Let Your Life Speak: Listening to Our Emotions

Let Your Life Speak: Listening to Our Emotions

This is the second column in our series entitled "Let Your Life Speak." Our first column focused on listening to our bodies, and this week we are focusing on listening to our emotions.  

The quote we share above succinctly captures what we want to say about this topic.

The first part of the quote is, "The more you hide your feelings, the more they show." When I (Scott) was younger and not as comfortable expressing my emotions, I can remember saying, "I am NOT MAD," or "I am NOT SAD," with such force that it was pretty evident to anyone listening that I was, of course, completely feeling those exact emotions. I was not yet, however, capable or comfortable in expressing them in a helpful way. The more I tried to hide or deny those feelings, the more they showed, but not in healthy or beneficial ways.

The second part of the saying is, "The more you deny your feelings, the more they grow."

Imagine standing in a swimming pool, and someone hands you a beach ball. Now imagine you try to submerge the ball and try to sit on it while it is entirely underwater. You might be able to do it for a moment, but surely it will be evident to anyone looking that you are trying to hold something down that naturally wants to come to the surface. That's what trying to repress our emotions looks and feels like. We might be able to do it in the short run, but it will be exhausting, and the pressure to let the feelings come to the surface will only grow. Eventually, everyone around you will soon recognize that you are hiding something, but will be unable to help as they won't know quite what is going on "under the surface."  

The expression, "I had a good cry," speaks to the wisdom of being able to feel and express the full range of emotions. A good cry releases the pressure of our feelings, which is why we feel relief. If you think of the "motions" part of the word "emotions," it is a helpful reminder that our emotions want and need to be in motion. They need to be expressed and not bottled up. 

Of course, not all expressions of emotions are healthy, and so learning to do so is a skill that takes practice, as any parent knows who is teaching their children the difference between healthy and unhealthy expressions of feelings. The key here is that emotions are not healthy or unhealthy—they simply are a natural part of who we all are. How we express our feelings is what can be healthy or not. 

We have more to say on this topic in the podcast accompanying this week's column, so if you have fifteen minutes, we hope you will listen.  Click here to listen.

As we say at the end of every podcast episode, we are so grateful to be walking this journey toward wellness and wholeness with you. Our feelings of gratitude are definitely feelings we want to share with others!

Making It Personal: 

1. How comfortable are you with experiencing and expressing the full range of your emotions? 

2. Can you think of ways in which the words of the quote we share above have been or are currently true for you? 

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To explore your own well-being in the eight areas of wellness, you may be interested in downloading our newest FREE resource, The Adult Wellness Compass Notebook. This workbook is perfect for either individual or group use, and is a tool for self-reflection, learning, and goal setting. Click HERE to download and enjoy.

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app—just search for “The Wellness Compass,” and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

And speaking of podcasts, Scott has launched a new podcast this week that is just him speaking about a topic that he is passionate about—the integration of spirituality and wellness. You can listen to the newly launched Living Compass podcast by clicking on the word “Podcast” in the bar at the top of this Living Compass webpage or find it in your favorite podcast app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.)

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Let Your Life Speak: Listen with Love, to What Your Body is Telling You

Let Your Life Speak: Listen with Love, to What

Your Body is Telling You

We all know how good it feels to connect with an old friend, someone we haven't been in touch with for a while. It feels good to listen to what they have to say and catch up on how they are doing. The experience of reconnecting can remind us of how very important they have been to us.

Now imagine that the old friend we connect with is not another person, but our bodies. That's right, what if it has been a long time since we have really touched base with our physical well-being and listened closely to what our bodies are telling us?  

With today's column, we have started a series entitled "Let Your Life Speak." A theme that will run through each of the columns in this series, and the Wellness Compass podcast episodes that accompany this column, is that our lives are always speaking to us in one way to another. The question is, “Are we curious enough to listen?”

People sometimes ask what we mean when we say that we focus on "whole-person" wellness. Our short answer is that all areas of our well-being are interconnected, like objects hanging from a mobile attached to the ceiling. Move one dangling part, and you will create movement in the other objects as well. All parts of the mobile, like all parts of our well-being, are interconnected.  

This is why experts report that two-thirds of visits to a medical professional are stress related. In other words, while these visits are intended to address a physical health concern, the origin of the symptoms is often stress or being out of balance in a dimension other than the physical area of our well-being.

Knowing that stress, anxiety, and grief may first express themselves as physical symptoms is helpful in understanding and helping ourselves heal. For example, if a person is having difficulty sleeping because of something stressful they are experiencing, simply treating the sleep symptom would miss the opportunity to address the underlying issue causing the distress.

It is also true that being proactive about caring for our physical wellness can have a positive preventative impact on our emotional, relational, and spiritual well-being as well. This is the premise of a recent New York Times guest article, "Whatever the Problem, It's Probably Solved by Walking." 

The article begins:

"Walking is the worst-kept secret I know. Its rewards hide under every step. Perhaps because we take walking so much for granted, many of us often ignore its ample gifts. In truth, I doubt I would walk often or very far if its sole benefit was physical, despite the abundant proof of its value in that regard. 

There's something else at play in walking that interests me more. And with the arrival of spring, attention must be paid." 

You can find the whole article HERE.

If we are fortunate, we can say we have more than one friend, yet we each only have one body. Perhaps it's time to reconnect with your "old friend,” go for a walk, and listen closely to what it is saying to you now. 

Making It Personal:

1. What are a few things your “old friend,” your body, is telling you now?

2. Have you thought about looking at your health from a holistic vantage point before now? What could it mean to you and your life?

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To explore your own well-being in the eight areas of wellness, you may be interested in downloading our newest FREE resource, The Adult Wellness Compass Notebook. This workbook is perfect for either individual or group use, and is a tool for self-reflection, learning, and goal setting. Click HERE to download and enjoy.

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app—just search for “The Wellness Compass,” and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

And speaking of podcasts, Scott has launched a new podcast this week that is just him speaking about a topic that he is passionate about—the integration of spirituality and wellness. You can listen to the newly launched Living Compass podcast by clicking on the word “Podcast” in the bar at the top of this Living Compass webpage or find it in your favorite podcast app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.)

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Hope and the Mud Season

Hope and the Mud Season

We live in Wisconsin, and like other places with northern climates, we actually have five seasons each year. Our fifth occurs between winter and spring and is known as the "mud season." If we need an image of the name for this extra season, we need only look at our mud-caked hiking shoes inside our back door, removed and left there to dry after a walk in the woods this past weekend. Or we can look out the window and observe the thirty-degree temperature swings that often occur daily, never knowing if we will see rain, snow, or sunshine. 

There is a muddiness in the broader world right now that is so much more profound than anything related to the weather. The unspeakable violence and suffering we are witnessing in Ukraine, and closer to home the continued school shootings and the political uncertainty in our own country can create enormous swings of emotions within us day to day, or even hour to hour.  

As mental health professionals, we know from our experience and research that the presence of hope within a person profoundly affects their resilience in the midst of such challenging times and their overall well-being. And so, right now, the question, really the challenge we hear from many people we talk with, is about how a person goes about nurturing and sustaining hope amidst so much suffering. 

We believe that hope is like a muscle; it is not something we either have or don't have, but it can be exercised and strengthened. In our Wellness Compass Model for Well-being, we address eight areas of wellness, and one of those areas is spirituality. 

Hope is often grounded and nurtured in our spirituality. Many people, but certainly not all, express their spirituality through a particular religious faith. In that light, it is worth noting that three of the world's great religions are celebrating holy days amidst the suffering and challenges facing our world right now. Ramadan, Passover, and Easter are all being observed across the globe. 

None of these religions minimize the reality of suffering. Each of these faiths acknowledges the presence of profound suffering, and yet it is in the midst of it that they each proclaim hope. So, for example, we read the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."

Mud season is real. Suffering happens in the world and our lives, as we are reminded all too often. Hope, though, doesn't just happen; it needs to be developed, practiced, and sustained, even when it is hard. In our fifteen-minute podcast, which is a companion to this column, we discuss some practices that nurture hope. You can listen to the podcast by clicking HERE or down below.

Sometimes hope springs forth all at once, symbolized by an unexpected sunny seventy-five-degree day in Wisconsin in April. More often than not, it appears as a small glimpse of a new crocus or daffodil just beginning to peek its head up through the soil on a cold and rainy day. In both cases, the hope is there, yet sometimes, we have to look closely to see it, given all the mud surrounding it. 

Making It Personal: What helps you sustain hope in the midst of challenging and uncertain times? What role does your spirituality play in grounding hope for you? Is there anything specific you want to do to nourish your spirit and sense of hope right now? 

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To explore your own well-being in the eight areas of wellness, you may be interested in downloading our newest FREE resource, The Adult Wellness Compass Notebook. This workbook is perfect for either individual or group use, and is a tool for self-reflection, learning, and goal setting. Click HERE to download and enjoy.

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app—just search for “The Wellness Compass,” and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

And speaking of podcasts, Scott has launched a new podcast this week that is just him speaking about a topic that he is passionate about—the integration of spirituality and wellness. You can listen to the newly launched Living Compass podcast by clicking on the word “Podcast” in the bar at the top of this Living Compass webpage or find it in your favorite podcast app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.)

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Click the button below to signup for the e-mail version of Weekly Words of Wellness. This weekly article can be shared with your community electronically and/or used for group discussion.

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Celebrating Assist Leaders

Celebrating Assist Leaders

Caitlin Clark is one of the reasons the University of Iowa women’s basketball team will be in the NCAA Final Four this weekend. What we admire most about her is not that she is a prolific scorer, although she is number three in the nation in that category, but instead because she is the assist leader for all collegiate women players this year.

An assist, in basketball and other sports, is the act of making a pass to another player who then scores. The player making the assist often gives up a chance to score herself to allow her teammate (who she thinks has a better shot) to score. Assist leaders are unselfish, which is why we celebrate and admire Caitlin Clark. We also want to give a shout-out to Marquis Nowell of Kansas State, who broke the single-game assist record in the men’s NCAA basketball tournament this year. Excellent work, you two!

Alas, this is a column about health and wellness, not basketball, but you might already have guessed the connection to wellness in our focus on assists. In our work as therapists, we have been honored to meet countless assist leaders—people who make the decision every day to support the well-being of others. Some of these people are family members who care for loved ones, some are people who help in some way in their communities, and some help others when they are at work, and the list goes on. These people, who often don’t get the recognition they deserve, are the real stars of the game of life.

On our Wellness Compass podcast this week, Scott talked about another related crucial aspect of well-being, and that is that of knowing when to ask for assistance ourselves. We all need the assistance of others to be our best, and knowing when to ask for help is critical to our health and wellness.

So here’s to all the assist leaders in our lives. May we celebrate them, and may we be inspired to imitate them.

Making It Personal:

Who do you know right now that could benefit from your assistance? How specifically might you offer that assistance this week? Is there some help or assistance you need right now, and who could you reach out to ask for “an assist?”?

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To explore your own well-being in the eight areas of wellness, you may be interested in downloading our newest FREE resource, The Adult Wellness Compass Notebook. This workbook is perfect for either individual or group use, and is a tool for self-reflection, learning, and goal setting. Click HERE to download and enjoy.

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. In this week’s episode, they expand on how interdependency is crucial to well-being. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app—just search for “The Wellness Compass,” and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

And speaking of podcasts, Scott has launched a new podcast this week that is just him speaking about a topic that he is passionate about—the integration of spirituality and wellness. You can listen to the newly launched Living Compass podcast by clicking on the word “Podcast” in the bar at the top of this Living Compass webpage or find it in your favorite podcast app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.)

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Subscribe Now to Weekly Words of Wellness:

Click the button below to signup for the e-mail version of Weekly Words of Wellness. This weekly article can be shared with your community electronically and/or used for group discussion.

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Detaching From the Outcome

Detaching From the Outcome

IWe carefully filled out the NCAA Men's and Women's basketball tournament brackets last week, both hoping for the best. We just checked our brackets, and out of the 20,056,273 entries submitted to ESPN, Scott is currently in 18,984,367th place. Holly's situation is only slightly better. While our ability to predict the future is clearly lacking, here's one prediction we are confident making. Neither one of us is going to win the ESPN bracket challenge. 

Do you know the odds of picking a perfect bracket involving 68 teams? 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. That number is so large we had to look it up to know how to say it. If you're wondering too, it's nine quintillion, two hundred twenty-three quadrillion, three hundred seventy-two trillion, thirty-six billion, eight hundred fifty-four million, seven hundred seventy-five thousand, eight hundred eight.

We can learn at least two wellness lessons from engaging in this annual rite of prognostication. The first is humility. We may like to think we either know or can predict what will happen in our lives with some degree of certainty. But clearly, when our 'brackets are busted,' we are once again reminded that there are always surprises and upsets outside of our control.

The second lesson is the value of nurturing the ability to detach from the outcome. Detaching from the outcome involves doing things wholeheartedly, while at the same time knowing, and being ok with, the fact that we can't control the outcome. It does not mean that we don't care about what happens. It means that we don't become so anxious or fixed on the end result that we try to either force a conclusion or, are so determined to have things be a certain way that we fail to bring our best selves to the experience.

Imagine, for example, that you are so worried about someone you care about that you try to control or strongly influence their behavior. In such a situation, you will likely unintentionally radiate distrust and anxiety and thus hurt the relationship, as the other person then experiences your words or actions as unsupportive. Now imagine that instead, you show up as the most loving and kind person you can be. You share your love and concern and then detach from the outcome of their choices or behaviors. With this mindset, you are more likely to strengthen the relationship and be experienced as an ally by the other person.

Here's one more example of how detaching from the outcome can be helpful. Imagine you have a job interview or a presentation that you are giving. You are so anxious about getting affirmation or getting the job that you come across as insecure and maybe even pushy. What if, instead of focusing your energy only on the result, you focus on being fully prepared and sharing the best of who you are and what you know? The paradox is that when we often stop worrying about or forcing outcomes, we may find that the desired results are more likely to occur. 

Basketball teams, as seen in the exciting ongoing tournaments, are never in complete control of the outcomes of their games. However, they are in control of their preparation, commitment, willingness to work as a team, attitude, and bringing their best efforts to each game. 

An excellent three-point shot percentage for college players is making 35% of the shots taken, which means that at least two-thirds of the shots are missed. That could be a third lesson for us. Like the men and women we watch playing in the tournaments, we still want to keep taking our best shots in life, understanding that missing many of our shots is a given.

Making It Personal: 

What helps you detach from the outcome when you are anxious? 

Can you think of a time when you were able to let go of trying to force something you wanted, and it ended up ultimately helping you or someone else?

 Is there an outcome that you are pushing for right now that could benefit from you loosening your grip? 

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To explore your own well-being in the eight areas of wellness, you may be interested in downloading our newest FREE resource, The Adult Wellness Compass Notebook. This workbook is perfect for either individual or group use, and is a tool for self-reflection, learning, and goal setting. Click HERE to download and enjoy.

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. In this week’s episode, they expand on how the wisdom of letting go and detaching from the outcome. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app—just search for “The Wellness Compass,” and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

And speaking of podcasts, Scott has launched a new podcast this week that is just him speaking about a topic that he is passionate about—the integration of spirituality and wellness. You can listen to the newly launched Living Compass podcast by clicking on the word “Podcast” in the bar at the top of this Living Compass webpage or find it in your favorite podcast app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.)

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Subscribe Now to Weekly Words of Wellness:

Click the button below to signup for the e-mail version of Weekly Words of Wellness. This weekly article can be shared with your community electronically and/or used for group discussion.

You can unsubscribe at any time.