#1 - Giving Emotions a Seat at the Table

[Music] Hello and welcome to the Veritas Podcast, where we believe leadership is first and foremost a spiritual path. My name is Dr. Lauren Borden. I am a professional certified coach, industrial organizational psychologist, spiritual teacher, and your host. Together we'll bridge the divide between the practical and the spiritual, the conscious and the unconscious, and mind, body, and spirit. All to support you in deepening your growth so that you can create the impact in the world that only you can have. It's so good to have you here. Let's get started. [Music] Hello, my darlings. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited to be recording an additional episode. Today we are going to be talking about emotions and why conversation about emotions is one of the single most impactful conversations that we can have about growth and development and leadership. For those of you who don't know my background is in psychology, but I am not a therapist by trade. I'm not a counselor. I'm not a clinician. And so as many of you can imagine when I got started, in leadership development and as a coach, I really saw emotions as something that really just exclusively live in the realm of therapy. That there's something that really only therapists need to be talking about. And I was doing an enormous disservice to myself, to my clients, and to honestly the leadership development community community in general. This idea that we, our emotions are separate from us or need to be separate or segmented off, I actually would assert is one of the most damaging things that we hold as professionals in many capacities. So if you are somebody who has a lot of feelings or has no feelings and is like where are my emotions, this podcast is going to be for you today because I'm going to talk about different ways for you to start getting in touch with your emotions. Why we should even give a crap about them and also as coaches how to actually support your clients and get curious about emotions and use them in a productive and positive way. And a little bit about my own story with them. First and foremost, for those of you who know me know that a lot of my work as a coach has been elicited and impacted by my own personal work. Like there's a really big theme in my practice is that I am really constantly doing my own work and looking at my own stuff in a really deep and sometimes kind of bold way. Like I'm very, very committed to it and yet when I started with this work five years ago, I was really kind of to put it bluntly a little emotionally stunted. I started off, you know, like grew up in a family that was is loving and wonderful and supportive in all of these things. And also like a lot of families didn't have a lot of fluency around our discussion of emotions. There was like a particular way that we related to them or when they came up in really intense ways in the space, like in our relationships and in our conversations where even as a little kid, I very quickly got the message that emotions, especially big ones weren't safe. And so spent most of my life also receiving the message that the most important thing was being able to be logical to prioritize what we knew, what we know, our education and that usually if like your emotions actually come up, it means that you're weak or too sensitive or there's something wrong with you. I should speak in the first person because that was really my experience. So there was something wrong with me. If there was ever a moment where my emotions got too big and bubbled up, there was a really big problem that I there was something wrong with me. And so usually for me emotions were wrapped in shame. And so the consequence of this like growing up and as I got older was that all of my energy went on to went to focusing on how I could be smarter, how I could get more certifications, how I could learn more and be a better student. And like didn't really know how to talk about my emotions, didn't know how to talk about them. Even though I knew, I think on some level, I knew they were quite large and didn't really know how to be about them. So usually for me growing up like when my emotions would come up, they'd come up and to put it bluntly like explosions. Like it was when I couldn't hold them down anymore. Like I'd get angry at my parents or I'd get you know, like kind of dissolve into a pit of sadness of some kind. And it was like, and what was funny about it was that like the more that I related to emotions as a problem, the more they became one. My avoidance of emotion actually reinforced the fact that they were unsafe because I spent so much time running for them that when they actually caught up with me, they were so big that they would overcome me and overcome oftentimes a lot of the people who I was around. Like I was not responsible about my emotions. But the way that I related to them was very much so I just need to be better like it handling them. I'll just become more logical. I will just disconnect more from them, run faster harder, more effectively. And that'll fix it. And so actually I want to take a moment to pause there for the listener to actually reflect because one of the really important parts of this conversation is taking note of like what are is your relationship to your emotions? What was modeled for you were they, you know, I have dear friends who I have a dear friend who I'm thinking of like one of my best friends growing up their family. Like it was very like loud and would just yell and it's like a big Italian family. I feel like a lot of this can be cultural where like Italians they will tell you like she, this was according to her with not all Italians, but her her way of explaining it was like I grew up in an Italian household. Like we're just going to tell you what we think of you. Like we're just going to, if we have an issue we're going to say it out loud, we're going to hash it out in those moments. And so for her it's like, oh my god, like it felt like more normal, but also perhaps unstable. For me, I'm like no one talks about them. And if they do talk about them, it's scary and they're they're a sign of weakness. And so like understanding where we start from is really important because all of that we carry over in adulthood and in our leadership and into our businesses. And so the way that that showed up for me when I started my coaching journey was that I just avoided them. A lot of my coaching style was, okay, there's an emotion coming up. We're going to redirect you towards something else that's like productive because emotion is not productive. There wasn't much curiosity. And don't get me wrong, like my coaching was, I was, I had just gotten out of a coach training program. And that is also largely how, you know, ICF International Coaching Federation standards, like they are very clear about there being a boundary between therapy and coaching. So in my mind, it was like, okay, the most responsible thing that I can do is not touch that. And so I didn't. And with my, that was with my clients. And that was also with myself. Meanwhile, fall into the backdrop. I start dealing with like some mental health stuff. So for me, the way that it came up was like extreme stress at work that was showing up in like physical symptoms. Acne, like started coming up really badly, horrible headaches, spasms, like muscle spasms in my neck. And then what really threw me over was that I started down the path of an eating disorder, which seemed at the time completely unrelated. I'll have to talk about that another time on a podcast because there was a lot of learning in that experience. And I think it's a much more common experience than a lot of us realize that landed me in therapy. And when I landed in therapy, my first therapist ever handed me this big list of emotions. And she said, okay, you're going to start learning how to name your feelings. And I was like, this is the most, this is the dumbest thing. I felt rudimentary to me. And like, childish, I was like, I can name my emotions. She's like, fine, then name your emotions, like prove it. And I, it was actually a lot harder than I thought. And so I kind of started on this road of like reclaiming my emotional side and all of the like what felt like unwieldiness of that. And it started me down a path of very deep healing that I desperately needed but had no idea like how much I actually needed it. I thought at the time, like if you had asked me, I'm like, I just need to outsmart this. I need to get better at being a coach, being a leader. Like, I need to be better at all of these things that I'm doing in my life. And then like the emotional stuff will just like fall into the background. And that's not how it works. I think what a lot of us don't realize is that a lot of these things that we're dealing with like depression and anxiety and mental health, it's like we're not actually, there's something old that's unprocessed that's in our space. And if you think it's not impacting your leadership, it absolutely is. Some of the ways that this was playing out for me, speaking in the first person, but like look for yourselves, was that like if I was working with someone in a really intense emotion would come up, I like couldn't be with it. Like I would have to immediate, like almost compulsively, like I'd have to fix it or reroute the conversation. I couldn't just be with them and hold space for them. And the consequence was that I couldn't like actually be connected. Because being connected means actually being present with people as they are, whatever's coming up and not trying to fix or avoid or do any of the things that we do with whatever they should give us, it's just holding space for what is. And so that impacted my leadership, that impacted my coaching. And then, oh God, good Lord. If I mean God forbid anything ever got me hooked, right? Like when I say hooked, it kind of mean triggered. Like if I was triggered or I had a really intense emotion come up, it was very, very hard to lead through that. I could do it, but it was, I'd have to like remove myself and process it. So astrology people, I have like a cancer stelium. I was like, well, water in my chart. So like obviously for me and I it might not be like that for you, but I think the invitation and the thing that I've seen with a lot of my clients is that like the way we are about emotions with ourselves, we're about we're like that with other people. It trickles out into our leadership. It trickles out into the degree to which we can be with other people through their struggles, through their emotional challenges, through their upset, which by the way is a completely normal process of like working on a team and being in a relationship with people and working and being disappointed and excited and all these things like it's what makes us human. The robots haven't taken over yet. Y'all so like why are we trying trying to let them right? So really, really impacted my leadership and you can see now how this might impact how I think about emotions with my clients and that doesn't necessarily mean like I had other things going on in terms of mental health and there was there was stuff there that needed to be looked at and I'm not looked at and I'm not a therapist and I'm not advocating for coaches pretending that they are and also taking a look at the degree to which as leaders and coaches we can hold space for a strong emotion as it shows up in the space. The degree to which we can stay connected to ourselves and other people and the thing is that we can't do any of that if we are emotionally stunted ourselves. This is one of the things that I actually really believe is that one of the most important things in our society in general. Specifically the thing that I think about a lot is the emotional intelligence and the emotional capacity of our leaders. When we think on a global stage in terms of some of the atrocities that we're seeing like to what degree do our leaders actually allow themselves to feel and be impacted by what we are seeing in the world right now. Versus shutting it down and trying to just logic our way out of things. Being intellectual and intellectualization is being able to think through things and think logically and remove emotion when necessary is like such an important skill and we have overdone it. We have swung so far in the direction of being emotionless that we've actually removed our humanity from big conversations, big world changing world impacting decisions and I'm not sure that that is good. It's one of the reasons why I mean I'm such a huge fan of Brunei Brown's work because I don't think this isn't just about feeling your feelings it's about bringing humanity back to the table so that we can lead people more effectively and connect more effectively and actually bring our heads together in a way that we can solve some of these really big problems. So what's it actually look like from a leadership perspective to work with our emotions? Number one is really to take a look at how you are about emotion. How does it show up? Do you over index or are you like so emotional that you are having a hard time maybe getting stuff done? Does it are you emotionally flooded to the point that you like can't get your work done? Is your nervous system regulated? It's like one of my favorite topics. We'll have a whole other one on this but to what degree are you able to stay connected to your breath and stay grounded through what's coming up for you? Through your work to be present with what's coming up for you to be present to your body to be present to your humanity and your emotions without being flooded by them. Are you on the spectrum of them being so big that you can't manage? Or on the other hand, are you trying to outsmart them and make them go away? Or both could be both. But where do you fall? Are you like trying not to be emotional? Are you trying not to hold space for them? And also like the other question is what do you do with them? Like is there something that you feel like you need to do? Do you need to try to fix them? You need to make them go away. Do you ignore them? Do you problem solve them? Do you try to like reassure to make people feel better? The way that you are with your emotions is the way that you're going to be with others. So for me, my go-to, which I learned pretty quickly, once I opened the emotional door, was that I want to fix them. I will, I like really just want to make them better. So would go into caretaking, I mean, I'm a coach, right? So of course this is it. Like, want to go into caretaking or problem solving or how do I make you feel better or kind of lean in? And which actually gets in the way of people being able to have them actually gets in the way of connection. So what do you do when the intense emotion comes up inside of you? What do you do with the emotional, the large emotion that comes up inside of them? The invitation is simply to connect to hold space. Brené Brown has a great one-liner. She says, "What does support look like for you?" Actually giving people an opportunity to tell you what they need versus you guessing and jumping in, not shying away from it. Number two, our emotions are data. They're just data. They are there to tell us something. They're there to their information. They're there to tell a story if you want to and get curious about. And this is one of my favorite things because each emotion has a different like gift inside of it, right? So anger tells us where like when we experience rage and anger, tells us where we're giving our power away, where we're in need of better boundaries, where we have accepted things that we're not actually okay with. Usually with anger, there's like some degree of self-detrayal happening. Usually sadness has a lot of functions, but oftentimes it's actually about garnering resources and connection. So like a lot of people have the experience of they feel sad, so they feel ashamed, so they like separate themselves. And actually what sadness is awful, often inviting is like allowing yourself to be with people and receive the love and support that's there for you. And like taking a look at the degree to which you allow that fear can tell us a lot of things when we're up against the edges of our comfort zone. And there's something big at stake when our safety is at stake. The thing to keep in mind with fear and I'll again do another podcast on this because it's important, but fear will lie to you. Fear can lie. So it's just about getting curious. Actually, all of your emotions can lie. So like getting curious about what stories you're telling about them, right? And then lastly, this is something that one of my favorite spiritual teachers, she has her own podcast, her name is Blue of Earth, BLU. It's a long story about how she got that name, but it suits her. And she, she uses the phrase, "Trust the trigger to teach." This is where, this is like the money ball. This is where the goal is, is that when we have an emotion come up when something triggers us, it tells us, and this is actually, let me back up. This is one of the reasons why it's so important as a leader, right? So like, not step over this stuff. Like we think that leadership means not being triggered and not having big emotions and having it all handled all the time. And it is bullshit. We need to stop teaching leaders that they're not supposed to be triggered and activated or that they're supposed to like have it all handled all the time because what it does is it teaches leaders that they need to step over the things that are activating and triggering them, rather than hold space for them and get curious for them, curious about them. Because when you're able to do that, you're able to actually heal your shit. And that is important because as leaders, we're kind of like parents, if you have undistinguished stuff, patterns, wounds, you will, whether you choose to look at your emotions and wounds or not, act them out on people you work with. They are having an impact whether you look at them or not. And when we're able to look at them, we can actually get curious about what they're telling us. So I already mentioned the like anger tells us this and sadness helps us get connected and sadness tells us when things matter to us and all those things. But if you look deeper than that, look at the trigger, what triggered the emotion and what is that trigger here to teach you? So for example, I do not like being told what to do, the trigger for me. I don't like people like mansplaining or like any of that shit. I have a very limited amount of patience for that. So I know that that is a trigger. But how do I know that's a trigger? I know that's a trigger because of the number of times I've been mansplained at and gone into like a silent fit of rage. And instead of being like, okay, I'm just going to like work through it and swallow my, you know, like swallow what it is that I have to say. I'm like, I got curious about it. Why am I so mad? Like this is really, I'm really mad. And there are a lot of reasons like there are systemic reasons and sexism and all those things that are very, very valid. And also that's something that exists inside of me. What's it triggering? It's triggering the fact that I on some level question my own competence. So when someone tells me what to do or mansplains at me, it feels like they're telling me that I'm not trustworthy. And I know that that's actually my work to heal. That when that thing that wound gets activated, there's part of that that's actually mine and that's my responsibility to heal. I can chase around all of the mansplaining idiots in the world and tell them to stop mansplaining me and that will never fix the fact that on some level, I'm questioning my own competence. I can be at the effect and at like, feel like a victim of the fact that men are assholes, but by the way, there might be some conversations about like sexism in the workplace and microaggressions. And yes, those are all very important and very valid and we will also talk about that at some point. And also, my work on a soul level, on a healing level is with Wait, wait, wait, hold on. This thing is getting at me. There's a wound that this is activating inside of me that is my responsibility to look at. No one, I mean, you will, your whole life, your whole life, your whole leader, all of your leadership, your life, your emotional well-being is going to shift when you realize that not one single person is coming to save you, that is your job to actually do what you need to do to take care of yourself. And sometimes that might mean like activism and systemic changes, yes, yes, yes to all of that. And also, for me, when men, men explain it to me, I know that what's actually getting activated is on some level, I don't think I'm worthy. And as long as that thing is active, as long as that thing is in my space, what's gonna end up happening is I'm gonna go out in the world and in my leadership and I'm gonna be consciously or unconsciously having the conversation of, I'm proving my worthiness. It's gonna seep out unconsciously into the decisions that I make and to the way that I show up until the way that I talk to people and lead people into how I receive feedback and how I direct people in which projects I take on and which when I'm willing to press my boundary and which client I'm willing to take, like that will seep through everything. And so this is not about not holding people accountable. It's about noticing, okay, so I have an emotion. Let's go, instead of avoiding it, go deeper, get curious, look in further. What's going on? What got you? What hooked you? It's if you choose it, that can be the single biggest growth in breakthrough that you might ever have. So what's actually getting triggered here? This is something that I say a lot. Like if I, someone looks at me and they're like, Lauren, like you're a thousand pound gorilla with purple hair, I don't even know, I just made it up. They like some ridiculous insult. And I'm like, that's a really weird thing to say. I'm probably just gonna move on about my day. Like if you're walking down the street and someone like screams something random and bled her in at you and you're like, like you're not taking that personally, right? Like if somebody looks at you and you're working and they say they give you a piece of feedback that you know is so wildly off base, it's not gonna bother you, usually, if it's off base enough, if you know that it's, if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's not true. It's only when we have a part of ourselves, it's like, that is it true? Am I that, that we let it in? This is where the shadow work is. This is what it takes to look at your shadows. The parts of yourselves that are unclaimed that you've resisted, that you've rejected. Our emotions, our triggers, our direct access points to that. Man, this situation keeps coming up where I keep getting really tough feedback and then it activates me all day and I feel crappy and I'm like, what is it that I believe about myself that this is, that this is activating? Wow, I believe that I don't know what I'm doing and I'm not worthy. Got it, that's your work because that thing, you think it's in your basement baby, like you think it's in your shadow, you think it's not impacting things, it is. It's not about shaming yourself or making yourself wrong or even fixing it. It's about, Carl Jung has this amazing quote that I love so much that is, keep your shadows in front of you, they can only take you from behind. Ah, that quote. This is how we know what's in our shadow, how we know what's unhealed inside of us, what actually needs to be healed and moved and shifted so that we can show up more powerfully. I want you to actually take a moment and think about the impact of what I'm saying. Think about like, okay, I don't know which side of the political line you fall on and I don't want to make it political, but okay, regardless of where you fall in the political line, I want you to think of like your least favorite politician or president in the places where that person has made very bad decisions or treated people poorly or berated people or, and like actually take a moment, those things that we do, those decisions that we make that aren't adaptive, that aren't honoring of people that, their consequences of this, this is what I'm talking about. If you make this decision over and over and over again, like to ignore your shadow, to disregard your emotions, we shove parts of ourselves in our blind spots over and over and over again and then they see out. So many, and I'm using a really extreme example, so maybe don't call me on that, I kind of am free styling here, but like how many leaders make harmful decisions and show up in ways that have substantial impacts on their teams because they haven't actually done this work. The way that I hold it, this is actually like a moral imperative. I'm not gonna say that many times, but we are shifting our leadership paradigm right now, so dramatically that these conversations about our shadows, about like our wounds are no longer optional. We need leaders that are healed. We need leaders that can be with strong emotions that have done their own work so that they can be with their own emotions and others and other emotions. And that can hold space for both logic and humanity at the same time and make decisions from there. And by the way, when I say we need leaders, who I mean everyone. Yes, I'm a leadership coach, so like whoever chooses to identify as a leader, but also even if you don't identify as a leader, this is everyone. Like you doing this work is being a leader. So man that came through really strong. Get curious about your emotions. Get curious about the wound under the emotions. What is the trigger here to teach you? Trust your trigger to teach. Think rooming was the one who said the wound is the place where the light enters. This is how we heal. This is how we show up more powerfully. This is how we have more impact. Three, get curious about how you show up around emotion with other people and yourself and start owning that. Emotion is oftentimes access to connection and by a jettisoning it, by pretending that it's not there, we shut it down. And then related to point two about that inner work, I think I'm probably going to do a part. I keep saying, keep putting little bookmarks and about other podcasts that we'll do because I'm thinking, well, that's going to be a good one. Add that to the list, but understanding what those wounds are and shifting them and healing them is the work. And also, on a more spiritual level, I had a teacher tell me once I was going to her for some business stuff. I had some questions about my business and she said to me she was like, she was like, yeah, sometimes this stuff will show up as like a business need because that's how your soul knows to ask for the deeper, deeper level healing. Like it seems shallow, but it's actually an access point. Like on some level, your soul and your insides and like this like larger cosmic universe that we're in, knows which buttons to hit to ensure that we'll go and do deeper work. I know in my business that when I'm stuck and I heal something that's deep and I shift it, my business changes. I know that when I heal something inside of myself, my coaching gets better, my clients start quantum leaping. It is wild and it's just work that I'm doing by myself. It is the same with your leadership. If you are interested in having any conversations about this, I have a number of resources. I'd be happy to talk to you one on one. Therapy is great for this and also usually we need multiple structures for this level of healing because it's not just, I'm going to go feel my feelings. It's what's the thing, what's the iceberg underneath the emotion that I need to look at and get responsible for. This work is not for the faint of heart, but it is friggin powerful. The game is changing y'all. This is one of the keys. Some resources that I will drop in that are really, really important and can be really used along this journey. Number one, whatever arises, love that by Matt Khan. So that radical self-love and how you can actually start using love to alchemize strong emotion and shadow as it shows itself to you. Two, how to do the work by Nicole LaPara. Small asterisk here. There are parts of this that are very much written from the perspective of a white privileged woman and there, I've seen discourse online about the degree to which it is applicable or feels resonant for people of color. I ask that you reserve your judgment, but if you feel called towards it, it's a really powerful book and it's going to be limited inherently. There will be moments where it's overly simplistic about trauma, but it's a really great access point for some of this work if you read it and you feel called towards it. I just want to put that in because I'm not ignorant to some of the discourse and criticism that it's received. And it's been a really, really powerful book for me and my clients. Three, therapy, particularly internal family systems. There is a book that is fantastic by Dick Schwartz called No Bad Parts. It's awesome. It's also something that I'm trained in, but it's not from a therapeutic perspective. You can also use it in coaching for healing work like as just to uncover what those shadows are and work with them. And if you've got some deep trauma that you want to work on, a therapist who specializes in IFS could be really, really good. And then the last one is Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford is also fantastic. Y'all, thank you so much for sticking with me. This was a free styling episode. If any of this resonated with you, I want to encourage you to share about the podcast on Instagram. My handle is @lorinboredincoaching. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or comments or feedback or any of those things. I would love to hear from you here what resonated. See how I can support you along your journey. Thank you so much. If you made it this long, it means that something in here resonated with you and you have really stuck with me. I want to acknowledge you for being so committed to your development that you hung out with me talking about feelings, which not many people want to talk about. This is really important work, y'all. And I'm super excited about it. This will not be the only time that I talk about it. Thank you for taking the time. And I will see you next week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]