54. Dealing with Big Feelings

Hi everyone. I’m Saralyn Hodgkin, and this is the podcast to practice your leadership.

Hi all. Thanks for coming and joining in. Love being here with you. I thought that I would start today with little story of something that happened to me a few weeks ago now. And just that we’d, we’d follow along from that story. I thought I’d share. Cause as I’ve been reflecting on this thing that happened to me to keep you further in suspense, um, I just think that there’s maybe stuff that can be offered here for you.

Pick up what’s useful, leave, what’s not. So here’s my 2 cents, is that I woke up, great, did our thing as a family, great. Go out, go for a walk with the dog. Awesome. And, halfway through the walk I’m like, oh my back. Ugh. Doesn’t feel great. What is going on? And I’ve had back issues before. I know how this goes, right?

It comes on gradual. Those who of us who have had something like this, you know how this goes. It comes on gradual and then you’re like, oh my gosh. Some of us go to the floor, some of us go to a bed, some of us just go rock still. Like, whatever your thing is, you go to what you need. And I’m like, ah, that’s what’s happening.

And so over the course of the day, I’m like, here goes my back. I know how this goes. And I just, I, I gotta wait till the chiro opens, which they’re closed for a couple days. I gotta wait till the Cairo opens, they’ll fix me up. Everything will be fine. I know how this goes, and you can already hear my voice.

It’s like, I know how this goes. I will control this situation. I know how this goes. And therefore I will manage not just my expectations, but the world’s expectations on how this is gonna go. It, it did not go that way.

Oh my gosh. I am laughing now. I was not laughing. By that night, I was able to sleep in my bed and I was able to go to sleep. Great. And woke up the next morning, I’m like, not gone. You know how sometimes it’s just like, okay, needed rest, 24 hours, whatever, but not gone, had a nap that day. Thanks rest. Well, you know, giving me a signal.

For me that was like, okay signal. Hey Saralyn, this is your body talking to you. Are you gonna listen? Please rest. So I did. I had a nap, but it’s like, okay now that’s over. We’re just gonna get back to things, right? I wake up, I try to get out of the bed. I really tried and I’m sure it would’ve been funny to somebody watching if they weren’t feeling the significant pain I had, and I then spent, two days, because the chiro wasn’t open, I’m still controlling the situation, chiro’s gonna manage this for me, uh, sleeping in a lazyboy, because the pain’s so bad, I just can’t move. And I’m down in, uh, what’s it called? Robax or whatever. I’m just, I’m like, uh, my partner’s name is Scott. I’m like, babe, hit me with the drugs.

And I don’t usually like taking Advils and Tylenols unless necessary, it’s my thing. Hit me with drugs. Give it to me, and I was in so much pain that by the time the chiro opened and I walked in there, I was bawling my eyes out. She looked at me and she’s like, I’ve never seen you like this. I’ve never seen your back injured in this way.

As she does her assessment and because let’s just tell each other way too much, you’ve been constipated for three, maybe four days? Emerge. So, go to emerge, and I am just shaking from, from the pain. But, and here’s where we get into this from the emotions that I am not making sense of at all, because I’m in so much pain.

I, I can’t, I can’t think, I can’t sense. Nurses are talking to me and asking me things, and I’m just, I, I just, I can’t handle. And my nervous system is trying to tell me things. Everything is trying to tell me things and the control is not working.

How I move through this is with some good pain management, with a lot of fear, despair, lot of grief. What do we hold on our backs all? Lot of grief. And they kept me in the hospital overnight, had to manage me and I thought, okay, I’m at the hospital. They’ll do pain management, they’ll see what’s going on and they will fix it and we will continue to control this.

As if it’s being controlled right now. My gosh. Anyways, long and the short of it, as my mom used to say, is there was no controlling. There was simply experiencing, dwelling, being, and it was moment to moment, and it wasn’t for a couple of days. This then lasted another two weeks.

Not at that pain because I had a fantastic prescribed regiment of pain medication that I also had fantastic support at home to be able to get off some of that pain medication when it was no longer needed. You know, addiction is real and I’m sensitive to that. So, it was a moment of Saralyn, listen. Stop and listen and feel and once, once the acute pain was managed, and I knew my limitations, which was sleeping in a lazyboy for two weeks, that it was this moment of such emotion and learning.

And it didn’t start off that way. It started as, let’s control this. Then it was grieve, grieve, grieve. Fear, fear, fear. And what I came to realize is that I was dwelling in the world of uncertainty, and one of the resources that helped me come to that clarity is a book some of you may know that I did not want to read called Big Feelings, How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay.

And a colleague of mine, Alexandra, reminded me of this book just a couple weeks before and I was like, oh fine, I’ll order it. I don’t wanna read it. I don’t wanna read about emotions. I read Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown, and fabulous book I I, stop, just stop with all this talk of emotion . Oh my gosh. Um,

This book, How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay, really helped me out. I’ll share a link or something here. Um, it’s by, uh, Liz and Mollie if anybody follows ’em on Instagram, their images are fantastic. But one of the chapters is all about uncertainty and there’s some about this book that is just so approachable for me.

And it was my time and space and my head space and my requirement and my need to learn about uncertainty, which for me is also a lack of control. It brings hints, dollops of perfectionism. In this moment it also brought despair. Those are probably the three primary, lots of other emotions, but those are the three primary ones.

And, and lots of others, like lots of frustration and asking for help, gimme a break, and not being able to put on my own underwear and, you know, the whole bit. Anyways, it, it really did bring up this uncertainty and I thought, wow, maybe there’s something to share here because a lot of people I’m talking to these days have hints or in are in full front uncertainty moments and, uh, life, the universe invited me into a moment through me, whatever it is, into a moment of uncertainty that I was not gonna control my way out of, rationalize my way out of.

It was an embodied experience, and so I unpacked it a little bit and while feeling all the feels, one of the things that I chose in the face of uncertainty is first to face it, which is not always easy.

I, I learned facing uncertainty when my dad died when I was 13 and it was just years of uncertainty, right? You can’t, I chose not to ignore it. I learned my way into not ignoring it. So that’s a muscle I’ve built. So I brought that muscle on in and said, okay, you know, like your quads or your glutes, like, come on, activate.

And, uh, part of facing it for me was just a simple question of what am I afraid of? And no judgment in that, not being sass about that, cuz sometimes I am sass about that. But literally, what am I afraid of here? I’m afraid of turning out to be like my mom, there’s a whole story there people, that’s a whole nother conversation.

I’m scared of always being like this. I’m scared the pain will never go away. I’m scared that I’m gonna get older and my kids are gonna have to support me like this at a time when I don’t want them to. It, it, it just, it went on and on and on. I’m scared I’m not gonna be able to be there for people who I hold space for.

I, it, it just went on and I faced it and I faced it in a way where, wow, I’m not solving any of that. I’m just acknowledging it. And that’s what face it meant to me in that moment. And some of it was total legit. Some of it was in the moment, some of it, you know, probing with the question of like, okay, where’s the evidence here? Right.

But it was a moment of dwelling in uncertainty. To not have all the answers, to not be able to control or fix or work my way towards a solution. And it was definitely a moment where I had to come into the knowing, like the embodied knowing that I do not have all the answers here, that I don’t have this all figured out.

And this one woman, Selema, gave me some great advice, uh, she didn’t frame it as advice. She just said it. She was sharing her experience with me and she said, every morning I would wake up and just say, okay, yeah, it’s even just a little bit better today. Just a little. It’s like, yeah, I’ve done that before.

I’m gonna take that and so looking at not, not striving for some goalpost of progress, but just striving for some level of directionally right progress was helpful and tapping into my learning superpower was helpful and not in a way of, I’m ignoring things, but in a way of, okay, I’m resourceful, I’m capable, my family is here, and even more importantly, I am here for myself and I can trust myself cuz I’ve been through shit and I’ve been there for myself and it has not always worked out.

And I don’t know where this is gonna go, but it’s going. And so I’m stepping forward. Well, I wasn’t literally stepping cuz my back was injured, like I, I’m, I’m moving forward without all the answers. Right? There’s something about feelings and emotions as this point of data that threw me into learning, which threw me into moving forward in my heart, in my mind, and not dwelling in the despair.

Sometimes having big old cries, I mean, let’s not say sometimes, like multiple times a day, having big old cries, right? And I will say there was a moment in the hospital where I put my brand new, uh, they’re not AirPods, they’re Google Pixel Buds, whatever they’re called.

Anyways, plug my ears with music and I’m laying there and I was on pain management, which was awesome. But just listening to Billie Eilish and that album. What’s her album? Happy Ever After I think it is, and just breathing and it’s like, okay. One moment at a time here. I don’t need to look three weeks ahead.

I just need to get to the next, to the next, to the next moment. Name my feelings. Feel all the feels. Focus on the right now. Listen to some Billy Eilish and then I put on some Radiohead cuz that’s great. Anyway, and then I created this playlist. Anyways, that’s a whole nother story. Um, but you know, whatever playlist works for you.

And then over over days came into routines. Came into routines of, of how I was trying to move my body, take pain management, talking to my family, like just developing the routine that was needed now and the safety that I needed in that moment, in those moments. And so feeling all the feels and sense making this as a season really helped me have and maneuver and navigate those, uh, as Liz and Mollie call their book big feelings.

And part of what I realize, I mean, well and good to say after the fact like this lasted uh, two and a half, three weeks and, you know, um, even right now I’m probably, I dunno, 80%, 85%, uh, back into my mobility. But all to say that as I reflect on moving through emotions as data and maybe call it a growth mindset or Glennon Doyle’s word brutiful, brutal and beautiful, like saying this is a brutiful season and moment.

That context allowed me to be able to tap further into that knowing that I’m resourceful and capable. And when I wasn’t feeling that I was so appreciative to have people around me who reminded me of it, which was really helpful for me. But that I get through, what’s the saying, a hundred percent of my worst days that I get through those.

And in this Liz and Mollie book, Big Feelings, you know, the first step is to admit what’s going on here? Right? Like, what’s, what’s the the, the, the squiggly uphill battle that I’m about to go towards as I try to come into this season of healing. I learned into the art of patience. I, you know, I, I was ending 2022 with my two words being bold and possibility.

Those were my two words, and I came into 2023 going, wow, bold. You know what bold needs? Patient. Bold means tapping into discomfort. Bold means believing in myself. Bold does not mean hustle. It can at times, but in this moment, bold is not sort of on that yang side. It is on the yin side of the boldness of rest.

It also helped. You know, all of what I’ve just shared helped me take the grandiose nature that I felt that this was, and be able to make it a bit more manageable. It allowed me to be able to see that I thought I needed to know everything and control it and be it, but it’s like, okay, hold on.

If I just take it into its parts, go one day at a time. Okay, maybe that’s possible and maybe there is possibility in that, right, of healing, of moving forward, of being able to tap into my resourcefulness, my creativity of all the senses of my intelligence. Anyway, it was really a practice. I think what I’ve come down to, it was a practice of building resiliency for me.

There’s a whole, whole bunch of stuff around the word resilience, but I’m in a time right now where I’m actually in training to become a certified resiliency coach. So I’m learning a lot about that word and what’s all around it.

But one of the things that I’m holding to is that no longer is it be resilient with like a finger pointing. It’s like, wow, how are you building resiliency in yourself right now, Saralyn? Because it is about building the capacity to hold resiliency for me now. Like I see that now.

And it means creating practices when I’m not in acute pain, to be able to rely on some of that stock that I’ve built of resiliency and be able to tap into it, being able to survive in seasons with it, but then also be able to come into practices of resiliency in different ways, at different times. So all of that to say, my offer and invitation to you is to build your practices.

To open your capacity to navigate these challenging times that we all go through, come work with me, talk with me, engage with me on resiliency. We see it in ourselves, in the teams we work with and the communities we show up in and our families. I’m just coming to a place where, wow, this is, this is root stuff, and the practice is to open our capacity to navigate the complexity, the, the challenges in front of us.

Whew. There’s a secret sauce in that all. Okay. Stay in the practice.

Thanks all. I’m Saralyn you can find me at holonleadership.org. I walk alongside you as you practice your leadership.