How To Continue Unbreaking Your Heart

Hi there everybody, thanks for being here with me today. 

I’m Dana, and you’re listening to The Revolution Within Podcast. This is the podcast where you’re learning how to revolutionize your relationship within yourself by ditching people-pleasing, prioritizing self-kindness, and finding the fun in dysfunctional. Haha. Making our dysfunctional emotions way more manageable day to day, too. That too.

But first, some housekeeping. Let me tell you how you can connect with me to work with me: My website is revolution-within.com, I’m on instagram @ revolution_within31, and you can reach me via email at dana@revolution-within.com

Best thing to do is go to my website and get on my email list so you’ll get all of my correspondence for my upcoming book and classes and all the things. When you go to my website there’ll be a pop up, you can put your name and email address in there and you’ll get on my email list.

So. I’m putting out another episode right away because I realized when I listened back to the last one that I kind of let my ADHD tangential side run amok and it was…admittedly all over the place. 

Going back to your childhood and figuring out what your still kicking around from there, avoiding people who are being emotionally manipulating assholes, dealing with variations of grief…I even mentioned Sigmund Freud and had an off-script California wildfires rant at the end. Things got wild, hahaha!

Well, it all had the central theme of having really big emotions and learning better ways of dealing with them, which is done by…what? Anyone? 

Right. The mindset work to learn how to be really kind to yourself. 

I’m a person who has spent much of her life struggling to cope with emotional disregulation. It’s ruled my existence. Controlled my career path. Caused strife in my family, my friendships…definitely my marriage. And ended a few relationships.

So. I’ll use another personal example. A few years ago a friend - who I called my best friend for over twenty years, she was my closest and longest-time friend here in Los Angeles - ghosted me with no explanation. I messaged her a few times, asking what I’d done, offering a blanket apology for…whatever it was, it’s hard to apologize for something when you don’t know what you did…with no response.

This…broke my heart. I’m still really hurt, to be honest…and I can only guess why she stopped talking to me. I assume it’s because of my personality - she’s the one who always called me “drama”…and I do live a rather unconventional lifestyle, admittedly. I’m also a mom, she’s not. We live very different lives, and maybe I became too much for her.

But…did I? I’m the one who tells my clients and anyone else within earshot that people do what they do and that 99 times out of 100 it’s not personal - that it has way more to do with THAT person than it has to do with YOU. In this case, her decision to just stop talking to me has everything to do with her and nothing to do with me, right?

Right.

But that logic didn’t make it hurt any less. Being ghosted by someone seems not only incredibly cowardly and immature, but…selfish. After 20+ years, you think I could at least get an explanation.

But here comes the importance of…perspective. Hmmmmm. 

So…this opens us up to the topic of: Why do people ghost? 

There’s this expression or meme or whatever that I see often these days: You never know what someone else is going through…so be kind. 

Ghosting someone is rude. Right? A text message takes what, three seconds, right? There are any number of relatively polite ways to say, “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” 

Well…what if that person can’t even bring themselves to send that text for some reason? 

We don’t all have the same experiences. We don’t all think the same way. Yes, we are all human beings, but our brains don’t think the same thoughts in the same ways. We don’t have the same priorities. We certainly don’t process information or emotions the same way.

So taking this perspective makes the hurt more bearable any time someone doesn’t pour their energy into me with the same veracity or dedication as I do for them. And that has happened to me many, many times over the years. ‘Cause I truly wear my heart on my sleeve. 

In my case it’s more like smack dab in the middle of my face. There’s no poker face here. When you hurt my feelings or when I get happy or when I get pissed off…it’s obvious. I never had an acting career, it was ruined from the start, haha.

So back to my former best friend. I’ve rationalized it by telling myself that she must be struggling with her own depression, which is something I know that we have in common. I’ve wished her well, I’ve let her go. I still think about her often, and I still send her loving energy. 

And I’m not going to stop doing that. I do that for everyone I’ve ever loved, even the people who’ve cut me to the bone. Yes, everyone.

Because how would it help me to carry around bitterness and resentment toward the people who’ve hurt me? The people who’ve used my open and empathetic nature with complete disregard?

How does it help you to continue to hate someone when you’re the one who feels the anger and rage? That person doesn’t feel any of it. They’re just going on with their life, completely oblivious to your feelings. You hating them doesn’t affect them at all…but it certainly affects you. It makes you irritable. It gives you an ulcer or chronic migraines.

Carrying around unprocessed emotions is what’s keeping you from living the life you want. It’s why you wake up in the middle of the night teeming with anxiety. It’s why you feel like you’re missing out on something…like something is off. Or why you have such big reactions when something relatively minor happens. 

You know that expression, “There’s no use crying over spilled milk.” I mean, you’re supposed to just wipe it up, it’s not a big deal. I mean, if you freak out over a broken dish, then you might want to think about what emotion you’re not dealing with. 

It’s just a bowl, Tina. Relax.

So how do I know that I'm not carrying around unprocessed emotions, Dana? Or, if I am, how do I deal with them?

Okay, well…here’s how you know you’re not carrying around a bunch of unprocessed emotions. You go through your work day unbothered by things. When something crashes or implodes, you might get annoyed for a minute or two, five minutes, ten minutes…but then you say to yourself, “Okay, no big deal. I can take care of this.” And you do.

Here’s the kicker: When you get home, and you do your night time thing to relax…whether it’s drinking or scrolling social media or something else…you’re doing it intentionally. Meaning you don’t zone out into it. You’re not losing yourself in it. Escaping into it because you just want to forget about your day/life. It’s something that you enjoy, not something that you’re doing just to avoid doing something else or to avoid talking to your spouse or whatever. 

I hope this is making sense. When you’re content with your life, you don’t feel the need to engage in forms of escapism. Now, this is all on a spectrum. We all indulge in things. We all overdo it sometimes. But when you’re not dealing with something…when you’re suppressing emotions, when you’re coasting along, living in comfortable misery (Episode 3)…you’re prone to zoning out.

How do you know if you are?

You’re stuck in traffic and you are absolutely raging about it.

You break your favorite coffee mug and dissolve into tears over it.

Your kid gets a D on a test and you absolutely lose your shit over it.

Those are overreactions. Traffic is a part of life. It’s not personal, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Mugs break. Even if it’s your favorite one, even if it’s the last thing your mom gave you before she died…it’s just a mug. 

And as for a bad grade…oh my God, don’t even get me started on the over-importance of grades. I stressed my way over grades through high school and college only to look back and realize that there was absolutely no point to any of it. Yes, good grades are helpful, so is going to a good college and all that…but is not the be-all-end-all defining factor in a child’s future? NO. It’s not. Your kid will be absolutely fine whether they’re a doctor or a welder or whatever. It’s more important that they’re emotionally healthy and secure in who they are than anything else.

In today’s world, mental health and stability is the most valuable currency. Self-preservation of ones’ energy and worthiness are worth everything. 

Okay, so if you are stuck in grief or anger or some other unprocessed emotion…how do you deal with it? Well, I talked about the iceberg last episode. So if you haven’t listened to that one yet, please go do that at some point. But we carry in our unconscious minds unprocessed traumas that we’re not even aware of that can keep us trapped in cycles of escapist behaviors. And that’s in our childhood; it’s a Freud thing.

In order to break those, we have to first become aware. That means we need to go back and journal about stuff. If you don’t like to write, you can talk about it either with a therapist or with a coach like me or you can start with your phone. I have personally a free voice recorder app on my phone and I use it almost daily. It’s a wonderful therapist because it never talks back to me, haha. 

No, that was a joke. It’s helpful because when I listen back to it and I actually hear what I’ve said I often have an aha moment. Growing up most of us (especially girls) weren’t allowed to be angry, while boys weren’t allowed to cry or be vulnerable. And seriously, that fucked us all up. Dictating the emotions that we’re allowed to have as children? Yeah, kids having explosive episodes can be problematic, and we’re supposed to teach kids how to behave better and all, but the whole “shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about”? Yeah, that ain’t it bro, you know?

And that’s just scratching the surface. There’s a lot there, even for those of us who had what anyone looking from the outside in would classify as idillic childhoods. Every single one of us has something. And yes, there are people who had terrible, awful abuse in there childhoods and there are people who didn’t; but every single one of us had something that we had to deal with.

Children should be seen and not heard; girls should be sweet and spice and everything nice, boys are dirt and stale and puppy dogs tails or whatever that ridiculous rhyme was. And don’t even get me started on the TV shows and movies of that time period. Yikes on bikes. My God.

What was modeled to us left us not trusting anything about ourselves. It left us confused and vulnerable to the assault of media and capitalism. So much so that…well, look where we are in society today.

So…you can start by recording how you feel in your frustrations at the end of your day. Every day. Go nuts. Just record a ten minute long diatribe for a week about how pissed off you are about how unfair everything is. 

Then I want you to listen back to those and ask yourself…is this how I really want to feel about my life?

And if the answer is no, then I want you to keep listening to my podcast and similar things - Mel Robbins is always top of mind for me, as she’s my future bestie - because keeping this type of content in your ears is going to help you to work your way out of there. Out of that mindset of…how unfair everything is. How bad everything is. And it’s a habit.

Yes, there is a lot of terrifying shit happening in the world right now. But there always is. There always has been. It escalates. History repeats itself. Every hundred years, we repeat cycles. Horrors are all around us. 

But historically, we’ve also made progress. We are not the same as we were a hundred years ago. We’re not. If we were we’d still be riding around in…we didn’t have electric cars, we certainly didn’t have the internet. Um…there has been progress in civil rights, there has been progress in - they’re trying to take us back - but, what I’m saying here is…I’m not going to get political here, even though I very well could, but I don’t want to go on a rant. What I’m saying is…we have made progress. And we can focus on what we haven’t done, or we can focus on what we have done.

You can be scared and focus on the fear. Or you can be scared and do something anyway. Focus on being a helper. In times like this…we don’t just look for the helpers. We become the helpers.

And I know how overwhelming this all is, I know. But the good news? It takes just tiny steps to make a difference. Awareness. Shifting judgement to curiosity. Taking tiny steps toward changing your perspective about yourself. Baby steps toward kindness and compassion and away from shaming and blaming.

Practicing feeling uncomfortable emotions. Sitting with them for short periods of time rather than immediately diving into zoning out in front of a screen or into a glass of wine. And recording the process, which is how you track it all and get to celebrate your progress.

That’s how you grow. That’s how you win.

And that’s what I have for you in this episode, beauties and cuties. Thanks for listening. If you have any comments or questions, there’s an option in the show description to text me with your thoughts so please…feel free. Also, it really helps the show to leave a good review (hopefully with 5 stars attached) and share it with everyone you know. I appreciate you, and I’ll talk to you next time. Take care and remember - all will be well.