If there’s one thing I could change about the experience of breast cancer, (even though it’s hard to pick only one) It would be the compulsion to hold everything in because of the fear of worrying or upsetting someone else. 

All emotions are a part of the human experience, and having the skill to express, process, and release negative emotions so that you have the space in your life to increase positive emotions is critical in the healing process.  

In this episode, I’ll share a personal story with you that got me thinking about the pain we bring on ourselves when we won’t express our struggles even to ourselves. 

I’ll tell you some of the reasons why that happens, and I’ll give you some ideas of how you can change that. 

We must work together to break the silent suffering that too many of us endure after a breast cancer diagnosis. 

Listen now and let’s start that process. 

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Read the full transcript below: 

Laura Lummer 0:00
You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills and the insights and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life, that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started. Hey, friends, you're listening to Episode 319. And I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And today, we're going to talk about some really good stuff, we're going to touch on a lot of the things that are in the third pillar of breast cancer recovery. My third pillar of breast cancer recovery, which is regroup in the regroup pillar. And if you haven't heard me talk about the four pillars of breast cancer recovery before, it's basically when I went through my own process and then started coaching women, I started to see some similarities, I started to see similarities in the process and the progress that we made, when it came to supporting our ability to heal, to going through that recovery process of making sense, or trying to make sense of what we've been through. And then trying to decide how we want to move forward in life. And what I saw in this process, what I experienced for myself, was what I ended up calling the four pillars of breast cancer recovery. Pillar one is release. And it's a matter of letting go. Letting go of so many of the thoughts and belief systems that were ingrained in us for some reason, that do not serve us any longer. And that not only don't serve us, but oftentimes do us harm by causing stress by causing mental distress. And by causing us to beat ourselves up, we've got to let go of so many things. And it does doesn't have to do with breast cancer, but letting go of belief systems, I call these the manual. And our manuals are kind of our rule books for living. Some of our rules are great and service, some of our rules, and I'm going to go with the majority of them work against us, if we don't take the time to see why we even have them, and why we hold on to them, so that we can change them and create more joyful lives. The second pillar of breast cancer recovery is renew. Because once we let go of these things, we've got some space, to renew life, to bring in new things, to breathe in newness to make better choices, better choices, meaning not that you are making bad choices, better choices, meaning choices that serve you and increase your joy, increase your ability to support your own body's ability to heal, and just make a life that's better than before breast cancer. And the third pillar is regroup. Because once you start refilling yourself and renewing yourself, we start to take a look around a set life and kind of regroup things and say, Is this job work for me? Does this business work for me? Do these relationships work from it? Does all the things that make up my life all these components? Do they work for me? Or do I need to switch them up? Do I need to put more energy into creating better relationships? Do I need to reevaluate where I find my joy in what I do for work for whatever right for hobbies, for passion, for enjoyment, and we kind of restructure life. And then the fourth pillar is revive because revive is just means keep putting more energy into those things that bring more joy to your life and spread your gifts to the world. Your gift of whatever it is your gift of knowing exactly what to say the right time, your gift of giving big strong hugs to people, your gift of baking the best sourdough bread, I don't know whatever your gift is, whatever you love, whatever when you put it out in the world, it brings more joy to people that's revived. Today, I'm going to well, actually, I'm going to tell you a story first, because what we're going to talk about is a little bit of relief and a little bit of regroup as well. So recently, last week, I lost a cousin of mine to oral cancer. Now, it was my dad's sister's daughter. And I hadn't seen her many years. We don't have a close relationship. But you know, when we were all kids, there's just a connection, right? You have family of cousins. So we know about each other. We kind of say things on Facebook. We didn't have a close relationship, but I don't think that matters. But what was happening is that my mom said something to me now My cousin suffered horribly, in the late stages of her disease, oral cancer can be just absolutely horrific and hers was. And my mom said to me, you know, her mom, my aunt, relate the fact that she never complained. So my mom said this about my cousin, she was, you know, she started telling me some of the things she went through. My aunt was a caretaker for her for the last few months of her life until she couldn't do it anymore, didn't have the skills or the tools to be able to provide for the needs my cousin had. And my mom said, even when she went through all that, she never complained. And when I heard that, like something inside of my chest just kind of snapped. And I just thought, what the hell? Why is that a good thing? Why are we acting like this person who suffered horrifically didn't complain is a badge of honor. What the hell? And I think about one of the things that in the four pillars I talked about, which is this protective barrier, that I noticed this in myself, and I see this in nearly every client that I coach, we want to hold back. We don't want to say things. We don't want to communicate what we're feeling and experiencing, because we believe we have the ability to control other people's emotions. So I hear things like I didn't want to say anything, because I didn't want them to worry. And I think, okay, that doesn't make any sense that right there is a thought error. And I did the same thing, right? Oh, just act like everything's good. Act like you're strong. Like you're the pink warrior act like it's all good. There's no problem here. There's no problem. I just can't sleep at night, I'm bald, I'm losing my hair, I've alternating bouts of constipation and diarrhea. Half the time, I feel like I'm physically in energy, energetically, completely disconnected from life. Because of the treatments I'm going through. My body self image has been had the rug pulled out from underneath it, because I just had my breasts removed, or one of them removed. radiation burns. All this we're going through and we say, but I won't say anything. Because I don't want anybody to worry.

Laura Lummer 7:15
People are already worried, okay, just because you don't say what you're going through, does not impact their story. They're your children. They're your loved ones. They're your parents, your siblings, your friends, your spouses. They're already worried. Okay, so you not caring for yourself. You telling yourself a story of it's strong to not complain, is not sparing anyone from worry. Not while you're in treatment, not while you're struggling after treatment, not when you're 10 years out of treatment, and life is just hard. And you got a lot on your mind. God, this just popped into my head, I watched this this movie recently and called boy swallows the universe. I just want to cry thinking about this little boy's face actor in this show. His name is Eli. He's the cutest, just most compassionate little soul. And he goes through tremendous struggles in this series. And it's heartbreaking what this little boy goes through. And at one point, he's just crying and crying, crying, and his stepdad like, why are you crying? And he's like, I don't know, I just have a lot of tears in me. And I just started crying, listening to him, I want to cry. Now just saying that. But sometimes we have a lot of tears in us. Because we're freaking human. And sometimes things are hard. You have to be able to talk about that. You have to be able to get that out of you. And I sound really passionate about that right now, because I am. I'm very passionate about that. Because I've felt within myself, what it feels like in the damage that it does to hold in emotions, to not find your voice to not express yourself. I personally have felt the physical and emotional damage. I personally have witnessed it and client after client. And I encourage it all the time. And I coach people all the time. And we avoid it for one reason that I just explained that we think other people don't worry. We want people to see us a certain way. And that's all a result of a story that you have. Why is it important that people perceive you in a certain way, rather than people love you for who you are. See you for who you are. Get to know you for who you are. This protective barrier isn't protecting anyone. It's just a barrier. It prevents connection. It prevents you getting to know yourself. It prevents you allowing the people who love you to get to know you. So why do we do this? Why do we hold back? Why do people perceive people not saying Something about what they're really going through, has a badge of honor. Right as as a thing of courage, this is courageous to go through horrendous suffering, physical and emotional pain, and never say a word about it. And I'll tell you what I've seen, one of the reasons I just talked about is that we say we want to protect other people, as if you have control over their thoughts and their emotions, which you never do. Another thing is that we compare ourselves all the time, we compare, we look at other people and say other people have it worse than me, or they already have it hard enough, or they've already got something hard going on. And that may be true. And what they have going on, they also need to talk about, they also need to find an outlet for that, but it does it minimize your own suffering. Suffering is suffering. Okay, I have had so many people ask me over the course of this last, you know, 13 years since my first diagnosis of cancer, I've had so many people ask me questions like, well, you know, does it bother you when that person didn't even have to go through chemotherapy? And you did. And I think, no, that person was diagnosed with cancer, I don't care what they had to go through. I don't care what their treatment was. They suffered, they went through trauma, I don't care what stage it was, or how widespread it was or where it was, or what kind of cancer it was suffering is suffering. And that doesn't just mean cancer, it means all kinds of suffering, financial suffering, social suffering, any kind of suffering, it hurts, right? So comparing our suffering to someone else's suffering, and then holding in what you need. And that that energy of expressing what you need, may be the exact thing you need to do to support your body's ability to heal. Maybe it's the holding in the making yourself small, the making your priorities worthless, right? What's important to me, what's harming me, it's not important enough to talk about just minimizing and diminishing yourself the energy of that think about the energy of that, is that an expanse of energy? Is that a healing energy? Does that support you in any way? It doesn't. And so using this false narrative that our human brains throw up there, for whatever reason, that somebody else has it worse. So just like, put your big girl panties on and move forward. That's when we got to come back to that release pillar. We've got to let ideas like that go. They don't serve us. They don't serve anyone. They don't serve relationships, and they show us how to not support healing. That to me is not something to be admired. Being completely emotionally disconnected from yourself, and the people who love you, is not a badge of honor. It's something that needs to be worked on. And it is it's challenging. If you've never done it, if you always held things back, if you've always told yourself this story, this untrue story that you somehow keep the peace that you somehow get to make everybody happy that you get to relive, relive every one of their worries, if you told yourself that your whole life is going to be challenging to start taking small steps towards expressing yourself. But expressing yourself is so important. And another reason why we don't express ourselves is because we limit people around us. We don't believe that other people have the emotional capacity to deal with what we might want to express. Right? So if you say if somebody says to you, someone close to you, I wasn't just mean to random people on the street, but someone you love someone you're close to. And they're like, how are you doing, and you're not doing well. And you don't say, you know, I'm struggling right now, I'm having a hard time with something right now. But instead, you say, I'm good, I'm fine, I'm fine. That's really limiting your belief in that person. You're putting a limit on their ability to cope, their ability to grow as far as their own emotions, their own emotional capacity. And in a word, it may be difficult for them, some things may be difficult for them to hear. But in processing together, these things that are difficult, everyone gets the chance to expand their emotional capacity. Everyone gets a chance to be more for someone else, to be there for someone else, and to be trusting of someone else, both us and the person who's hearing right. And this is so important when we create that space. When we allow ourselves to hold space for ourself to say in this space, I just need to say what's really happening. And I want to be really clear here This doesn't mean getting stuck and indulging in negative emotions, we get stuck in these negative emotions, because we don't talk about them. Right? When I have clients come to me, and they tell me, I've been stuck here for a long time, and we start digging into what they've been stuck in, I can physically see when they let it go, I can physically see their breakthroughs. And I've heard so many times, I feel so much better just because I talked about this. So when you feel or hear yourself, say, or think I'm stuck here, I'm stuck here, let that be a red flag to you. That whatever it is you're stuck on needs to be talked about, we cannot resolve the issues that we have. And the places we're stuck with the same origin that got us stuck there with our brain, we sometimes have to reach out and get that support, we've got to regroup, we've got to find our champions, and my regroup pillar, I encourage people determine who your champions are in life. So let me go back just a minute here and say, when I talk about champions, when you have something that you're struggling with, that you're struggling to get through, you may not feel safe, emotionally safe, expressing these things to the people who are closest to you, because you've never done it before. Because you've never practiced it. Or because you haven't worked on your belief that you expressing yourself is going to cause someone else worry or suffering in that house somehow is your responsibility. So when that happens, it's so important to reach outside of you. I know when I was going through chemotherapy, when I went through my first cancer diagnosis, when I was going through the recovery, I found a tremendous amount of support. In my mind body oncology coach. That's who I went to, because I felt like she got it, she understood what I had been through she herself had survived breast cancer. And she had tools and insights that I didn't yet have. And I needed to be really open and honest and raw about what was happening. And that's where I felt the safest. So sometimes when we're starting out, you got to find a safe space, not sometimes we always have to find a safe space. But sometimes when you're starting to learn to express yourself, that safe space needs to be in someone who's a counselor, a therapist, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a coach, something of that nature, that they're not close enough to you that you feel responsible for causing worry to them. And that can be a stepping stone that can be training wheels, to strengthening your ability to vocalize yourself. I know I've talked about this on the show before, where so often when I ask a client, tell me where you feel this. It's right here in their throat. It's right here in their heart is the throat, it's the it's the tension. It's the closing, it's the contraction in the throat and neck and chest area. And think about the energetics of that. Think about the energetics of not releasing your voice, your feelings, your emotions, where they get stuck, and where you physically feel them getting stuck. This is how you get to learn about your body. Understand the signals your body is sending you and tune in to like, Oh, I'm feeling this stuck, like in my heart, like my heart is hurting. Words can help to release those things. And this just isn't me relaying anecdotal evidence from my own experience. And from the experience, I have coaching women over all these years, but there's research that shows strong social relationships influence physical health, positively, there's also research that shows that toxic social relationships are detrimental to our health. Hence, going back to the regroup pillar. When we look at things and say, How is this serving me? Is this relationship serving me is this supporting my body's ability to heal, we need to look at it on both ends. Because we're certainly not going to go into a toxic relationship and open ourselves and speak about what's most important and what's deepest in our heart, we're not going to do that in a place where trust hasn't been established, or where there's fear that something you say may be used against you. And so think about that, in that kind of relationship where you feel that way. Is healing possible.

Laura Lummer 19:32
If you're in that energy, wherever it is, if it's a work energy, if it's a personal relationship energy, and you continue to go back in it and put yourself in that position again, and hold in what needs to be expressed. And notice where it feels in your body. Ask yourself, is that ever going to be supportive of your body's ability to heal? And you have to answer that question for yourself. I already know the answer but you answer it for yourself. Right? We come back to this studies. And you know what, here's a really impactful thing as well. So let's talk about isolation. Let's talk about strong social relationships and isolation, right? Because technically, when you're not communicating, right, when you never complain, and again, I don't know if I finish my thought on that earlier. Never complaining doesn't mean indulging in negative emotions. It doesn't mean staying in and complaining and putting energy back into the same thing over and over, right? It's like saying, this sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks over and over. It means that there's some times when we're working through stuff and it gets hard. And there's some times where we've got to release something. I'll tell you, I've shared on this podcast before I have what's called a hand and foot syndrome as a result of the chemotherapy that I'm on. And some sometimes it's really painful. It's very uncomfortable. And sometimes it's worse than others. And some days, it's uncomfortable for so many consecutive days that the suffering just kind of builds up. And I noticed the other day, it was one of those days, it was everything I touched hurt in no matter that I was wearing two layers of gloves and doing all the things. In fact, as I'm recording this podcast, I actually took my gloves off because I had my nails done. And I love the way they look and they bring me joy. So I wanted to take my gloves off for a while. But the other day, I was doing something and it was just so frustrating. Because even just anything, anything I touched anything I picked up hurt. And finally I was getting ready for bed. And I realized that there was a lot of tension building up in me. And I realized that I hadn't even allowed it allowed myself to express it to myself to just take a moment and say, This frickin sucks right now. I'm sick of this, right? And I did when I realized that I stopped and I went, I feel like I have some tears in me. Because this frickin sucks right now. Obviously, it sucks just talking about it in this moment. But I gave myself a few minutes to just be enough to allow it. People ask me all the time, how do I process emotions? How do I let things go? How do I do that? You hold space for yourself. In that moment, I stopped. And I just went,

Laura Lummer 22:19
I'm going to just let myself feel what this feels like. I'm going to let the tears flow. I'm going to allow myself to express to myself that right now I'm frustrated. That right now I'm sick of this, that right now, I wish I didn't have to manage this. And once I did that, and once I allowed that for myself, I felt better. I released that I didn't have to hold it in. And I didn't feel the need to express it anyone else at the time, I just needed to recognize it for myself. I needed to address it for myself. And then I didn't stay in it. I did it. The next morning, the next day, it was like this sucks. That sucks. It sucks all the time. Right? That's indulging that staying in that indulgent emotion, I went back to managing it and I had the capacity to manage it better. Because I recognized that the emotions that were coming behind it, were at a point where they needed release. And sometimes that happens, right. So the difference between allowing expression and then staying in and wallowing so to speak in an emotion is you express what needs to be done, you release that. And then you decide now what I want to do. Now how do I want to move forward? Now what's my next step? Okay, so let's come back to isolation, I want just wanted to make sure that I finished differentiating that between expressing your negative emotion and getting stuck in it. So let's talk a little bit about isolation. Because when I'm talking about isolation in this in reference to this conversation, I mean, isolating yourself from connection. And, you know, I'm not talking about isolation, like being locked in a room by yourself where you can't be with anybody. You could be in a room full of people, in still isolate yourself. You can be in a relationship for a long time, and be very isolated. God knows I've been in those relationships. And when we, what we do, the choice we make when we isolate ourselves is we choose not to speak, we choose not to hold space for connection. We choose not to allow the other person that we want so badly to connect to. We choose to limit their ability and their emotional capacity to deal with us. And we isolate ourselves. We pull ourselves back, we put more space in between us and somebody else. And that can have isolation now isolation as far as physical human isolation as well, that can have really significant effects on our health. But here's the thing. When we stop expressing ourselves so much we keep the stories in our head, then we start telling ourselves now You'd have stories about ourselves. And I've seen this over and over my clients that results in physical isolation, because we stopped going on around people. And we start to say, I just feel sad, I just feel depressed, I don't feel motivated. I don't feel like engaging with people. That is what's happening because you're suppressing everything you're feeling and everything you need to say. And it's heavy, right? We talk about the energy, I feel heavy, it feels dense, it feels heavy, it weighs you down. And as a result of that being weighed down, you don't move out into life. Right. So isolation, physical isolation, emotional isolation, and especially over long periods of time can have significant negative effects on our human brain, on our mental and emotional and physical health. In fact, studies have shown that parts of our brain, the hypothalamus, parts of our brain actually shrink, when we isolate ourselves, parts of our brain shrink. That's pretty significant. Social isolation. And it's been studied mostly a lot in older adults, because as people age, oftentimes, it'd be becomes more difficult for them to make connections, because they're not going to work everyday where they see people, they don't have kids, where they're doing playdates and things and taking their kids to parties and connecting with other people, their kids have grown, maybe they're retired, or maybe they're tired after work, or they don't want to do the same social things that people that work do. And so the world starts to get smaller, their social connections unless they're very intentional about them. And I don't mean like 89 years old, I mean, 5055 60 years old, I see people my age, all the time, isolating themselves more and more. And this is actually having an impact on our brains. And not only that, that it doesn't just have an impact on our brain. It affects the levels of different neurotransmitters, and chemicals and hormones in our body, like serotonin and dopamine, those feel good chemicals, and it can decrease our feelings of pleasure and our sensitivity to negative stimuli increases. Because we gotta have stimulation, we're human beings, we want stimulation. Think about this for yourself, think about someone that you may know, or this may relate to you. And think about someone who doesn't have a lot of positive interactions in their lives, who doesn't have a lot of friends, or just even a few friends, but engage with them frequently, or a hobby or a volunteer role, or a job or something where they're stimulation in their life. Think about how those people gravitate more towards negativity, negative stories, because negative stories like God help us if we watch the news every night. And then we want to relay those kinds of stories that are happening and they're so negative, right, but that negativity is a stimulus. So when we don't have enough positive stimulus, when we don't have enough connection, we want something to feel like we're alive. So we gravitate more towards negative stimuli. And that increases and then increases how shitty everything feels too, right? So it's not just this effect on our brain, but because of the effect on our brain health that isolating ourselves has, we have more susceptibility to inflammation. And then that's going to affect not just our mental health with our shrieking hypothalamus, but it's going to affect our physical health as well. So I want to share this information with you from the World Health Organization. Because I think this is kind of captures everything I'm talking about here really well. So the World Health Organization reported that there was a 25% increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression world wide, during the first year of the pandemic, when we were what? isolated. They attributed this spike in mental health decline. Two factors, including social isolation, loss of loved ones, economic instability, and uncertainty about the future. So I read that and let me go through those again, one by one. Let's think about your experience with breast cancer. Let's think about how it feels when you don't allow yourself to connect to people because of the stories you have about expressing yourself saying what needs to be said and processing your emotions. Social isolation. Is that part of it? It absolutely is. I've just talked about that. For what I don't know the last 2030 minutes. loss of loved ones. Well, this may not be the physical loss of a loved one, but it's a distance. Right? The loss of connection with our loved ones a creates a distance and that distance feeds into the feelings of isolation. economic instability. When we're going through breast cancer and breast cancer treatment, economic instability, the fear of finances is huge. And I'm so committed to talking more about that on this podcast, because I just see it. And it's not just when we're in treatment, but it's also when we're in recovery and trying to support our body's ability to heal, even if we have no evidence of disease, and the stories we have about money, and where we should spend money and if we're worse money, and are we taking money from someone else, and that economic fears have a direct impact on what we're willing to invest into support our health, mentally, emotionally, and physically, and uncertainty about the future. So first of all, we never know what's coming in the future, right? The future is never certain. But then for some reason, our brains really lock on to that, when we have a diagnosis of a disease. Or when we went through something like the pandemic, right, what does this pandemic mean? How many people get infected? Who's telling the truth? Who's not telling the truth? I be afraid. Should I be? Should I go outside? You know, we're a mess. Oh, my God, there's so much uncertainty around it. Right? But also with breast cancer, right? The brain locks onto that, do you feel uncertainty about the future? Absolutely. One, it's in the beginning, am I gonna survive this? Then when I survived this? What's my life gonna be? Like? How are my relationships going to change because of the things that have happened to me, because of the difference in my appearance, because of the difference in the way that I think, is the uncertainty? Should I make plans? Or am I going to cancer again? Should I make plans? Or am I going to die? Should I invest in time, money, energy in this thing, is going to be worth it. All those kinds of uncertainties are in our heads. I know this because I coach people all the time on this. And because I live with that as well. So think about 25% increase in anxiety and depression. And these factors are what were attributed to it. And these are the exact same factors that the majority of us struggle with, after a diagnosis of cancer. And what is one of the ways to help us through that increasing connection? Social relationships are critical for our mental, emotional and physical well being. And holding ourselves back is never a way to connect more ever. So what can you do? How do you build connections? How do you start off safely? Well, honestly, there's a lot of ways that we can go out into the world. And now even as adults, who again, as I said a minute ago may find it more difficult to connect to people. If you find it difficult to connect to people, you're not alone. There's a lot of people out there finding it difficult to connect, but wanting to connect. But fortunately, we have this thing called the internet, which is a blessing and a curse. And all around the country. I'm not sure if this is international, but I know in the United States, you can go online and find a thing called meetups. I have friends who love to travel, who spouses don't love to travel. And they go into meetup groups, with other women who love to travel. And they make amazing friends and have incredible experiences going with these women in the safe social groups, making new friends and learning to travel. I have seen people do that when they wanted to do a 5k. And they don't know anybody in their life who wants to start to train to do a 5k. So they go to a meetup for people who are like, hey, I want to learn how to do a 5k. And I want to support my health. And I kind of want to challenge myself, but nobody I know and no one I live with wants to do it. And so you can find meetup groups, there are meetup groups for everything. Yoga, sound baths, fitness groups, running groups, travel groups, food groups, literally everything. So if you feel like you want more social connection, and you don't know how, remember this, you're not alone. And a lot of people are looking for connection. And so check out something like meetup groups, or, you know, I think they still have what is it called Parks and Rec in most cities, and they have lots of adult programming in these things. So don't be afraid to reach out to your community, your local community and your neighborhood to start to establish new connections and relationships. I know around me, there's all kinds of like, my group text goes off so much. I have them all muted now because there's trivia night so there's a group of us who love to go to trivia night, there's Bingo Night, and there's all kinds of things that are free to go to, that a bunch of people I know love to go to. And so I'm in this group, that group this group and you know, just pick and choose Oh, I think next week I'll go to trivia or hey, I want to connect with these people and they all get together there. So there's lots of fun things that are out in your community that you can look to, to be able to connect with people in Speaking about this wonderful thing called technology, both the blessing and the curse that can be used to, there's so many social support groups if you don't feel safe, or you live in isolated place where it's not easy to get out and get to groups, use Zoom calls. And I hear this often people have this objection and say, Well, I want to connect personally, I get that. And I would love that for you. Because being in the presence of someone's physical energy is super powerful and amazing and always better than being online. But being online and connecting with someone is way better than being alone. And being totally isolated, and not feeling like you have anyone you can connect to. In my role as a certified network, metabolic advocate. That's all done online. All my coaching is done online. As a matter of fact, one of my goals is to have a live event in this upcoming year. But so far, for all the years I've coached, it's all done online. I work with my naturopath, my metabolic Training Institute of Health's trained naturopath, she's in Portugal, I'm so grateful for it. So utilize the internet and the ability to connect with people over the internet in ways that are positive and supportive for you. Especially if that means being able to talk freely and safely about what you need to say, what needs to be heard. Okay, that's so important. And when we do this, it improves your communication skills. The more you learn, and I'll tell you, I start off coaching some people and as they're talking to me, I can tell they're keeping everything at a surface level. Because we have this idea of how we're supposed to present ourselves. We talk ourselves out of the pain that we're in, we say immediately Well, I know that that's not how I should feel. So I shouldn't be happy. What the heck, we're not supposed to be happy all the time. There's no way we can go through this life and be happy all the time. Because life has a lot of challenges. And it can be really tough. Sometimes, let's just accept that. Let's just say that's what it is. Okay, let's just embrace that. And it's like when you give someone a fitness program, one of the things that you have to do to enable them to be able to succeed in this program is planned for setbacks, because there will be setbacks, there will be challenging times, there will be challenging emotions, there will be tough periods. This is just a simple truth of life. And the sooner we embrace that, the sooner we're willing to admit that the sooner we're willing to accept that it's okay to not be happy all the time. It's true. I'm going to struggle with things. And when I struggle with things, there's a reason why I have people in my life who love me, that's for support. If you don't know how to get those words out, because it's never happened before. Because most generations before us didn't have to work on this stuff and understand the importance of working on this stuff. I cannot encourage you enough to reach out to someone outside your circle of influence. So a coach, a counselor, a therapist, someone where you can start to develop the skill of communicating openly, constructively, transparently. And being able to express all the good stuff in all the NOC good stuff without getting stuck in the NOC good stuff. Building your communication skills with yourself and with someone else is just so important for your overall well being. That's what I have for you today. I'm going to start giving out badges of courage for people who aren't afraid to say, hey, today's sucks, and here's why Can somebody help me? Think through this work through this? Right? So we look for solutions, because we're not afraid to say I need some support right now. I need some help. I want to feel better. I want to solve this. In order to do it. I've got to acknowledge it. I've got to accept it. And I've got to talk it out. All right. If you need help with that, you know where you can find me. The breast cancer recovery coach.com Go to coaching and programs on my website. You can join my better than before breast cancer membership. Or work with me one on one. All right. But whatever you do, whatever you choose, just don't hold everything in. Please don't do that. Take care of yourself, my friends. I'll talk to you soon.