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Welcome to the Period Power podcast. I’m your host Maisie Hill menstrual health expert, acupuncturist, certified life coach and author of Period Power. I’m on a mission to help you get your cycle working for you so that you can use it to get what you want out of life. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Hello folks. I am feeling all kinds of excited today because we’ve had lots of new members join The Flow Collective and everyone in the membership is getting hyped for what we’re going to be getting into over the coming months. Someone just posted in the community about how excited they are. And I was like, “Me too.” I’ve literally been waiting for this all year because I’m always thinking two seasons ahead of where we currently are.

So although with each season we’re firmly rooted in that experience, it’s always part of my long-term vision of what we’re doing as a community. And of course that feeds too on to what we do on the podcast. So each season there are key skills that I want you to build because that then paves the way for what I have in mind for the following season. So think back to the summer, I wanted you all to get better at wanting things. And you can listen to that whole episode called Practising Wanting, which is all about that.

And I did that that because I knew that in the autumn, we would be going through this life edit as a community. And I wanted you to have that skill embedded to some degree before we got going with the life edit. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to have mastered it, because many of these skills are ongoing, they’re not just one and done. But I wanted you to be more at home with your wants, your needs, and your desires.

And now here we are autumn about to do the life edit which includes the wellness reset. And I’ve been preparing for our kick-off call that is next week. Well, it’ll have already happened by the time this episode comes out. But I’m just very excited about it all. And as per usual what I talk about on the podcast is going to accompany what we’re doing inside the membership. So that way, those of you who aren’t members can take what I share here and use it in your life.

And those of you who are members get additional material that supports you in this process. It’s going to be quite the adventure. Now, this week in the membership, well, when this comes out, we are focusing on managing your mind and using thought work. And the following week, next week is all about emotions. And we’ve got an entire call dedicated to that where I’ll be showing you how to feel and process emotions. But I wanted to do an episode in advance of that, that was about by responding to emotions, to give you something to start working with now. So that’s what today is all about.

Now, I’m going to give you a bit of a backstory to begin with and then I’m going to share some of what was going on for me earlier this year. And as I do that, I would love for you to pay attention to my response to my emotions. And then I’m going to share one of my favourite techniques with you.

So I actually wrote the prep notes for this episode over four months ago back in May partly because I knew it would be important to talk about this now with the life edit coming up and everything that we’re doing. And partly because I had been going through a season of life where I was feeling things very deeply. So even though I went through this in spring in terms of where I was in the year, it had the qualities of autumn and winter to it. And I had been going through a period of doing some deep resting. I needed to lie down a lot. And this would have been post COVID too.

So I was working from home so that throughout the day I could take breaks, and lie down, and watch something on Netflix. And I was also processing a lot of emotions that were to do with a significant change in my life.

Now, if you’ve been around here for while you’ve probably heard me talking about how processing emotion doesn’t always mean being in floods of tears under a duvet for several hours or days. It can be that but when you build this skill, most of the time you’ll just feel and process emotions as you go about your day. And probably nobody around you would be any the wiser and not because you’re hiding it, it just won’t be this big thing. Nothing wrong with it being a ‘big thing’, sometimes it is that, but other times it’s just like, yeah, I’m just noticing this emotion.

I’m feeling this emotion as I’m going throughout my day. And it was just so interesting to observe myself going through this process. It was really messy; I’m not going to lie. I was really in the muck of all these emotions. I gave myself some mental health days. It’s very good to remember that when you’re your own boss, you can actually do that. You don’t have to push your way through. And what was most significant was that I wasn’t in a rush to feel better. I wasn’t in a rush to get out of any of these emotions.

I was actually very committed to feeling this way for as long as I needed to be in those emotions. Now, there’s nuance to this of course, I was kind of in and out of them. I was still kind of doing things in my life. So there’s lots of nuances here, but it was perfect for me to go through this for so many reasons. First of all I had these emotions so that’s enough. They needed to be processed, they were there to be felt.

But I also had a couple of months of not working on a big project of any kind. And it has been many, many years since I’ve had a window of time in which I haven’t been working on a big thing of some kind. But at the same time I was feeling my way into creating something for the members of The Flow Collective which is what we’re embarking on now. So feeling was really important in every sense of the word. It was literally perfect for me to have these emotions because it was also a bit of a research project for me.

So that’s the backstory and as I shared that with you, what did you notice? Is there anything that stood out to you? I mean it’s so simple it may not be obvious, but can you hear how I responded to the emotions? I didn’t resist them, in fact I welcomed them in. And this is one of my favourite ways of thinking about emotions, working with emotions. I was actually coaching someone in my business coaching group about this on Monday. But before I share the technique with you, I want you to think about an emotion that tends to be challenging for you to experience.

And I’ve said this before but it’s worth repeating, there’s no such thing as positive emotion and negative emotion, they’re just emotions. But is there one that comes to mind that maybe you’d rather not feel? I’m going to pick feeling rejected as the example. I know that’s a hot one with many of you. But just pick an emotion that’s challenging for you. Maybe it’s feeling anxious. Maybe it’s feeling lonely, grief, and I walk you through this technique. It’s very simple, very powerful.

So imagine this emotion that’s challenging for you to experience, rocking up to your front door. They ring the bell, or they knock, this emotion is there, maybe it’s rejected or whatever emotion you’ve picked, but they’re there at your door. What comes up for you? What do you notice in your response to them arriving at your door? So you can consider your physical response and notice the sensations that you experience in your body, maybe a bit of nervous system response.

And you can also consider the emotion that you have about that emotion. So there’s the emotion you’re initially feeling that’s at your door. And then there’s the emotion you have about it being there. Is it dread or fear? Are you annoyed or irritated by their presence? Or are you delighted that they’re there? Do you feel accepting of their presence and their arrival? So can you see where we’re going with this? This exercise will tell you so much.

So you’ve brought some attention to you internal response, how you feel sensation wise and your emotional response to that emotion. Now let’s look at how that would play out in your behaviour. So rejection, feeling rejected is at your door. How do you respond to it? You can do this for any emotion. Do you hide under the window in the hope that it doesn’t see you and thinks nobody’s home and goes away? Do you run upstairs and lock yourself in the bathroom because you feel scared of that emotion? Do you judge them being there and make it a problem?

Do you open the window or the door and tell it to eff off? Do you chase it away? Do you open the door but stand in the doorway so you’re not actually letting it in? So you’re acknowledging it’s there but that’s it. And this is what we do when we know we’re experiencing an emotion, but we resist actually feeling and experiencing it. Or do you engage with it somehow? Do you have a conversation? Do you invite it in and hear what it has to say? Because that’s an option. And as you might have guessed, that’s what I recommend.

So I was asking my client what the benefits of her doing so might be for her and her answer was so great. She said she’d find out why it’s there. So good because that’s so valuable. It’s one of many reasons why being with and feeling your emotions is so valuable. That’s why I bang on about it all the time. You get to know why they’re there; you stop avoiding feelings and trying to get away from them, you stop stuffing them down, or just erupting with them because you’ve been stuffing them down so much.

And gradually you lean that you are able to feel any emotion which is fantastic news because usually when people fear showing up to their lives in the way that they want to, it’s because they worry about the emotion that they’ll feel, whether that’s to do with failure or their success, the discomfort of whatever the emotions are that they imagine being as a result of whatever steps that they might take. And if you know that you can handle any emotion then you can go about creating the life that you want.

Can you see how intrinsic being able to feel your emotions is to the life edit that I’ve been talking about? And there are some emotions that you’ll feel more up for than others. And I’ve been sharing recently on Instagram about how historically anger has been challenging for me. But there’s other emotions that I feel very at home with, like grief, sadness, feeling depressed. And I’m not talking about a diagnosis of depression here, that’s very different. That’s a clinical diagnosis that needs to be treated appropriately by a medical professional.

I am talking about feeling emotions like grief, and depression, and sadness, emotions that typically are not valued and they don’t feel great, so we usually try to get out of feeling them. Ten or so years ago, gosh, was it that long, maybe even longer I was in China. I was there for a semester as part of my degree in Chinese medicine and just getting experience in the hospital’s neurology department. And it was just very cool to see acupuncture and herbs being integrated with modern medicine, western medicine.

Anyway whilst I was there a very good friend of mine died from a terminal illness and I was devastated when I found out. And I spent a week or so, crying my eyes out in my room. I didn’t go to the clinic. I wasn’t studying. I wasn’t showing up for any of the stuff. I was grieving. And I went all in on feeling that grief. It was the same when I had my miscarriage. But about three days into this a classmate knocked on my door and just went, “Right, that’s it. It’s time for you to get out. We’re going for a walk, get dressed, come on. You need to get outside.”

And listen, I know what she was trying to do was so well intended. I’m sure it came from a very loving place, but there was no way I was doing that. It just didn’t feel appropriate, or needed, or helpful to do that at that point in time at least, because I was deep in grief. But I was okay with being deep in grief. I didn’t need to get out of it. So even though it felt awful to me, I was heartbroken, I was sad, I was feeling a lot, but I felt comfortable in that. But it was uncomfortable for her to see me like that.

So even though she probably thought she was doing it for me, I reckon it was it actually a way for her to try and stop feeling the discomfort of whatever was coming up for her in witnessing my grief. Again, very understandable, but even though how I was feeling was just awful, I was very accepting of those emotions.

They arrived at my door and my response to them was, of course you’re here. It makes so much sense that you’d show up now. And I guess you’re going to be around for a bit, so come in, pull up a chair, I’ll stick the kettle on and let’s just get cosy together and be in this. And I wonder how it would be for you to let your emotions be there. And if you are in The Flow Collective, I’m going to be showing you how to do this in a variety of ways. But I wanted to share this technique with you all as a way to get started with noticing your emotions and your response to them.

Okay my loves, thank you for joining me this week. That’s it for today and I will catch you next time.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of the Period Power podcast. If you enjoyed learning how to make your cycle work for you, head over to maisiehill.com for more.