S3 E12 Navigation Tips for OffLoading Stress and Sleeping with a Smile

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Good evening and welcome to the Comforting Voice podcast. I'm your host Shastere, and I'm joined in the studio tonight by Emmy the Minimacaw and a piping hot cup of tea in my Thrive Gear mug. I got the jumbo size Thrive mug, and tonight I have a little bit of a frog in my throat. Something's going on. I feel great, but uh I think I was talking on the phone quite a bit today, and uh that that did me in. So here we are. We're gonna see how this goes. We're gonna go through our regular Tuesday mishmash, and we have some really good stuff lined up. Oh my gosh. Okay, so really quick, before we get into anything, just a gentle reminder. Make sure you check out the website comfortingvoice.com. You can send an email that way. You can leave a voicemail that way. All of the links are there. You can go explore, you can get your Thrive gear like I have with me tonight. Wow! It's just a wonderful place to be. Check it out. Did I mention that all of the episodes can be heard there? Yes indeed. Alright, moving right along. Let's get into the important stuff for the evening. Are you comfortable? Are you cozy? Let's get you there. Do you have your hot cup of tea with you? Maybe you need a bottle of water. Get everything you need at your fingertips. That way you can truly relax, you don't have to worry about anything. Put your feet up. If you're here to fall asleep, make sure that you've got everything you need. You know, get your extra pillow at hand if you need that, get your sleep mask, your teddy bear, figure out if you're sleeping on your left side, your right side, all of that stuff that you do to get cozy. And somewhere in the mix, when it makes sense, give yourself a really good productive stretch. This offloads a lot of stress and attention from the day. Sometimes we don't even know it's there. We think we're good, but yeah, it's accumulated. Offload that stuff, give yourself a really good stretch. Reach all the way through your legs, your arms, into your fingers, your toes, wiggle your fingers and toes, and then release that stretch. And that is an awesome, awesome way to set yourself up for a really good night's sleep. Right after that, you know the drill. Take a good deep productive breath. In, inhale to about the count of four, hold it for just a little bit, about the count of four, and then exhale just a little bit slower, about the count of six. That just cinches it. You're gonna be off to Dreamland in no time. There you go. Best thing in the world you can do for yourself every night, whether we're hanging out or not. Okay, so you're already on your sleep prep? We're gonna take a quick, and I mean very quick, fast grab in the cigar box to see what your tea tag and fortune cookie slip are. Are you ready? Emmy is busy preening herself right now, so maybe I can do this without any T-Rex drama. She's kinda poised and ready though. Oh, I got it. Oh no, she's laughing. She was just waiting. I think she knows. She's pretty smart. Okay, your tea tag for the No, you can't have it. Your tea tag for the night. In every moment of life, you should be what you ought to be. And your fortune cookie slip. If the cake is bad, what good is the frosting? That's some interesting food for that. Okay, the lucky numbers off the back of the fortune cookie slip 52, 16, 56, 25, 2, and 1. And since she can't reach the archive receptacle, it's not here. Do you want a piece of paper to join? You can have this. Okay. So she has something to do for a minute. We call that Bertie Arts and Crafts. She makes confetti out of cardstock. So we've got a very, very special salute tonight for join the fun. Something wonderful occurred. We got our very first voicemail on the website. I'm not gonna play it. It was more of a personal nature, and I did I don't know if the person wanted me to play it or not, but it was very special because she was a follower and a listener on my first real podcast. And it was so funny because one night I was recording and I was kind of going through some of the new countries. We'd had a couple new listeners come in, and I kind of did a shout-out, and I was like, and then we got one listener in Zimbabwe, and it was just so funny in the moment the way it came out of me because I wasn't expecting one listener in Zimbabwe for some reason. Anyway, within about five days or something, I got an email from this person saying, Hi, I'm the lone Zimbabwean that listens to your podcast, and we've been friends ever since, and we just kinda, you know, pen pal every now and then on email, and she's got kind of a similar attitude, we see eye to eye on stuff, and we've just always had very pleasant occasional conversations. So she ends up listening to the podcast, and um we exchanged emails, it had been quite some time. Turns out, about the same time I start putting out coloring books, she starts writing children's books, and it was just the most fun moment of catch up with somebody that I met in such a strange, obscure way, and we became friends. And when you're, you know, a podcaster or any kind of influencer, that's kind of a rare thing. You start getting followed by people, and it just turns into an ocean of, you know, just people with no names attached or anything. So when you end up with an opportunity to talk to someone like that, it's just so fun. She followed me through the bird podcast that I had, and here we are here, and she's just like, yeah, this is great. I have to make another acknowledgement with we're just gonna call her Zimbabwe. With Zimbabwe, um, Zimbabwe was a fan of Zoltan, the podcast bird, and I tried to have Zoltan down here tonight. He was my first little parakeet that I got, and he always came down to this the studio and hung out with me. But he was more interested in his little budgie friends, and he's flapping around and causing trouble up there. So I'm gonna try to get Zoltan on the podcast. It was just a little bit difficult, you know, last minute, so you you ended up with the pickle chicken. So since I just been so tickled pink to have heard from my friend again, we've got Zimbabwe on the lineup for Join the Fun. And Join the Fun is our little salute to three countries off of our listener base list every week so we can kind of get to know each other and see where each other is from and what's going on with this in our various parts of the world where we live. It's one of the easiest ways we can really get to know each other as a listener base, because let's face it, this is pre-recorded and that's how it goes with podcasts. Okay, so let's see what we got here. First on our list tonight is Italy. Italy has a free public wine fountain in a small town that runs 24-7 for visitors. No charge, just generosity and tradition. Italy is home to Vatican City. Vatican City is the smallest independent country in the world, located entirely within Italy's capital city of Rome. Italy has more active volcanoes than any other country in mainland Europe. So if you're joining the fund from Italy, you represent generosity, fascinating uniqueness, and a land shaped by powerful natural forces and deep history. Next on our list is Venezuela. Venezuela is one of the few places on Earth where you can witness lightning storms that occur almost nightly for months in the same location, lighting up the sky in a continuous natural display. Venezuela has one of the largest proven oil reserves in the world. And Venezuela's national tree changes dramatically with the seasons, shifting from dry-looking branches to bursts of bright color. So if you're joining the fun from Venezuela, you represent natural intensity, powerful resources, and transformation that brings unexpected beauty. And last but certainly not least, wrapped in a big hug and a personal shout-out to Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is home to balancing rock formations that look almost impossible, naturally stacked in ways that seem to defy gravity. Zimbabwe has one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, reflecting a strong cultural value placed on education. Zimbabwe's name itself comes from a phrase meaning house of stone, tying directly back to its ancient architectural heritage. So Zimbabwe, you my friend, and everyone else that may tune in in the future from Zimbabwe, you represent strength, knowledge, and a legacy built to stand the test of time. So thanks for joining the fun, and next week we will have three more countries from our listener base list. Okay, so moving right along, tonight's content is just a little bit special, it's a little bit upgraded. We're gonna see how this goes. Great idea. So Lon and I were chit-chatting on text one night, and we were kinda talking about the reasons that this podcast started in the first place, and that's just to have a break from all of the bombardment of all that negativity out there. Oh my gosh, the news is just on fire. You can't get away from the stuff that's going on, right? Well, that's always gonna be there. So sometimes it's good to take a healthy break, kind of like if you're at work. They give you breaks during the day. Take a break from all that negativity. And some of that news stuff and all that hyped up junk that we're just bombarded with, it affects other people's attitudes, it affects our attitudes, and there's just these weird things going on. So you gotta do a lot of self-care. Make sure you stay balanced and make sure you stay healthy through all that. Very important. Lawn and I are gonna give you permission to do just that. And really, Lawn is giving me permission to take a break tonight from podcasting, because I've got this weird frog in my throat. So I'm gonna enjoy my Thrive Gear jumbo mug full of hot tea. It's still at a warm temperature, and if you've got a few minutes, here's Lawn.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

I am sitting in the desert southwest. I am sitting out in the wind today. I'm enjoying no tolerating no putting up with that wind. Some of us like wind, some not so much. Some are triggered by its relentlessness. We better that situation by getting out of the wind, and so today I share some information about triggers and a few thoughts on how to control our own and get out of the wind. It's a little long, so bear with me today, but it's important. We have all been there. Someone yells, we feel shaky. A door is slammed and we become enraged or shocked. Someone acts aggressively and our version of PTSD kicks in. Whenever any of these things happen, it's likely that it has triggered an emotion. So what is a trigger? A trigger is a word, a person, an event or even experience that touches off an immediate emotional response or reaction. It's like being startled by a noise. The noise is the trigger. The startle is our reaction, our response. Our reactions to emotional triggers are often excessive. They last longer than what seems to make sense for the event. It's as if we are still jumping at the sound of that door hours later. Now not all triggers are negative, of course, they can also stimulate joy or happy memories like an example might be when we smell a flower it reminds us of a place that we love or we see a pick of an event where we felt very happy. Still, we often use trigger to describe negative stimulus, those that set off sadness, anger, fear, sometimes even hurt, shame, and despair. When we are triggered, our bodies engage our survival response, fight, flight, or freeze. Our hearts race, we break into a sweat, we even go cold. The sympathetic nervous system we have is activated to save us from a perceived harm. Yet we often flee too fast, fight too hard, freeze too long. These reactions can start to interfere with our ability to live when a trigger leads only to that survival reaction. But we can make them lead us to healing too. They can point us to where we have personal work to do. When a trigger, for example, accomplishes that nudge toward self-reflection, it can lead to true success. So if we can shift our thoughts from trigger and response to trigger, then finding a resource, that will be success. Triggers thrive on the illusion that we can't trust ourselves. But once we have access to those inner resources, we can learn to catch ourselves instead of reacting blindly, and then we can trust that we can handle what we feel. So as we become more self-assured, the arrows just don't penetrate as deeply. We develop a thick enough skin to cope with the world and its shadow side rather than hiding from them. So let's kind of discuss for a moment trigger origins when we react overly strongly to a significant thing. It hijacks our nervous system. There are known categories of triggers like feeling self conscious, being discounted, such as when someone stands us up or ignores our calls, when we're feeling controlled, taken advantage of, when we feel vulnerable, when we have relationship experiences, boundary concerns, for example, when someone is coming at us while drunk or disrespecting our space, when we feel uncomfortable about what is happening around us if we witness someone being hurt or something like that, and fearing what might happen, such as when a threat appears imminent. Now there are thirteen coping skills that will help us to get control of these. They are our tools, they help us handle our triggers, and they're specific psychological and even spiritual tools to help us respond rather than react to our own triggers. Number one is to name it. The well known tale about Rumpel Stilskin discovering his name means being free of threats. Name the threat. Two is seek the source, identify the source of that trigger, whether it's a person, a past trauma, something that was said. Be aware of projection. Trigger reactions are about projection. For example, we predict outcomes based on past experiences, anger, violence, even losing a past love. When we make our reaction all about other people, it leaves us powerless because we can't change them. Notice hyper arousal signals. When we are triggered, cortisol and adrenaline course through us so we might feel fragile, disorganized, disoriented, we're unable to self-regulate in that moment. So the first order of business, focus on calming ourselves down. Do some of those favorite techniques that we've already spoken of. Take a breath. Count to ten. Go for a walk. Go to the bathroom, splash your face with cold water. Number five is don't fight your inner voice. If you're triggered by an inner critic, don't reply with an opposing opinion. That reaction will only start an argument with a force whose sole training and mission is to put you down. It's time for a break. Step away and tell yourself, you know, I trust myself to handle whatever happens. I'll work this out. Practice knowing and showing your emotions. Emotions are like muscles. They develop in healthy ways by being used appropriately. Take a breather. When we are triggered, we lose our objectivity. We may feel feel like the wind is knocked out of us. This makes it much harder to say what needs to be said. Get off social media for a bit. Take a breath. Try an echo response. If someone is shaming or insulting us, we can simply repeat aloud to that person slowly the exact words that are triggering. That often causes a pause that can prevent us from being bold over. It's a martial arts style, actually. We are directing the energy back to its origin. Be ready for family members. They know every one of our buttons and exactly how and when to push them. It's no wonder we're often at our most reactive around family. Be present as you can, but if you need to, be on the lookout and vacate. Get out of the wind. Find humor in this situation if it's possible. Everything has humor. That is one of the fastest ways to diffuse stress. No, you are not alone. We become easy victims of our triggers when we believe everyone else is able to control theirs. Seek therapy if need be. If it's particularly unmanageable, there is professional help. Make sure you check it out. It's not a bad thing, it's actually a superpower to ask for help. And finally, practice acceptance. As upsetting and challenging as triggers can be, it can help to remember that they are one of the body's ways of pointing us towards our own healing. Similar triggers happen to all of us. They are simply part of life. A practice of accepting what we can't change, knowing that people will say and do things that set us off, for example, is a way to be kind to ourselves. We don't have to accept abuse, but we do need to be our own advocate. All of this goes a long way toward reducing the power that triggers have over us and regaining our ability to consciously and calmly be ourselves. Get out of the wind. Thrive.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

So make sure you you remember that if you ever need to hear that again, you can rewind, you can come back to this episode, and it's kinda like our way of giving you permission to acknowledge whatever it is that you need to acknowledge. for healthy existence in this day and age, right? There's a very weird anomaly I've noticed over the past year or so. And I can't figure it out. I'm not sure what the um label for it is. I just don't know. But these people make content out there that's just radically over-the-top idiotic. And I'm not sure if they do it because they can cash in on the attention and it's like a negative clickbait. It seems kinda harmless at first. It's just somebody doing something radically weird, over the top dumb, that sort of thing. Pretty soon you get wrapped up in scrolling through the comments, even if you're not leaving comments and you start hyper focusing on the ones that are negative, that are funny in a negative way, that cut that creator down, and the whole thing is actually kind of this weird negativity backwards clickbait and it kind of sucks you in if you're not careful. So I had to start kind of keeping myself in check. It started kind of making me feel negative. I felt schmarmy from just reading the comments. It's another bombardment. It seems kind of innocent. And I want to stress it's not that we shouldn't have fun, laugh at some stuff. It's that we need balance. So if you find yourself taking something in a direction that's just not healthy, you're may you're focusing too much on making fun of someone, that sort of thing there's easy ways to shut that off without getting rid of social media. Maybe you need a break from social media. Do what's right for you. It's always gonna be there. You can jump back in when you're ready. It's not gonna hurt anything. For me, what I do is I do not put Facebook on my phone. I don't need the distraction I don't need the bombardment and then I can get on a computer when I have time for Facebook if I want to check messages that sort of thing. And I try to use it as a place to keep in touch with people I went to high school with a few cousins and I keep the entertainment value of it to a minimum. I try not to engage in stuff that's controversial or negative or get caught up in that. I've experienced different things that feature articles and stories meant for engagement of conversation and it has a negative effect. People get stressed out by society and the news and all that. And then it's like they're crouched and ready to just jump an attack for no reason strangers. Very easy to hide behind social media very easy to hide behind a keyboard very easy to make horrible attacks on people's character all sorts of stuff. So I just don't engage in that and if you're finding yourself in a similar situation one thing that's handy to do is if you find content that you really want to just not see anymore. A lot of times there's a little uh three dot menu on the post itself you can click that and it'll give you some options to not see the post from that creator um just not show you any posts from that creator not show you content similar to that there's kind of different you know things that you can click on based on what you want to do. So there's some filters built into Facebook that nobody talks about but they're there. And then on that same note you can do that with content you like. So I get into a lot of different arts and crafts type stuff or people making miniature stuff. There's some other just really creative type groups that I've just stumbled across and they're just fun to be there. The people are uplifting and they cheer each other on and all sorts of stuff. So when you run across something you like whatever it may be maybe it's a hobby you're involved in or something like that you can do that little drop down menu and it says show me more of similar content. So you can have that give me more of the good and then filter out the bad and that's a good way to keep yourself from focusing too much on the negative stuff or absorbing too much of the negative stuff or interacting with people that are gonna be engaged in the negative stuff and just attack you for no reason. We don't want that. So yeah play around with that concept do what's right for you and it's a lot like our sleep prep right it's just another tool to help you survive the day-to-day stress that's out there, the day-to-day tension that's just in society sometimes all that stuff it it's just another tool to help you navigate and stay in a lane that works for you right so you get to be the driver in your own life just make sure you pick a lane that's a really good fit and really gets you to where you want to go in a useful way and you'll be great. That's all I really got for you this week I hope you were inspired I hope you had a good time and I didn't even get bit by the Minnie macaw. She's been a really good bird you want to say goodnight to everyone Emmy? Do you want to step up step up can you say sleep tight goodnight and bye bye