014: Unlocking Emotional Freedom

Hi, everybody, and welcome to The Arm Coach podcast, episode #14. Okay, so this is the second episode that is all about the think-feel-act cycle as it relates to our arms. I really wanted to go more in depth on this because I've heard from so many people who really point to this piece of the work that I do, the idea that our thoughts about our arms create our feelings about our arms and our feelings about our arms drive our actions as really their kind of favorite part or the piece of this work that they're most excited about. And I think it's because so many of us spend so long feeling like we don't understand why we don't take better care of our arms, right? We usually know we hide our arms because we don't like how they look. But what can feel perplexing is why we don't take actions to change our arms, like exercising to sculpt them or eating in a healthier way. Often, it's because our negative thoughts about our arms make us feel defeated, and we think "why bother?" So instead of lifting weights, we watch TV. Instead of nourishing our bodies, we eat sugary foods. This think-feel-act cycle gives you a framework to understand these patterns. And it shows that if you can cultivate more loving, grateful thoughts about your arms, you'll naturally feel more motivated to care for them. I promise you that learning how to tell the difference between the different parts of the cycle is essential. If you want to understand why you hide your arms more than you want, if you want to understand why you rely on sugary foods and an unhealthy diet in certain situations, and if you want to understand how to change your desire to bare your arms, you need to be able to tell the difference between each part of the cycle. I've said this before, but the think- feel-act cycle is not just an interesting concept when it comes to your arms. I mean, it is interesting, but it explains all of the results you have with your arms, including why you are having a hard time changing how you feel about your arms, so it's so crucial that you understand it. Alright, feelings about your arms. Let's dive in. What is a feeling about your arms? I should actually mention before we go any further, that I'm going to use the words feeling and emotion about your arms interchangeably. So the think-feel-act cycle about your arms could also be the think-have an emotion about your arms-act cycle, but it doesn't sound as nice. Think-feel-act about your arms. Okay, so what is a feeling about your arms? It's an emotional state, right? You're confident about your arms, you're insecure about your arms, you're embarrassed about your arms, you're proud of your arms, you're ashamed of your arms, whatever it is. You get the picture, it's an emotional state about your arms. But here's my next question: how do you know when you're experiencing a feeling or an emotion about your arms? I'll tell you, this is a question that usually stumps most people, and here's why. When most of us talk about our feelings about our arms, nine times out of ten, we are describing our thoughts about our arms. Now, remember, if you're going to use the think- feel-act cycle to change how you feel about your arms, you've got to get really good at distinguishing between each part of the cycle, and that means you have to understand the difference between your thoughts about your arms and your feelings about your arms. So a couple days ago, I was working with someone who is trying to use these tools to change how she feels about her arms. So she is really aware that she hides her arms to avoid certain emotions about them, and one of those emotions for her and frankly for many of us, is anxiety about our arms. She hides her arms so that she can stop feeling anxious about them in certain situations. So we were talking about a party that she was going to attend and the anxiety she was having around baring her arms at it. And first I wanted to know, what were the thoughts that she was having about her arms at the party, and she said, I haven't seen these friends in forever and I'm always so self-conscious about my arms around them, I feel like they're always judging my arms or talking about my arms behind my back and I hate feeling this way about my arms, I seriously think it would be easier to just wear long sleeves to the party. So these were all the thoughts that she was having about her arms at this party. Now, remember last week, we talked about how our thoughts about our arms may feel true, but they're not necessarily an objective assessment of our arms. The truth was, she was invited to a party. Everything else, all the thoughts she was having about her arms being judged by her friends and worrying that they say stuff about her arms, all of that, all of those thoughts, were opinions or assessments she was having about her arms. But here's the thing, they were also what was creating her anxiety about her arms. The party itself was neutral. The party didn't make her feel anything about her arms; the party doesn't create any feelings about her arms in her body. She doesn't have a feeling about her arms until she has a thought about her arms at the party. And all of her thoughts about her arms were creating a lot of anxiety for her about her arms. Okay, so those are all her thoughts about her arms, 'everyone's going to judge my arms, I just feel so self-conscious about my arms around these people', so I asked her, when she thinks these thoughts about her arms, when she thinks about her arms at the party, how does she feel about her arms? And what she did is what almost everyone does, we all make the same mistake. I asked her when she thinks these thoughts about her arms, how does she feel about her arms. And you know what she did? She told me all about her thoughts about her arms again. I asked her, when she thinks these thoughts about her arms, how does she feel about her arms, and she started talking once again about how she was worried about her friends and seeing her arms again and how they were going to judge her arms, it was the same litany of thoughts about her arms. Here's the thing, we all do this. Ask someone how they are feeling about their arms and you rarely get an emotion about their arms. You rarely hear from people, I'm feeling insecure about my arms or I'm feeling anxious about my arms or I'm feeling embarrassed about my arms. Most of what you get is a story of what's going on with their arms, what's happening around their arms, their assessment of their arms or themselves. So many of us conflate our thoughts about our arms and our feelings about our arms and it is so important to distinguish between the two if you are trying to use the think-feel-act cycle for your arms. You cannot conflate them, you must be able to distinguish, you must be able to see them as separate. I talked about this in the last episode, but just as a recap, a thought about your arms is a sentence in your mind about your arms. It is the language that is running through your head about your arms. I talked about that electronic news ticker where the headlines about your arms are just constantly going past. And usually these thoughts about your arms are judging and assessing your arms, and you, for that matter. Now, a feeling or an emotion about your arms is very different. And it goes back to my original question: how do you know when you're experiencing an emotion about your arms? Here's the answer, the answer is you know when you're experiencing an emotion about your arms because you feel it in your body. Every feeling, every emotion about your arms, creates a distinct set of physical sensations that are located somewhere in your body. Now, most of us do not think about it this way when it comes to our arms. But any emotion you feel about your arms, it will change your breathing, it will change your heart rate. Maybe your breathing slows down or gets more shallow when you think about baring your arms, maybe your heart rate speeds up when you imagine showing your arms, maybe different muscles tense or relax when you consider your arms, parts of your body may flush or tingle or sweat when you contemplate your arms. You get the picture. You know when you're feeling an emotion about your arms because you are experiencing it in your body and the way you experience it is through the distinct physical sensation that every emotion about your arms produces. Now, most of us overlook it, and I did for a really long time. Unless that emotion about our arms is so intense, unless it's so intense and we're really feeling like our heart pounding in our chest when we think about our arms or we're really feeling our stomach knotted up when we imagine showing our arms, most people when they talk about their feelings or emotions about their arms, they breeze right by what's happening in their body and they go straight to the thoughts that are running through their mind about their arms. But a feeling or an emotion about your arms is not a thought about your arms, it's not a sentence about your arms, it's a single word. It's confident or insecure or proud or embarrassed or ashamed about your arms. That's what a feeling about your arms is. It's a single word, and all of these feelings about your arms can be located in your body. And the way you do that is by paying attention to the physical sensations that you're having when you experience an emotion about your arms. Okay, so let's go back to that party example. When I pointed it out to her, when I pointed out that when I asked her what she felt about her arms she just gave me all her thoughts about her arms again, but her thoughts about her arms were not what she was feeling about her arms. Her thoughts about her arms were not her emotion about her arms. When I pointed this out, I asked her, so what does anxiety about your arms feel like, and the question stumped her, and I'll tell you, it's a really common – to sort of think, I don't know, I don't know what this emotion about my arms feels like, because we're not practiced at thinking about our emotions about our arms in this way. We're not practiced at thinking about our emotions about our arms as a set of physical sensations, unless they're really, really, really strong. But when she focused on it and when she started to think about it, she thought okay, I think when I feel anxious about my arms I have an elevated heart rate. I think when I feel anxious about my arms my breathing gets more shallow and maybe there's some tightness in my chest. Now, you might be thinking, so what? Why do we care about this? But you have to describe what's happening in your body when you think about your arms. It is not enough to just tell yourself, 'well I just got to stop feeling anxious about my arms. I don't want to get in touch with my feelings about my arms, I just want to stop feeling anxious about them'. But you have to get in touch with yourself, you have to start to understand what's happening in your body when you think about your arms if you want to use the think-feel-act cycle for your arms. The other thing is that there is a huge, huge benefit in being able to separate out what's happening in your body from what's happening in your mind when it comes to your arms. And you need to be able to separate out the two if you want to harness this cycle for your arms. When you separate out what's happening in your body versus what's happening in your mind about your arms, the first thing is you're no longer going to be at the mercy of a negative emotion about your arms. And what I mean by that is you're no longer just going to feel overwhelmed by your feelings about your arms. The reason why is that when you give your brain something to do, you get a little bit of your power back, and trying to describe and notice the physical sensations in your body that accompany the emotion that you're feeling about your arms, is the way you get your power back. Because it gives your brain a purpose. Instead of just feeling anxiety about your arms, instead of just being at the mercy of your anxiety about your arms, all of a sudden your brain has a task. Think about it this way, when you're feeling really anxious about your arms, what's normally happening is that you just keep thinking the same thoughts about your arms that are creating your anxiety over and over and over again. And you don't even realize that you're doing it. You don't even realize that you're just recreating your anxiety about your arms every time you keep thinking the same thoughts about them. So your anxiety about your arms just grows. And soon enough, you start to look for an escape, you start to look for a way to run away from your feelings about your arms. But with a task, your brain has something else to do. Instead of just ruminating on these thoughts about your arms that are creating your anxiety, all of a sudden it can pay attention to your body when you think about your arms. So you're not just thinking these thoughts about your arms over and over and over again. Your brain has another purpose. So that's the first thing. The second thing, the second benefit of being able to separate out what's happening in your body from what's happening in your mind when it comes to your arms is that the negative emotions themselves about your arms, whatever they are, they become less intense. So once you start to describe the negative emotions about your arms as physical sensations, you'll start to notice that they seem a bit more bearable. And there's a really simple explanation why. When most people think about a negative emotion about their arms, let's use anxiety about your arms, just the phrase, it just doesn't sound very good, right? It sounds really unpleasant. Think about negative emotions about your arms, like embarrassment about your arms or insecurity about your arms or anxiety about your arms, shame about your arms, whatever it is, it sounds unpleasant. Now, I want you to think about an elevated heartbeat and tightness in my chest when I think about my arms. It doesn't sound nearly as unpleasant, right? Because it's not nearly as dramatic. An elevated heartbeat and tightness in my chest when I think about my arms kind of sounds a bit more bearable, than telling yourself over and over again, I'm anxious about my arms, I'm anxious about my arms, I'm anxious about my arms, right? So those emotions themselves about your arms will become a little bit less intense. And the third reason why it's so useful to be able to separate out what's happening in your body from what's happening in your mind when it comes to your arms is that once you do that, then you can start to change how you feel about your arms. Once you are no longer just at the effect of how you feel about your arms, just feeling anxiety about your arms and feeling so overwhelmed by it, but you're actually able to look at your anxiety about your arms, you're actually able to describe your anxiety about your arms, then suddenly you can also look for the cause of your anxiety about your arms. Now, the cause is always going to be your thoughts about your arms. But for most of us, we're so sort of wrapped up in the emotion about our arms; it's feeling so intense that we're not even able to look for the cause. But if you're able to give yourself a little bit of breathing room, if you're able to give yourself a little bit of space, then you can start to pinpoint the thoughts about your arms creating how you feel about them. And if you can pinpoint the thoughts about your arms, if you can observe them, then guess what? You can also start to question them. You can also start to think about changing your thoughts about your arms, and then you don't need to turn to something outside of you like long sleeves to mask how you're feeling about your arms. So this is what I want you to do: when you're feeling a negative emotion about your arms this week, when you notice that negative emotion about your arms, instead of immediately thinking, I don't want anyone to see my arms, or I hate how my flabby my arms are, or my arms look terrible, right? Those are all thoughts, those are all judgments about your arms. I want you to give your brain a task. I want you to tell your brain, okay, what does this feeling about my arms feel like in my body? And at first I will tell you, that you might not come up with anything. Your brain is not used to thinking about your emotions about your arms in this way, but trust me, if you pay attention, you will start to notice it. And once you're able to observe how it feels in your body when you think about your arms and just focus on the physical sensations, don't judge them as good or bad, don't tell yourself that they're unbearable or uncomfortable, just notice what they are. What's happening to your heartbeat when you think about your arms? What's happening to your breathing when you imagine showing your arms? What's happening to your muscles when you contemplate your arms? What's happening to your hands or your feet or your head when you consider baring your arms? What about your temperature when you think about your arms? What other sensations do you notice when you focus on your arms? Pay attention to that. This is so key to help you distinguish between your thoughts about your arms and your feelings about your arms and not conflate the two. So try that out this week and let me know how it goes. That's it everybody, thank you so much for listening to this episode all about understanding your feelings about your arms. If you're ready to take the next step in transforming your relationship with your arms, I'd love for you to join me in the Arms By Kristine Master Class, where we dive deep into the think-feel-act cycle as it relates to our arms and learn how to harness it to liberate ourselves from long sleeves and embrace our arms with confidence. You can find out more and sign up at [website]. And if you have any other ideas or questions or topics that you would like to hear me talk about when it comes to your arms, you can always email me at [email protected] m. Otherwise, I'll see you on the next episode!