When Someone You Love Has Anxiety

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Hey, welcome to the Love Shack. A little old place where we get to get together and explore fresh perspectives, eavesdrop on juicy conversations and uncover mysteries that nobody talks about, but absolutely influences our relationships. If you're struggling in your marriage, just starting out in a new relationship, or are single and looking to do better next time, this is the show for you. My name is Stacey Bartley and I am here with my co host and lover, Tom. Together for the past decade, we have been teaching and loving on people from around the world with the sole purpose of helping individuals and couples to love more and fear less in their relationships, both with themselves and others. A quick shout out to our podcast listeners today?

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Yeah. Today we're going to be talking about when someone you love has anger. I know we probably can't relate to that right now. Being a little sarcastic. Right. We have a lot of things to bring up anxiety within us. And today we're going to be having Keeley Negan, a certified community resilience model teacher, Reiki practitioner, and reconnective healer. She's been helping people break free from anxiety's grip for the past decade. So with everything that 2020 has delivered us, navigating the world right now is a challenge for most of us. But we know how much harder it can be if you, your spouse, a partner or a loved one struggles with anxiety. How are you supposed to know exactly how to talk to a partner or a loved one about their anxiety without hurting their feelings? Right. How do you bring these conversations to the forefront of your relationships? At times it can seem impossible, especially when you have no idea perhaps how it feels to have anxiety or know how to share that it definitely has an effect effect on our relationship. So here in the Love Shack today, Keeley's going to be sharing with us some very simple and life saving practices that are based on cutting edge neuroscience. And we're going to empower you to hit the reset on your fraying and frazzled nervous system right here, right now. We'll be right back with Keeley. Megan.

Are you tired of sitting on a couple's counselor's couch and feeling like you're just rehashing the past and making no progress? Do you feel like you're holding on to your relationship but panicked you're losing your partner? It's time to learn how to deepen your connection. Finally resolve the arguments that keep coming up. Understand yourself and your partner and create Create the level of intimacy you've been dreaming of. It's time for love to tingle your toes again. Schedule your private session with relationship expert stacy bartley@stacybartley.com checkup. Do you feel like your love life is on life support? It's time for a turbocharged relationship resuscitation with an alternative to marriage counseling. Head over to stacybartley.com to learn more about their proprietary programs their clients use to save their relationships. S-T A C I B A R T L E Y.com Visit stacybartley.com today.

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Hey, welcome back. Boy are we excited to introduce to you today our guest. We are joined by Keely Megan. We're going to be discussing what anxiety actually is and what it feels like, how anxiety can hijack our relationships and exactly what we can do about it. And the one most important message that you must know about anxiety today and how to deal with it in our current world climate. Like we don't have anything going on, right? But first, let's reveal a bit more about Keely so you can truly appreciate what she has to share with us today on her website. I loved when she says I care because I've been there. That just says volumes. For the past decade, Keely has been helping people break free from anxiety's grip, but her abilities she developed by overcoming her own tsunami of anxiety that has been hardwired into her body. Her victory over anxiety has led her to become a certified Community Resilience model teacher, a Reiki practitioner and a reconnective healer as well as many other things as she utilizes Cutting edge practices from the field of neuroscience, in Keely's words. She says, I imagine a world where every single one of us knows how to relieve anxiety and its sister, depression. And as a result, we can then face challenges with greater courage, strength, and grace, like the work that Tom and I do, teaching from not only education, but from personal experiences. Keely, too, has had a personal experience of dealing with crippling anxiety. And we want to invite her and welcome her to the show right now. Hi, Keely. So great to have you here. We have been so excited for this conversation. It's such an important one, especially right now. The timing couldn't be better, right?

Oh, absolutely. And Stacy and Tom, I'm so excited to be on as well. I've loved your other shows. And yes. Boy, what a pregnant moment here.

So tell us a little bit about your own journey so that. Right. We can let listeners know. Hey, I really do know what I'm talking about here. Right. Tell us a little bit about your story.

Yeah. So. I love helping people with anxiety, but it didn't come naturally.

Right.

I am a highly sensitive person, which means I'm more reactive to my environment, naturally so than the people around me. But I was also verbally and physically and sexually assaulted by members of my family's church for over a dozen years.

Wow.

Growing up in my 20s, I just. I really connected with that sense of hating myself and feeling like life was an empty shell and it was meaningless. And I was saved by a couple of therapists in my 20s and 30s.

Who.

Weren'T dealing with my nervous system. They were doing talk therapy, but they were miraculous and they saved my life over and over. And I went on to what I considered a normal life. Right. But out of the blue, in my 40s, boom. Panic attacks so fierce, I was physically paralyzed for hours.

Wow.

Move a muscle. And when I could move, I was still so anxious and raw that I could barely milk my goats. Like, right. Kind of normal.

Right.

So I could barely milk my goats, get myself to work, come back and milk my goats again and go to bed. I couldn't afford therapy. I was living on this remote mountain mesa in New Mexico and I was really white, knuckling my way through life for months. And one morning, I woke up lying in my bed, scared and exhausted. And I heard myself say, if I don't get help, I'm not going to make it. And so I did some research, put down a payment plan, got myself to Albuquerque for a three day workshop where I learned how to slow down and stop the panic attacks. And it was a miracle. I didn't master the skills right then and there. But I realized I wasn't crazy. This wasn't my fault. I knew how to work with it. And as a highly sensitive person, I still have a finely tuned nervous system. But today I can halt most anxiety within seconds or minutes and even panic. Right? Seconds or minus, like, oh, come on, right? Breathe ground. Do what? Do what? You know, rub your hands together.

Kelet.

So.

I love that you're sharing just right out of the gate some really simple and powerful things that we can do when anxiety strikes. And the thing that I want to point out a couple of things here with just your story number one, sometimes we don't believe that we struggle or have or experience anxiety. That it's not a normal, natural part of the human experience. And if anxiety didn't strike you until you were 40, especially because of everything that you had been through, we might think that we're in the clear. You know, I would think that, right? Like if I didn't know anything about anxiety because of the label that we put on it, I might go, oh gosh, you know, I'm in my 30s, I'm good. I don't struggle with anxiety. Right. And yet anxiety is a very normal, natural part of our human experience. Right. And so I just want to make it clear to our listeners that what we're talking about in the world of anxiety right now is one. And everybody experiences it from time to time. Let's just give some examples. You know, you feel like you've lost your wallet, right? That feeling is anxiety. Or is it, where did I place it? I'm scrambling around, I don't know what to do. And my brain starts thinking about all the what ifs, what if I lost it? What if it was stolen? What if, what if I never find it again? Oh my gosh, there's my, my checkbook, my credit cards, my, my cash, right? That's anxiety. Or I miss getting into a car accident or I don't know how to have a conversation with my partner and I'm anxiety ridden and my heart starts to beat really fast and my armpits get really sweaty. That's anxiety. That's low grade anxiety. And then it has ranges, right? Keely. It can get to a point where there it's momentary and it passes and then it can get to the point as you described from trauma and from past experiences and not knowing how to develop or, or deal with it. And it can turn into a place of incapacitating Anxiety, yes, indeed.

And we tend to talk about anxiety as stress. I'm a little stressed out today, like feeling the stress a lot today. And so we don't really use that word anxiety so much. It tends to be pigeonholed with the, you know, within the medical community. But you know, what I think of is stress is low grade, anxiety is mid grade, full on panic attack. That same nervous system is just way amped up in its reaction.

So share with us a little bit about what anxiety feels like.

For me, it feels like there's an electrical fence around my gut, like there's little tiny lightning bolts around my stomach and my heart is pounding and my chest might get tight and my shoulders tight and achy and sometimes I'll feel real jittery. Like after a car accident, I noticed I was just, I felt this internal shaking. And after I did all what I needed to do, I drove off a little bit, parked, and just let myself shake physically. And it shook it right out of my system. So shaking is another way to engage that nervous system and let it disengage or discharge is the word I'm looking for. But it's also confusion and brain fog and racing brain and that inability to take action, that feeling kind of frozen or paralyzed, exhausted. And those are all my symptoms that have been throughout my life. And other people also notice headaches and increased blood pressure and tight muscles causing more physical pain, joint pain. Right. Shallow breathing, sleep apnea. Like there's a whole contingent of vets that went back with CPAPs or B PAPs to Iraq on their second tour because the trauma and the anxiety from the trauma had caused sleep apnea. So fist clenching, jaw tightening. And then there's the flip side of anxiety. Heavy feeling, dead or numb, right?

Yeah. Depression, yeah.

Same nervous system reactions that are happening in different ways. And I can talk more about that if we have time. But it's all related and everybody's symptoms are different.

I like to, when we're talking about matters of the emotional nature, I like to bring along a conversation or a metaphor of the physical. Sometimes it's difficult for us to understand the emotional body. And so I want to create a couple of distinctions here that might support our conversation. I want people to understand our listeners out there that we all have as human beings a physical body and we have an emotional body. And our physical body and our emotional bodies work just the same. Thank goodness. We can learn a lot about managing our emotional well being by looking at how we handle our physical well being. And they're both Real, right? It's just that our emotional bodies isn't there, and it's invisible, it's fluid, it's dynamic, and gosh darn it if it can't time travel, right? We can have an emotional experience that takes us back to 1970 in like nanoseconds. Right now, right? There we are. A song comes on, a word is said, a phrase is spoken, and you had brought up, you know, in our military and such, and what a challenge that is in ptsd. And that really is what a panic attack is, is. It's. It's. Something triggers us, and then all of a sudden we time travel emotionally back to whatever that time frame is that our brains have wired that experience to be. And that's the beauty of it, because sometimes we want to go back and remember our memories and good times in our childhood and. And good times in our lives, right? That's where our memories also come from, where that same song can come on that takes me to a beautiful place or inspires me or causes me to remember a loved one or a great moment or victory in my own life. So the same thing that can be a nemesis to us and our emotional bodies can actually be the empowering part of us as well. And so we don't want to get rid of it. We just need to learn how to manage it. And just like, if I have pain in my physical body, it's going to ask for my attention. It's going to say, hey, hello, I need your attention right now. And when our nervous systems get right triggered in an emotional sense in our emotional bodies, it's saying the same thing. And I loved what you said, Keely, when you said, sometimes I just have to go and let my body shake it out. And that's my emotional system, like, working a few things out, just like my physical body does, right?

And they're so connected. So you're shaking out your emotions, but you're also discharging it from your physical body. Because when we do that time travel piece, we're not just. We may be completely unaware we're doing it. For starters, a lot of people with PTSD have no idea why all of a sudden they freeze or why all of a sudden they want to punch somebody, right? But it's. So it's not just the emotions. The exact same reaction is happening inside the body, that we're being flooded with hormones. We're being. Our nervous system is doing all kinds of crazy things, including cutting off some blood supply to the conscious parts of our brain, right? The cortex and prefrontal cortex, which I'd love to talk about more, but it's very intertwined. There is no separation between the two.

Yes, I love that. Yes. Let's talk about the prefrontal. Let's go there because I want to.

Let me just keely ask you, if I may, why is it, do you feel it's so scary, you know, for you to, you know, when you finally realize you had to turn and face everything that you were experiencing at the emotional level? Why is it that we feel. Why do you feel it's so scary for us? Like Stacy had shared, it's really easy, pretty much accepted that when we have a physical someone stepping on your toe, we're not going to go too long without saying, excuse me, you know, please get off my toe. But why share with us? Why do you feel that's such a difficult journey for people to take, you know, to be able to, you know, if you don't mind sharing. Why. Why is that? Why do we. Why do we do that to ourselves?

Right. Well, it's interesting because you ask the question as if it's a conscious thing that we're doing to ourselves. Right. But actually it's an unconscious thing. So it. And I also want to say we have no models to start. Very few, when I was growing up, very few models of what that would look like for women in particular. But also it's an unconscious biological response. It's not a conscious response.

So I love that it's so true. Because the hormones fire off and then the next thing you know, your body's reacting and your mind starts scrambling because you can't make any sense of it yourself. Right, Right.

And one of the things that your body's doing is seeing more danger than actually exists. The amygdala and the hippocampus are. They're comparing the present to the past. And as soon as something triggers us that says, whoops, this might be a problem. Right. We're immediately immersed in this sense of danger. So it makes it even harder to speak up or to do the thing we need to do to stay safe.

So literally, the convergence of what you have so wonderfully described is almost. Hence why it needs some really, really skillful approach because we have a convergence of things happening within our body that's really unlike anything else.

Yes, yes. And I mean, yes, there can be times where it's really important to have skillful help. And it is also very simple to unwind anxiety when you know what you're doing. And this used to be embedded in our cultures, right. We used to know how to do this. And as colonizations have happened, it's actually stripped away. I mean, colonization was happening way back in Europe. We were colonized tons, right? And so all of that was pulled out of the culture. So the medicine people and the drum, like Norwegians, their drumming was banned. Drumming is something that rebuilds that bond after trauma. So all of the simple things that we would do, the rubbing our hands together, rubbing our hands on our pants and paying attention to what that feels like inside. Our sensations are what make us feel alive, right? And we numb it down when we don't know how to handle it. But when we pay attention to that sensation, it helps bring us back from anxiety and it helps reconnect us to ourselves. So I don't know, I'm kind of wandering all over the place, but.

No, I think you're doing fantastic. I want to go back over what you had just said, because I. What you're giving away is gold. What you're giving away is if you're struggling with anxiety, whether it be on the scale of low to high, it doesn't really matter, right? The moment that we can intervene with it, the easier it is to manage, right? We don't have to wait for it to climb, right? And sometimes we can't manage it. Sometimes it just is, right? Zero to like 60, like a high performance machine that we are. But. But if we can, right, we can do some of these simple things. So I want you to go over those again very specifically so that our listeners can like really take that in. Right? So the first thing we can do is what, number one?

Well, the first thing that is very helpful for a lot of people, particularly tactile people, is just rubbing your hands together, rubbing your hands on your pants, just paying attention to that sensation that helps us come back into our bodies. It helps. I don't know if our listeners understand this language that I'm using, but it helps us re. Engage. I'll leave it at that. So, yeah, just paying attention. And it gives a signal to the survival brain, which is in the brain stem. And it talks a lot with the amygdala and it controls what happens to the rest of our brain. So it's the language we speak in the survival brain. Don't speak English, we don't speak any other language. We speak language of sensation, we speak visual images, right?

My daughter, I have a daughter that struggles with PTSD. She was rescued from a domestic violence relationship about 10 years ago. And one of the things that would really, really help her when she would have a panic attack is for me to just rub, you know, put my arms around her and like rub her back. And what I know, right, is that it gives the brain something else to focus on instead of just, you know, continuing to escalate the what if and oh my gosh, and I'm not safe and I've got to do something and. And the panic that's reeling inside of ourselves, the sensation gives my brain something to focus on that takes it out of that scrambling. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. So I love that you're saying sensation is so powerful, right. Rubbing your hands together, having somebody hold you, wrap their arms around you. If you're a touch or feel or that something is comforting for you, or a fuzzy blanket that you can rub your face in or anything that's going to redirect the neuro system. Right. Have you had success with like music and some of those things as well?

Absolutely.

Music.

If there's particular favorite pieces, put it on. Dance to it. That dancing, that rhythm, especially if you can dance with other people, reconnects us. That's Bessel van der Kolk's work. Looking at how we reconnect with community. Reconnects us to ourselves, reconnects us to spirit.

So.

So, yeah, the music, the visualizations. So imagining where you'd rather be right now, imagining the beloved pet or place in nature or the person who is so dear to you. There's a beautiful story of a woman during. After Katrina, she was labeled catatonic because she'd just been kind of rocking back and forth, forth in one place for many days and nobody knew how to reach her, right? So she gets this diagnosis. But a Red Cross worker with a one hour training walks up to her and says, I notice that you're rocking back and forth. I wonder how that feels inside. And immediately the. The rocking, which had been kind of dark jerky, becomes smoother, right? And the very next day, this woman who'd been catatonic walks into the Red Cross center to thank her and say, you know, when you mentioned I was rocking, I realized I needed to be on the porch swing with my grandma. That childhood memory of the swinging with her grandma, a safe place, a warm, loving person was so strong it could bring her out of a catatonic state. Simple.

It is these things that we need to nourish. Yeah. I'm sorry, Keely, I didn't mean to cut you off. Go ahead.

Part of the key is Noticing what people are already doing. Because our nervous system is. They're not only designed to get us into freak out, they're also designed to calm us down. Right. So she just hitchhiked on what her biology was already trying to do. It was trying to get her on the porch swing, but she was stuck. She couldn't quite get there. Right. As soon as she paid attention to it, somebody said, oh, you're rocking. Oh, rocking porch swing. Right. So if you notice somebody's rubbing their hands together and looking really anxiety ridden, you can just say, hey, I notice you're rubbing your hands together.

How's that feel?

No, I notice you're feeling a little anxious. Maybe just notice what's going on in your hands right now. You're doing fine. I'm here, you're safe. Just give that a moment, you know, and pretty soon the small rubbing movements become larger and they start to really be able to pay more attention to it. And the more you do it, the more it unfolds that reaction that you're looking for.

Isn't it amazing that our bodies naturally know what to do? And in a panic attack. Right. In a panic attack, you feel like you're so out of control. Control. And yet your body is taking you to a place where it needs to go in order to unwind things. If we were able to pay attention. Right. Where our bodies are so full of voice.

Yeah. And I love Keely that you shared, you know, the story that. What a powerful story that the red Cross worker. And correct me if I'm wrong, I would imagine when you're, when you're, you know, when you're doing your best to cope and using the strategies that you've already shared with us, say rubbing your hands and together on your pants. Sometimes, you know, one could be self conscious. So rather than making someone feel bad about that, you're asking to be invited into that experience by the observer. That is skilled. Correct. I mean, meaning it will expedite the calm that the person wants to have by doing that.

And even cooler, nervous systems are psychic. So science shows us that nervous systems talk to each other and communicate and what's the word I'm looking for? Affect each other from a distance. So if you are calm, it will help the other person calm down. If you're not so calm, they'll pick you up and get you a little panicked too.

Right. That's so true. Well, and that's going to take us right into where it is we're going to go next, which is how does anxiety hijack our relationships and what we can do. If by chance, maybe you're not the one that's struggling with anxiety, but you're in a relationship with somebody who is. We'll be right back. Foreign.

Do you feel like your love life is on life support? It's time for a turbocharged relationship resuscitation with an alternative to marriage counseling. Head over to stacybartley.com to learn more about their proprietary programs their clients use to save their relationship. S-T-A C I B A R T L E Y.com Visit stacybartley.com today.

Ready to learn the most important thing you can do to revitalize your relationship today? Go to stacybartley.com fairydust stacybartley.com.

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Are you tired of sitting on a couple's counselor's couch and feeling like you're just rehashing the past and making no progress? Do you feel like you're holding on to your relationship but panicked you're losing your partner? It's time to learn how to deepen your connection. Finally resolve the arguments that keep coming up. Understand yourself and your partner and create the level of intimacy, intimacy you've been dreaming of. It's time for love to tingle your toes again. Schedule your private session with relationship expert stacy bartley@staceybartley.com checkup. Make it a great day. Keep your dial on Alternative Talk 11:50.

Hey, welcome back. If you're just joining us, we've been having an incredible conversation with Keely Megan about anxiety and what it feels like and some simple things that you can do to calm yourself down, like rub your hands together and create a sensation that's taking you out of the anxiety place. But we want to take this conversation now into the relationship realm, where maybe you are not necessarily the one that's struggling with anxiety anxiety, but you love a person who is perhaps a lover or a child, right? That you're trying to support through this challenging experience of anxiety. How does that happen? I can tell you that as couples come into our offices, what really plays out is someone who struggles with anxiety has tried to share, but not quite knowing how to share. And then when they did share, they felt judged or criticized for it or not being able to, quote, get control of it Right. And they feel like there's something wrong with them. And the other partner that isn't struggling with anxiety, that's not feeling these sensations in their body, and who seems from an onlooker to be so, like, incredibly outlandish. Right. I panic because then I don't know what to do and I don't know how to support you and I don't know how to fix this. And typically, these are the conversations that lead us to. To creating a gap or a wedge between us now, how we used to once be connected and supportive of each other, we're now finding ourselves more and more and more in a place where we can't talk about it. So the person who's experiencing anxiety begins to try and hide it. Right. And manage it on their own. And the person who's experiencing it or trying to be that supporter realizes that they're failing at doing such a great job, and they start to get defensive or upset about when they see it. Right. It's like, ah, why can't you just pull it together? Why can't you just, right, get a handle on this? Oh, we're going to talk about this again.

Or we've been in this space long enough now it's time to, let's move on now. Like, you know, we spent enough time. We're done now.

And so these things can greatly affect our relationships. And as you were struggling with anxiety, qe did this affect your relationship in these ways as well?

Oh, gosh, yes. Oh, my God. In all kinds of ways. I mean, I say that anxiety is like a stealth bomber in relationships, and these things come out of nowhere. Oftentimes. I don't really know why they came out of me. Like, have you ever said, I'm sorry I did that? I don't know why I responded that way. Right. So these things would come out of me and I wouldn't know why I did it or said it. And I would see my partner. You know, at that point, I don't even realize there's something wrong. Or maybe I have a little. Maybe I was a little off there, but then my partner would react and she wouldn't know what was going on and why. I just thrown this, maybe a zinger at her. Right. And.

And.

So I want to explain a little bit about what's happening in the brain so that both sides of this conversation know that when we say it's an unconscious biological reaction to a perception of danger, anxiety, it's not a lack of willpower and it's not our fault. It's the unconscious brain hijacking the conscious brain. So what that means is the survival brain, which is kind of the gatekeeper, has faster reaction times, and we use it unconsciously to keep us safe. But it's only Good for about 20 minutes maximum, preferably more like 20 seconds.

Right.

And when it flips the switch and says, I'm taking over, it shuts down the cortex and the prefrontal cortex. So your capacity for decision making and moral capacity, ethics, language, and creativity, all kind of go down the drain.

Right.

Your blood supply to that area, the brain, is diminished. Your. Your neurological interactions are diminished. Right. You're less of who you really are, and you're more of this crazy thing in your neck that's saying, I'm taking control now.

I'm in charge. Everybody stand back. Yes, that's usually what it is. Everybody stand back. I've got weapons and I'm going to use them.

Right. Or you might be in a freeze response. Right. Like just shutting down, going up, hibernation time.

We're clear.

Nothing good is going to happen here. You know, so many different reactions that can happen, but when they're unexpected and they seem out of character, it's a good, pretty good indicator that there might be some anxiety happening and that somebody else has grabbed the wheel. Okay.

That's so important. That's so, so, so important and valuable. Right. And what we tend to do in our relationships is we tend to take these moments personal without realizing the opportunity is to do the one and only thing that we have the capacity to do when something is happening outside of us, which is to step in as the role of support. Yes. That's the only thing we can give. Right. When we love somebody, we tend to want to jump in and fix it, which usually means I'm trying to enroll you into the idea that you're safe. Right. And that you need to see things my way. Right. And then that your way of seeing this or experiencing this is wrong and mine is. Right. That's our favorite conversation in relationships. Right. So that's what we're saying, really, when I say pull it together, I'm saying, I don't understand what you're doing right now, so you need to stop and see things my way. Exactly.

So, for example, to play this out a little bit as a sexual abuse survivor, and there's so many of us out there, I want to be sure to share this. So encounters with intimacy can be really quite challenging.

Right.

So this intimacy can involve things that remind you of something in your past. That was horrifying and terrifying and create, you know, that unconscious trigger where all of a sudden something has changed and you don't know what it is. I wouldn't know what it is. Right. And I would start to freeze up and my partner would feel abandoned. Like, what this is. We're stopping. What?

Like, I was really enjoying this. What do you think?

Yeah. And not only that, but like, I'm getting to a place I really need to go. I'm getting to a place that is so luscious and I feel so connected to you. And all of a sudden you disappeared on me. That's not fair.

Right.

So really good reasons for resenting what's happening, but because I'm numb and I can't really communicate very well what's happening or why it's happened, I don't know how to respond. So I shut down. So that's one of the toughest places to deal with this. It's much easier if you can.

Deal.

With, like, go into a class and learn about it together. If this is an issue, learn about it together what's going on physically, emotionally, what. And then start to look at what are your triggers and then work on that outside the bedroom. Right. So you get better at that. And then you can bring it inside the bedroom.

But. Well, and. And you've brought up, you know, probably one of the most deepest, vulnerable places we ever find ourselves is in our intimacy, our sexual intimacy with others. And unfortunately, if you're hearing our voices right now, right. And you're struggling with these kinds of things that Keely just described, understand and realize where we typically go as the person who's not experiencing the anxiety is, oh, my gosh, I did something wrong. What's wrong with me? Why can't you love me? Is the conversation. Without realizing there's nothing wrong with you. It's not anything you've done that the experience is happening inside of the body of your lover and we can step into a supportive role again. I'm going to use that word. Right. It's this place where. Right. I don't take it personal. And that's typically what we do. And that's the hardest part I found in working with couples in this very, very delicate and difficult situation and challenge that you brought up is that we tend to personalize what's happening. The reaction of my lover means something that I should know, something I should be doing, or something is wrong with me. And indeed, that's not the case. Right. I like to say if you are not the one feeling it, the message is not for you and there's nothing that you can do about remedying that. And if we go back to the analogy of our physical and our emotional bodies, I wouldn't feel like I needed to take responsibility for somebody who had fallen down and skinned their knees on their own. Unless of course, I'd push them. But let's say they fell down, skinned their knees and I had nothing to do with it. I wouldn't feel responsible for that. Yeah. But indeed in the bedroom I might, right? If they're pulling back, they're checking out, they're, they're going numb. I might go, oh, it's me. You can't love me. I'm not lovable. I can't do this. Right. I can't. What I feel rejection. Instead of realizing, no, what's happening is happening inside of the experience of your lover. And all you can do is play a supportive role. That's your place where you get to say, hey, how can I support you from this? What do you need? Right. Let them tell you. And it kind of goes back to your story of the Red Cross. Right. Notice, notice what they're already doing. What can I do for you? Which ironically helps bring them closer. Right?

Yes.

So what would be helpful, Keely, you know, that's appropriate obviously to share on live radio. Then you know, what would be, you know, helpful, you know, in that intimate experience when you know the.

Yeah. What have you done personally that, that you know, you're cocking from personal experience here. We're not talking about a client, we're talking about to you. So, you know, in those moments, how did you successfully move through that with your lover?

It worked best really when she was not taking it personal and when she could say, oh, hey, I noticed something just happened. Can you tell me what's going on inside? You know, just really gently, really non judgmental. And that gave me enough safety. Like I didn't feel like I had to keep trying to perform something I was completely incapable of in that moment. And you know, I had that permission and safety that you talk about so beautifully. So, hey, I notice something's going. Seems like something's going on for you. Can you share what that is?

I love that. And my favorite question is, how can I support you? How can I support you right now? What do you need from me? Because in reality that's always can give if something is happening outside of ourselves. Right. With a child or a lover, it's, it's realizing and recognizing that that's really all I have to give unless it's mine to manage. This emotional experience that we have with inside of ourselves is really work that only we can do within us.

Absolutely right. So beautifully said. Because it is so important that survivors are encouraged to do their own work. Like, there's a lot of us who want to be rescued. And, you know, I've fallen into that camp. I want somebody to save me. I want somebody to do the work for me. But as soon as somebody tries to do it, I get mad because I know it's my work and nobody else is going to be able to do it like I can do it well.

And as I say, we call this concept emotional weightlifting. And emotional weightlifting is difficult developing the emotional capacity and ability to face emotionally difficult things. Right? And so in my emotional weightlifting oftimes, you have a person in the relationship that's trying to do the emotional weightlifting for everybody, right? And if I do it for you, I can do it for me. I can do it for everybody. And it's a lose, lose, lose all the way around because I, if I'm doing the emotional weightlifting for the relationship, I'm going to burn out. There's no way that I have the capacity to do that. Right. And it saves the other person from doing the emotional weightlifting that they need to do in order to become stronger and gain the capacity and the skill necessary in order for them to be successful and feel successful with inside of themselves. So nobody wins. There's a no win there.

Absolutely. And that first weightlift is terrifying. You think you're gonna die, right? You're convinced.

I'm so glad. You funny. Yes. Well, you know, you think about going to the gym, right? For real and working out your physical body, right. And if you're out of shape, we have a CrossFit gym just down the street from us, right? And I've done CrossFit before and I remember, you know, trying to climb a pole for the first time or having to do my very first military style, like, push up. And just like you said, physically, your, your brain is going, there's no way this is going to go well. Right? And you're like, right. And I remember falling into tears, right? Trying to do, you know, two push ups. And my coach saying, come on, Stacy, you can do this. Give me a push up.

And I'm like.

And essentially that's what goes on in our offices keely every day where we're saying, hey, you've got this. You can do this. Now give me an emotional push up. Tell me what's going on. Inside of you, what do you need? Right?

And the beauty is after that first one, it's never as scary.

It's so true.

Never ever as scary. For me, like, I had to do emotional push up after emotional push. I, like, I was doing it for a decade, man, and then I did it again in my 40s. Right. But once I got certain skills with. With a skilled person, you know, oh, my gosh, like, I can do this in, like, seconds. I can do this in my sleep. I can do this on a bus. I can do this anywhere.

Yes.

It's not hard.

Well, and just like, when we get to a place physically where we feel confident and strong in our own body, right. Maintaining it is so much easier than. Than building it. And so it is with our emotional capacity and strength. Right. Maintaining it is an ongoing process. It's never going to be completed. Right. And so getting in there and maintaining it once you do develop those skills. Right. That and you know how to support your partner or you know where to go when you're having an anxiety attack because they don't go away. We just get better at managing it. Challenges don't just go away. We just gain confidence and abilities to navigate through it. So we're like, oh, man, this okay, we got this. We know what to do. Right. And as it changes and evolves, you just get better and better and better at it. Right. So I love that you say, yay. It was so simple, and I can do it anywhere. And that's so true. And so many of these things that we tend to avoid that are of the emotional nature.

Yeah. And I think it's again, to be redundant. Just as in any skilled person or place of improvement in our physical lives, that has not happened just magically, it's through repetition and repetition and repetition. That's why in our body of work, we do say emotional weightlifting, because people can. Okay, that makes sense. Because you literally have to do the. The reps of things. Like you shared Keely, you have to do that first one that terrifies you. Then the next one won't be so terrifying. Of course, it's much, much easier if you can be in a place of permission and safety to do that. So as our. As a partner, that doesn't, you know, have the challenge, the best thing we can do. Stacy says to me all the time, what do you need to hear from me right now? You know, like, boom, okay, I need. And then you have to advocate for yourself. But that comes through repetition and building that permission and safety between you and your loved One, you and your child, you and your family, your, you know, your sibling, your parents, you know, I mean, yes. I mean, it takes repetition to do so.

Absolutely. I love that. What do you need to hear from me right now?

How can I support you? And what's interesting is when we love somebody and an obvious. Obviously, the more we care, the more challenging this is. As I want to jump in, I want to fix it for you, which is doing emotional weightlifting for everybody, by the way. I just want to point that out and then I panic because I don't know how to fix it. I don't even understand what's going on. And I'm supposed to come up with the answers. I'm supposed to know how to comfort you or make this all better. And the simple solution to that is just what we're talking about here. Hey, how can I support you? What you do, do you need. Because the person who's experiencing it is going to know what that is or at least how to make. Maybe take that first step into comforting them. Right. Going back to the story of my daughter. Mom, just put your arms around me and tickle my back. Okay. Gosh, I can do that. And then that would turn into, let's go for a walk. That's now. Let's talk now. I'm ready to share. Right. And it would unwind itself. As you so beautifully. Beautifully said.

And that's why the. The list that I am providing for people at that. That you'll post on your page is that the. The 14 things you can do. It's so great to have a list posted on the fridge that you can just go, let's try this one. Let's try this one. Let's try this one.

I love that. I love that. And I want to. I want to get that in. Unfortunately, there are so many things that we could still go on and talk about here. And it's time for us to go. How does this go so fast? So, hey, tell us where we can. We can connect with you, our listeners. How can they connect with you? Keely? And tell us a little bit more about this wonderful gift that you've given us here inside the love shack, those beautiful 14 things that you can do to get help now. I love that. Sure.

Yeah.

So you can reach me@keelymegan.com so k e E L Y M E A like more like Megan. M E A G A N as in Nancy.com. i do private sessions. I have classes. And you can also find on my website as well as the radio website in the podcast, the list of the 14 things. So this is more things like rubbing your hands together or looking around you and naming four different things. You can see four different things. You can hear simple, simple things like this. More you do it, the more you're nervous system responds.

So beautiful.

I want to say in this time of people wanting to kill themselves because they are so in despair over what's happening, right. We have suicides that are just skyrocketing. So now sit on your fridge if you receive the call, right, Keep people talking and get walk them through the list.

I love that. Keely, thank you so much for being here with us today. This is such an important and empowering conversation and we've got to have you come back and do this again. We just, we didn't cover as much as I'd wanted to, but I promise we'll have you come back and we'll take another crack at it. Next week we have coming up a conversation. Three ways to make difficult conversations easier in your relationship. You know, we need to begin embarking on some of these con conversations that are sometimes challenging to have. And we have a special song for you today. As we close out our song or our show every week we have a song that we share that kind of continues on with the conversation that we're having. This song is another song, another favorite by Tom and I Blanken Jones called Night Fly. It's designed to help us take a big deep breath, realize that we're okay and the this moment that we're going to be able to right. If we'll just calm down and maybe support and love those who are around us and give us some safety and permission to maybe feel our feelings, take a breath, hold each other, love, we can experience some calm even right now amongst all the chaos that's surrounding us. Enjoy. Maybe bring your heart and your life some peace in this moment as well. Thanks so much listeners for being with us. We love and appreciate you always. We look forward to being back here with you next week. Bye bye for now.