Episode #405 – The Weather Within: Making Sense of Emotions with Kathy Washburn

Cherylanne Skolnicki:

I am Cherylanne Skolnicki, and this is Brilliant Balance, the show for those of us who still dare to want it all, who have big dreams and bold ambitions, I think we deserve to have a big, full life and the freedom to enjoy it. So let’s design our next chapter together for brilliance, not burnout. Each week I’ll bring ideas, insight, and a fresh perspective to keep you growing into a life that feels as good as it looks brilliant. Balance your life your way. Now let’s get started. This is episode 405 of the Brilliant Balance Podcast, the weather within Today, we’re making sense of emotions with Kathy Washburn. So welcome back to the Brilliant Balance Show, my friends. Today I am just delighted to be joined by Kathy Washburn. Kathy is a myriad of things. She is a cancer survivor. She is a life coach. She is a positive psychology expert, and just a very bright light.

Someone whose work really can help us navigate our own inner landscapes. And I met Kathy through a mutual friend a while back, and then I got myself on her email list after being a guest on her podcast. And I have to tell you, I read a recent Substack post that she wrote called The Weather Within. So you’ll hear the echo in this episode title, why Your Emotions Are Not The Problem. And after devouring every word of this post, I just knew I had to have her on the show. So in this episode, we’re gonna dive into how to really read your internal climate, if you will. We’re gonna take this weather metaphor pretty far and how we can use that to help us learn to respond with compassion, not necessarily control when life storms roll in. I think I am learning so much about how embracing our feelings can actually be our most empowering resource, and Kathy is gonna really help us dig into that today. So please welcome Kathy Washburn.

Kathy Washburn:

Hello Cheryl. Ann, I’m so excited to be here.

CS:

I am so excited that you are here. You are just a delight. And I know the listeners are gonna hear this in my voice because whenever I’ve had the chance to talk with somebody before we record an episode, I just think that energy comes through and I am so happy to get to spend this time with you.

KW:

I agree. And energy is what we have, right? It’s,

CS:

It’s all we have, right? It’s, we have, it’s really all we have. So you wrote this, just knock your socks off post on your substack. Mm-hmm. I love this metaphor about emotional weather, and we are gonna go really deep into this one very narrow slice of your work in positive psychology. Okay. But before we go deep, I wanna go a little bit wide mm-hmm <affirmative>. And can you maybe give the listener a bit of your backstory? What was life like before you did this work and how did you get here?

KW:

Hmm. Before I did this work, I was completely numb to emotions. I was incredibly successful from the outside in. I worked at an investment management firm. I helped start, I worked there for 25 years. I was married, uh, for 25 years. I was about to turn 50 lots of like milestones happening.

CS:

Oh, big. Yes.

KW:

And that’s when the big bad wolf came and hof and puffed and blew my house down. Oh my goodness. And I think that the blowing of the house down happened because I had zero emotional resilience. I was kind of keeping it together. I am a good girl. I am a lifelong people pleaser, emotional suppressor. We can talk for hours about how I became that way and how I was loved into being, but suffice it to say it was working for me. Oh. Until it wasn’t.

CS:

Amen.

KW:

So that’s kind of what happened. And I retired from my job, and then shortly after my husband, I found out he was having an affair and planning on leaving me, but waiting for my two sons to get on planes to Spain and Australia. So all of a sudden I was there like that little wind sock at the used car lot, just like flailing

CS:

Everywhere, get exposed. Oh my goodness. They

KW:

Get exposed with no tether. Like I just, everything that I had tethered my meaning to was gone. Was gone.

CS:

Wow. And from that place, somehow you find your way forward. So I think just if you’re listening to this and meeting Kathy for the first time, just you can put yourself in those circumstances. Imagine that all in one season and really a very short, you know, unilaterally aligned season, your career ends as you know it, your marriage ends, and both of your children leave the country for adventures of their own. And you are there blowing in the wind trying to figure out where next. That’s, that’s a terrifying thought, I think probably to most listeners. So what did you do? How did you find your way forward?

KW:

Well, there was a tenacity that I think I can attribute to cancer survivorship. I had, uh, it was 14 years prior, I got through stage four vulvar cancer and just got back to normal. And I feel a bit like I flitted that second chance away. So when this happened, there was this tenacity and urgency like, okay, this is not gonna knock me down. I can’t throw this second chance. And I had friends that were dying of, you know, and I’m like, oh my God, why them and why not me? Like, this is crazy. Right. So I felt like I had to do something about it. And there was first like this reckless act where, uh, there, there was this money, amount of money, money kind of going around a spreadsheet in our mediation meetings that was supposed to be for my 50th birthday and visiting our children in Australia and Spain.

KW:

And it kept moving around the spreadsheet. And finally my ex-husband out of kindness or narcissism, I don’t know, but he said, you know, Kath, you should just take that money. You should just, you should just go on the trip. And something inside me said, uh, hell yeah. I don’t even know how it happened. But that night I booked myself in this, uh, active adventure tour and I went to New Zealand for a month and hiked the north and south islands. I had no business being there. I was 30 pounds lighter than I am now. I was sick. And even the guide was like, what kind? What, what, what part of active adventures did you not understand?

CS:

Did you not get <laugh>? He’s like,

KW:

You don’t even have hiking shoes. What the hell?

CS:

What the hell are you doing here? I

KW:

I love it. But I needed to completely shift my world. Like I couldn’t be in that old place, that house with ghosts flying all around, I just had to get out, get out. Yes. And then when I came back, I, that just kind of buoyed me to be on my own side. And I got an apartment and one night I was just searching. I don’t even know what I put into Google, but it gave me this course called the Science of Happiness. And I started talking with Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I dove in till four o’clock in the morning, just absolutely gobsmacked at this idea that I could be something different. That actually there was something good and right inside of me, even though I felt rejected, abandoned, hopeless, and yes. So it was like a whole

CS:

The path this world opened. Yes. Well, you know, when you’re there till 4:00 AM in the rabbit hole that some world has cracked open. Right. There’s a portal there for you when you’re that inflow. Mm-hmm

KW:

<affirmative>. It was such a portal. And so the, the,

CS:

The field of positive psychology was like this siren song mm-hmm <affirmative>. That pulled you toward the next chapter at that time. And that was about 15 years ago that you were 10 years, or 10 years ago, 10 years ago, that you were doing that transformation. And kind of since then you’ve been building into this kind of work, writing, coaching, thinking,

KW:

Teaching. I teach a lot about emotions because at age 50 I had no idea what they were.

CS:

Isn’t that wild? How many of us get this far in life? I just turned 50 this year. And I am telling you like you can get this far and not actually be in touch with emotions. I think there’s a generation or 10 that got skipped on figuring out how to be in touch with them. For sure. And so many of the women and men who listen to this show, I think, are trying to cross that chasm for our children’s benefit. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. You know, we wanna be in touch with our own emotions and do better and, ultimately , put them in touch with theirs. I think that is a huge purpose driven reason for doing this hard work. Um, it’s time consuming. It’s hard. It does not feel natural. And I think these models that you teach, including the one we’re gonna talk about today, are so helpful in giving us something to tie to, to like, that feels like a little bit more of a framework that we can grab onto. So I’m grateful for it. Mm-hmm

KW:

<affirmative>. Me too. <laugh>,

CS:

You are, you are a wise woman, Kathy, and people are gonna get to know you through this. I hope lots more people will. We’re gonna link to all your stuff as we go through the episode, so they can get your substack and read your work and hear from you on your show. But I wanna, let’s get into this model around the emotional weather because I think that, again, while it is one slice of an angle that you can unpack, um, it’s a really powerful one. And I had heard it probably for the first time shortly after 2020, like after everything was falling apart. I think I heard this from Mary Hyatt on my show. She said it, somebody may have heard this episode and it was a stop me in my tracks moment of wait a minute. That is such a great metaphor. So can you just unpack the metaphor of emotional weather at a base level, um, and what it maybe reveals about how we relate to our feelings?

KW:

Yes. It’s such a beautiful question. And the first thing, which is probably the, the thing that gobsmacked me the most about emotions was they need motion. And like weather, weather moves. It’s sunny, it’s rainy, it’s stormy, it’s peaceful. And the idea that you’re not supposed to stuff an emotion or stay in an emotion for hours upon hours was so enlightening to me. Because I think, and I know this happens with men, but with a lot of women that I work with and for me myself, so many times, there is an emotional storm going on inside with this. And I’m in communication with another human. And it gets stuck like right here. Yes. I free you’re

CS:

Point to your throat. Yes. Like it’s stuck right at your throat.

KW:

It’s stuck right here. And I swallow it back down and that swallowing it back down and not expressing what’s happening keeps you in the storm. And there is this idea of, you know, not, you don’t always have to express what’s happening. And sometimes it’s not really a good idea, uh, to express it if you’re really hijacked. But there is a process that is necessary. And just like if you’re the mountain, you know, there’s a great mountain pose or mountain meditation and yoga, and if you’re the mountain, how can you just witness, how can you be a witness to what’s happening? And it gives you a whole new perspective on emotions. It kind of removes them from who you are. You know, instead of like, I am angry, it’s, wow, this is making me really angry.

CS:

Right. I’m,

KW:

I’m not angry.

CS:

No, I’m watching it roll. I’m observing it. I may be affected by it. I have these physical sensations being caused by it. I have thoughts coming up because of it, but it will, when addressed, move through sometimes not even when dressed. There’s nothing I need to do and it will move through. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. I think. So I want everybody listening to picture that picture yourself as like a literal mountain. And you, if you had a 24 7 camera on that mountain observing weather patterns, right? You would see daylight come through sunrise and then it would move to nightfall, right? You would see wind move through maybe moving the leaves on the trees. You might see rain come, the clouds come in, rain pour, right? Winds are whipping, it moves through again, the sun comes back out. Like think about all the season to season you would see snow hitting it instead of rain.

CS:

You might see leaves falling. Like all of these things that are happening around the mountain. But the mountain is still the mountain, right? The mountain doesn’t have to participate in the weather system that’s moving through. I think that’s kind of what we’re playing with here, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. As a system of, and sometimes I think that when you mention this briefly, there’s other people involved in these emotional weather systems. It’s their emotion that we’re in the presence of. So back to we’re the mountain, but here comes this weather system that actually has nothing to do with us. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. But we’re witnessing it. Do you find that we get sucked into those just as easily as we get sucked into our own?

KW:

Yes. Especially if you are unaware. Yeah. Like it happens without us even knowing. I mean, we’ve all been there and there’s a lot of, um, there’s a lot of research about this, about you, you know, your emotional vibration. Yes. If you’re kind of spinning up here and there’s a great graph about this, but if you’re spinning up here in joy and hopefulness Yeah. And somebody comes in the room and they’re way down in the lower vibration, it’s not easy to get that person up to where you are. But it is way

CS:

Really

KW:

Fall for bringing you down. And sometimes they’ll poke and they’ll poke mm-hmm <affirmative>. And they don’t know they’re poking. They just can’t resonate with your energy and your energy can’t resonate with theirs. So without self-awareness, woo,

CS:

Everybody matches. Okay. Pause. That’s really important. So I’m gonna play back what I heard you say. So you are in the room and you’re happy, right? You’re dancing around, listening to music, you’re excited about your evening that’s coming up, whatever. You’re at this high vibe. Someone comes in the room at a low vibe, they’re depressed, angry, sad, worried, whatever. They can’t match yours. That’s really hard to come up with. So they almost unconsciously want you to match theirs. There is going to be this gravitational pull downward because they want what connection. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Exactly. That’s where I bet you’re headed with this. Like, that vibe is so desperate for connection, it’s hard to get when there’s dissonance. So we’re gonna try to create the match. That’s a mind blowing idea.

KW:

So, and this sounds so simple, but it is not easy. And I share this with that caveat. All it takes is for one person to break that chain and its awareness, right? So if it’s that moment and you’re the dancer and you see it coming, like the black cloud has entered the room, you know, this person’s off first, like get into your body. It’s awareness of like, okay, I’m stepping into my body. I always invite people just to take two mothers. May I step backwards? Like not, not just to separate yourself, but to mentally give yourself some space.

CS:

Literally you’re saying literally take two physical

KW:

Steps backwards. You have to take your body with you.

CS:

Okay. Now to explain why that works. ’cause that’s fascinating because

KW:

Our body is the thing that’s reading the energy of the other body. And without the connection of your body and mind, you’re gonna do something where you look back and go, wow. Why did that happen? <laugh>,

CS:

Why did I say

KW:

That word? Or those words, you know, like, don’t come in here and rain on my parade. I’m dancing. Right? I mean that just, woo. You just went down. You

CS:

Did. Okay. So literally, the first piece of guidance here is you feel this coming in, here comes this incoming dark cloud. You take two physical mother may eye steps backwards, big giant steps

KW:

To

CS:

Reconnect your mind and your body mm-hmm <affirmative>. To be aware that what is really happening here is that my body, which is a vibrational field of energy, is reacting to this other person’s vibrational field of energy. And I gotta get control of my body. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Or at least get into it. Okay. Then what? And

KW:

Then the magic, um, is curiosity. If nothing else. If you can’t dig deep for empathy, you can’t. Curiosity is the queen of all mother shifts <laugh>. Yes. Where you can say, wow, you look sad. What can I do for you? How can I help you? That’s way different than a mother trucker. I see you coming in the room <laugh> like, don’t write on my parade. It really helps you. Like you want connection also, why

CS:

Are you always like this? Yes.

KW:

Why are you

CS:

Always doing

KW:

This? Always a never mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. Instead you just, you create that space because you want connection also. Yes. And that connection of why you always, that’s not the connection you’re looking for. What’s really deep down is a heart-centered connection. So your two giant mothers, may I step back, is an opportunity for awareness of you, ’cause you have more power than they do. They’re way down. They’re hard to gather, but you can gather yourself.

CS:

Also a really important point. I’m gonna just keep bolding and underlining Please do, please do these gems you’re saying you have more power than they do because the person at a higher vibration, meaning more positive sort of mood, they’ve got more access to themselves. That is the more powerful place. Somebody who is really in this low vibe down energy has lost their power. They kind of are hijacked, you used the term before mm-hmm <affirmative>. Right? There’s a takeover happening. And because of that, they don’t have the power to steer out of it in the same way that you have the power to stay out of it. That’s what I’m hearing you say. Yes.

KW:

And if you are also feeling hijacked, you also, the only thing you do have control over is you in either one of those situations. Yeah. And once you become aware and you know anybody listening, you’re gonna have knowledge that you didn’t have before that you can’t unknow. So the next time you find yourself in that situation, you’re gonna remember, I gotta take two mothers, may I step back because I don’t like what’s happening at this moment. And the only thing I can control is my own, my own weather system. Mm-hmm

CS:

<affirmative>.

KW:

And I can let my weather system go into a tsunami right now, or I can step back, become that witness. Like, oh wow, I’m gonna just let that cloud just pass over me, gather my wits about me and just ask a question. Mm-hmm

CS:

<affirmative>.

KW:

So this is, so,

CS:

I love that we’re in this territory of how it relates to our relationships with other people because I do think we feel like emotions can be contagious and you’re sort of giving us a framework for why can you also unpack this? Let’s say you unexpectedly find yourself in traffic and now you’re gonna be late and there’s nobody else involved really, other than the people who are also stuck in traffic. Right. It’s kind of nobody’s fault per se, but the emotions come up mm-hmm <affirmative>. Because now I’m gonna be late and how’s that gonna make me look? And I feel all the things are bubbling. Anything different about the model in a situation where it’s sort of, of your own making versus you’re witnessing someone else?

KW:

Yeah. I use a lot of, um, Shazad Charmaine’s work in positive intelligence. And what he talks about is how can you shift to making whatever it is a gift and opportunity. And so it’s often related to either a circumstance you, yourself or another person. So it can be, you know, the circumstance of traffic Traffic, right? And it’s like, huh, what’s the gift and opportunity? Oh, I’ve been meeting to listen to the brilliant podcast podcasts, <laugh>. So I’m going to listen to two episodes and shut NPR off so I don’t mm-hmm. Wanna torture myself for the next 45,

CS:

Or call my mom, or, or I’m

KW:

Gonna breathe

CS:

For

KW:

In five minutes, I’m gonna connect with my mom. Or you know what, this is an opportunity to have so and so at the office to pick up some slack. And this is making me delegate when I hate delegating and I know it’s the best thing for me to do, but wow, look at this. I now have, so this

CS:

Is an example of if it’s happening for me Right. Sort of what’s in this experience for me instead of what’s happening to me. That’s what I hear you framing here. Yes. Yes. And I think if I put myself in that situation, what I’m probably gonna be experiencing is a whole lot of bodily sensations that I am completely disconnected from mm-hmm <affirmative>. That my brain is translating as bad <laugh>, both at the same time, just generically bad. Right. And then, pausing maybe to get underneath that to say, well, what am I actually feeling here? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. I think it is so important. I don’t know, I was sharing this with you when we were prepping a bit for this episode. That it is so difficult sometimes to even name what I am, you know, we don’t even know we’re having bodily sensations. We don’t know that there’s this constriction between our rib cage or you were pointing to your throat, or you know, your shoulders are up around your ear. We don’t, we have not clocked that that is happening. And yet that is sending these sort of biofeedback signals to us going, alarm bells are going off. Right. It’s bad. How does that play into this model? Like, what do we do with these uncomfortable sensations?

KW:

I, I think that right there is the, the keys to the castle because that emotional bypassing, which we’re all so used to doing

CS:

Right,

KW:

Is actually ignoring the best and biggest gift and opportunity. ’cause it’s our body saying, Hey, something’s wrong. And that’s what negative emotions are. The function of emotion. Negative, negative emotions Yes. Are to alert us that something is amiss.

CS:

Okay. You

KW:

Know, like guilt. Guilt says, ah, there’s something, you’re off your moral code here. Something’s not feeling right. Opportunity to dig a little deeper. Sadness might be saying, Hey, there’s something that you haven’t processed. Maybe it’s a grief that is stuck at like, give yourself some time and space to just weep. But we can, when we emotionally bypass, we are ignoring our own body system to help us elevate and, you know, learn more about and be a better version ourselves. It’s

CS:

Like, it’s like saying, Hey, pay attention. Right. Hey, this is

KW:

Like, hey, pay attention. Yeah.

CS:

Yes. Did you know that beyond hosting this podcast, I also directly support women leaders at the intersection of work and life as a member of bold. You get direct access to me, the women on my team, and a peer group of exceptional women who are rewriting the rules and redefining what it means to have it all together. Go to brilliant balance.com/bold to learn more and apply for your spot today. You are way more advanced in this work than I am. I wanna be very clear about that. That’s why I’m so excited to learn from you. But I think the notion of, there’s a bodily sensation that is like a low grade alarm. It’s saying, Hey, pay attention. Like I just got a blinking red light over here and we ignored it. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So then we get louder, now it’s an auditory signal and we ignore that and then we get a physical sensation and we ignore that.

CS:

Like the signal amps up y’all until we pay attention to what it is trying to say. Which is, could you acknowledge that there is a big feeling here? And if we keep pretending there’s not and just trying to fix it and change it and alleviate it and numb it out and move through it so quickly, we’re missing the point of what it’s, and it’s just gonna keep trying to tell us in different ways. So you have this great analogy of like sitting in a hot room for a minute before switching on the AC. Would you like to talk about that? Like that you feel discomfort without trying to change it? To me, that’s the metaphor I came up with. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Like can you unpack that pause? Why is it important to sit with it before we try to change it?

KW:

Yes. And before I do, I just wanna highlight, uh, something really important that you said. I think more people need to understand this dis-ease that we suffer through by ignoring our own bodily alarms, eventually turns to disease. And I am that girl. When I got cancer, I was probably in the best physical shape I’d ever been in my life. I was in the yoga teacher training program, I could do crow pose like it was my job and I haven’t been able to do it since. But I couldn’t understand, how can cancer grow in a body that is so healthy? And years later, just 10 years ago or eight years ago, I stumbled upon this book by Dr. Lydia Teak who wrote about the behavioral component of cancer. And stuffing emotions is an absolute toxic thing to do to our immune system. And our immune system can only keep fighting for so long. I do believe, and she calls this the type C behavioral patterns. It doesn’t stand for C doesn’t stand for cancer, but it could type a behavioral pattern that leads to heart issues.

CS:

Heart issues, yeah.

KW:

And type C issues lead to cancer. There’s research, it’s all over the place. It is not to me pushed as strongly, but if you are in that disease and that dis-ease and you stay there and you think that that storm is yours all the time and you carry that storm with you and you don’t give it movement, eventually your body will just say, uncle

CS:

Yeah, I can’t keep fighting all of this off.

KW:

I can’t keep fighting. So I, that’s a really important point ’cause that those are the people I work with. Yes. Yes. So sitting with the emotion, it’s a hard thing to do, especially if you’ve grown up ignoring them, suppressing them, avoiding them, fixing them, focusing outside of yourself. Uh, in fact, this is called an others’ directed identity, where if you are that good girl and you, you actually learn to feel through the other person’s feelings, which is a really hard thing to shake, but mm-hmm. It can be done. So for you to sit with the feelings, it’s kind of like you dating yourself, you know? Mm-hmm. Like, okay. I call it intimacy. I see where you just gotta sit with yourself and like, oh wow. Whew, what’s happening? And give it the attention that it deserves. And sometimes it’s really just, you know, when I work with cancer survivors and they’re going to get some scans done and their whole body is just on fire quaking, and I invite them, like, set your watch for 90 seconds, sit down and just name all the things you’re feeling. I am so frustrated that I’m here. My hands are sweaty, I feel like I’m gonna throw up or be sick. I hate this place. And whatever’s happening, give it the space that it deserves. And then at 90 seconds when your watch goes off, pick your whole body up and take it with you as you slowly walk away and find somewhere else to sit in that waiting room.

CS:

Fascinating.

KW:

Set your watch for 90 seconds. And this time only focus on what is going well. Well, and that might just be my fingers moving my lungs. That woman at the desk always reads people with a smile. I have somebody sitting next to me that loves and cares about me.

CS:

Okay. I have a question. So this, this the second time we used physical movement Yes. Change a physical station like you’re moving your GPS to a new spot because I assume we are leaving these other emotions in the other spots mm-hmm <affirmative>. And now we can step into a different collection of them. Like there’s a physical sort of reinforcement of new place, new state mm-hmm <affirmative>. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So, I think I love this and it’s hard, right? I love it. I’ve tried it. It’s hard. So then, so for everyone who’s listening, I do want you to think about applying this. Like, if you are feeling a negative emotion bubble up and your desire is to stuff it down, bat it away, fix it, change it, be mad at it, avoid it, whatever. The invitation here is to try actually feeling it mm-hmm <affirmative>. By naming it and letting all the sensations associated with its surface, but within a time container. Yes. ’cause you said something important, which lasted two minutes. We’re not saying stay there for two days. Two minutes.

KW:

Right. Then

CS:

Move your physical self and pick up the positive emotions that you can access and, and only look for those. So sort of intentionally leaving behind the others at that point, what’s the magic in the two minutes? Is there any

KW:

Yes. And it’s actually 90 seconds, which I call a hot second. But that’s the research of Jill Bolte Taylor. Yeah. Where the 90 seconds is the physiological effects of an emotion if left to its own devices. So if you are crossing the street and you’re on your cell phone and a car horn beeps, like your whole body gets flooded with like, oh, gotta get outta the way. If you make it to the other side of the road, 90 seconds later, all that flows through and you’re like, oh, okay. But if you pick up your phone and call your friend and start about this crazy driver that almost hit you, we

CS:

Extend it, you

KW:

Are choosing to stay in that emotion. So the idea of emotions needs motion and they’re fleeting. They come up to tell us something, and then they’re meant to move across. So getting into that habit of like, whoa, I, I’m feeling a big emotion. I advise all my clients to have a feeling chair or a feeling rug or

CS:

Go there,

KW:

Go there, stand on that rug, or go sit in that chair, set the timer for 90 seconds and just let yourself feel what you’re feeling and then get up, go somewhere else, and just for 90 seconds focus on what’s good. And right in this moment, what happens there is all the sudden you have given yourself a choice. I can choose to go back to that negative feeling. You know, if you have cancer, you’re in the waiting room of a scan that you’re petrified about, that’s your reality. But you’re way more open to what’s happening around you than when you’re completely hijacked. And positive emotions have just as rigorous a role to play positive emotions, opening our world to different opportunities. It actually, our, uh, our vision is, um, our peripheral vision o literally opens up when we’re feeling a positive emotion, positive emotion, it closes. And that’s why they say tunnel vision. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. You have tunnel vision. So when you can tap into positive emotions, all of a sudden you, there are different opportunities around you, things that you couldn’t even see before and you’re more open to hearing. So you can imagine a doctor’s appointment for sure. Where you’re closed off, you pick up stage three, you know? Yes.

CS:

Little snippets of

KW:

Infertile, you know, and you walk away and you don’t hear anything else. But if you can get yourself in that more open state, you can become a participant in your health and you can ask questions and be curious, even though you’re in hell. I mean, there’s no question you are in a dark night of the soul, but there’s also an opportunity in your own inner being to be able to be at choice. That’s what Viktor Frankl talked about. Yes. And I love the meaning. Exactly.

CS:

It’s so, I mean, and in the, in just the worst of you do, if you don’t know Viktor Frankl’s work, he is a Holocaust survivor. And that’s the,

KW:

The

CS:

Origin story of his work. Right. So there’s like no darker circumstances in which we can have somebody developing that theory, but the idea that the one thing we can choose is our reaction to the situation. And there was such clear evidence on survivorship and in the kind of choices people made. That’s a must read in my top 10 ever. I think. So we’ll link that one up. Yes.

CS:

The one of the things you said in the substack, and I know we’ve talked about is like, there’s nothing wrong with any weather. No. We don’t really have, like, there’s no emotion or feeling that’s inherently bad. They’re all part of the human experience. And yet there are, there is sort of this toxic positivity frame that I’m, I wanna make sure we draw a line mm-hmm <affirmative>. Like, how is this not toxic positivity? Mm. Why can’t we just sit with our negative emotions and stay there and wallow? Right. I have my own theory, but I would love to hear like, what’s your take on that? Well,

KW:

And again, this is sad, Charmaine is, when this kind of opened up for me is if you think about the negativity when it’s happening, these negative emotions, and you try to, and he talks about right, right brain, left brain. And the way that I think of it is you can’t just be like, okay, this person in front of me is me off, but I’m gonna swallow it, stuff it, and I’m gonna put on my smiley face.

CS:

Right.

KW:

And I’m gonna just

CS:

Make it till I make it,

KW:

Fake it till I make it. So we just literally bypassed, that was an emotional bypass that was going, that was like going from this side of your brain and leaping over here. Got it. And the work that we’re being asked to do is to go this way, go into my body, like what is happening for me. Like, wow, I feel really violated. Like that guy just took my idea that I just said, and nobody heard me and owned it like it was his own. And we walk outta the conference room and he winks at me like, thanks for that. Oh no. I mean, how can you swallow that instead of feeling it in your body? Like, whoa, something has been violated and this is in my discernment, this is a new issue. It’s not just like dredging up old things and we don’t have to go down that road, but, but feeling what is happening in your body and being on your own side. It’s okay to say to somebody that it wasn’t okay. Yeah. That was not okay.

CS:

But then letting it go

KW:

And then moving through it or asking for what you need, like that wasn’t okay, I need to be acknowledged for my idea. How, how can we solve this? Do you wanna go into the boss’s office or do you want me to?

CS:

I see. So that’s a potential pathway to moving through it. One potential pathway is I’ve given this enough attention, I’m done thinking about it now I’ve done, I’ve given it, it’s due. That’s enough. Another is there might be an action that I need to take or something I need to ask for as we break this good girl syndrome mm-hmm <affirmative>. That allows me to move through it. Otherwise I’m gonna stay stuck because my being hasn’t really gotten what it needed out of that encounter yet. I think that’s an important PS to this, that yes, the listener, I don’t want it to be like, well this is just a stutter step between shoving it down again. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. It’s not, what do I need in order to move through this? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I, I heard something in the way you said this that’s like sometimes you’re just okay. Right. If we use the traffic example, it’s like, yeah, I got this flare of physical sensations. I’m angry, frustrated, annoyed, whatever. I am just, okay, I don’t really need to call 12 people to talk about this traffic thing. There could be a bigger emotional storm that I do require processing. I may need to be there a little longer before I am ready to move through. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. In other words, bigger, slower moving storm instead of a pop-up

KW:

Thunderstorm. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. They

CS:

Both are Okay. It’s, you have to discern what you actually need. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. And the thread through all of this, Kathy, is that they are not permanent. They, you know, all storms run outta rain. There is a piece of life that follows this particular storm, whether it’s tiny or big mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yes.

KW:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I think it’s also important to note that all stormy weather contributes to the mountain. The grass grows, you know, the trees move in a certain way because of storms. Like they do have an effect. They do leave residual good and bad. They can allow us to change to, to the version that we’re, that we’re reaching for if we allow them to. So even though it’s a hell, you know, hellish storm, if you choose to address the emotion, address the person in front of you, you get to deepen your intimacy with another human. If you choose to, instead of emotionally bypassing speaking up for yourself, then all of a sudden your road with this coworker that used to just take all your stuff and run with it stops and you become, and you become known for your work. So they are opportunities. It’s almost like our whole body’s saying, are you sure you wanna be a better version? Do you share? Like, it’s, it’s our opportunity to really kind of be on our own side.

CS:

It’s so good. There’s so much depth in this really there. I think that I would encourage listeners to find other listeners if you know them, to unpack some of this with, or maybe share this with somebody that you can have a two-way dialogue, because I think there’s so much depth to this idea, especially if you’re hearing it for the first time. I have one other kind of thread I wanna pull a little bit, which is, is there, we’ve talked a lot about sort of noticing it as it moves in, but when I think about this weather metaphor, there’s also kind of the element of forecasting. Mm. Right. We can see the weather coming. Is there a piece of this model that looks more like a forecast? What and what would that look like?

KW:

Yeah, it’s called preempting the saboteur <laugh>. That’s ADE’s language. It’s when you, you know, for example, um, you’re gonna get together with a friend of yours who is kind of like or, you know, a little gloomy. You know that they’re on this lower and you’re kind of thinking, oh gosh, there we go, there we go. So you know that you have a meeting with her at lunch with her at two, and you are envisioning like, how am I gonna handle that moment when she says, oh, I didn’t get that job, or I didn’t do, and you are like forecasting in the way of like imagining the whole thing playing out and you see yourself being curious or you see yourself being empathetic or you tap into your desired feeling of being connected. Like, I cannot accentuate desired feelings and values more for all your listeners if they have, I know if they’re working with you, they know these things, but when you can tap into like, I really wanna feel connected.

KW:

Yeah. Or I really wanna feel creative. And so using those feelings so that you can direct the energy and that conversation and kind of preempt any saboteur energy or negative energy of yourself. Like, oh, shut the truck up. I can’t hear this again. You keep saying this. Instead you say, gosh, you know, this is, this is like the fourth time you’ve mentioned this. This must be really hard for you. What, what is it that you’re, that you’re struggling with? How can I help you use different energy and serve your desire to be connected? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Does that make sense?

CS:

It does. And what, where my wheels are turning is we all know people like this Right. That you’re just describing. And so I was in my own little, thought bubble about that. And I think

CS:

The thing that I wonder is paying this model forward for those people. Right. What I’m hearing is, if there is somebody in your life who is regularly like this or negative Nelly, they are stuck in an emotional weather system that they don’t know how to sort of, but sometimes that verbal processing is an attempt. I think it’s a misguided attempt to move through it, but what it is actually doing is potentially keeping them in it. Hmm. So if they’re verbally processing it with you and they also did it with their sister and they did it with their neighbor and they did it with their friend, it’s like they’re just staying in it and in it and rehashing and rehashing and rehashing instead of that experience ended five days ago. Like, and we’re just reliving it instead of moving through it. So I don’t wanna be like the coach in every personal encounter. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And curiosity sounds like an angle that keeps you out of that advice giving. I do, I do think there’s something in this though that’s like, how do you invite other people to do exactly what you’re teaching us today?

KW:

And that’s being that person, yourself, being that curious person will ignite her curiosity in herself versus sitting there and listening to it without saying anything and being secretly or inside like seething. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Seething, which energy she, she can feel that energy even though you’re not voicing it, you are feeding it by saying, oh my god. Yeah. I can’t believe she did that. I, that’s horrible. Right, right. You’re just,

CS:

You’re

KW:

Amplifying it. You’re stuck in the fire. Yes. But you’re saying, wow, you know, this is the fourth time I’ve heard this story. This feels really deep for you. What is it that is so hard to move past?

CS:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

KW:

That’s her, you just gave her the ability, a new question. A new question, which is shifting her into that positive side and, and not toxically it. It’s saying, Hey, how can we shift this energy while you are still in full control of, of your own, your own weather mm-hmm <affirmative>. Because you are, that’s

CS:

The critical thing, is not getting sucked into that storm where then you have to

KW:

Fix

CS:

It. You’re the recipient, you leave that encounter and now you are worked up or sad or frustrated. You’ve, you’ve sort of caught that emotion instead of witnessing it. There’s this difference between witnessing it and taking it on as your own. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And we’re trying to witness, but not take it on like the mountain analogy.

KW:

Yes. And I, you know, in terms of like preempting the saboteur or if you know, you’re gonna walk into it, this might sound so stupid and wooey, but I learned it in yoga to create a bubble around yourself, but not just a bubble. It’s an energetic bubble. That bubble is surrounding you in a mirror. The mirror is facing out. So when somebody’s stuff is coming at you or they’re projecting on you, you’re just sending it back with love. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And it is,

CS:

That’s so beautiful.

KW:

Crazy how power, I mean, we’re all energy, which is how we started this. A hundred percent. We are all energy. So you are in control, like your weather is this far. Like, you don’t, you’re not walking into somebody else’s storm.

CS:

So good. Kathy, so good. I I really, I hope that the listeners today, when you’re sitting there, wherever you are, if you’re in your car, if you’re making dinner, you’re out on a walk listening to this, that you take the time to promise yourself that you will try to practice some piece of what Kathy shared today. Like this is such deep wisdom in teaching and it doesn’t work unless you work it right. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Like, it just doesn’t, you have to try the technique yourself. And, and if you’ve never done anything like this before, it’s gonna feel wackadoodle for a minute. Mm-hmm. Like get, give it space to be a little messy and to have some trial and error. Come back to the episode, listen to how she said it again. We’re gonna link for sure to your work. Mm-hmm. So that they can find more. Um, I would like to particularly link to this post if I can figure out how to do that. Yes. And then where is the best place to send them for more? Kathy

KW:

Kathy washburn.net. That’s my website.

CS:

Perfect. So that’ll be in the show notes. Washburn’s phonetic, but it’s BURN Kathy’s with a K. And I think that it’s such a great place also, sometimes I just tell people, Google this name right. If it’s linked, it is spelled properly in my episode. If you just Google that, you’ll get yourself straight, she is highly Googleable. You’ll find her <laugh>. I am so delighted that we had time to do this, that you responded so quickly after your substack went out. And what a gift to me and to our listeners to have this model to hold at the forefront when, when emotions roll in, to think of them as weather systems that will in fact roll out. And that we don’t have to get swept up in them. We can observe them as they move through so many gems in this. Mm-hmm. Any closing thoughts from you before we wrap it up?

KW:

Uh, this has just been a privilege and an honor and it is my life’s work now to share this because I do think it is definitely the link to our, the next generation, but more importantly the link to release the dis-ease that, you know, if you’re, if you’re 50 or over, there’s a lot that has been building up and if I can help release that, uh, I feel like I can put my head on the pillow at night. Amazing. Thank you. Amazing.

CS:

Well thank you so much for being here today. It has been just an absolute delight. Mm. Alright my friends. That is all for today. Till next time, let’s be brilliant.