Ep #257: Unearthing the Buried: Understanding and Healing from a ‘Sweep-It-Under-The-Rug’ Upbringing

This is Feminist Wellness, and I’m your host, Nurse Practitioner, Functional Medicine expert, and life coach, Victoria Albina. I’ll show you how to get unstuck, drop the anxiety, perfectionism, and codependency so you can live from your beautiful heart. Welcome, my love, let’s get started.

Hello, hello, my love. I hope this finds you doing so well. I recently asked the folks in Anchored, my six-month program to overcome emotional outsourcing, aka codependent, perfectionist, and people-pleasing thinking, about the most challenging parts of interpersonal relating. One of the biggest things that came up was a fear of, or avoidance of, emotions. Not feeling our feelings because something inside us was saying, “That's scary.”

We worked with it, we sat with it, and we came to see, together… because collective healing is magic, incredible medicine… that adult avoidance of emotions, avoidance of conflict, avoidance of things getting interpersonally challenging, tended to overlap with growing up in a family that brush things under the rug.

You know that family where it's just like, “No, it's fine. It's fine. Don't worry about it?” Like, mom just started screaming in the kitchen and was just like whatever, stormed off, and no one talks about it. That kind of thing. Or, like if you had big feels you were told, “No, we're not dealing with it.”

Well, that walking on eggshells, that kind of, “I'm fine, thank you,” can have really long-lasting implications for our adult selves and how we relate to ourselves and our feelings and to others.

In this conversation, I'm going to use the words “parents” and “caregivers” interchangeably. I'll invite you, as we go, to sub in the one that works for you in your head. So, in many families, many, many, many families, emotional expression is a language that's just never taught.

My parents often would speak Italian to each other, over our heads. My sister and I learned Spanish and some French growing up, and English; we grew up in the greatest state of the union, Rhode Island. We're Argentine, so we spoke Spanish growing up, but they would speak Italian to talk over our heads; they didn't teach it to us.

In hindsight, I'm like, “Oh, that was pretty smart,” though I would have liked to have learned Italian. But alas. Digression, as usual. But that was within the first three minutes, which I’ve got to say is pretty much a record for me. I think we'll check the historical record and get back to you.

But much like my sister and I were not taught Italian growing up, we were not taught how to feel our feelings or how to talk about our feelings or anything about feelings, like so many of us. And so, for many of us, the mantra ‘what's unspoken stays unspoken’ forms the bedrock of our emotional communication or lack thereof.

This silence, often a product of intergenerational patterns, leaves a profound imprint on us, and what we grow up thinking is the best or right way to communicate. This practice, deeply rooted in a mix of societal, cultural, and often survival strategies, leaves invisible but indelible marks on us.

Psychologically speaking, when emotions are consistently ignored or unacknowledged, when situations just didn't happen… when you definitely saw them happen… it disrupts the normal development of our emotional regulation as children. And can confuse our developing minds around what's real, what's true, who to trust, what's okay and what's not okay to talk about, and when and where it is okay to be real and honest.

According to Attachment Theory, originally the work of Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby, and many others since its origins, not talking about what's real can lead to a range of emotional relational issues, from anxiety to avoidance and intimate connections.

Dr. Jonice Webb's work on child emotional neglect highlights how growing up this way can skew our emotional compass, leading to challenges in both understanding and expressing our feelings in adulthood.

It makes it harder for us to recognize what others are feeling, because we didn't see people, we didn't experience people, actually feeling the full range of human feels when we were smaller. It's like growing up colorblind and only realizing later, the world is full of color.

Biologically, emotional suppression can really impact our nervous systems, which are wired for connection and expression. In the absence of that full range of emotional expression, our nervous systems are never getting the proverbial “all clear” signal from our environments that allow us to downregulate, to chill, and to go into ventral vagal; the safe and social parts of the nervous system.

So, it makes sense, right? Logically, you're going to stay jacked up. You're going to stay in that state of high alert, which affects our ability to connect and feel safe in relationships. Logically, if you think you're running from a lion, you're not really going to relax into a hug, right? And so, as adults it's as if our emotional alarm system is always on. Even when there's no danger that limbic worry is just going, which impacts not just our mental health but our physical wellbeing too.

As I talked about so often here, prolonged fight or flight, sympathetic activation, adrenalization; adrenaline, norepinephrine racing through your bloodstream; leads to eventual collapse, to dorsal dominance. When you're just too exhausted from staying jacked up to stay jacked up.

So, in lieu of anxiety and worry, depression and disconnection set in. Or like me, you spend a lifetime bouncing from sympathetic to dorsal, in that beautiful mixed state. The more I work with it and think about it, I think most people are experiencing emotional outsourcing… which again, codependent, perfectionist, and people-pleasing thinking… most of us are actually in functional freeze. I know I was.

How did it get this way? Why? Why, parents, why? Well, one of the key reasons parents may suppress emotions within the family is rooted in their own psychological history, often influenced by their experience when they were kiddos. And so, they pass these habits and coping skills down to their kids, as they were handed to them; à la intergenerational trauma. Your mom's go-to casserole is the one her mama made for her, right?

Psychologist Judith Herman talks about how unresolved traumas can perpetuate a legacy of emotional silence within families. It makes sense. Caregivers who grew up in environments where emotional expression was discouraged or punished… Remember, and I think about the boomers a lot. My wife's parents are “the silent generation”; five minutes before the boomers.

Oftentimes, they were punished, had their mouths washed out with soap, or were hit for having human feelings. So, of course, they're likely to repeat these patterns with their own children. Feelings were coded as very dangerous, scary things. And, they often don't know how to do things any differently now.

It can also be because they don't know they're doing anything sub-optimal, let alone harmful. This cycle is often unconscious. These caregivers might not have had the opportunity or support to process their trauma, or to learn alternative ways of emotional expression; pre-internet generations often didn't, not in the same way that we do now. Right?

They might view the suppression of emotions as a necessary means of maintaining control or stability, which they were trained to believe that being a good parent means controlling your children; that's what was, right? So, they may be totally unaware of the long-term psychological impact that this has on their children; who are mostly us, now adults, listening to shows like this one.

Sociologists like Émile Durkheim have discussed how societal norms and values can deeply influence individual behaviors like parenting practices. In many cultures, showing emotions, particularly those viewed as “negative” like sadness, disappointment, or anger, are often seen as a sign of weakness or instability; what is worse than being weak?...

And have been super-extra verboten for humans socialized women, who are expected to be always pleasant, grateful, easy to get along with; which definitely does not include being sad, pissed off, or disappointed.

There's a widespread cultural narrative that promotes stoicism and emotional restraint as virtues, particularly in patriarchal societies. These societal norms are internalized by caregivers who then, again, consciously or subconsciously impose those expectations on their kiddos. As with other components of emotional outsourcing, the pressure to conform to these standards can be so overwhelming that it overshadows the need for emotional authenticity and expression within the family.

Another factor in parents’ suppression of emotion is a fear of vulnerability. For so many, showing emotions is equated with dangerous, risky, scary, bad thing of being vulnerable and having feelings. So, emotional restraint is valorized; again, a sign of strength.

This fear of vulnerability is compounded for folks who never learned healthy emotional skills or emotional literacy, and don't know how to understand, be with, honor, manage their own emotions. And from there, really have no clue how to empathically respond to the emotions of others, which of course, makes emotional expression in themselves or their family members a wildly uncomfortable thing.

Of course, no surprise, they avoid and suppress emotions instead of engaging with them. This is particularly common in parents who believe… Thanks patriarchy and white-settler colonialism… that their role is to rule the home instead of being a co-creator of family life. This, combined with a capitalist drive that often values productivity over personal wellbeing, creates a perfect storm for emotional neglect.

Finally, historical and economic factors play a crucial role in why parents might suppress emotions in the family setting. Families and societies that have undergone significant hardships like financial instability, war, displacement… Hi, all of Latin America… or other forms of collective trauma like [inaudible], endless dictatorships, constant ridiculous inflation, on and on.

These communities often develop a culture of emotional suppression as a survival mechanism. In these circumstances, the priority becomes physical survival and stability, often at the expense of emotional expression and definitely connection. Parents in such situations may view emotional conversations as a luxury, or an unnecessary burden that could detract from dealing with practical, survival-related issues.

Similarly, in families where there’s substance abuse issues or mental health concerns, talking about how sad you, as a 14-year-old, feel about your breakup, is just not something the family structure might have the space for. I know that sucks. I'm just saying.

So, what does this emotional silence look like in adulthood? Well, imagine a garden where certain plants, emotions, are never allowed to grow and flower. The seeds are still there but the flowers cannot blossom. As adults we might find ourselves in an emotional desert, unsure how to cultivate our feelings. It's like monoculture, come to think of it. That's interesting; that just popped into my head.

It's like all you're growing is ‘I'm fine’, said between gritted teeth, right? That's all you know, when that's all you've been able to grow. I just love a metáfora, love it. I particularly enjoy mixing metaphors.

Just a little preview, I have a book coming out on emotional outsourcing. It comes out March 2025. We've got quite a while still, but I was rereading, I think it's chapter four. On one page, I think I used like 16 metaphors, or like 16 million metaphors. It's pretty fun. You all seem to like being the cake, so… If you'd like to be the cake, watch out, more metaphors coming your way.

So, my angel, let's get back to it. When you don't really know how to have, name, feel, or be with your feelings, you might find yourself struggling to identify or express your emotions, much less process them through your body. When feelings are seen as a dangerous problem in childhood, your nervous system learns to activate into sympathetic when it senses out of balance emotions.

Which makes you feel overwhelmed, anxious, worried, and full of impulses and urges to turn away from your feelings towards a distraction from them. Which not only make sense, but has a name because it's oh so common, and not something for you to feel guilt or shame or blame about.

It's called “buffering.” We talked about it in Episode 14, 245, and 243. There are so many shows where I touch on buffering, because it's a central part of living with emotional outsourcing. And learning how to buffer less is a huge part of stepping into emotional adulthood from emotional immaturity.

So, little kid ‘you’ learned some emotions were dangerous. They happen in your adult life, and your nervous system goes into sympathetic activation; you don't want to feel those feelings; and so we go to extremes to not feel them in our own bodies and to deny them in others. Again, generally not even realizing we're doing it.

The concept of “alexithymia” is a term coined by psychotherapist Peter Sifneos, a state where emotional literacy is significantly impaired. This is common in folks who come from emotionally neglectful or immature families, which are generally, once again, folks where are emotional outsourcing rules.

This can manifest and relationships as a kind of emotional clumsiness, where intentions and feelings are lost in translation. They might feel a certain discomfort or even physical sensations like a tightness in the chest or a knot in the stomach, without being able to connect these sensations to specific emotions, and without doing deep somatic work to recreate those connections.

This inability can lead to moments of confusion and frustration in situations that demand emotional responses, such as intimate relationships, social interactions, or even personal moments of crisis.

I know, I, myself, have absolutely been there, with that kind of somatic discomfort around allowing myself to fully feel my feels. And when other people have had really big feels around me. Fifteen years ago, I would just shut down. I would just numb out to both my feels and theirs because that was the skill I had. That was the tool; that was it.

So, when this is our norm, relationships, particularly our romantic ones, can have a certain distance, a superficiality, which can lead to a sense of loneliness or isolation even when we're physically close to our partners or friends. The concept of intimacy is then often conflated with physical proximity or shared activities, rather than emotional closeness and vulnerability, because we don't share her truest truth.

Perfectionism and overachieving are cozy when this is your norm, because when you're perfect others approve of you, and there are fewer feels to deal with. Because when you're perfect, you can obviate conflict, right? Ha, if only. Sure, being a keener can lead to high levels of success in one's career, but it often comes at the cost of personal wellbeing.

Leading to burnout or chronic stress as we continually push ourselves, unable to feel satisfied with our achievements, always striving for an elusive sense of validation from outside of ourselves. Which, I know you know from listening to this show, is never coming. That is to say, the call does need to come from inside the house.

Meanwhile, codependent and people-pleasing behaviors; prioritizing other's needs over our own; sometimes to our detriment, is also the norm here. Coming from an internalized belief system that equates our value with our usefulness or likability to others, which is another protective mechanism like perfectionism.

This can lead to unbalanced relationships, where our needs and desires are constantly sidelined. Because of the nervous system activation, and subsequent worry and anxiety tied to big feels, when faced with high stress situations or conflicts we might either detach emotionally, or become overwhelmed by emotions that we can't fully understand, control, don't quite know what to do with.

This reaction can be particularly perplexing for us as we struggle to navigate our emotional responses while trying to adhere to the learned behavior of emotional suppression; cue the buffering once more, as a smart, albeit harmful, but very smart coping mechanism for sensations that can easily overwhelm.

When emotions were a problem, conflict was often hidden away or was not. And because all of those pent-up emotions would eventually explode, conflict was scary, loud, dangerous, growing up. Especially when we grew up in emotionally suppressive environments where there was no repair or discussion after rupture. That made conflict super-duper scary, and so of course we avoid it as adults; we're not morons, c’mon now.

While doing that, avoiding any discomfort, any conflict, any somebody not liking me, that can seem to protect our tenderoni just a little bit. It also makes us really challenging to be in relationship with. As always, I mean, romantic, friendship, colleague, parent, child.

Ooh, it's challenging, because we're reluctant to address issues, to say what's real, to say, “I actually don't like that. Actually, I want it this way,” or whatever. Leading to a buildup of resentment and a sense of being misunderstood.

Professionally, it hinders our ability to assert ourselves or address workplace issues effectively, which can stall career growth and team productivity. Internally, this avoidance creates significant stress and anxiety, leaving us in a constant state of vigilance against potential conflicts.

Fearing naming the issue straight up, we head on over to passive- aggressive-Ville, which is a lousy suburb of Terrible Communication-Land; I just want to make sure you know where it is on the map. This is a place where frustration is expressed indirectly, which further complicates most interactions and relationships, leaving everyone annoyed and no one actually happy or connected.

Finally, the suppression of emotions often manifests physically. I've seen this time and again in clinic, and the science just adds up. Chronic tension, headaches, digestive issues, stress-related physical ailments, immune issues, metabolic issues; the science is clear.

Physical symptoms can be a somatic expression of the unprocessed emotional stress anyone holding their feelings back would carry, because it's dysregulating in your nervous system. It makes sense. It makes science, right, my loves?

That was a lot. As always, I just want to be clear, it's the new year and so there's always new people listening to this show. Welcome. I love you. I'm glad you're here.

The reason I spend so much time talking about what sucks, why it sucks, and why it's so terrible, is because we tend to blame ourselves, to shame ourselves, to treat ourselves like crap, for having reasonable, totally appropriate in their way, and good reactions, responses, to growing up in lousy environments.

In environments where we weren't attuned to, that didn't actually support us, that weren't actually helping us to thrive and grow. Where we weren't being met, where we weren't being taught, how to have our feelings. Where we weren't being taught that conflict is a gift; which we're about to get into.

I know, if you're like, “Wait, what? What? What?” I'm getting to it. So, when we grew up in emotional outsourcing; codependent, perfectionist, peoplepleasing thought habits, it is our habit to self-flagellate. To treat ourselves like crap, because we do not believe we're worthy of anything else. And because this perfectionist story says, “If I beat myself up enough, then no one else will come for me.”

Not only is that not true, but beating yourself up does absolutely nothing for you or anyone else. And so, I spend time going over all the hows and whys of what's really lousy here, so that you can see it's not just you, and you're not just making it up, and it's not just a story you're telling, and you're not just bananas; this comes from somewhere.

And so, if you realize that any time a friend is like, “Hey, I'm annoyed you are five minutes late,” and you can’t even go to there, or you're just like, “Oh, I'm sorry, I'm terrible,” anything to avoid conflict, whatever you're doing, you're not broken. You're not diseased. You're not defective. You're not a problem. You have survival skills, and they come from somewhere. So, please, be kind to you. Okay?

All right. So let's take a moment, nervous system break; shake it out. If you're like, “Ooh, this is a lot,” shake your little shoulders, give it a shimmy. Shake your paws. Shake your legs, if you have the capacity and it feels good. Give your perfect little body a little shimmy shake. Maybe a little sigh. Bring that nervous system back. Yeah.

So, let's talk about remedies, my darling. I love the remedies. What we get to do, is to do emotional repair through that process to reconnect with suppressed emotions. Remembering how to recognize, validate, and express our beautiful feels, and how to not run away from conflict.

As with any survival skill that touches deep into our childhood and early nervous system programming, nothing is as important as orienting our nervous system to safety. Trying to engage in healthy conflict, or connect deeply with your emotions, while dysregulated is really setting yourself up for a likely terrible time, my perfect, tender squash blossom. You deserve better.

If you don't know what “orienting” is, that's cool. I got you. Head on over to VictoriaAlbina.com/257, that's the number of this podcast. Can you believe it, it's our 257th? There, you can download a free orienting exercise recording I made for you. It's short and sweet, just like me. And it's an easy skill to add to your tool bag.

Please, please take gentle care of your nervous system and orient often. It really can take about four to five seconds, so if your brain’s like, “Ugh, I don't have time for some other whole, long self-care thing,” that's cool. I'm not offering one… I sound like the Pillsbury Doughboy... Five seconds, legit; it's really helpful. It's science based, it's evidence based, and it has some woo energy to it too, if you want to bring that in; all the science and all the woo, they can coexist. They do it here.

The more oriented you are, the more you're in ventral vagal, the more you can actually feel, the more capable of healthy conflict you will grow into being, as you widen your window of capacity in your nervous system. So, once oriented, the kitten step on this for me started with setting an alarm for three times a day, at random times each day, and pausing to check in with myself.

I would just ask: What feeling am I feeling? It's pretty basic. It was basic, but it was also mind blowing. I was like, “Oh, I didn't realize that I actually was sitting here pissed off until I asked myself.” So, I kept a feelings wheel on the ready, and explored: Is this anger or frustration, joy or contentment, sadness or longing, numbness or overwhelm?

I did it with an air of curiosity, not perfectionistic “I have to get this right.” But just like, “Oh, I'm curious. Is it joy or is it contentment?” Part of what I was doing, was mapping feelings onto my body. Because I had never really had them. I still do this, pause and be like, “Oh yeah, what does contentment feel like? Okay, let me do right now.”

Joy, for me, my hands are going ‘whee’, jazz hands over my head. It feels like sparkles of red and pink just coming ‘whee’ out of my head. Joy! Contentment is more subtle. It's this soft blue energy that moves from my chest down into my belly. Ooh, like ocean waves. It's soft.

Now that I have access to both of those and I know where they live, it gives me a heuristic, right? It gives me a shortcut. And, who doesn't love a shortcut, right? So, I do the longer work to have the shortcut, so that when I'm standing in line at wherever, and it's like, “Argh, it's taking forever,” am I actually feeling impatient with this moment or am I actually feeling anger because I told myself to do 15 errands but I really only have enough spoons for three?

What's wicked important to know, is that there's no right answer. Whatever you believe to be the emotion you're having, go with it. Just trust yourself, because it really doesn't matter. Know that the more you trust yourself, the more trustworthy you grow to be with you, and then with the people in your world, and that's pretty friggin’ rad.

Of course, the more you can bring the somatics, the body awareness in; name the emotion, feel it in your body; it's a beautiful, magical way really, to build intimacy with yourself. If meditation works for you take it to the cushion. Ask your body to show you what different emotions feel like within you. Explore your feelings through mindfulness, it is so powerful.

I've also found creative and expressive practices to be so healing for this emotional feeling block: Art, music, dance, writing, can be super useful. I particularly find that the wordless ways of expressing emotions that might be too complex or overwhelming for words, have really moved the needle the most.

So, I bought a package of oil pastels a few years back, and a big, cheap sketch pad; nothing fancy, way under 20 bucks for the whole setup. It's been amazingly helpful to be able to draw out what I'm feeling when words have felt limiting or just not available. It's not “good” art, whatever that is, because that's not the point. It’s about getting it out. It usually, frankly, looks like a mess.

That's great, because feelings are messy. And so, I just let the feelings be messy. Music and dance have been life changing. One of my favorite things that we do in Anchored; I love our weekly coaching calls, they're so powerful; we dance. We move, we have dance parties, we have somatic movement events.

And after our weekly coaching calls, we dance or move pretty much every week. It's a beautiful way to get in touch with and express the emotions within through rhythm and movement. It allows us to bypass the cognitive filters that often inhibit emotional expression.

Nature has played a huge role in reconnecting with my own emotional depth, and studies or backing up what our bodies and our ancestors all know; nature is magically healing. I want to encourage you to connect with plants, trees, the woods, as a way to connect with yourself and your beautiful feels.

So, as you connect with yourself, as you begin to grow more space for your own feelings and all the energetics that come along with them, I want to remind you, as always, that as humans we're pack animals, and we heal in community, we heal in collective.

I want to really encourage you to, if you have friends that you can share this part of your journey with, do. If you have friends where you even sort of maybe have an inkling of, “Yeah, I can probably share this with her,” do it. Get consent, right?

“Hey, I've been doing this really interesting work that I heard about on the Feminist Wellness podcast. I would actually really like to talk with you about it. Do you have space for that?” That's how we get emotional consent for a conversation.

And if your friend says yes, trust them. Oh, I know it's so hard. Oh, I know it. This is how we do it. This is how we change, right? Trust them. And tell them about the work, if you feel so moved. Again, you can get consent. “I actually would really love to share where this is coming from and what it was like in my family. Do you have space for that?”

Check in, get consent; it never hurts. If they're like, “Yeah, of course,” then see what it might feel like to share a bit about your family of origin, and how and why it got this way. If you know about your grandparents, and theirs and theirs, you can start to sort of build the story of the “why”. Which, for me, I find it really soothing to understand that again, it's not me. It's not that anyone was trying to hurt me or harm me or disrespect me or shortchange me, it just was what was.

Which doesn't excuse it, but it helps me to bring in extra compassion and care when I start with curiosity. So, gentle exploration of self, sharing and community, and we cannot forget to talk about acceptance. One of the things that keeps us from truly feeling our feels, and really being at peace with them, is that we experience ourselves being angry, being disappointed, being frustrated, or whatever it is, and we push it away.

We say, “Oh no, I can't be angry,” usually because we learned in childhood that it wasn't okay for us to be angry, disappointed, frustrated, etc. So, part of the pinky promise I want to invite you to make with yourself when you start this work is, whatever feelings come up, honor them. Respect them. Thank them.

Here's my biggest thing, the biggest tool I've used that's been so helpful, is to, as a feeling comes up, and remember, for me, at the beginning, this was wild work, right? I could do mad, sad, and glad when I was in functional freeze, and frankly not much else. Wild depression; I could do wild and earthshaking depression, but not much beyond that.

And so, as a new feeling would come up, and this is because I have access to my visual cortex; I can visualize really well and really easily. If you can't, that's cool, whatever, you can just be with the felt sensation in your body. But I would visualize the emotion, give it a color, a texture, a weight. Or ask it what it’s color, texture, and weight are; that's a little more advanced skill. But I do that now.

Then, I would think it. Here's the part that makes me a little teary now, and definitely had me very much in the feels and in the crying; which was super helpful. I would tell it, “You belong. You belong with me. You are a part of me, and you belong here. You have significance. You have belonging.”

Because all we are hunting for as humans, is significance and belonging on the way to safety, right? So, each of my feels, like each of yours, is really just looking for safety and belonging, significance in your world. So. why not give your emotions, the gift of reminding them, letting them know, “Baby, I'm grateful for you. It's not always pleasant to be with you, frustration, and I get it that you're here to teach me. I hear that. I see that. I know that. I trust that. I believe that. You belong.”

My beauty, from working within, I know so many of you will be asking, “How do I take this to my family?”. The truth of the matter is, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it have feelings. So, if your family is not on board with this process for themselves, in their own lives, the greatest gift you can give them is respect.

Just honoring that that's not where they're at. That's not what they're capable of. That's not what their nervous systems can handle right now. Pushing someone to have feelings that their nervous system doesn't have the space to have, is setting someone up to be flooded in their nervous system, or to completely shut down. And it is not a kind or loving choice.

Remember, the “feminist” in Feminist Wellness means consent. So, much like you would check in with a friend and say, “Hey, can I talk with you about this?”

Check in with your siblings or your parents or your aunts or uncles, whomever in your family you might want to talk with, and say, “Hey, I've been doing this process to really feel my feels a lot more. And it's been really challenging in a lot of ways. But honestly, overall, it's been a real gift. So, I just wanted to let you know that, that I have a process, I have a thing I do, and it's really helped me to not just feel more sadness, but to feel way more joy.” Because they are flip sides of the same coin.

“If you would like to hear about it, I'm here.” That's it. Offer people the love, care, respect, and resources that you want to offer them, with love, care, and respect, right? It brings us back to acceptance. When you go home for the holidays or call your parents or however you see your family, remember, they are who they are.

Just because you're changing doesn't mean that they are making similar changes. It does mean that you get to step into more acceptance, love, and care for them by not trying to force them to be someone they're not.

So, my darling, this journey is unique to each of us. What works for one may not work for another. There's no timeline here. It's about finding your path, and walking with love and patience. So, please be gentle, kind, and compassionate with you along the way.

Celebrate each and every time you can identify a feeling, every time you can feel a sensation in your body, every time you can connect in with the feeling, and don't run away from unintentionality. If you consciously choose distraction, to not feel a feeling because you know it's going to overwhelm you, hallelujah. Yay, amen, parade. Yay, good job.

And every time you intentionally say, “No, no, no, I'm sticking with this one. I'm going to feel this sad, lie on the bathroom floor sobbing, because I know I always get up.” Then, yay to that.

As we close, let's remember part of this healing is also societal. It involves challenging the patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist structures that often underpin these familial and social dynamics. By advocating for emotional honesty and vulnerability in our families, in our homes, in our communities, we're not just healing ourselves, but are contributing to a larger cultural shift and societal healing.

Likewise, healing is a communal endeavor. It's about finding and creating spaces where our emotions are acknowledged and validated, and then giving that gift to the next person, and the next and the next. Remember, no matter how you came up, what you learned in childhood, you have the magic superpower of neuroplasticity.

Our brains and bodies are not just capable of shifting, changing, growing, and healing, they're designed for it. What a beautiful place to close. You have magical superpowers.

I want to thank you for listening, my darling, perfect love. It's been such a delight to share about this, and to talk about it, and to remind you that you too, can grow.

If you've been wanting more support in your journey and you feel called to work with me, I'd be honored to work with you. Head on over to VictoriaAlbina.com/anchored to learn more about my six-month coaching program. If you feel called to apply now, we'll be in touch when we open the program again later this year. It's been quite a while since we started an Anchored group, and I can't wait to coach you, yes, you, so soon.

If you're an Anchored alum, come on back. We miss you. Oh, I'm really doing PillsBoy laughs today. I'm kind of really liking it. It's just happening, but it feels cute in my body.

Okay, my darling, let’s do what we do. A gentle hand on your heart, should you feel so moved. Remember, you are safe, you are held, you are loved. And, when one of us heals, we help heal the world. Be well, my beauty. I’ll talk to you soon.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Feminist Wellness. If you want to learn more all about somatics, what the heck that word means, and why it matters for your life, head on over to VictoriaAlbina.com/somaticswebinar for a free webinar all about it. Have a beautiful day my darling and I'll see you next week. Ciao.