29. Emotional "MEH-ness"

well hello guys it is Tuesday afternoon oh Tuesday Morning um and today we are going to be talking about feeling bleh not a full-on depression and not feeling overjoyed and elated obviously but like that feeling in the Middle where you're just like meh like lackluster you're just Trucking along and sort of existing I know that so many of you guys can relate to this because I hear it from you a lot I sometimes still experience this that feeling like whatever you know you're just going through the motions things aren't terrible anymore they're not like you're not in a constant state of trauma response anymore it's not that you've just gotten to the point where things

are just sort of underwhelming you've almost maybe even become numb a little bit to all of it and so there's just no emotional response whatsoever it can come and go this sort of stagnants emotional stagnance if you will like you might notice that something happens like a circumstance happens and normally or before historically you would get either excited about it or have like an intense emotion whichever end of the spectrum it is but you're noticing that these these days you don't have that at all there's no reaction like wow I used to react to that and that couldn't be a good thing sometimes when you used to react intensely negatively and maybe now you're not doing that so much but there

is a little bit of a difference between being numb to it and then expecting it and managing your mind around it and allowing it to be because you know that you can't change somebody else's Behavior or a circumstance that's already happened so there's a difference there and I'm talking about the numbness so I think most of us are of the age or era that our parents didn't exactly teach us or show us that having an intense emotion or reaction or you know wave of sadness anger or any of the emotions they didn't teach us that this was okay and in fact feelings were something that we just put away aside they're just things that we deal with and we don't really we talk about them

we don't really pay attention to them you may have heard your parents say oh I'll give you something to cry about when you were maybe having an intense emotion and you know when that uncontrollable cry that we get like and as a kid when we're shut down in that way we learn really quick that we must at all cost protect our emotions and hide them and depending on whether you're a man or a woman most of us are of the era where for men maybe your father said to you you know oh you're acting like a you're acting like a girl and then if you're a girl I don't know my mom used to say oh don't give me that Sarah Bernhardt routine which is funny because I still don't have no clue who Sarah is

but I remember her saying it to me an awful lot I can laugh about it now because I know she didn't mean any harm I'm almost positive if she picked that up from her mother who picked it up from her mother and her mother and whatever we were just taught to go up to our room to have those kinds of emotions if you're gonna cry go up to your room and so as you can imagine the message that we got from that most of us is that emotions are that they're only for us to see that we must guard them that we must keep them behind closed doors nobody else has the time or the interest in hearing about them or experiencing them while you are it's like a burden on anybody else to show them your emotions

I know this is very true for me and again like I said I know it was no fault of my parents they just didn't know they weren't aware of the message that that was sending but I do know that I grew up and I ended up being very codependent and very concerned about taking up anybody's time or attention if they could spend it on more important things that's the way I saw and so it as a result for me what I ended up doing was learning how to talk really really really fast because I thought well the faster I can get my point across the less time I'm taking up of the person I'm speaking with and then they can go about their business because I didn't want to bother anybody and now I look at

that and I I get sad for myself for sure like it's like I feel bad for that part of me that really felt that and thought that I was an inconvenience that any of my thoughts or emotions or anything was an inconvenience for other people and in fact what that ended up doing this is really not even what I'm talking about today but what that ended up doing is causing me to not build solid relationships moving forward because I was then never showing anybody who I really was and what I was really about because I thought that that was not appropriate and so then I always sort of felt alone even around a group of friends because it wasn't nobody was interested in any of that so it was like

this self it was like this machine that was created like so nobody wanted to hear about it so I had Shame about my own emotions so I needed to to hide those and keep them behind closed doors and then I didn't want to inconvenience anybody but then that also created this false like front for me so then I could never establish real authentic relationships based on who I was I based my Persona around what I thought people wanted to see it was almost not even uh I want them to like me it was more like I must not show them I'm not this is not what I'm supposed to do nobody wants to see me this way so this is not really what I was talking about today I guess that's just a little bit of the

introduction what I wanted to talk about was the fact that because we're not brought up to share our emotions we end up not learning how to process them we end up thinking and taking on the idea that emotion and our inconveniences especially the negative ones the negative emotions are inconvenienced in and inconveniences to our own selves so when life happens you know younger when we have awkward experiences in high school and college when we have insecurities and when we have heartbreak when we have those things happen we haven't been provided the skills to process these emotions and instead we unconsciously develop the skill of learning how to evade the emotions and

solve for them by distracting ourselves by using other behaviors to make us feel better to make us feel fulfilled in some way or another and so for some of us that looks like like I've shared with you guys many times is that for some of us that ends up looking like drinking college parties because that's a confidence in a bottle and it's also instant acceptance with whatever group of people that you are hanging out with that was like the cool thing to do so it may look like that for you it may look like these days going on your phone and scrolling the second that you have an emotion that you don't like and it's again like I was saying it's a very unconscious Behavior but we pick up our

phone and like nervously frantically scrolling through our phone on Facebook or what other social media or checking email or doing all that sort of stuff and we just move our attention elsewhere playing Candy Crush doing you know Wordle whatever this is how we these days many people end up coping with the inconvenient or negative emotions that we have and what this does is we're sort of just putting the emotions off so our brain learns the behavior because if we remember the motivational Triad is to seek pleasure avoid pain and be efficient so the brain of course at all costs it wants to avoid the uncomfortable the thing is is when we don't make room for the negative

emotions we also will eliminate the positive emotions because as we know it's on a spectrum all of our emotions are on a spectrum and we can really usually only feel to the negative the same amount of positive but also because if you are feeling in your everyday life after going through alienation and maybe currently still in it it's been going on and droning on and you have all of this built up unprocessed unrecognized emotion that you have just been kind of stacking up inside of you and maybe on top of that if you're a woman and you have hormones going on and you know all the stuff that life presents to us it gets us on a daily basis when we have all of that happening and then we have

grief that's happening also you guys I just realized that I'm in my um getting dressed Mumu I forgot to put my clothes on I you know I do my makeup of my hair in the morning and then I just completely forgot that I still have my like after shower and I hadn't looked at myself like whatever it's on it's I'm not gonna stop now but anyway no I forgot where I was life is throwing stuff at us at all times it's just part of the human experience but on top of that we have this grief and so there's all of this like emotion that's sort of piled on top of each other there and I don't mean to stress you out by saying that there's stuff that you need to do no but because

we have all of that and our brains sometimes are just like I'm fed up with feeling like I felt emotion for days I've been crying for I mean you know years maybe I'm constantly crying and letting out these tears and emotions and I'm over it so we can become numb because we have not actually learned how to allow them to be in our bodies and just understand that emotions are not problems for us to solve they are just emotions it's the story that we have about the emotions that really causes the suffering so when we have this pile up of the emotions and of other stressors that life gives us we tend to sometimes just shut off and this means also that if we've gone through some

grief we're also feeling vulnerable and we don't put ourselves at risk for the negative emotions anymore so like for instance what I mean here is in order to have a positive emotion when I stay positive and negative you guys know that I really I say that because it's an easy way to describe but I really think emotions are all neutral okay if you look at them as neutral then they're not problems they are what happens in our body as a result of a thought as I was explaining I think in one of the recent episodes but anyway they're the physical manifestations maybe it wasn't maybe that was in my coaching membership anyway emotions are the physical manifestations of our thoughts so but

they're not anything to solve for we can look at our thoughts if we want to feel something differently because it's not helping us okay but that's a separate so allowing emotions no matter what they are will help you to stop the stacking of all of these like the stack of papers that you keep putting to the side and you keep saying you're going to do them it's sort of the same here and you just have to start at some point and then you can just make the decision that you're going to feel the emotions when they come up there's nothing for you to solve for the past stuff let that be they'll come up again and when they do just make the decision that you're going to allow

them to be having said that let's get back on track like for instance new friends ask us to go out to dinner or maybe you're just started dating again after the whole mess of alienation and that is nerve-wracking because how do you even address the whole issue of alienation and where your kids are it just seems so draining and so all of that and because we have that story around it being so draining and we might risk rejection and we might risk being judged in that exhaustion of having to explain it on the date and what are they going to say and react and blah blah blah because we don't want to feel that and we're scared of the negative emotion or just don't have the mindset for it

then we also sacrifice the opportunity for the good emotions the positive emotions because the going out and the date might lead to something else or just going out in a date and having fun going to a nice dinner going out with friends and maybe laughing your asses off who knows or just having a connection that you haven't experienced in a long time since maybe since the alienation began so in order to have the positive emotions we need to go out and have these experiences but we don't have these experiences we don't put ourselves in a position for those experiences because we're thinking about all the negative things that could happen and they very well could but we're we're not

willing to risk having the negative emotions in order to get to the positive emotions so what happens we end up with this flat blah life were in Melville and so we feel numb nothing really motivates us or causes us to feel emotion on either end now when I say this just know also I will be doing addressing depression separately on a future episode okay what I'm talking about here is the madness that I mean honestly let me just say this depression is also feeling the meh we don't it's not always you're feeling like awful but you really have no ability to feel any of it and it feels hopeless okay regardless if you've been either diagnosed with depression clinical

depression or you feel that you are depressed everything I'm sharing here also will apply okay but just know I'm not specifically addressing depression here the blah is more like it's like a step up from depression where you're like things are fine things are fine you just don't really feel like you're living you kind of feel like you're existing whatever that's really what I'm talking about here so what I think is really helpful I'll say this for depression too you must must every day and it's gonna sound so plain and simple but I'm telling you it will change your life if you're in this spot and you're not already doing it you must get up every day make your bed and then get in

the shower do your hair whether you're a woman or a man do your hair and put on your I'm saying this as I'm in my MooMoo but put on your your uniform like a power uniform for the day I don't care if you have nothing planned I don't well we'll get to that in a second but or if you think that you're not going to see anybody that you know it makes all the difference in the world to put your makeup on do your hair get in nice clothes and look like you're going to work if you're not look like you're you're going to lunch do that that is a must okay it will change the way that you feel so quickly once you get dressed I have never actually gotten dressed and been like wow and I shouldn't have done

that that was a waste of time never okay so this is important do that it will change your mood entirely always make your bed shower get yourself fully dressed don't just slick your hair back if you're a mom don't just look it back up in a bun do your hair if you don't have time then start waking up earlier okay telling you you won't regret it now if you're still feeling ick after that which is highly possible you should also do future you favors set future you up for Success so think about the future version of you and what can I do to set her or him up for an amazing day an amazing week an amazing month what little things can I do today that is setting me up in the future

this will help you not only to start getting some planning like focusing on what's going on ahead of you but also then you'll start to get into the action space in your head as opposed to just going through the motions you become intentional and mindful in that moment and so then you start to recruit your executive functions and when you do that you snap yourself like you start to feel much better because your lower brain is not running you anymore okay so ask yourself what you could do to set future version of you up and then in your free time go and do things for you okay even if you're on a budget okay if that means that you take yourself you pack up a

picnic and you take yourself walk your ass to the park you don't have to have lots of money to do something like this you can take yourself to the movies if you have a little bit of money okay but instead get out of your house is what I'm saying don't stay in it all the time for me it never ceases to amaze me how different I feel like my whole body chemistry is when I am feeling low energy and then I go out even across the street just to go to the grocery store Everything Changes like instantly my energy comes back to me or I thought like I needed to like nap like I was so tired and like why am I so tired today and if I get in my car like within three minutes my energy is like whoa so that

is another thing that I think is super duper helpful and lastly like I was making the reference just a little bit ago not putting yourself at risk to have the negative emotions and therefore you're not experiencing the positive emotions either your life will change so drastically when you decide every day to take a risk in one way just one risk every day and that could be a little risk or it could be a big risk okay but do something outside of your comfort zone every day reach out to somebody that you haven't reached out to or May need for community so reach out to somebody start doing some Live Events even if it's just to say hi to your family and friends on Facebook do

something that causes you to feel awkward and uncomfortable and put you out there okay go out to dinner with somebody sign up for the dating app whatever that is for you like knowing too that you yes you are risking having the negative emotions it's going to be a little uncomfortable it's going to be awkward at times it's going to be you could risk getting hurt you could risk rejection yes those things do happen but in the end you're going to have a life that was worth living because you took the risk because you stuck your toe out there this I think is something that future you will never regret knowing okay so I'm I'm going to put myself out there and I might get hurt and that's

okay because I know that I can I can experience and move through hard things difficult things so so yeah that's what I have for you if you're feeling numb or blah then I think that these four things will help you to not feel blessed and to get your blood pumping again especially the last one taking risks so from backwards I'm doing this by memory because again I didn't have an outline take a risk every day small or big and by risk you know that I mean within reason and let's not take any risks in our life don't go base jumping or anything I mean you can but please I did not tell you to do that so take risks every day find some way to put yourself out there in some way shape or form okay

then what would future you how could you set future you up for Success what little things can you do for future you and future you like I said could be an hour from now's future you or it could be a year from now to you but how can you set yourself up in the future now so think of little ways that you can do that or big wise that's number that's number three number two is to take take a shower and get dressed every day every day fully dressed every day another sense of silly but I'm telling you every day so important make your bed every day that's number one and also I needed to add in there too huge hello this is like my background but is exercise some form

of exercise get your endorphins going as you know jumping jacks is my Windex jumping jacks uh walk does not matter get your blood moving get the endorphins going and I tell you that this will it'll have you feeling a lot more emotions on the Spectrum all of these things will give you the motivation to have the emotions and to risk experiencing the negative emotions and so if you're feeling blah or like you just you just can't feel the joy ecstasy side of things or or and you also can't feel the other side where you know the Despair and ways that you normally might react to situations and you notice we're not really you know you're sort of in that middle range then yeah get yourself

moving get yourself moving in all senses okay start looking into your future start getting excited about creating excitement for yourself about what is to come start considering possibilities for yourself by setting your future self up considering what future you might be appreciative of the current you for doing okay so that's what I have for you guys today that was pretty short and sweet y'all have a wonderful day and I will see you next week oh yeah of course obviously make sure that you are clicking the follow button wherever you're listening to this and I would love if you would rate and review you know that my reasons why and the membership of course is always and still

open okay you can join it in the middle of the month it does not matter so I can't wait to meet you see you soon 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