Wednesday Share Day – January 24, 2018

I may be all over the board today, so I apologize in advance. It seems one thing has led to another which then led to another. You know how that goes.

When I find blogs or videos that resonate with me I save them in a separate file for my Wednesday share days. Then I go back and see which one to share with all my Fledglings. How to Move Through Feelings of Body Shame was a really good one.

However, when I reread this blog, I realized that it focused on body shame. I originally saved this piece because I thought it was using body shame as an example. Maybe I saved it because it starts with a Brene Brown quote (I love her work!), “Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness, will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

My shame may not have been body image related, but using the five steps I can manage and counter my own shameful thoughts when they start to hijack my brain.

Step two in the process is to Observe (instead of judge) Your Shame.

Wow! Just yesterday I was listening to a meditation seminar that had guest singer and song writer, Jewel, sharing her story about recovery, mindfulness, and meditation. I didn’t realize that she’s another who has risen from the ashes and become reborn. In addition, she has her own website to help inspire emotional fitness that I’m going to check out in the upcoming week.

One of Jewel’s main points was that her song writing and journaling allowed her to become an observer of her emotions, rather than staying in the emotion.

“If our body is a car, the brain is not the driver. It’s actually the steering wheel. And when you’re mindful, you put yourself behind the steering wheel. You become the driver of your life.”

-Jewel

That was what I needed for my transformation. I needed to write from an observer perspective rather than sit in what I was experiencing. It was my blogging that helped me, too, become reborn.

At the very beginning of How to Move Through Feelings of Body Shame, there was link to a blog about emotional triggers. Since I’ve been struggling with triggers recently, I decided to click on this also.

How to Identify Your Emotional Triggers and What to Do About Them starts with a Deepak Chopra quote, “Awareness is the birthplace of possibility.” 

In this blog, I could identify with a couple of the emotional triggers I was struggling with. I also realized that I had made cookie dough with my daughters. I mean, making cookies with your kids is a great way to rationalize and justify eating sweets to drown out painful emotions. However, my truth (which brings me back to the shame piece) was that my primary reason was not connection with my girls, but to internally feel better. Which, come to think of it, goes counter to the mindful healthy eating and exercise I had done for the past week and a half.

“Often, our triggers are experiences, situations, or stressors that unconsciously remind us of past traumas or emotional upsets. They ‘re-trigger’ traumas in the form of overwhelming feelings of sadness, anxiety, or panic.

The brain forms an association between the trigger and your response to it, so that every time that thing happens again, you do the same behavioral response to it. This is because what fires together, wires together.”

I really like the suggestion from the blog. Write down the following so that you have a road map of what to do when you’re triggered again.

1. The Trigger: what pushes your buttons
2. Your Current Reaction: how you normally act when your button is pushed
3. Your New Response: what you could do as your normal response instead of your normal knee-jerk reaction

It’s so easy to fall back into bad habits. It’s also easy to shame ourselves for not doing what we believe we aught to do or not getting it right all the time. I have fallen into that trap lately.

I need to be grateful that through my recovery, I don’t turn to my addiction to constantly medicate. I occasionally may eat cookie dough when I’m feeling off,  and yet, subconsciously, I also increase my own personal program. I focus more on meditation, I tap, I listen to podcasts, I listen to sermons, I work out, I read books, I do workbooks, I pray.

What I haven’t done lately is blog. I’ve found the excuse that I’m too busy to sit down to start and finish a blog, so instead, I’ve avoided it all together. Not my weekly Grateful Sunday, Motivational Monday, or Wednesday Share Day blogs, but the ones where I follow Jewel’s advice and become an observer. I believe the truth behind the excuse is the fear of what I will find when I once again look from the outside in.

I guess it’s time to start looking inward once more.

So, from one thought around to another, today, learn about how to move through shame, learn how to identify your triggers, learn what you can do about your triggers, and check out Jewel’s website, Never Broken, Make Happiness a Habit, so you too can learn about emotional fitness.