Finding a balance between staying optimistic and acknowledging tough days can be a delicate dance.
Is optimism an all-or-nothing game? Does being positive mean you're never allowed to have a negative thought? Holding ourselves to such rigid standards can be overwhelming.
Life is an intricate tapestry of joys and challenges, good days and bad. Denying or suppressing our tough emotions isn't the answer, nor is telling ourselves we "shouldn't" feel a particular way.
Addressing and processing these emotions, especially on our hardest days, is crucial. It aids in mastering our thoughts, achieving emotional autonomy, healing, and consciously choosing our emotional state.
Join me this week as I shed light on navigating my challenging days and highlight common traps that can ensnare us, robbing us of our emotional freedom.
Resources:
The Importance of naming your emotions
Read the full transcript below:
0:00
This is Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach, a clinical or Aveda specialist, a personal trainer, and I'm also a breast cancer survivor. In this podcast, we talk about healthy thinking and mindfulness practices, eating well, moving your body for health and longevity. And we'll also hear from other breast cancer survivors who have reengaged with life, and have incredible stories to share. This podcast is your go to resource for getting back to life after breast cancer. Hello, and welcome to the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I am your host, Laura Lummer. And I'm super happy that you're here with me today. If you are new listener, welcome. Welcome to the show. And if you are a repeat listener, I'm so glad you keep coming back. And if you'd like to do something to support the show and make it easier for other survivors who might need to hear it, find it, you can go right where you're listening, hit the subscribe button, scroll down to the bottom. Well, at least that's how you do it on an iPhone. I'm not sure how you do it on an Android, but scroll down to the bottom. And you can just hit the stars and rate the show or leave a review. And it really, really, really makes a huge difference when you do that. So thanks for that support. And for taking the time to do things like subscribe, and rate and review, I always always appreciate it. Alright, let's jump right into the show. So a couple of weeks ago, I was on a coaching call with my Empower group. And this conversation has stuck with me for a while and especially over the course of this week, which I'll circle back to and tell you about. But on this call, one of my members asked me if I had bad days. And if I could share with her with the group at that time, what those bad days were. Because knowing that I struggled through those kinds of days as well I think helped her feel like she wasn't alone. And that as she was doing so much amazing work on her mindset, it didn't mean she had to be perfect, as she continued to move closer and closer to that future vision of herself that she wants to be. And I love it when I get asked questions like this because it makes a big difference for me. Those kinds of questions make me think about and they remind me to be careful not to make things sound like they're super easy, or that everything is all sunshine and rainbows all the time. And as much as I am committed to and love and want to work constantly towards inspiring and empowering others. I want to be sure that I do that, realistically. And that what I share with you is very real. Because life can be hard. And we have to do hard things all the time. And do I have bad days? God? Yes, I definitely do just like you just like everyone else on this planet. And when I talk about that, you know, it reminds me of the story I'll share with you when I was growing up. I grew up in a very traditional Catholic house and my mom would say to me, God will never give you a challenge that you can't handle. And throughout my life for a very long time, I used to think about that when I would see people suffering through horrible tragedy. And I would think, Oh shit, I don't want God to think I'm too strong, because I never want to have to go through it that poor person is having to deal with. So it took me a long time to move past being raised with some old school Catholic guilt. And to change my mindset, that's kind of a wild mindset, right? So I go on your own, I wouldn't want to think I'm too strong. So I don't want horrible things to keep happening. But obviously, since then, it's been a lot of time learning how to manage my mind, and not just learning about it, but practicing that in my life. And even so, days are still hard. Living with cancer is hard. recovering from cancer treatment in a new and forever changed body is hard. Life can be hard, and it throws curveballs at us all the time. So I'm going to share with you the story of my past week, which is not easy to share about because it was a rough week. And this last week, I really had been struggling with what I call my existential crisis. So physically, that means to me that means physically I'm responding really well. I'm feeling better and better, definitely better than I have in months. But emotionally, I'm wrestling with all the things that I want to do in life, working on creating a plan to make those things happen. And that part is super exciting. And as I worked on my healing, and I visualized that dream and all the fun that it is and that it's going to be I love that. But then I have to come back to managing the red tape of insurance and co pays and deductibles and denials, and people not doing what I think they're responsible for doing in their jobs, which results in more work for me, it results in me feeling frustrated, and sometimes just really wanting to install a heavy bag in my house, so I can just turn around and punch something. So yeah, I do have bad days. But there are some important things that I've learned about how to manage those when I have a bad day. I think first and probably most importantly, is that you have to really allow bad days to happen. You have to allow your emotions to happen when you're in this kind of a day. And I honestly believe that the worst thing we can do on a bad day is tell ourselves wished you didn't feel the way we're feeling. There's a really powerful thing that happens when you let yourself feel sad, angry, frustrated, victimized, whatever, those emotions are that come up, that are uncomfortable. So the other day, I'm riding on my peloton, and the instructor says something to the effect of you know, dig deep, get in touch with why you're here, and why you showed up, and really bring out that person you came here to be. And out of nowhere. In that moment, I felt this just gut wrenching emotion and tears just start pouring down my face. And it was so powerful. And I was like, what is happening right now? Right? I'm trying to get a good workout in here. Because sometimes we feel those powerful emotions before we're even consciously aware of what we're thinking. So for me, in that moment, when I questioned what I was feeling, I realized that my thought that came up that caused that emotion my thinking was, what if I don't get to be here long enough to be the person I want to become? And I stayed with that emotion, that sadness, trying to get clarity on that thought and where my head was, and I let the tears fall as I was riding along. Can you imagine if my husband walked in the room right? Then see me fiercely pedaling and gasping for air with tears streaming down my face? He be like, What the hell are you doing? What is happening here? Get off the bike if it's that hard on you. But I had to push past that, that I just kept riding and I just kept feeling sad. And if I had tried to push past that, to push down that emotion, and to tell myself, No, I don't want to feel like this, get your act together, Laura, then I would have missed out on that realization of the truth, the truth of what I was thinking, and the thought that brought up fear and sadness in me. And it was in understanding and facing that truth that I could say to myself, Okay, well, what if I don't get to be here long enough to be that person? Am I going to let that stop me from trying? Am I going to get off that bike right now and give up? Or am I going to live like the person I want to be, and let go of the attachment to the outcome. And that's really the tricky part. Because we live our lives, a lot of time in tit for tat mode. If I do this, I get that. And then when we don't get that, we go dark, we spin out. But if we live life to the fullest, because that's the way we want to live. And not because if we do that there's a promise of something else like being cancer free or being blissfully happy or being supermodel thin. If we just stay in, I live this way, because this is the way I want to live, then we're living authentically. And when things are challenging, we can say this sucks, because it does suck. But then we get to ask ourselves, is this the way I want to feel? Do I want to feel angry? Do I want to feel frustrated, betrayed, disappointed? And if not, then the cool thing is we get to choose how we want to feel regardless of the truth, that the circumstances aren't what we want them to be. I remember my first session with my coach after my diagnosis of metastatic cancer. And I said to her, you know, I have all these plans for 2021 and I was so excited. And now everything has changed. And she said, No, everything hasn't changed. Only one thing changed. You got diagnosed with cancer. That only changes everything if that's what you're going to allow it to do.
9:59
Words Wisdom, tough love. But sometimes that's what we let bad days do. We allow them to overshadow everything. We allow bad days bad situations to blind us to what's good in life. And even on really tough days, they're still good in life. Now, another pitfall, when it comes to bad days is buffering. We do not like to feel uncomfortable, right? Our brain wants to get us out of the space of being uncomfortable as quickly as possible. Right? no conflict, no arguing, no uncomfortable, no awkwardness, we don't like those feelings. No one likes to feel defeated, frustrated. No one likes to feel like I need to install a heavy bag right now, that's not a great feeling. So instead of allowing those feelings and actually noticing what effect they have on our bodies, like noticing, my gut feels tight right now, or My chest feels heavy. My throat feels constricted in exploring the thoughts behind why we're feeling that way. Instead of doing that, more often than not, we say, Where's the banana pudding, the Cabernet, the doughnuts, the gym, the vodka, whatever your thing is, that takes you out of emotion, and into physical numbness or distraction. We don't like the physical feeling. So we do something to temporarily change it. And that never really addresses the actual problem. So I want to share this quote with you because I love it. It was from an article I read in the New York Times called the importance of naming your emotions. And in this article, after quoting the psychologist Dan Siegel, who said, you have to name it to tame it. The author of the article, Tony Schwartz says and this is a quote, it's also true that we can't change what we don't notice, denying or avoiding feelings doesn't make them go away. Nor does it lessen their impact on us, even if it's unconscious. Noticing and naming emotions gives us the chance to take a step back and make choices about what to do with them. Emotions are just a form of energy, forever seeking expression. Paradoxically, sharing what we're feeling in simple terms helps us to better contain and manage even the most difficult emotions. By naming them out loud, we are effectively taking responsibility for them, making it less likely that they will spill out at the expense of others over the course of the day. And of quote, now, my favorite part of that my favorite part is the statement that emotions are just a form of energy, forever seeking expression. Think about that, that is so cool. An emotion is just a form of energy. And energy can be a new feeling exciting or motivated. Or it can feel heavy and intense. But even if it's uncomfortable, it's an awkward feeling uncomfortable feeling. It's just energy in sending with it and allowing it and noticing it and processing it and releasing it. Rather than choosing to drown it in food or alcohol or sex or anything else, noticing it and naming it. This is sadness, this is fear. This is what I'm thinking. And this is creating the energy that's making me feel this way. That is what allows you to let it go. And that's why we have to be careful not to suppress the emotion or turn to buffering. It only forces the energy deeper into us and it will come back because remember, it's forever seeking expression, naming it recognize it, processing it that is expressing it. So let's talk for a minute about the difference between allowing an emotion and reacting to emotions. So this past week, in fact, it was Monday this past week, was one of those days where every time I turned around, something happened that I didn't expect. I didn't like I woke up I started the day waking up from a terrible, scary dream about my youngest son that felt very real. You know that feeling you wake up already sick to your stomach. And before you realize it was just a dream. And then you got to talk to your kid and hear His voice and make sure he's okay even though you know it was just a dream. And then before I even brushed my teeth that day, I found a banking error in my checking account. And that was no fault of mine. I went to the lab on that before I brush my teeth. After I brush my teeth. I went to the lab to get some blood work done. And a woman pulled up in the parking spot next to me and opened her door and slid And it so hard inside of my car, my car literally shook. I went into the lab, and I was presented with a bill for hundreds of dollars that I was not anticipating didn't know that was coming. So you get the picture, right. And that's just a piece of it as a few events, from what seemed like a never ending DAY OF SHIT I didn't like. So I got out of the lab, I sat in my car, and I thought, I just don't want to do anything, like I just want to disappear. I just want to sit here and not do life today. And I'm not gonna lie, the tears are flowing, I didn't even want to drive home. I just sat there. And I just felt sad. And I felt angry, and I felt frustrated. And that is what happens when you're allowing the emotions. Now if I was reacting to my emotions, I could have pulled out of the parking lot driven home bit my husband's head off when I got there and said something like, Listen, I'm going to shitty mood, just leave me alone. Right? That's reacting to your emotions. And that's what puts up a wall between us connecting and healing ourselves in also connecting to our loved ones. Now, when I got home that day, my husband did asked me because it was obvious, it was not okay. He's like, are you okay? And I said, I'm really not okay, I'm having a very hard time pulling my head out of my ass today. I just need a minute to just sit down and figure this out. And that's what I did. I just took some time for myself. And you can imagine that all the little things that I just shared with you. They were not the real issue. The real issue was me thinking, life is short. And I want life to be amazing. And here I am dealing with this petty bullshit. But petty bullshit is just a part of life. People don't pay attention and they smack in your car. What are you going to do? What are you going to let that mean to you? And more importantly, how do you want to feel, because that's the part you get to decide. Once you allow the emotions to be there, you notice what you're feeling and where you're feeling in your body, and you label it and you know that the worst thing that can happen is that you're just going to feel bad or uncomfortable, but it's not going to kill you, you get to stay in it, you get to feel it. And then you get to allow it to dissipate. So there's another trap here in having a bad day, telling yourself that your emotion is justified, it's a dangerous place to go. Telling yourself things like I deserve to be angry, because the person the bank didn't do their job. And that resulted in a lot of work for me. I deserve to be frustrated, because even though my car wasn't damaged, that woman should have been paying attention. And you probably have friends or loved ones that you would share stories with of your bad day. And they'll say, Oh, you have every right to be pissed. You have every right to feel hurt, you have every right to be sad. And although that may be very true. The question is, is that how you want to feel is that the place where you want to spend your time in this life, regardless of the truth, that the circumstances themselves may justify a negative emotion in your mind, and in the minds of many people around you.
18:26
I think one of the best red flags is when you can catch yourself making statements like that makes me mad. Anytime you hear yourself, say that, say that someone else did something that makes you feel a certain way. You just gave away your emotional independence. Because it's what you think of what someone else did. That creates that emotion. Now what they did, when someone slams their car door into you without looking, you can think you are careless and rude. And you can get yourself all worked up. And like the trap that I mentioned a minute ago, anyone will tell you be justified in feeling that way. Or you can decide that, you know, that wasn't cool by any means. But your thought can be I'm not going to allow that to ruin my day. And then guess what? You will not feel angry. Her action did not cause the anger. You thought about her action caused the anger. Now I shared with you in a previous show that the radiologists who read my CT scan in 2018 failed to report that there was a significant tumor in my chest, which became advanced metastatic disease by my next scan. Now, would anyone say that I would be justified to be angry with him? Yeah, of course they would. But I have a choice about how I want to feel. And I want to feel emotions that support my healing and support me enjoying my life. So I make a choice over and over again, not to be angry. And that's a choice. That's available to all of us on any bad day. But sometimes it takes a while to get there. It's not always easy to work through really powerful emotions, you have to process them, write about them, understand the thoughts behind them, and talk to someone else to help get clarity. Like when I talk to my coach about what was happening, or how I saw it. And she's like, now, that's really not actually true. It's definitely a process. But it's a very doable process. And as much as I would love to live by the motto is no bad days. It's just not really realistic. We're only humans. And we're always working toward learning how to manage our expectations of life, how to manage the thoughts that go whipping through our minds. And as we get better and better at doing that. I do think I do know, there are fewer bad days, because you don't think of them in that way as frequently as you once did. So I hope that helps to put some things into perspective for you. And I would love to hear your questions on on this on this topic. If you struggle if what I talked about in the show doesn't quite make sense to you, or you have a question about it, ask me come and find the Facebook group, the breast cancer recovery group on Facebook, it's a free group. It is there to lend you support in this is the kind of thing that we want to support each other in as survivors. As women recovering from breast cancer living with breast cancer going through breast cancer treatment, we need support, it's really important to manage our mind and manage our thoughts around the things that are happening in our lives. And I would love love, love to hear your thoughts and to offer that support. So find the breast cancer recovery group on Facebook. I'd love to see you there and know that you are not alone. You do not have to be perfect. But you can manage your mind around the things that aren't bringing the results that you want to have in your life. All right, I'm going to talk to you again next week and until then my friend be good to yourself and expect other people to be good to you as well. Take care of
22:20
us cook your courage to the tears laid all your doubts your mind is clearer than before your heart is full and wanting more your futures Give it all you know you been waiting
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