How Can Holding Emotions Teach Us?? · Confidence & Clarity Code

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How Can Holding Emotions Teach Us??

Happy Beautiful Monday Everyone!

I sat with something at the end of last week and throughout the weekend, and just had an epiphany after a walk.

That's usually how it goes down for me. A walk, workout, shower, or meditation. 🚶‍♀️🛀

Over the last few weeks, I've been sharing about how to use your hidden patterns quiz results to both discover how experiences and emotions show up in our outer and inner worlds, and start to remember who we are so we can honor ourselves. I did that today because I put awareness on some feelings last week and waited for the answers to arrive.

Last Wednesday, my MIL left after visiting for 8 days. I've known this for a long time, but it really sunk in this time: That's WAY too much time to have someone else in your space, dysregulating the normal rhythms of the home and life.

I realized a few things this morning on my walk:

You can be excellent at regulating yourself, but having anyone extra in your environment, especially those who aren't regulated will very likely catch up with you. She has bad ADD and anxiety so her nervous system never calms down.
Giving yourself space and care during this time is essential, but likely won't have the same effect as it normally would. On a typical day I can reset and find my baseline pretty easily, even if I've been stressed. I found returning to the energy of the space with my MIL in it was more difficult and I began to ask myself why.
It's completely okay to have frustration and negative emotions during this time. Those emotions and feelings are arising to alert us to something being off. And, we can still hold love in our hearts for that person too.

She left on Wednesday. Normally I would be good to go after a day or two, but this time my feelings lingered and I knew I had to explore that so I set the intention.

This morning, I realized on my walk that I hadn't fully processed and integrated many of my feelings towards her from the past. I was aware of them and felt them at the time, but some of her behaviors this time we're a trigger.

Before I'd done the deep work, including lots of releasing, and inner child and shadow work surrounding my parents, I used to have a 1 to 2 week emotional detox from their visits because everything triggered me. How I respond to their visits has been a massive gauge for my own personal growth and evolution. It took time, but they don't trigger me anymore. I can witness them and I may not like their behaviors or words, but I can let it go. I can also say my peace and honor myself.

I know now what triggered me with my MIL last week. She projects quite a bit and she did it to me a few times (an example was because I swore and she didn't like it... and IDGAF 😂 but it's okay for her) but she was doing it to my daughter. All of these projections are subtle cues that she isn't good enough in her eyes.

It brought me back to early in my relationship with my husband when I felt like I was invisible because his parents would talk over me. Frequently. And I know that was a story I was telling myself. I wasn't invisible, they just lack self regulation and being able to hold space for others so they just interrupted me. It just happened to be much less than they did it to their son. But at the time I was identifying with a wound of invisibility and rejection.

She also doesn't respect boundaries and space of others. She would be loud and even talk to me when I was working and on client calls (my office is on the main floor and has no door). She did the same to my daughter, not honoring the space of her bedroom or even a dressing room. This probably bothered me the most because it was in my face much of the time.

So what am I going to do? I have awareness, which is the first step. The next step will be doing some more intentional nervous system regulation exercises and subconscious work since I can do quantum healing and hypnotherapy on myself like I do with clients. I'll also be having conversations with my daughter and asking her if she feels the need to do any work together.

And the next time my MIL visits, they are going to be some new boundaries in place. The first one being no extended stays.

Have you been in a similar situation? What learnings did you have or are you still breaking it down?

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How Can Holding Emotions Teach Us??