Jessica Porter (4:36)
Hi everyone, this is Jessica Porter. And welcome back to Sleep Magic, a podcast where I help you find the magic of your own mind, helping you to sleep better and live better. So today is this month's mailbag episode where I will do my best to answer questions that you've sent in. Before we get to that, first, I want to say a few things. One, I'm not an official expert on any of these topics except hypnosis. And we do have one question this week which really has me dive into hypnosis. So I'm going to give you my thoughts and experience and perspectives and, like, do with them what you will. I won't pretend to know stuff that I don't. If you need professional support with any of these issues, I encourage you to seek it out. And finally, if you fall asleep when you hear my voice, because you've trained yourself to fall asleep when you hear my voice, that's great. But please don't be listening to this in, you know, a situation where it's dangerous to fall asleep. If you want to hear the actual content, you might want to listen to it while you're on a walk or something, but not while you're driving. All right, let's get into it. The first question is from Gina. Hey, Jessica. With it coming up to Christmas, I have a question. Any tips on how to stay calm around my extended family when they say things I don't agree with, whether it's political or personal comments to me, such as how I dress or by the fact I'm eating different food to them, etc. Etc. Maybe I'm too sensitive, I'm not sure. But how do I let it not bother me and upset me? I have a feeling some other listeners may be able to relate. Yeah, Gina, I think we all relate to a certain extent. Absolutely. This is a great question. Thank you for asking this. I actually did an episode just recently, probably coming out very soon or around this time, about handling stress during the holidays, and it might be helpful to listen to that and sort of prepare with it. I would recommend it to anyone going home or being around family with that kind of social and emotional pressure. But let's get specific about your questions and some things you can do. Your question made me think about this deeply, and I'd like to offer you a few tools for this experience, and maybe you'll use one of them or two of them or none of them, but hopefully any listener in this situation will at least have something to play with over the holidays first. I think in these situations it's really important that we're able to take care of ourselves, to stay present and centered and to be able to soothe ourselves. I mean, these are family gatherings. It's not one on one therapy with family members. It's not an opportunity, at least I want to take to blow things up in public, you know? So the best I can do, and maybe it's always the best I can do, is to be able to soothe me during experiences that may be uncomfortable or tumultuous. I am a really big proponent and practitioner of this thing that I learned in hypnosis, like 30 years ago, which is just putting my hand over my heart, like physically putting a hand to my own chest. And for me, that's a symbol that I'm protecting my core Protecting my little kid inside. And it's not like a symbol I expect other people to see. In fact, sometimes I do it. I sort of hide that I'm doing it. It's not some gesture for the world. It's a signal from me to me that I'm okay, I'm here. No matter the drama going on around me, I'm here. And it really helps me to regulate my nervous system or at least check in with it, so I don't, like, lose myself. So you might try practicing that gesture or some kind of gesture, but I really find that the heart tunes me in to where I'm at. Try it. When you listen to sleep magic at night, right at the beginning, or when you're meditating, you want to do it when you're relaxed so you really get that message, that connection installed. But you can also just do it during the day and especially in situations that are uncomfortable. It's a great way of grounding yourself when you suddenly feel like things are getting weird. So no matter what's going on around you, you. You've got you, which is great. So that's one thing, and it's a real active tool. The other things I want to offer are more like attitudes that you may want to cultivate for the holidays. The first one is acceptance. Practicing acceptance of others is a really important thing to do for our peace of mind because, well, we can only ever be ourselves. I've said versions of this on the show before, but the takeaway is that other people being themselves is not as personal to me as I think it is. You know, like a tulip in the garden is just being a tulip. Let's imagine one of your relatives who has really strong political beliefs that you disagree with is just a tulip. And that tulip is like watching the news and getting intense on social media just being that tulip fully. Maybe the petals are getting sort of frayed or even flying off, but they're just doing themselves, and they're in the same garden. And you're a geranium in that garden, and you are being nourished by whatever influences you've chosen to surround yourself with. Well, that tulip, being the tulip actually has very little to do with you. Even if the tulip's, like, screaming across the garden or throwing dirt at the geranium, it sort of has nothing to do with you or your essence or your mission in life. I've learned this over the 27 years that I've been a hypnotherapist client after client, I see we are all watching our own movies in our own minds. Even when we're connecting with people around us in meaningful ways, and especially these days, we can really be siloed in our own realities, which makes the weird tulips even weirder. But still, that's just them doing their thing. So you might want to imagine the members of your extended family, go into deep relaxation and really bring up each one in your mind and just see them simply being themselves and accept them. That's what they're doing. And in fact, it's all they can do, just as you are being the geranium. And that might help you accept them, which can help you detach from feeling like they're out to get you or are singling you out. And that leads me to another layer of acceptance or understanding, and that is that most of us do not in modern life make a journey internally into the self deeply. Most people don't go to therapy. Most people don't do inventories of their own fears. Most people don't do hypnosis and like no judgment. That's just the world that we're in. And the world is getting increasingly speedy and externalized and extroverted and vying for our attention. But the thing is, going inside oneself is very natural. We need to go inside to organize our thoughts, feel our feelings, self reflect. And then when we've digested them a bit, we shift gears and express our energy to the outside world. And while we're paying attention to the outside world, we collect data, we have experiences, we connect with others, we teach things, we learn things. And then we come back to ourselves and self reflect and sift and sort and grow. And then we go back out again. It's like a boomerang. Now, this movement in and out isn't always that simple. You're not like in, out, in, out. But you know what I'm saying, There's energy going in deep to a core that reflects and energy going out to the world at whatever rate one does it. This balancing act is the most natural thing in the world. And yet in our current world, the vast majority of people are discouraged from doing that. And this going inside can even be shamed or called navel gazing or isolation or narcissism. I mean, sometimes it is when your mechanism is only to go inside or look itself and only get your own needs met, that's out of balance too. But that's not what I'm addressing right here. Suffice it to say that a lot of people in this world are not balanced. So in pressurized social situations, which all holiday experiences generally are, they're just doing whatever they can do to survive and be okay, many people are just defaulting to their coping mechanisms. Most of us are. All of us are defaulting to our coping mechanisms and sometimes just thrusting them in other people's faces. So, yeah, the holidays can be hard in large part because we all feel a certain social pressure and we don't necessarily know how to handle it. So people use alcohol or overeat or overshare or pepper you with questions and judgments and criticisms, and that's like the currency that that person has, especially under pressure. Those are their tools. They're coping mechanisms. And all those coping mechanisms get used because very few of us are trained to put our hands on our hearts and connect with ourselves. So when I put my hand on my heart and I send the signal to my body and my inner being that I'm okay and I just need to be the Jessica flower in the family garden. And that's all I'm doing, just being here, being me. And I can just look at others and accept them because they're doing their best, just being themselves. And, yeah, they might say something weird about the food I'm eating, but they're just being themselves. So that's tool number two, cultivating acceptance. Cultivate some acceptance of each individual before you even get there. Send them love before you meet them over the gravy boat. Finally, you wonder if you're being too sensitive when people make comments about what you're wearing or what you're eating. And I think what I said about acceptance applies to this. But there's one more thing, and I offer this last one. Assuming that your family isn't horribly toxic and mean, in other words, that you're not going into some situation that is dangerous or abusive. That's a whole other category. So assuming that, I'd like to offer one more attitude, a sense of humor about yourself. Now, you may have a great sense of humor about yourself the rest of the year. And it may be harder to find during a family gathering because there's more history and the relationships are more complicated. But think of a family gathering as the Olympics of learning to laugh at yourself. You know, it's like Frank Sinatra in New York. If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere. If I can laugh at myself at Christmas, I'm in good shape. Unfortunately, this ability to laugh at ourselves and see ourselves is sort of ridiculous at times. Well, seems to be getting lost lately. But it's, I promise you, one of the healthiest traits anyone can cultivate. When I make fun of myself, I'm embracing my contradictions and vulnerabilities, which are all parts of being alive. And everyone is a bag of contradictions and strange behaviors. Everyone is weird. So when I can look at my own quirks, the woo woo things I do, or the strange foods I eat, and understand that they are not all of me, that they are just the funny details within a much bigger existence, which by the way, is also bigger than my ego or my identity, they are not all of who I am or who you are, then I can laugh at myself because none of it is all that important. And here's a pro tip I learned doing stand up comedy. When I laugh at myself, first I get the audience on my side and then we can laugh about anything after that, including them. So it's actually a great way to open up the whole room and let everyone feel more at ease. So here's an exercise. Consider what others might find odd or funny or strange about what you think, what you wear and what you eat. Consider how someone else might poke fun at it or not understand it and do it yourself. First step into the you that's bigger than that quality or habit or article of cloth. You can handle it, I promise. It's important that we don't let our own egos and their sensitivities rule our lives. And that's advice for more than family gatherings. It will serve you in every situation. You have an inner being. Some people call it a spirit, a soul, a psyche, an unconscious under your sense of self or your quirks or that food or what you wear. And it's just energy. And that's connected to everything. It's connected to your family, it's connected beyond your family, it's connected to nature, it's connected to the whole. Our job is to let go of all the stuff on top of that quickly or slowly or somewhere in between, we let go and we become free. So keep that in mind. So those are the three tools for the holidays. Put your hand on your heart, connect with your inner self, cultivate acceptance and try to laugh at yourself sometimes. Don't take yourself too seriously in preparation for this gathering. I hope that helps. Best case scenario, there's one more level to this, so forgive me, I'm going on and on. And I just want to warn everyone, we only have three questions tonight, or maybe four, but I go into them in great depth. There's one more level to this. Best Case scenario, you actually bring a loving vibe into this family experience instead of feeling defensive or reactive. Best case scenario, you are so centered and peaceful that you ask the questions and you get curious about your uncle, and you become the spiritual grownup in the room, putting out a really loving vibe. Now, I gotta say, that's a stretch for me to even say because I think I've spent so many holiday seasons just being defensive and worn down, so. And my family's great. I love my family. But it's a ton of energy coming at you from a ton of different directions, different generations, different needs. Everyone's nervous under pressure. But when I find even within that chaos, I can use my sleep magic tools and just bring my awareness to my breath and let my body relax and let go, then, you know, I can say, hey, uncle so and so. Tell me about the best thing you did this year. Tell me about what makes you happy, and tell me what you're looking forward to in the next year. I want to know. And I bring the vibe instead of waiting for everyone else to mess with my vibe. With genuine openness and curiosity and that still centered place inside, you might turn a lot of those interactions around. You have the capacity to do that. I mean, if not this year, it'll come. So right now, bottom line is, take care of yourself, keep that hand on your heart, and just breathe. Thank you so much for the question. I really appreciate it, Gina. Have a great holiday season.
