Storing Emotions

Hey, there. Today's episode is called storing emotions, and it's all about a concept that we explored about a year ago and discovered a few years back called the emotional garage. What that is is the body, essentially, where we take all of our emotions and we store them in a place where we don't want to deal with them like we do with most things. We put it in the garage. How are you doing, Cat?

I'm doing really well. How are you?

I'm doing good. I'm excited about this topic. You know, like, the concept of the emotional garage came to me when I was in a really bad state. You knew me for a lot of years, and I would never face my emotions. Like, I basically had one emotion. It was called good, and it encompassed everything in the feelings wheel that I wasn't aware of. I had a really bad habit of when something bothered me, when something upset me, when something didn't feel good, I just took it, put it in a box, and I put it in the emotional garage. I didn't allow myself to feel it.

This storing of emotions really caused me to have some really bad problems in my body and with my health. You know, I was full blown accountant at this point. Didn't really see the need to feel my feelings as. As it said. But as time went on, my body kept score, as the book says, and it came back with a vengeance. So today's episode is really just talking about the emotional garage story and emotion, and, of course, what we can do to empty out the moldy boxes that are in the garage.

You know, I think that any man who. Who does something similar, I just want to say that I think there's some unspoken thing that men have to soar away their emotions. It is so prevalent in our society that my own son, about two years ago, I remember his sister was upset about something, and she was being emotional and crying, and she was upset, and he said, look, if you want to stop crying, just put those worries in the back of your head like I do. And it caught me so off guard, and I was just like, whoa. Without even realizing it. I think he was about seven at the time. He illustrated something that so many people do, but it's more prevalent in men just because of the way society says men have to be tough and strong. And all these things.

And of course, as you know, we have a very emotionally open household. Your feelings and, like, hug it out and, you know, just like, over the top as one would expect from someone who co hosts a personal development podcast. But yeah, something in him just knew to store it away. And so I did chat with him and say, you know, sometimes, bud, you know, I understand if you got to get through the day or get through school, and, like, it's not bad advice, but it is advice that we should maybe look into. Maybe sometimes you need to take out the thing that's bothering you out of the back of your head and, you know, think about it a little bit. But I just thought that was, like, amazing at seven, that that was his advice to his twin sister.

It's very telling. And my eyes kind of jumped out of my head with that. In a sense that, who knows where that comes from? And the condition, the societal conditioning with it is just so predominant of like, yeah, don't feel your feelings. There's a show that I watched that says, flush it down with brown and, like, you know, basically drink your feelings away.

I was thinking flushing, browned.

I was thinking of something we're going to stop.

I was like, wow, that's a very vivid analogy. But of course, you're known for your brilliant analogies.

I am. I am. I've had one, I think, in 46 years.

Moving on, moving on.

But that really is the culture is to be like, don't feel your feelings. That's a sign of weakness. The opposite is actually was my experience is that in not doing that, I felt like I couldn't communicate to anyone. I felt like I couldn't reach out to anyone because, well, then I'm just going to show I'm weak. And I'm not supposed to be weak, and I'm supposed to be this big, tough man that doesn't have feelings, and I'm going to be okay. And meanwhile, I was rotting, like, I mean, literally rotting from the inside. I was. Couldn't eat anything.

I was, like, coughing up blood. Like, it was bad. And this happened for years, and it would kind of come and go, as bad things happen in life as they tend to. But I had never really tied it to emotions until my friend called me and told me that you're storing everything in an emotional garage right now.

Yeah. I think there's been an increase in people understanding the link between emotional pain and physical pain. And I think for so long they were viewed as separate things. And now there's been just a lot of research about mind connection and all of these different things. And I noticed it in myself that when I'm really upset about something, I get flares. It triggers, like, some of my autoimmune diseases that I cope with on a daily basis. And emotional pain, frustration, being upset, or lack of sleep will literally cause my body to flare up and attack itself. And as part of my coping with managing these diseases in the healthiest way I can, I'm really having to find ways to calm my system and be in a more calm state and process through the emotions because it literally debilitates me physically.

And that's never really happened before. It's almost like, you know, your whole life, you kind of, like, put things away or whatever. I mean, I'm emotional McCryer, you know, very sensitive person. So I felt like I was processing a lot of things. But there's also been many times where I've had to be tough, had to be strong, had to put things aside to take care of my kids, put my own health aside to kind of push through hard times. And I didn't realize how much of it was making me physically stick from the things that I was carrying around with me in my brain.

Thank you for sharing that, because I think somebody is going to hear that and go, oh, my goodness, that happens to me. Or just even bringing that awareness, because this is something that we've kind of found with you in the last six months that, you know, like, yeah, it's like, it's really new for you. I know, for myself, allowing myself to feel the feeling in a safe way was the challenge when I was starting out. I mean, crying was just. Wasn't going to happen until it did happen. And then, you know, it felt like it would never stop. But that was just the purge that needed to happen. I'm saying that as an honesty thing because I could easily tell guys right now that are listening, just start crying.

You'll stop. And it's like, honestly, there were moments where, like, yeah, it's like, it can be really challenging. And that fear is, and I've heard it from so many people that we've worked with, is that I'm afraid if I start crying, I'm never going to stop. I get that fear. I had that fear. And now my thought is, isn't it better to start letting the hose flow before it blows out somewhere else and, like, in anger and rage and, like, bad behaviors and just maybe start letting it out? Like, is the pressure off now rather than wait till something really bad happens? Because I was talking with someone, one of my daughter's friends in the car, and they kind of were talking about, you know, like, how they weren't supposed to cry because they're a guy and all that stuff. And I shared my insight on it and I said, like, you know, if you stub your toe, let's just say take it easy. And that's like an energy transference, right? Like, you have literally hit something in motion and that energy.

Yeah. And it's that, like, there's a pain there and that pain is stuck in your body and it can get released in different ways. For some people, it's crying, laughing, swearing. You know, you might want to go punch a pillow because it just hurts that much. You know, like, everybody's got a release, but when you don't allow that release, that emotion gets stored inside you. Now, we're not saying, you know, like, when you stub your toe, punch the person closest to you because that's just perpetuating the problem. But what we are saying is find a way that releases that makes sense to you. And crying is just the same as laughing.

It's just an emotional release that has kind of gotten a negative connotation. And when we can reframe it as like, no, this is just me letting it go right now so that it doesn't become an illness five, six, seven years from now or however long that stuff can take. Because I never faced my emotional barrage. You know, the way I looked at it was like, as long as I stop putting stuff in, then it gradually I'll be able to take stuff out. I kind of jumped there. But the thought is that you don't have to go spring clean. You can do a box at a time when you feel the right calling for it.

Sure. I think that's a really important point and it's something I very much want to convey to our listeners, is that all of us have boxes in our emotional garage and if we don't open them up and process through the boxes, at some point the garage door will blast open. I was recently coaching someone two days ago, a man in his thirties, and he told me that he wanted to get help because something that happened to him, a very severe bullying incident that happened to him in high school that he hadn't thought about at all. All of a sudden it came to him in a dream and he woke up remembering it and he said, it's been like several years, like, right. Maybe like 20 years since he's, 15 years since he's been in high school. He said, I've maybe thought about this bullying incident once or twice since then, and he really packed it away. But because it came up to him in a dream, you know, that's how your subconscious kind of lets you know. So you can forget about it.

You can never think about it. You can divert your thoughts, but it's inside of your body. It's deep within your brain and your subconscious and things will trigger it and have it come out. And sometimes you might not even know why you're reacting to things the way that you do. But by constantly, like, self analyzing, I mean, it's never going to be empty of boxes. You're going to have something in the garage you have to go through. But what we want to encourage people to do is sort things as they come in. You know, make it a nice, neat box that's accessible, that's, like, near the door that's labeled and, like, you can understand it versus the nasty, moldy, rotting one in the corner that you realize, like, rat poop is in on accident type of thing.

We are bringing up feces in this show, folks. It's just the way it's going. We did not plan for this, but here we go. First of all, everybody that goes through this stuff, one of the terms that kept coming up, as you were saying, that was disease. You know, disease, which is like the body not being at peace with itself. And you and I have seen this. Like, I've had illnesses, you've had illnesses. And we're still having these things in different moments.

Like, we'll get, like, a shooting pain somewhere, and we're like, what just happened? And you're like, I had a thought about this person, this event, or having to go to or do this. And you're like, my body's physically reacting to it. And there's science around this, I'm sure. I don't read journals or anything like that. I just kind of go from my life experience and those that are around me. But when your body is not at peace with itself, when it's not at ease, that's a harboring ground for disease, you know? And, like, when we start looking at things, people are not. We're not living the lives that we think we should be living. That's really what this boils down to.

Even if you're like, you cry, you laugh, you get rid of every emotion. Not get rid of, but you process every emotion as it comes up, and you get everything out. Like, there still can be structural tensions in your brain where you're like, but this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm not supposed to be the teacher. I'm supposed to be the principal. I'm not supposed to be the accountant. I'm supposed to be the coach. Like, you know, and so there's disease in a bunch of different ways.

One of the most interesting things, and I was talking about this a couple weeks ago. I was meeting with a, you know, a fellow coach, and she did some channeling, which is really neat if you've ever, never done it. It's like, so channeling can be a bunch of different things. Like, some people channel, like, entities and stuff like that.

Some people journal and, like, write down what comes through.

Right, exactly. For me, when I channel, it's usually when I'm talking, and often it happens in these podcasts. Wherever I'm two minutes into a thought and I stop because my brain kind of goes on. It's like we are saying stuff that I didn't realize we knew, you know? And so that said, and that's usually when the train, like, just goes right off the track. And I pause and I'm like, yeah, so have fun going back, listening to episodes, and finding those moments where I completely derailed myself. No, but thank you. What was communicated to me in this was that the emotion that's inside of you is screaming to get out. It does not want to be in there.

It wants to get out and go see the world. And as soon as I kind of saw, like, that inside out kind of feeling, that's like, no, I just want to jump out. I want to go somewhere else. You don't need to feel this bad thing anymore. It just kind of reframed it for me. And it's been such a powerful visual.

I love it when we get new visuals that we haven't heard before because, like, I feel like we practice being self aware. We practice so much personal development, so many tips, so many things. But it was really profound that to think of these emotions in a new way, all these things you're storing in your body, there's so many things that are bothering all of us, anxieties and worries and all these things. And if you think of them, like, little mean creatures, like, banging on your insides, trying to get out, you can sort of have some compassion for them. Like, they're trapped in the garage, it's dark, they don't like it in there. And if you don't let them out, think of all these little mean little creatures running around, tearing up stuff, wreaking havoc like inflaming your body, giving you headaches. How many times have you heard people say, if your kid has a stomach ache and they say they don't want to go to school, that's very often anxiety. Anxiety is stomachache.

That can be a part of it. It almost when you can personify your feelings and think of them as little creatures running around and kind of look at them and say, okay, I don't want to be trapped in a dark place. Let me open the door, scoop you up. Look at you. And it's going to come out in a tear. It's going to come out in like, sweat on a run. It's going to come out when I journal and I channel all these little crazy little creatures that are wreaking havoc and flaming my joints and all these different things, and I'm going to get them out and put them on paper. And if you've never heard anything like this, maybe it sounds a little weird.

Maybe it sounds a little woo woo. But one of the most profound things you can learn is to visualize how to become the person you want to be. And sometimes these visualizations really, really help. I use it with my kids when they're upset. I will put them in a shower and I will say, I want you to envision all your tears and all your sadness leaving your body and going down the drain, or all your worries. I say, imagine all your little worry bubbles are floating all of around you. We're going to pop each one because you're safe and you're here with mom and all these things. And so it works great for adults, too.

Get those little worried gremlins out of the garage and find a way to process them out of your body. And you will notice physical changes and mental changes.

Absolutely. There is, there's so much work being done around this. And you use the term woo. I'm like, it's funny how we look at this stuff, but if we said it's metaphysical, that might still give the kind of concept. If we say, like, this is like quantum physics, people go, oh, dang. Okay, well, I'm going to listen to this now because it has, like, fancy words in front of it. It's all the same thing we're talking about. We're talking about energy and how your mind perceives things and sets things up and the stories.

So those are great tools, though, Catherine. Thank you.

I know. I was just, like, envisioning myself, like, walking up to the moms at school and being like, so have who has released their little inner worry Gremlins today, who has let them out of the emotional garage and sweated them out on this walk back home from school? You know, like, I think, like, they would all look at me like I had three heads. And so those of us who talk frequently about mental health and coping skills and all these things, unfortunately, we're still in the minority. So sometimes I feel the need to put a little disclaimer, like, might sound weird if you haven't heard it before, but don't knock it till you try it.

I can strongly affirm that as an accountant in my previous life, even, like, what is it? Like, three years ago, if I was to look at myself today, I'd be like, I wouldn't believe a single word I was saying. I would have locked me away. I would have been like, nope, this isn't right. Like, you don't feel feelings and emotional garage and feelings aren't things. They're just. It's an experience, and then it's in the past and it doesn't affect you anymore. And what we're finding with, okay, so the DNA stuff is like, we're finding that genetics and things are not just encoding blue eyes, green eyes, they're catching epigenetics, is turning your genes on and off. There's so much being discovered about stored emotions, not even from us, but, like, that have been passed down from generations.

And just because, you know, like, it's kind of. Sometimes we know things intuitively and the science has to catch up. It's the same thing when, like, everybody's had that moment where they're thinking about somebody and they call and they're like, that is so weird. Is it really weird if every single person on the planet has experienced this at some point? It's probably something more there that we just can't define or, you know. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, three years ago me, not probably three year old me, would have been just thinking, it's cool. Three years ago me, it would be like, this is not on the spreadsheet. You need to just get your nose back in a computer and figure out math.

But when you expand your horizons and your possibilities with this stuff and you accept that your feelings are valid and you need to deal with them in a way, and, you know, some people, maybe not, but the people listening to this definitely have some sort of emotion where they're going, like, I'm afraid to face this. I don't know how I move on with this again. I'll tell you, I have been there, and it is find a safe person, a safe space to do it with. You don't have to walk the whole journey today. You can just acknowledge, even by saying the simple thing, to acknowledge your feelings. Which is what? One of the things I did in the beginning, which was, I'm feeling something right now, and I have the feelings wheel, or the feeling wheel on my screen, and I'm looking at it, I'm like, what is this thing I'm feeling? Because I had no clue. I had good, and I guess not good, but, you know, if anyone had asked me, I just would have said good, even if, like, you know, well, my. My body's on fire right now, but how are you? I'm good.

So being able to start to broaden your feelings and identify them, once you name it, you can tame it and you can release it, but you need to know what you're releasing. And that helps.

Yeah. We are so passionate about naming the feelings that we have laminated feelings on our refrigerator here at home in Chicago and at home in. In Winnipeg. Like Andrew said, he has his feeling wheels up. What, on your background or it's on your bulletin board or something, right?

Both. Yeah. I need access to everything. I need things visual. I'm a very visual person.

But it's so helpful if you have kids, but it's helpful as an adult, too. If I were to summarize everything in this episode, first I want to say that if you clicked in and the title of this episode resonated with you and made you want to listen, that you are meant to hear this, you're meant to take something from this, and we hope that you do. Most of the people that we help in our coaching practice are people who are brilliant. They are hardworking. They've gone to school. They've done jobs. They've done everything that's right in this life, what we call the checklist, they do what they're supposed to do. They go to work, they take care of their families, they mow the lawn.

They have all of the signs of a successful life by today's standards, but there's still something missing inside, and there's emptiness inside that they can't quite identify. And what we help people do through our coaching practice is exactly what we've walked you through today is we help people go into the emotional garages and find the things that they've packed away. And we also help them go deep within themselves to reconnect with the parts of them that they've long forgotten in the busyness of life. And we help you rediscover what you are meant to do and what will add some joy to this life. Because we've both been there. We've both been there in situations where everything looked really shiny on the outside but was riding on the inside. It's pretty much exactly like most of our garages are. You know, it looks like a nice house on the outside, and then you accidentally leave your garage door open and you're like, oh, my God, what the neighbors say.

So would you like to share maybe some action items for the listeners of this episode?

Yeah, sure. So we touched on the first one, which is when something comes up and you're like, I don't know what I'm feeling. If you're so turned off, you haven't wanted to feel up or down, which has been part of my journey. Feeling wheel, go to. I think it's like feelings wheel or feelingwheel.com. and, like, there's one you can print out, and just by naming it, that's just kind of a really good small step that you can do. You don't have to face anything when you want to face something that's happening in your life. Let's say, you know, something happens to you, somebody says something, somebody cuts you off in traffic.

Kids don't, you know, listen, whatever it is, acknowledge that you have a feeling. It's okay for you to be angry. That was one of the early messages that I got because I was always afraid to be angry. What I learned was that it's okay to be angry when you direct it to us through a safe means, not just without control. It's kind of going like, you know what? I'm feeling worked up about this. I'm going to go for a walk and just decompress. I'm going to go for a run. I'm going to yell into a pillow.

Depending on how intense you are feeling it in that moment, there's no wrong way as long as it's not harming someone else as you do it, because then you're just keeping that emotion going to the next person and whatnot. Another one would be to go to talk therapy, talk with somebody about the feelings that you're having and finding ways that might be suitable. The biggest thing that has come to me in the last few months because I feel deeply, I'm a deep feeler, and it's been very embarrassing my whole life. And now I'm getting a tattoo of it on my forehead. So just to show how proud I am of this. Yeah, that'll be a good look for the podcast. But what I was conveyed to me is that crying is just the same as laughing. It's a release.

There is nothing wrong with crying. So I want you to hear the words that I'm saying right now. Crying is a good thing, and you should do it if it feels called to do. Because when we allow ourselves to let that out in the moment, it doesn't turn into fear or anger or rage or hatred. It's released. And so finding those ways that make sense to you to release is a very, very powerful thing. Everybody's journey is different with that. We've known that from the people we've coached.

But when you start to face that part of you that you weren't wanting to face, that's usually where the gold is in your life. The reason why you're not probably moving forward in the way that you want in your life is because you've been so afraid to face a certain thing or emotion or past issue. Once you start to kind of acknowledge it and face it in a way that makes sense, it doesn't mean you have to go face the person that caused it. It just means that you have to figure out your way of handling it or moving through it. That is how you move forward much faster. And I can attest to that. I know you can, too, Catherine. It's when you start to face these things, it's like you release the brakes and you move forward at a speed that is so much more fun in life.

I agree. In summary, let the gremlins out of the garage, folks.

All right, well, let's end this on our normal high note of glimmers. And those are the little things that are delighting us this week. Catherine, what's your glimmer for the week?

Well, if you're seeing this on YouTube, you might notice I've got a new background. It's really nice. Thank you. Andrew helped me put it all together, and I'm most proud about the fact that it's from stuff we already had. Right. We just moved some things around in my apartment, and I've got some really bright, colorful artwork that the twins made in the third grade. Yeah, I just think it fills out the screen. I just had two picture frames before, so now it looks a little bit more happy and professional.

Me. And it brings me joy.

Good. I like it. I really like it.

Thanks.

I like the colors suit you more in the background, for sure. Much more vibrant for you. My glimmer this week is we got to go to the Harry Potter cursed child play. I'm so happy you didn't say that because I'm like, I don't have anything else. If she doesn't say this, but we went to go see this joint glimmer. There were times when we were there and we were like, wow, I forgot that this is a play, not a movie because the special effects were so well done. So if you're a Harry Potter fan, did they call them potheads? I don't know. Potter heads? I'm not a pothead.

Clearly I am not. But I did love the movies and watching this as like kind of whatever it would be like, 8th book, 9th movie was just, it was perfection. It really was well done.

Yeah, we absolutely loved it. Highly recommend. Thank you again, by the way, for, for that nice day. It was great.

It was awesome. Well, everybody, we will see you next time. Take care.

Bye. Hey guys, quick disclaimer, we're podcasters on the Internet. If you need to seek professional help, please go see your healthcare professional.

One last thing. Don't forget to go to fiveyearyou.com future to start getting those emails from your future self. It will change your life.