31. Settling For Less When You Can Have SO Much More

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 31. stay tuned welcome to be on the high road a podcast dedicated to Healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation I'm your host Shelby Milford a twice certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth if you're experiencing the effects of alienation and you're ready to heal then this show is my love letter to you stay tuned hey guys I gotta tell you I am a little bit of a battered wreck I just came back from putting my sweet pepper down the appointment was at three o'clock I decided like really last minute I decided you know I was just wanting to

wait to see if she would pull out of it just like four days ago pepper was trotting down the road she seemed like she was on the upswing like she was healing she was eating she had some energy I mean she was still like kind of Staggering she didn't have a lot of muscular control but she was trotting down the road straight and narrow four or five days ago and then she wasn't long story short you know I stayed up most of the weekend with her trying to get her back to health and then again last night and so around noon today I made the decision and now I'm back home pepperless my sweet peeper pepper is what do they say over Rainbow Bridge yeah so um it's tough you know I think you're a

pet parent then you know how much your animals can mean to you and if you're not I just want to let you know that I am in no way comparing your child and the grief you feel to my dog and the grief I'm feeling from that okay but maybe what I'm getting ready to say will help you to understand and I think I've kind of explained it a couple weeks ago that pepper I got her when I was like fully pregnant I had my daughter like three weeks after I got pepper chili and pepper so pepper had gone through it all with me and so for that reason you know it's so difficult because you know they just become part of your life 16 years you know um so you know crazy enough that she

passed away almost four years to the day from when chili passed away actually it was a couple weeks apart but anyway pets as you guys know pets when we're going through the grief of alienation the grief of losing this massive amount of time with our children if you already are a pet owner pet parent you know how much support how much comfort how much unconditional love that they offer and for us as alienated parents that is so important because that is the one thing that we feel that we've lost is the unconditional love right of our own child and possibly the partner and not that you ever had it but the stability that a pet brings can very much help to I don't want to say replace but comfort

in the loss of the stability you may or may not have had in your family life with your child's other parent it's definitely the stability that we've always craved yeah knowing that they're there for you your pets are at home when you get home and they will offer you the wagging tails and cute little faces whenever you walk in the door and there's no conditions there's no anything so pepper through the hardest times of the alienation the hardest times of my life she was there and it's difficult to say goodbye it's it's really difficult so on that note this episode will be getting out I'm recording this it's Wednesday evening it's now six o'clock and so I I don't

know if I'll get to editing it tonight but either way just want to let you know sorry if it's late tomorrow Thursdays are usually the days that I drop them but I do like to get them out earlier if possible but anyway so in light of everything I just shared with you I think I just want to share some thoughts that I have today about grief and about suffering and about feeling negative emotion nothing is written I am just going off the top of my head when I was driving home in the car just a few minutes ago I'm pretty sure that you can all relate to this one of the first things when I left the vet's office that I thought of I left the office I was in the parking lot and I thought oh I need

to run over to the grocery store across the street so let me just do that this is one of the First episodes you've listened to I used to use alcohol and sometimes other substances mostly alcohol I used it so that I could tolerate the events in my life the second that they got uncomfortable I would just be like let's go have drinks you know and I think that so many of us do that you don't doesn't have to be problematic drinking it is the societal way that's what we do it's how it's sold to us right so you don't necessarily have to have a problem or drinking Habit to relate to this the reason I'm telling you this is because today I was pulling out of the parking lot and one of the

first thing I said I'm going to go to the store and I had been crying and crying and crying and so I was like all right I should be fine and I was like oh you know it's been a really tough day I should just get a bottle of wine it's like this fleeting thought I guess I didn't really like it didn't consciously think about the thought until got to the store so when I was at the store unconsciously shopping around on the one of the end caps was the sour patch cherry bombs or whatever and so I was like and I picked those up and put it on my cart uh long story short is I got in the car and then I realized like oh my God yeah I forgot to get that wine wait what it was like the weirdest thing I

was driving I was pulling out the parking lot and I was like wait why would I want to get wine it was like this conscious unconscious like sort of Shifting in and out of awareness I was like well maybe I do want the wine and then I was like no I don't want the wine I was able to be like no that's just an awful idea and then I realized that I was like popping the sugar-coated cherry bombs I was popping those things like candy and I had like maybe 20 of them because they come in this big bag and I was like oh my gosh look what you're doing as I'm having this conversation of myself about the wine and this is what the brain does this is what all of our brains do but my point of this is the

reason my lower brain was telling me this is because it's still like hey if you don't want to feel uncomfortable look at me over here right it's I had this hard emotionally draining sort of really last couple weeks but especially the last like since last weekend it's been a tough one I have been caring for this my sick sweet dying cancer baby dog and not funny that little in the back of my brain was like yeah let's get a bottle of wine you deserve it people do ice cream and with cookies this is what all of our brains do as humans is it wants to as you guys hear me say seek pleasure avoid pain be efficient okay so the lower part of the brain back there was like the emotional part of the brain

too was like hey let's drink some wine let's have some sugar let's do whatever it is to avoid your current discomfort because that's not fun that's energy that sounds icky so let's avoid that pain and let's get the pleasure and so I know for me when I do that when I pick up the whatever it is today for me it was the cherry bombs right but and sometimes it is cookies or chips or whatever I'm using that that food or the sometimes it's uh getting busy in the house or whatever it used to be drinking I'm using that to tolerate the current circumstances or events of my life okay and when we do this we don't feel the pain that's needed in order to move out of it right to get to the next phase of

life that was really the takeaway here is that change happens when we have enough discomfort right like what is that saying when the pain of staying gets greater than the fear of leaving then you'll finally end up leaving I remember driving down a very windy road in Texas Hill Country whenever I found that quote or somewhere version of it dangerous dangerous this was years ago I don't do that anymore most of the time but I remember finding that quote I just remember thinking oh my gosh I think I'm almost there to when the pain of staying is greater and I was like I'm almost at it I wasn't but let me tell you what took me so long to get out of that relationship I could have gotten myself

out of that whole mess way before I did you know six seven years later whatever it was and I drank to tolerate the state of my life so then I never like got my ass moving and felt the pain that I was supposed to feel so that I could move out of it do you know what I'm saying hopefully I'm making sense here like so when we use any sort of behavior to make things livable then we're not able to move to our next phase evolve to our next version of ourselves right and so then you're staying in this like stagnance for however long until you either you stop doing the behavior or some other catastrophic thing happens in your life that causes more pain than the behavior was numbing dulling so when

pain comes into your life clean pain not the suffering that we put on top of it but when things happen that cause you to feel any of the emotions that come with grief when we numb it away because we think we either deserve it because it's been a hard time for us or we tell ourselves that we can't handle the current circumstances without it that the pain is just too great so we need to do the thing whatever it is oh I'll stop after this however long event my mom is sick now my mom is not sick I'm just saying I'm using that as an example for my husband's aunt is sick or something like that I'll deal with my habit when that's done but let me just tell you there's never really ever a good time

and this episode is not necessarily a talk to you guys about quitting habits it's I'm not that's not the point here my point is if you're using something to to buffer your life I think that we are brought experiences things happen to us or for us for our growth it's an opportunity to grow and move through it and get to the other side stronger and better and whatever it is that you're meant to be at the end of that right and so when we ignore that and just tolerate by using something to buffer then we miss out on life even if it's the uncomfortable icky you think inconvenient emotions right still those that's just part of life when your attention is on trying to get out of

circumvent the discomfort then first it's exhausting because even in the subconscious you're having to be like no no no no I don't want to feel that I don't want to feel that so you're doing all this planning around the Habit how can we get around this that's on low grade playing in the background of your mind and then on top of that you have this other pain around whatever habit that you're doing because maybe if it's drinking then you have the hangover or you're spending the money if it's eating maybe we're on a weight loss plan and now you screwed that up and so there's like this emotional hangover about it afterwards so you have emotional hangover from the grief and then you

have an emotional hangover from the eating that you did and it's double triple quadruple the pain do you know what I'm saying you've got clean pain clean pain one is whatever emotions are with the grief and then when you're trying to lose weight let's just say you have this other kind of pain because you're having to learn how to allow urges and so that's uncomfortable right and because you're avoiding both of these things in order to circumvent the emotions then you have emotional hangover emotional hangover maybe possibly even chemical hangover right so there's all of this pain that we add on top of it which is so stupid but we all do it so I'm not calling you stupid it's

just so silly so I just wanted to say that if and when and I know I'm being lighthearted about this when we're talking about the grief of your own child and the loss um still though all of this applies when we avoid emotions we're creating more pain for ourselves right like I said it is such a normal thing your brain is super healthy and thriving if it is a habit for you to reach for something okay it is normal what I wanted to say was that when you notice yourself if with grief and with any sort of uncomfortable emotion that you might be having when you are reaching for something to tolerate it I just want to lovingly first just let you know that I know that you are more than capable and

equipped to feel and handle the amount emotions as themselves also I want to save you the trouble because when you do that you end up feeling the pain at some point anyway either more because other things have to happen for you to like be like oh oh I'm supposed to learn this in order to move to the next version of myself or it's for longer because you keep pushing it away right so it's an opportunity the discomfort any time you have an uncomfortable emotion come or an event that happens in your life you get fired God forbid that's a lot of uncomfortability all of a sudden that comes up when you earn the trust with yourself and show yourself that you actually can feel the emotion without

having to use something to tolerate it you feel like you have superpowers you've it's such an amazing feeling and it says wonders for your self-worth and for your like I said the self-trust and your belief in yourself your ability to show up for the world and then also really truly for yourself because we usually show up for ourselves last if you're anything like me then you will take care of everybody out there your amazing service person you will serve anybody out there and you will show up on time for your meetings maybe you're late but I'm ADHD sometimes I'm late but you always do everything for everybody else and then you put yourself in the back burner right so when you do stuff

like this for yourself and be like no no I'm just gonna go ahead and feel this emotion okay so it's a little uncomfortable what's the worst that can happen I can feel some discomfort right and I can regulate my thoughts as opposed to letting them go nuts I tell you watch yourself next time if you use a habit to tolerate your life listen to the chatter that's going on in the back of your brain okay because what will happen is a shame cycle you know right after you make the decision to do it or like afterwards oh why did I do that and so the reason why I I say all this to you is because I want to inspire you and to help you along the way to not feel the suffering right I want you to move

through the suffering and into a constant state of evolving okay so that's why I say that I don't say this for you know oh you need to stop doing this or you do whatever you want please do whatever you want I just know too that how much pain that you and I have gone through and I want you to not if you don't want to I don't want you to let's just say that okay oh and also so when we reach for whatever Behavior it is sometimes it's Netflix too it's as simple as like just binging shows just to turn off or movies whatever because we enter into a different world right sometimes that can be healthy but when you're watching like eight shows a night and then you're doing it the next night

and the next night when you notice that you're doing the behavior in order to not be present in your life this is what I'm talking about okay but so when you're buffering when you're using something to tolerate the current state of your life then like I said it'll take longer for you to get out you will sit in the misery of the current state of your life if you're miserable but also because when you desire whatever Behavior you have Netflix candy cookies drinking whatever it is when you have a feeling of Desire your brain is like a filing cabinet it's going to go back to the thing that last supplied it the dopamine hit oh Netflix did it it knows that you can get a little dopamine hit

if you go and watch that one uh guilty pleasure show right and you can check out from the current state of your life that you're just tolerating okay but what you're also doing by making your life tolerable is that that feeling of Desire could be for the things that you really deep down want to do right you could be using that emotion to start to fulfill your deepest desire players but because you're currently using the Netflix the the surface stuff you're numbing the deeper desires so much so that sometimes you don't even know what those desires are anymore and that's what I wanted to to say is that not only are you numbing the current state of your life but you're also numbing the

Deep desires so then you have to like unpack all that to get to find what it is that you truly desire does that make sense so if you want to if you feel like you just don't know what your purpose is like everybody knows what they want to do how come I don't listen I was there you guys have heard me I've read book after book after book about purpose and I was like I just don't know well here's why one of the reasons why is because my brain was so used to not having to think or access the deeper desires so I could never resource my own desire because my brain was so used to going to the surface desire the one that's not anywhere near as deep as my true desires

this is just the the sugar gum or like the fast food quality sort of desires it doesn't last you know how like when you have some sort of fast food you're not full for very long you're full for maybe like an hour and then you need more it's the same with this these aren't your true desires you know you have that urge that craving that desire for something and then you're so used to fulfilling it with easy access and uh instant gratification sort of thing so then each time you do that it's like adds another layer on to where your true desires are so when you take away the buffer then you're able to start accessing your deeper and truest desires so if you want

to feel more purposeful in your life and you want to feel like you know where you're headed and what you're doing my probably number one thing that I would say to do is if you're currently using something to tolerate your life then maybe becoming aware and removing that from your life and then you will find the clarity I promise so we're supposed to have the Heartbreak in the discomfort of loss and grief and anger we need these negative emotions to move us through okay and when we get good at feeling the negative emotions then none of them are a problem so yeah so maybe it's not about avoiding the uncomfortable maybe if we get good at feeling discomfort then life is just

kind of like awesome you know we can have know that we're going to have when you accept love into your life whether it comes in the form of a puppy or a child or uh you know your favorite flower you know whatever it is when you accept that into your life you also know that there's a chance of loss too that is what we signed up for you know when we decided to have babies and when we decided to be pet owners pet parents whatever you know this is it's part of it you know we're gonna have we're gonna have pain we're gonna have pain and the sooner that we accept that and allow those emotions to be the sooner that we stop suffering and we're able to get to the heart of living okay so if you want

to feel closeness closer to your child and you want to feel secure in your relationship with your child or with anybody really maybe you second guess yourself you have a lot of self-doubt this program helps you to get out of that pain and that suffering we work on the parts of your mind that tell you that you're not enough that tell you that your kid hates you and that you there's no way you'll be able to accomplish the goal and there's no way that you'll be able to ever love or even like life again we work on those parts of your brain and so you very quickly within the first couple weeks start to see the light you learn how to take your power back in your life you start seeing

things from a bigger picture of you you're more productive you're at peace with yourself you'll find motivation and excitement for your life you'll start waking up a couple of my members have said you know I'm actually like excited to go do life like I'm actually excited to plan this event and do things so if you are feeling like you've lost your oomph to life and maybe you want to write a book right maybe you want to do public speaking maybe you want to just be able to feel good around the people that you hang out with and right now you feel reserved insecure and self-conscious because of the things that have happened in recent and not so recent past so many of us as alienated

parents all of the change in our lives for many of us anyway the change that has occurred in our life has usually been at the hand of somebody else right it was chosen for us and not in a good way and so in this program you begin to take the reins of your own life and so if you are in pain right now and you want to stop being in pain and you want to be more productive and you want to feel excited about life join this program you won't regret it I promise promise and if you do you can always cancel okay so uh that is all I have for you guys today okay so all of the more recent episodes I think since like I don't know like last 10 or 11 episodes or video episodes and so if you want to

see the video you can either go to YouTube where I haven't posted or you can go to Spotify and I'll put the Spotify link in the show notes I have it there for the last few episodes anyway so you can always go there and watch the video If you so please and the reason why I was saying that is because I will put a couple cute little pictures videos of my sweet pepper girl there just in memory of my sweet peeper pepper that was way longer than I ever thought that I was gonna do for today honestly right now I feel so much better I thought that I was gonna be like you know miserable during this I wasn't sure if I was going to be crying on this episode I didn't

know what was going to happen because I was just a hot mess right before I turned am I gone I made it through y'all thank you but seriously I that actually just really helped me but anyway you guys thanks for listening thanks for spending your time with me today and I will see you next week love you guys thanks so much for listening today guys I'm honored that you chose to share your time with me if you like what you've been hearing and you want more come join me in the new monthly membership where we take the concepts that you hear about here and using a logical framework you learn to apply them to your specific situations upgrading your thoughts and your life

even while experiencing the grief of alienation for more information go to beyondthehighroad.com see you soon