Nicole LePera

I can feel bad about what I do, but so many of us have learned not only through the critical voice in our mind and what we believe about ourself to feel bad about who we are, but our bodies have begun to shut down.

acknowledging whether you have the more traditional shaming voice that some of you are very clear that you have or whether or not it's just baked into the habits that you're doing to avoid feeling shame it's in your body so just like we talked about with the free state can i rebuild that connection can i give myself time and space so for me

I know I need if I can break the habit of saying something I don't meet in the moment coming from emotion that I might not have clarity on.

If I can take time away and again, not a walk around the block to ruminate, to get get an even better case about what I'm going to come back and how wrong you were.

Right.

But to calm my body down.

Can I then reaccess and get some clarity to then be able to verbalize maybe what it is that I am truly feeling in the moment?

Because again, when shame shuts us down, we are shut down to the signals in our body, to what is authentically true for us and more so that's to the ability then to act from that truth, setting the boundary, sharing our perspective or communicating our emotion.

I mean, emotions are confusing.

We don't have a guidebook.

And if we didn't have a parent that was attuned, aware enough of their own emotions, able to regulate themselves to gain that awareness, then we're going to struggle to know we're feeling something, to be able to distinguish what it is that we're feeling and then to be able to feel safe enough.

to give words to it.

So it becomes, again, for me, it's an ongoing practice.

It's a,

Practice of connecting with the body, right?

Tuning into emotions are sensations, right?

Anger and anxiety often do go hand in hand with anxiety, oftentimes overlaying or being the surface experience of anger because it's that amplified state of energy racing through our body, of our fists becoming clenched, of our heart racing.

And if anger, as I don't think very few societies have a healthy relationship with anger.

Especially for women.

It can be very destructive in general, especially if you've been on the receiving end of abusive behaviors coming from dysregulated anger, though, again, across gender lines, it's going back to this idea of the good girl, right?