191. True Emotions vs. Pretend Emotions How to Win with Emotions After All

Do you feel like you really struggle with  actually feeling your emotions or even knowing what emotion you have? One of the challenges we have is we actually grew up without really learning about emotions. In fact, we call it emotional intelligence. So it’s like happy, mad, sad, or glad. Those were the main emotions that we had.

 If it got any more complicated, what were we offered? a cookie or a sucker because, hey, don’t show your emotion. Or if you start crying, what did you hear? Hey, I’m going to give you something to cry about, right? Okay, so my name is Dara Tomasson, and this is episode 191, True Emotions vs. Pretend Emotion, How to Win with Emotions After All.

And this is the Quilter’s Coach Podcast. Now, What we’re going to talk about today is really learning about our emotions. I know the song feelings, nothing but feelings, right? We really want to increase our emotional intelligence.  Because when we do that, we actually learn how to create permanent change, whether it’s permanent weight loss or permanent, like no more people pleasing or working on our perfectionism, whatever those go to that we struggle with, we’re going to learn how to overcome that.

 My goal today in this podcast is to really dive into what emotions are. And then we have this crazy thing called indulgent emotions, which they’re actually not real emotions. It’s like with food, right? We’ll eat chocolate or we’ll eat something and it will feel really good, but it actually isn’t a true good feeling because it’s something you’re putting from the outside in and the real true emotions when we can truly feel that immersive, like actual emotion is when it’s the inside out.

 We’re going to be diving deep into that. And. So that you can now have this framework in your brain that will help you so much to create the kind of experience in your own life that you will, that will help you to understand, Oh, no wonder. I spent all this money on fabric or no wonder I didn’t get very much done today.

Oh, no wonder. I’m feeling a lot of resentment and I’m eating at late at night. Oh, no wonder this is happening. So now when you can have those no wonder moments, then you can have this clarity and you’re not punching yourself in the face and being, having all that negative self talk. So you can actually start moving the dial in your own life.

And that is my goal. I have seen it with my clients. I do it with myself over and over with my kids, with all sorts of people. This is how we’re going to create permanent change. So  I want to, before I go deep into  some tools and strategies on learning how to  a real emotion is, or actually what an emotion is in the first place I’m going to share this client testimonial.

 One of the so this is actually a brand new member and she came to a free training that I had. and it. Really resonated with her because as we were talking, she realized how often she was sabotaging herself. And so it was really fun to meet with her on a consult call or a curiosity call, discovery call, and she said.

I really, I finally said, this is what I want. I want a long arm. I want to buy this, that I want to make money from home. I want to serve people in this way. And she knew that she wasn’t doing it. She was nervous. She had apprehension, which is normal. Anytime we do anything new. And so I have a long arm.

Six module long arm class inside the membership. And she said, I need the emotional tools to overcome the self sabotage and wasting all out of time. And one of the things that she said  was that she shows up for everyone else in her life, but she doesn’t show up for herself. And that, those free training that I gave really resonated that if she really wants to have that internal change.

She has to be willing to start looking in the mirror and seeing why she’s not showing up. And I was so happy that she was able to go from listening to a podcast. That’s actually how she found me. And then listen to a bunch of other podcasts that I was on. And then she came to the free training and now she’s in the membership and now she’s able to Open up a whole world of possibilities.

I, sometimes I imagine, on Lion, which in the wardrobe when those, the kids were playing hide and seek, and they opened up that wardrobe and they thought they were just going to hide in the wardrobe. And then there was this whole new adventure. That is what my membership is like. It’s opening up your life to.

Opportunities and experiences you actually never thought were possible. So I was just so happy for her. And that is possible for you too. So if you want to get on one of those calls, a hundred percent, just make sure you book because they, they’ll go quickly. Alright, so an emotion, I’m gonna use emotion and feeling interchangeably.

The first thing I wanna clarify is we have a sensation, like a feeling. So I’m holding a hot. jar of cocoa  and so my fingers have the Sensation and sometimes we say feeling of heat Okay, but we’re doing some we’re talking about we’re not talking about like the sensation in your fingers or your skin  It’s the actual feeling inside Now, an emotion or feeling inside is just literally vibrations in our body.

So hormones are like the little cars that drive around the car, the body, and tell us what to do. What’s going on? They inform us. So if I see beautiful fabric, the hormones are like, oh, what is she doing? What is she doing? Oh, she sees beautiful fabric. She really loves that fabric. And so it sends the messages to my brain and my brain says I love that beautiful fabric and then the hormones say oh what’s gonna be the response?

Oh That’s so beautiful, right? I have like admiration. I have desire. I have All of these hormonal responses to the thought, This is beautiful fabric. Recently I went to the thrift store and I found  Liberty of London skirt.  I knew it right away. As soon as I saw the skirt, I was like, that fabric is Liberty.

I’m buying it. And I’m actually going to use it for fabric because the skirt’s way too big. So  we have all these receptors, the hormones, and they let us know. So now when I, when we feel those feelings, They just vibrate through our body and then we can just feel all of it. So if there’s panic, our heart starts to beat, we sweat a little bit, we’re really alert and we’re like the adrenaline’s rushing and we’re going to go.

One of the struggles that I have working with my clients is I want you to imagine our neck and our so Here’s our brain, of course, and then we have our neck and imagine all the a bunch of different straws all in our neck.

So each straw is a different emotion. So there’s shame, there’s joy, there’s curiosity and they attach our brain detaches to our body. So we know about the vagus nerve. If you don’t, we have this thing called the vagus nerve and that’s where our, Sympathetic nervous system is attached to so if we’re nervous, we might have to pee a little bit more.

We sweat, our hands are clammy because  we are, that’s our nervous system, right? It’s the one, it’s letting us know that we have some danger or we need to be And react in a certain way. And then in along the vagus nerve, we also have the parasympathetic nervous system. So I think of a parachute.

It’s like in our higher brain slows everything down and we can think about our thinking.  So this is all happening all the time. And we don’t even really know that it’s happening because it’s just like operating as usual. Now, the more we can be aware of it, the more we can take. advantage of how amazing the system is. 

Now, we have what’s called indulgent, or pretend or band aid emotions. So what they’re doing is their job is to try to protect us. Okay? Because we have the, what’s called the motivational triad. How we’re wired is to conserve energy, to seek pleasure, and to avoid pain. That’s how humans have survived all this time. 

And if we want to seek pleasure, then that, that means we’re not gonna go and take care of all the hard things. Or if we want to conserve energy, it means we’re not gonna go have that difficult conversation with our mother in law. All Or if it’s conserve energy, seek pleasure and avoid pain.

So in order for us to protect us, we can go into these indulgent emotions. And I’m going to read them out for you. So there’s overwhelm, and we know that when you’re in overwhelm, it leads to inaction. So there’s always something. Underneath overwhelm. It’s what really is stopping us? And then we have worry.

Worry is like a rocking chair. You’re moving a lot, but you’re not going anywhere. Okay? So if you get stuck in worry, you’re not going to get to results. We have self pity. So if you sit there in self pity, you’re actually not going to move forward. You’re just going to stay in a rut.  Busyness, this is a really tough one, especially for women that’s been valued to be busy, right?

There’s a, there’s like a value attached to your checklist. Then we have doubt, because if we’re constantly in a state of doubt, then we don’t take action and then nothing gets done. So I just recently admitted to my dad on Sunday that I have been.  In doubt of my countertop. So I finally, after seven and a half years of hating my kitchen, we are redoing it.

It’s just very ironic because I have had a really hard time making a final decision on the countertop. And so I just doubted this and I doubted that and I didn’t move forward.  And this one goes right alongside of it. Confusion. Because, what color do I have? And do I use a matte quartz? Or do I do granite?

Or do I? And we can just stay in confusion all day every day. All right?  Procrastination goes right hand in hand. And I even said to my dad, I’m like, I am actively procrastinating this decision.  And I’m allowing myself to stay in doubt and confusion and I’m using busyness like, oh, I have all these basketball games and I have to do all these things and it just keeps me stuck.

 Then indecision. There you go. So we have overwhelm, worry, self pity, busyness, doubt, confusion, procrastination, and indecision. So these Emotions have us keeps us stuck in a spin cycle and it’s really hard to get out of them   now the next thing I want to like tie this to  what we do with  When we don’t want to feel these things and when we don’t want to actually get to the root of like why am I?

Always so worried. What am I doubting? What am I worried about like? One of the reasons I’m procrastinating the countertop is that I don’t want to make this big decision and spend all this money and then they install it and I’ll be like, Oh, I hate it  because that’s that’s a lot of money. And so of course it makes sense that  if I don’t make the decision, then I don’t have to feel disappointed if I made the wrong choice. 

So it all makes sense. But really what underneath all of it is I just don’t want to feel disappointed.  I just don’t want to feel disappointed that I made the wrong choice  and I haven’t picked out the handles and I haven’t even got the guy to do the tile, but I just did decide mostly the pattern for the tile, right?

So it all just makes sense.  I’m wondering  for all of you, what are your go tos?  What are those emotions?  And it, and they feel real. Like they worry is a real thing.  But it’s, there’s something that’s hiding  that’s not, you’re not actually getting to the root of it. You’re not getting to the root of any of these when you hide behind them. 

And I think about what we do with food.  So we can use food to hide from our brain. So if our brain has a lot of negative self talk and we don’t want to be in our brain, then Eating food is a distraction, right? It’s like indulgent. Also, think about sleep. If we are constantly tired,  then we don’t have to feel as much.

We’re indulging in fatigue so that we don’t have to truly live and experience that.  I wanted to talk about how do you discover the other side of your body? of what you’re hiding.  So this is the activity I want to share with you for this podcast. It’s going to be really helpful. So now that you know what an indulgent emotion, the indulgent emotions are, you can even put them on.

I have them on the handout here, or you can write them all down. Overwhelm, worry, self pity, busyness, doubt, confusion, procrastination, indecision. So anytime that you are experiencing that, this is what I want you to do. I want to offer this to you. I want you to put your hand on your heart.  And like Viktor Frankl says, we’re going to take a pause.

So you put your hand on your heart and you say, Hey,  and say your name, Dara.  You are spinning and overwhelmed right now. Can you tell me about that?  And I imagine those people who are watching my YouTube, I’ve got this cute little picture of me  and you’re talking to an eight year old version of you. 

And you say, Hey, what’s going on, sweetie? I can see that you’re like really worried. I can see that you’re, you’re getting you’re doubting yourself or you’re feeling confused or you’re, I can see that you’re procrastinating. I’ve asked you to go to bed a couple of times. What’s going on?

And so this is called the nice mom voice. So it’s not like the naggy mom, like what’s wrong with you? How many times? No, we’re not doing that. And we’re not doing the like wet blanket mom of Oh, that’s okay. You can stay up late. If you don’t want to go to bed, that’s fine. Just sit with me. No, we’re not doing that either.

We’re doing the fair. You’re gonna want to be very clear, compassionate, clear, but very kind mom. That’s I see that you’re struggling. Let’s have a conversation because I care about you and I know that you’re struggling and I love you and I have all the time in the world to listen to you. Okay,  how would that feel?

If you could start talking to yourself that way.  So when you have that parameter, and I often think of  this like the nice mom. I think of  how, what a difference that would make in my life if I had that kind.  So try that.  You be the nice mom to yourself now  with  the other thing that, because what a nice mom does is a nice mom says, what’s really going on? So I want you to imagine it’s you have a dart board. Okay. Or a curling, if you any curlers out there, my grandpa and grandma were.

curlers. My grandpa was a semi professional curler. It’s very exciting. But, so you think of or even target, right? You think of a target like a bullseye.  So there’s always the actual problem in the middle of the bullseye. And then we have the rings around it. And so  confusion and worry and overwhelm, all of those things are Like, the rings around trying to protect us to get to the core of the issue, alright? 

And a nice mom, that’s what she says, she’s so what’s really going on, sweetie? So then you start talking, and it gives you a safe place to talk. So today on my coaching call with my in the membership, we actually did this self coaching activity, where I said.  So they actually all drew a target just like that, and they put their real, really important goal to themselves in the middle. 

And then I asked them, what is stopping you from creating that goal?  So for some of them, it was weight loss. One of them wanted an online course. And so then what they were able to see is, Oh, I can’t do this yet because I’m afraid of technology. Or I’m afraid of what people might think. There could be the haters.

Or I’m afraid of People thinking I  might, whatever, right? So we all have our reasons  and then you can just start  addressing each one of those and one of them can be well What is like what is the solution  and then you can just propose and say hey, sweetheart, you can talk to yourself like that It’s nice.

Nice moms talk like that You can say, Hey, I hear that you’re really struggling with this idea. Let’s just try this thing.  Oh yeah, that can feel daunting. I get it, but we’re just going to try this one editing tool online. And then if that doesn’t work, we’re just going to give ourselves a budget where, and then we’re going to find someone who’s going to help us edit it.

So now we can address that obstacle and we can come up with those strategies and then we can say, Hey, and tomorrow by three o’clock, I’m going to follow up with you. How’s that sound?  And so that’s what I want to offer to all of you.  So  with,  as a life coach, I 100, 000 billion percent know that each one of us can solve any problem.

We just need to have the amount of curiosity, commitment. and tools to work through those emotional obstacles that we don’t always necessarily see. And so if there are, I want you to try this out. So I want you to draw the circle. I want you to put in the middle what you really want. And then I want you to come up with five or six or seven or three reasons why you haven’t got that goal yet.

And then I want you to make a decision of, okay, I’m going to try this.  And I’m going to try this and then I’m going to evaluate it and maybe every day I evaluate maybe every Friday or  maybe I get my own life coach or accountability partner, whatever that is. And cause you’re worth it.  And the thing is your desire, you’re a good person.

So what you desire is a good thing.  All right.  Thank you so much for joining me. I do want to just say that in the month of March in our membership, we are working on how to overcome overwhelm. Imagine that and how and then in April, if you’d like to join us for April of 2025, we’re looking at a toolbox to build. 

The life your own way, and so we’re going to create tools that will help us to be more resilient. So when things aren’t going so great, and then how do we resolve conflict? So if that is something that you are ready to head on with in your life, come and join us. And if you have any questions whatsoever, please just you can book a call with me and you can ask any questions.

I’m here to help. Take care.