Speaker 1: 00:03
Wine is a podcast that focuses on mental health and other aspects relating to what goes on inside a person's happy. We are by no means professionals on this field and only aim to make these conversations about mental health easier for the listener. Nothing we say or talk about is professional advice unless explicitly mentioned. If you seek professional advice or experience symptoms of an actual mental health disorder, please contact a professional or visit your closest center for behavioral health. You are not alone. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to You Are Not Alone. This topic is on emotional freedom.
Speaker: 00:40
Emotional freedom is being free from feeling like a victim of your emotions or controlled by your emotions. And also emotional freedom could just be that sort of relief that you get from finally letting go of the mental barriers that you kind of had before that stopped you from being in touch with your emotions, basically.
Speaker 1: 01:06
Exactly. So before we get the podcast started, we have a test for all of our listeners. It's a test to see how emotionally free you are. So we're gonna ask you five questions and then we'll give you the analysis of like how many you need correct to be emotionally free. A first step towards achieving emotional freedom is to know where you currently stand. The first question is if I'm angry with someone, I'll breathe and center myself before I react. The second question, when I'm filled with self-doubt or fear, I treat myself lovingly. The third third question, when stuck in traffic or if something doesn't happen on my timetable, I have patience. Fourth question, after a hard day, I focus on what I'm grateful for rather than beating myself up for what has gone wrong. The fifth question, I have empathy for others, but I don't become their therapist or absorb absorb their emotional pain. So answering yes to four or five questions means you're experiencing emotional freedom. Two to three yeses indicts some emotional freedom. One to two yeses indicts a low level. Zero yeses indicates you are not enjoying a lot of emotional freedom, but you can start to make a change now. And all begins with making the change now.
Speaker: 02:21
Exactly.
Speaker 1: 02:22
Once you can make that change and move forward, you can finally have a better mental health, and you can work on receiving better emotions, receiving things that you never thought that you could ever be more free about. So, in my opinion, emotional freedom is the key to the cage of destructive mental health. It's the way out. And with good steps and taking care of your mental health, you can get out of that cage easily. Are there any things you do, Cheyenne, that helps you better your emotional freedom?
Speaker: 03:01
I think one of the main things that you need to do is let go of an ego that you have, especially um for guys, not to make this be like a one-sided uh thing, but from such a young age, we're taught like to be tough and to not basically be in touch with our emotions. So one of the first steps is just letting go of that. And you really need that barrier to be lifted from your soul in order to progress with your emotions and to get that emotional freedom that you're looking for. It's not something that happens overnight. It's not something that realistically you could just tell somebody to, hey, get rid of this, or hey, be in touch with your emotions all of a sudden. It doesn't work like that. It just you just need to take the time for yourself to deal with acceptance for who you are as a person, how things make you feel, and realize that it's okay to express yourself in any sort of way.
Speaker 1: 04:14
I think my difficulty comes from my culture of being Muslim. And when I was growing up, it was kind of like this phase of you can't really talk about your emotions because you're a man and you need to just have your life together, and your emotions cannot be talked about. I remember it was really difficult to talk to my parents about my emotions because I just knew that they wouldn't understand. And it just seemed like I would, I already knew what the answer I was gonna get. I was gonna get, I need you to man up, I need you to not feel like this. I don't know what it's gonna take, but like please grow up. And when someone tells you that, like, you it's it's more of a fact that you kind of need to hide your emotions now. And it makes you feel like I can't talk to anybody about my emotions, which starts the process of I'm gonna need to start bottling up my emotions. And now that I've started bottling up my emotions, I'm just gonna explode at one point. And the next thing you know, my emotions are flying all over the wall. But I'm still not getting out of the cage that I put myself into that I need to find that key to emotional freedom.
Speaker: 05:29
And it's not always the easiest thing when your peers and your friends are, like you said, cutting off that conversation, being like, hey, toughen up, be a man, like or you know, it just in any occasion, if you cut somebody's emotions off like that when they're trying to be real with you, it's not a very welcoming feeling. And it kind of makes you put up these walls and ones that are hard to take down later in life if you don't work on them now.
Speaker 1: 06:03
I think the boundaries and the walls that we put up for ourselves really become the most difficult thing to either get over, and unless we get over that wall or that stigma of you not being able to talk about your emotions, that's that's the thing that you need to get over. Unless you unl unless you just want to sit there and allow yourself not to feel emotions, that's fine. But I promise you, you're going to destroy your mental health doing that rather than pushing yourself to become better. It's it's not as hard as you think it is to talk about your emotions. You need to swallow that pill that you have in front of you, and that's the ego pill, that it's okay to talk about how you feel. And I get it. Some friends they may say things, they might treat you differently if you talk about how you feel, but don't allow that stigma to stop you from talking about how you feel. If you feel some sort of way, then it should be okay to talk about it. How do you feel? Do you think that there's been ever a point in time where it was difficult for you to express emotion because you had that stigma in front of you, and there was no way of feeling like I need to talk. I need I need someone just to just express my emotions to.
Speaker: 07:35
I think that I've ran into multiple occasions where I felt this way, but mainly because of my own mental image that I was thinking of of whatever situation it was. Because in my life, I don't have too many negative people or people cutting off that conversation, but it would always just stem from me feeling like I'm saying too much, or maybe this person doesn't care. It's almost like self-doubt in a in a way, where like I would feel those types of emotions or the lack of emotions, or being able to express them because of what I thought might be the outcome.
Speaker 1: 08:20
And the thought of it becoming some sort of outcome or the way that someone's going to react to you also stems from the trauma that you when you did express your emotions at one time and were shut down by somebody. That trauma, that feeling, that anxiety, that experience that you have to speak about something that you are shut off about, it becomes difficult. And the more you get shut off about it, the more you become this person who shoves their emotions down into their like deepest, darkest parts of their minds. And you just become this person that doesn't allow themselves to express themselves freely. Because imagine, imagine if the anxiety, the the pushing of the of the shutting down of the feelings wasn't there. Imagine if we were all able to express our emotions and communicate well with each other. How different would we be? How different would things get better for you? I believe that if I was able back then, when I was younger and I had to shove my emotions down, if I was able to express them, I already know that I would be a step ahead of bettering my mental health. Yeah, but I did. We just need to express ourselves freeingly without the feeling of being judged. And if you are in that position where you're surrounded by people that are not willing to listen to you and that are willing to judge you and how you feel, because it's it should be a norm. Why is why is it not a norm for us to talk about our feelings? Why is this why are why do we have this stigma of being a bitch? I apologize for my cursing, but it's just it doesn't make any sense to me. Why is expressing your feelings mean that you're a bitch?
Speaker: 10:13
Why does that equal why does that form why why does it make you feel like you're any less of a person? Just because you're being real with yourself or somebody else. And one one of the things I want to talk about is one of the negative effects of not having this emotional freedom. Like it doesn't matter how many people you're friends with, how many people you talk to on the daily, if you're not in touch with your emotions and you're not expressing them with other people, it can lead to a sense of loneliness. Like it doesn't matter how physically lonely you aren't, you can still feel mentally alone. Because you're it almost seems like you're blending in with other people, just having regular conversations, but you're not telling people how you really feel, or you're not being real with yourself, and it just leads to the loneliness.
Speaker 1: 11:05
One of the hardest parts I remember when trying to express my emotions was like having that conversation and having that thought bubble in my head. Like, I I just I just really want to talk about this. Like, I just but looking across the table and looking at the person that I was talking to, I knew that if I expressed my emotion to them, that they would just look at me like I why, dude? Like you, why are you like why are you this? Like, stop acting like a child. Like, this isn't something that's very expressive. Like, you don't need to be expressing this, like you're fine. And I knew after that that that person wasn't a very good friend, and I didn't need that in my life. So expressing yourself to someone across the table, if you feel as if you can't do that and they're gonna make you feel some type of way, I think it's time to recalculate if that person is a good friend to you or not, or whether they're just acquaintance.
Speaker: 12:01
Yeah. And if you are that friend who is telling that friend that they're okay or that nothing's really wrong, you know, just try something out. Just humor them. Really listen to what they're saying, because a lot of the times nobody's gonna be super upfront with you. Nobody's gonna be forceful with what they want you to hear. But just take a moment, take a step back, and just really listen to what your friends are saying, if you are that person.
Speaker 1: 12:33
And I think before we do end this episode, I I think we really need to talk about how we need to get over this wall, or how to get the keys to emotional freedom.
Speaker: 12:45
Yeah.
Speaker 1: 12:47
And I want to ask you what steps would you take to finally getting the key to releasing yourself out of the cage? How would you help me finally get the last two yeses or three yeses I need to finally open the door of emotional freedom?
Speaker: 13:08
I would say the first thing that you need to do is just be real with yourself. And of course, it seems like like you can't really just tell somebody like, hey, just get straight to it. It's almost like the same thing as like, hey, be a man, toughen up. Hey, open up about your emotions. But it's just a step-by-step thing. Again, if you're not starting to do that, you will never get to that point. And a lot of the times where you feel that way, like you can't open up. You just have insecurities, and which is normal, so many people have insecurities, but people also have worked on those insecurities and gotten past them. You just need to constantly have a goal in mind to be very well versed in your own emotions and how you can express them. You just need to take the time to sit back, step back, do what you like to do, talk to people who really make you feel comfortable, and that's when you kind of get out of this shell that is suppressing your emotional feelings that you want to talk about. And really that that's just like steps one and two when there's a whole book of steps. It's like a hundred steps on what to do. But the first thing is just starting, which I know a lot of people have a hard time on. But obviously, like just like the title of this podcast, you're you're not alone. Like, there's people out there who are going through the exact same thing that you are going through to the listener. This is something that you could work on. This is something that you could talk about with your friends, with your family. And, you know, if people continue to cut off this conversation when you try to bring it up, maybe it's time you talk to somebody else. Or if you are the person who's cutting off somebody else and telling them that they're fine, just humor them for a second. These it's just it's almost like there isn't necessarily a step-by-step thing. It's just the way you go about life. And the more comfortable you get in life, then the more you get comfortable with speaking on your emotions and how you feel. And you kind of let go of what doesn't really matter, because when we're firstborn, you kind of just go through this thing where you're taught one thing and it has to be this way. So you don't even think about your own emotions, things like that. Like you said, with your culture, guys are just supposed to toughen up, man up. But later on in life, you realize, no, I need to be in touch with my emotions. I need to speak on this. It's just how we go about life. The steps you take in life and the steps you take to better your emotional health, they're parallel with each other. Almost the same.
Speaker 1: 16:10
Another step that I would want to add, or part of the book of steps that I realized that helped was loving yourself.
Speaker: 16:17
Yeah.
Speaker 1: 16:18
You need to love yourself. You need to find ways to love yourself. You need to figure out how to love yourself. You need to think of what I can do to better my mental health. And it's and it's the simple things, it's the baby steps, it's the little things that that you do. And if you do them not even correctly, because like if you do it wrong, then you figure out, okay, that's not a way to love myself, then I just need to figure out something else, the way to love myself, because anxiety, all these feelings, they creep in when you're self-doubt, when you don't know um how to feel. You allow those disorders or those demons to be like, this is free play. This is a we can we can do whatever we want.
Speaker: 17:03
Let them take control of you.
Speaker 1: 17:04
Yeah. And they they know how to express their emotions better than you do. They know how to make you feel depressed, they know how to make you feel anxious, and it's a battle that you can easily win. Maybe not easily, I apologize for saying that. It's a battle that you can win if you just allow yourself to finally express the emotions that you've had bottled up for so long. And you got this. You've got this, you know you've got this, you've always known you've got this. But again, take the first step. You got this, you can do it. Got anything else for the listeners? No, I think we pretty much covered all the bases. And I just want to remind all you please, please, please, please, please remember. You are not alone. I've got your back. We're gonna get through this together. How does that sound, Shannon? Sounds great. Thank you so much. Catch you guys on the next episode. See ya.