Season 3, Episode 1: Navigating Self Care & Stress Management with a Chronic Illness

Welcome back to The Gut Show, Season Three!

In this season, we are going to explore gut health and digestion from other perspectives. So in seasons one and two, you mostly heard from me, your host, Erin Judge, dietitian and GI expert, but in season three, I want to bring in other experts to talk about maybe some other conditions or just other things to think about when we're looking at digestion and digestive disorders. I also want to bring in those who are living with chronic illness, whether that be IBS, IBD, or other conditions, and they've done something from it from a place of advocacy, or maybe even providing resources for others in this space.

I hope that you enjoy everything that's coming from this season, and while maybe every single topic and interview doesn't completely relate to you and your specific situation, I encourage you to dive into the episodes week by week and learn with me on these different perspectives that experts and some of our peers have to share with us!

So dive in episode one where we're going to talk to Chelsea Connors all about navigating stress management and self-care and then meet me back here every single week for a new perspective, a new voice and me, your host, Erin.

Chelsea Connors is a Certified Life Coach and Former Therapist bridging the gap between mental wellness and personal development. She works with clients individually, hosts group programs and runs a monthly membership that will be re-launching in February 2022.

To stay in touch, sign up for her free Calibration Practice where you’ll learn her signature 5 step practice for sustainable and realistic self care.

You can check out the podcast on iTunes here, Spotify here, and on YouTube here! Below is a full transcript of the episode if you prefer to read through it or want notes.

Don’t forget to connect to others in The GUT Community, a Facebook group for those with IBS and digestive disorders to support one another and dive deeper into each episode together.

Erin Judge: Welcome back to The Gut Show! Today's episode is one I'm so excited about because we have one of my favorite experts in the mental health space: Chelsea Connors! She is a certified life coach and a former therapist who's bridging the gap between mental wellness and personal development. She does work with clients individually, hosts group programs, and runs a monthly membership that will be relaunching in February 2022, which is so exciting because we were right on the cusp of that.

If you remember, from season two of The Gut Show, we actually interviewed Chelsea, and you can find that episode as a bonus episode and we talked all about navigating stress and overwhelm, so you can also get to know Chelsea a little bit better there. But as we segue into today's episode and our interview today and our topic that we'll talk about, Chelsea, I would love for you to just say what you've been up to, what's new, and what work looks like for you now, maybe some things that you're excited about for the new year!

Chelsea Connors: Absolutely! So first off, thank you so much for having me back, I'm so excited to be here! And yeah, I think things I've been working on currently are restructuring some of my individual programming like you mentioned in that intro I'm going to be relaunching my membership called the practice vaults in February, so we've been doing a lot of work on that. And then I am also collaborating with a team working on developing a coaching program that I can't share a lot of details about just yet, but that is in the works. So a lot of different projects and moving parts over here!

Erin Judge: That's so exciting! And I know that many from our community have been kind of overlapping with your community and have loved seeing that, and especially your desire to help those within the chronic illness space. Even if that's not direct I feel like there's such a good overlap, especially those with IBS, and so we love seeing that connection. This brings us right into our topic for today and that's this idea of being overwhelmed, feeling exhausted, feeling stressed, you know, with life, we feel that way.

So it's like there's already this bar of life and even, you know, recording this episode in early 2022, the past two years, like we all collectively feel that that bar of just overwhelm has increased. Those with a chronic illness or digestive disorders, I feel like that bar is even higher, and there's just so much stress and exhaustion tied to it, which can be due to the fact that their condition is having on their daily life, which is causing maybe less capacity there, but also navigating their condition and just all the pieces involved with that. And one thing I'd love to get some insight from you is what do those types of feelings, the feelings that are associated with that, when do those actually have a strong impact on the body? What does that look like?

Chelsea Connors: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that they tend to have the strongest impact on the body when they start triggering the release of hormones over and over and over again, right. So cortisol, we know is a huge stress hormone, so if you're somebody who's very susceptible to feeling stressed, or don't have great stress management tools in your toolbox, that can be really, really impactful on how your body begins to feel and how it reacts and learns to respond to life. And then also, if you're starting to experience certain emotions over and over and over again, you're creating different patterns in how you respond to those different emotions, and so sometimes when we're not necessarily slowing down enough to be intentional with what you want that response to look like we can, and this happens to all of us as human beings, but especially if you're also struggling with chronic illness of some sort, right? We can develop some unhelpful coping mechanisms, patterns, ways of responding, that then just take some time and effort to unlearn and find things that are more helpful. And that certainly is a process that I know we both work on with our clients in different ways, but it's so impactful for how somebody feels both physically and mentally.

Erin Judge: Yeah, absolutely. And I think kind of thinking about that as a visual it's like there's your capacity to start with, which is going to look different every day, right? Because you might have more filling up that cup, and what you don't want to be overfilled with stress or overwhelm or thoughts or whatever. And hormones can affect that just, you know those with the menstrual cycle, those changes, you know, that can impact it, just how you feel when you wake up if you have symptoms when you wake up or not. Or maybe your body's been taxed so that capacity cup can be very different. But then there's also almost these triggers, which may be in your control, but mostly, probably are not in your control all the time.

And so instead, we're not really saying that it's, and I think we talked about this a lot in the first episode and it's something that's so hard to communicate that the managing stress piece isn't about always just controlling these stressors, but maybe understanding how these different triggers and life and these different things that come your way, go into you and then how that impacts your body on a deeper level. And so navigating both the actual impact on your body that you may not see or even really feel physically, or you might, but also the emotions that you feel. So there's almost two sides of that. Would you agree that that's something that is not really communicated well, or maybe even well understood with how stress and overwhelm and all these things impact us?

Chelsea Connors: Yeah, yeah, I absolutely would agree with that. And I think, again, something that I feel really passionate about, and that I think that I say almost that at nauseum is that I think a big contributing factor to that is because we are constantly moving, we are we are go, go, going, we are constantly receiving more and more information, whether that's through social media, or TV, or the news or email, like whatever it might be, and so I think we don't recognize subconsciously how much as a human you're being impacted right now. And so it's really easy to overlook some of the more subtle signals that your mind or your body might start to send you when you're starting to feel some of these things. And so, yeah, I think that there's just so much happening kind of in the background, and sometimes we don't notice it until it is like so big that it's disrupting your day or physically impairing you or mentally impairing you to the point where it's like, oh, this is like, now a significant thing that's getting in the way of me living my life.

Erin Judge: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love that you mentioned that of like, there's so much always going on, and that does have an actual impact. You mentioned hormonally, you know, there's hormones that are released with that and there's actual processes happening in your body, whether you feel it, notice it, or even actively participate. So it's like not even just allowing it to happen, the fact that it is always happening, what are some of those subtle signs, like what what would be a signal, or some signals that you've seen people deal with, or notice when they are maybe more intuitive and more in tune with some of those changes that are happening?

Chelsea Connors: Sure. Yeah. So I think that everybody's body, I believe, communicates with them differently. So as I'm about to share some kind of like broad strokes, for anybody listening or tuning in, this is not an end all be all list, it doesn't mean that these have to be present. But some things that it might be helpful to start tuning into are things like your energy levels, right, like that's one of the most obvious ones, starting to notice if your energy is dipping, or if you feel really energized at certain points throughout the day, or things like that, that could be a great way.

Checking in with your physical body, so doing an exercise like a body scan, if you start to notice, maybe there's a certain area of your body that starts to feel really tense or tight when you're stressed or overwhelmed, or I'm going to guess that you see this often, maybe if you experience like stomach pains, right, or tightness in hip flexors, or things like that. Those can be common areas in the physical body that are kind of signaling to you to pay attention or something's up or it might be beneficial to explore that a little bit further.

People can also start to experience tension headaches or sometimes just starting to second guess everything that you're doing. It feels really difficult to make a decision or sometimes even have a conversation with a partner or loved one or a friend or co-worker, right like that might be a clue into like what's going on in my my mind right now and like all the different ways that that can be impacted. So those are just to name a few, but those are some of the areas that I see people starting to notice. Or just like chronic stress, just constantly waking up and feeling like, I never can get enough done, or there's so much going on in a day, or the to-do list that for many of us is, in reality just never-ending, right. Like, as soon as we take something off, we're adding something on, and so learning, like when that starts to feel like I don't know how to handle this anymore, or I don't know how to do this, those can be really great signals to like, explore a bit deeper and start paying attention.

Erin Judge: Yeah, absolutely. And I think something that is interesting is that a lot of those things are perceived as normal, especially in the US where we're based, it's part of our culture, it's part of the hustle, the grind, you know, we're working hard, the doing everything and getting everything out of your life, being present, you know, just all of these things that we hear. And in some ways, I think it's celebrated, and so when we feel those things, it can be tempting to think that, you know, well, that's supposed to happen, or I think there's this other side of it, where we feel like, something's wrong with us, it's like almost more so blaming ourselves, and blaming our bodies in some weird way about how, you know, we can't keep up like something must be wrong with me. And I see that a lot, where it's like, well, I don't want to change any of these things., you know, I don't want to look at what might be coming in, like something must be wrong with my body.

And in some ways that might be true. I think there's, you know, the varying capacities that we have based on how we process and what goes on and all of those different things. But I think what people don't understand is that there is something physical, like, there's some physical things that are happening. And those are just signals. Beyond cortisol, so we know cortisol is released when we're dealing with stress and you know, overwhelm and things like that. But what other parts of like the physical body, like what's actually happening beneath the surface that is causing the lack of focus, the poor sleep, the poor energy, like all of those things that actually happen?

Chelsea Connors: Yeah, so that lends me right into the nervous system, right, because we're going to be thinking about, we have two parts of our nervous system, we have the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system, is when we are living from that fight flight or freeze mode that most of us are really, or many people are somewhat familiar with hearing about by now. And then we have the parasympathetic nervous system, which is more of the rest and digest mode that we all need to sustain our well being over time. And what we hear about happening right now is that most of us are living in the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, way more often than our bodies were made to. Right. And so what happens when when you live there is one of my favorite analogies for this that I learned in some of my graduate clinical work that I think is so helpful, is thinking about the nervous system, like the brake pedal and the gas pedal in a car. Are you familiar with this analogy? Do you use it?

Erin Judge: I think that I've learned it from you. So it's a great thing to remember and say over and over again.

Chelsea Connors: Okay, well, hopefully it bears repeating. But I think it's so important because I think sometimes just like having knowledge, tidbits like this is what really helps people start to recognize like, there is nothing wrong with you for having these experiences, right, like your body is responding in the way that it knows how to based on the demands that are being placed upon it.

And so when we can kind of use information and knowledge to help alleviate some of the added self judgment and self criticism that whether you have something chronic, some chronic illness going on, or whether this is more happening for you mentally and emotionally, hands down, judging yourself and being hard on yourself about it, not going to help, right. And so that's why I repeat, like knowledge and tidbits like this so often because I think they're so important and they're not talked about enough.

So jumping back a little bit, we spend so much time in this fight flight or freeze mode, and there are so many things that can activate that, whether that's a difficult conversation that you had, or something not going the way that you wanted it to go. Maybe having a flare up and all of a sudden now you're reacting to being in like oh no, what could this mean? What might happen next, and kind of like having that compounding stress or compounding anxiety on top of your real experience, and that's just keeping you in this go go go mode, which is activating, then maybe your heart starts beating really quickly, then your brain is moving really fast and you're thinking really about, like every worst case scenario that could possibly come true, right?

Like all of these things that we all experience internally, very often, so that's like having the gas pedal down and having it full floor and not knowing how to stop or how to slow down. And then the brake pedal is when we learn to activate the parasympathetic nervous system that honestly reminds your body that you are safe. That things are though they may not be ideal, or how you want them to be, that you're not in life or death, danger, which is how oftentimes your body is responding when you're in that sympathetic nervous system reaction. And so things like breathwork, journaling, movement can be so helpful for activating that parasympathetic nervous system and actually learning how to strengthen your brake and know when to use it because you get more in tune with your body and your mind.

Erin Judge: Yeah, I love that. And I agree, I think learning what's actually happening in your body is so empowering, because it takes away the judgment, the guilt, the opinions of others, the normalization of some of these things in our life, and brings it back to no, what is my body saying, and I know that you agree, I think we probably even talked about this multiple times, but the communication from your body is something I always talk about.

Your body isn't communicating to you to fight you, like, your body's not communicating to you to shame you, the body's not communicating to you to harm you, like the body's communicating, hey, I need something and like, this is what's going on. And like we are trying to live, you know, we're trying to function, we're trying to make it in our lives every day and I'm trying to tell you because you have the power to do some things to either help me or we're going to keep going, you know, as fast as possible and we're probably going to go off the cliff because we can't stop if we go that fast.

And so many times I think we just beat ourselves up for that communication our body's giving us instead of looking deeper, and it's so hard, because sometimes that communication is not what we want to hear. And it might look like fatigue, where you shut down, it may look like crying all afternoon, you know, it may look like I have a flare-up and those are really hard, and that looks different for every person and that's difficult. And so I think it's it's so interesting to learn how, what's really going on beneath that communication and when you know that you're able to harness the communication a bit better, I think and navigate it instead of feeling like you have to somehow turn off and on a switch or whatever it may look like you know, on a surface level.

And then that comes down to, you know, the actual practice of it. Because it's easy to say, oh, yeah, we need to learn how to slow down, we need to learn how to activate this, you know, parasympathetic nervous system state and get into this mode, and that sounds really nice and it almost sounds like the fancy switch, but it's not that easy!

And so I think I know where you will go with this, so I'm just going to lead you there. Would you consider actual true self care, what we call self care, as being the practice of activating that nervous system state in coordination with your own body?

Chelsea Connors: Yeah, yeah. So I think it depends on how one defines self care, right? Because I think that there are so many different ways that self care is portrayed right now and so, I think that is hard to say like yes or no because of that, right? So my response to that would be well, how are we in our conversation going to define self care? Because that's important, and thinking about it from that lens.

Erin Judge: Let's get into that, um, how would we actually define self care? And I figured you would say that, so I want to start that conversation because recommending self care is what we typically do and so I think, changing the conversation around what true self care looks like, what true response to your body's communication looks like is really important.

So let's break it down! What are the different versions of self care that are out there and what should self care maybe actually be defined as?

Chelsea Connors: So thinking about self care is something that is so heavily utilized right now. I can remember being in graduate school, where I'm studying clinical mental health counseling and still, there was just like this blanket statement of like, make sure you're taking care of yourself.

I distinctly vividly remember thinking like, what does that mean and how do people do that? What should I be doing? And I felt so confused and frustrated, even in a master's degree in clinical mental health counseling. So I now like to think about self care as almost like the practice of learning to tune into, discern and then take action on giving yourself what you genuinely need.

The reason that I use those words when I use that definition, is because it's important that we are being curious and reflective enough to get to know like, when am I doing quote, unquote, self care that maybe looks pretty or that is, like, lazy but isn’t actually restorative?

When am I doing self care that is forcing myself to look like what I’ve seen somebody else on the internet doing to take care of themselves, but actually does not feel good for me, right? Like, these are all of the nuances to self care that's really important for that personal empowerment piece, so that every individual is no longer looking outside of themselves to define what they need, but actually starting to ask themselves more helpful questions to then again, like discern, do I really need to sit on the couch and watch Netflix today and and chill out and zone out for a little while because that's truly like, what's going to be the most supportive for me, which is a okay sometimes? Or would it actually feel more helpful for me today to go for a walk and schedule some doctor's appointments that I need to catch up on and take care of myself in that way?

There are so many different forms and practices of self care, but I think that discernment and that reflection piece is the piece that often goes missing. And so people just say, like, well, I took a bath last night, and I don't feel better, so clearly, self care doesn't work, or it doesn't make a difference. And that's where I think it gets messy, or sticky.

Erin Judge: Yeah, I agree. And I think there's some inaccessibility or lack of accessibility when it comes to what's perceived as self care too where it's like, well, you have to be able to go get a massage, or you have to be able to afford, you know, someone to help clean your house or, you know, it doesn't have to look that way and not every time will it look that way and that personal factor matters so much. And even the way that we ask for help, or the way that we do take action on the care that we need, sometimes it does look like things that aren't comfortable either. It's not always super comfy. It's not always even always relaxing. Sometimes it is simply doing what needs to be done, knowing that that's going to help with relaxation tomorrow or with you know, that support that you need later, and I love that conversation.

And I think what can be kind of hard is that while it is empowering to know that self care doesn't look the way we've been told it looks and it is more personalized and there can be a lot of power in it, I think it can also almost be overwhelming in and of itself because there's so much responsibility and like personal ownership that's tied to self care. Because if you're not actively discerning and listening and you know, processing and assessing yourself, it's very very hard to do that. And that can sometimes feel like a lot.

What would you say if that, you know, I know that I felt that and so I know someone listening probably that's what's in their mind, and they're like, oh, no, like, that just seems like too much work. What would you say to that person? Where would that actually start?

Chelsea Connors: Yeah, and that's such a good point and I certainly know many people that feel that way and have felt that way. So my first thought is to start small, right? As you talk about the responsibility piece, and we talk about awareness and discernment, and these like big, buzzy type words, yes, it all sounds well and good and it can also be overwhelming. And again, if we go back to that busyness factor, many people are going to have resistance, because they're going to be like, I don't have time for that, like, I'm too busy, I got too much going on. Maybe you have kids, and you're working and life and there's so much happening all the time, so I totally relate to that.

So my first thought would be, start small and even if you can find five minutes a day, where you're just paying attention, starting to pay attention to how you're feeling physically, mentally, and emotionally, how are you talking to yourself, what's going on in your body, like, and I'm a huge fan for writing things down. So if you could take three to five minutes and ask yourself three to five questions, like I just named really briefly right there, and just jot them down so that you're strengthening that muscle of what it feels like to pay attention to yourself.

Just start there for two weeks, maybe even a month? And then start to think about maybe can you look at those notes> Are you noticing any patterns? How might you envision that somebody can approach those things, right? And that might lead you to starting to find like, what are the tools that you think could be helpful for some of the patterns that you're learning about yourself?

So that might mean like, oh, it would actually feel really great to have 10 minutes to myself in the morning, rather than jumping right into work, because I noticed that by x time, I feel like my stomach is in a twist, or I feel really overwhelmed, right, or whatever it might be, you might start to gather more information that helps you be more in tune with what you'd like to try when it comes to some of these self care practices so that it doesn't feel like you're sitting down with a dictionary of options, feeling just overwhelmed and you're like, I don't even know what word I'm looking up right now.

You can kind of use more information before like pulling out the dictionary, and then you're gonna have like, okay, right now I'm looking at D, and at least then you're focusing on one letter or one thing, and that's going to oftentimes feel much more palatable, then trying to take this huge, broad stroke of like, I'm gonna start taking better care of myself. And it's like, okay, but what does that mean? And what does that look like for you?

Erin Judge: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It has to start with that connection and I love that you brought that up because it's something that I always communicate to clients. In my own life, what I’ve found to be so powerful is the act of journaling. And something that we talk about often within even our programs is journaling, it's almost like creating just a safe space to communicate. So starting without going into the deep conversations with yourself, but just learning how to converse and communicate to yourself in a safe way, and like learning how to trust that it's okay for you to communicate and journaling might be physically writing, it might be talking, you know, say walk around your room and just have a conversation. It doesn't have to look one specific way. But that is always so fun to see that light up for people because it is easy to just take what's on your brain, just write it down for a little bit. Follow up a prompt every day, like if you want to, you know just just write and just talk and just see what happens whenever you learn that it's safe.

One thing I think I see some people that do run into though because maybe their nervous system is just very off and something's going on there because there has been just that chronic stress and they are in that fight flight or freeze to a level that almost feels impossible to get out of, or maybe there's like past trauma that comes up and that blocks parts of their brain, if you will, or you know, these emotions or maybe what they're going through is so challenging that even the act of trying to write it down or think about it causes their body to respond, because it's all hot to process, which is a probably a lot in our community. What would you say for that? Because that may cause a block, so what's one of the best ways to get through that if you're kind of feeling like you're in that state?

Chelsea Connors: So I think that is so real and so important. And honestly, my biggest thought on that would be to start working with a professional, to start working with a therapist and to find somebody to walk that path with you because it can feel really hard to try and do that on your own without an expert, without somebody who's trained, without somebody who is able to hold that difficulty with you and just give you space and time and a framework and insight to utilize as you process through that, as you learn to navigate it, as you learn to work with it in different ways, learn whether what other options you might have. And yeah, I think it's just so important to work with a professional. If you're experiencing that. 

Erin Judge: Absolutely. And then even thinking about the tools that you talked about earlier, if you identify the need, it's like, well, I noticed my need, I have no idea what it looks like to give myself that. Like rest, how do I give myself rest when I have three kids and a full time job, it's like, you know, there are these situations where it does feel like, well, there's no obvious answer here. I don't have that equipment, just because I've never been taught that or told that or it doesn't look like what it looked like for Chelsea online or for Erin online or for this other person online. You know, a really great professional is going to be there to help give tools to and ideas and help you understand that. And I think what's fun is knowing that you have the ability to try things.

I think that something too, where sometimes there is this mindset of, well, that didn't work, like you mentioned with the bath like well, I took a bath and it didn't work, so it doesn't work for me. And I hear that with journaling, where it's like that just doesn't work, with meditation, it just doesn't work for me. And I know that that's kind of a closed mindset to believe that like, well, that's the only way that should look. But I think there's something around that that people haven't been told. So let's explore that. What does it look like to maybe trial and have fun and give yourself permission for things to work or not work? Or is there a type of mindset that you work with clients on ever around that?

Chelsea Connors: So thinking about that, two of the biggest pillars that I stand on as a coach is having a growth and experimental mindset. So thinking about a growth mindset, right? Like that is holding the belief that we can change, that we can shift our ability to learn something new, grow in how we approach something, right versus a closed or fixed mindset, which is almost the belief of like, this is just who I am and that's never gonna change. That can be really difficult to navigate, and also, based on science, we know that that's untrue, right? We know that our brains have plasticity, they can change no matter what age you are, it might look different, it might take different lengths of time, or a different number of practices in order to make some of these changes, but we have neuroplasticity in our brain, it is possible to change.

So reminding yourself of that and really embodying this growth mindset and kind of taking on the initiative of being a lifelong student, a lifelong learner, of yourself, of the world, like we're all constantly doing that whether or not we're actively participating in it or not. So having a growth mindset is hugely helpful. And then also, I think about an experimental mindset alongside of that.

So, obviously, we live, especially here in the US, in a culture that is very driven by success and outward productivity and like this onwards and upwards only trajectory, which has benefits to it, and having dreams and desires and goals and working to improve. those are all great things. And we have to recognize that we're all human here. Nobody is always moving onwards and upwards, nobody is constantly productive. Nobody is only ever successful. And actually, the better that we can get at failing, the more fully we'll experience life, and the more that we'll be able to give this self permission to experiment with new things, to try something different, to approach something again, after it didn't go well, a time or two or 10, or 20. Right?

And so that helps you actually develop resiliency, that helps you develop self-trust and self-efficacy, right. And these are vital aspects that are going to contribute to your well-being overall, so it's a big unlearning about what it means to grow, to experiment, to try something new, and really appreciating that there is also value in the times where it doesn't go well, or in the times where something doesn't work for you. Right, like that's still helpful information. Like, I might learn that I'm somebody who hates taking baths, but I actually love getting in a sauna, or doing a cold shower or cooking feels like therapeutic for me, or whatever it might be. And so if I didn't allow myself to experiment, how would I ever learn those things about myself?

Erin Judge: Absolutely! And I think that goes back to what we mentioned, at the start is knowing how to connect to yourself and in a, not necessarily positive or even healthy way, but just in a way, knowing how to just be with yourself and understand what you're saying, because the power is, but my body's communicating something different. And I think it's important to remember that if it does feel like, well, nothing ever works for me and like, well, that is my experience. It's like, okay, let's dig deeper into your connection to yourself, and what is your body saying, like, you're not wrong, but there might be something else there that is being communicated that we could dig into.

And I think what's also helpful to say is I teach growth in fixed mindset as well, when it comes to IBS and health and any change you make in your life, you have to have that growth mindset because not everything is going to work specifically for your body at all times. And like we mentioned before, the nervous system, and just how your body functions, your body's not always going to have the capacity to do everything well every day, and you're going to hit roadblocks. That's just how it works. And those dealing with chronic illness, those roadblocks might come up more often, and so there's a lot to that.

I think one of the hesitations I've seen around this is this idea that a growth mindset has to also be this kind of can do attitude of like, well, I’m always positive, and it's okay, I'm ready to pick it back up. And it's like, it's not like that. The truth of it is, it's not always pretty, like you might fall apart first, and you might throw a fit, you might be angry, and that's okay to be frustrated. It's okay to be sad. I think disappointment is something that we always have to talk about because it's it's okay to be disappointed when you really try something and it doesn't work for you, because that just is part of it. And I think the growth part isn't about, well, I'm gonna be happy and like, it'll all work out in the end. Like it's more about, you know what, like, that actually didn't work, and that was hard. I think it's being present with that, too. Would you agree?

Chelsea Connors: Absolutely. Yes, I would agree. And I think too….I love that you just focus on that disappointment piece because I think that that is something that just naturally as human beings, we try to avoid as much as possible. I mean, it sucks to be disappointed whether it is in something outside of us, whether it's in ourselves, whether it is in like a hope or an idea that we had of how something was going to go or how it was going to work for us.

Like that I find and I see with my clients, avoiding disappointment is something that is so innate and also oftentimes subconscious. Like we don't recognize that we're doing it a lot of the time when we're doing it. And so bringing that to light and knowing like, yea, no, it's having a growth mindset doesn't mean being positive 24/7. It doesn't mean that you're going to put a silver lining on everything because a lot of times that's actually not helpful, right and we need to be able, no matter what, to sit with the full range of our human emotions and sometimes that's going to look like having the best day ever and feeling like oh my gosh, things feel so great right now like I'm so excited. And that also means having those days where you are crying or you are like, hugely disappointed about something in your life or in your body or, or whatever it might be.

And then everywhere in between, right, so making space and permission and normalizing that that's part of being human. That's part of all of our experience here. Nobody gets through life without having that and without doing that, and so the more that one can practice, like reminding ourselves of that, especially if you're somebody who has perfectionistic tendencies, or maybe you're really uncomfortable with some of those harder emotions right now, or maybe right now your life looks like more difficulties and struggles and hard parts, then good parts, it might be really challenging to accept that this is a reality of life.

But oftentimes, we need to feel it to heal it, right, we need to be present, like you mentioned, with these things and start to, I mean, it's part of the process of getting to know yourself better, whether that's on a physical or a mental and emotional level. And I think too, like the theme of self acceptance is coming up for me as we're talking, not acceptance in a way of like, it is what it is, and I just have to like, be okay with it.

But as an example, and I've shared this on the last podcast, again, I'll share it again, like I have IBS, I have GERD, I've struggled with these since I was a kid. And there was a time when I was in like my early 20s. I was studying psychology and I was just like, so much in this season of trying to figure myself out and trying to like, find kind of what we're talking about, like, what are the things that helped me feel my best that helped me manage my life in ways that feel good for me and work for me.

And I often found myself really frustrated, because I felt like I couldn't quote unquote, do as much as other people would do and feel okay, or feel good or feel how I wanted to feel, or I found that I actually needed a lot more structured rest time than I saw other people around me needing and eventually it came to learn like, oh, a traditional nine to five job for me, does not work for me, it doesn't work for my body, doesn't work for my mind, doesn't work for how I want to live my life and all of those pieces at points were so hard for me to accept because like you mentioned before, I created this narrative of like, what is wrong with me? Why can’t I do everything that is, quote unquote, normal that I see other people doing?

And actually, when I moved into this avenue, where I was like, no, I just actually get to listen to my body when I start to feel more fatigued and more tired. And I'm going to opt to do something more restorative, rather than going out and I'm going to start to embrace that. And that took years. I'm not saying that this was like a switch type of experience. But it was really hard to accept that and at first, I felt wildly disappointed. And I had to go through all of these series of emotions of getting to know my body, right, like learning all of these things at work, but without allowing that process, I don't know what my life was, like right now.

And so though it was painful and hard, staying in this curious, growth, experimental mindset has really helped. And I'm using myself as an example, but I've also seen this in many, many clients get to this place of like, oh, I feel way more aware of who I am and things that support me and what works for my body in my mind and what doesn't, and again, it's like this ongoing journey, as cheesy as that sounds.

Erin Judge: Yeah, I mean, it's hard not to be cheesy, but sometimes the truth is kind of cheesy. I think it's good to have conversations on a deeper and also practical level about it, because I see it too, and as someone who you know, as a health professional, even the things that we're taught for helping people get through things, it is always like, onwards and upwards. Sometimes we just forget to like, say, you know what, it's not fair and like, that's okay that it doesn't feel fair and it's okay that you feel frustrated, and if you ignore those feelings and those thoughts, like, that's not actual communication, and I see that often, where I see you know, my clients and I do it because I want to avoid like discomfort. I want to just think about the good and the movement. It takes time. And I've had even clients tell me, you know, I can't journal the morning because my whole day is going to be spent like crying and thinking about these things, because sometimes that's what it is.

I think what we have to remember is that the process of building awareness is not meant to always just feel good, it's like meant to really get to know you, and that includes the happy and the joy and the gratitude and the excitement, which can come the exact same day as the disappointment, the frustration, the anger, the you know, all the different emotions that can come up and ignoring them, or putting them aside or even hyper focusing on the emotion without having the conversation, which I think is sometimes this weird avoidance of like, I'm going to focus so much on the emotion and I'm angry, I'm angry, I'm angry, but I'm never going to talk about it like that can happen too, as well as I'm happy, and I'm just gonna ignore the fact that I feel angry right now and like, everything's fine and then you fall apart later. It's just, it's all about getting to know you, communicating, and the acceptance is accepting that that's part of you and working through that in whatever way it looks like for you. And just so important.

And I think even getting resources on like, I remember, whenever I started having this conversation, as my self, my personality, I grew up in a family who didn't talk about feelings or emotions. I can compartmentalize, I've got that still if you will, where I could definitely compartmentalize for short periods of time, and that means I can shut off, you know, emotions that don't serve me in the moment. So if I need to be working with a client, and I'm extremely sad, I can shut it off, it's going to come back and I do have to say hello to it again, because it can only get stuffed for so long. But it took a long time in my own life to realize that, like, emotions were like, there were more emotions than I thought, and some of the signals I was hearing from my body were actual emotions with a name and with, like, potential triggers and reasons for them. And they were signals of things that I would have never thought, you know, I would think like, you know, disappointment and those different things like the feelings, just I don't know that, I don't know how to even describe that, but not understanding what emotions are, and I think I learned that well into my 20s.

Like, even just in the past five years, as an adult, you know, and just hearing conversations about it. And I think that's something you know, this is not a self help podcast, and this season of our podcast is all about just conversations, like I don't want there to be, here are your five action steps you know, with every episode, I want it to spark just thought and insight and you know, maybe a different perspective.

But one challenge I think I would give a lot of people is learning what emotions are, and that might be with a therapist, it might be with a coach, it might be from a book or from a podcast, or something but just learning what the actual names of certain emotions are and what they feel like and what they look like, and then exploring that in your body with that communication, that okay, anger might look this way, what does that look like for me? And then what is this that I'm feeling? Is that actually anger? Or is that shame? Is that sadness? You know, what is that actually, and that's been really empowering with building that safe communication through journaling, and through my therapist is incredibly helpful with getting the insight into things that's like, well, I keep trying this, and I'm going in circles. And it's like, well, what if you looked at it in a different perspective, and that's been empowering, but then just learning, okay, I'm hearing these things from myself, now I can put a name to it, communicate it, make sense of it and explore it.

And to me, it feels I feel more human because now I have this range of emotions, and I feel, it's not just a good day or bad day, it's like, no, I'm feeling all these different things. And that's a little bit of a segue. But I thought about that, too, with self acceptance, I think, coming back to even what we talked about with the nervous system, and you know, you have to understand that to know what your body's saying, and even parts of self care might be part of that. I think it's also important to have the knowledge and the power of what emotions are and what those really look like and how to talk about them, and, you know, you might only talk to yourself about it, you don't always have to tell everyone what you're feeling at all times of the day, you don't even have to express it at all times of the day. But I think just that's a big empowerment tool that a lot of us are missing.

Chelsea Connors: Yeah, I love that thought and I see that often, right, where was oftentimes we'll kind of pick like, I don't know a handful of emotions that are our go to, like ways of describing ourselves or ways of responding then when somebody asks, how are you, and we can get sometimes hyper fixated on that or not know, like, what does that actually mean? Like, every time I tell somebody I'm anxious? Or I just tell myself, I anxious, just like, what am I actually telling myself? What does that actually feel like for me? Is that actually true right now? What other words might fit here? And I think too, another empowering piece around emotional intelligence, which is kind of what we're talking about, is recognizing the duality and the nuance of emotion so that we can, we as human beings, we have the capacity to feel multiple emotions at the same time, and I often see that feel really confusing for people, like how can I both be so excited and so sad at the same time? How can I feel really connected and also alone at the same time, right, like, and I think normalizing that experience, too, is so important here, because sometimes it doesn't fit into a neat little box of being able to say, like, this emotion, that emotion, right, and so welcoming that and knowing it's okay to feel multiple things at the same time, and you can make space for all of them as a practice, as well. And I think what you mentioned, too, of just getting in the habit of naming and exploring what are the emotions? What does come up for you, what is present right now, is hugely powerful.

Erin Judge: Yeah. And going back to the very start, like it takes away, I think some of the overwhelm like, it takes away some of the stress in a weird way. And I don't know if there's any, you know, research around that, like emotional intelligence and helping decrease stress, or something. But in myself I noticed that, of being able to, I guess, the acceptance piece, maybe is that tie of like, just being able to accept the fact that like, you know what, I'm grateful for things, and I'm sad, and I'm, you know, excited and happy, and I'm frustrated.

And, you know, as I've dealt with my own gut issues, and I've walked with clients through it, like, there's so much power in that too, as you're making changes and as you're dealing with chronic illness and all these things that, yes, it's unfair, yes, there, you know, there's bad days, and there's some feelings that go along with that. There are also moments of gratitude, there is also moments of joy, and sometimes I think we think we have to either cover up the negative, or I guess, negatives, I'm trying to get away from using the word negative, because I think that also has its own power of like, well, if I feel that something's wrong with me. So that's always checking our words, which is important.

But those things that maybe people don't like to see, I think a lot of times, we either want to cover that up and just show the, oh well, I am alive, and so I guess I must be grateful. For those IBS it's, well, I don't have IBD so I guess I should be grateful, because that's what my doctor told me. Instead of embracing both, or I think sometimes we want to hide the good emotion, I don't know another word for that, the emotions that maybe are prettier or sexier or you know, more accepted, like happiness, and joy and gratitude and all of those different feelings. We want to hide those because we want people to know how mad we are or how sad we are and how horrible the day is. And I think, you know, the toxic positivity conversation, which we're not going to get into, is just cutting out the quote unquote, negative, we need a better word for that then just slapping on a think positively have positive thoughts.

But I think there's also some power in realizing that if we only focus on one, you know, we're not serving our bodies, we're not serving ourselves, we're not serving our relationships. And whether you're portraying just the high or whether you're portraying just the low, like you've taken away a whole aspect of who you are, and you're probably going to feel empty, you know, at the end of the day, and you're probably also going to be stuck at the end of the day and like self care is not going to make sense because how do you take care of yourself if you don't have all the information you need? And you know, I think there's just so much to it that's beyond just thinking positively or you know, just even saying like, oh, you can hold space for both, there's so much there and yeah, just scratching the surface of understanding it and be okay with it. And then leading to acceptance is like level one. Maybe.

Chelsea Connors: Yeah, absolutely. And just one more quick note on that, one of my favorite quotes by the Queen Brene Brown is that, and she found this through her research, is that as human beings we can’t selectively numb. So when we numb out the more challenging emotions, than we typically are also muting out some of our ability to feel really good. And I see that play out to be true with my clients all the time, all the time, right, we're almost like, it almost shrinks your emotional bandwidth, like, you'll only let yourself feel a little bit this way or a little bit that way. And what happens, first of all, that doesn't feel good for your body. Second of all, you're definitely storing a ton of emotions if you're doing that. And then thirdly, more from like a kind of like a spiritualish perspective is like, you're missing out on a lot of your experience of life when you shrink your ability to feel.

And so as hard as it might be, as uncomfortable as it might feel, if you can remind yourself often that this is part of the human experience is being able to feel like this whole rainbow of emotions, that that's part of living a full life. Normalize that and practice normalizing that and saying that to yourself over and over and over again, it can be helpful to change the perspective on how you feel about having certain emotions, whether they're good or bad.

Erin Judge: Yeah, I love that. That's so good. And I think just that final truth that it might not always be easy to do that because sometimes those emotions that have been numbed are going to be very strong and not easy to navigate, and so there is zero shame in getting help and, you know, finding safe spaces to like, allow yourself to feel and explore and process is so so important. And it's okay to be selective with that, too, I think that's something that we have to give ourselves permission for us, you know, find the safe space. And if it's not with yourself yet, find a third party, find help and, and then if people in your life are also not safe for that, like don't, don't do that. It's not a safe space, and if you don't feel safe, there's a reason and so, you know, really being selective and knowing that when you find that safety, like you're able to process those things, and maybe even get in the middle, because you might go the other end of that bandwidth. I know, I experienced that some whenever I was learning my emotions, and you know, it wasn't even that there was anything like so significant or profound that was there. It's just, I didn't feel and actively, you know, engage with so many emotions.

And so when they started coming, it felt like I was constantly on a pendulum. And I needed some support to get in the middle and learn how to just be present with those because they aren't, they weren't something I was engaging with. And so I just want to encourage anyone that it's okay to get help. And that might look like a therapist and might look like a coach, it might look like the spiritual guidance person, like it may look different. And so that's just part of the exploration and ask questions and trust your intuition in some ways to make sure that you feel good, and that'll help you move forward.

Chelsea Connors: Love that. So important.

Erin Judge: So well, Chelsea, this is a great conversation. My mind is like going so I think anyone listening, it's a great time to like grab a notebook and like just write thoughts. Maybe listen again and see what pops out. Because it's always just a fun, it's fun to talk about these nuances of us and being human and having life and you know what that looks like and so I can't wait to dive deeper in my own thoughts from this. So I really appreciate your time and sharing all of your expertise!

Chelsea Connors: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I loved this conversation as always!