Episode #213 Healing Emotional Pain

(upbeat music) Welcome home co-journers. I'm glad you're here for another episode of the Homecoming Podcast. I'm Dr. Tamah, a licensed psychologist, ordain minister and sacred artist, here to help facilitate your journey back home to yourself. And we're gonna start today, as we do, every week with a poem. And this week's poem is gonna be an excerpt from Nikki Giovanni, and the poem is called The Blues. Some folks think The Blues is a song or a way of singing, but The Blues is history, a way of telling how we got here and who sent us? The Blues may talk about my man or my woman who left me or took my money and is gone, but what they mean is I was stolen. We sang The Blues in the cotton fields not to complain about our lives, but to let each other know we are still here. We stirred The Blues in our stews to give us the strength to go on. And Lord have mercy, we use The Blues to give us joy and to make us laugh, to teach us how to love and dance and run away. And much more, thank the Lord, how to stay until the next day. The Blues is our history, our quilt, the way we fry our chicken, the way we boil our grains to make us some real good something to drink. The Blues is our encyclopedia and no matter who tries to copy us, only we know the real meaning of these songs. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I want you to think about on today your own song. What do your blues sound like? What is the story they tell? Not only the story of your individual life, but your intergenerational life, your ancestral life. What are the stories that led to your story? What is the story of your yesterday? What is the story you are creating today? And what do you hope will be the imprint the prophetic mandate for your story on tomorrow? And so as we think about the narratives, our stories, and consider the Blues, I thought that poem was perfect because our topic on today is healing emotional pain, healing emotional pain. And heart ache and heartbreak are real. They can be devastating. They can shift us and turn our worlds upside down. We feel it deeply and a part of the feeling it is recognizing our humanity. When I am shut down or cold or disconnected, then it denies me the fullness of my humanity. So first I want to encourage you to reflect on what and maybe who are the things that broke your heart. And that's not just romantic relationship, as was mentioned in the poem, some of it may have been a breakup, a separation, a divorce. It may have been financial difficulty. It could be oppression in all of its various forms. It could have been a job or a dream that got deferred or denied or delayed. It could be a health diagnosis, a health condition. What are the things that broke your heart? And for some of us it may be grief, grieving people or places or a time in your life or grieving the things that you never got to receive or that you never got to be. There is power in your blues. There is power in naming it and knowing it and recognizing it. Sometimes we are in denial and pretend that we're fine and pretend that everything is okay. And when I do not acknowledge that my heart is broken or that it's bleeding, what often happens is the bleeding comes out in ways that I don't recognize. It may show up in the way you parent your children. It may show up in your control issues. It may show up in your temper. It may show up in your eating habits. It may show up in your substance use. And so we recognize the ways in which we have had heart breaking experiences. But here is the truth of it that these broken hearts can also heal. And I just believe that some of you are a witness to that. We will call it your testimony to be able to proclaim what are the things that broke my heart but didn't have the final say. I am so, so glad about that that I can say I have survived some heart breaking experiences. And that was not the end of my story. And so that's why this is our topic on today is because even though I recognize that many of us are in emotional pain right now, I am hoping that you can outlast it, that you can outlive it, that you can even broaden the frame so that I see the wound but that's not all I see. I see the pain but that's not all I see. And so as we consider, just like the poem said, that the blues can express our pain, but it also can be the anthem that gives birth to our joy. And so how do we begin to tend to our broken hearts? A part of it is feeling what you feel. I cannot heal what I will not acknowledge. I cannot heal the wound I deny exists because when I pretend that it doesn't exist, then I don't nurture it, I don't protect it, I don't nourish it. And so I want to invite you to flip the script because perhaps growing up in your culture because of your age, your gender, your religion, your race, you may have been given messages that feelings were unacceptable. And so you stuff it and suppress it and don't even sometimes acknowledge it to ourselves. You know, it's one thing to tell someone else, I'm fine and you're not really fine. The horrible, painful truth is sometimes we even deceive ourselves into thinking we're fine when really we're heartbroken. And so can you feel your feelings? I invite you to reflect on when was the last time you were heartbroken? When was the last time you were disappointed? When was the last time you were frustrated? When was the last time you were outraged? When was the last time you were embarrassed or humiliated? And even when was the last time you felt joyful or excited or in love? Or when was the last time you were consumed with rage? If we can acknowledge our feelings, then we can start to think about the next step which is to express it. Instead of just holding it in, do you know that suppressed emotions, denied emotions can actually contribute to physical illness? Do you know that when we contain and restrict ourselves, it can show up in our bodies. It can show up in autoimmune disease. It can show up in cardiovascular disease. It can show up in my digestive system, in my reproductive system. It can show up in my respiratory system. And so the various systems of our bodies are designed to rally when we're in distress. But then they are supposed to go back to kind of equilibrium. But many of us have had sustained experiences, sustained seasons where we felt that vigilance or felt that pain or felt that abandonment. And it overwhelmed our capacity to cope. It overwhelmed our physical bodies. And so we ask ourselves this sacred, sacred question. Here it is. Do you want to be made whole? Do you want to? Because sometimes we adjust to dysfunction and we say I'm just going to stay that way. Or we are afraid to feel it and to express it. And so we stay stuck. When I'm providing therapy for people, for example, who are going through divorce, it is normal, natural, healthy, that the first number of sessions are very much focused on their ex, right? What that person did, how they are disappointed, how they are heartbroken, how they are frustrated. And they express that. And it's a safe space to be able to express it. And I know when they've turned the corner, when they're able to start talking about. their life. When they able to start talking about their next chapter, their future, when I decide that I have expressed it, I have felt it, and now that no longer needs to be the center of my story. And so I want to invite you to consider what are the ways that the heartbreaking experiences have been the center of your narrative and has it become stuck there because of a lack of telling of the story, a lack of expressing what you are feeling. And so some of you may be wondering, well, you know, how do I express it? Because I'm used to numbing it, right? Or pushing it down, or holding it in, or we say like, oh, nobody wants to hear that. Well, I start to express it with my social support, with my community, with my friends, or my family, where the people of my life who care about me, who want to hear and hold space for my pain. I can also think about expressing it in therapy, to be able to say, I have felt so burdened by it, or I don't want to be stuck in it. I want to work through it. So I want to work with someone who has some expertise in helping me facilitate this journey. So that may be another way to express it. And then you all know, I love the arts. So a beautiful way of expressing it is with your creativity. So you can write poems about it, you can do a dance about it. I mean, dance it all the way out. All of those feelings you've been holding in. You can sing about it, and the good thing about when it's about self-expression. It doesn't matter if you sound like the yon say, or Rita Franklin, or you sound like some notes that are kind of all over the place. But I want you to know in the shower, and in the car, we all sound good. So I can express it in my music, in my therapy office. I like to have instruments, which is why here I have my drum and a tambourine, because I can express what I've been holding in musically, in terms of visual arts. One of the interventions I love to do with kids is collage making. But adults can do it as well. You get your magazines and cut out your images and your words and create not only the images of what you have survived, but create an image about my vision for my future. A lot of people talk about that as a vision board. So what are the ways I can express what I feel? Also journal writing. Some people like to journal in books. Some people now do it on their phones. You can also create little videos with photography in words. So taking pictures that represent what you're feeling, and then it can either be your spoken word, or it can be music that matches what you're feeling. And so express it. I know some people will say, well, I'm not creative. So how do I express it? Some of you may express it in your cooking. During the pandemic, I remember one of the major items that were missing from stores were baking goods, because people are like, I'm just going bake out my frustration or bake out my boredom. And so we express our pain. And then another piece that we want to think about when we consider soothing, not only do we want to recognize what broke our hearts and cause the pain. And let me say that sometimes the thing that caused emotional pain may be yourself. I think I'm not the only one that has made some choices sometimes that had consequences where I broke my own heart. And we usually will say things like, I knew better or I should have known better. And so to hold space for that as well, that even if it is a result of the things I have said and done, it can still be a source of pain for me. Sometimes even more so because we may be feeling the guilt or the shame or the regret of the choices that we have made. And so I want to let myself feel it. I want to let myself express it. And then we want to develop healthier coping strategies to replace the unhealthy coping strategies. So when we're in pain, sometimes we seek immediate relief, but from things that actually can amplify our pain. So sometimes when people are in pain, they do, they call retail therapy. So you're shopping more and creating more debt. And now you have all of these new items, but still don't feel any better. Sometimes when we are feeling pain, we may try to medicate that pain with food, with substances, with hours and hours of television, with doom scrolling on social media. Sometimes we try to medicate that pain by taking out our frustration on other people. So we call that displacement. I'm upset about one thing, but instead, I'm going to take it out on my children or on my neighbor or on people in traffic. And so I want to recognize what are my unhealthy ways of coping that actually don't heal me. And then I want to start to embrace healthy coping strategies. And there's two different ones I want you to think about. Emotion focus coping and problem solving coping. So with emotion focus coping, those are the things that help to soothe you. And that may be talking to a friend about it. It may be things that kind of like soothe your nervous system. So you might like a Roman therapy. You may say I'm going to take a bubble bath. You may say I'm going to get a massage. You may say I'm going to go take a walk out in nature. So what are the things that are not unhealthy that also give you some relief or some comfort? Emotion focus coping can be helpful. And I want you to know problem solving coping is also really essential. Because those unhealthy things didn't really solve my problem. It may have given me a temporary lift. It may have given me a moment of escape. But the issue is still there. So I invite you to consider for the things and or people that broke your heart what are some decisions or some actions that you can take to address it. Yes. So what are the behaviors that I can engage in? So I might be heartbroken about a layoff or not getting getting chosen for a promotion. So I can do some emotion focus things of saying I'm disappointed. So I'm going out to eat with a friend and that's going to lift my spirits. But then I also want to consider it may be time for me to start looking for another job. It may be time for me to get some new skills and some new trainings. It may be time for me to consider is this field really for me? Is it limiting? Do I want to explore some new directions? So consider how do I take care of my heart? That was the number one. The emotion focus coping. But then how do I create the life that will be affirming, rewarding, fulfilling for me? By creating that kind of life, it helps to heal my heart. By creating a life that I'm not trying to escape, it will help to soothe me and to comfort me in important ways. So I invite you to consider what are the things that are pleasurable to you. And imagine to have imagery, individualization on what is the kind of life that would heal my heart. Right? What are the experiences that would allow me to not just feel soothing or relief or comfort? What would be the kind of experiences that would make me want to get up tomorrow? And so what I am talking about is hope bringers. We want to consider ways that we can nourish our hope, feed our hopes. So you think about your hope as seeds in the ground. Right? And so then how do I water the seeds? Because sometimes in my heartbreak, I stop investing in myself. I stop watering the seeds because I'm shut down. Right? We all know those seasons when we're under the covers. When it's hard to get out of bed, sometimes you might just be sitting in the dark. And so what can open up my curtains? What can allow my harvest to come up? So when you're considering that, in this moment you may be saying, I'm having so much heartbreak, I can't even imagine that. So I want to tell you about something called solution. focus therapy. Solution's focus therapy is when I think about when were the moments in my life when I was doing better and then what was I doing in that season that perhaps contributed to my better life, right? So it may be, oh isn't that interesting. When I was doing better, I was spending more time with positive people. When I was doing better, I was reading sacred texts or I was writing poetry or I was praying in the mornings or when I was doing better, I was going for a walk every day or when I was doing better, I was watering my plants. But now I have neglected my space. So both my interior and my exterior are reflecting my pain. So I want to activate, right? I might say I want to stir it up. I want to activate my hope so that I can acknowledge the heartbreak, I can feel and express the heartbreak and I can begin to heal it and I heal it in part with hope. So I express what needs to be expressed and then I start to nourish my hopes with drinks of my possibility and considering my dreams, my visions, what will help me to shift. So speaking of the shift, when you want to heal your heart and the pain of your heart, I want to tell you about cognitive restructuring. That sounds real fancy, right? Cognitive restructuring is really shifting the way you think, right? Shifting my mindset. So when I am in a place of despair, what despair does is it rains on every parade. So now I am looking at everything through the eyes of my pain, which is making it really hard for me to have any hope. So some of the ways I am thinking about things aren't really true. When we are in pain, we often overgeneralize, right? So what does overgeneralizing look like? Let's say one or two people didn't like you and your heart broken about that. And so now the script becomes nobody likes me and no one ever will like me, right? So we want to begin to challenge our negative thoughts, our negative generalizations so that instead I can start to pay attention to the both and. So what is the both and? It is true that this friendship and this friendship didn't work out. Those are true. And it is also true that I have not met everyone who was going to care about me, that I have not encountered every relationship or every connection that is possible for me. And so can you give yourself permission for the both and? Can you give yourself permission to recognize the heart ache and the heartbreak and then also create space in your vision for the truth that more is still possible. So it may be that I am heartbroken because of a death, because of grief and of loss. And you may say to yourself, I will never get over it. And let's say we don't have to challenge that, to say that I will always be aware of the lack of this person's physical absence from my life. And then like, what do I have to add to that? Right? So I will always acknowledge it. And I'm also thankful for the lessons they've given me, for who they created me to be, that they inspire me in these ways. And I know that they would like for me to have joy in my present life and in my future life. So I want to invite you to challenge the script, that narrow script of negativity and to expand what is actually possible for you to acknowledge the full range that as we said in the beginning with our poem, the blues is a part of my journey, but there is more to my life than my blues. And I give myself permission to sing my blues. I give myself permission to acknowledge the downbeats of my life. But in addition to the downbeats, there are some upbeats and my despair will often force me to only see what has gone wrong. And I invite you to consider, even if it was brief, even if it was only one or two moments or one or two people, what are the things that went right? And so as we consider that, we recognize that in addition to our cognitive techniques that we also, when we're having heartbreak and heart pain, want to consider releasing. Sometimes we're stuck in rehearsing or rehashing or verminating. And we are stuck in our past. And so I want to acknowledge the past, our roots, and our early experiences are essential. But I want to give you a strategy. And that strategy is, once I have exhausted the why, I keep asking myself why, like why did this happen? Why did they do this? Or why did this happen to me? At a certain point, I give myself permission to shift my question from why to what now? Because some things you will never get a satisfying answer for the why. Some things are the mystery. And so I may not fully have an answer to why that sits well with me, or that brings me total peace. But what I can say is I want to make some decisions for what now. I don't know why that happened. I don't know why it happened to our family. I don't know why it happened to our community. I don't know why. And I grieve that. I feel the heartbreak of that. And I give myself permission to create from now, to create a life for me now. And I want you to know that you are deserving of that. That you are worthy of that. That that is possible for you. And so as we think about activating the healing of our emotional pain, I want to tell you some strategies as it relates to the vagus nerve that can help you to soothe. And so one of them will be surprising to you. And that is just rocking, right? To be able to move our bodies to comfort ourselves. You might rock back and forward. You might rock side to side. For some of you, the comfort that heartache will be in your humming and in your vocal expression. And then a part of our release is also in our breath. And I want you to know you have been symbolically and maybe literally holding your breath for a long time, going through life very tight and very rigid. And so I invite you to shake it out and to give yourself permission to inhale your healing and exhale the despair. To give yourself permission to inhale your hope and exhale your blues. Your heart is tender. Your heart is delicate. Your heart, our hearts are worthy of care. And recognizing that is actually a strength. The fact that it is still possible for you to be moved by things says a lot about you that you have not surrendered to being a robot. You have not surrendered to being a rock. Your goal is not to be hardened. Your goal is to stay human. And so I invite your soul to tell your heart, mind, body and spirit. Welcome home.