In today’s episode, we’re talking about a framework for making sense of our emotions with Kathy Washburn, a positive psychology practitioner, life coach, cancer survivor, and extraordinary human. We’ll explore her “emotional weather” metaphor, which offers a fresh perspective and actionable wisdom on the storms we can feel within.

Kathy draws on her powerful story of resilience and healing, moving from a life of outward success and emotional numbness to one marked by disruption, disease, deep self-inquiry, and reinvention, and shares how to become a compassionate witness to our emotions and those of others, letting go of people-pleasing and emotional suppression. She offers practical tools for positively weathering emotional storms, insights on fostering emotional awareness, and tangible steps for using curiosity and presence to maintain connection, even when someone else’s “weather system” rolls in.

I hope you’ll walk away feeling inspired and ready to try some new practices that can help you handle whatever weather comes your way.

Show Highlights:

• Kathy Washburn’s backstory of her “house blown down.” [02:56]
• Positive psychology and generational gaps in emotional literacy. [07:09]
• Understand emotions as weather, and yourself as the mountain. [10:21]
• Emotional contagion and the “Mother, may I?” steps strategy. [13:46]
• How to respond with curiosity when it’s hard to empathize. [16:58]
• Discover the “gift and opportunity” in difficult situations. [20:18]
• Why bypassing dis-ease turns into physical disease. [25:26]
• Learning to sit with emotions for 90 seconds. [27:19]
• Balancing emotions vs. toxic positivity. [34:47]
• Can we forecast and prepare for inbound relational storms? [40:18]

To find Kathy's work, visit https://kathywashburn.net.

Also, Kathy references Jill Bolte Taylor's work. Here is a link to her episode on Brilliant Balance: https://brilliant-balance.com/podcast/episode-214-jill-bolte-taylor-learn-to-host-a-brain-huddle/

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