I do this often with clients who will say, like, you know, I had this thing happen to me, and I just can't seem to let it go. I'm so angry still. Or, you know, this thing is ongoing, and I just want to not be angry anymore. And my first question to them is like, Well, have you felt angry enough?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of uplift for her everyday wellness for women. I am so excited about our guest today. We have with us Dr Carly crew and Carly, we will you tell us a little bit about yourself real quick.
Yeah. So I'm a mom of twin girls. They're gonna be five in two short weeks, which is crazy. And I'm also a trained family doctor who specializes in women's mental health. So the the title I have is called MD psychotherapist. So I'm a family doctor who also does mental health therapy, and I own a virtual mental health clinic for women in Alberta, Canada, and where we help women in a really holistic and kind of multifaceted way to meet them where they are with their mental health challenges, and we're a team of about 12 doctors now, so I'm excited about that. That's amazing. Well, thank
you for coming.
Yeah, I'm super excited to be here. I know that I was lucky enough to have you on my podcast, and I'm excited to continue our conversation. We had so much fun that time. So yeah, I'm really, really happy and honored to be here.
Oh, thank you. Yeah,
I'm I'm so happy to continue our conversation. I think we had a hard time cutting it off last time. So it's it was meant to continue.
Yes, absolutely. Well, awesome.
Well, what I wanted to start talking about is sort of how the emotions play out in women. You deal with a lot of women who are struggling, and I think a lot of times when we say, like, what's going on with women who see therapists? It's really easy to say, Well, is it anxiety or depression? And just leave it there, but if we break it down to the women that you're actually helping, what are some of the areas that that come up most frequently as sort of the foundation for then the emotional response of anxiety or depression? I
love this. And actually, I know we had kind of chatted a bit before, but something that just came to something that just came to mind that is a huge thing that I didn't bring up before, is an issue I see in a lot of my clients that they probably don't present to me, saying that they have is what's called the stress tolerance. So humans, on the whole, human beings, just have a really low tolerance for feeling any kind of distress, any kind of pain, any kind of emotional pain, etc, right? And when we feel these different types of emotions, like anger or disappointment or sadness, it's often not the experience of the emotion that is the biggest problem. It's the fact that we have very little tolerance for experiencing that emotion, and when we have any even little bit of distress, we feel very uncomfortable and are really quickly motivated to try to make it go away. Yeah, on the whole, many women I work with are in the habit of suppressing emotions, eliminating emotions, or ignoring emotions, right? And so this can cause a whole host of problems downstream, right? Can absolutely cause, you know, anxiety. It can absolutely cause more low mood and depressive symptoms. But what it comes from, again, is that that almost inability, or a sense of not knowing how to manage being in distress for any period of time. Interesting, yeah. Listeners might be thinking like, well, do I do that? And it's it can be something that is hard to figure out in yourself. But my questions for people often are, you know, when you feel really, really angry, for example, how what's going through your mind about feeling anger? And often, women are having what are called secondary emotions. Secondary emotions is when you have an emotion about an emotion, right? So, for example, you get angry with your children, and then you feel shame about anger, right? Or you feel anxious, and then you feel angry about being anxious. And it's those secondary reactions that follow from having very little tolerance for the primary emotion, which is called the stress tolerance. So that's kind of a lot of therapy talk, but basically it comes out, as you know, like having kind of like, these flying off the handle moments because you just don't know what else to do. You don't have any skills, right? Which, I know we'll talk a little bit about emotional management and emotional processing skills. If you don't have skills to deal with all this emotional energy that's going through you, which, spoiler alert, most of us don't, right? Like, yeah, most of us have not been sat down and been like, Okay, here's how to be angry, here's how to be sad, right? These are not lessons we were often taught unless we were very lucky and we had really emotionally intelligent parents, and so most of us don't have those skills, and so we just don't know what to do, and then we act out in ways that we often don't like. And that's what brings people to therapy a lot, they'll often come to me and say, you know, I'm feeling really irritable with my kids. I'm flying off the handle. I don't know how to handle being angry with them. I don't know how to handle this grief that I'm feeling right now about this loss I've had. I need it. Go away. Can you help me?
I love this. I think that's so important. Because I think sometimes we feel, even subconsciously, that it's wrong to have negative emotions, right? Like, if we're perfect, then we wouldn't be upset about that, or then we wouldn't have gotten our feelings hurt or been offended or had this emotional response. And I think that the best life is a life full of a dynamic range of emotion, right? I mean, we don't really want a life that's like, happy non stop all the time, that wouldn't be a very rich life. We want a life that is that has the full range of emotion. But when that emotion comes, it can be really scary or vulnerable to us. And I think even society tells us sometimes, like, Well, you shouldn't feel that way. Don't feel that way. And we even may do this to each other sometimes, like, Oh, don't feel that. Don't say that, don't feel that way. Like, just be happy. Like, be grateful. At least you're not, you know, my
vibes only, right? That's the kind of idea. And actually, I'm glad that you brought that up Mallory, because if anybody's Read, read Glenn and Doyle untamed, yeah, she I actually referenced her in my book, and she talks about that women, we kind of without realizing it, often have this idea in our heads of this like perfect woman who does life right, like this idealized human being who knows just how to respond correctly to all situations, and who is graceful amidst emotion and All these different things, right? And we kind of create this, this woman that we're constantly comparing ourselves to, like we're wondering, like, Oh, I'm not quite there right to her yet, or I'm not behaving. I don't know how to do this. And then, like you said, What leads from that is that we tend to think that the experience of emotion itself is wrong, yeah, that that if we feel sadness about something that's terrible, if we feel anger when we are you know, a boundary is crossed when we feel we're like, oh, I'm the wrong one here. I shouldn't have this, right? And I say that in my book. I say that women have a tendency to just assume any emotional reaction to life is incorrect of theirs, right? There's not a that whatever they're doing is probably an overreaction. And I often bring that back, and I, you know, can tease that out with people and say, well, though really like let's look at how other people in your life might have felt. Let's look how, you know, how maybe a good friend of yours might feel if that happened to her. Do you think that her reaction would be overzealous or over dramatic, or wrong? Well, and women often say, Well, no, like that would make a lot of sense for her, but to ourselves, for some reason, it doesn't feel like that's an okay thing to feel right, that that emotion, whatever that response is, and that's, again, just circling back where the secondary emotions come in. Right is because we judge our primary emotional experience as wrong, and we also tell ourselves that we can't tolerate it, that this emotion might kill me. That's what it feels like, right? When you're in the grips of anxiety, or you feel so angry you could rip your own hair out, right? It feels like that emotional experience is going to completely overwhelm you, and you're going to go crazy. You can't survive it.
Gosh, that's that's so true, and I can think easily of examples of where a lot of women run into this with a partner, a spouse. You know, where you interpret something that that happened as taking it personally, not just that, like, like, if your husband says something stupid to you, you think like, oh, man, he must not really love me. But then you take it a step further and think like, why am I not worth loving? Like, I know those are two really painful assumptions that you just drew out of nowhere. And so you had that initial reaction, and then you have that secondary and I think we can do that with kids and in our work environment, our social neighbor environment, you know, the neighbor did something, we're like, they were so disrespectful of me. Why am I not worth respecting? You know, like, whatever, that was a giant leap that's going to cause you a lot of
pain. Absolutely, I think one of the things that I often share with my clients and is not again, my own idea, it's a truth, is that emotions are not facts. We often think they are, and we think that our emotions are generated from facts, right? We think we see our husband or we hear him say something, and we have an emotion, what we don't often understand, and this is actually something I teach in my membership in my like emotional management course, is like understanding that your emotions are not based on the facts. They're your emotions are reactions to your own interpretations of the facts, right? And and it's often that our emotions are actually not accurate reactions to the facts, right? So your husband might say something that sounds really terrible, and you instantly interpret it as, oh, he must not love me, like that dramatic brain of ours that loves to make the worst things like reality, and we feel sadness about that, when all of it, all it could have been, was that he just had a really rough day at work, and he needs five minutes before five minutes before he can, you know, be patient and and be with you, that sort of thing. And so that's where your emotion of sadness is not really accurate to the facts of the situation. And is this sort of emotional intelligence that helps us really develop a sense of emotional wellness, right? Of like, Okay, wait a minute. We get. Distance from our emotional reactions, we see them less as ourselves and more as something that we can produce in our bodies. Right? Emotions are things that are sensations and experiences that get produced in the body. They can be inaccurate, right? A big one about this is guilt. Women that I work with, and most women, I don't know if it's our generation, how we were raised, society something. But a lot of women I work with are plagued with inappropriate guilt, living lives motivated by guilt. I couldn't not contribute to the bake sale, I would feel so guilty. I can't not help my mother in law, I would feel so guilty I can't not go to that toxic family dinner on Sundays that drives me crazy and that they treat me badly because I would feel guilty, right? And guilt, the experience of guilt, is an emotion that you know has a purpose. Okay? I always ask or I always share with my clients, like all emotions have a purpose, whether they're good or bad, they do have a purpose, and they have something that they're motivating us to do. That's why emotions have evolved, is that they they signal to us how we're supposed to act. And so guilt when it's an appropriate reaction, ie, you've actually done something wrong that violates your moral code, or that hurts others, right? Guilt is appropriate in that situation, and what it does in that moment is it motivates your behavior to apologize, to avoid doing that again, to remedy the error, right? And what I find in a lot of my clients is that they feel guilt about things when they've actually not done anything actually wrong, but they've been kind of conditioned to believe that what they've done is wrong, and then that's called inappropriate guilt. Okay, I actually have a whole podcast episode on this, but the experience of guilt specifically is one that I often ask my clients to step back and ask, you know, is this emotional experience accurate to the situation? Is it actually accurate response to the facts? Well,
and you touched on it, and briefly, you know, where do these things come from? I think if we think of our primitive selves, we are so motivated and driven by safety, right? We, as our cave woman selves, our main job was to stay safe, and we've brought that now into our brains. We need to stay safe. And so we develop these emotional reactions for a reason. So these, these overzealous responses, sometimes or misinterpreted responses, like the example that you just gave with guilt, or the example with my husband said something, and that must mean something like these happen for a reason. They're not happening because we're broken, because we're totally messed up. They're happening because our brain perceives risk danger of some sort, emotional danger, even. And so our brain wants to say, like, ooh, don't go there. We don't want to expose you to any more danger. We want you to stay safe. And so our brains develop ways to cope with these emotions, right to stay safe. To say, I don't want to be vulnerable. And that's where we kind of have to fight it a little bit, is to say, I can keep you safe, body. I can keep you safe, like it's okay to be vulnerable. I know it seems like you're unsafe right now, but really, I've got you like I'm here with you. We're gonna get through this. It's okay to experience that. That emotion
absolutely and that framework that you just shared so beautifully is, is almost the framework for any of these, you know, distressing emotions is that they're often kind of like this, what I'd call vestigial remnants, right? Like the appendix, it's like, doesn't serve a lot of a lot of use and can cause a lot of trouble. They're almost vestigial remnants of our old cave woman days, right? Yeah, and in this case of things like guilt, people pleasing, even perfectionism, I think that those are products of some more modern day conditioning that women are exposed to as we grow up in our families, right? So, for example, people pleasing is one that I find we often pick up in childhood from our relationships with our caregivers. But again, like you said, it's all motivated to keep us safe, because being in community and having safe social connections keeps us safe, so anything that risks us being out of community or being ostracized from our community will cause us to feel guilt and shame.
Can you talk a little bit more about that, of that, that idea of those attachment relationships early on in life, and how we can kind of carry that through, and how it can affect us later in life. I know that's a massive topic, so we won't be able to get all the way into it, but just to get people an understanding of some of the things that come up sometimes,
absolutely, yeah, and you're right, it is a massive topic, so I'll try to keep I'll consider brevity as good, but so when we talk about attachment relationships, we're talking about basically the first relationship you have with your primary caregivers as a baby and as a child, right? And I've often referenced our little brain, little brains, like when we're children, as little, tiny supercomputer. Customers and their super computer job in childhood is to learn or say even download programs to keep us safe and to get us love and attention from caregivers, because it's so vital for our survival to have love and attention from caregivers, right? And so one of our primary motivations as little people when we're first born and in the first few years, first few years of life, is to develop a framework of how we get that love and attention from caregivers. And so why does this matter? So this framework, or this computer program that we download in childhood, continues to play out through adolescence into young adulthood and into our adulthood, right? And so how that primary attachment relationship went? And there's, you know, tons of literature on the various attachment styles that we won't go into, but how that your little, you know, computer brain in the beginning, learned that, like, this is how I get love, this is how I am safe. This is how I am unsafe. This is what, how I write these different things, these very simple things that your your basic computer, baby brain learns now are going to play out in adult versions. And so what does this look like if you had a caregiver, for example, who was quite emotionally unstable and erratic and would often have big emotional explosions, and then maybe you didn't see them ever come back and apologize and repair that rupture with you, your learning about how these important relationships happen will look like that. Okay, so love means that sometimes my person who loves me blows up, yells at me about things I can't control, and then sometimes they don't even apologize for it, and that's what relationship is. That's what we like, basically, right? Or in even worse cases, if, say, speaking up for yourself was dangerous for you, for example, you were abused or criticized, or, you know, neglected, you, then learn. Okay? So now in my adult and this is not conscious learning Mind you, it's a lot of subconscious programming, right? That's why I talk about it, like computer programs being downloaded. So then in adulthood, now you're going to feel like, anytime you advocate for yourself, is going to risk your own safety, it's going to risk your own love. So then, thereby, your brain again, trying to keep you safe, like you mentioned, will motivate you to avoid doing that at all costs. Okay, so these early attachment relationships to really create a framework, or, you know, a mode of operating in your relationships as an adult, and it can really impact you, right? I like to think about it as like, how did you learn what love is like. And so because that, how did you learn what love is like? What did love look like? Was Love, abusive? Was Love, caring? Was Love, responsive? Was love, you know, specifically, responsive and attuned to your needs. Perfect. That's what we needed right now. When you grow up, you'll have be able to have secure attachments with others in your life. And again, I'm grossly oversimplifying this. So anybody who's listening and who is, you know, in attachment theory and all that, I'm grossly oversimplifying it. But that's kind of the basics of it is, is how those early relationships set the stage for how we learn to be in relationship as an adult.
And I think that we hear kind of through a negative lens, stereotypically. You know, we hear about this a lot, like, oh, I went to the therapist or the psychiatrist, and they talked all about my parents and how to blame my parents. And it was like, well, that's, it's not exactly about blame, right? Like it doesn't blame is not the point, but where there is so much truth is understanding why you process the way that you process, right? Like, our brains, like you said, are these little super computers. Our job is to take in data and process it to keep us safe. That is, that is what our brain does. And then there are secondary functions like processing memories and intention and all of these things that we develop as more more developed humans. But, but at the basis of it, all, we take in data, we process it, and we create a reaction to keep us safe. And so by recognizing that safety response that may be leading us astray is where we can find and release and and, you know, process differently to bring us more joy and more meaning and more peace, I think is, is why it can be so important. And I think I'll just give a plug for therapy, because I think I've had many patients and and people in my life that I've said, you know, I've never talked to a therapist, and I have many times, and I get a lot of the time, you know, oh, I don't. I the therapist didn't do anything for me. And I think that can definitely happen, you know, you want to find a therapist that you jive with, but I think what some people think of as therapy is I'm going to talk about things and they're going to listen and say, Oh, that must have been really hard, and that may happen, but so much of what a therapist is trained to do and psychotherapy is to use these frameworks to help you interpret your own set of data and to help you. Kind of break down. Like, why do I respond this way? Why is that? You know, we hear the word trigger a lot like, why is that such a trigger for me? Why? What is happening in my brain that's making me respond that way? And that's where a therapist can really help you break down and find the framework and then adjust that framework work to serve you better. Absolutely,
and I love how you frame that, because you're right. I in the family practice office even. I'm like, Have you ever seen a therapist? Oh, I don't like to talk to people about my problems. And I'm like, That is a misinterpretation of what therapy is, yeah. And, and you're right, some people have really not positive experiences with therapists. And the reality is, is that there's so many different types of therapists. There's so many different types of therapy, right? Like, there is, you know, I don't know how many, I can't, but I know of at least 15 different schools of therapy, right? And so if it's something that you're like, well, maybe I do need to speak to a therapist, which I recommend two things to all people. One is a stoicer, and two is therapy, but, but you know, if, if you're thinking like maybe therapy would be something for me, you know, it is really important to to have an open mind, to try to make sure that you have a good connection, if you don't have a good connection, to feel confident enough and love yourself, enough to look for someone else who can resonate with you, and who you do feel heard by, and who you are seeing progress with right? And it's a challenge. I mean, in Canada, probably, similarly to the States, there's limits around you know, what's available financially, what's available locally, what's available if you have a benefit program, those sorts of things. And those are all very real constraints. And so it's not like just keep trying until you find a therapist like we do recognize, obviously, as doctors who've worked in them and in the health system, that there are, you know, limits to that, but the underlying message is that you're worthy of finding somebody who can help you really work through these things and to do your best to try to find what's available for you the best possible fit.
Yeah, yeah, I love that. Well, let's switch gears a little bit. One of the things I see happening a lot is processing emotion. And you talked briefly about this before, but I think a lot of times when we do feel emotion, if we don't know how to process it, and this is something that I see the result of, it can affect our physical health, it can affect our bodies, right? And so we experience an emotion, and in a perfect world, like we experience that emotion, we sit with it, and then the emotion moves along right? Like, if I experience something sad, ideally, I'm not feeling sad for the rest of my life. At some point I process through that emotion, and then I no longer feel sad. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, how does that serve us well and and what happens if that emotion doesn't move through us? What happens if that emotion gets stuck? And then three part question for you, what? How do we process that emotion better? Yeah,
I love this question. So when it comes to emotional processing, there's different schools of thought around what that looks like and what exactly that is. But the way I teach emotion processing starts with emotional awareness. So some of us are not very aware of what emotions feel like in our body. And people might be thinking, how is that possible? Like, I know exactly what anger feels like. However, if you're somebody who might have experienced, you know, childhood trauma or any kind of traumatic experience, often one of the defense mechanisms of the body. Mechanisms of the body is to actually kind of like detach from the body. And so it's possible for some listeners, that you actually may not have a good understanding of what emotions feel like in your body. What does that feel like when I'm angry? What does that feel like when I'm sad? So emotional awareness and understanding of what those experiences are in your body is the first step, because unless we can identify the emotional experience we're having and give it a name, then we can't process it right. It feels very uncomfortable, and sometimes I just it can take weeks of me working with a client just to help them develop that understanding of what the emotion is they're feeling. And it can be hard sometimes to articulate I'm not sure what I'm feeling. I'm feeling some combination of anger and resentment and probably a bit of guilt and right? It's a bit of a messy picture. And then part of emotional processing is, again, kind of understanding what emotions are and understanding that while sometimes they're inaccurate, the experience of the emotion is still valid? Does that make sense? So the fact that the emotion has been generated in your body is still important that we process that energy out of the body, even if it's inaccurate, because what we often do is like for anger. For example, women will automatically assume that anger is bad. Anger specifically is really hard for women to feel often because it's a socially conditioned emotion. We're not supposed to be emotion. We're not supposed to be angry, and so when we feel anger often, we'll instantly judge it as inaccurate or unwelcome, and we don't want to have it, and we won't process it. We'll shove it down. We'll vary it, we'll stifle it, we'll try to suppress it. We'll distract ourselves. Right? These are all ways of. Not processing emotions.
I think that's so important, because once we experience an emotion, it becomes reality, so true or not true, like we felt it. So when people say, like, Oh, don't feel that way. You're like, I just did I do exactly. It's part of my reality now. So to suffice, it is sort of, sort of a silly approach of our brains, because it's already there, and you can't make it not there
well, and it's going even deeper. Is almost, in my opinion, a bit of a form of self abandonment, which women do a lot. We often self abandon. So like, when your body generates an emotion, there is worthwhile value in honoring the fact that that emotion has been generated, yeah, even if it's inaccurate, the situation, right? So I always say, like, for guilt, if you're feeling guilty, like, first of all, let's step back and honor that you're feeling guilty and that that's an important motivator, and let's look at it as a messenger, as the what is it telling us, right? And kind of treat it with respect and honor, even if we don't like it, even if we don't like that we're feeling it, even if we think it's inaccurate. So, so first awareness, then, like, kind of an understanding of what emotions are, of the validation of all emotions being valid, and then a lot of emotional processing starts with being able to be in the emotion, right? Because, like I said, we have such low tolerance for distress that when we have any build up of the emotion, it's like Whoa, boy. We shove it right down. We don't know what. We don't want to have to deal with it. We don't want to have it. And so we need to start to expand someone's capacity for sitting with emotion. And that phrase sitting with emotion is a mindfulness kind of idea of, can I watch this emotion come? Can I identify where it is in my body? Can I pay attention to the sensations without actively trying to make it go away. And that's very hard, and that takes a lot of practice, right? And that experience, or that practice, would be called mindfulness of current emotion, where we use our mindfulness skills, which are like observing non judgmentally, what's happening in the body and just being with it, that is an extremely challenging process, especially if you have ever been conditioned to not have emotions like, I'm not saying this is easy. It's extremely hard. These are some of the things that I work with with my clients, right? So, so the the emotion comes, we can sit with it, this painfulness, right? And then once we get comfortable sitting with the emotion, then we can move into like. So what does it look like to honor and process this emotion? Okay, and and so sometimes that might look like, if you're feeling very angry about or towards someone writing them a letter saying all the things, not because you're going to send it, but because you're completing the emotional cycle, right? You're completing the cycle. When things get trapped in the body, it's because the cycle has been incomplete. It's the same with the trauma response. So when you look at research and literature around PTSD, people who are able to act on their trauma response in the midst of a trauma actually have a lower risk of PTSD. So for example, they did studies on, you know, children who were present at 911 and the children who were able to run away, hide, make sure they were safe, like these sorts of primitive escape reflexes, actually had a lower incidence of PTSD than ones that felt trapped. They couldn't do anything. They couldn't protect themselves. Okay? So that's really relevant when we bring it into just emotion work as well. Is like, okay, so if my emotion is coming, I'm in an emotional cycle, even if I don't like it, how can I complete the cycle? What does my anger want me to do? What does my guilt want me to do? What does my sadness want me to do? What does my grief want me to do all these painful emotions that we often have, and then it's often doing those things, and that can look like a lot of different ways. So we're kind of moving into Part three is, how do we process it? It can look a lot different ways. So for example, some strategies like breath work and EFT, like tapping, can be a good emotional processing. I'm moving more into using some tapping strategies and things. Because, more than anything, it just encourages us to say what we're feeling, which in itself is processing, right? Processing might look like going to therapy and talking it out this how I felt, and why did I feel that way, and what did that look like? You know, processing is like I'm expressing, I'm venting, I'm letting things out. Because there is cathartic value in venting. It might look like having a conversation with a friend who can hear you and validate you, and you can get all the things out. Or it can look like actually setting aside time in your day to feel that emotion on purpose. I do this often with clients who will say, like, you know, I had this thing happen to me, and I just can't seem to let it go. I'm so angry still. Or, you know, this thing is ongoing, and I just want to not be angry anymore. And my first question to them is like, Well, have you felt angry enough? Like, have you been angry often enough yet? Have you, have you expressed the energy that is in your body? Because if you haven't expressed it, it's coming out one way or the other, right? And that's what you were speaking about. It's coming out in physical manifestations, or it's coming out in. Short temper, it's coming out and being irritable with your family because you haven't actually given that emotion, that energy, time to come out. So some people might have heard of like worry time, or I also say anger time. Let's pick a time and let's have anger time, or let's have sadness time. In fact, one of my clients had a really sad thing happened to her, and she was feeling so upset about feeling sad about it, and not even further to that, but her family had also kind of been shaming her a bit about feeling that, aren't you over that yet? Was kind of like the idea, and she was disappointed in herself because she wasn't, quote, unquote, over it yet. And that's one of the biggest things, like, so common that I see. And so I said to her, I'm like, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna actually, like, set you up a time for you to feel this, free, feel this. I want you to, you know, put on sad music. I want you to, like, burn a candle, drink a bottle of wine. If you want to, like, I want you to do the things that a sad person would do. And that's okay, yeah. And that's how I think we complete that cycle, right? That's how we let that out, right? I had a client the other day who has had a devastating, fine family event and and she said, I almost feel like I'm done crying because I've cried so much, and I'm like, This is good, not that I want you to cry all the time, but it's it shows me that you have completed that emotional cycle. And of course, she will cry more and all that, but she but to feel like I'm actually feel like I've cried enough.
I've cried enough. Yeah, and I love this, because it's such a shift in focus. You know, I think oftentimes, by default, we put our focus on, how do I fix things? How do I fix me? How do I fix my brain? How do I fix that situation? How do I fix my family members so they won't cause this emotional response in me, and this is so much more a process of release and entrusting our bodies and our hearts and our minds to to get us through like as we as we can trust ourselves most of what's happening in our bodies and our hearts will take care of itself if we can get out of the way and not hold on to it, right? And so I think that that that shift in mindset from How do I fix this situation, which I do think is end up what ends up happening in some therapy appointments, or when we talk to a well intentioned friend or a well meaning family member who will be like, Well, what you need to do is, here's the way you're going to solve this for them, or a lot of people will kind of defend the other person, like you deserve so much better than that. They should not have treated you that way. Yeah, and this is our default of how we help each other cope. And you know, it is well meaning. It just doesn't help because it helps us stay stuck more. It helps us keep that emotion in place. Instead of saying that sounds sad. That sounds like you're experiencing a lot of sadness, you know? That sounds like you're really upset about that, and then having someone be like, Yeah, I am upset about that. I feel really angry right now. And instantly it's like, freedom, right? Like it starts to free that emotion by just saying, Yeah, I do. I do feel angry about that. And this is oversimplified. I mean, sometimes you do need to fix things. Sometimes you do not actually fix the exact scenario. But so often we our bodies and our minds are so wise, if we can just give it space to process. Oftentimes, I think it will process on its own, but we need help figuring out how to do that and how to stretch.
And it's like, like I said before. It's like that, that moving from a form of self abandonment, like my emotion is wrong, get rid of it. Why is my body feeling like this to Okay? My body is wise, and it's having a reaction, whether it's valid or not, or accurate or not, to the situation. And I need to honor that, that my body's having that emotion and have a lot of self compassion and have a lot of self love, and that's how we heal ourselves, right? Spoiler alert is that we see ourselves for the human beings, the flawed human beings that we are, and we love ourselves anyways, and we honor ourselves. And
this is, yeah, well, yeah.
I think this is something that I have been really dealing well, moving through, I would say, transitioning and learning a lot about in my life over the last three to five or so years, and it's just so freeing. I mean, this is how I talk about wellness, as living an intentional, meaningful and happy life, and this is how we get there, is by figuring out how to process. I mean, there's lots of ways to get there, but, but by allowing ourselves to be free, by recognizing that we're in control and yet not in control, you know, we don't have to control that, that when we try to control the emotion, then that gets in our way. But I have the choice. I'm in control enough to let it move through me, and as we do, there's so much more peace there, and also so much more compassion, compassion for ourselves and compassion for the people who may be causing us angst or negative emotion as a family member, a co worker or something like that. You know, when we start recognizing this, we can live with these other imperfect beings and say, Huh, it seems like they're acting out of a place of fear, or it seems. Like they are really acting out of a place of shame and just understanding the way that all of this works. I think we can start showing ourselves like, Oh, I'm not terribly flawed. My body and brain are doing exactly what they're supposed to do. They are keeping me safe. They're trying to protect me. And I can go back to my body and my mind and say, Hey, body, it's okay. I'm safe right now. You don't. You don't have to have that reaction physically. I can calm down. You don't need to, I don't need to run, you know, from that predator. I can calm down. And I think we can also have that compassion for our spouse or our kids or whoever, as we start recognizing like they're not a deeply flawed individual, they're using a coping process, just like I am, and I can have that compassion and be like, Oh, they're they're reacting in a way that's causing me pain, but they're not doing it to cause me pain, and they're not doing it even oftentimes because of anything about me. They're doing it because of them. And the more we understand this in ourselves, the more we can understand that in other people, and it's just such a more peaceful and compassionate way to view the world, instead of I'm messed up and you're messed up and I have no value and you have no value, and suddenly life is so hard and so sad. No,
I love that. And it's funny when you kind of danced around the word control, because, like you I dance around the word control. Often. I'm like, Can the idea of control? This concept of control is kind of what we want, but also wanting to release control. And so I've tried to shift from this idea of control, because in my world with my clients, anxiety loves control. Yeah, right. Anxiety wants control. And so instead, I've said it's we're moving out of this sense of needing to control and have control, to this understanding of ourselves as whole, complete beings, and moving from a place of empowered agency as an active agent of my life. Can direct my life because I have this understanding that's markedly different from I can control my life, right? Because, yeah, right. Because I think that sense of needing to control your life, control your emotions, control others. Emotions control everything. That's where we get anxiety, perfectionism, right? All these different things we we get all these behaviors, these almost, you know, maladaptive behaviors, because we want to control and we believe that if we do these behaviors, we can control something, right?
Well, and it is so painful, it causes us so much pain, because the fact is, you can control very little in your life. And so then you get disappointed expectations when you try to control something and it doesn't work, and you're like, ah, what does this mean? This means I'm flawed, or I didn't do it right? Or like, no, there was never going to be success here. You were never going to be able to control that person or that your child or your spouse, and as soon as you can let go of that control and recognize that you are coexisting in a world of moving parts and that you get to be the agent of yourself as this world is spinning around you, then suddenly, okay, I don't have to control them. I don't have to change them, I can just stand here strong and let that world spin around me and start to grow and develop myself. And that's, that's free, that's really free,
definitely. And, I mean, one final, I think, point I'd say about all of this is, like, this is emotional intelligence work that is hard, yeah, okay. Like, you know, Mallory and I were sitting here talking about this, but if you're listening, you're like, those doctors expect way too much of me. Like, you know, it's okay, right? Like, I did not start knowing this. I am still a parent who struggles to keep my poop in a group when my four year old are losing it, right? Like, it doesn't mean that we're walking around being like these, you know, perfect beings who never you know emotions, right? And that's again, bringing it back from what we spoke about this morning. It's like or earlier, it's, it's not that we're trying to do this correctly all the time. It's that when we mess up, and we, you know, we're continually trying to improve, but when we do mess up, that we understand, like, hey, still living in the same body with the same evolved brain, right? Like, still, it's an ongoing process. There's never a done point where our turkey timer goes off and we're just like, that evolved like, totally this is an ongoing process all the time, and and, and understanding that, you know, everyone's human, and we all have things to learn. Yeah? Just so much self forgiveness there and self compassion, yes,
yeah. Well, I'm glad you brought it up to that, because I wanted to say the same thing that this, you know, it's, it's a little bit heady, it's a little bit deeper. It's, it's a lot of hard and a lot of vulnerability. All the vulnerability is, is big there, but it's worth starting to kind of be curious about in your life, because I do think this is massive for moving forward. And by all means, do it with the help of a therapist, but But start looking at why your body and why your mind responds this way, because it is so freeing, and it is, it is how we get to a place of peace and confidence and being a little bit less affected by all of the things that we can't control, you know, all the negativity around us and all of the hard things in the world that people, especially during this pandemic, you know, the world, has really weighed down. On people. And it's these principles that start to be able to give us that resilience to say things can be hard, and I'm still standing strong, I'm still breathing slowly and having peace and joy, you know, like people say, like, how can I be happy in the midst of all of this garbage? Like, this is how this is the work. And so don't be, don't be overwhelmed by it and and it is a lot that we've talked about today, but I've loved it. I think there's so many important things here. So thank you so much for sharing your expertise. Oh, it's
been my pleasure, emotional wellness, emotional intelligence, helping our kids emotionally regulate is totally my jam. Like it's just something I love talking about that I'm always learning more about. I'm always wanting to share more about something. I coach clients on my patients in the clinic, right? All these sorts of emotional regulation techniques are are really valuable. So, so I'm really honored to have been here and shared it with you. Thank
you so much. Thank you. Will you tell the listeners how they can find you
absolutely so most of my world is on Instagram at Carly crew with an E and and my My website is pearlycrew.com and in terms of, you know, if you wanted to check out different ways you can work with me or learn more about me, right? I'm always available on Instagram. Just send me a message. I'm more than happy to chat with people. I have things depending on where you are in your own journey. So I have some offerings at, you know, a low level that are really high value, like my membership program. I have a mental health membership program that's available to women all over the world that is really focused on high impact topics in women's mental health. And that's called the, you know, collective I have my podcast, which is called Mind Over motherhood. That's not just for mothers. I need to come up with a new name. Oh,
I think it's Thank you podcast.
Thank you. Um, so I have my podcast, of course, I also have a book out called, you are not your anxiety. And that's specifically, obviously an anxiety management book. But I talk a lot about perfectionism and people pleasing in that book as well. And then on the other end of the spectrum, I also work with, you know, high achieving, perfectionistic professional women, and I coach them to create lives of more ease and flow and more freedom. Because I think that physicians like you and I sometimes we can feel a little bit trapped in the traditional idea of what our job is supposed to look like. And so I help professionals in all different areas help create a little bit more freedom and define their lives more on their terms and so, and that's your one on one coaching. So again, you can reach out to me about any of those options, or find me on carlyere.com
I love it. Such a great resource.
Thank you so much for being here, Carly I really appreciate
it. Yeah, it's been my pleasure. Thanks, Mallory,
thanks for listening. And come back next time for another episode, and remember this information is for education only and not intended to be medical advice. I.
