Ep. 35: When fear forces you to feel (w/ Lauren Lowrey)

Season #3 October 04, 2022

How do you handle it when you've been hijacked by your emotions?

When we consistently try to not to feel the suckiest of emotions, it sets us up to be completely derailed when one of them takes over.

In this episode, AMPstigator Host & Founder Lauren Lowrey talks you through a recent time where she was hijacked by fear, how she regained control and the questions she asked herself to find the true source of the emotion.

💥 This episode is for you if 💥
-You're living in emotional limbo while you regularly try to diminish what you feel
-You realize it isn't healthy to keep avoiding the sucky emotions
-You're ready to heal a past hurt and let go

📺What you'll hear in this episode📺
This episode begins with Lauren explaining a recent event where she was triggered at the sight of a friend's hospital wristband. Seeing the band immediately resulted in tears, which led Lauren into deep inquisition around the pain she stored and what needed healing.

[4:50] Lauren explains the 6 emotions social scientists say are most often considered 'hijacking' emotions
[9:19] She walks you through how to start asking yourself the questions that matter, like 'what's really stored here?' and 'what's the deepest source of this emotion?'
[13:04] Lauren gives practical examples of how to process the most difficult emotions
[15:03] Plus, she shares her formula, the 4 things Lauren does to calm her mind and recenter herself after a hijacking episode.

🔖 Chapters 🔖
0:38 - When Lauren was triggered by fear
2:25 - Make sure to listen to Ep. 31 "At What Cost" first
3:29 - Disconnection from our bodies
4:50 - The Sucky Six emotions (anger, sadness, grief, guilt, shame, fear)
7:48 - Missing the message from the emotions
9:19 - Asking yourself questions that matter
11:56 - Lauren identifies the source of her fear
13:04 - How to handle the emotion (example w/ Recycling center)
15:03 - Finding your formula (Lauren's 4 go-to's)
18:47 - Let's review! What happens when we feel hijacking emotions?
21:01 - Next week's episode

Show notes:
Ep. 31: At What Cost? When doing it all nearly kills you
Ep. 17: 3 Questions to Deepen Self Awareness

✔️ Connect with Lauren Lowrey ✔️
On the AMPstigator website
AMPstigator on Youtube
The AMPstigator Instagram
Lauren's Instagram

Episode Transcript

LL solo – When fear forces you to feel
Oct. 4th

Welcome back to AMPstigator.
I’m glad you pressed play.
Especially with a title about fear. You could’ve said “yeah - no. not dealing with that.” But you didn’t. You pressed play, which tells me you’re ready for what I’m about to dish out today.

—--SETUP—---
About two weeks ago, a good friend of mine at work was getting a planned surgery. The procedure was on a Friday so he had to go on Thursday and get all the pre-op tests done so they’d be ready to go the next morning when he showed up for surgery.

So, my friend comes up to me, and he points to his hospital wristband from all the pre-op tests… and he says to me: “hey lauren, how long am I supposed to keep this thing on???”

Now – this is a good friend of mine. He and I have a deep connection over both having rare health issues that should’ve killed us, AND YET WE LIVE, so we get each other.. And we joke a lot.

But on that particular day, I took one look at that hospital wristband he had on… and instead of laughing at his joke… I started to cry.

He was mortified thinking ‘OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE’

I was like ‘no no no, this is why I’m in therapy because what happened to me in august was that deeply traumatizing.

I can’t minimize it or rationalize-it-away or -worst of all- try to distract myself from feeling it……
AND THAT is what today’s episode is about: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU’RE TOTALLY HIJACKED AND FEAR FORCES YOU TO FEEL.

Now, before we get started, if you haven’t already listened to Episode 31 “At what cost”... go back and listen to that, because it’ll be so much more clear why I felt I needed to record this episode today. In it, I detail why I was hospitalized 3 times for 9 days in August.. Why it was so deeply traumatizing and how it became a life-changing experience for me.
It’s my Season 3 premiere and really explains why Season 3 is different from what I’ve recorded in the past.
Plus.. if you aren’t already, sign up for my weekly emails. In this week’s email, I put together a list of questions and journal prompts that go along with this episode. I went through a checklist of things to think about when FEAR or -really any hijacking emotion- totally derails you.

—---LESSON-----

I would consider this a well-established truth. Most of us in our current state of being are completely disconnected from our bodies. I’d like to think if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re MORE CONNECTED, but even still…. We’re glued to our phones, to our email, to our Netflix series or true crimes shows.
We run the same plays every day. We can predict exactly how we’re going to feel *and exactly* what’s going to happen because nothing changes day to day.
We’re disconnected from the messages our bodies are sending us… like, ‘hey, i’m tired’ – so we drink caffeine–
Or ‘hey, i don’t love this job, I don’t feel purpose here’ so we disengage or shop or doomscroll…
Or ‘hey, I’m really stressed with all the things I do,’ so we drink.

Even anecdotally, I know 2 different people who had their appendix rupture at home.. And I said to them each separately as I learned their stories “you were doubled-over in pain. Why didn’t you go to the hospital?” Their responses were either ‘I thought I’d get better’ or ‘I didn’t have time to go.’

***You can’t see me right now, but I’ve got a major judgement face behind this mic.***

THIS… IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.

If we’re out of our heads – and more in our bodies, we would FEEL our bodies speaking to us saying things like “go to sleep” or “go to the hospital.”

BUT THERE’S ALSO… SOME OTHER BIG, YUCKY EMOTIONS that are pretty hard to ignore – AND We all have trouble with at least one of these:
ANGER
SADNESS
GRIEF
GUILT
SHAME
Mine -in that tearful wristband moment with my friend- was FEAR! I had an overwhelming fear that was totally triggered by the sight of a hospital bracelet.

My body was hijacked by a sucky emotion.
I’m gonna call ‘em “THE SUCKY SIX” – anger, sadness, grief, guilt, shame, fear.

So - when we feel those things, not only are they shocking because they have the capacity to TOTALLY TAKE-OVER, but they’re particularly arresting because when you consistently *TRY NOT TO FEEL,* the intensity and severity of those types of emotions get pretty overwhelming.
—----
So, lemme ask you a question.
What does it mean to be human?

I would say ‘TO FEEL.’

But when we actively try not to feel… we also actively disengage from the very thing that makes us human.

And what are those “SUCKY SIX” emotions even there for, anyway??? Definitely to make us feel something. But also… mainly…. To keep that human experience going for as long as possible.

Those emotions are MESSAGES.

Let’s look at it like this:
GRIEF AND SADNESS – ARE biological reactions. Evolution scientists say humans developed those as a way to stay together. You’re together? You’re safer! So you GRIEVE and YOU’RE SAD when you’re not together.
GUILT AND SHAME are also a function of LIVING IN society. We’re stronger that way. If we feel guilt or shame it’s a response to something that would otherwise hurt the group. We evolved that way. Gotta stay together. Gotta do what’s right for the group.
ANGER - is interesting… social scientists say anger’s a bargaining chip. They say anger is how we inflict cost or withold benefit.. Which is how we bargain. So if someone’s really angry.. We perceive that as ‘this person will withhold from me, or hurt me.’ And so it influences behavior.
AND THEN LASTLY…
FEAR… IT’S obvious – it’s to keep you alive. DON’T DIE.

Before you label these sucky six emotions as GOOD or BAD… POSITIVE or NEGATIVE… you need to think through this:
1. Those emotions are there to make us FEEL something
2. Feelings are MESSAGES
3. If we ignore, or diminish or minimize the emotion.. We miss the message.

A friend of mine - MaryBeth Hyland, from Season 1, Episode 4, “The Bridge.” She always says “What’s the message in the mess.”

If we’re so reluctant to experience the mess… we’ll miss the message. Or how ‘bout this… if we don’t slow down enough, WE’LL MISS THE MESSAGE.

So, no matter the circumstances around one of these sucky emotions…you do have options when you feel them.

You could diminish them. You could bury them. You could pretend they aren’t there or distract yourself from really feeling them.

But none of those help you RECEIVE THE MESSAGE FROM YOUR BODY.
There is a chemical reaction in your body. Your body stores emotion, chemically, in your body. I saw the hospital wristband, instantly I was triggered to cry. My body chemically responded to that sight and said “yep, I know the series of emotions here… I’ll just take over.”

Yeah, sure, I could TRY to suppress it or break a glass. Or yell and scream…
I could diminish it. I could brush it off.

Or I could cry…
People cry for all sorts of reasons, right?
My kids cry when they don’t get what they want. People cry from physical pain. We cry in grief and loss.**I definitely cry happy tears - like, relief or love or overwhelming gratitude.**

Tears are important – they’re not good or bad. They’re sending a message. They’re an EXPRESSION of something you feel deeply – so deep you probably have a hard time defining exactly what it is.

So I had to ask myself a lot of questions… and if you haven’t already, look up Episode 17, “3 Questions to deepen self awareness”... I did an entire episode on why questions are so important. It’s a good support to this episode.

So here are the questions I was asking myself about my tears with that hospital wristband…
Naturally, first of all…. It was why am I crying?

Well – I was afraid.

Afraid of what? I’m out of the hospital. I’m healing. Why am I crying?

Well, the wristband reminds me of the physical pain from that time and not knowing what was wrong.

Yes - those things are true - but there’s still something deeper. Why the tears?

(beat pause)

Remember what we know about emotion. It’s stored chemically in the body. It’s residue from a past experience. This is why you can cry when you stretch a certain way in yoga – if you don’t know about this phenomenon, look it up. It’s a real thing.

Now… I didn’t have to go on this inquisition. I could’ve stuffed it down for it to come back up the next time I saw a needle or a friend needs medical care. But I know the longer I stuff that crap down it’s just going to explode out.
It’s just not healthy.

So, I have to keep going deeper. What’s stored there? Why did I cry?

These are the kinds of questions I’m talking about. This is the reason I recorded this episode.

BECAUSE WHEN FEAR FORCES YOU TO FEEL… IT’S SENDING YOU A MESSAGE. IF YOU’RE NOT USED TO LISTENING TO YOUR BODY, YOU’LL LIKELY NEED TO DECODE THAT MESSAGE… AND THAT WILL TAKE QUESTIONS.

I’M TALKING BE-YOUR-OWN-THERAPIST-and-GUIDE-YOURSELF TYPE QUESTIONS.

Now I realize these questions take silence, stillness and TIME to answer. Those are three things I had NONE OF… LIKE ZERO… until August. It’s part of why those hospitalizations were so transformational for me: they showed me what was really standing in my way of true wellness: ME!

Until I could be still… quiet my mind… and give myself time… I would never truly be well.

—--
The more I thought about answering those questions about the reeeeeel reason why I was crying, the the more I realized….
My fear was **THE ABYSS**, the blackness.
My fear was **DOOM**
DEATH — THE VERY THING WE’VE ALL BEEN PROGRAMMED FROM THOUSANDS OF GENERATIONS OF HUMANS BEFORE US – ALLLLLL OUR ANCESTORS – TO KEEP US ALIVE.

When we are faced with fear – and please know we feel fear all the time – all of us do… we have a visceral reaction. WE FEEL SOMETHING.

And what does it mean to be human?
IT MEANS YOU FEEL… you experience the range of human emotions.

And NOOOWWW….
You have to do work to figure out THE SOURCE of some of those feelings. I mean reeeeally explore them.

Because to ignore the emotion is to ignore the message.

So let’s get back to why you pressed play on this episode…
WHEN FEAR FORCES YOU TO FEEL.

How do you deal with that?
How do you handle that.

Well, let me put it to you like this… and this is the best visual I can give you: You have to let it wash over you, but roll off.

I’m not saying ‘drown yourself in one of those sucky six emotions.’
I’m saying FEEL IT.
FEEL ALL OF IT.
THEN LET IT GO

Then ask yourself this very powerful question: what’s it telling me?
AND THAT PROCESS TAKES TIME.

Because if there’s something you’ve held onto in the past… something that made such a dent in your psyche that it got stored, chemically, in the body… then you have to explore why it’s there… heal it and let it go.

I think of these kinds of emotional reactions like working at a recycling center. You see the trash moving along on the conveyor belt, and there’s people reaching onto the belt to pull off glass bottles or cardboard, for example.

Think about the conveyor as your emotions. When you reach onto that conveyor belt and say “oh wait no! That can’t pass! Don’t let that through” – you hold onto it. Think about the experiences you’re doing that with. When you say: oh I’ll take that fear, or I’ll take that rejection, or that shame, or that grief and I’ll just hold all of those things and you just carry it around with you in your body. If those were pieces of trash, you’d be loaded down – like a trash monster.

That’s why I’m saying you have to listen to those hijacking emotions coming up.. Because they’re in you. They’re sending you a message about what needs to be healed… SO YOU CAN HEAL IT.

And everytime you heal one of those things it’s like taking off a piece of trash. Or letting go of one of those glass bottles you had in your arms from the conveyor belt.

So how do you do that…. Well, we start by noticing the emotion. And then allowing ourselves to feel it.

For me, the next step is falling back on my formula of things that help me calm down.

This isn’t something I’ve talked you through before, but when I say ‘formula’ I mean - things that Center you.. Ground you.
For me, I have 4 different things I can do.. and it all depends on where I am and how much time I have. If I’m at the TV station or in a show, I have a 2-minute commercial break, at best. But if I’m at home, I’ll have more opportunities.

So here are pieces of my formula - if I’m in a place where I can do this, I’ll lean my head back, close my eyes, and take 2 or 3 deep breaths. It helps me.
If that’s not available to me, another option I take OFTEN is to go refill my cup of tea. I’m a tea drinker and there’s something so therapeutic for me when I have a hot cup. I can breathe it in and let it go. It gives me a moment to walk away from the moment…reset…. And come back.

If I have more time - or even if I’m in the car - I’ll turn on a guided meditation that helps me change the record player in my head. So… instead of feeling FEAR FEAR FEAR, I can hear someone else’s voice instructing me on how to breath or a visualization to do. It’s realy helpful for me.

My biggest, best and favorite thing to do is to go into nature. I walk. I stare up into the trees. It’s a grounding practice for me and it calms me instantly. It’s not always available to me… so I have other things that I know HELP me stabilize after I’m hijacked.

You need things like this, too. They can be anything… but they need to be things that help YOU… that make YOU FEEL okay again.
What’s important is that you find something that works for you… that grounds you…. That connects you back to reality. It’s not a scape-goat or a distraction. It’s a place you can go or a thing you can do while you process that hijacking.

—----

I think more than anything we have to listen to the messages we’re feeling. I talk alot about intuition on this podcast. Cultivating your intuition is based in -FIRST- listening to your body and the signals it’s giving you. As you get more in-tune with those things, you begin noticing other things – picking up on other signals that come beyond the processing of the mind.

Your body holds deep deep wisdom. We can’t bypass it – talk ourselves out of it – or think everything has to be run through the analytical mind or it’s not allowed.

All these things work in concert together. They inform each other.

I’ve always said my role here with this podcast is to bring important conversations… but the deeper goal in all of that IS TO TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO LISTEN. I BELIEVE LISTENING TO EACH OTHER LAYS THE GROUNDWORK FOR LEARNING TO LISTEN TO YOURSELF.

AND WE LISTEN.. WITH LOVE AND COMPASSION.. THAT’S HOW WE TURN OUR JUDGEMENT INTO CURIOSITY.

—-
So let’s review… what do we do when fear forces us to feel.

Well… WE ALLOW OURSELVES TO FEEL IT.
WE LISTEN TO THE MESSAGE IT’S SENDING US.
AND THEN WE FIND OUR FORMULA – the things that will bring us back to our calm. For me, breathing, meditating, a cup of hot tea and walking in nature do it for me everytime. You gotta find your things.
AND ONCE YOU’RE CALM ENOUGH, YOU NEED TO ASK YOURSELF THE REALLY DEEP QUESTIONS… “WHERE IS THIS COMING FROM?”

And don’t be satisfied until you go deeper and deeper and deeper.

You can do this work. I believe in you!
We’re all walking around holding this stuff and we may not realize it until we get hijacked by that emotion.

I created a simpler way for you to walk through this process. It’s in your email inbox right now. If you don’t already get my weekly AMPstigator emails, shoot me a note at [email protected]. I’ll forward you today’s email because I know it will help you.

My goal is always to talk about things that might be hard.. Or deep.. But to make them accessible.. And make you know you’re not alone in them.

This week is kind of a turning point week for me in my healing. As I release this episode, I’m officially in the week where I’m considered physically healed. I still have to take it slow for 2 more weeks to make sure I don’t hurt myself, but I’m building back a better foundation of wellness. So I’ll be taking it slow for a while.

So, thanks for sharing this accomplishment with me today and thanks for being a part of my healing.
If this episode was helpful or impactful. Let me know. Write a review of this podcast on APPLE. There are so many of you who are listening every single week… so just take a moment to share what you think about AMPstigator and why you keep coming back. It really does help other people find these conversations.

—-
Next week, you’ll hear from an awesome author, speaker, entrepreneur named Brittany Cole. She teaches a lesson about having courage when you think you don’t belong. She also has a really cool take on confidence and IT’S NOT AT ALL what you expect. mAKE SURE to Follow AMPstigator on Instagram because that’s where I share video clips of my favorite moments from every episode – and it’s also where you and I can connect!

For now, I encourage you to shine your light, lead with your heart and live life purposefully. I’m lauren lowrey and this is AMPstigator.

Ep. 35: When fear forces you to feel (w/ Lauren Lowrey)

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