All Emotions are Valid

In this mini episode, Carrie reflects on her previous episode where she shared her mother's story and the emotional impact it had on her. She discusses the importance of allowing space for all emotions, including grief and anger. Carrie also explores the motivation behind her podcast, which is to build empathy and connection by sharing stories. She shares an example of how hearing someone's personal story can change perceptions and build empathy, even if opinions on an issue don't change.

If you have a question for next week's Who Asked Me segment, or if you have a story you'd like to tell, send me an email at carrie.always.talking@gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you.

Facebook group- www.facebook.com/groups/carriesalwaystalking/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/storytelling-is-human-1.5511027#:~:text=Because%20stories%20create%20an%20emotional,apply%20it%20to%20our%20own.

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to episode four. This is a mini episode of Carrie's Always Talking. I'm your host Carrie McNulty and this is a podcast all about stories and connection, both of which go together perfectly. It's the main way that we learn about one another. It's the main way that we build empathy and humanity. And that is something that I feel that we could use a little bit more of in the world today. As I said, this is going to be a mini episode. So, you won't have to listen to me talk for 55 minutes like you did in the last episode. Um, and by the way, if you are listening and following along and liking and sharing, thank you so much. I am just forever grateful for getting the opportunity to do this and to have people who will listen to me do it. It's just never going to not be cool as far as I'm concerned. So this was a fun week for me. I didn't work and I had a birthday, so I am officially in my mid forties.

 I mean, man, what would little me think about that? I remember my mom had this mug that was like, I look 30, I act 20, I must be 40. And she always drank coffee. And so she had this mug and it always kind of made me laugh. And now I'm 44. And I'm like, well, I don't know that I look 30 and I don't think I act 20. I'm definitely 40, 40 plus.

 All right, so what's on deck for today is I want to talk a little bit about just briefly to start the episode last week. And so if you did listen, this will make sense to you. If you didn't, this is your opportunity to hop on and give that a listen. That would be awesome. I would so appreciate it. I did do this episode all about my mom and her health and the complications throughout her life and then the eventual complications in our relationship based off of some of the things that she went through in her life. I really, I gotta tell you, I was super duper nervous about doing that and sharing her story because of how private she was when she was living. And I was, I had nights where I couldn't sleep and went back and forth about releasing it and made my husband listen to it in advance to make sure that he was like, it's okay, it's good. It really caused me a lot of anxiety. And at the same time, there was a part of me that was like, this is definitely the right thing to do. And also, I think the other interesting thing that I noticed was how emotional I was. And it was really good for me because I'm not a super big crier a lot of the time.

 It really helped me tap into some emotion that I hadn't really felt since she passed away in 2021. So to me, it was very helpful and cathartic and good to share her story and allowed me to get unstuck and move through some emotions. And it gave me the opportunity to talk about how you can hold different feelings that seem to be opposing or different thoughts that are opposing and have them feel true to you at the same time. It gave me the opportunity to talk a little bit about dialectics, which comes from a modality of therapy that I was taught earlier on in my career called dialectical behavioral therapy. And I think it's a great modality of therapy. I think there are things in it like mindfulness and emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness skills, distress tolerance. There are things that everybody could use. It's meant for a specific subset of people in certain diagnoses and it's been adapted for different people and their needs. But in that the part is that you're gonna feel conflicted a lot of the time and things are gonna be very polarized, but that's okay. You can hold both of those things at the same time. And I got a comment from a friend, Emily, who has been very kind and listening to the podcast and she said it was okay for me to share this with you. And so I thought I would. She wrote, Carrie, this was so moving. Thanks for sharing this story. I think it's important for us to share these kinds of stories because it's really easy to feel alienated and alone when people we love are going through unimaginable difficulties. And parentheses also never knew that the word dialectic, what that meant until today. And I heard it first on your podcast and then again on another one. End of parentheses. So again, awesome, thank you. And yes, I agree. That's one of the main motivators for this podcast. I'm gonna talk more about at the end of this little mini episode today is that sharing these stories, even when they're hard, and I kind of think especially when they're hard, when it comes to grief, you know, that's sort of where it landed with me is that so often when we lose people, as a society, we're one coach to move on very quickly. You you get the three days off from your employer and then you're supposed to be good to go.

 People are initially more supportive and then we lose our abilities and our attention spans to hang with it longer for that amount of time. And then we kind of think that people are over it and they're moving on. And grief is not like that. Grief isn't linear and it isn't short term. It's lifelong. And it's like a wave that could come and hit you at any time. When you least expect it, you'll hear a song that reminds you of somebody or you'll, whatever, you'll see something that makes you think of that, and all of sudden you're right back in it like it just happened. mean our brains are so cool in that way and maybe frustrating to some people in that way. But when we're talking about grief, there's no right and wrong way to do it and it's also there's some people who are like myself who want to verbally process everything and other people who don't want to talk about somebody that they've lost at all or they can't because it's too difficult for them. All of that and everything in between is a hundred percent okay.
I think the thing that gets hard for me around grief is that when people aren't allowed to express what was difficult in a relationship with somebody who's passed on, in our society, we hear a lot of, don't speak ill of the dead, or they're no longer here to defend themselves, or what's the good in thinking about that? Just think about the positive memories. Unfortunately, I think we're interrupting people's grieving process when we give that message that it's, yes, it might be uncomfortable to hear them talking about somebody who's no longer here and maybe less than a positive way, but that's helping them move through it because they're not saying that it's all negative, but they're acknowledging the parts that were. And especially and in particular, when it comes to feeling relief, when somebody has passed, There's so much guilt that comes from feeling relief whenever somebody passes away. Because that's not permitted, right? That's not a feeling that you're supposed to feel. The feelings you're supposed to feel about somebody are sadness, longing, love, all of that. And feeling relief is a little bit touchier, because again, you're not supposed to speak ill of it. But when people feel that way, I just need to say it's so normal.

 Whether it was a long illness that they had to endure where they suffered greatly and there's a relief that they no longer have to do that, or because the relationship was so complicated that there is a sense of freedom or relief that can come from that person not being here in the form that they were here in. I just think all of it is okay and there needs to be space for all of it. And I'm hoping that in sharing my story that it helps other people to feel more okay with the harder emotions around losing somebody. All of us are complicated just as beings. And so how could relationships with a caregiver or a sibling or somebody you've spent a lot of your life with, how can those relationships not be nuanced and complicated as well? There isn't only one way to feel. And I appreciated Emily's comment and also the ability to allow myself to feel all of those things and hold them all together at the same time. So, I thought, you know, how awesome for her to make that comment. And also it got me thinking a lot about grief. And then it got me kind of rolling onto a little bit more about anger and what we do with anger, societally. especially not to make this all about women, cause I know that there are people that aren't women that are listening to this podcast, but again, societally, especially as women, we really don't get to delve into anger too much and if we do we get labeled as overly emotional or this is a somehow anger has been given a bad rap in my mind you know as an emotion and it's one that we should avoid at all costs and with grief can come anger but not always and many things in life can elicit that emotion I don't always feel that it's a secondary emotion either I think sometimes something will happen and it's normal to feel angry about it it may berelated to another emotion and it may not be. I think the issue with anger is the action that's taken with the emotion. That's the thing that people have a problem with. And I agree because you are allowed to be as angry as you want to be about something. But what you do with that anger, how that physically manifests for you, could be the problem. So you can't flip a table because you don't like your dinner at a restaurant and you punch somebody because you don't like something that they said, or you hurt somebody in a physical way, or sometimes even a verbal way. And that's where the work comes in with feeling that emotion. But in and of itself, anger is not a bad emotion at all. I actually found a quote about it that I liked. Just so happens today. I swear the universe does that for me sometimes. Does anybody else have the experience where you're thinking of something

 I don't know if it's just our phones and its ability to read our minds now or what, but I was thinking about it. And then all of a sudden this quote pops up. And of course it's like even therapy related, which is so funny, but this quote came up and was like, "My therapist once said, anger is the part of you that loves you the most. It recognizes when you're being mistreated, neglected or disrespected. It's a signal to step away from places that don't serve you well. It alerts you when it's time to leave a room, a job, a relationship, or old patterns that no longer work for you. Learn to listen to your anger and make it your best friend. Only then will it subside." And I'm like, yes, because if we look at anger as a part of us or the reaction that a part of us has to a situation. You hear me talk about parts of time. And if anybody wants to know more about that modality of therapy, I would love to talk about that. Maybe that could be a mini episode at some point. Let me know what you all think. It's part of internal family systems. I'm level one trained. So by no means an expert, but it's one of the best things that I have found in my work with people who have trauma.

 But yeah, I mean, the more you lean into understanding or getting curious, like I said in the first episode, like getting curious about why you feel angry and the more you lean into that and get to know it, it's not necessarily a scary or bad emotion, could actually be functioned really well to try to protect you. In most cases, that's what's going on, you know?

The last thing I want to end with today in the mini episode is talking a bit more about what's driving me to do the podcast, what's left a lasting impact on me, and what I'm hoping to accomplish by doing this podcast. I talked a bit about it in the first episode, but I want to talk a little bit more about it. And then I also want to do sort of a call to action or kind of ask a favor from all of you who are listening. And this might help explain why.

You know, first of all, I never have considered myself a creative person in any way, shape or form. I don't do anything art related. Um, I'd love to be able to, I don't play music, but I have a great appreciation for music. There's a lot of things that I've just never looked at myself as somebody who had that capability. um, 2018 and 19, I did improv and I really liked that. And I did find a more playful, creative side to myself and that was really good for me. enjoyed it. But as myself alone working independently, I didn't really see myself as somebody who was creative until I started podcasting. The fact that people are saying to me even the sound of my voice they like recorded or that, you've got a good voice for this or that is surprising to me because there was a point in time where I wouldn't even have considered speaking into a microphone, let alone doing something on the scale. And it has helped me to access a part of myself that does feel creative. It's exciting to come up with ideas for what you want to talk about and lay it out and structure it and have it be something that people enjoy listening to. it's, I'm excited to be able to let the part of me that loves to verbally process everything have the opportunity to be creative. And so that's one reason why this is important to me to continue for my own growth. 

But the bigger reason why I think it's important is for the purpose of building community and connection with the people in the world around me. As I say in every intro, I think that that's something that we need more of in the world is the ability to grow empathy and humanity and understanding for other people. And I think stories are one of the best ways to do that. I remember watching, I think it might've been a 2020 episode around maybe the 2016 election. And there's a lot of issues that very hot topics politically. And there was a woman that was going door to door and telling her story about a very polarizing topic to people that vote the opposite of how she votes. And in this process, it didn't change people's votes or who they were gonna vote for, their feelings about the hot topic issue. But what it did was at the end of it, they were able to say,

 I heard this person's story and now I understand why she needed to make the choice she needed to make for herself and how they viewed her as a human being having a real life experience, it softened their outlook on her and her situation. And you might say, well, that's just one person, but it's still something, it's still movement in the direction that brings us closer together, that we all have real life experiences. People don't just make choices in a vacuum or make choices that you don't agree with because they're not good people. They make choices that they need to make in order to get through their life. And if we understand that more, then we're all growing together. And we still might end up feeling the same way that we feel, but we have gained some ability to connect and some ability to have empathy. And I think that's what one of my goals is for this show. You know, in this week to week having different people on that you might not normally meet and hearing their stories.

 And I like that idea so much that I decided to go looking for some articles through the week this week to help support this. And I'm going to link one of them in the show notes for you to read. And I think it's a really good article that helps to illustrate the point. So just going to highlight a couple of the things that I found. It's an article from CBC news, and it was in March of 2020. And the writer was Christine Hennebury. And she wrote about you know, just the building of connection through storytelling and how it's actually really good for our brains. She says that, "Stories create an emotional connection that we can gain a deeper understanding of other people's experiences. And it not only helps us to understand their lives, but allows us to take in the lessons they've learned and apply it to our own."  It's always going to be something that's relevant in the world, you know, no matter what you get into on social media or everybody loves a good story, anybody loves something that makes them feel. If you really feel something, you're going to be more likely to remember it. You're going to have a visceral connection to it, whether that's a song or a movie or hearing somebody's story. It reminds us that we're human. And I think that's ultimately what the goal is of what I'm trying to do. So I'm gonna link that article, I'm gonna put that in my show notes so if you wanna read it, you can, it's not super long. And again, I think it's interesting and helps support what I'm doing here.

 If this is something that resonates with you or if you like what I'm doing, the call to action or the favor that I'm gonna ask for is that you rate and review my podcast. I've already had nine people rate it, you know, five stars, which is excellent, thank you. But I'm hoping that I could get some reviews as well because if the more people, you know review it or rate it the more likely it is to get noticed which is not easy to do whenever you're just a little one person show So if you would be willing to do that, that would be awesome and I would really appreciate it You can do that in Apple podcasts I'm guessing there's an option to do that wherever you might be listening to this be it You know Spotify or I heart radio or wherever you're listening to my podcast if you would be willing to do that, that would be awesome. I'm not a great salesperson and it's not like I'm doing this to make money. just want this to be noticed because I feel like what I'm doing is important and hopefully you do too. So that's all I've got going for us this week. But next week I'm going to have Courtney Alesandro join us. She is one of my closest friends, but also just an incredibly interesting, cool, funny person who I think we could all learn a lot from, or at least I have learned a lot from her. So yeah, she's going to be talking about a couple different topics. I'm hoping there's a couple stories that she'll tell. And one of the things I do definitely want to have her talk a little bit about is her job as a nurse practitioner working in palliative care. And so that's what we have on deck for next week. And I will leave you with that until then. I hope you all have a very good week and I hope that you will be well and I will talk to you then.

Take care.