Holding the Line:  Tools for the Worst of Times

This is episode 293 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Welcome. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast. Kari Schneider here with you today. And I have a topic that I think, think will really help you through the tough times today. I'm going to give you some ways to break down what's going on when things are at their toughest. So if you're not going through the tough times right now, probably you will, you likely will at some point and you likely have at some point. So if you are doing great right now, please still listen in because someone probably needs this that you may want to pass this to. And again, if you're doing great right now, listen in because you're going to be able to look back and reflect on when you went through something hard. And this is going to give you some tools so that you can handle whatever comes your way in a way that helps and really makes a difference. That's my wish for you with this podcast. When people go through hard things, it can be like grief, even if there's not a loss of a loved one. So for instance, if someone loses a family member, a friend, if you lose a person that you love, people often refer to the stages of grief and I've referred to the stages of grief with many clients, clients who are dealing with family issues, clients that are dealing with business issues. These stages of grief are a what are called a Kubler Ross model. A Kubler Ross model, and this model describes denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance as the five stages of grief. So denial, it's this shock and disbelief. You can't believe this thing has happened, especially if it's something surprising. It's not as much the, the experience when somebody's gone through the loss of a loved one who was going through a long term illness or who was very, very old, there's not as much of that shock and disbelief. But if you lose someone via an accident or the market turns and you lose your business, that shock and disbelief is that first stage. And it can be really tough because when you're not prepared for something so prolific, it tends to rock our world, it tends to shake us up. And that can be accompanied by numbness where you literally are, are not responding the way you thought you would in that situation because you're not able to fully feel. So that's denial and then anger. Anger is probably pretty self explanatory but a lot of the questioning of why this would happen in a, in a way that's bitter, angry, often resentful. This is the frustration, the helplessness lives here as well. And bargaining, negotiate, make deals. If you are a religious person, this might be conversations with God, this might be trying to negotiate with banks. If you're in business, this might be doing everything and anything. But typically it's from a very desperate place. And depression, depression is that deep sadness. Now I want to really hold space when describing depression in that depression doesn't show up for everyone the way we often imagine it does. I would always see depression as something that, you know, people are unable to fulfill on their day to day life tasks. They might be in bed for long periods of time. And that is what depression looks like for a lot of people. However, I was being diagnosed with depression many, many years ago and I was like, I'm not depressed, that's not me. I'm doing all these things. So make sure that when you look at something like depression, there can be high functioning depression. And these are, these are often people who are needed by a lot of people and that's one of the things that keeps them going. But they're not happy and there's not a lot of joy in their lives, but they're very high functioning and they seem like they're accomplishing a lot that can be still depression, even though it doesn't look like what we think depression often looks like. So it's a deep sadness and a withdrawal and often accompanied by a sense of maybe a little bit of helplessness, maybe a lot, and even hopelessness as well. And then finally the stage of acceptance, coming to terms with loss and finding a way to move forward even though the pain may be still, still really present. So I want to help you today gain that sense of acceptance. And we're not just talking about the loss of a human life, although that can be the scenario. We can be talking about the loss of a home when you move. We can be talking about the loss of a business when you sell a business or you retire. We could be lock talking about the loss of a way of life and, and again that example of retirement. So when we feel this sense of going through something really hard, it may feel like the worst. And I put that in quotes because it, in the moment it may feel like the worst thing ever. And it's probably not. If we look at facts and we look at the bigger picture, it's probably not the worst thing ever. But it certainly feels like it in the moment. So we can call it the worst. You're going through the worst. Whatever it is, you went through the worst thing at that time. Time, it felt like the worst. So if it feels like the worst, that whole model of grief, that whole emotional journey, the stages of grief that can be happening in all of those other situations, a divorce, the, the, the, the loss of a friendship, the change in a relationship when your child goes into the teen stage, there can be so many things that people don't associate with the stages of grief that you might be going through those stages of grief through another thing that feels like the worst in your life. Business, personal life, relationships, death, all of those things. Divorce, all of those things can feel like the worst. So what do we do here? So what I want to unpack for you are some of the thoughts that are going to lead to the emotional state. And I'm going to give you the biggest gift in the world, and it's this. The thoughts that you have, the thoughts that are going through your head often subconsciously, are optional. You don't have to think those thoughts. It's a beautiful thing that I learned years ago from one of my teachers and mentors, Brooke Castillo, and many, many other people, Eckhart, Tolle, Byron, Katie, Tony Robbins, many people that I've studied from. And it's that your thoughts are not something that are permanent and they are not facts. We often mistake our thoughts for facts. And it's very, very important to really embrace this concept right now. If you're going through the worst, or when you went through the worst, or when you're going to go through something that's very, very challenging and feels like the worst because your thoughts contribute to all of that emotional turmoil that you're going through. Your thoughts are often either creating more of a certain emotional state or creating a certain emotional state that might be making it really hard for you to get through the challenge or that circumstance or whatever's happened in your life. So we want to make sure that we can recognize some of those thoughts that you're happening, a lot that are happening along the way and what they're contributing to. So I've gone ahead and written down a lot of things I've thought when I've felt like I've gone through the worst. I've written down ones that my clients have thought when they're going through the business restructuring, going through the loss of a loved one, going through divorce, going through massive uncertainty. So I've written down a bunch of the thoughts that you might be experiencing. And the reason I want you to hear them is so you can recognize them. And when I say recognize them, I don't mean recognize the exact word for word thought. What I do mean is recognize that it's just a thought, it's not a fact. And it's a thought that's contributing to either you healing or contributing to you staying in something that's really hard and staying in something that's really probably a suffer fest. And then I'm going to give you a little tool and it's an acronym because I love acronyms. That will help you hold on, it'll help you hold the line, it'll help you hold yourself. And if you don't have the hint right there, it's going to be H O L D. So we'll get to that after we look at these thoughts. All right, so the first ones I want to go into lead to a particular emotional state. And these are thoughts like, this can't be happening. I can't believe this. I can't believe this is real. This doesn't make any sense. Listen to those thoughts. When you think those thoughts, how do you probably how. What are you feeling? What's going on for you? Those are the types of thoughts that lead to an emotional state. Like disbelief, it leads to shock. So chances are you might have felt shock or felt disbelief, but subconsciously there were thoughts there first. Like, what is happening? I can't believe it. What's going on? This doesn't make any sense. Now keep in mind that if you kept thinking those thoughts, it's going to perpetuate a feeling of shock and perpetuate a feeling of disbelief. So consider that those thoughts. I can't believe this is real. It's a thought. It's not a fact. It's not a real hard fact. It's a thought that has a passing through through our mind. That's all it is. It's a sentence in your brain. It's a sentence that your brain created. Why would your brain create that sentence to hold you in that emotional state? Well, there's reasons that we feel the way we do when we're going through hard things. And oftentimes shock and disbelief serves us in various ways. When we are shocked and we don't believe something, what do we often do? We often stop, we look, we freeze. So this is your mind's gift to you, to hold you still for a second and that can help you. So your brain is going to offer these thoughts to offer the emotional state of Shock and disbelief. Why would we do that? Because it's a safety mechanism. It's something that stops us and makes us look and study. And that is our primal way to survive when big, awful things happen. All right, let's look at another few shot thoughts. I don't know how to go on. Nothing will ever be the same. I feel so alone. When you think those things, they probably bring something like sadness or depression or loneliness. And again, they bring those feelings. Those feelings can be valid. We don't want to deny anything you're feeling. We want to process the emotional states and at the same time, listen to what the brain is saying. And when I say the brain, your brain and your thoughts are not you. The reason I know this is because you can witness them. The. The you that is witnessing and observing your brain pump out those thoughts. Your brain, your programming, your subconscious give you thoughts to help give the appropriate emotional response for what's going on. And that emotional response is what leads to your action or your inaction. And if you're feeling sa or you're feeling down, that's part of what's protecting you. Slow down. That's what sadness does. That's what depression does. It slows us down. So I hope that by listening to this, you're hearing that there is method to the madness, or let's say, method to the sadness, method to the grief. Your brain is offering you these thoughts, offering you these emotions in your body so that you can get through what you're experiencing. You're not supposed to be happy all the time. And when something awful happens, these are appropriate thoughts. However, when you can see them and observe them and see what they're doing for you, then you can help yourself go through the emotional process instead of get stuck in what it's causing in your body and in your mind. All right, let's look at a couple more. Why did this happen to me? This is so unfair. I can't believe this. I can't stand this. This could bring a lot of anger. And I can tell you that anger and frustration, those tend to be the. The empowering negative emotions. So those types of thoughts will often have us take some sort of action. We want to get moving. Eventually, when we get sick and tired of feeling sick and tired or sad or depressed or feeling like we can't do anything, eventually we'll want to do something. And that's when the anger is a spark. It's a catalyst for movement. It's energetic. It's far more energetic than sadness. So it serves a Purpose too. Imagine this. Imagine. Imagine with the greatest traumas or the tragedies in life. The anger gets you motivated and mot mobilized. The frustration keeps you energized. It is an energetic negative emotion. So I want you to be able to observe this from a place of safety and see. Okay, I can see why my brain would bring my emotional state, my body, into these spaces because they serve my survival. They serve me going through something really hard. Let's look at a couple more. How about what will happen next? Or I don't know if I can handle this. Or I'm stressing over blank. I'm stressing over this thing, I'm stressing over that thing. Well, guess what? Most high achievers don't say I'm anxious, that I'm scared, that they say I'm stressed. Stress is the high achiever's version of fear. Stress is the thing overwhelm. We can get caught into overwhelm. But what is it really for a high achiever? It's anxiety, it's fear, it's I'm scared that I'm worried, that I'm stressed, that that's all it is, it's fear. And again, these are thoughts that are creating an emotional state that are not facts. You might have some worry, but consider that the next person, it's not a fact in the entire universe. The next person and the next person and the next person may all have worry about different things. So you're choosing to worry. You're choosing to be afraid of a certain thing. Why? Why is that so scary? These are the things that you can observe. These are the things you can ask as a response to some of the thoughts that are coming up, the thoughts that are optional, the thoughts that you have control over. It may feel like you don't have any control over the thoughts or the emotions that are coming in a such a hard time that feels like the worst. However, they're ones that are there. And I'm not suggesting for a moment that you start to get hyper vigilant over thoughts that are naturally coming into your head and emotions that are naturally coming from a terrible experience. I'm not suggesting that at all. What I am suggesting is that you observe them and observe that they're there and observe why they might be there and observe what emotion they're causing in your body so that you can have awareness over what's going on and so that you can help yourself process what you're experiencing in instead of feeling like you're a victim to it, instead of Feeling like you're stuck in it with no ability to see any reason why anything is happening. I want you to see some of the reasons why you're experiencing what you're experiencing so that you can eventually be able to understand what's going on for you and serve yourself. Help yourself through it. Help yourself get through the worst or what feels like the worst. How about this one? This one's tough. I should have done more. It's my fault that this happened. If only I had acted differently, said something different, done something different. If only this. If only that. These. How would you feel if you were thinking these things? You're thinking these things. They tend to bring a vibration in the body, an emotional state of guilt or regret or even shame. So see those. See those thoughts that are coming up. What if this had happened? What if that had happened? It's my fault. I didn't do this. I did do that. Again, what are they pointing to? An emotional space. This serves us, too. Take a look at us. We're humans trying to survive in the world. And if something awful happens, what are we doing? We. We're questioning our role in it. We're questioning the feeling guilt and regret and shame. How does that serve us in survival? It means then we don't want to do that thing again in case it can help us survive. All of this is here for a reason. It may feel ugly, awful, icky, horrible. However, it's here to serve us. And I'm hoping that you're starting to see that by this description. Because that shame or that regret, it's the thing that would have us act differently next time. Why? It's our brain learning how to survive whatever we just experienced. All right. No one understands what I'm going through. I feel so disconnected. I'm so alone in all of this. This would feel like loneliness. It would feel like isolation. It would feel like we're disconnected and disconnected and isolated and lonely. Doesn't feel good. The reason it doesn't feel good is that we want to be with other humans. We want to be with other humans because it's part of our survival. We are meant to be with other people. So emotionally we end up getting drawn to that instead of going into spaces of isolation. I hope you're seeing that so much of this is there to help us, there to help us survive, and that the thoughts that keep coming can be optional. They are not. They might keep showing up when you don't intend it and you don't have to stuff it. You don't have to try and make it go away. We just want to see why it's there and observe it. Oh, look, it's. It's causing me to feel these emotions. These emotions are helping me in this way. So process these emotions. Confusion. I've had many a client go, I'm confused. I'm confused. I'm confused. I don't know what to do. Everything feels chaotic. Overwhelm. I can't think straight. Why that confusion and disorientation? Those thoughts serve us to hold us in one place. Especially when we're terrified of change, terrified of what's coming in the future. If we think. I don't know what to do. It feels so chaotic. I can't think straight. It keeps us confused. When we are confused, we do not take action. It's another holding one, freezing one. Keep us in the same spot. That's what it does. Why do. Why does everyone else have it easier? It's not fair that this happened to me. You don't understand. You don't understand what I'm going through, and you never will. Those are thoughts that are pretty heavy, and they bring an emotional state, typically of some sort of resentment, bitterness. Again, it's distaste for what's going on. It's going to have our brain learn to. To avoid these scenarios. These thoughts and these emotions are serving our learning. They're serving our brain programming that, okay, how do I avoid this in the future? See what's happening, see why it's happening. And lastly, numbness. Typically, the thoughts that are causing this emotional space, which is an emotional space, even though it feels like it's not, feels pretty numb, disconnected. It's. I don't feel anything. I'm completely overwhelmed. Overwhelm can lead to a feeling of numbness. I just feel empty at numbness. And you might be looking around in a really tough situation and see other people emoting and. And feeling with it, but you're feeling numb. You're feeling nothing. You almost don't want to feel anything, but you also feel like you're looking around going, I. I feel like I'm supposed to feel something, but I feel so numb. And it's a way of. Again, holding us in a space where we might feel, we might think we might sense that we can't quite handle the flood of emotions because it's more emotion than we've ever experienced or we don't know how to experience because no one ever taught us how to process it. That might be your protective mechanism of numbness. Remember all of these thoughts all of these emotional states are serving you to go through whatever is feeling like the worst for you. All right, so I'm going to give you something. And as I said earlier, it's an acronym and it's called HOLD and HOLD as this acronym is. I wanted the acronym HOLD and I started working with it and wordsmithing it. And I did that because I thought of holding the line as in holding on, as in holding yourself. Because sometimes when you're going through all of these thoughts or going through some of the emotions that I'd mentioned, or sometimes all of them, if you're going through stages of loss or grief or suffering, if you're going through that stuff, I kept thinking, hold on, hang on, hold the line. And sometimes I'd actually feel, if I've been through things like this, I'd feel like I needed to be held. I've gone through this in serious illness, I've gone through this in losing family members, I've gone through this in depression. Years ago when I was highly functioning, no one ever would have known I was depressed. So I've gone through things like this and this is what I would have needed. I would have needed someone to help me hold the line. I would have needed myself to keep saying, hold on, you've got this. I have needed to be held. Hold me. And if it's not someone else, it's you for you. You don't need another human to do this for you. This is you for you. So H for the HOLD stands for healing. And healing isn't one form of healing. Healing could be so many things to so many different people. Healing for me might be a walk in nature. Healing for me might be a confident conversation with someone I really, really trust. Healing for me might be being near water and meditating. So whatever healing is for you, but it often will encompass self care activities that will promote nurturing or nourishing your physical, your emotional, your, your mental well being. And this might mean that healing encompasses leaning on someone else getting help. So healing and help, both in the H, you can get help and that can be a big thing for your healing. Bring joy, bring relaxation, introduce the time and the space and the allowing for grieving, for dealing with whatever feels like the worst in your life right now, being able to give yourself that awareness and that space to process the emotion that's part of healing. If we stuff and ignore those thoughts and emotions that I was mentioning earlier, they tend to come back. I see it in high achievers all the time. I've experienced it Myself. And then all of a sudden, you feel like you're bombarded with all the things that weren't dealt with before. So allow yourself the space. Okay. O O is for observe. We just practiced for the last few minutes going through all those thoughts and all those emotions when I described them. That's you observing. That's me observing some of the thoughts I've experienced or my clients have experienced. That was what we just did, was the practice of observing the. Paying attention to your thoughts, paying attention to your feelings. And how did we do it? There's no judgment. In fact, there was. There was a space of seeing how it's actually helping us survive. Why would it be there? Oh, why would you go through that in a tough time? Oh, it's teaching my brain. It's holding me safe even though it's very, very uncomfortable. This is why I'm experiencing some of the things that I'm experiencing. So practicing the mindfulness to observe your own internal state. Remember, we cannot control our external environment. And that's typically what happened with the worst thing ever. Whatever happened in our lives, we can't control that. But we can help work with our own internal. Our own internal state, our internal environment. This looks like observing triggers, recognizing patterns in our emotions and reactions. And this observation helps gain insight. It helps us gain clarity on how we tend to respond or react and what our brains are. Are doing to hold us safe or to help us through this. And sometimes what our brains are doing to keep us stuck because it's scary. All right. L L is for letting go. Releasing. Releasing has been one of the most profound practices that have helped me heal through some massive things in my life. Not only small traumas, but big ones as well. So letting go can be a huge thing. Releasing the things you cannot control or change, that's what you let go of. This includes letting go of some of those emotions that I talked about earlier. You can practice releasing them. Oh, I'm experiencing anger. I'm experiencing shame. Shame or guilt or regret or resentment. Okay, let me just be with it for a while when I observe it, when I'm with it, when I'm healing it. And then eventually I can just release it. I can let it go. If I try and resist it and force it, then that doesn't happen. But with. With the option of release and letting go and allowing that, it's a huge difference. It's about accepting the present moment and focusing on what you can influence and change and just being with that, not focusing on the things that you can't change your external environment. And lastly for D is develop. This is developing resilience coping strategies. Resilience is that ability for something to bounce back to its original form. That's resilience. Resilience 2.0. Resilience, that's further is the ability to bounce back but come back stronger. There's a thing you've probably all heard of, ptsd, post traumatic stress syndrome or disorder, and whatever people want to call it. But there's also P T, G, ptg. PTG is post traumatic growth. It's the thing that happens when your resilience kicks in and you come back to your original space, but then you develop and you actually come back stronger. Just like developing and breaking down a muscle tissue when you're working really hard and it struggles, it breaks down and then it grows and repairs and comes back stronger. So not only can you handle what broke it down before, you can handle more. That's post traumatic growth. So for all people want to talk about ptsd, there's also post traumatic growth. So make sure that you're looking at that in terms of the awful things that are happening in your world. They will help you grow, develop, learn, understand, prepare, heal, nurture and nourish yourself. The developing is what really is the gift that comes out of the all the hardships that come your way, the worst things that happen in life. You can even develop new skills, hobbies, ways that help you cope with what you're experiencing, help you adapt, help you find a new sense of purpose, help you help others go through what you've gone through. That may not be your thing, and that's okay. However, you will develop as long as you allow yourself to do those things and allow yourself to process what's gone on. All right, so I'm going to recap those real quick. H H is for healing. O O is for observing. L L is for letting go, releasing, and D is for developing. This is where you're growth comes in from, whatever hard thing happened. All right, this may be something that you know you will need in your future. Maybe it serves you right now or maybe you know someone who this can serve. If so, share it with them. And as always, I am rooting for you. You've got this. Whatever you're going through, have a wonderful rest of your your day and an Empowered week. I'll talk to you next time.

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