Hi there, my name is Piper Harris, and welcome back to the Rebuild Your Ruins of Piper Harris Coaching Podcast. On today's episode, we will talk about how often we don't actually think about our emotions and they spin us up. We feel them, then we respond, and we have it all backwards. We are going to dig into why we need to feel for real and learn how to identify our emotions accurately and why some of us struggle to do so. Hello, hello, hello everyone. I hope you are doing well today. It is Friday for me. Oh, I cannot tell you how excited I am about this Friday. So Friday is my Saturday, Thursday is my Friday, if that makes sense. I don't take clients on Fridays. Uh so I take this day to write blogs, to do podcasts. Um, I just take it as a day just to be creative. Um, often I have a date day with my husband if he can get free from work. So Fridays are um exceptional in my book. But also this Friday, I'm pretty excited. I'm really excited. Want you guys to know I only have 14 Fridays left. That's it. And you're probably asking me, like, what do you mean, 14 Fridays? Well, uh, it is 14 Fridays until I graduate with my master's in clinical mental health counseling. And I am so thrilled for this. Um, so some of you know um a little bit about my background. I actually worked in um the counseling field back in the late 90s and early 2000s. I was working on my bachelor's degree in applied developmental psych, and I had the blessing of learning all things CBT, and you're really getting thrust into a hands-on program. It was phenomenal. I worked in um psychiatric hospitals, um, I worked in um, you know, lockdown facilities, I worked with kids, adults. Um, it was it was pretty incredible. Um, but I was a kid doing the work and um saw some pretty bad things and uh it it about killed me. And I threw my hands up in about 2002, three, around there, and said, I'm done with this, I'm out. I'm never counseling again. I'm out. And then fast forward to COVID, um, I actually was doing really, really well pre-COVID with my coaching business. I was actually still using all my CBT techniques, but calling it coaching, not counseling. Kind of funny how we lie to ourselves. And then COVID hit and um my business went belly up, belly up. Um, it was heartbreaking, but I didn't feel like it was appropriate or ethical to keep my clients on their contracts when we're all losing jobs. And so I'm I'm going through COVID, and as you all know, it was horrifying. It was it was a very scary experience. And I thought to myself, okay, what can I do? I need joy. What and how can I help others? So I created something called the Caring Through COVID series. Um, and you can find some of those on my YouTube channel. And what I did is I worked with other women that I knew and I helped them to develop their businesses. And so we did some podcasts, two YouTube um videos together, and I created booklets for people that took part. So, some free um, you know, how to do certain things, free, free packages, I guess you could say. And it really fed my heart. Um, but then during that time, I also lost my hearing. It was a crazy year during COVID. Um, and so I I really was, um, although really working on the outside to embrace what I was seeing, but also trying to give joy to others, I was really in the depths of my soul feeling great sadness. Um, and so at that time, my husband said to me, He's like, Hey, are you actually gonna go back to school and do what you were made to do? And I just said, What are you talking about? He's like, Well, you've been fake counseling for how many years now? That's what he said to me. And so thankfully, thankfully, I listened to my husband's wisdom. And um I went to school. I started my master's program in the summer of COVID. Um, so whatever that was, June of 2020 or July, June, something like that. And um, I actually started at a different university, wasn't a real fan of their program. And so um got some good grades so I could prove to Liberty that I was the student they wanted. And I have been at Liberty Um University since then, and I can't tell you how grateful I am for their academics. Their program was incredible for clinical mental health counseling. Um, the professors were incredible. I mean, it just it's been an incredible experience. And then for me, on top of it, it was such a joy to have a university that also embraced my Christian faith. And so it just been an incredible experience. So, although I've loved this journey, hallelujah, the process is done in 14 Fridays. I can't wait to breathe and not to think about school on top of everything else. So uh I kind of got off topic from today's topic, but just so you guys know, in 14 Fridays, oh, there's gonna be a podcast. There's gonna be a party, uh absolute party. I might even be popping champagne on podcasts. I don't know. We'll see. So uh today we're talking about are you feeling for real? So um oftentimes uh working in the counseling office, people come to me with these really painful feelings, these really painful feelings that lead them to what we call maladaptive coping strategies or or poor um behaviors that are keeping them stuck and in pain. But the problem is they're not actually feeling for real. They don't know how to clearly and accurately define what the feeling is that they're facing. And so in the C D CBT model, my whole premise is hey, we we don't want to look at the feeling right away because most of the time, all of us kind of get stuck in the feels and it's not real, and we need to look at the thought that's behind the feeling. So, with the CBT model, if you can kind of imagine this with me, I'm using my hands and I recognize your listeners, and you can't see what I'm doing with my hands. But on the left-hand side, we've got thoughts. Thoughts lead to a feeling, and the feeling leads to a behavior. The problem is most of us just go to the feeling and then we behave. But if we can't accurately figure out number one, the thought that's associated with the feeling, then we can't accurately define the feeling and then we can't stop the behavior. Does any of that make sense? So today I want to talk about feeling for real. I want to give you some tools that can really help you to feel for real because what it does is it allows us to have greater emotional regulation and it actually helps us to take away the sting and the pain of the emotions and helps us to break free from those behaviors that are really creating immense pain. So as I was preparing for this podcast, um, I've been actually preparing for this one for a couple weeks, um, just haven't found the time or the like oomph. I don't know. Um, but as I was preparing for it, I was thinking about um, you know, feeling for real and how that starts. And it really is a developmental across the lifespan process. I was thinking about myself in grade school. And in grade school, I was the class clown. I mean, I was over the top. In fact, I'm sure my parents would tell you that I've pretty much been over the top with emotions for most of my life. Um, but what I can tell you now that I look behind me is that I can really accurately define what was going on. Really, what was happening to in that little girl that was over the top, you know, class clown, goofy kid, is that inside I had a lot of sadness. I felt very alone. I felt ostracized. I was bullied. So in grade school, I was really fat. Um, and on top of it, I wore these giant Coke bottle glasses and headgear. Oh, for my young listeners, if you don't know what headgear is, oh, just Google it. It was bad. It was really bad. And then my mom in grade school um would make me little hair bows, and I'll never forget I was on the playground being my silly self. And I don't know if it was a girl or a boy, but they ran up to me and they were being turds and made fun of you know me being fat and then told me I looked like a helicopter because of the bow on my head. Isn't that funny how we remember those things? But then I kind of started reflecting on my middle school years, which, you know, middle school for everyone is awful. It's middle school is not fun. And I apologize if y'all can hear my idiot dog barking. Um, but middle school hit and it was really, really difficult for me. Hormones hit, and I was still that ugly duckling, still the giant glasses, still the really disgusting teeth. Fortunately, I didn't have to wear headgear in public during this time. Um, but I was always over the top. I was still over the top, but inwardly, I still felt that same ugly, fat girl that was bullied, you know. Um, and what's interesting about when I would reflect on that is even though I was this, you know, extrovert on the outside, it was actually creating even more external bullying, if that makes sense. But in middle school, um, I actually met the school counselor, his name was Mr. Mertz, and he had an enormous, enormous impact on my life and my love of counseling because he started talking to me about what are you actually feeling? What are you actually feeling? And so he kind of started to walk me through that at a developmentally appropriate pace because my brain's not even fully formed. Um, but he was just wonderful and he let me be a peer counselor and he just really drove me towards this love of counseling. And then high school hit, and um, as everybody knows, high school is full of emotion, it is full on emotion, and I continued to per to perpetuate this extraversion. Um, but it was ramped up. Um, my first year of high school, I was raped. Um, it was uh my first-time experience. Someone took it from me, and I didn't tell anyone, so I expressed it in this extroversion. In fact, I had a best friend, um, his name was John, and I had grown up with him in grade school during church and all that. And I remember him saying, we had done like this big group called Young Life at our house, and I was only eating ground turkey. I wasn't eating beef at the time, and he swapped them and I ate beef. And I remember him saying to me, You were acting so oddly. I was so afraid it was because I swapped the beef and the ground turkey for taco night. And I'll never forget him saying that because as I can recall that as an adult now, he saw such a severe expression of extroversion and these flamboyant emotions on the outside that he's saying, Oh my gosh, this is so severe, and this is so not like this is not the piper I know. I know she's goofy, but there's something going on. Oh, it's my fault. And I'll never forget when he said that to me. Um man, I'll never forget when he said that to me. So as I was recalling these feelings, what you can see is I had big feelings, right? I was expressing an outward emotion that was incongruent with the inward feeling. And the behavior, if we think about the CBT model that was leading me to the behavior was avoidance. That's all it was. I was avoiding the pain of being the fat kid being bullied. I was avoiding thinking about how mean kids were for to me. I was avoiding thinking about my rape. And so I perpetuated this false emotion and persona on the outside because the inward feelings were so enormous. Okay. But the thing is, is I wasn't feeling for real. So it made everything that much worse. So when we talk about feeling for real, we really have to understand how our feelings create behaviors, but then we'll get to the thinking part that's really the most important part. But so there's this guy named Plutchick, I think that's how you say his name, P-L-U-T-C-H-I-K. Um, in 1958, he created a model of emotions because what he was finding is that people were not accurately defining emotions. And when we can't accurately define emotions, we can't regulate emotions. And so he came up with this model of emotions where it's like you have two opposing more emotions. It might be joy versus sorrow, anger versus fear, acceptance versus disgust, surprise versus expectancy. And then you have to think about the intensity of emotions. But do any of us do that? None of us do. None of us. Um, so but he tried kind of putting these emotions into this chart. And what's interesting when I look at his work in 1958, it was phenomenal work. And he was really trying to help individuals regulate emotions, and it's really been fleshed out even further over the years. But here's the thing: um, we have what he said primary emotions. He called it joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, anticipation. He called those primary emotions. What I would say now, I utilize an emotions wheel, and the the primary emotions that I see are feeling bad, afraid, angry, disgusted, sad, happy, or surprised. Okay, so pretty similar, pretty similar there. And then he said there's secondary emotions: there's love, submission, awe, disapproval, remorse, contempt, aggressiveness, optimism. And that's kind of where he stopped. And then he said, if you put certain emotions, primary and secondary, together, it becomes a combination emotion. But what he was saying about this is if we can't accurately define what emotion we're feeling, then we can't accurately regulate the emotion we're feeling. And what happens with that is then we go over the top like I did, and the behavior goes to avoidance. And what I can tell you with my work with anxiety and stress-related disorders. So I'm talking about generalized anxiety, panic disorder, um, social anxiety disorder, specific phobias, uh, PTSD, trauma-related, um, grief, um, prolonged grief, those are primarily what I work with. And what they're saying is that, well, y'all, I apologize if you heard the squeaking ball, you would not believe this is the third time I've tried to record this between my children and my dogs. I just, I, I, I can't catch a break. So I apologize. So, what I was saying is when I specifically work with anxiety and stress-related disorders, what happens is we create avoidance mechanisms, those poor coping strategies, and it just makes these emotions bigger. But if we can't accurately define the emotion, it makes the emotion and the feeling bigger and it makes our behaviors that much worse. So, what I try to teach individuals with anxiety and stress-related disorders is that we have to learn how to accurately define the emotion as well as accurately define the intensity within context. Meaning that, for example, if I have an individual that's coming to me, say, for a trauma, maybe it's a rape like myself, they have created, they have big feelings. The feeling is um fear, shame, sadness, whatever the anxiety, whatever those feelings are, and they're extreme because of the trauma. But what happens when we see things in like this in trauma is that rather than look at the emotion, the feeling, and identify what's the root cause or the thought behind the emotion, they go to their behavior, which is an avoidance strategy. So it might look like a trauma victim being hyper-vigilant. They have feelings of anxiety, fear. They create a coping mechanism of hyper-vigilance, which means they don't go out in public, they might jump at certain sounds, whatever it is. And so they've created a poor coping strategy that then leads them to avoiding the feeling and avoiding anything that really could help them externally, like creating community, talking to a counselor, right? So, contextually, if they're out in public and say a man looks at them in a way that they thought was really bad and they were gonna come hurt them when maybe he just was looking in their direction, they jump to the coping strategy of really becoming fearful, running away and going home. Well, contextually speaking, he probably was just looking in their direction. Does that make sense? So we have to help, I have to help clients to be sensitive to the um motion to their emotion, what it's driving to them, and to what degree um is this intensity really contextual? We have to dig into contextually speaking, is this something that we should be afraid of? Does that make a sense? So, what this Plutchick um guy talked about is that we really need to understand as well how our primary emotions interact with our secondary emotions. And so he said, for example, when you have anger and disgust at the same time, that is contempt. And as I was, you know, researching Plutchick and thinking about this, I see this a lot with my couples, a lot with my couples. In fact, when I see contempt um with couples, I'm like, oh boy, this is gonna be tough to recover from. Because what happens is like, say, for example, you have a primary emotion of anger. You might be sitting there and you're mad at your spouse because they don't um pay attention to your feelings. They, you know, for example, a pretty common situation that I see in the counseling office is the wife is really annoyed that the husband isn't noticing her haircut or really saying, Hey, thank you for taking care of things around the house, yet the husband's asking for sex all the time. So she's carrying this anger, just like she is holding it around because she's not saying to him, I have this anger, but she's also not accurately defining what that anger could be. What else is is in involved in the anger? Is it frustration? Is it um feeling distance between y'all? She's not she's not accurately defining it. So she stews in the anger. She stews in the anger, and the husband keeps pushing for more sex because he's like, why does she keep pulling away from me? So then he has anger, right? Well, then what happens is they might not even give in to sex or they have sex, and then guess what happens? They don't enjoy it, and it's disgust. They're disgusted. Like I just did it because I thought maybe I'd get what I needed from you. So do you hear that? I'm sure maybe you might have gone through this before. I see this a lot in the counseling office. But the problem is if they hold on to that anger and that disgust, pretty soon there's contempt, and that's what lands them in my office. That contempt, I I say to my my clients, that contempt, imagine it as this oozing, disgusting, uh like liquidy force that's like crawling through the floors and intertwining in every bit of your relationship. Contempt is a bad thing, and again, it calms up because we're not accurately defining our emotions and sharing the thought behind the emotion. The wife wasn't just angry because her husband, you know, wanted sex all the time. The wife was angry because she's like, Hey, you don't see me. I want to hear that you love and adore me. The the husband wasn't angry because she wouldn't give it up. He was angry because he's like, Why doesn't she desire me? What's wrong with me? Those are the actual thoughts behind the anger. So we really have to be aware of how primary emotions interact with secondary emotions and what they can create. So Pletchik also said things like, if you put joy and love together, the combination creates trust. Absolutely. How about he says you put trust and submission together? That can actually create fear, right? I work with a lot of people when they finally work on some of their interpersonal issues and they find the one and they trust them and they submit and they're like, heck no, this is scary. This is what we call cold feet, you know, runaway bride. That's what that is. Um, some other uh combinations he talks about is you can put sadness and remorse together, and there might be a disgust. Um, you could put anticipation and optimism together, and that's joy. So it's really important for us to kind of see how um emotions can interact together to create an even greater feeling or emotion. So additionally, when it comes to feeling for real, we really have to pay attention to um the emotion and how much emotion or excuse me, attention we're giving to the emotion. Does that make sense? So feel the emotion, feel the feel, but how much attention are you giving to it? If you're a highly anxious person, um, oftentimes we have a physiological response preceding the the actual feeling. We don't recall it right away. So if you're highly anxious, you might have heart palpitations, you might have a tightness in your stomach or your chest. So all of a sudden you are focused on those physiological feelings, and then you're like, oh my gosh, I'm anxious. I'm anxious. Anxious, I'm anxious, I'm anxious. I'm gonna have a panic attack. I'm a panic attack, and that's all you focus on. And then what does that do? It creates more and more and more emotion when it's just a feeling. Feelings aren't always facts, y'all. Sometimes our brain just lies to us. So what we need to do is we have to create emotional clarity or understanding of the emotion. We have to, because we can't regulate our emotions if we don't. So how do you do that? Well, from the CBT model, we have to think about the thought that happens before the emotion. And you know, research shows us that the that if we have really low emotional awareness, it actually strengthens our maladaptive strategies or those poor coping strategies. They don't, they're the things that don't work, the things that actually increase our negative affect or what we call um sadness, depression. So that's what research shows us. If we keep hiding from what these emotions are actually telling us, and we don't take the time to define them specifically and define the intensity and where they're coming from, we actually increase the negative feeling that we're feeling. Crazy, right? So emotional attunement is absolutely key. So again, going back to if we don't accurately name, we choose poor coping tools. And then we tend to be in a more negative mood. So, um, like I said before, it's those avoidance patterns that we see often with trauma and anxiety, stress-related disorders. So, um, one of the other tools I want to talk about or feelings that I want to talk about that is extraordinary, extraordinarily common for not being able to feel what's real is shame. Shame is a really poor coping tool that we use. I don't know why we use it. Um, with my work with my clients, um, we work on cognitive distortions and recognizing that shame voice, that shame speak. And shame is experienced in the thought of I am bad. And then in turn, we act out the shame for that badness, right? And then that morphs into hopelessness, powerlessness, and self-consciousness. I mean, if you want to take it back to biblical times, you can think of Adam and Eve. They ate the fruit and then they hid themselves from God. They felt shame, they covered themselves, and then they blamed each other. So that is a very typical poor coping tool. So when you're thinking about your feelings for real, when you first start trying to accurately define what's actually going on, you're more than likely going to feel shame first because this is a very common human experience. So we have to be sure that we untangle our feelings from shame. Our feelings from shame. Now, what I'll say is guilt's not a bad thing. If you have guilt left left, that's okay. Guilt is kind of this uh form of tension, and it it bears out like in regret, maybe, and then it kind of can lead us to a more empathetic thinking of self and others, and it helps us fix something, right? It gives us a bit of renewal. So I kind of diverged with guilt and shame, but just be aware when you feel for real, shame's gonna be that first thing to come up. So thinking about primary, secondary emotions, um, there is um really the most important thing that I start with with my clients is you gotta feel felt. Feeling felt. Does that make sense? It's a key factor in that interpersonal relationship with my clients. I have to have this responsiveness to them and their feelings and call out, oop, hold on, that's that's uh a primary emotion you're feeling, but what is at the depth of it? And so Dr. Dan Siegel came up with this scene called name it to tame it. Name it to tame it. And basically, this is accurately defining emotions. But what research shows us, if we accurately name our emotion, we can tame, can excuse me, tame the behavioral response. And so the process of counseling, we are allowed to and we work through processing emotions through storytelling and it helps us gain new perspectives on our experiences. So, for example, I'm working with an individual with um terrible panic disorder, and we're working through it, and often, and this is one of my most favorite techniques um that I work with my clients. We're talking about high levels of anxiety and what he was feeling. And I always ask my clients, I say, you know, if I could take care of X, Y, Z, if I could take away your anxiety, I've I could take away your fear, if I could take away, you know, your your sadness, would you do it? And they're like, uh, yes, take it away now. And then I say, Well, if that's the case, why didn't you just get rid of it before now? And I'm telling you, the look on their faces like, dang, Piper, that was really rude. That's why I'm here for you. You're supposed to help me tell tell me how to get rid of it. And I ask them again, if you're really serious about getting the uh rid of the emotion, then why don't you do it? And they they feel assaulted by that question. And then I say, okay, so there's a reason you're keeping your anxiety, your fear, your sadness. And they go, Why would I keep this? This is horrible, Piper. I say, okay, just stay with me. What does the anxiety actually help you with? What's good about your anxiety? What's good about your sadness? What's good about your fear? And they're like, Piper, nothing. Like, come on, keep going. And I coax them through this. And really, what we find, what's really fascinating, is yeah, we might have that anxiety. We might be at the very top level of the surface of the water, right? But what is that anxiousness telling me? Well, it might be telling me that I feel maybe excluded in something, but what does that say about me that's good? The anxiety that's pointing toward. Well, I want to be part of community. I I find that community is so important. So the anxiety is pointing to a really wonderful characteristic trait of this human being. Or anxiety really pushes you hard to get things done. Or your anxiety when you worry about others, what does that say about you? You're loyal, you're caring, and so we work through this idea of I'm not getting rid of my anxiety, my pain, my whatever this big, huge feeling is because it actually works for me on one side. That's weird to think about. And I also use the imagery of like, imagine there's a pot on the stove full of water. You need to boil some noodles. When you're in anxiety and you're going so hard and fast, you're boiling over, you're making a mess all over the stove. And you say in response, oh my gosh, I can't look at that. I can't do that. So you slam down the heat on the stove. That's avoidance. But what happens to the water? What happens to the noodles? They just sit there. Nothing happens. So it doesn't work. You understand? So I tell you, tell my clients, I know you're at a 10 and you're at a rolling boil, but if you go to a zero, then you're gonna feel worthless. The anxiety is working for you. Turn it down. So we continue to identify the positive things that are attached to anxiety and stop looking at anxiety as a bad feeling. So then we go into this feeling and we name it to tame it. Okay, Piper, I'm feeling like, all right, I hear you. I I'm feeling anxious right now. Okay. Why? What's that? What's going on? Okay, well, I'm feeling anxious, but really what it is is I'm kind of I'm I'm feeling inadequate at work. Great. Why do you feel inadequate at work? What are we missing? And oftentimes they say, Well, I think people don't like me. And that's when I come up with another CBT technique, and I said, Okay, test that out. Go ask them. And they're like, What do you mean? Go ask them. Go ask them if if you suck at your job. Well, I can't do that. Like, if we're naming it to tame it, we just got there. You feel like you're inadequate. We got it, but you're still at a 10 on the stove. Inadequacy is a really big emotion and it hurts. So now we have to have a behavioral experiment that proves that's wrong. I did this to a client and she's like, You're crazy. I'm not asking that woman at my office if she thinks I'm a despicable human being. I'm like, why? That's what you think of yourself. Ask. She said, but I don't want to do that. I said, why don't you want to do that? She goes, because I'll feel stupid. I said, well, why will we feel stupid? She goes, because they won't think that of me. And I just sit there and I smile. And I said, Oh, so that original feeling of anxiety and feeling inadequate is false. And she just got this smile that climbed across her face, just creeped across her face. I'm like, oh, huh. Funny how that worked out. She untangled those feelings. She untangled what she thought and she got to the root thinking, which was that's not accurate at all. I don't need to do a behavioral experiment because I just realized that was an irrational thought. But we had to name it to tame it. And we couldn't name it to tame it until she felt feeling she felt heard in the office. And it's my job and my responsiveness to those emotions to help you entangle them. So uh Dr. Siegel also talks about something called the SIFT model, S-I-F-T. And this goes along with accurately learning to name and tame our feelings, our emotions. So the first thing is identifying sensations in your body. If you are dealing with anxiety and stress-related disorders, you are going to have intense sensations in your body, period. So you have to identify where in the body you're feeling them. If you can identify, um I had one client tell me it's like this creeping warmth that goes over from like back of his head over to the front of his face. When he started feeling that, when he started being mindful of that sensation, he knew what was coming next. He knew if I don't capture this feeling and recognize what's happening, I'm gonna go into a full-blown anxiety attack. So clearly identify first where you're feeling sensations in your body, in your body. For me, I get a knot in my stomach. When I know my anxiety is high, I get a really weird kind of sour knot in my stomach. So the second part of the sift model, the I, so sensations is S, the I is for images or memories. So emotion, when we only go to the feeling and then we go to the behavior, the problem with that is that our our body, the physical sensation, and then the images and memories that are flooding through our head, we just get taken off our feet, right? We just, it's like we have no control. So I want you to be aware of the images and memories that are coming up. What are the images and memories that are coming up? Again, you're having to teach yourself to slow the response. Then we have to accurately define the feeling. F is for feeling. So you go to a feeling wheel. You can find those on a quick Google search. And then he says you go to the T, the thoughts, the core beliefs, the self-talk, the evaluations of others and self. So the SIFT model is really helpful for you all when you're starting to feel for real. Start with the yes. What sensations am I feeling? Start and then go to I. What are the images or memories that I'm having that are are involved in with in this? And they don't have to be real, meaning that we all have cognitive distortions. We all put images and memories into our mind that contextually don't make sense. So, for example, the lady with her work coworker, she knew, she absolutely knew that the images flooding through her mind about she's worthless, she's inadequate, everybody hates her, weren't real, right? But you still have to identify what they are. Then what's the feeling I'm feeling? And accurately define it. Don't stick with those primary emotions. You've got to break out of those. And then from there, taking a breath, calming that emotional and physiological response. So you don't go to a behavior, a behavior that's maladaptive, avoidance, lashing out, drinking heavily, whatever it may be. And that's when you go to the T of core beliefs, self-talk, and evaluations. So that's a lot of information today. That's a lot that I put in there. It's hard to learn emotional attunement. But if we don't, then we're always going to be uh run over by our feelings because oftentimes feelings aren't facts. We've got to untangle, you know, shame from our feelings. We've got to untangle um the intensity of the emotion from the context. We've got to untangle uh our faulty thinking. If we're not doing those things, we can't regulate the emotion and we can't tackle the behavior that's keeping you stuck and in pain. It's a process. It's a process. And this is what I want to tell you. And I say this to my clients. Um, I have been practicing this for I started therapy in 1998. Um, I've been practicing this since then, the CBT model of thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and really working through this. And for the most part, I can I can tackle this pretty good. But I am human. And there are times where I just let those emotions run wild. And then I look back and I'm like, oh my gosh, Piper, you're ridiculous. You know, like you're literally ridiculous. And so I had to, you know, take a deep breath and say, okay, Piper, what's the sift model? Where am I feeling this? What are the images that are running through my head? What are the feelings? Accurately define them. Don't look just at primary emotions. And what are the thoughts that are are connected to this? It slows that emotional process and it stops me from the maladaptive behaviors. But I don't always get it right. So, this is what I want to say. Feel for real, y'all. Feel for real. You can do it. And the more you feel for real, the more you have emotional clarity. The more you have emotional clarity, the more you have emotional regulation. The more you have emotional regulation, the more you can break free from those behaviors that are hurting you and keeping you in pain. So I hope this was helpful for you today. I'll catch you next time. That brings us to the end of this episode. Thanks for joining me. I hope you learned some tools that can equip you to continue to rebuild the ruins of your life and renew your mind. If you're curious about working with me for your anxiety and stress-related disorders, head on over to my website at piperharris.net to connect with me and schedule a counseling session. If you've enjoyed the show, please rate and review me on your podcast listening platform and share it with your friends and family. As always, thanks so much for listening to the Rebuild Your Ruins of Piper Harris Coaching Podcast. I'll talk with you next time.