Category Archives: Feelings

No Trace of Injury

29 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by in coaching, Emotional Intelligence, Feelings, Leadership, Uncategorized

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I was watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Worf (the big, scary Klingon) fell off a catwalk and broke his spine. Luckily, a friendly alien with healing powers was on the scene. He put his hands on Worf’s head and fixed the broken spine. Dr. Crusher scanned the now breathing Worf and declared that there was no trace of injury.

The phrase really hit me: No trace of injury. My first thought was “I want that.” As I move forward in life, I want no trace of past injuries. Of course, that can be impossible for physical injuries. My ankles will always have some stiffness and tons of broken blood vessels from multiple sprains while playing basketball in high school.

However, what about emotional injuries? Do we need to carry those scars forward with us throughout our lives? I began to ask myself what was keeping me from living a life with no trace of injury.

I have felt for some time that I am resistant to being happy and successful. It infuriates me when people say, “You look good. Everything must be going well for you.” The immediate response in my head is, “You try restarting your life from scratch at 58 and see how well it goes, Donkey Head!”

In truth, life is going well! I have work that I love. I’ve bought a condo that is beginning to feel like home. I have friends and family who love and support me. My life is not the life that I planned and worked on for 35 years, but it’s pretty darn nice!

So why do I resist joy and peace? It took some soul searching and navel-gazing to come up with the answer. I feel that I am minimizing or even forgetting the trauma of my divorce if I look like I’m doing great. Several years of my life were awful, bordering on unbearable. If I look good, I believe that others think it couldn’t have been that bad if I’ve managed to recover so well.

If I look depressed and miserable, I am showing the world just how yucky the experience has been. I wear my misery as proof of my suffering. Yes, I know, that sounds very melodramatic. I have never denied my gift for hyperbole. What’s surprising is that I actually felt that way. It was a bit of a self-revelation.

I know that I am not alone in dealing with the curveballs that life throws. Many people have suffered much greater traumas than the ones that I have experienced. We all have experienced situations and events that just weren’t fair! Absolutely not our fault and totally unfair! The injustice of life can really get my blood boiling.

However, blood boiling is not all that productive. In reality, the only person suffering from my suffering is me. Can’t I just let the injustices of the past disappear? After more soul searching and navel-gazing, the answer for me right now is no. I cannot let it go completely. I want all the injustices I’ve endured to live on.

I want them to live on, but I’m tired of carrying them. So, I decided to write them all down. When I think of a time that I’ve been harmed, I write it down. If I start to think of that particular event again, I stop and tell myself that I don’t need to hold on to it in my brain anymore because it’s written on paper. The process is a blend of release and cognitive restructuring.

I told my therapist about my coping mechanism, and he asked me to make a list of all the “shaping events” of my life. Those include both positive and negative events that have made me who I am. We got into a lively discussion about whether or not we get to choose how we are shaped by an event. I feel that we get to choose to some degree. I can choose to become bitter and resentful, or I can choose to process the @(*#%/! emotions, learn the lesson, and move on.

For the record, I do not like processing emotions. I spent a good deal of life stuffing them and ignoring them. Also for the record, that is not the healthiest way to deal with them. It’s best if we name the emotion, claim the emotion, and then tame the emotion, which means we integrate the feeling and emotion into who we are now.

I like the idea of creating a list of shaping events for several reasons. First, it’s a balanced list of good and bad life events that helped create the me I am right now. That’s some good information to bring to light and discuss. Second, our beliefs are based on our experiences, and I am ready to look at those beliefs and see if they are still serving me. Third, I like that an objective person is going to read my list. It makes me feel seen and heard. Someone else will see my traumas and triumphs. As a result, I don’t feel like I have to hold on to them so hard.

I will definitely be asking my coaching clients to do the shaping event exercise. Coaching is about raising awareness and providing support. I look forward to being their witness to life’s triumphs and injustices. I will be keeper of their experiences so that they don’t have to carry them around anymore.

If we hold onto the past, we cannot move forward with joy into the future – with no trace of injury.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Psychological Safety: Fact and Feeling Parts

27 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in #Communication, Feelings, Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

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It’s important to know that every message has a fact and a feeling part. One must identify both parts in order to deal with a conflict effectively or to communicate clearly.

This is a Kathy Observation, not researched fact, but I’m pretty sure that you cannot create psychological safety and strictly stick to facts all the time. We are humans, and humans have feelings. As leaders, we don’t have the luxury of ignoring them. I learned this lesson late in life, and it would have saved me some time and trouble if I’d known about it sooner.

For 20 years, I led volunteers as an Army spouse. In one group that met monthly, there was one young woman who always sat at my right hand and objected to everything that the group proposed. She objected on a factual level – logistics, budget, convenience. She slowed us down every single month.

If I’d been savvier, I would have figured out that it wasn’t the facts that she objected to. I had a vague notion that she was unhappy or resentful, but I had no idea why. There was a feeling component that I wasn’t dealing with at that time. If I’d asked and listened, I could have saved us a lot of time arguing over facts for no good reason.

Now I pay attention to everyone’s nonverbal communication and ask about any telltale signs of an emotion. People often agree with something or say that everything is fine while their nonverbals say exactly the opposite. Crossed arms, furrowed brows, and a lack of eye contact are all indicators that they don’t agree and everything is not fine. They will carry those unexpressed feelings out the door and stew in them if I don’t bring them out in the open by asking some questions.

It can feel scary to voluntarily dive into the ocean of emotions. The water is murky and deep, and you have no idea of what lurks down there. Take heart! First, leadership requires bravery – so take a deep breath, and go for it! Second, naming an emotion that you see and asking about it can create an uncomfortable situation, but it isn’t fatal. In the workplace, you generally get an explanation for the emotion that makes a lot of sense and gives you new information. The answers can be surprising – something that you wouldn’t have guessed.

We can only create psychological safety if we deal with both the facts and the feelings of individuals. The only way to identify the feeling part of a situation is to ask!

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

You’re OK, too!

21 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Feelings, Leadership, Uncategorized

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February Series: Feelings

You’re OK, too!

Let’s end this series on feelings by talking about our feelings for others. I’m going to tell you that it’s worthwhile to cultivate positive feelings towards others, and I imagine your initial response will be that there are some people for whom you will never have positive feelings. I’ve had this conversation before!

I know that there are annoying and obnoxious people out there. Some don’t seem to have any morals or common sense. It feels like a lot of work NOT to dislike those people! I get it. I’ve been there. I am there! However, I want you to know that it is worth the effort – for you.

It’s difficult to hold the heavy lens of negativity and not have it affect your life. It’s next to impossible to hold it up some of the time and drop it other times. If we look through a negative lens at some people, we probably will use it to look at all people. We begin a cycle of negativity in which we expect to see negative behaviors, provoke them by our expectation, and then feel satisfied and right when others behave in the negative way that we predicted. It’s a messy quagmire, and it’s exhausting.

On the other hand, a spiral of positivity is an uplifting and energizing cycle to create. There are other benefits as well that include increased resiliency, increased satisfaction with life, less inflammation in your body, increased broad-mindedness (our brain actually processes information differently), increased immunity to viruses, better ability to connect with others, less depression, and better focus. Wow! That’s quite a list!

OK, so positivity is a great thing and feeling empathy and kindness towards other is going to help us achieve it. How do we go about creating it? There are some obnoxious, annoying, dishonest, selfish, callous, infuriating, tactless people out there! Ack! Take a breath and read on.

In my leadership series, I begin with a book called Leadership and Self-Deception. I highly recommend it. In a nutshell, the book promotes the idea that all personnel and personal issues are caused by one thing: we don’t see other people as people.

Here is an example from the book:  Imagine that you are sitting on an airplane next to the window, and it is open seating. No one has an assigned seat. The middle seat is open. Do you put your bag in the middle seat and try to discourage people from sitting there even though the flight attendant has announced that the flight is full. Do you judge each person by how much of an inconvenience that they will be? Does one look too chatty? Another have too many bags?

In that moment, are you seeing the other passengers walking down the aisle as people like you who have a need to sit down or as annoying objects that threaten to invade your personal space? How would you feel as a person walking down the aisle?

The book explains that theory in detail, but basically, we want to see everyone around us, even the obnoxious ones, as people. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we have to put up with unethical behavior or disrespect. It means that we set boundaries and give feedback in a compassionate and kind way.

We talked about self-compassion in last week’s blog (https://kathystoddardtorrey.wordpress.com/2017/02/14/im-ok-of-course/), and this week, we are talking about practicing “other-compassion.” It’s a new term that I just made up! The key is to see everyone as having needs and dreams equal to your own. We want to treat them the way that we want to be treated. Sound familiar?

I continue to work on seeing other people as people. When I begin to slip by magnifying someone’s faults and objectifying them, I repeat to myself, “This is a person with worries and dreams equal to my own.”

There is another way to develop empathy for others that has some impressive research behind it. Loving Kindness Meditation, increases positivity with all the benefits mentioned earlier. It also increases our empathy for others and our feelings of friendliness and compassion.

There are no right or wrong ways to do it; there are just guidelines. You can search online and find all types of Loving Kindness Meditations. You can listen to on or create statements to use in the meditation that have the most power and meaning for you.

Basically, during the Loving Kindness Meditation, we say three or four phrases several times. The first time we say the phrases, we say them to ourselves. The most important part of the meditation is to create and hold onto a feeling of friendliness, compassion, joy, and expansiveness as you say the phrases. Here is an example:

  • May I be filled with loving kindness.
  • May I be well in body and mind.
  • May I be at ease and happy.

Then we say the same phrases while thinking of someone with whom we feel close.  We would think, “May you be filled with loving kindness.” It’s important to hold onto the positive feeling while thinking the phrases each time. It’s not too hard to say the phrases with feeling when it’s toward someone that we you are fond of.

Next, we move on to someone who we feel neutral about, someone we don’t really care for, and finally everyone in the world. Use the same three to four phrases each time, and focus on maintaining the feeling of compassion and acceptance.

This practice can be a game changer in your life. You can see results by meditating for 10 minutes about 5 or 6 times a week. Who wants more resiliency when facing challenges and more satisfaction with life? I do, I do! For me, resiliency is one of the biggest benefits of Loving Kindness Meditation. The world is full of challenges, and I welcome the grit that will help me to overcome them.

The goal is to incorporate Loving Kindness Meditation into your life for eight weeks. By then, you should see results that will motivate you to use the meditation for the rest of your life.

In the end, we win when we develop feelings of friendliness and compassion for others. We get to put down the heavy lens of negativity. We begin to see the positive things around us and expect more of them. We create a self-supporting cycle of positivity that improves our “other-compassion,” our own health, and our emotional well-being.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

I’m OK, of course.

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Feelings, Leadership, Uncategorized

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self-compassion

February series: Feelings

I’m OK, of course.

So far this month we have talked about the importance of befriending our emotions (https://kathystoddardtorrey.wordpress.com/2017/01/31/ive-got-a-bad-feeling-about-this/) and understanding that every situation has a fact and a feeling part (https://kathystoddardtorrey.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/everything-has-a-fact-and-a-feeling-part/). Now let’s talk about how we feel about ourselves. We want to have positive feelings about ourselves; therefore, we want to speak to ourselves in a kind and supportive way. Life is way harder when we face the challenges of the world with negative self-talk in our heads.

There are quite a few phrases that are tossed around to describe how we feel about ourselves; words  like self-esteem, self-love, and self-compassion. The self-esteem emphasis has traveled a long and troubled path. Many grumpy, old people blame the millennials’ attitude of entitlement on the self-esteem movement. That’s a discussion all its own that would include open-mindedness, the danger of stereotypes, and communication.

However, studies have shown that a focus on self-esteem results in a dismissal of our faults and wrong-doings. We sort of ignore them and focus on our good qualities in order to maintain positive self-esteem. We are not motivated to change or even believe that change is possible when we think that we are excellent no matter what. There is no correlation between high self-esteem and success or superior performance. If we feel a need to protect our self-esteem, we rationalize bad behavior and don’t think we need to change because we are so awesome already

Next up is self-love, and I must admit that self-love is not one of my favorite phrases. I’ve already disclosed that I’m not a mushy-gushy type of person, and this phrase just doesn’t appeal to me. I have a dear friend who is also a coach, and she talks a lot about self-love. In fact, she has her clients look in a mirror and say, “I love you.” Many times, the people who do this are moved to tears. There is a very emotional reaction that I can’t pretend to understand. If self-love resonates with you, it’s a fine way to start feeling positive about yourself. However, unconditional self-love that focuses on only our good qualities runs the same risks as self-esteem.

My favorite perspective is self-compassion. One of the reasons I like it is that it isn’t overly mushy. Another reason is that it’s got some impressive research behind it. When researchers compared self-compassion to self-esteem and just general positive feelings, they found that self-compassion resulted in a belief that we can change our less-than-desirable qualities and behaviors. Even better, self-compassion motivates us to change! That’s huge!

Here is a definition of self-compassion from a study done by Juliana Breines and Serena Chen called Self-Compassion Increases Self-Improvement Motivation:

“Self-compassion has been defined as a self-attitude that involves treating oneself with warmth and understanding in difficult times and recognizing that making mistakes is part of being human.”

They go on to cite other studies that show that self-compassion creates a more positive attitude and increases optimism, as well as happiness. It also lowers levels of anxiety and depression. Bonus: Self-compassion results in better romantic relationship functioning. Woot!

To get these results, when you consider a mistake or misdeed that you’ve done, ask “What would I say to myself from a compassionate and understanding perspective?” Talk to yourself as you would to a close friend whom you care about.

If you find yourself rationalizing the behavior to get yourself off the hook, you are slipping into a self-esteem perspective that doesn’t require self-examination and behavior change. We would tell our friends if they were misbehaving, and we should tell ourselves the same thing.

Exercising self-compassion is the surest way to get to self-actualization, which is realizing one’s full potential. We know that we are OK, and that we can be even better.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

 

Everything Has A Fact and A Feeling Part

07 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Feelings, Leadership, Uncategorized

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February Feelings

Everything has a fact and a feeling part.

Feelings are an important part of being human, and they are present in every facet of life. It’s valuable to keep in mind that every message and situation has both a fact and a feeling part. One must identify both parts in order to deal with a conflict effectively or to communicate clearly. I learned this lesson late in life, and it would have saved me some time and trouble if I’d known about it sooner.

For 20 years, I led volunteers as an Army spouse. In one group that met monthly, there was one young woman who always sat at my right hand and objected to everything that the group proposed. She objected on a factual level – things like logistics, budget, and convenience. She slowed us down every single month.

If I’d been more savvy, I would have figured out that it wasn’t the facts that bothered her. She was having strong feelings that I was ignoring.  I had a vague notion that she was unhappy or resentful, but I had no idea why. If I’d asked and listened, I could have saved us a lot of time arguing over facts for no good reason.

It’s a good idea to make a practice of identifying the fact and feeling part of situations. Is your pre-teen refusing to wash dishes? If so, then ask how he or she feels about washing the dishes. Of course, no one gets out of washing the dishes just because they don’t like the job. However, finding out why your pre-teen doesn’t like it can open an interesting discussion.

If a coworker consistently objects to following a procedure, find out why. You may get factual responses at first, but ask some curious questions about feelings until you know how he or she feels about the procedure. The discussion will usually include why he or she has those feelings, and that’s where the valuable part of the discussion resides. Once we know the emotions that a person is feeling and why, we have what we need to start finding a solution to the challenge.

You can even ask yourself about the feeling part of a personal situation. It’s great to list the facts and to know the pros and cons of possible actions. It is also enlightening to know how you feel about those possible actions and why. You can gain insight into your values and priorities by getting in touch with your feelings.

The answers to the question of what someone is feeling and why are usually surprising – something that you wouldn’t have guessed. The only way to identify the feeling part of a situation is to ask! The answer is the information that you need to begin finding a solution.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This!

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Emotional Intelligence, Feelings, Leadership, Uncategorized

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Feelings

February is the month of Valentine’s Day and declaring our feelings. Therefore, it feels like a good time to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly emotions that we all experience – and what to do with them.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this!

We all have feelings. In my mind, that isn’t always a good thing. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with emotions for years! I am not a natural touchy-feely type; however, I have learned that there is value in all types of emotions.

If we think about emotions as light and dark, then we know one type by comparing it  to the other. For example, we experience joy in the context of sadness. We can’t experience one without the other. If we only feel one type o emotion, it’s like looking at something white on a white background.

One quote that I heard in high school has stayed with me for almost 40 years: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” – Kahlil Gibran,  The Prophet (I will admit that I did not remember where the quote came from, and I had to look it up.)

There was a time when I was awful at dealing with my feelings. That is to say, I stuffed them most of the time. If a feeling made me the least little bit uncomfortable, it was banished. I was very good at not feeling my feelings.

I began my life coach training in 2005, and they wanted to talk about feelings a lot. I didn’t want to play in the beginning! The instructor would walk past some poor person trying to coach me around my feelings, and he would say, “Get her out of her head! She’s always in her head.” Hmmm. Let me think about that.

I do have a tendency to live in my head. I am very logical, but I saw the value in embracing feelings so I changed how I respond to emotions. I decided to view emotions as friends rather than enemies.

The first step to embracing your feelings is to know that dark feelings are not bad and light feelings are not good. Feelings just are, and all feelings are okay. We can react poorly to any emotion, but the emotion is just a natural part of being human.

The next step is to figure out exactly which emotion is visiting. When I feel an emotion, I accurately name it rather than stuffing it. For example, if I feel angry, I would say to myself, “Wow! I am feeling very angry, and disappointed, and frustrated!” Stepping outside ourselves to objectively define how we are feeling takes away some of the power of the emotions.

In the beginning, I wasn’t even good at labeling light emotions! I wasn’t sure about what I liked or what brought me joy. I’d spent many years as a stay-at-home mom who did what everyone else liked to do. I did enjoy those things, but I didn’t know what I enjoyed in a vacuum outside of other relationships. I spent a lot of time asking myself, “Do I like doing this? Does this bring me joy?” and “What emotion is this creating?” It was a little unsettling to realize that I didn’t know myself well at all.

It took me a while, but I did improve. It helped to go through a list of various emotions and then decide which one felt most accurate. I would think, “Is this happiness? No. Is this relief? No. Is this contentment? Yes, I think I am content.” A written list of emotions can help you explore your feelings. If you search online for “list of human emotions,” you will get a bunch of results.

Embracing emotions can be scary. I find comfort in the fact that they are just visiting, and not setting up a permanent residence. I guess that one could argue that depression is sadness staying too long. We definitely should get help if a dark emotion won’t go away. However, most of the time our emotions will come and go.

Lastly, it’s a useful exercise to take a few minutes and examine why we are feeling a particular emotion. A dark emotion can be the result of something challenging  a value that we hold or our ego reacting to something that makes us feel small. A light emotion can tell us what we like to do and who we like to be around.

Remember that you aren’t a turkey, and you shouldn’t be stuffing yourself with unwanted and unexamined emotions. It’s better to label the emotion, give it a hug, and then figure out the source of it. To feel is to be human and we are all human. There is no need to have a bad feeling about that!

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.