6.Move Past The Pain Of Alienation/Stop Self-Sabotage By Allowing Your Emotions

if you've been feeling stuck in your life maybe you feel like alienation is defining you and you can't seem to move past the effects of it maybe you're repeating a specific cycle choosing the same kinds of people in your life this episode will really help you out welcome to Beyond The High Road a podcast dedicated to Healing your heart and life following the grace of alienation I'm your host Shelby Milford a twice certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth I'm also a Target parent who felt like my identity in this world left me on the very same day that my sweet child did after hitting my emotional bottom I devoted the next six years to research

and personal growth using proven Concepts based heavily in neuroscience and psychology I developed my own playbook for reintegrating with life and reframing my role as my daughter's mother in the midst of living apart from her I went from feeling agonized helpless and directionless to feeling energized confident and most importantly at peace today I get to help other parents like you to do the same 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 so before I forget I want to remind you guys that if you are liking what you've been hearing on the show please hit the follow button so that you can get

notified when new episodes come out especially because I haven't exactly decided on which day of the week that I'm going to be doing it um on the reg I've been coming out with at least one episode a week if not two but eventually I'm gonna need to land on a day I've just been testing out what I'm gonna like more anyway so please hit the follow button to get more and also if you have not I would love you forever if you would also rate and review the show so that we can get more exposure and have some more listeners and then possibly have those listeners join into Doc's holiday support group which I'm getting ready to tell you about in just a sec alright see you soon

So today we're talking about allowing emotion and processing pain processing any emotion for that matter so stick around okay so before I start into today's topic I want to let you guys know that over the holidays I am going to be running a support group a weekly support group where you and whoever is interested will have free coaching available to you once a week if you want it right now I have it tentatively scheduled for Thursdays at 8 pm Eastern Standard but if that doesn't work for the majority of people then I am okay to switch to another evening I figure evenings might be best for most people but regardless if you're interested in the group coaching over the holidays

just message me with yes I'm totally interested and let me know at least that if 8 PM works then great we'll just keep it at that for now if it does not just let me know what times do work for you okay and if there is a time that most people are saying that works better then I'll do my best to accommodate I'm going to be holding the meetings on Zoom they will be private and you of course will have the option to remain anonymous to the other participants if you so choose so if that's a concern for you if you're not that can be covered no problem at all you don't ever have to turn on your camera if that like I said if you want to remain anonymous I'll lay out all the

details on how to do all of that after everybody signs up and we get a day and time finalized so if you've never experienced group coaching what that will look like for these is I will bring on one person at a time to get coached on whatever is going on with you that you want help with and coaching is different from therapy if he's never experienced even one-on-one coaching where we focus on what is happening right now and moving forward like where you want to be as opposed to what has happened so much in the past so that's the difference there basically is I help you with actionable steps to take moving forward and sometimes I just act as a person to hold space for you to listen

and help you to unravel your thoughts so what I compare coaching to is like if you had a big ball of Tangled Up yarn and picturing me helping you to unravel the yarn so that all of the knots were out and you were able to then use the yarn like I'm helping you look at it and decide which parts you want to keep and which parts you don't the yarn being your thoughts ideas beliefs okay and together we would sort through the thoughts that are not helping you or causing you to stay stuck we sort through all of your thoughts together and decide where you want to land basically pulling the string so that you can look at everything that is happening with a clearer mind so that you can make

more informed decisions about who you want to be how you want to act what you want to do moving forward okay it's a super duper helpful life-changing I would say tool I went through CRP lots of therapy my therapist was amazing and unlocked a lot for me but really coaching enabled me to take my own lives by the reigns with therapy I felt like I was still stuck back in the problems in in the circumstances of my past and when I began with my coach that is really when I started to see the major change in my life happening I began to see where my power was and that's when started happening for me what that would look like is I would pull one person on at a time and Coach them coach you if

you were the person and what is so great about the group coaching is that if you are a spectator in that or a listener in the coaching experience that somebody else is having oftentimes because you're not the one getting coached you will be able to you will see it in a completely different way than the person is that is getting coached and so you'll be able to like the pressure will be off a little bit and so you'll be able to take in the whole experience and take whatever the person being coached on their situation and apply it to your own life there's a great deal of learning that goes on in Group coaching sessions because everybody walks away with so much more

results from whatever's going on like I belong to a group coaching membership for myself and I tell you benefits that I have gotten from that have just been I just can't even I can't even express can I pay a pretty penny for my group coaching my monthly subscription to that so this is completely free to you so it's an amazing value where especially during the holidays I think that I hope my hope is that it provides you with the kind of support that you wish you had the kind where you feel less alone where in fact you feel supported and loved looked out for and maybe even you develop a camaraderie with the group or one or two other of the people from there that's my hope for you is to for

you you guys should develop a network of people that you can contact if you so please you can be as participating as you want to be right so that is up to you you can come to these support meetings and stay completely silent the entire time every time you come if you so please nobody will put you I will not be putting a spotlight on you so you can make this group what you want for you and if it goes well what I mean is that there's a good attendance then I will consider then at that point whether we want to take it past the holidays or not okay and make it like a regular thing that's where I stand with that moving along so I've been talking a lot about thinking on purpose in creating emotions

with your thoughts right but I have yet to share with you my thoughts and my knowledge about the power of allowing your feelings we have as I talked about out in I think the third episode talked about maintaining control over your emotions we have been especially in the Western World we have been conditioned from the time that we're young to only want to feel the good ceilings right the happy we're always trying to get to happy and although that is wonderful we in this life we're going to have other feelings and because we have not most of us have not been taught what to do when these uncomfortable feelings come up we tend to avoid them and some people can

get away with that in their life and do just fine everybody I'm sure could do just fine and but when you are dealing with something like parental alienation or when you're trying to recover or heal from domestic abuse or childhood abuse and any psychological abuse if we're trying to move past those things and create a new life for ourselves we first have to process what has happened in the past so that we don't repeat what has already happened okay so we some if you've ever been in the place where you're like why do I keep attracting these people why do I keep attracting narcissists or why do I keep having these friends in my life that take advantage of me or why you have these

repeating themes going on since childhood or since you were old enough to date if that has happened with you and you you would like to stop the cycle the way that you do this is by processing your emotions and becoming intentional with your sinking I'm sure that the reason that we pick who we pick usually has to do with wanting to act out or fix for whatever problems existed in childhood if there was any abuse in childhood we as adults will try to recreate that scenario so that we are in control of it this time the brain wants to do that in order to work it out and feel safe and move on from there but it does this all if you're not aware of it you're doing it and the brain is going

to lead you awry lead you where you don't want to go because you're not doing it consciously because you don't necessarily you don't need to relive these experiences your childhood experiences in order to process and move fast there's a much easier way to do that much easier way to do that and that is to process your feelings and I have been promising this or threatening this however you want to take that to give you guys a little mini episode on this since the second episode really and I think I've held back on doing it because I thought oh gosh it's not exactly the most riveting topic oh processing emotion but I had to get over myself today and decide to put this out there

for you guys because I think I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't put this out there as a resource for you because if you have never learned how to process an emotion how to allow an emotion or even if you have learned how to process like extensively in therapy it is a completely different experience variants when you're doing it on your own this is a tool that if all of the tools that I have learned throughout my life really but especially in my training and my education in the last six or so years this one right here has helped me more than any other one and it's taught me how to stop drinking because I used alcohol as a way to stuff my emotions and stop drinking like it

was problematic for a long time and now I don't even think twice about it because I learned how to not be afraid of my emotions and I've learned how to allow an emotion allow urges I mean it's such a powerful tool so it's allowed for that I've taught my clients too how to stop over drinking how to stop overeating this way by allowing their emotions and it's such a simple process but without this tool it's it is almost impossible for you to evolve for you to grow and change patterns that have been there for a long time some of these patterns that you don't even realize that you have okay and then once you learn how to allow emotions you become awake you like or all of a sudden

conscious to life it is a completely different feeling folks I'm telling you I know it sounds plain and simple but allowing your emotions is by far the most life-changing thing that I think that you can do enough building that up today was a perfect day for me to record this because I had a rather challenging morning I was gonna make a couple posts and I just wanted to see get some ideas and so I just did a hashtag parental alienation search and what came up was this Stepmother's I don't know the girl it was just this stepmom who how should I say this so that it's not charged she basically has made like a coaching business around alienating demonizing the children's

Mother the quote unquote bio mom people like me and you basically this was a stepmom not a stepdad it was infuriating because I saw the post and the post was this flippant post a month I don't need to go through all of it but then I of course because I'm a glutton for punishment I clicked through and went to this profile page and I saw all of the she was like building this Army of other stepmoms and maybe step dads I think it's just mostly stepmoms who have positioned themselves as the holier than thou stepmom who is honest to a fault to the children about the bio mom or dad or whatever I'm getting all kind of flustered even talking about long story short this girl is demonizing alienated

parents like us and she is what I consider to be a major part of the problem okay so I had all the kind of feels this morning I was in a mood my stomach was enough if you remember from my managing your emotions I was talking about the swirling in the belly and like the hot in my head and I had like the feelings going up and down through my chest and into my solar plexus like I was having a stress like anger and stress response that was like intense I was so pissed at this person okay so I painted the picture you get it clearly I have some more processing to do but I thought right then and they were I was like okay I have to stop what I'm doing right now I have to put it

down and I need to go ahead and process this emotion that I'm having as opposed to either feeding it with more of what reading more of what she had to say as opposed to getting busy doing something else so that we don't have to feel like I used to drink I would never I probably wouldn't have drank it 9 30 in the morning because of this ever but maybe I don't know but I would have done something maybe I would have online shot adopt or started cleaning or doing anything I could to not seal but in this instant what I chose to do was feel instead because sometimes the best thing to do is to allow the emotion to be present okay not sometimes really all the time but there

are times where it's just wouldn't be smart for you to process the emotion like I.E when you're driving or if you're at work right and with people or in public so there's certain times when it's not appropriate but otherwise I vote for if it's possible I vote that you always try to feel your emotion when you're feeling the physical effects of it okay and sometimes even when you're not but let's just stick with the basic right now so I chose this morning to process this motion here's what it looks like I sat down I was already sitting but I had like he I usually like to pace and so I had to position myself with my feet on the floor like mindfully with my hands on my thighs but relaxed position

and I just got in touch I closed my eyes and I got in touch with my breathing okay and so I calmed myself down and I simply told myself to allow the emotion to be okay you're creating this like mental emotional space for yourself and once you've centered yourself and become aware of the physical feelings that you're experiencing in your body swirling in your belly if that's what's happening for me I'm gonna talk about me so I this morning I felt my belly doing the butterflies I felt the tightness and noticed it helpful to say them out loud it's okay I feel tightness in my chest right now I feel warmth it feels hard sometimes my belly will feel hard or like my throat in the air will feel hard

and tight and I want to describe all of the physical Sensations that I'm having at that moment and I want to notice like take a scan of the body if you've ever done like shravasana and yoga sometimes I'll do it in the beginning of the class too but like where you scan from the top of your crown of your head all the way down to the your feet right for processing emotion you do it how you want there are no rules me I like to start from my bottom up as opposed to scanning from head down I like to scan from my feet all the way up my legs a lot of times I will feel this weird feeling in my knees and in the my calves and in my leg my thighs too so I feel it all I notice it all the way up groin

area do I feel anything there belly back chest throat all the way up how does it feel in my head and I take time to sit with all of those vibrations and Sensations okay and once you do that without rushing it through like if you can come to yourself be there with yourself with the idea or with the thought the mindset that you are being present for yourself to love yourself with the intention to be there for your emotion that you're experiencing In This Moment you will notice most of the time feelings come like in waves they'll pass through you and things will start to shift if you sit with it long enough usually 60 90 seconds sometimes you'll start to notice a shift where maybe the

the feeling in your solar plexus has moved up it's less tight now and it's sort of dissipating or broken up and however that works for you and I I don't want to put words into your mind I really truly want you to experience what that feels like okay but it does it will start to change some people will even if you close your eyes can actually see a color associated with specific feelings I don't want to get all blue on you but whatever you can do to describe to yourself what the physical feelings look like feel like sound like even all of the physical all of your senses what you can describe about it okay be present for yourself and when you do that once it starts to dissipate and let

go without rushing it what I like to do is tell the emotion like tell you tell you know have the conversation with yourself with your body that you are inviting it to leave whenever it's ready because if you try to push it out of you like I don't want to feel you anymore it's like a little four-year-old it will throw a temper tantrum the emotion your emotions do not want to be resistant when you resist your emotion or when you're trying to avoid it or classify it it will end up being stuffed or it will rear its ugly head later okay so be present for all of it just allow it to be there and notice it like it wants to be acknowledged your emotion that part of you these physical

Sensations are there to tell you something and it wants you to pay attention to it I know it sounds like metaphysical like but it's true I promise I promise it helps so much to just acknowledge it there's nothing super complicated about processing and emotion it's noticing it allowing it to be there and then inviting it to stay or go whenever it's ready that is it you create that hold that space for yourself okay and doing that you start to develop like this trust with yourself like the other parts subconscious parts of your brain will start to realize that you have your own back that you are safe that you will you will be there for yourself when in other times you have

not when other times you put you on the back burner you've chosen to go drink your feelings or you've chosen to do anything but not feel this feeling that I have you'll start to notice you're building a relationship with yourself that you like being with yourself so these things are important like super duper important for your growth and once you begin to allow your emotions it's my experience you'll start to realize that their only vibrations in your body and we're so scared of those emotions for why like for why they are okay they may be unpleasant but usually what is unpleasant is not the actual vibrations or the sensations that you're feeling in your body what's unpleasant is the

thoughts that we attach to these emotions if you don't judge yourself and if you remind yourself that the feeling that you're having is okay then there is nothing to fear it's just discomfort or just whatever however you describe it okay you cannot die from having an emotion in fact the opposite is true actually people do die from not sealing from avoiding their emotions that is the honest to God truce people do die of sickness and all sorts of disease because they are avoiding feeling but the opposite is never true in fact the only thing that you can suffer there is a better life and not repeating the mistakes that you've already made this is the simplest tool you can apply is to

allow yourself to feel discomfort and there is a difference let me just say that allowing yourself to feel I think I said this before allowing yourself to feel does not mean wallowing in your feelings or feeling sorry for yourself or what's the word I'm looking for like drowning yourself in emotions yeah this is not you're not being decadent with over feeling or feeling too many or becoming so emote you're allowing an emotion to be there and in that way you can let go and move forward with your life we're not I'm not asking you to sit in your emotions but there are times like when it came to feelings I had about my daughter and a lot of these deep wounds that I was still carrying

where I needed to really I needed a minute I needed like to re keep feeling the same emotion allowing myself to keep feeling the same emotion and the thoughts would come up and come up and each time I had to stop myself and allow myself to feel some of these emotions can be I will say that some of these emotions can be powerful and they will keep coming back but what I ask that so make sure that you have support around you and that you've been through therapy I am not a therapist I am a coach and I am trained in this but if you need to be seeing a therapist if you fear that allowing these emotions is going to be too much for you then get back back into counseling if you're not in it okay but

I want to be I want to make sure that you understand that emotions are vibrations and your thoughts are not you okay okay so don't forget to get in touch with me and leave me a message about what times work best for you if you're interested in attending the holiday support group okay you don't want to sleep on this because I'm working this all out this week wanting to possibly start next week if we don't start on a Thursday or definitely for sure start the week after next you can hit the voice message option right there on the episode notes or you can also email me at beyondthehigh Road yahoo.com okay yeah so don't see fun now also y'all don't forget to subscribe to this

show if you want to get notifications and I would love it if you are enjoying what you hear I would love if you would leave a review that would be fantastic it would help the show help me to gain more listeners and get more exposure for our holiday group and generally just up the morale all right guys so I will I'll see you next week thanks thanks so much for listening today guys I am so elated that you've chosen to share your time with me if you liked what you heard today and you would like to hear more please click subscribe so that you can be notified of new episodes and um thanks again y'all you are already in my heart until next time