Emotional Work - Unlock the Resistance that Holds You Back
Doing emotional work shows us our blindspots and unlocks the resistance that holds us back from becoming the highest version of ourselves.
Last week I did a deep dive into Mindset, the first component of my formula for excellence:
Mindset + Emotional Work x Discipline = Success
This week I’m going to dig into Emotional Work, which I think is the critical element of truly creating personal change.
Doing emotional work shows us our blindspots and unlocks the resistance that holds us back from becoming the highest version of ourselves. If we skip over doing the hard inner work of experiencing our grief and pain we are bound to keep repeating the same old patterns over and over again.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
- Albert Einstein (maybe)
In my view, emotional work involves continuously repeating five actions.
Action #1 - Be Honest About What You Are Avoiding
From an open-minded mindset take an honest assessment of what is holding you back in your current struggle.
Grab a piece of paper or journal and write down the following question:
What am I avoiding with [fill in your current struggle] is?
Write down the first answer that comes to you, before the protective parts of you push it away or deny it.
The answer to that question will very likely make you feel icky, give you a pit in your stomach or make your heartache. This is a good thing, it is your intuition pointing you to what you need to heal!
As I shared in a previous post, in my struggle for weight loss I was avoiding the truth that I use food to numb pain and that I use control to fix the resulting shame.
When I first faced this truth I felt shame and embarrassment (icky feeling). This is why an open-minded mindset is such a critical first step. If we are not open-minded we will succumb to our instinct to push away or numb out the uncomfortableness of the truth.
“What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you. You are always a slave to what you’re not aware of. When you’re aware of it, you’re free from it. It’s there, but you’re not affected by it. You’re not controlled by it; you’re not enslaved by it. That’s the difference.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness
Coming at my truth from an open-minded place I was able to see that the addictive relationship I have with food and dieting was in control of me because I was avoiding it.
First, I would put all my energy into fixing what was wrong with me by dieting. This would result in pain and burnout. Then I would go off the rails and binge to make myself feel good and numb out the pain with food. I would never actually get the results I wanted because I was so wrapped up in the yo-yo of going from super controlling to super lazy. The yo-yo itself was keeping me stuck.
When I let myself surrender to the truth about my addiction to using food and dieting to numb and fix I took my power back.
Being willing to sit with the uncomfortableness of the truth of my addictive behaviors with food and dieting gave me the clarity to see what I could do differently.
Action #2 - Feel and Experience the Emotions You are Holding On To
Once you are clear on the truth you are avoiding the next step of emotional work is to let yourself feel and experience the emotions you are feeling, in particular, pain and grief.
Emotions are just “energy in motion”. Like waves at the beach, emotions come and go.
When we don’t allow emotions to just naturally pass through us we create a dam inside - in our attempt to avoid or numb unwanted emotions we end up holding on to them.
Holding on to and avoiding feeling our unwanted emotions keeps us stuck because the actions we take to avoid or numb those emotions turn into unhealthy patterns.
I had been holding on to my perceived failure of gaining so much weight. I didn’t want to feel the uncomfortable feelings around the truth that I had let myself go.
In my attempt to reject feeling the pain of failure, I perpetuated my addictive patterns.
I would eat to numb out from the pain of my failure…
Then overcorrect the wheel with unhealthy diets to fix the resulting shame…
The diet would result in pain and burnout…
Then I would numb out from the pain…
Rinse and Repeat - Over & Over…
Admitting the truth to myself that this yo-yo was an addiction and then letting myself experience the resulting feelings of failure, shame, & embarrassment ended the cycle.
It freed me from the weight and power those emotions had over my psyche.
sidenote:
The pervasiveness of the pain and grief I was carrying was much larger than just my perceived failure for gaining weight.
I spent nearly three years working to heal the pain and grief from my Mom’s battle and death from alcoholism ~ On the other side of that healing work I arrived at the pain of my own addictive behaviors with food and dieting.
I plan to include future posts with more details about that healing journey with my Mom’s addiction in the future.
Action #3 - Give Your Self the Love and Safety that is Needed
Once you have experienced the emotions that you have been holding on to the next step in emotional work is giving yourself the love and safety that is needed.
How do you determine what is needed to provide love and safety?
The answer is found in the underlying desire of the truth you were avoiding and in the felt experience of the emotions themselves.
Ask yourself this question:
When I am avoiding the truth that [ ______ ] what I am really desiring is [ ______ ] so that I can feel [ ______ ] ?
For example:
When I am avoiding the truth that I have an addiction to dieting and binge eating what I am really desiring is to put an end to the internal tug-o-war and feel at peace and harmony within.
Once I determined what the void was that I was trying to fill by avoiding the truth I connected to what I truly needed to feel love and safety. From this place, I gained clarity about what I could do differently moving forward.
When I realized that what I really desired was to put an end to the tug-o-war of binging and dieting so that I could feel peace and harmony I was called to take the following actions:
Creating a daily practice of self-love. I began to write myself love notes reminding myself that I didn’t need to turn to food to numb out.
Practice loving discipline by consistently taking actions that my body needs to be healthy. Aligning those actions with my values and not a superficial goal.
Continuously practicing letting go of control and rigidity by being flexible with my approach to diet and exercise. Letting life happen, without being rigid or by doing the opposite and going off the rails.
Completing embodiment practices of breath work and meditation on a daily basis.
Using my writing to process my emotions and express my love & creativity.
Action #4 - Let Go of What No Longer Serves You
In my journey, I’ve come to see every challenge, every time I get emotionally triggered, as a gift.
It is a gift because each of those moments of hardship is providing me with the lesson that I need to grow into becoming the highest version of myself.
Each and every one of the lessons showed me something that I need to let go of because it no longer served me. It showed me that what I was holding onto was blocking me from experiencing happiness.
The question to ask yourself is:
What do I need to let go of right now to be happy in the current moment? What no longer serves me?
When I asked myself this question the answer I got back was:
I need to let go of tying my happiness to my weight loss and choose to be happy right now even though I weigh over 316 pounds…
As I shared in my article The Myth of Happiness, happiness is a choice. It's a choice to accept life as it is, right now in the current moment, regardless of the circumstances.
Happiness requires only one action on your part. Letting go of what you are clinging to as a dependency of your happiness. When you do this you are no longer waiting for someday to live your life, you are living it right now.
Action #5 - Practice Awareness and Presence
The final step to emotional work is to realize you are never done doing emotional work.
It is a continuous, lifelong process of practicing steps one through four.
You do this by making a conscious effort to be present with your emotions and thoughts at all times. You look to bring a high sense of awareness to yourself and to see the story you are always writing out in your mind.
One important note here.
The game is not, to not fall into the trap of thinking you will never avoid the truth again or never fall into repeating your past protective behaviors again.
The game is seeing how fast you can become aware that you have fallen into the trap and begin the emotional work of:
Admitting the truth
Feeling the emotions that come up
Providing yourself the love and safety you need
Letting go of what no longer serves you
Emotional Work in Practice - A Recent Example.
In my last article on Mindset, I shared about the medication my doctor put me on to help with my weight loss. It's called Mounjaro and it's a GLP-1 agonist. Basically, it aids weight loss by suppressing appetite and lowering insulin (it's a type II diabetes medication). Because of how overweight I was and that I was prediabetic my endocrinologist put me on it.
I recently read an article that talks about how when people come off GLP-1 agonists they tend to gain the weight back. A key detail deep in the article is that it's critical to make lifestyle changes while you are on the medication and not just depend on it. This is important so that when you come off you are more likely to maintain your weight loss (most people don't do this).
It turns out that seeing this article was truly a gift because it triggered me in a huge way. It was calling me to do the emotional work on what I was avoiding.
When I realized this I started the process of doing the emotional work around my trigger with the Mounjaro.
Action #1 - Be Honest About What I am Avoiding:
Answer: The fact is that when I come off of this mediation statistically speaking I will not succeed.
Action # 2 - Feel and Experience the Emotions I am Holding On To
Result: I felt FEAR!!! I had been bypassing the fear that statistic creates. I took some time and let myself really sit with and be with that fear.
Action # 3 - Give Myself the Love and Safety that is Needed
Result: Once I let myself fully experience the fear of the statistics about coming off Mounjaro, a space was created for me to see the reality of my situation. I was able to connect with my underlying desire which is to achieve peace and harmony by embodying a healthy lifestyle.
From there I objectively accessed what was true:
First, I went into using Mounjaro by viewing it as just a tool in my health and fitness toolbox, it’s not a fix or magic bullet.
Second, the whole time I’ve been on Mounjaro I’ve been building healthy habits and doing the emotional work of healing my relationship with eating and dieting.
Finally, I realized it’s critical for me to double down on leveraging my accountability and support network in my journey.
Action #4 - Let Go of What No Longer Serves Me
Answer: It no longer serves me to hide from the truth of the statistics about coming off GLP-1 medications. By sharing in the open my fears of coming off Mounjaro I free myself of the anxiety those fears bring.
Action #5 - Practice Awareness and Presence
Result: Once I got really present with the fear that was behind my avoidance of the statistics of coming off Mounjaro I was able to get back to practicing awareness and presence. I realized this fear is going to keep coming up and that’s okay. It’s just an opportunity for me to reflect and access if I am practicing and cultivating the habits I need to succeed in the long run.
Emotional Work is a life long journey. Currently, I’m diving into another chapter of emotional work with the Men of the Alliance as we dig into Conner Beaton’s new book Men’s Work. I highly recommend this book for any man that wants to create lasting change in their life.
I’ll close today with a note I shared with my brothers in the Man Talks Alliance in September of 2022. It was right after I lost my first twenty pounds - a moment where the emotional work of the past three years began to pay off in changing the patterns of my relationship with my health and fitness.
My First Big Weight Loss Win
September 22, 2022
I want to celebrate. I'm at nearly a month of consistent daily wins in my health and fitness journey ~ I'm seeing the results, I'm down from 316 pounds the month after my surgery to this morning I weighed in at 292 pounds.
Part of my success has been a shift. A shift from trying to use shame to fix myself to making a daily practice of taking it "One Day at a Time, One Night at a Time" and consistently cultivating self-love.
One of my rituals of cultivating self-love is every night before bed I take out a sticky pad and write myself a love note. I write this note to the younger part of me that wants to numb out from life, from pain.
Over the course of the month, this note has evolved to become a form of self-acknowledgment. I remind myself of the win of the day and what I've overcome. Finally, I include some encouragement for when I inevitably wake up in the middle of the night and go to the fridge for comfort. When I'm done I stick the note on the fridge.
I have also created a morning ritual of celebrating the win of the night by taking the note off the fridge handle and placing it on the fridge door when I wake up each morning and then acknowledging that: I did - I made it through one more night.
This morning as I did this I had a thought "I'm one bad choice away from unraveling everything"...
I instantly thought of my mom and her alcoholism. My heart opened and I was filled with newfound compassion for her.
My mom was drunk most of my adolescent years but she recovered from her alcoholism when I was about 11 years old - She maintained her sobriety for 10 years, until around my 21st birthday, when she made one bad choice and everything unraveled. Her relapse destroyed her life and four years later she was dead.
The thing is my mom didn't maintain her sobriety for 10 years out of self-love. She grit her teeth and clenched her fists every day, keeping her demons at bay with control, until one day she didn't have it in her anymore, and that's when she made the one choice that destroyed her.
As I thought about this I could see all my past attempts at "fixing" my health and fitness; That they had been a form of control. I had grit my teeth and clenched my fists and it was exhausting...
I realize that part of "One Day at a Time, One Night at a Time" is not putting the pressure of one bad choice unraveling everything on myself. I have the faith and resolve that if I were to make this choice I would pick myself back up and go again; However, I also recognize that there is a naive part of me that would use this logic to tell me why it's okay to make that bad choice just this one time...
So as I stood there this morning looking at my note I was reminded why daily rituals that cultivate love are critical for my continued success in my journey.