249: Recovering from Your Not-So-Good Moments

You’re listening to the Vibrant Happy Women podcast, episode number 249. We’re talking about recovering from your not-so-good moments. Stay tuned.

Hi, I'm Jen Riday. This podcast is for women who want to feel more vibrant, happy, aligned, and alive. You'll gain the emotional, physical, and spiritual tools you need to get your sparkle back and ensure that depression, anxiety, and struggle don't rule your life. Welcome to the Vibrant Happy Women Podcast.

Hey there my friends, Jen here. So the US Thanksgiving happened a couple of weekends back. I’m recording this about a week after the fact. It’s taken me that long to recover. I’m kidding. Let me just say that Thanksgiving 2020 matched the year. It was not good at the Riday house. Now, I’m going to share something vulnerable. I questioned whether to share this because you could think wow, Jen hosts a podcast and she acted like that. Yeah, it was one of those days. Let me tell you the story.

Thanksgiving, our turkey was thawed in time this year. My husband put it in the oven. I watched some of the parade. I had prepped the cranberry sauce with my son. I had precooked the sweet potatoes, I was ready. We were ready, because we’re going to make this the best Thanksgiving ever. It’s always the goal, isn’t it? Well, I started cooking and helping. My husband does a ton of it. But this year I was more involved than I usually am. I did Brussels sprouts and I made homemade mashed potatoes and all the things. And everything was going great.

I even had time to go take a 20 minute nap before we ate, while things were finishing up, I got dressed, I looked nice. I thought sweet, all our kids were there just like last year. It’s going to be a great Thanksgiving. But behind the surface there was a little bit of – I don’t know – that 2020 energy, do you know what I’m talking about? I don’t know what’s going on cosmically, or astrologically, or energetically. But something has been up this fall. So that’s why I went and took that nap, I thought okay, I’m going to make sure I’m all set emotionally, so this all goes well.

Well, we sat down at the Thanksgiving table. Now before I go any further, please do not judge me. If you’re the type of woman who never loses her crap, you’re not listening to the right podcast. I had a bad moment. Here’s what went down. We were all seated at the table, just about to eat, everything looked beautiful, my six kids, my husband and myself. And I said, “Hold on, we need a picture.” We never take family pictures so I thought okay, I hold the camera in the form of a selfie, I hold it up, I get everyone in the picture, I snap several.

And then I look at the pictures, “Hold on, let me check this”, I said. And there’s Jane, age 11, smiling like – I don’t know – how do I describe this without you seeing my face, smiling like not good. Not even like – it looked like she was purposely looking kind of evil. Her eyebrows were slanted inward like she was angry but then she had this weird cheese smile with it. And I just felt something kind of snap in me but I held it together. I’m like, “Jane, why did you do this? It looks like you’re purposely ruining the picture.” And she denied it and said, “No, no, I was trying.” So I said, “Okay, let’s try this again.”

I hold up the camera, everyone look, I already feel a little bit of cortisol stress hormones rising in me. And we take the picture. I look at the camera and this is where I really lost it. My 13 year old daughter put her hands under her chin and tilted her head sideways in that cheesy like “look at me” pose. It was on purpose. And my 17 year old, same thing, he was flashing gang signs. And the thought that went through my mind was, “Oh my gosh, I cooked this meal and these kids can’t even let me get one good picture in the entire year!” And where do you think that thought led me? You know.

I snatch my daughter’s sparkling apple juice, we bought a couple of bottles, we spread it out evenly among the kids, I snatch it away, the daughter I could reach and I said, “You don’t get this, you don’t deserve this. Why did you ruin my picture?” As I’m snatching the juice, it spills all over the Thanksgiving table. Then have you ever had a moment where you’re watching yourself behaving wrong, you know it’s wrong? It’s like you can’t stop yourself, you’re watching yourself as an outside observer. That happened in this moment.

I lost my poop, I lost it. I went kind of crazy. I’d like to say be gentle with me everyone, be gentle, I must be perimenopausal. All the stress of 2020, all the stress of the virtual schooling and all the togetherness, so much togetherness, it just came out. Long story short I seriously ruined that Thanksgiving meal. I had no idea that was going to come out of me. I stopped it fairly quickly, I left within five minutes. But still before that five minutes ended my 19 year old picked up his plate, went to eat elsewhere.

Three people were staring at me in horror with a frozen expression on their faces. You guys, I was horrified, while it was happening, after. I left without eating anything, I went upstairs and cried. So this is the podcast episode where I remind you that I’m so freaking human. I am so human. And if you are listening, have never had a moment like this, I’m so happy for you. This is not the first time I’ve had this moment. Now, it’s been a long time since I’ve had anything like this happen. But it’s been funny ever since.

It’s like that moment on Thanksgiving Day was a pressure point, everything had been building, all of 2020. I had no idea. I just know I’d been low energy, feeling a bit moody. And then ever since, I can’t tell you all the emotions that have come out since my little mom tantrum. I have felt all the things, all the dissatisfaction of my life, all the things that are wrong are presenting themselves to my mind. And it’s been hard.

I thought long resolved grievances have been coming up, resentment, stress, frustration, stories I’ve told myself in my mind too many times that are there from the past came back with a vengeance this week. So have you ever had a moment like this when you’re not being your best self, you’re not feeling your best self, you’re losing your poop, losing your crap and you don’t like how you’re showing up? Well, we’re human, take a deep breath.

I hope my story helps you know we are all human. What do we do about it? Well, thank goodness I have a safe space where I do most of my emotional processing. I went straight to my bed, my favorite place. I cried a bit. I breathed a lot, I felt horrible. Yes, I eventually and quickly went and apologized to everyone, luckily we kind of salvaged the day a couple of hours later by the time we were ready for dessert. It all ended okay. We all ended happy.

We all had our little family therapy moment where everyone said, “Yeah, mom, you haven’t been to yoga for a while.” I’m like, “The studio’s closed.” And I’m in a yoga teacher training. Anyway, we all worked it out, they understood, we all have moments. Thank goodness. We ended the night with watching a Prep & Landing Christmas special. It was a really good day by the end of the day. But like I said, these emotions have been bubbling up ever since.

So what tools do I use to process emotions when they come up? Because they come up at really weird times, and holidays tend to be some of those times for a lot of us. Well, first number one, I breathe, breathing deeply lowers that cortisol. Number two, I pull out my journals and I just write. I call this a brain download. I have been writing, and writing, and writing, and writing. And I see interesting things come out onto the paper that don’t necessarily present themselves to my conscious mind.

Number three, I take what I see on the paper, I look at those thoughts and I find the one that feels the most emotionally juicy and then I do a thought table. Now, I won’t go into the details of a thought table here, but the point of a thought table is recognizing how your thoughts generate feelings, yes, your thoughts drive your moods and emotions. How those moods and emotions affect your actions, like mine on Thanksgiving. And ultimately what are the results?

Luckily with my tools I was able to up-level that thought and recognize, Jane actually didn’t mean to make that face, because of the autism spectrum thing that happens in our family, a lot of my kids struggle with photography. When it comes time to smile they do not understand what their face looks like when they think they’re smiling. And that’s what happened with Jane and she and I had a talk and I apologized profusely. The other two, they were still being turkeys but they got an apology too.

So number three, up-level that thought. Thoughts drive emotions, emotions drive our behavior, and our behavior leads to results in our families, in our careers, in our health, all of it.

But number four, and most importantly for me is the Feel It to Heal It method. When you have strong energy and strong emotions moving through your body, rather than resist it, or numb against it with alcohol or Netflix, it’s so important to let yourself feel it. Lying in bed, breathing, I just felt so much all of 2020 coming to a head.

Maybe I hadn’t done enough emotional work and it was ready to come out so, I felt it, breathing, inhaling, exhaling, what’s there churning in my heart area, clenching in my stomach? Deep sadness, and frustration, and resentment and anger, the result of a lot of thoughts that I had been consciously and subconsciously thinking throughout 2020, we’ve all done it. We all have a story that it’s been the year from hell and we can’t wait to see it in the rearview mirror.

Stories about virtual schooling, stories about politics, we tell ourselves a story and create realities in our minds that make us feel a certain way. So we’ve all created a collective story of pain, and frustration, and resentment largely in 2020. And sometimes we just need to feel it. So, if you’ve lost your crap lately, or don’t like how you’re showing up, maybe you get into bed and you just feel it to heal it. I talk a lot more about this in the club.

Definitely join us in there if you want to learn more and get the nitty-gritty of these tools. But you can go and try them now, creating space for yourself to let that energy move. Emotions, in the end, are energy. They are vibrations of energy just like light and sound and we happen to feel them in our bodies. And if you stick with it and let yourself feel it, it will pass. So I’m still processing some stuff, it’s not over, Thanksgiving was just the instigation of a flood of emotion and I’m working it through. I have my tools and I know that I can handle any feeling.

So I want to give you hope that you’re not alone and that you too can handle any emotion. You can use tools that will help you up-level those thoughts and change your behaviors, and even let go of the feelings you’re not loving. Hey, 2021 is right around the corner. And this is a great fresh start, a point in time where we can say, “This marks the beginning of something new.” And it’s a new phase.

By the way, an astrologer friend of mine, I don’t know if I believe in astrology but it was interesting to hear her talk about it. She said December 21^st or 22^nd, this winter solstice marks the beginning of the Aquarian age, Google it. So if you believe in that stuff, the Aquarian age is an age that leans towards feminine energy, that’s the energy of connection, and flow, and ease. And I kind of like that idea. So whatever’s coming up for you right now emotionally and otherwise, behaviorally like me, take the time to process it.

I believe we’re clearing stuff out to make space for something new, whether that’s the Aquarian age or the beginning of 2021, we can have something new if we do our work. And that’s what the Vibrant Happy Woman podcast, and Club, and world is all about, noticing how you feel, knowing how you want to feel, and having those tools in your back pocket to help you get there.

I want to thank you for listening. You’re not alone. Let’s do our emotional work and make that space in our hearts and minds for something even better, to up-level our lives, our thoughts and our happiness. Thank you so much for listening, I will see you again soon. Until then, make it a vibrant and happy week. Take care.

If you enjoy this podcast, you have to check out the Vibrant Happy Women Club. It’s my monthly group coaching program where we take all this material to the next level and to get you the results that will blow your mind. Join me in the Vibrant Happy Women Club at jenriday.com/join.