as much as we’re designed to have negative emotions, you can’t have one without the other. If you hadn’t experienced fear, you wouldn’t know love or peace. If you hadn’t experienced sadness, you wouldn’t know happiness, like you can’t, you just can’t have one without the other. And when you’re always striving to feel positive, when you’re, when that’s your goal in life, you’re missing out on your true experience. You’re missing out on half of your life, forcing yourself to feel positive about things that you don’t want to feel positive about and it’s exhausting.

So an emotion is a harmless vibration in your body. Because created by a thought that you’re having in your head. Now, it doesn’t matter whether you’re feeling excited, or whether you’re feeling anxious, or whether you’re feeling joy, or whether you’re feeling nerves or whether you’re feeling happy or frustrated or angry or anxious or, you know, peaceful. It’s a it’s a vibration in your body.

We then label it or This feels good or this feels bad. I’m happy to feel this but I don’t want to feel that. Whereas actually where we come back to the fact that all our emotions are completely neutral. We don’t have to add judgment on top of it. We don’t have to get frustrated about getting frustrated or angry at getting angry or feeling sad about feeling sad. And this is what I see so many of my clients doing they’re like, oh my gosh, I don’t want to feel bored. So they fill their time eating so they don’t have to feel bored. but then they and then they do stuff they didn’t really want to do. So they don’t feel bored, but they still feel bored. Or do you get angry about feeling angry, which creates more anger, or the classic is anxiety. Those of us that experience anxiety and then go, Oh my gosh, I don’t want to feel anxious, we get anxious about feeling anxious, we get scared about feeling scared, so that creates more anxiety. So then we’re like, oh, my gosh, this feels bad, I’m gonna get anxious about feeling anxious about feeling anxious. And before you know it, you’re in a full blown panic attack.

So when we just come back right to the beginning and right to the the grounding, emotions are harmless, then we can look at that emotion, we can look at anxiety, we can look at anger, when we’re actually willing to feel it, then we’re able to process it and release it. But so many people go, Oh, no, I don’t want to feel this emotion and they stop it, they block it, they try and push it down or hold it down or put it in a box on a shelf, I don’t need to think about that. I’m going to put that in the back of my mind, I’m not going to think about it. Which have you noticed? Doesn’t actually work, it doesn’t allow your, your body to release that emotion.

And when you look at the word emotion, it has the word motion in it. And I Googled motion, motion is the action or process of moving or being moved. So what I love to teach you is a process. And it’s so simple, on how to the process and release your emotions, how to allow your emotion to move to be moved through your body and out of your body. Because when you learn this process, when you get comfortable feeling uncomfortable, it then doesn’t have to drive your actions. So when someone’s shouting and screaming and waving their hands in the air, and their face is red, they are reacting to an emotion. They’re not processing it, they’re reacting from it. So anger is in control. Anxiety is in control. That emotion doesn’t have the ability to control your motor skills, it doesn’t actually have the ability to wave your arms around until your brain gets involved and goes, Oh yes, this is terrible. Let’s shout and scream. It feels like we’re releasing it. But we’re not because it’s unconscious and it’s out of control.

When you learn the process of allowing the emotion to move through your body, e motion, the process of moving. You’ll notice that your emotions aren’t something you need to be frightened about. They don’t need to run your life. It’s okay to feel bored. It’s okay to feel frustrated. Sometimes it’s okay to feel anxious. Sometimes it’s okay to fail. You can even feel anxious all of the time. Most mornings, I wake up with a sense of dread. Just because my brain is telling me a story or imagining a story about how my day is gonna go. I especially experienced anxiety when my babies were little. Well, they’re not babies. Now my teenagers were babies. Because my thought was how am I going to get through the day? And then that would ease and then as the afternoon started to go into evening, I was like how am I going to get through the night? Well, of course if I’m questioning how am I going to get through the night I’m going to feel anxious.

Now I didn’t know these tools back then I really wish I did. Because what I then did was beat myself up for being anxious. That part my friends is optional. Please don’t ever use your emotions against yourself. You’re human. You are designed to feel emotions. That’s what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. And, and nothing has gone wrong when you experience a negative emotion. I’m going to say that again. Nothing has gone wrong when you experience a negative emotion.

So let me tell you how to process and move the emotion through your body. It is as simple as this now, the first time I told my husband I went through this with my husband he was like Nikki, what the fuck you talking about? If that’s your thought, that’s not

a problem. Stay with me because this when you when you become aware of your emotions and how they feel you’re able to manage them. If you’re able to control them, and you’re able to release them, they relate to you you are an you enable yourself to let that emotion flow through your body. It’s just like water. And here’s how you do it.

You ask yourself where in my body do I feel this emotion? So your first cue will be probably you feeling something, you’ll feel angry, you’ll feel anxious, you’ll feel frustrated. You could do this with the good emotions as well. You could do this with excitement with love with joy with peace with contentment. Were in your body? Do you feel this emotion? And if you’re not, if you’ve never done this before, this alone will be a huge step forward. Just labeling. Oh, okay, I’m feeling angry. And for me, I feel anger in my chest. Like, okay, so I’m feeling angry, I can feel it in my chest. And then ask yourself these really simple questions. Is it hot? Or is it cold? While angry for me is a hot? It’s a hot sensation. Okay, is it fast? Or is it slow? And actually anger for me? When I look at it, it’s quite a slow, heavy sensation, which is another great question. Is it heavy? Or is it light? And then, when you’re looking at this, this sensation of anger so for me, it’s this heavy, hot sensation in my chest? Does it have a colour? Now we’ve been conditioned to think that red is the colour of anger, right? Like, it can see the cartoon characters, their heads exploded like steam pumping out. It’s like a red colour. But just notice, is it red for you in your body? And this is usually the bit that people go, Nikki, what a colour What are you talking about. But the more that you get used to doing this, the more that you’re able to look at your emotions and you’re able to experience them, you learn that they’re harmless. You are actually safe to feel that emotion. But the action you take from it might not always be safe. Especially if you’re avoiding your emotions by eating or drinking. You know, it might not be the actions of avoiding your emotions might not be safe for you. I’m going to address that in a whole other podcast episode. So please keep an eye out for these because I’m going to talk about cravings and urges for sugar and alcohol. So I will address that specifically in another in another episode. But for now, these are the three things that I want you to take away from today’s session and practice…

As you’re walking as you’re driving, give yourself a moment. And it really doesn’t take long. Give yourself a moment to fully experience the emotion. Knowing that nothing has gone wrong. That it’s safe to feel that emotion because you are human. So if this is a heavy emotion like grief, I wouldn’t suggest doing this if you’re driving please give yourself actual time to sit and process and release grief. Feel it the way you need to feel it. You can move it through it doesn’t have to be avoided. Research shows that our emotions only lasts for about 90 seconds. And in my experience having learned and practice this process when I look at my emotions they don’t actually even last that long, I reckon up to a minute max. That is not a long time. But just notice with absolute fascination zero judgment when you’re avoiding your emotions how much time that takes up. So you could feel mildly uncomfortable for a minute or 90 seconds. But then you get to live a life that is so much more peaceful so much calmer. And when you’re when there’s no emotion that you’re not willing to fail now you are un fucking stoppable in your life. Because the only thing that’s holding you back now is the anxiety or the nerves or the self-doubt

Self-doubt is huge for me. At comes up all the time, self-doubt and dread. So when I experienced that though, I literally just place my hand on my heart. I take a nice deep breath if You’re driving, please don’t close your eyes. But I’ve now closed my eyes. And I just I just tell myself, I am safe to experience this emotion. And so I practice this with frustration, right? If I notice, I’ve started to get frustrated by boys, because I’ve asked them for what feels like the time to put their shoes on. I noticed frustration. So I just take a step back, close my eyes, I’m feeling frustrated. Even just that feels like a release. I am feeling frustrated. I don’t have to react from it. I’m going to talk about more about reactions in the next episode. So listen, keep an eye out, listen for that one. But for this week, just start to practice noticing your emotions, just start to practice. Allowing yourself to feel them knowing that it’s only going to last 90 seconds. Or for the really, you know, grief, sadness, put a timer on. Allow yourself to fully surrender to that emotion, allow yourself to cry, allow yourself to shout if you need to whatever the whatever it is, but just give yourself permission to feel it because you are human. So please tell yourself that with compassion, we are designed to have emotions. There is no “I’m emotional”. Let it out, you’re human. And just remind yourself, nothing has gone wrong. I am safe to feel this emotion. And then from that sort of more relaxed space or place, you can ask yourself what how actually do I want to show up. And I’m going to talk more about that next week.

So I really hope this helps. I really hope you can take away those questions. apply them to your life, come back to this episode if you need to, by way of just reaffirming to you that the fact that you are a human on this planet means that you’re gonna have emotions, every single human does. And it takes a lot of strength. I think it takes a much stronger person to actually experience their emotions than it does to avoid them, put them on a shelf and never look at them. You don’t need to do that.

And if you need any help with this, please get in touch because this is what I do.

Have an amazing week. Thank you very much for listening, and I’ll speak to you all again soon. Bye.