Light and Shadow: the podcast

We are back with another “little learnings” episode, now covering the emotional piece. I know this is a long episode, but it’s probably my most important episode to date - and the most researched! I’ve working on this episode for 5 months, trying to flesh out all the details and nuances of emotion to help change your narrative and understanding of emotions as a whole. This episode starts off by de-mystifying emotions and the emotional experience by explaining the scientific and biological need for emotions to exist. By providing a clear definition and intricate understanding of emotions, I hope you change the way you relate to them as well. While the old narrative might be emotions are useless and to be avoided at all costs, we move into a deeper, wiser understanding of what emotions really mean for our lives and how to begin listening to what they’re trying to tell us. I touch on the impact of emotional trauma and how it affects our ability to feel, express, and communicate our emotions, as well as detail the grave problems that occur when they are ignored. I venture into explaining in detail the 5 core emotions and give plenty of examples to help emotional concepts stick even in the most emotion phobic minds. I truly believe recovery begins and ends with experiencing, understanding, and relating to our emotions in a healthy way, and this episode serves as the overarching framework to do just that. I know it’s long, but it’s packed with information that I feel is the most vital part of our recovery process.

The perfect bridge between the past three dark intermission episodes and talking about emotions in the next episode coming, episode 14 really gets into the uncomfortable feeling that abandonment brings. Sometimes we fear being left so intensely that it effectively dictates the way we live our entire lives. In this episode, I discuss how childhood experiences shape our brain, nervous system, core beliefs, and inner dialogue which then serve as the compass of the life we live. We think life is inherently as it is, but it’s these underlying factors that are guiding the types of experiences we have throughout our lives. From those experiences, we layer on even more behaviors that we think protect us from the pain, but inadvertently come face to face with our own demise. It may seem that we are meeting the same kind of person with different faces, and, in this episode, I explore why that may be. I talk about the origins of abandonment issues and how those issues manifest in the quality of lives we have. I also discuss how sometimes the hardest things we face often bring the greatest jewels life could ever bestow. Could the secret to healing from abandonment be in the abandonment itself? And what kinds of things free us from this plaguing fear? Find out more in this bridge episode, combining dark intermissions with uncovering the truth at the emotional level.

After some life changes, we’re back with another dark intermission episode (in the same thread as episodes 8 & 12) examining what to do when someone’s effort toward your relationship suddenly starts to decrease. While I begin by focusing on unhealthy relationships that serves as a continuum of episode 12, I also shed light that some effort levels drop simply because that person is no longer in alignment with you. Sometimes your journey must move elsewhere, and moving on and letting go could be the best course of action. In this episode, we talk about the reasons why we get involved in relationships with people that don’t reciprocate our efforts, while also exploring the effects of staying in those kinds of relationships. We talk about how one sided relationships compare to healthy relationship and how, ultimately, building your self worth and vision for your life is your highest protection and guide to living a truly fulfilling life with quality, mutual effort relationships of all kinds.

This episode is in the same “dark intermission” thread as “the case for not choosing the guy (or girl) that makes the huge effort.” In this episode, I examine the questions a lot of us have following the ending of a toxic relationship - particularly the one where we did go for the guy who made the huge effort, only to be dumped just as quickly as they came into our lives. We can’t help but think, “why didn’t they choose me?” “They liked me so much in the beginning, what happened? What did I do? Why didn’t they love me?” So often we focus this conversation around what we did to repel or push them away, not realizing that the basis for the relationship was never even about you or them - it was about a need you both shared. A need that was complementary in the beginning that became contradictory once normal relationship issues come up. Ego and genuine, honest love simply cannot exist together. They negate each other. So while you think you’ve done something wrong, sometimes it’s doing something right that’s chasing the unhealthy people away - and this isn’t a bad things. Sure there could be things you also need to learn and work on, but someone’s ability to love you rarely has as much to do with you as it does with them and the relationship dynamics they are familiar, comfortable, and accustomed to. Sometimes it’s normal, healthy behaviors that push unhealthy people away, and that’s okay - because their rejection really is just divine redirection. Have a listen to find out why and what you can do to stay on your path.

After going through the “little learnings” of logical fallacies and cognitive distortions, we finish off this cognitive restructuring segment with thought reappraisals. Thought reappraisals begin with identifying distortions that other people have told us or ones that we’ve told ourselves. By first recognizing that we’ve fallen into thinking traps can we start to find our way back to truth. By finding our way back to truth, we can more easily regulate our emotions by intervening at the thought level, challenging the core beliefs and world views that might be limiting our perspectives. By learning to see as things actually are rather than as we are, or as our trauma has informed us to see, we can move past dysregulation and into a more happy, healthy, and balanced future.

This is the second of the “little learnings” we’ll be using for interrupting the cycle at the thought level. While logical fallacies talk about argument and evaluation in terms of interpersonal debate, cognitive distortions really speak to our mind’s misinterpretation of events, information, situations, or people being presented to us. Even more often, cognitive distortions can affect the way we see ourselves. If we accidentally distort the way we see things, we may act in ways that aren’t aligned with what’s healthiest for us or others. The goal is to uncover the truth about our own thinking patterns, so we can move toward a better reality because we see one is possible. In the next episode, we’ll get right into thought reappraisals and how to reframe our thoughts to be more geared toward reality and accuracy. From there, we can potentially reverse the downward spiraling of our lives by interrupting our behavior at the thought level. By lodging in new thoughts, we can allowing for a new feelings, body sensations, behaviors, and, essentially, an entire upward spiral to take hold.

Before we deep dive into [step three] of mapping healing - interrupting the cycle - I wanted to give you guys these “little learnings” to shed light on how exactly we can interrupt the cycle at the thought level. Understanding logical fallacies are critical in seeing how people’s perceptions, arguments, or evaluations of us can shape the way we think and feel about ourselves. We may shockingly come to find we’ve been basing our opinions of ourselves in distortions of reality or even down right lies. You might also be surprised to find some logical fallacies even border on emotional manipulation, in which you might have been subjected to you. In any case, I’m here to help you get your mind right. From getting your mind right, our feelings, body sensations, and behavior tend to follow, and, hence, begin to help us break free from our familiar patterns. Whether you’re unearthing trauma and past things people have said to you or stuck in a heated debate, logical fallacies are essential when thinking critically, so let’s get right into them!

We’ve all been here before - being treated less than desirably by the guy (or girl) who wanted us first. Often times, we think to ourselves, “well, if he’s (/she’s) making such a huge effort, maybe I’ll give it a shot,” only to proven to why you should have never given them any chance in the first place. In this episode of the dark intermission series, I reflect on a recent end to a talking stage and make the case of why we shouldn’t go for the guy (or girl) just because they’re making a big effort. Because effort level is only a reflection of their interest in you, I talk about all the ways, simply focusing on interest and effort is problematic. As I see it, huge strides of effort early on could be just as big a red flag as expressing no interest at all. Let’s have a chat on the three essential levels of moving past the talking stage and taking a closer look as to why effort level isn’t as strong an indication that the relationship will progress past the initial interest as we’d like to think.

This episode serves as the part two follow up to the “ [step two] uncovering the truth” episode of the mapping healing series. Because I understand what a hot topic all things God and religion can be, I wanted to pair this off into a separate episode for those truly interested in exploring their spirituality. For me, God in my recovery was absolutely essential. I, personally, cannot separate the two, but given that speaking about God had different impacts on me, depending on where I was at in my recovery, I want to respect the wishes of all people at all points in their journey. In this episode, I speak specifically about my experiences with God throughout different stages of my recovery and healing journey. To me, while tremendous work can be done in terms of gaining information, in the “uncovering the truth” step, I found that the only real and lasting progress I made was when I started to place my life in God’s hands. The more I let go and surrendered, the more I found freedom. Additionally, I found that doing this “uncovering the truth” step in community with others, especially those with wisdom who could see what I couldn’t, knew truth that I didn’t, and helped lead me closer to understanding God was ultimately the deciding factor in how much progress I would eventually make. While I respect the wishes of all people, it is just my experience that God was a key and missing point in my life to which I do not believe recovery and freedom would have been possible. He supplied and provided things I didn’t even know I needed that ultimately led to the upward spiral I live in now. This is to also note that this journey - just like my recovery - wasn’t without its ups and downs, but just because you experience ups and downs, doesn’t mean God has ever left your side. In my conclusion, I don’t think I chose God as much as He chose me. I don’t think I brought myself up as much as God led me up. I truly don’t think I could have managed without His presence in my life, and this is just my story and perspective on that, and why I think He should be included in your healing journey, if you so choose. With him, many truths are illuminated - truths and provision that set you free. In effect, I couldn’t talk about what it means to uncover the truth, informationally, without talking about what it means to uncover the truth, spiritually. I think recovery and true healing happens when both coexist at once - an identity outside of your worldly and often traumatizing experiences.

While I take myself through the mapping healing journey, I find myself, again, in the uncovering truth stage, gleaning new insights to unlock new levels of my recovery. In doing so, and spending time going back to look at the origins of my binge eating, I’m starting to see that no matter what you struggle with - eating disorder, adhd, personality disorder, mood disorder, panic and anxiety disorder, depression, etc., the body is always - even if unconsciously - looking for regulation. In every addiction, substance abuse problem, brain-behavior impulses, mental health issues, and destructive habits, there is an unseen pull for the body to get to balance. In this episode, I talk about the 7 pillars of health that universally bring every person, everywhere back into health, regardless of individual circumstance. These are the foundational pillars to which, even if other areas in your life are in disarray, the calm, routine and regulation of keeping these pillars in place, can make those other issues easier to manage. In essence, building these pillars in place through implementation in your daily routine will increase your resilience to stressful circumstances infinite fold. I introduce this in the middle of the mapping healing series because while finding out all the interworkings of our individual problems past and presents can be daunting, and healing itself can be an arduous battle, keeping these pillars strong and steady throughout your healing journey are the best way to safeguard yourself against further and new adversity. It’s a sure-win place to focus your efforts and guide you back into balance even when dealing with you past or present circumstances seems most difficult. The hope is even by simply upholding these pillars, the pulls to destructive behavior for regulation will be less tempting because you are establishing a routine of regulation in your everyday life. By patching up the holes in your life outside of your unsocial issues, there are less holes to fall into on your road through recovery. By standing on these pillars, you create a stable foundation for you to flourish and better equip yourself to stand tall in the face of adversity. **just want to add a disclaimer that I am not a doctor. I’m constantly learning new information and science is always evolving. While I have a science background, I am not by any means a professional in this field. I try my best to give you information to the best of my knowledge, but particularly the fields of neuroscience and nutrition are always changing and new information is being presented, so please use this information as just a guide to further your own research. For instance, after this recording, I saw evidence that the ketogenic diet, which limits carbohydrate intake, can be highly beneficial for mental and neurological disorders, so while I stand by the pillars as safeguards for holistic health, there are specifics that I only know enough to give general information, and sometimes I get it wrong! Please use all this information as a guide and not as the advice of a healthcare professional.**