Michelle Tubman
Rhonda, welcome to the mindful weight loss podcast.
Rhonda Farr
Thank you. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Michelle Tubman
I'm so happy to have you here because one thing that I've learned being a weight loss coach is that nothing is more important than emotions on the weight loss journey. We have so many of them related to how we feel about our bodies and our relationship to food and all of the things. We've also got emotions relating to why we want to lose weight and all of the things that happen as we progress through our weight loss journey. I think one thing that is common amongst all of us who struggle with weight is that we are terrible at feeling our emotions, identifying our emotions, expressing our emotions. I think that's probably one of the largest reasons why we struggle with weight in the first place and so I was so happy to have you come onto the podcast, so we can have a little bit of a discussion about why it's so important to have a relationship with our emotions and to be able to explore them and process through them in a healthy way. Then also talk about some strategies of how we can actually do that. Not just on our weight loss journey, but in our day to day lives as well. So I am so happy you're here.
Rhonda Farr
Thank you. Let's do it.
Michelle Tubman
Let's do it. Alright, Rhonda, why emotions, how did you even get started working with emotions?
Rhonda Farr
That is a very good question. So I started out helping couples who are struggling with intimacy. Typically couples who come from very conservative backgrounds who are struggling with intimacy. I would get these couples on calls and we would start teaching all the coaching tools that I'm sure your audience is pretty familiar with. Every single time when we get to the deeper root, the causal root of what they were coming to me for was an emotional wound, right? Like the intimacy, their intimate life was an external byproduct of a deeper emotional wound. And if you really think about it, some of your audience might initially have a knee jerk reaction. To this that says, No, no way. Every single thing you're struggling within your life is an emotional problem. Problem is not the right word. It's an emotional source, every single thing, and I would love it if you wanted to challenge me on that. Or ask more questions about why that's true.
Michelle Tubman
I don't think I can challenge you because the more that I do this work, the more that I see that it's actually true. What I've noticed on my own journey is just this tremendous reluctance to even come face to face with those emotions that are kind of, at the root of everything. My knee jerk reaction is to say, Well, no, it's not emotional. It's the other person or it's the circumstance or it's these things that have happened to me or whatever it is, but I think deep down, I know, and I understand that there's this emotional route to it. But I think it's a journey to get to the point where you can actually understand that and I'm wondering though, Rhonda, could you give some examples of what that looks like?
Rhonda Farr
Yeah, totally. So let me start with where I started coaching, and then I'll move over maybe into the body image and the food and the things that you're talking about more. So for me, I did an interview with this intimacy coach, she's a therapist, and she called it the canary in the coal mine. I love that. So she said, your intimacy is just the canary in the coal mine. It's mirroring what is really going on inside of you. So the other people are mirroring that. Now if we want to bring this over into our relationship with food or our relationship with our own body, when we have an urge to eat something. when we have an urge to check out and avoid something. It's the canary in the coal mine, it's the mirror. If we can focus on what's going on there and not give in to the urge of your body, your physical body will start to bring up lots of emotions, lots of feelings. Those emotions are a tunnel, a portal, if you will, into something that is waiting to be healed. Your body is always trying to show you a manifest what it's ready to heal. So, canary in the coal mine of what's going on inside.
Michelle Tubman
I love that. And you know what? I had a thought while you were saying that. Can we talk about what an emotion actually is? Because, oftentimes when I talk about emotions, I'll ask people like what is an emotion and I get these blank faces.Or they'll just say, it's a feeling. What’s a feeling? So what exactly is an emotion Rhonda, when we’re talking about doing emotion work and feeling your feelings. What do we actually mean by that?
Rhonda Farr
I'm going to give you a few definitions, and I'm going to let you in the audience decide what resonates with you, right? A lot of people will say emotions are literally energy in motion. So you're a physician. You know this, like the reason we can read MRIs or X rays are all the things right through these images is because we're reading energy, right? You're looking on the screen, some type of screen, energy. Your body is energy, when we have an emotion moving and vibrating in our body. It's that energy starting to shift and it's transmuting higher vibrations, lower vibrations, quick vibrations, slow vibrations, if you think about overwhelm and anxiety, calm, peace, flow. Literally, energy in motion and if you'll pause and not give in to every urge and whim around you, and I don't just mean with food, I mean with anything you will feel your physical body experiencing transmutations of energy in motion. Okay. So that's one way we can think about it. Another way I like to describe an emotion is simply just a physical sensation in your body that comes from having thoughts. It can be as simple as that when I think I love my body, I feel this way. And by the way, we might think that's a really great thought, but somebody who has a really maladaptive relationship with their body and they try to say I love my body. That could feel terrible to them, right? Absolutely. Yep and it probably will feel terrible. So again, canary in the coal mine, right. For some people, it feels great for some people. It feels terrible to think that thought. That's why it's always about you, and your conditioning, and what's in your brain, right?
Michelle Tubman
Mm hmm.Do you have more definitions? Are those the two that you wanted to talk about?
Rhonda Farr
I'd like to give you one more that I think could be helpful. Okay. I mean, an emotion is simply the brain's connection to the body. You've probably heard disembodiment apps for separation, something like that. So what that means is somewhere along our lives, some of us learn that it's unsafe to feel energy in motion, that it's unsafe to have a physical sensation in the body because of thoughts we're having. This can come from capital T trauma, like sexual assault, or death or even things that maybe seem a little more innocuous, but as a small child, if we saw it or it was repetitive, those capital T traumas can teach us like that's so unsafe, we never want to feel that again. We literally can disassociate with our body. We learn to do it and that's when we're operating in the head and we don't like to go below the neck. Right? Because it feels so terrible. So emotions can be that connection, when we want to re embody the brain with the physical felt sensation below the neck. We tap into that vibration, that energy, that emotional sensation. So it's very similar to what thoughts create feelings in our body, but I would also say it's just your brain's way to communicate with you through the body. If that makes sense.
Michelle Tubman
It does make sense, it makes perfect sense. I actually love this definition of emotion. Because I think it relates to what happens with many women when they struggle with their weight. I think that disembodiment is at the root of a lot of it. Whether it's because of big T traumas or little T traumas. Who knows, I almost think it doesn't matter. The fact is we're at this point as adults where there is this separation between our mind or our brain and the rest of our body to the point where I have had women tell me that they don't know what they're feeling. They can't label their emotions. They can't distinguish between different emotions or they might understand that they're feeling bad versus they're feeling something positive. But that's about as far as they go. There's this instinct to want to intellectualize everything that's going on in this equal instinct to just suppress whatever is going on below the neck and in the body. I think when it comes to weight loss, and Rhonda I'm sure you would agree when it comes to sorting through any of the issues that we're trying to work through in life, bringing that body and mind back together is just an essential component.
Rhonda Farr
Yeah, absolutely. Because what happens is when we start to disassociate with the body, we lose so much valuable information. You're your body. That's literally how we heal, right. Like we're saying, We've got to stay disconnected. So we don't feel that way. So it doesn't hurt. But it's so ironic because when we connect when we're able to tap back into that and teach our body that it's safe, that we're okay, that we have skills and tools now, that's how we actually start to heal and not have to feel so much pain. Both are motivated, very well intentioned, but just one of them is more healing and more accepting of what is and the other is very scarce. I actually have some thoughts about how your clients who are so disassociated or disembodied could start, that maybe we don't think of because we don't have to talk about emotions with that. So you and I are sitting here in this chair, looking at each other. We could say what does it feel like to sit on this chair, like the chair against my thighs, and just focus like what does our body physically feel like?
Michelle Tubman
You know what, I think that is actually an excellent first step in this whole process. I often encourage people to do things like get massages, or go get a pedicure, or things like this and just allow themselves to experience the physical sensations of doing that. Or even just dancing in your kitchen or moving your body in some way that feels good and just notice what's going on in your body as you're doing these things. As a first step, I think it's a big step for people who are completely disembodied who just are not present in their bodies at all. To go from that space, to this place where they're able to fully experience their emotions. That just seems like a big leap, for a lot of us. So I like this idea of starting with, just how does your legs feel against the chair, how does it feel if someone is massaging your back or if you're dancing in the kitchen? I love that. I think that's crucial. I think that's part of healthy living actually to just do things every day that reconnect us to our bodies and into ourselves.
Rhonda Farr
And be aware that's the other piece I'll add and you were saying this too, but just literally be aware when you're getting that massage. What does it feel like with pressure against my muscles or even as we sit here? What do my feet feel like where they meet my shoes or where they meet the floor? Like literally just starting to feel a physical sensation. Because what happens then is when you're angry or sad, you can say, How do I know I'm angry or sad? I mean, it could still be above the neck. Maybe my head feels like pressure. Maybe my shoulders feel really tense or maybe my heart just feels kind of heavy. When we're starting it is very good if you can name the emotion, but if you can't do that yet, don't start there. Start with how do I even know that I'm having a feeling like I just don't feel well? That's all I know. Okay, well, how do you know and just start describing that? It doesn't have to be big. You don't have to be a master at this right away?
Michelle Tubman
No, of course not. Of course not. And I don't think anybody can expect themselves to go from this place where they're not in touch with their bodies to all of a sudden having labels for everything and being an expert in themselves. It's a process like everything else. Totally. I'm just wondering, Rhonda, are there any other consequences of being disembodied or having this disconnection between your mind and your body?
Rhonda Farr
We don't have time for that on the calls to tell you all of this. But yes, of course, when we're disembodied obviously, we're missing all the information and I'd love to give some maybe one example of that, but also health wise, right? So when you're disembodied, what you're basically doing is resisting a part of your humaneness. You're pushing away part of your experience and when we're in resistance, what we know is, we're creating a cocktail of hormones and stress hormones and you could probably name those out way better than I can. Cortisol, adrenaline, all the things right. There are studies and there's research that shows if we experience stress and we think it's fine and no big deal. It doesn't have a negative consequence on our body. But if we experience stress, and we believe we should not be experiencing stress, and we push that stress away, what happens is we flood our body with all these stress hormones, number one, but number two, we pile on more emotion. So I'm experiencing stress and now I'm going to add resistance to that. Oh, yeah. And then I'm going to judge myself because now I'm getting overwhelmed and I'm going to just add the overwhelm into the judgment. Oh, yeah. And now I feel really guilty because I always do this and spin out of control. And now I'm just gonna tell myself, you know, like, I'm a big pile of poo because I'm eating everything to try and cope with all this right? Do you see what you've done? Like there are so many physical health consequences that go far beyond the healing of your emotional body, which I think is actually foundational, but even physical, yes.
Michelle Tubman
Do you think that there are cultural or societal things out there that encourage us to be more disembodied? I just feel like and maybe that's because the medical profession is a very cerebral place so I'm surrounded by people who have to be in their heads for a large proportion of their day. But when I'm out there in the world, it just seems like most of us are walking around in a little bit of a fog. And I don't know if it's because we're caught up in the rat race, so to speak, or if there's other things going on, it just, it just seems from where I sit and look out at the world that it seems to be more normal as in you know, more common for us to be disembodied. Did you have that observation as well?
Rhonda Farr
Totally. Well, when we're two years old and we skin our knees. Our parents say, Oh, you're fine. That doesn't hurt. Come on. Like basically, we don't have time for that. Or please don't cry because I feel sad. When you're sad and I can't handle my own emotions around you feeling sad. From the day we're born. We're conditioned to feel okay, so we can accomplish, so we can fit in, so we can accommodate expectations, from the day we're born. Absolutely. Then we live in this cultural societal norm, where doing more, achieving more, getting more done is perceived as successful. It's perceived as strong, right? And then it becomes survival. Will we want to be part of that group? Well, we want to be a valuable member of the herd, right? Like, it becomes survival, instinctual, conditioned. Every angle we can look at this at, we are being told to not pause, feel, and really be conscious and aware with emotion.
Michelle Tubman
And you're right. We're also told that we shouldn't be expressing emotions, especially negative ones. Like I can't tell you how many times growing up I had, you know, my dad, tell me chin up. Chin up Michelle. Right? It's true. You just kind of learn that okay. Well maybe it's not okay to feel this and so down go those emotions, somewhere deep inside. I guess what worries me about all this is yes, I mean, the health effects we're very well aware of. The science is clear on the effects of this on our body. But if this is what most of us know, if this is what is normal for most of us, how do we even know that there's a whole different way to live? I mean, before I discovered coaching and understood that I actually had emotions. I don't think that I would have ever realized that my life could have been so much more fulfilling.
Rhonda Farr
Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think most of us don't, and many of the humans on this earth probably won't come to that awareness. First of all, that's okay. And here's something that happens when we start to come to that awareness. We want others to come to that awareness. And we say it's very loving because oh, we want to be in true relationships with them and we want to see them be happy. But I even think we have to be careful with that because we're usually motivated to teach and help others so we can feel better so we can feel better also.
Michelle Tubman
Yeah, fair enough.
Rhonda Farr
But here's the second thing when you're talking about your dad, it made me think about my parents, all the parents, right. Like that's just the way they're taught, most of us are taught that way and then we're just repeating. I want to offer this other effect of disembodiment which is a relational detachment. When we can't tolerate our own emotions, then it's very, very difficult to be honest and have a true connection with another person. When we can't tolerate how we feel when somebody else is honest, when someone else has emotion, then it's very, very difficult to have a true honest connection ever. So that's the other thing. We're walking around in these relationships that we think are quote, “happy”, right? But that's because we have this mutual unspoken agreement that we're going to be happy on the terms of keeping each other happy and keeping ourselves happy, not in being authentic and who we are. Yeah, so a lot of people come to this work, because they can't do that anymore. Because something is missing and they have all the success externally and they're still not happy. And they're like, What is wrong with me? That's where I get most of my clients, when they are in that space.
Michelle Tubman
That's exactly why people come to me for weight loss coaching as well, because they've tried everything else for years and sometimes even decades, and they've just come to this realization that there's something missing. And that thing missing isn't some magical nutritional knowledge. It's not some magic pill or remarkable macro ratio, that it's going to solve everything. It's something going on inside that is inhibiting weight loss. In almost every client that I've coached, this has exactly been the issue, just this tremendous disconnect, and I find there's almost this yearning to get there. Then it's hard, though it is hard if you are, you know, a 40 something year old woman and have spent 40 some years being disconnected, not feeling your emotions and not allowing the vibrations to transform through your body. It's a scary process. And it's difficult.
Rhonda Farr
Yeah, can I push that? Even further? The way you said it was like all this is going on, and it makes it more difficult to remove the weight from our bodies. But I want to say that there are so many women out there, very large, beautiful women who have no desire to take the weight off of their bodies and they are very happy and comfortable in that. And I think it even starts more deeply. Why do we think that happiness means that? We have different reasons like health and strength. I know the size of our body isn't the thing.
Michelle Tubman
Yeah, and you know, even in my weight loss programs, we ban the talk of goal weight, right? Our goal is being in a body that you feel comfortable and energetic and healthy in where you're metabolically healthy, and it involves a lifestyle that you feel good about. tThat you can easily enjoy for the rest of your life and so many women have to really readjust what that means. That's a whole separate conversation because, of course there are cultural pressures for women to be thin and so we have to separate. Why are you trying to lose weight? Is it because of this or is there some other reason? And you would be, maybe you wouldn't be surprised, but I was certainly surprised at first to learn just how difficult it was for women to even tell me why they wanted to lose weight. That it's somewhere along the line. They just got this idea. It was something that they had to do and hadn't ever spent time to sit down and think about it. In my programs if women come to the conclusion that they're happy where they're at and the weight that they're at now, that's just as much of a win as the weight loss, for sure.
Rhonda Farr
100% and I think most people are motivated to accomplish any goal weight loss or whatever because they think they'll feel better when. But what we know is there are people who weigh exactly the same weight and some of them are exceedingly happy and some of them are just miserable and feel terrible. We see 100 pound women who have body dysmorphia, who are very upset with how, quote “big they are” right? That's how we know, this is inside of you and your urges, your push for your weight loss or gain or whatever it is, is the canary in the coal mine. It’s telling you that there's something inside of you that needs to be addressed and healed and if we can sit with our emotions long enough to figure that out. Then we start healing at the root instead of trying to put external band aids on everything.
Michelle Tubman
Absolutely. Yeah and I think that's also one of the reasons why we do two things in our programs here at Wayza health that are meant to encourage women towards this. One, is to take a look at what you’re telling yourself that you'll do or what are you telling yourself that your life is going to look like when you lose the weight? And then how can we start doing those things right now? That often brings up lots of resistance and lots of excuses. Then the “Yeah, buts….” come out. That gives us a great opportunity to explore what some of those messages underneath are. The other thing that we do that may be a little bit controversial is we step on the scale every day and we don't do it to record weight. I don't care about the number, it's more of, you step on the scale and what happens? Like what thoughts are in your mind, what is your body feeling? And what is that telling you? What is that trying to teach you? And then when you're able to step on the scale and not have those reactions anymore, then that's kind of a little bit of a sign that we've somehow managed to take away the power of these external things. So I think that those are our two ways that we try to get at this.
Rhonda Farr
I'm reminded of a Jim Carrey quote where he says “I hope everybody has the chance to be really successful, rich and famous, like have all the money they ever wanted. So they can then know for sure that that's not the answer.” That's exactly what you're saying for your clients. We wish you would have the exact body that you choose. So you then can know that that's not the answer. It's still inside of you. So if we can pull this full circle back to emotions, when we don't answer the urge with food, or when we do step on the scale and feel how we feel, if we can sit with that and figure out what we're really craving. Is it connection? Is it self love? It's almost always self love and connection to self. There's your spoiler, yeah, sure. But is it honesty? Is it alignment? Is it authenticity? When we really can sit with and not answer those urges. That's where we get to learn what our body is really craving and give it life giving, fulfilling attention. That has a potential to change everything.
Michelle Tubman
Right and we have a lovely meditation inside our programs as well that you can just listen to when you're experiencing an urge to kind of walk you through this because a lot of women say is actually very terrifying, to allow an urge to be there, partly because we've never done it before. And we think that these large feelings are going to come and kill us you know really like that's, that that's what it feels like sometimes and I think if if we're able to try this just once or twice to just sit with the physical sensations that come up when you're having an urge for food or for drink or for going on social media or whatever it is that's trying to distract you from your body. If you sit there, it becomes a little bit less scary.
Rhonda Farr
I'd love to make a connection with that too, exactly what you said is true and if we just build on that, where we were with that trauma before or the disembodiment a lot of times what happens is the nervous system remembers why you disembodied in the first place. So when we ask a client to sit with this meditation or sit with this urge, their body literally feels like it's going back to those moments that it learned that it couldn't handle before and it takes it full circle to the whole reason of disembodiment. So I feel like that's an important distinction, because I do believe and teach that thoughts create feelings, but your body also memorizes how things feel right? And sometimes a nervous system response connection, a memorized feeling comes back and your client might be like, Oh my gosh, I haven't thought about that since I was five years old. But they find themselves physically feeling exactly the same as they did. So that's another important thing, especially when we disembody. There's a reason we did that and our body remembers that.
Michelle Tubman
Right? Yeah and sometimes I hear women tell me, I had no trauma. You know, I had a good childhood and you know, my life has been fantastic. I have no reason. And I had a very interesting experience yesterday. I experienced an RTT session as a client, which is a form of hypnotherapy, and we were really talking about some issues that I'm having in my business. So I wasn't even talking about my weight. Through this session, I had this memory of being young, maybe about three years old, and someone in my family had come home from a holiday and had given me this red and white knitted poncho, and I put it on and I loved it. I clearly remember feeling so joyful and happy being in this poncho and spinning around like a little girl does, and all the adults in the room laughing. Now of course right now my adult brain can say you know what, how cute must not have been of course they would laugh, but at the time I felt made fun. Like it was not okay for me to love this poncho or to even express joy. Right? And it wasn't until after this session yesterday that I realized oh my gosh, is this why I buffer joy to eat, because I couldn't figure out why. It was just this silly little experience that I had when I was just a toddler. When you're two or three years old, your brain can't use logic to explain why the adults are laughing. You just interpret this as threatening to me in some way. So, I guess I say that because I don't think we necessarily need to identify the stories that brought us to this place. The work is in the now and feeling what you're feeling, now.
Rhonda Farr
That is true and I've done RTT myself and I have like oh yeah, all this stuff that comes up. You're like whoa, I haven't thought about that for three decades. I will say this when we're little. Our brain is wide open, right? That subconscious and we're taking things that people say, things that we see on TV, our friends, like we're just accepting that religiously, culturally, personally and we don't know that we're taking it on at that age. Oh, by the way, the adults in our lives just like the ones you were talking about in this room with you in the red poncho, they don't know they're giving it to us. So it's crazy because we're haphazardly acquiring all of this stuff that is being locked into our identity. Then our subconscious starts to close up a little bit more. We know through highly emotional situations that it can still be accessed and through repetition, it can be accessed we know that, but it's closing up a lot. Then what happens is we live our adult life with that as our guide, right? We didn't know we were taking it, they didn't know we were giving it and oh by the way, it becomes the direction of the rest of your life. Are you kidding me? That's why we have to sit with the emotion because we have to figure out there was something else going on and it might have been adaptive at the time. But it has now become maladaptive and I want to know that, here in the now and present, so I can address what's going on.
Michelle Tubman
Yeah, yeah, I love it. And are there any other things that we can do on the day today that can help us with this? It's like I have a mindfulness meditation practice that I do every day and I include a body scan as part of that. I feel for myself anyway that it's really been helpful for me to tune into my body easier when I am in the midst of a difficult situation or an emotional situation. So I hope that you'll confirm that mindfulness practice helps with this.Are there other things? Beyond what we talked about, feeling your body when you're sitting in a chair and the massages and dances and things like this. Is there anything else that listeners can do to start this process in a gentle way?
Rhonda Farr
I will give you two options and neither of these are the perfect fit for anybody. So I'm just gonna say that for your listeners. If you try this, you're like that totally didn't work for me. Fine. We've got to figure out what works for you. These are two suggestions though. So number one is so so simple, complete silence. I love meditation. I do it too. I love the body scans. If that works. Do it. It's beautiful. I use it with my clients all the time. But complete silence is really a telltale sign of what's going on inside your body because I've got clients who can't do it. There has to be a TV on, there has to be music on, there has to be a podcast on. What happens to your mind and body when you allow complete silence and you can start with five minutes if this is hard for you. Be really aware, when I'm in complete silence, where do my thoughts go? When I'm in complete silence, what is the felt sensation in my body? And just start from there.
Michelle Tubman
Oh I can tell you it's restless for me that is for sure. It's just interestingly, before we go on to your second suggestion there, I grew up in a household where the radio was on all the time. I have a husband now who loves to have the TV or the radio on all the time and I can't. I can't even do it. So you know we have a schedule in our house now so that I can have some silence. But you know the irony of it is if I sit in silence without distracting myself with my phone or other things, I definitely get very strong feelings of restlessness that come up. So that's what I've been working through. Personally to see what's there and it's a challenge for me to sit with that restlessness but I'm making progress there.
Rhonda Farr
Yeah, I will tell you to even challenge yourself more when you sit with restlessness. Just start describing it.Then welcome it and just say welcome, you're welcome to be here. I literally talk in my mind to my body and my emotions and then just say, Hey, why are you restless? Could you tell me? What do you want me to know right now? You have my attention. There's no music or TV on? So yeah, quick challenge there.
Michelle Tubman
I'll do that, thank you.
Rhonda Farr
Yeah. Here's the last suggestion and this does not work for everybody. I'm going to go ahead and tell you that, but sometimes when we are afraid our body is afraid to feel discomfort like restlessness or sadness or whatever. Sometimes we can feel happiness and excitement. So I will literally have my clients tell me what it feels like when they're excited about something or I will have them imagine what it's like to sit with a pet and rub their pet or maybe remember a moment with a child that they really love. And I'll say, just describe what your body feels like when you think about this moment. So it's still making a connection between mind and body, but it doesn't quite feel so scary. And what I would do when I started practicing this, I set an alarm to practice three minutes, twice a day. You could do three minutes in the morning and be done with it at first, but just relax my body and think of a memory where I felt comfortable. Where I felt safe, where I felt connected and then describe that sensation.
Michelle Tubman
Okay, yeah, I can see how that would be helpful for sure.
Rhonda Farr
What we have to be careful with is some clients when they're asked to do this, they don't feel worthy to feel happy. And they don't feel worthy to feel a positive memory. Yeah, so it can be frustrating even more like, I can't even feel happy. And so I just want to tell your listeners if that happens to you. You're okay. There's nothing wrong with you. Your body just isn't comfortable feeling good anymore and we can work with that and use some of the other techniques, but this does work for some people.
Michelle Tubman
Well Rhonda, that's me. I can wallow in sadness for days on end and be okay with that and being happy for five minutes is very, very, very, very difficult for me. I'm always just waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I can certainly pull up times where I felt comfortable or peaceful. I think that would work for me as well. But I think that is actually an important point because we especially when it comes to emotional eaters, there's just this assumption that we eat the negative emotions and that is not true. For all of us. There are a lot of us that struggle with feeling happy or good because there's this underlying belief that we don't deserve it or something bad will happen and take it all away or whatever it is.
Rhonda Farr
Can I give you a quick insight? Even people who seemingly have it all together and who would even describe themselves as having it all together have that feeling of the other shoes gonna drop. The brain is hardwired to keep you in your safety comfort zone and if we start to feel a lot more positive emotion, it's almost an automated response for all of us, mine does it constantly, that just says Oh, don't be too happy. Oh, you're gonna get let down or starts creating these crazy horrific circumstances. Well, this person might die or that person might this, like even extremes. And it used to freak me out like this is a premonition something's gonna happen. But now I just say, Oh, I hear you. I hear you. You're like my thermostat and you don't want me to turn up the happiness too high and like, I see what you're doing. We're safe. And I'll just say to my brain, we're safe. We're okay. I know this feels uncomfortable, but we're safe. Yeah and it's just what brains do.
Michelle Tubman
I love that. And I think like you've mentioned this a couple of times that you will actually talk to yourself, you'll tell your brain that you feel safe. You'll ask your brain, what are you trying to tell me or you'll ask your body? Right? And it may feel a little bit silly doing that if you're not used to it, but I think it's actually so important. Because part of what, especially when you're asking yourself the questions, is it opens up curiosity and it takes away some of the judgment. So I think a lot of us, if we're feeling badly about something, we judge ourselves for feeling that way. Or if we are feeling something like resentment or envy or something like this, and then we judge ourselves again, for feeling that. I think if you're able to, step back and allow those feelings to be there and ask what are you trying to teach me? You can't really judge yourself and be curious at the same time.
Rhonda Farr
You can't heal that, which you're judging. When we have a thought that creates discomfort in our body, this is my personal opinion. So I'm going to preface this with this is Rhonda Farr school of thought, I think we're all born worthy, and valuable and as we go throughout our lives, we develop self-talk and narratives that go against that. I think when you feel a discord, uncomfortable emotion in your body, all it means is, the way you're seeing yourself or talking to yourself is not in alignment with your True value and worth as a human on this earth. When you feel icky. It's just an indicator that your narratives aren't matching your value. And if you can just say oh, where's this off? Or, and that's a little bit more advanced, right? Because when we don't feel worthy and good, like that's really hard to go there. But I think the ultimate goal is to just see emotions as an indicator that something's out of alignment. Just like a smoke alarm would be in your home. Like you just want to go toward it and check it out and tell you what it's indicating.
Michelle Tubman
Yeah. I love it. And that's why we often use the metaphor of indicator lights on the dashboard of your car, right? It's like emotions are just that light blinking telling you to just you know, pop the hood and take a look at what's going on inside and I love Rhonda Farr school of thought, that we are all born you know, worthy and deserving. A lot of the struggles that we have is because we've just simply forgotten that.
Rhonda Farr
I would venture to say, I don't speak in absolutes a lot, but I think all of the discord in our body comes because we have forgotten that true divine potential. You can call it what you will, but just this true worth that can never be taken from and when we see ourselves with ill intent or when we judge ourselves or when we forget that worth. It's just saying hey, that's not who you were created to be, your thoughts are not in alignment with the measure of your creation. Let's just check that.
Michelle Tubman
Right and I'm gonna end this conversation by bringing up something I read in a book called Burnout by the Nagurski sisters. I love it. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. One of the sisters is talking about doing an experiment where every time she encounters another person out there in the world, living her life day to day, she would compliment that person in her mind in some way to find something beautiful rather than them critical and to actually tell them in your mind. You're beautiful, and it's amazing how difficult it can be to actually do that for another person, but how even more difficult it is to do that for ourselves. But after I read this book, I actually engaged in that practice for a good month and what happened naturally as I was training my mind to look for the beautiful in everyone, I couldn't help but see it in myself as well. I think that it is absolutely true that each and every single one of us has intrinsic value on this earth and if we can start to see it in each other, it's a little bit easier to see it in ourselves as well.
Rhonda Farr
Beautiful I love it.
Michelle Tubman
All right. Rhonda. Do you have anything else that you'd like to say before we sign off today?
Rhonda Farr
I just want to say to your listeners, take anything from this interview that feels relevant and valuable to you. Nothing I have said should be used against yourself. Like we might try some of the techniques or we might say I don't know how to sit with an urge yet. Oh, my goodness, she's saying we should be able to do that we can't. These are all things that we're learning at our own pace and depending on where you're at the smallest tiniest new thought or the smallest tiniest shift, that could be exactly what you need. I will say four years ago, I wasn't even close to being ready, to go all in like I am now, but being willing to take the tiniest step forward or see it with the tiniest amount of less judgment than I was before was the catalyst. It was letting the door open just slightly, when I didn't even know if I could and I would just offer that to your audience. Don't use this against yourself. Take any tiny bit of this that resonates with you and just start small.
Michelle Tubman
That is beautiful advice. Rhonda, Thank you. And if listeners want to learn more about you or work with you on their emotions, where can they find you?
Rhonda Farr
Yeah, you can go to Rhondafarr.com. I have a free course that's four parts that they could partake of very easily. It'll pop up on my website. I also have my calendar link on my website. So you can find me there. You can email me at [email protected] You could find me on Instagram and message me. I'm out there, You'll find me
Michelle Tubman
Wonderful and I'll make sure all of that is in the show notes as well.
Rhonda Farr
Beautiful, Thank you so much. Michelle.
Michelle Tubman
Thank you Rhonda.
