Let's talk about the difference between indulging in an emotion and processing an emotion. When we are indulging in emotions, we often stay in the same emotional state after that period of feeling is over. With processing emotions, you're almost always in a different emotional state after the feeling is over, after the experience of feeling those feelings has come to an end or has come to a complete point. I'm going to explain what I mean. Because I know a lot of this language might sound really foreign to you if you aren't a veteran of sitting with yourself silently and feeling your feelings. Which by the way, is not a selfish, pointless, fruitless pursuit. It's the only way we heal. Okay, so if there are any voices in your head saying, Oh, this video already is stupid, like this activity is stupid sitting with my feelings with myself is stupid. Just understand that those thoughts, those beliefs come from a certain place, maybe from a certain person who's taught you certain things about emotions in general. And they can exist, you know, those thoughts can come up and you can place them aside and spend time on yourself and your emotions anyways, because you know, that it's okay, and that it's the right thing to do and that it's healing and that it's healthy and that it's okay, all of that. Okay. So, that disclaimer aside, I had to really, you know, I always have to speak to the people who have that chatter in the back of their heads that will prevent them from really participating and, again, healing, okay. So when you are indulging in an emotion, this might be guilt, shame, resentment, frustration, confusion, that's a really big one. When you're indulging in those emotions, you're pretty much just like shoveling and dumping more dirt on the pile of reasons why you should feel confused or frustrated or resentful, or regretful or angry or blame full or judgmental or guilty or ashamed. You're it's not, it's not that you're processing the feeling. It's not that you're learning new things about yourself. It's that you're just stoking these flames fanning the fire of the negative emotion that you don't want to be feeling anymore. little caveat there. Sometimes we're not ready to move on from that feeling. Sometimes we do want to indulge in that resentment or blame or frustration or judgment. I know judgment is one that I spend a lot of time in I indulge judgment quite often, it's a problem. And it hurts, you know, it hurts me it hurts my relationships, it never goes well. So those are some of the things that will happen as a result of indulging in emotions, you know, you'll stay stuck in those feelings, you won't learn anything new about yourself, you won't have that perspective shift that can be the miracle that you need to have a breakthrough I mean internally or with another person in a relationship, whatever. None of that happens when you're indulging, you just get deeper, darker, sad or lonely or more ashamed. It's not a good not a good pattern to be involved in. But it is a pattern and when you're stuck in it, it can be hard to see another way. So when you're processing emotions. Interestingly enough, even though I said earlier that when you process an emotion, generally you are in a different emotional state after that experience is over. The point is not to fix negative emotions. The point of processing your feelings is not for that end of the road where you are, quote unquote feeling better. The point is greater intimacy with yourself greater trust of yourself. The point is being able to self regulate and maintain you know, emotional stability even when you're triggered or even when you're in a really hardcore emotionally flooded state when there's a lot of chaos going on. Or there's at least a lot of chaos in your mind if not around you physically. You know and being able to maintain high high sensitivity, high consciousness decision making skills in the face of being triggered. That's that's really
one of the main benefits you get from from actually processing feelings. You maintain your ability to make sound rational, intelligent, wise decisions, even when you notice a flood of emotions that come through that would have you make really impulsive decision And or hurtful decisions or intentionally manipulative or malicious decisions like, and that is, that is a huge gift you give yourself by doing any kind of you know, healing work where you become more self aware is guess what? You've just given yourself back sovereignty, you've just given yourself back personal power, you've just taught yourself how to not let others have more control over you than you have over yourself. And what could be more valuable than that? What could be a better a better gift to give yourself than that? So I guess the next part of this is how, how do you do both? You know, how do I know I'm indulging in an emotion? And how can I stop indulging and start to process? You know, you're indulging when you notice yourself just wanting to spin spin spin on the quote unquote victim story. I know that I can sound so judgmental and patronizing when I say like, you're indulging in your victim story, you know, like, just bootstrap your way out of this, whatever. But I do have to use the words victim story, because when we are indulging in emotions, it's very often us just indulging the stories, stories, the the all of the evidence that we have for the reason why we are not in control of our lives right now, why we are not really the ones causing us this pain, why, you know, it's other people's fault. If other people would change, then we could be happier than we could be free, then we could be confident and we could be self assured all of it. And that's not true. You know, you're you are your own hero, you're an adult, you're the one who can save you now. Thankfully, you're though you're the only one who can abandon yourself. Now in adulthood, you can't be abandoned as an adult. There are extenuating circumstances, there are exceptions to that rule, but I'm speaking generally. And it's very likely that if you're watching this, you aren't an exception to the rule. You can't be abandoned as an adult except by yourself. So that's a lot of stuff about indulgent emotions. And then if you're saying, Alright, I want to stop indulging, I want to stop, like telling the story and really obsessing over the story of how I'm a victim here. And I want to start to process emotions. And I want to start to claim more of my personal power. And I want to start being more consciously aware of the decisions I'm making. And I want to be making higher quality decisions, not decisions that are coming from a wounded place or a triggered place. Great, then how do you start doing that? Number one, a breathing practice. So even though you might be listening to this, and you're in a really dark place, and some calm bitch in a quiet apartment is telling you to start a breathing practice. If that pisses you off, I get it. I understand that would make me angry too. If I were in a really bad place, and it has, it's made me angry. Lots of times, I've spent a lot of time feeling really hateful towards a lot of people who told me to start breathing or meditating or walking outside or being nice to myself or saying nice things to myself in the mirror, or eating enough food or drinking enough water or going to bed on time. I've spent a lot of time being really angry at people who told me to do nice things for myself. So right off the bat, I would like to invite you to maybe drop the defensive walls. Maybe calm down just a little bit, though you love being told, being told to calm down. So just harsh. I get it. I understand that you don't have a lot of time I understand that your life is stressful. That's exactly why I'm asking you to get 30 minutes more sleep by going to bed early, not sleeping in later. That's exactly why I'm going to ask you to please start breathing for at least 30 seconds when you get up in the morning before you look at your phone. And before you go to bed. 30 seconds of breath, silence non stimulation from the outside world you deserve that and you can give that to yourself too. If you're gonna fight me on on 30 seconds in the morning and night for yourself then we don't really have much more to talk about. I don't know why you're watching the video. If you're going to fight me on 30 seconds Why don't you think that you deserve to take that 30 seconds for yourself if you're going to fight me on 30 seconds of breath work.
How do you expect to get whatever else you're wanting? If if what you want is like so far past this 30 seconds of luxury for yourself of silence. How do you think you're ever going to get there if you can't give yourself 30 seconds of breath it It's going to be hard, it's going to be hard because along the way to whatever you want, you're going to eventually have to start letting in love letting in peace letting in quiet. And if you can't let in 30 seconds of, of breath for yourself, again. What are we even talking about here? You deserve that. So that's, that's number one is start to have a breath practice, start to implement some consistency with yourself. If you're having trouble with indulgent emotions, you know, if you're having trouble indulging in shame, or judgment or anger, or any of these things that we're talking about, it's likely just because you grew up in a in an environment that left you pretty dysregulated. And so your job now as an adult, is to stop hurting yourself more to stop, worsening that dysregulation. And you stop worsening dysregulation by increasing the consistency in your life by increasing the the peaceful loving discipline, you know, the loving discipline of a, of a gentle hand on the small of your back, guiding you across the street, when there are no cars coming, you know, and then saying, Okay, you're safe to go run and play. That's the gentle discipline that we're talking about here. We're not talking about any name calling or threatening or ultimatum making, we're just talking about gentle discipline. You need to start incorporating more peace, more consistency, more contentment into your life, if, if these are things that you're struggling with, processing emotions, it doesn't happen. When you're in triage, when you're in survival mode, it really it's, it can't, like I've tried. I've also tried with other people, you know, it's you got to, you got to get yourself to a place where you feel safe enough to be that vulnerable. Feeling your emotions is very vulnerable. Sometimes a processing session, quote, unquote, can take 30 seconds. You know, I've done it with clients where they really, it's funny to say the word pass, but like they'll, they'll pass a feeling. They'll it'll move on pretty quickly. But it can be extremely intense. So getting yourself to a place where you have enough calm around you enough stability to be in a room alone for 30 seconds or 30 minutes. If you have that luxury. That's that's important. So please don't try to process an emotion or don't try to like, I don't know, get yourself into a good place, quote, unquote, when you are feeling it. No, that's how do I want to say this. I'm saying a combination of things. Don't rush yourself. Give yourself time and space. Know that when you're feeling at rock bottom, when you're really really really struggling with some very, very heavy, indulgent emotions, and they're spinning and they're spiraling. And it really, you know, those are the moments where clients have said to me before, I feel like this feeling is gonna kill me. So I might as well do it first. If we're being honest, it can get that bad, your indulgent emotions can get so bad that you're like, This isn't worth it. I'm good. I'm going to opt out of this. Thank you very much. I've been there. Lots of clients have been there. But you guys have to remember that emotions never, never have that much power over you and emotion will never kill you. You can process your most painful emotion. And you don't have to keep indulging in it. You can process your most painful emotion and you can still be physically intact and emotionally intact, but not only emotionally intact, but truly, so much more emotionally whole than you were before you are willing to open up to feeling that horrible emotion that you've been trying to avoid this whole time. And this whole time might mean six weeks ago, it might mean since you were for whatever emotion you've been trying to avoid that has been causing less than ideal effects in your life. Um, no emotion is gonna kill you. What else do I have to say about that? No, that's a really important one. You're your life opens up when you're willing to feel your negative emotions instead of keep them hidden or pushed down. You become more able to make
wise complete self serving loving decisions. You don't have to keep making decisions that just are born out of your desire to avoid whatever pain you're struggling to feel In order to process Oh, and isn't that a relief? Wow, that feels so good to know. You can always come back to that. I hope this was helpful. If you are on the path and trying to really process your feelings, release the feelings that are keeping you in painful places. If you're trying to no longer indulge in painful emotions. Way to go, you should tell yourself right now maybe go in the mirror and say thank you say I'm proud of you. Say I appreciate the effort because I know it's so hard and take some private moments to say whatever else you need to say to yourself, because I'm sure there's a lot and remember, you don't always have to speak you can say a lot to yourself in the mirror just with some loving eye contact. Again, I hope this was helpful. If you want any more information about me if you want to book a session, anything like that, you can just find the links below. My website is codependent millennial.com And I'll talk to you guys soon. Have a beautiful peaceful day.

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