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Love Your Life Show: Personal Growth, Mindset, + Habits for Busy Moms
Hospital Stay: Life Coaching Tools for Anxiety that WORK
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Sometimes no matter what we do, life throws us curve balls. Recently, I found myself back in the hospital (I had spent 13 days there last year) in a pretty scary situation. I felt a whole range of emotions,
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Hi, this is the Love youe Life show with Susie Pettit, certified life and wellness coach. Join Susie as she helps you with your wellness and mindset so you can live a life you love. Let's go, Warriors.
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Warriors. Hello and welcome to another episode with me, Susie Pettit, your certified life and relationship and wellness and parenting coach. And basically feel better. Coach, I am coming to you with a different message today. You might already be able to tell the audio is different. It is because I'm not in my home office. I in fact am in the hospital. And I'm laughing because what else can you do? Warriors. I am in the hospital because I am admitted to. I'm the patient. I'm not visiting someone in the hospital. So I will get into that in a bit. But I wanted to. I'm really moved to come on here today because while I'm having an experience that is unpleasant and scary for me, I am really seeing how the life coaching tools that I teach you all on this podcast and in the Love youe Life school and with my one on one clients really do work and I just, I really. You guys matter to me so much and so I want to make sure that I really emphasize. And today I really wanted to highlight three tools. I have done individual podcast episodes on each of these three tools so I will link them in the show notes so that you can go back and listen to those because these are tools worth knowing and learning and practicing for when your life turns pear shape. Also today is going to be a shorter episode. I just want to really touch on what the tools are and overview and then move on just so that you know and you have access to them too. For as I just said, when your life goes pear shape, when things go upside down. So why am I in the hospital? Quick story is that, you know, my heart, I have apparently had heart and a heart issue, one might call it my whole life. It is just now that I am in perimenopause, my symptoms are getting a whole lot worse, which makes sense when I talk to people because estrogen protects your heart and as estrogen goes down then you know, they basically perimenopause is like any symptom you have, you're going to turn the volume up on it. So. So for me it is, you know, I normally have a low pulse blood pressure and that now it's even lower, which just means. Well, it doesn't just mean I don't want to minimize what is happening. I faint and actually I fainted twice on this past week and set some records here at the hospital. They said that my heart had stopped longer than they've ever seen it stop and someone come back to life. So my warrior heart is here. I still have messages to share with you all. So let's. Super exciting and wonderful and yet totally terrifying and scary to me at the same time. So there's that going on. And if listeners of the show remember, I was in the hospital about three months ago, and the reason why they know my heart stopped and for how long it stopped is because they had implanted a device in me almost like an apple watch underneath my skin. And so they were able to read that device, see what happened. So it's just. It's interesting because, you know, when I look back at the time, I was like, why am I getting this thing? It's called a loop detector. I was a little, you know, disturbed about it, and then now I'm like, oh, thank God I had that thing. So. So there's that. So here I am today, trying to bring to you the three tools that are super and most impactful for me so that they might be helpful for you, too. And the first one that I want to talk about is what I call clean pain versus dirty pain. And this is when clean pain. So as humans, we're going to have pain in our life. We're going to have. I'm not even talking physical experiences. I'm talking about emotional pain here. So we're going to have things that happen that maybe we lose a job or we have. We faint and we end up in the hospital, or we, you know, our kid has a diagnosis or what we're going to have, we're going to feel painful emotions is what I'm trying to say. So me having this experience with my example, like, feeling scared, normal, you know, I'm going to feel scared, I'm going to feel disappointed. I'm going to feel. I'm going to feel lots of things. So we have clean pain, which are reasonable feelings to have for the circumstances we're going through. And one of the things that I help people be aware of and that I'm aware of in my own brain is when my pain turns what I call dirty. So we really want to be aware of clean pain versus dirty paint. So clean pain is me feeling disappointed that, well, that this is happening, scared that this is happening, disappointed that, you know, okay, I had a full week and a half planned in the future, and that's not going to be happening anymore. I am scared. I feel frustrated that's clean paint. Dirty pain would be anything when I really with involving the word should, like, this shouldn't be happening. They should have figured this out in December. I should have. I don't know what I could be shooting on myself here for, but, you know, I should have drinking more water that day. That's not accurate. It didn't have anything to do with it. But let's, let's just say that. Or like, you know, let's take another example. Say you lose your job and clean pain is feeling disappointment that you lost your job, scared that you lost your job, frustrated that you lost your job and your deskmate didn't lose their job. Dirty pain is getting into things sort of out of your control. Like, you know, they should have told me two weeks ago what to do instead of just giving me the, you know, the firing slip. Or they shouldn't have done it in the way that they did it or that I shouldn't have even taken this job or any sort of shutting on your screen. We want to be really clear with, clear and clean with our pain. When we feel clean pain, we can process it, we can move through it. It just feels different in your system than the dirty pain. So that's really the number one thing. And I will put an episode below a link to listen to the whole episode on Clean Pain, Dirty Pain. That's one of my top downloaded episodes. Now the next thing that I wanted to focus on is something I called zoom in, zoom out like a camera lens. This is hugely helpful in life in general and especially for my warriors who feel anxiety. So think of a camera lens zooming in and zooming out, and you want to be aware of what you're doing. Are you zooming in or are you zooming out? Often when you're an experience like I'm in, or something just happens, like, again, back to the job loss, or you get a diagnosis from your kid, or you're, you know, something relatively like your mom says she can't come over for dinner, like she said she was going to, etc. We usually want to zoom in initially and think just of what's happening right here, right now. Like, not to look. Not zooming the lens out and thinking like, oh my gosh, what does this mean? And if they put a pacemaker in me, what would that mean at age 82? And. And like, will I be. That is not helpful for anxiety. Also, even zooming out my situation, it's like, you know, I faint. It's like, okay, we go to the hospital and Me being like, but what does this mean about next Thursday? Like, sometimes you have to zoom in so closely to just really the next hour, the next day, the next, you know, for me, sometimes it's like, just understand until the next doctor comes to meet with you. Like, when is the next doctor's visit? You know, with your job, maybe you lose the job. It's like, okay, let's zoom way in. What do we do now? We get our resume updated. We look, you know, we Google something online. We just zoom into that day. Or our kid has a diagnosis, we are going to zoom in. What's the next step? Really? Just getting sort of into that, like detail oriented. Like with my hands, I'm sort of like grasping. Like you want somebody to touch and to feel. Like very like short term zooming in. Not when we're zooming out. Our anxious brain is usually just spinning and thinking of these things that we don't, you know, we're making up crud in our head and we're just like, well, what if? And that's unhelpful. Which, that's tool number two. Zoom in, zoom out. Which leads me right into tool number three, which you just heard me say, what if? So I love bringing attention to the difference between the what if monster and the what if fairy. Okay, though when we are thinking what if, our brain, when we are thinking of the future, first of all, we are making things up. We don't know what happens in the future. What our brain is doing is it's thinking to our past experiences, thinking about what happened in the past. And it's usually future telling based on what happened in the past, which is where there can be a lot of drama there. Like say you, say you, you know, you're thinking of a discussion you want to have with your husband and it's something that is, maybe you're a little more fearful about. Your brain is going to look to the past and be like, oh, when I bring up things in the past, he reacts in this way or he gets defensive or this. Like, you know, we bring up things that actually happened and then those usually stop us from doing something different that will go into the future. It's, it's, it's like it makes sense with our human brain. And yet we want to be aware that whenever we're thinking about something happening in the future, it hasn't happened yet. We're using our imagination to come up with what's going to happen. So we want to be deliberate and conscious about what we're using our imagination for and what? 19 times out of 10. I was going to say nine out of 10. But it's even more than that. First we're going to use the what if monster. So first we're going to go to the worst case scenario. Our brain has a negativity bias. It wants to keep us safe, so it scans everything in our past to look at the negative. Okay, so it's going to remember those times when her husband got defensive. It's not going to remember the times when her husband's like, oh, yeah, you know, sounds good, go for it, Susie. Or whatever. So the what if monster is where our brain naturally goes. The challenge is, is that it often doesn't go all the way to the end. So when, when the what if monster comes up, take my situation. And it's like, you know, it's like, well, what if the pacemaker doesn't work? Okay. Right now they're talking about a pacemaker. So my brain goes, what if the pacemaker doesn't work? Often our brains, we just stop there and we spin and we can't sleep and we're just like. We literally don't answer that question. We're just like, oh, my God. Oh my God. Yeah, that's right. What if it doesn't work? Oh, that's awful. And then we just like, it's. It's like to me, it's like my brain shuts down and I'm just like spinning. And maybe I go to eat something or numb out on TV or it's like, bleh. And the solution here is you want to take the what if monster all the way to the end. You want to answer the what ifs one time fully, okay, so what if it doesn't work? And then. And then what? And then what? And what if then and what if then. And what if then. And you go all the way down to the dark moment. Okay. That our brains are afraid of going there to. Going to. But trust me with this, when you go all the way to the dark, there is a, like a feeling of release. When you go to the absolute worst, it's that usually what it ends up with is a sort of like, okay, then I'd, you know, I'd get through it or I'd be resilient or, you know, like, I know I there. I want to work through this with you on one. On one. Coaching. Not here, because it can get pretty dark. But it's like, even the worst case thing, it's like, okay, then I die. It sounds awful. And trait here to say on a podcast. But it. When you're working through it, you're just. It feels like a release and a surrender and, like, okay. And then oftentimes, you know, you're like, well, that's not gonna happen. Like, if it does happen, okay, then I'll deal with it. Okay, but now let's switch to the what if theory, which is equally possible. So with the what if fairy, we say, what if this ends up better than I imagined? What if this is exactly what happens? What if this is the best thing ever? Like, instead of the what if monster that is so bad? And, like, what if it fails? Like, what if this is for me? Right now, I'm asking myself, and I'm telling myself that, like, what if this is exactly how it's supposed to happen so I can have a life full of vitality and health moving forward so that I know all this stuff about menopause so that when I'm, you know, 92, I'm still dancing on the dance floor, so excited, and I'm living into that what if. Okay, I want to give you another example of the what if monster and fairy, just so it's not so dire like the one I just gave you, but let's say it's the job loss again. Okay? You lose your job and you're like, oh, my God, what if we go broke? Okay, go to that what if monster. What if we lose our money? What if the money goes, okay, then what? What if. What will you do? Okay, then I'll sell my house. Okay, then what? Then I'll have some money to, you know. Or maybe you're renting. You're like, well, then I'll have to stop renting and I'll move into a smaller place. Or then I'll have to get a job at a coffee store and buy a tent. Like, literally go to the bad. Because then what do you find out? I did this with my divorce. I was like, well, then I'll be living in a tent with my three kids, and that would suck, but, okay. I was like, I don't know. I just could, like, sort of picture us in there, like, eating apples and cheap peanut butter. Like, it's like, right? It just gives your anxiety something to hold on to, and you aren't as crazy. So you do that once, and you were just like, okay, I'd handle it. And then, brain, let's go to the what if theory. What if I don't lose all my money? What if this job loss is the exact thing I needed to Start my career in this thing. What if this is exactly what my family needed to relocate and have a different vision of? You know, I wasn't that happy in that job Anyhow. What if. And we push our brain over there. Now, let me just say something. It's going to feel harder to go to the what if ferry. We're not used to it. Okay. It's much easier if you. If you were to tell someone like, you lost your job, they're gonna go to the what if monster for you. Okay? So it's much easier to go to the negative because of our negativity bias. Plus we bond often over complaining and criticizing and looking at the negative. And I'm here. You guys are warriors listening. So I want you to practice going to the what if Fairy. And again, I will put links to that show. All three of these shows on Clean Pain, Dirty Pain. Zoom in, zoom out. What if Fairy, what if Monster so that you can dive in and really get the tools that I practice and come to a Love youe Life school coaching session or schedule a one on one with me. I love helping people with this sort of stuff. I just wanted to get on here today with you. I hope the audio was okay. I should take a picture of where I'm recording. It's kind of funny. I just wanted to come on here today with you because I'm. I'm doing this in real life and. And I have moments where I'm just in that, you know, feeling my clean pain of disappointment and sorrow and fear and frustration and overwhelm. And yet like me knowing about these things. Clean pain versus dirty pain. Zoom in, zoom out. And the what if Fairy, what if Monster helps me so much. And I want to help you, dear Warrior, because you matter to me. So if you. I have no ifs. I just want to say I love you, take care of you, I'm thinking of you and we're all in this together. I'm just here in this life using the same damn tools as you are, doing the best I can. So I'm sending love to you. I am quite sure you're sending love to me. And we'll all just marinate in this big bath of love as we're doing the best we can. Humaning is hard and I'm just here to help you make humaning feel a little bit easier. Big love to you, Warrior.
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Thank you for listening to the Love youe Life show. If you want to hear more from Susie and support the show, be sure to subscribe to this podcast on itunes. Also leave a review and share this podcast with friends and family. Go get em warriors.
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