131. Why We Struggle with Our Emotions & Ways to Build Emotional Intelligence feat. Jay Fields

Jan 19

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Today's guest is Jay Fields, an educator, coach and author who has taught the principles of embodied social and emotional intelligence to individuals and organizations for twenty years. In this episode, we talk all about emotional regulation, including emotional difficulties faced by college students, how your childhood and parents can impact your ability to emotionally regulate and form healthy relationships, ways to improve your relationship between your body and your emotions, tips for managing your nervous system and building better emotional habits, and the power of self-empathy.

Jay's Website: https://jay-fields.com/

Mentioned In The Episode…

+ Jay's Newsletter & Coaching Sign-Up's

+ Jay's LinkedIn Learning Courses

+ Your Resonant Self

+ Mood Meter

+ Emotions in the Body

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About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

[00:00:00] Sadie: Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.

[00:00:19] You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.

[00:00:37] So let's dive in this week on She persisted.

[00:00:42] Jay: with emotion we're kind of all or nothing either. I'm gonna be overwhelmed by this, or I'm gonna shut it down and pretend it's not happening. But that in between place where you can say, this is true, this is also true. I'm really sad right now. And it's also true that I have someone that when I bring them to mind, I can't help but. . And it isn't a way of negating the sadness, it's a way of saying, this isn't my whole life. And I think that's really important in the teenage years because we are so, focused on experience that moment. If I'm sad in this moment, I'm gonna be sad forever, or I'm always gonna be sad about this one thing.

[00:01:16] Hello, hello, and welcome back to She Persisted.

[00:01:18] I'm so excited for today's episode because it's all about emotion regulation, and when I was struggling with depression and anxiety and my relationships and all these urges and problematic behaviors, one of the biggest goals was to regulate my emotions. I felt like all of these challenges were stemming from my ability to regulate sadness and anger and anxiety, and all of these things that I was feeling on a really intense.

[00:01:43] Scale on a daily basis. So if you didn't know emotion regulation is one of the sections of D B T. There are so many skills in the emotion regulation module that I use all the time, and that we've talked about on the podcast like abc, which is accumulating positives, building, mastering, coping ahead, the please skill, which is all about decreasing your physical vulnerability to things opposite action, which is huge.

[00:02:06] It's doing the opposite of what you're feeling, so you can shift the emotions themselves. Riding the wave of an emotion or urge checking the facts, all of these skills are in the emotion regulation module and are crucial to being effective with your mental health on a long term basis.

[00:02:21] So today's episode is all about a motion regulation and emotional intelligence,

[00:02:26] and all things coping skills and just improving your ability to regulate your emotions. Our guest is Jay Field. She's an educator, coach and author, and she's been teaching the principles of embodied social and emotional intelligence for over 20 years. She's so much insight into this, into regulating stress and your nervous system.

[00:02:45] We talk about having lasting change with behaviors and habits we talk about. Regulating your nervous system to reduce stress. All of these things that are really important and most of you probably want to improve. I know I do. So anyways, this conversation is amazing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

[00:03:01] And with that, let's dive into it.

[00:03:03] Sadie: Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Jay. I am so excited to have you on the podcast.

[00:03:07] Jay: Me too. I'm really looking forward to this. Thanks, Sadie.

[00:03:10] Sadie: Of course. So, to start with your background, I'd love to hear about how you started specializing in emotion regulation, learning about how that connects to the nervous system, and what brought you to working within the mental health.

[00:03:24] Jay: yeah, good question. I guess it really started in college. I went to the College of William and Mary back on in Virginia, on the east coast where I grew up, and when I was in school, , I got really into yoga. So this was 1998 and I started teaching in 1999. I also got really into rock climbing and I was paying my way through college at this point, right?

[00:03:47] And I, I was two years in and I thought, you know what? I just wanna be a yoga teacher and I wanna be a rock climbing instructor. I don't need a degree for this. This is stupid. I'm gonna drop outta school. , like the whole thing. Yeah. I'm like, I can't afford school. So I went to the dean, and I said, I, I wanna, I wanna drop out.

[00:04:03] And she was like, well, why? And I said, because I just wanna be a yoga teacher and work with people in that way. And, and she said, well, I think you're a smart lady and you're gonna regret not having a degree. So why don't you see if you can design a degree that the best yoga teacher in the world would have, you know, in order to be really good at what she does. So I designed an entire degree in what I called Psychosocial Health and Human Movement. And so back in 1988 or 98, excuse me, when like the body mind connection wasn't really a thing Yeah, that's what I studied. And cuz I recognized that when I was doing yoga or I was rock climbing, I was a different person emotionally, psychologically, you know, my anxiety went away.

[00:04:45] Any sense of, self-doubt went away. And I wanted to understand why that was happening. So I did that. And then in my twenties I basically taught yoga and. backpacking and rock climbing and worked with adjudicated youth in the wilderness therapy system. And, slowly started to add in more, understanding of trauma informed teaching, , the neurobiology of what's happening when we're embodied, when we're in our body, and how we work with emotions.

[00:05:14] And. . Then I wrote a book when I was about 30, about teaching yoga and how to basically how to be an expert in a human being at the same time. And that started getting me coaching people, other yoga teachers reached out and they were like, Hey, can you coach me based on the principles in your book?

[00:05:30] And I was like, oh, okay. And then they started telling their friends and saying, you know, you don't have to be a yoga teacher to work with Jay. Really, Jay just helps you to be more in your body and more authentic in how you relate to other people. , and that's how my coaching practice started. And then those people started bringing me into their workplaces.

[00:05:49] And so I started working in workplaces around how to manage emotions and how to use your nervous system to help you regulate stress. And now I, I primarily just coach one-on-one and I have a group coaching program called Yours Truly. And that's all. , using those principles of how to work with your nervous system and your body to manage motions so that you can, like who you are in the relationships that matter to you the most.

[00:06:17] I love that. So that was a big old Yeah. Bunch of information. .

[00:06:20] Sadie: No, I love that and I love how it highlights that it really is applicable to every area of life and no matter. What your goals are, what you're working on, whether it's career or education or relationships or your physical health.

[00:06:33] All of these things are relevant to your emotions and your ability to regulate those emotions and incorporate them, in that journey. .

[00:06:41] Jay: Absolutely. And you never stop being a human being. Yeah. You can't, you can't just separate your emotions from school or from work or from this particular relationship.

[00:06:50] And, you know, the story I just gave you was kind of like the stats and the, and the facts. But what was happening for me in college was that I, you know, I got into a good school, I was a smart kid, and I kind of. The, my path laid out for me. I knew what I was gonna do with my life, kind of, and I also just was absolutely flailing in terms of how to make decisions for myself.

[00:07:15] I was flailing around how to have close relationships, romantic relationships, without totally losing my identity. You know, I would just completely become a people pleaser. And so The work that I do today has so much to do with the fact that between the age of like 18 and 22 when I was first and like so happy to have my life decisions for myself.

[00:07:38] Yeah. I felt like, gosh, n my book Smarts isn't helping me figure this stuff out and I'm in a lot of pain because I don't know how to be internally direct.

[00:07:51] Sadie: Totally. And I think that's such a universal experience when you transition to college. And I think there's a spectrum of how much you experience that and how much it kind of almost like derails your life in a, in a sense, and how much it interrupts your education or your relationships.

[00:08:07] But I think to some degree, everyone does experience that because it's such a huge transition. Your, your identity is changing, like you said, your autonomy over your life, your relationships have shifted. Mm-hmm. , and it's really hard to grapple with that and work through it, especially if you're not able to regulate those emotions or even understand what emotions are coming up for

[00:08:27] Jay: you.

[00:08:27] Absolutely. Yeah. It's such a potent time in life for realizing, like, I've been in one paradigm my whole life, and now I'm in a totally new paradigm. Yeah. Who am I? What do I want for myself? And then the the third and final piece, how do I do that? Yeah. Because I think I like had some sense of who I am and what I wanted, but it was like, over there, and I didn't know how to get there based on the school, the schooling and the skillset I had

[00:08:55] Sadie: a hundred percent. So I'd love to kind of bring this to what you learned when you created this curriculum, for yourself in college and then continue to. Implement that with such a wide variety of people. We talked before, we started the recording about how this connects to childhood and how your relationships were modeled and how you learned about emotions.

[00:09:17] So I'd love to start there because it's the foundation of all of this. How does your childhood, emotional modeling and your relationships with your parents impact, your ability to regulate those emotions and have healthy relationships later on? so

[00:09:30] Jay: much. .

[00:09:31] Sadie: Yes, so much. It's a really loaded

[00:09:33] Jay: question.

[00:09:34] No, but it, it is kind of the crux of it. And it's one of those things that I find that the adult clients I work with will sometimes get frustrated. Like, ah, are you kidding? We have to talk about my childhood can't we just get past, they're like, we move

[00:09:47] Sadie: past that. Yeah, yeah. .

[00:09:48] Jay: Exactly.

[00:09:49] But the reality is, is early in our. We get these blueprints for what it means to be a good person and what it means to relate and what we do with emotions and that sort of thing. And so, you know, whatever you saw modeled in your home growing up is what most people tend to do. Even if what they wanna do is something different will default to it.

[00:10:11] So for example, in my family growing up, I was quote unquote, the sensitive. , you know, I was the one that had feelings

[00:10:18] Sadie: actually. My sister also, all of us are kind of sensitive, but they're definitely me as well. .

[00:10:23] Jay: Well, and he, and here's what's true in my family, all of us are sensitive. Yeah. But I was the one that was maybe less unwilling to try and hide it.

[00:10:33] Yeah. And so, you know, in my family, emotions were something to be figured. Like, we'll figure this out. We'll figure out why you feel that way, and we'll fix it. We'll change something you know, we'll put you in a different sport or we'll, get, we'll

[00:10:49] Sadie: get rid of the emotion.

[00:10:50] Jay: Yeah, exactly.

[00:10:52] We'll fix the emotion by doing something out here. or it be something like, you know, self-sufficiency was really a strong value in my family. So it'd be like, you can, you can do this, you can get through this, as opposed to like, ouch. That must really hurt. Like I totally get how you would feel that way.

[00:11:11] right? Yeah. And so as an adult, my default is to go to figuring it out. What can I fix so that I don't have to feel this way? Or telling myself like, it's not that big a deal. You can do this. You're strong. And it's not that those two things are bad. They're absolutely great. But the first part that's missing for most people, is resonance is a grownup saying, your feelings make sense to me.

[00:11:39] You are not crazy. I've felt those two before and I'm here. And then once, I mean, can you, can you like feel the difference if someone Yeah. Like in your, in your chest, someone just saying like, I get you. . That makes sense. I'm sorry you're feeling that way. And then once there's that resonance, let's go to what can we do about this?

[00:12:04] Or you're strong. Look at all the ways you've gotten through things in the past. This is resilience in building that, but without that first resonant place, most. People then grow into adults who don't know how to soothe themselves. Yeah. And some of my clients talk about how their parents, bought them something.

[00:12:23] or fed them something. Oh, you have a big feeling here. Have this piece of cake, spree, shopping spree. Right? So, and then I'll say to 'em like, ah, okay, so when you have a big feeling now as a grown up, do you go in a shopping spree? And they're like, oh, hell yeah. I'm like, Hmm. So where

[00:12:40] Sadie: do you think we, you got that?

[00:12:41] Yeah. Yeah,

[00:12:42] Jay: like, so yeah, that's kind of where that piece comes in is like whatever got modeled is what will take in as well. This is appropriate.

[00:12:53] Sadie: Yeah, no, I remember that exact for, for me, it was a shift that I experienced. We were talking about the problem solving, The non-valid of the emotion and then creating space for it.

[00:13:03] That was exactly what my parents and I worked on in family therapy and intensive treatment was just the skills education around how do you validate? Because if you don't validate the getting, for me it was like getting her outta bed, getting her to school. , yeah, getting me to do anything wasn't gonna happen without that validation piece, and it just left me feeling so isolated and alone and misunderstood and ignored.

[00:13:26] And I wasn't voicing these emotions very well, so it was a two-way street, of course. But Sure. I just remember how different the relationship felt when my parents would say, I, I see that you're really struggling and you are in so much pain, versus being like, Sadie, if you don't get outta bed, your life is gonna be a disaster.

[00:13:44] Like it was night and day. with how our relationship felt and what I was willing to do, behaviorally to do the opposite of what I was feeling because I felt seen for those emotions. And so it's, yes, it's, it's huge. And it, and it, yeah, it feels different. It looks different. It's truly a game changer.

[00:14:03] Jay: 100%. And I, you know what you said it felt different cuz my approach to my coaching is somatic. So Soma from the body, Greek word for People can identify what it feels like to be validated, versus what it feels like to be told. You gotta like, get out of this. Yeah. You know, if you weren't so sensitive you wouldn't be feeling this way or that sort of thing.

[00:14:23] And I think the other piece to understand about that, lack of validation over a long period of time. And, and, and let me just pause and say, , your parents. My parents weren't bad people or bad parents. Yeah. They just didn't have the, the understanding of the difference and, and

[00:14:41] Sadie: we're not very good as, as advocating for what we need from parents.

[00:14:44] I mean, teens in general. . Right. I would be very impressed if any teen could articulate, like, this is what I would like for my parents to get my emotional needs met. That would be insane. Insane. Oh my gosh. Wouldn't that be amazing? Right? So how can a parent even guess? what exactly the teen needs in the moment.

[00:15:00] Jay: Yeah, and most parents didn't get this from their parents either. Yeah. So we're all kind of blind here, but the thing about. A lot of not being validated over a long period of time is that eventually the person gets the message, my feelings must be weird and off because I'm having this experience that feels super big to me.

[00:15:22] And the people who love me and care for me don't seem to think it's that big a deal They're not meeting me and seeing me in it. So if they're not meeting me and seeing me in this, I must be weird. And these emotions must be out of proportion. And so we get even more untrusting of our inner experience and that's where.

[00:15:43] you know, that's where kind of those patterns of, people pleasing or being, coming enmeshed with other people happen because you no longer trust that your inner experience is appropriate and you're looking to connect with someone else's outer experience to be okay.

[00:15:59] Sadie: What is the first step that you re.

[00:16:02] Clients take when they recognize, okay, maybe this isn't the most effective way to approach my emotions. I'm modeling this thing that I learned, or I'm repeating this thing that was modeled to me. Mm-hmm. , is it awareness? Is it rewiring the thought process? Is it just sitting in the emotion? Mm-hmm. , what do you recommend as like a first step that people can take to begin the process?

[00:16:25] Jay: Great question. The first step is kind of preceding the emotion. The first step is to start to have some connection to your body. Most people, especially when we're still in the school systems, we're told that our connection to our body is through pe. Like doing something as opposed to the fact that like white of memories.

[00:16:46] Exactly. Pee. Oh. , as opposed to the fact that at every moment of every day in your life, you're in a body. And you know, right now your body can tell you, are you warm? Are you cool? Are you tired? Or is your energy high? Do you feel, pain? Are you breathing deeply or shallowly? You know, all those things that are about your present moment, awareness of your experience in your body are the precursors to knowing what you're feeling because every emotion has a physical sensation that goes with it.

[00:17:21] Yeah. if you're aware of your physical body, you can start to at least know I'm having a feeling as opposed to the feeling happening from your neck down. Mm-hmm. , and you're not aware of it, and it's just running the stuff that's coming out of your mouth or the way you're making decisions. , so dar to have some connection to the fact that you have a body from your neck down.

[00:17:42] Sadie: Are there some common bodily sensations associated with emotions that people commonly mislabel or don't realize? I know, so people are like, oh, I feel hot when I'm angry, or I clenched my fist. Those are pretty commonly knowns, but what are some that you see people missing all the time that you wish they would be more aware of or more in tune

[00:18:02] Jay: with?

[00:18:03] Oh, great question. And you're totally right about like the hot and the, the fists clench. Yeah. There's a great, I can't remember who did it, what study, but if you google emotions in the body, there's this really cool chart of like a thermo,

[00:18:17] Sadie: oh, I love that. I've I it on Instagram when this episode comes.

[00:18:20] No, it do.

[00:18:21] Jay: That's amazing. I love that. Yeah. I think, you know, it's interesting because most people that I work with can read those appropriately. Mm-hmm. , you know, the, the, the common kind of like the heat with anger, that sort of thing, or the sinking feeling in your tummy when you're, when you're scared.

[00:18:40] Most people can read those. The thing that gets in the way is a lot of people numb out when they have a big feeling. Yeah. .

[00:18:46] Sadie: Yeah. I also would

[00:18:48] Jay: think that the, the sensations there, but then it disconnects through

[00:18:51] Sadie: numbness. Yeah. I would also think that if you're feeling an emotion for an extended period of time, whether it's the emotions associated with depression or anxiety or, or loneliness, whatever it is, you, you would become numb and ignore those.

[00:19:05] Sensations because they're just there constantly. Like I think of stress or overwhelm, just being tense all the time. I wouldn't even realize that I am tense because I'm like, well, this is just how I normally am. The majority of that's baseline the time. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm. .

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[00:19:50] Sadie: So I'd love to kind of talk about how you can, once you've kind of created this awareness of the sensations associated with your emotions, what do you recommend? Mm-hmm. . To do? Is it just the, the awareness piece? , is it increasing the awareness even further?

[00:20:05] Is it more exercise? So you're more in tune with your body? How do you improve this relationship between the emotions and the, the nervous system, the bodily sensations to be more harmonious, if you will?

[00:20:18] Jay: Yeah. So again, fabulous question. Let me step back. If the first piece is body a. For many people, that's an uncomfortable.

[00:20:28] Yeah. Right, so, so maybe it's because you have chronic pain. Maybe it's because you don't like the way you feel in your body because of how it looks, or

[00:20:37] Sadie: you've been avoiding it because you're suppressing the emotions.

[00:20:39] Jay: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, you know, there's feelings down there, so like, I'm not going, you're like, no, thank you

[00:20:45] So, yeah. I'm good up here. Yeah. So the, the first thing that I recommend people do is when I'm talking about becoming more aware in your body, I recommend that people find a felt resource that works for them. So the word felt resource comes from, trauma therapy with the idea being that.

[00:21:02] A felt resource is anything in your body in the present moment that you can experience as either pleasant or neutral. So for example, feeling my feet on the floor is pretty neutral for me. I don't have a charge around that. It doesn't, you know, kind of rubbing my hands like this together is actually kind of pleasant.

[00:21:22] Oddly, I feel like I hold tension in my hands, so like to rub my hands feels nice. So a felt resource then means that if you can find in the present moment something that's either neutral or pleasant and you're having an unpleasant emotion, you now have two things. , you have two layers of experience.

[00:21:40] You have the heat and the tightness of anger. You have the neutrality of my feet on the floor, and what that does is it makes it so that that heat and anger don't overtake you or flood you so much that you go numb because you have this other layer. The way I like to talk about is this is true, this is also.

[00:22:01] It's true that I'm angry and feeling overwhelmed. It's also true that I can feel my butt and my chair dialectic. So . Exactly. So my whole experience isn't awful. . And then from there, naming it. Yeah. What am I feeling? And if you can't name it because you're numb, the shortcut is, I don't wanna feel this.

[00:22:23] Yeah,

[00:22:24] Sadie: there's a really good app, so whatever it is you Yeah, go ahead. There's a really good app called Mood Meter. , I definitely, my phone has done that thing where it offloaded it, so I won't be able to show it very easily. But it shows these four different quadrants with the intensity and if it's positive or negative.

[00:22:39] And then within each quadrant there must be like 20 different emotions, varying an intensity. And I'll show. So you say, if you're like, I'm like writing it down. Oh my God, no. My therapist gave this to me and it's so great. It's high energy. It's like the smiley face and all the different faces, but high energy, unpleasant, high energy, pleasant, low energy, unpleasant or low energy, pleasant.

[00:23:01] So right now I'm low energy, pleasant, and then perfect. It gives you all of these emotions and as you run your hand around it gives you names. So Holy chill smokes. That's awesome. Restful. Blessed, comfy, peaceful, thoughtful, complacent, tranquil, cozy, serene, touched, grateful, satisfied, secure. And so I'm not very good at labeling my emotions.

[00:23:21] It's like a whole nother level of the emotion wheel, but all these words that would be helpful to attach to the experience, but maybe wouldn't come to mind. It's a great tool. I love that. I'm totally tracking out on that right now. Yeah, you can log the emotions throughout the day. It's, it's a good tool to.

[00:23:39] because there's a lot of emotion words out there. It's hard to label them and that kind of does help. It's super

[00:23:44] Jay: hard. We basically, you know, can name like four or five emotions most people can, and Right. There's such a range of experience and you know, I know you've had people on before who've talked about naming emotions and that sort of thing, and, but if you can name it, yeah.

[00:23:58] It literally brings together the part of your brain that can understand your experience with the part of your brain that's having the emotion. And that's. For your brain and then helps your nervous system to to regulate. So just being able to name the emotion usually brings it a little bit down. And then my other favorite.

[00:24:18] Hack, I guess you would say, for working with when you, so you're aware in your body you can say, this is the feeling I'm having based on the sensations I'm having or the emotion I have. And then if it's, you can't feel anything, the hack is, I don't wanna feel this. And usually when you say that, you realize what you're avoiding and if you know what the feeling is.

[00:24:40] Then it's about offering self empathy. So if we go back to that original, like what happened in your childhood and if, you know, you were having a big feeling and your parents told you get, get your act together, you need to get to school or, you know, well, you're just sensitive. You know, whatever.

[00:24:58] and what you really wanted was someone to validate. Mm-hmm. . So self empathy is you validating yourself. And my favorite shortcut to that comes from Sarah Payton. I don't know if you know her book, it's called, I've Heard her name, but I haven't read it. Such a good book. Highly Recommend it. Your Resonance Self.

[00:25:14] And in it she talks about the shortcut is the two words. Of course, as in of course I feel sad. Of course I feel anxious. Of course I feel elated. And it's your way. Saying, I make sense to me because our brains don't like dissonance. Yeah. Our brains don't like when your body feels like you're really freaked out and you're telling yourself it's cool like, you shouldn't veal this way.

[00:25:42] Yeah. But if your body feels freaked out and your brain goes. It makes sense to me that you're freaked out. This test is a really big deal and getting a good grade on this means that you could go to the school you want, and you put it in context and of course, your anxiety makes sense. Mm-hmm. right?

[00:25:59] Doesn't mean you like it, doesn't mean you want it. , but it means, it's not dissonant, you know? Yeah. It's not crazy.

[00:26:07] Sadie: A hundred percent. What are some other nervous system management tips that you recommend people implement? . Is it just like repetition of the ones you mentioned or are there other, like is it with time you learned other ones?

[00:26:22] What are some other tips that people can try if they want to improve their ability to regulate their nervous system in addition to their emotions?

[00:26:30] Jay: Yeah. , so. . Before I give you a couple of the tips, here's what I would want people to understand about your nervous system.

[00:26:38] When we talk about being regulated, that's when you're your optimal zone where you're alert, but not. Hyper. You're calm, but not, you know, shut down. So you're in that kind of range where you just feel good. Dysregulated can go two directions. You can go up or down. So upregulation looks like when you're multitasking, you're moving too fast, you're talking fast, you're agitated, people are too slow, too stupid, too in your way, you know, like that feeling. You're tending to be more. Your breath is shorter. Downregulated is when you go more into that like turtle in a shell, everything slows down. You just wanna wear sweatpants and watch Netflix. You don't wanna talk to your friends, you don't wanna be around people. You feel unmotivated. So both of those are, are versions of being dysregulated.

[00:27:32] Both are healthy, you know, we go into both for different reasons. The problem is when you get stuck in one and you can't get back to that place where you feel, okay. Yeah. So I say that because the things that we do when we're upregulated to come back down might be different than the things that we do when we're down regulated to come back up.

[00:27:52] Mm-hmm. , The, the gist of it, whatever they are, is they all have something to do with becoming more present in your body in a way that you can feel something that's pleasant or neutral. . So for example, the ABCs, this is an easy place to start. A stands for awareness, which simply means look around the room you're in because many of us are, you know, in front of a computer, we're on a phone.

[00:28:17] Or you just get into that place where you're stressed out or upset and you get tunnel vision. So simply taking your eyes off the screen, looking around the room, taking in the light, looking out the window. . Just moving your gaze can actually help to regulate. That's a, and also taking in the sounds that you hear, the smells that you can smell.

[00:28:39] So put yourself in the place that you're in and look around. Be there. B and a B. ABC stands for body, so that's doing anything you can, that reminds you that you exist from your neck down. So it's a stretch. It's. tapping. It's shaking. I'm a big shaker. It's just getting up and moving around. Go walk outside, go get the mail, you know, like, yeah, do something.

[00:29:05] Massage your feet. Put lotion on your hands. Go splash water on your face. Anything that reminds you like I have sensation in my body and I have control over that. And then C stands for centering. And centering traditionally is. Is something as simple as like sitting taller or standing taller.

[00:29:25] Broaden your collar bones. Get that sense of your spine is lengthening so you're not s slumpy. Because even this posture sends your brain more of a message like, we're cool. But if you're all hunched, you're getting more a message of like, this is not safe. I don't know, I'm protected. So centering starts with just opening up, getting longer and taller in your spine, and then I like adding a piece where I put my hand on my chest or my belly or one to each and just bring to mind someone or something, or someplace that genuinely makes me smile.

[00:29:57] I love that. And like to feel that smile, not just as a smile on your face, but like what does that smile feel like in my body? Mm-hmm. , you know, and that isn't about escaping whatever thing you're experiencing. It's about finding, again, a layer that's pleasant. Mm-hmm. that you can hold with you as you then also feel.

[00:30:19] But man, I'm just so freaking. Yeah.

[00:30:23] Sadie: I love that because I remember when I learned mindfulness in the D B T context the first couple of times, and it was very painful. The idea of sitting with my current thoughts, I was like, that's, those are very dark, those are very overwhelming. and I was like, maybe I just need to wait until I'm in a different season of life to be able to implement these skills.

[00:30:42] Mm-hmm. . But I think that that caveat of the baseline of the mindfulness practice being either neutral or pleasant, gives you that safe space to go back to, even if your, your thoughts aren't the most positive, or if there's like an intrusive thought or you feel an emotion that's overwhelming. The baseline there is something that you can handle and that isn't going to be tied to those unpleasant emotions.

[00:31:08] Jay: Right, right. Because I think one of the things that happens with us humans with emotion is we're kind of all or nothing either. I'm gonna be overwhelmed by this, or I'm gonna shut it down and pretend it's not happening. But that in between place where you can say, this is true, this is also true. You know, , I'm really sad right now.

[00:31:26] And it's also true that I have someone that when I bring them to mind, I can't help but. . Mm-hmm. . And it isn't a way of negating the sadness, it's a way of saying, this isn't my whole life. And I think that's really, really important in the teenage years as well, because we are so, you know, focused on experience that moment.

[00:31:46] And it becomes so pervasive. If I'm sad in this moment, I'm gonna be sad forever, or I'm always gonna be sad about this one thing. It's like, well, this is the truth. all people is that we have different parts of us. Mm-hmm. and different parts of us can feel different things at the exact same

[00:32:03] And you can use that. I, I like to think of it as like creating a container for yourself. To have the feeling. Yeah. If you can feel the pleasant or neutral, there's your container. and then, , whatever's on the inside that's more unpleasant. At least it's contained. It's held. Mm-hmm. , it's not like absolutely spreading out into everything.

[00:32:25] Sadie: Yeah. The last thing that I wanna touch on is connecting these emotional and physical sensations, awareness practices to behaviors and habits, because I. . That's something that helps people understand like, okay, this is how I'm gonna see progress. This is how I'm gonna see a shift. I think that the feeling part is so important and the day-to-day, because again, that's your baseline, that's how you function.

[00:32:52] All these other things are secondary to how you're feeling and experiencing the world, and I think it's really interesting to see how these impact your ability. Create behaviors and build habits because like we mentioned, the shift in feeling validated and then being able to engage in a behavior is a game changer.

[00:33:08] So how does these more abstract emotions and nervous system, tips. Connect to the more practical behaviors that you engage in or the habits that you build.

[00:33:20] Jay: Yeah. What I tell the people that I work with when we first start doing these exercises that are about increasing embodied self-awareness, is that there's the aspect of it that's about like functionally it's gonna help you regulate your nervous system better and manage your emotions better and feel better.

[00:33:37] Yeah. But, Yeah, but on a relational level, what it's doing is it's basically you creating a felt sense of being related to yourself. Like sometimes I'll give people the exercise of just ask yourself throughout the day, are you there? Are you there? And see, to me when I do that, it's like, I feel something spread out in my chest. Like, oh yeah, I'm here. I know this part of me that's bigger than my worries or bigger than my fears. That sort of thing. And so I guess what I'm trying to say to your question, say to here is the first part of this is Creating a relationship to yourself that you become trustworthy to yourself, you become trustworthy, that you will validate yourself and your feelings.

[00:34:25] You won't shut them down, you won't make fun of them. Because from there you build self-confidence. You build, self-worth, you build, Again, that sense of trust. And from there, that's the foundation of changing every behavior. If I have trust in myself that I'm gonna show up for myself. If I have a big hard feeling, I'm more willing to disappoint someone else versus try to please limit my own.

[00:34:57] Hmm. Does that make sense?

[00:34:58] Sadie: Yeah. And I, I love that. I don't know if you've heard the TikTok sound, where it's something about , not keeping your promises to yourself, and it's like, how can you trust yourself if you're constantly breaking promises to yourself? , and I really like this idea that you're talking about with being able to self empathize.

[00:35:15] Because even if you have a goal of like, I'm gonna engage in this behavior or this habit, or be consistent here, and you're not, you have this really healthy foundation with yourself to say, of course I didn't do this. And if these emotions came up and. , you're not breaking a promise to yourself. You're not derailing that trust.

[00:35:34] You are in fact, helping yourself get through it. You're supporting yourself, you're experiencing those emotions. Yes. And so I, I, I love that so much, and I think it goes hand in hand with both engaging in behaviors and then also giving yourself the grace when you're not. Or if you, you break a habit or you're not as effective because you're there to emotionally coach, help support yourself.

[00:35:57] Jay: Yes. And I would say, you know, back to that kind of family of origin sort of influence is that for most people, that I've worked with, whether they're 18 or 68, without awareness, they usually are still doing the thing to themself. Mm-hmm. that their caregivers did. that was hurtful.

[00:36:18] Right? And so that sense of not validating themselves or making fun of themselves or just like turning away when there's a hard feeling, most of them are still doing that unless they interrupt that pattern and relearn I'm worth being validated and I'm worth shifting these patterns to being kind to myself because so much of the time it's like, They're, they're looking out here going, it hurts so much when X, Y, or Z person does this to me.

[00:36:48] And I'll say, well, let's look at how you do that to you. Yeah. And if you can change that. . I freaking guarantee you, you will not tolerate people doing it to you anymore. Yeah. Because you've felt the difference. It's like what you said about when, once you felt the difference with your family of them validating you, it's night and day and they would feel it too, and you just don't go back once you felt the difference.

[00:37:13] Mm-hmm. ,

[00:37:15] Sadie: what would you say to someone who. is really struggling with their relationship yourself, with themselves. There's that disconnect between the emotions that they're feeling and below the neck, their bodily sensations, their nervous system, their ability to regulate. They're at the beginning of this journey, and they're just feeling overwhelmed.

[00:37:32] They're in the struggle. What would your, your advice, your wisdom, , or even just like reassurance be. .

[00:37:38] Jay: Mm-hmm. . Well, you're not alone. Yeah. There's so many people that feel that way and and what I would say is, And this is kind of hard to know until you do it, but the embodied self-awareness stuff, all the things we were talking about, just as simple as, you know, feel your butt in the chair or put lotion on your hands and really feel what that feels like.

[00:38:01] What research tells us is that embodied self-awareness helps us to feel more courage, feel more empathy, feel less overwhelmed by our emotion. Feel more attuned to other people, more connected. So it's one of those things where I'm always trying to find the best, most succinct way to say this.

[00:38:23] It's that sense of like, embodied self-awareness can feel like a big, hard, scary thing to do when you're feeling that lack of connection to yourself. But doing it helps everything in your brain to go, oh, this is okay. You just have to start dipping your toe in the water. And if you dip your toe in the water and it's scary, then you get to say, wow, that was scary.

[00:38:47] Of course, that was scary. This is new to me. Never done this. And in the past it's felt really hard. Trust that your brain will come along with you . You know? Yeah. Right now the stories you tell yourself about it are like, whoa, this isn't gonna work, or This is gonna be hard, but all the physiology is there to support you in it, especially if you're kind to yourself through the

[00:39:09] Sadie: process.

[00:39:10] I love that. If people want to continue to consume your content, start coaching with you. Where can people find you? ,

[00:39:19] Jay: they can find me on my website. So it's j a y dash fields, f i e lds.com. And I am over 40 and I am not into social media. , . The only place I'm on social media is LinkedIn. So, but I have a ton of free content on my website in terms of writing.

[00:39:37] And, , people can sign up for my newsletter and every week I send out things that are like this. Kind of stories. Here's what came up for a client and here's how we worked through it. And on my website you can also learn about my group coaching program, yours truly, and coaching one-on-one with me. And yeah, I just really encourage people to sign up for the newsletter cuz that's where they'll get the ongoing

[00:39:58] Sadie: tips.

[00:39:59] Yay. I will link all of those in the show notes and thank you so much. Thank you, Jay. Thank you. I know that this conversation is gonna be so helpful for so many and there are so many very accessible and simple shifts you can make that will have huge results. So thank you so much. I hope for bringing so much value.

[00:40:16] Jay: Oh my gosh. Thanks so much for having me. My pleasure.

[00:40:19] Sadie: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of she persisted. If you enjoyed, make sure to share with a friend or family member, it really helps out the podcast. And if you haven't already leave a review on apple podcasts or Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at actually persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tik TOK, and check out all the bonus resources, content and information on my website.

[00:40:40] She persisted podcast.com. Thanks for supporting. Keep persisting and I'll see you next week.

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