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About this episode

Ever feel like you’re going through life with an invisible weight holding you back—old hurts, unspoken fears, or emotional “constipation” clogging your sense of connection with yourself and others? Many of us are conditioned to avoid our discomfort, stuff down our feelings, or simply muscle through, only to discover that real joy and closeness remain just out of reach. The struggle to feel truly seen, cared for, and emotionally vibrant isn’t just personal—it’s a modern epidemic.

In this episode, you’ll discover how to build emotional health and resilience by learning to recognize, honor, and skillfully process your feelings. Through practical analogies—like emotional “potty training”—and grounded, compassionate guidance, you’ll explore why authentic emotional connection is the missing link to deeper relationships and personal well-being. Whether you’re seeking more intimacy, healing old scars, or just want to feel more fully alive, this conversation offers real-world tools and gentle permission to let your feelings move—and gently transform your life from the inside out.

Rachel Kaplan, MA, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist and host of the acclaimed Healing Feeling Sh*t Show podcast. Kaplan has studied yoga, meditation, and hands-on healing practices in India and Nepal, earned a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and trained in cutting-edge trauma modalities such as EMDR. Her “Inner Talks That Heal” TEDx talk explores the internal relationship between our loving and wounded parts.

Episode Highlights

07:49 Rachel’s personal journey of healing.

15:42 Avoidance, dissociation, and the societal struggle to stay present.

17:46 The importance of feeling both pain and growth.

22:52 How to recognize, accept, and let go of your emotions in a healthy way, instead of suppressing or avoiding them.

24:00 How emotional constipation develops: Childhood, suppression, and the need for emotional movement.

30:18 Practical steps to reconnect with and care for hidden or neglected parts of yourself.

37:50 How unmet needs and hidden parts show up with partners.

41:49 Self-responsibility in emotional processing: Navigating attachment styles and reactions.

45:37 Vulnerability, repair, and building emotional resilience in relationships.

51:42 Further resources: Rachel’s book, podcast, and ways to continue learning.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Take a few moments each day to breathe deeply, become aware of your body, and notice your internal sensations as a way to center yourself.
• Allow emotions to surface without judgment—treat them as natural signals your body sends, much like physical needs.
• Reflect on which parts of yourself you tend to hide or compartmentalize, especially those that felt unlovable or rejected in childhood.
• Set regular reminders to connect with these hidden parts, whether through journaling, meditation, or simply pausing to ask how you’re feeling.
• Approach your vulnerable emotions with care and curiosity, not with the goal to fix or change, but simply to be with yourself.
• When intense feelings arise, give yourself time to fully experience and process them—don’t rush to distract or avoid.
• Recognize that, while circumstances or others can trigger feelings, processing and integrating them is ultimately your own responsibility.
• When conflict or triggers arise, do your inner work first, then share with your partner from a place of vulnerability rather than blame or reactivity.

Mentioned

Author Rachel Kaplan introduces FEEL, HEAL, AND LET THAT SH*T GO (*YouTube video)

Feel, Heal, and Let That Sh*t Go (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

The Power of Your Other Hand (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

ERP 346: Accessing Relatedness & The Priority Of Connection — An Interview With Gabriel Kram

ERP 423: How To Transcend Trauma (And The Effects Experience In Relationship) — An Interview With Dr. Frank Anderson

Evolve in Love (program)

Connect with Rachel Kaplan

Websites: thefeelingsmovement.com

Facebook: facebook.com/HFSSwithRachelKaplan

YouTube: youtube.com/@thefeelingsmovement

Instagram: instagram.com/healingfeelingshitshow

LinkedIn: .linkedin.com/in/rachel-kaplan-ma-mft-68355436

TikTok: tiktok.com/@thefeelingsmovement

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

If you have a topic you would like it to be discussed, please contact us by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. 

Also, I would so appreciate your honest rating and review. Please leave a review by clicking here. 

Thank you!  

*With Amazon Affiliate Links, I may earn a few cents from Amazon, if you purchase the book from this link.

Episode Transcript

Rachel, thank you for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me.

Yes. I am very excited about our topic, in that I feel this is so important. Yet, I think that having a real embodied practice and it being incorporated into life, as in just as much as eating and sleeping, to give attention. We're going to be focusing on our emotional connection with our experience around feelings and emotion and just the importance around that. You have really coined a movement, The Feelings Movement. So let's just get to know you a little bit. How did this become a focus for you and for people who are just getting acquainted with you here? What would you like to share?

That's such a funny question, just like I'm with the therapist. I think all of us have some wounding from just being raised by humans, being little tender sacks of nervous systems in the world being raised by humans. So I have that. Then, my first relationship, which was really the first thing I was obsessed with. Like, I was pretty distant from my family actually, a little empath, and was not so sure about some of what I was feeling in the house. So I kind of did my own thing. Then, when I was 12, I met this boy I just wanted to be as close to as possible, and ended up being this massive initiatory tragedy. He, right before we both turned 15, took his life and pulled me into that experience and trapped me from trying to stop him in a very good way.

It was just utterly devastating. I would say that I died, spent a few years plotting my death. I actually tried to stop him by promising that I would also take my own life. I just really moved into my head, like I think so many of our population, where we live. It wasn't until actually my next relationship where I had accidentally caught feels, that I started to realize how wounded I was, and that I was really empty inside. I was, I think, a junior in high school at that moment, and plodding my escape through college. But just really saw clearly that if I didn't deal with my own inner world, I would be building a life over a hole and that it wouldn't work.

So I started a very conscious journey of therapy that year, at 16. I had my first huge healing moment, which was really life-changing, like deeply soul-enhancing. I think I came back to myself in a way where suddenly everything was in technicolor, and I was turned on and mystically awake, but not really grounded yet. I was way more wounded than I thought. I was arrogant and 18, and cute and naive. But it would really, at that point by 18, set the trajectory of very much what I was focusing on in my life. I spent a few years in India, Nepal, studying Eastern religions and mindfulness and yoga, and taught yoga.

And what's interesting is what I'm focusing on now, when you're like how'd you get into what I call emotional potty training or the subject of what I'm offering, I would say that it wasn't until I had been a very good psychotherapist for a decade and just about a year after leaving a non-viable marriage, that I realized—this was like about eight years ago, the end of 2017—oh my God, I love myself, and I feel well in a way that I never dreamed of. It was so fascinating to me because I was already in the field. I looked like I had a great life. I think when I look into the world, even people doing a lot of self-help and therapy, and even the therapists, I think that most people are 70% baked as far as their healing goes. They look like they're functioning, maybe even look like they're thriving, but there's still this voice inside that's like: am I good enough, do I belong, am I lovable? So I became, I'd say, obsessed with really capturing what made the difference between the first 15 to 20 years after that experience, kind of my compensated self and what felt like a really emotionally resilient, self-loving self. Also, watching what made the difference in my clients.

So everything I've been doing—my podcast season one, my book—all of it is this tireless effort to share that, so that we expedite the healing that's happening. You said that I started a movement, I call it The Feelings Movement because it both speaks to like a revolution of: let's have our feelings, let's learn how to skillfully feel. But also a bowel movement, and we'll get into that. But it's a force.

The last thing I'll say is that, at some point, this very unique mentor, fully out of the therapeutic world—someone who lived in a mud hut and told me if I understood the internet, I wouldn't put anything on the internet—a very different kind of person, ended up being the deepest influence on my own understanding of healing, on my own healing. At some point, two thirds of the way through our work, he said: what you're receiving is a debt, and there's no way to pay back the debt other than really claiming your life and moving it forward. At that moment, I was like, okay. I didn't really get it. But then as soon as I really felt into the wellbeing I had created inside, I have had this, like I said, obsession with sharing it and moving it forward. So that's what I'm up to.

I love it. I want to respond to a few things. So if I'm hearing you, Rachel, some of the ways in which I'm processing what you're describing, it's almost as if the experience in high school around healing, the way I'm feeling it in my body is like, it saved your life and it opened you up into living and what is possible. And through the journey of various forms of healing modalities and mentors and teachers and guides, the process to integrate and then live into, in relationship, and recognizing perhaps. I mean, this is one of the things that I loved about in your book, is just really normalizing, even on the start of your story, around how we're being raised little humans, and just the circumstances that likely we're all living with some level of either, I know you're mindful of trauma being overused, but just the disconnection and perhaps the wounding, and the spectrum of that. That even if it's limited, it can still feel that we're a little bit ill-equipped around how to be in real flow, and we'll get to your analogy here. But just the integration, the living into, that this is a process that we might need to relearn, teach, give support to.

Because it's not just like, even I'll raise my hand with you, when I was reading your book and you were really inviting. I've done a lot of somatic psychology training, and I do yoga myself and a lot of my body practices. And I do notice still sometimes, throughout the day, in an attempt, I think what it is, is to meet whatever demands, I'll restrict my breathing. So just deepening my breath and just noticing what's there, my relationship to time and just tasks and running a little bit more masculine energy. Anyway, so it's just been really great.

With you!

Just that this is a process of fine-tuning, and this is attunement. When we look at relationship and attuning to another, but also having this attunement to self. If we're in a place of restriction, living in the head, the thought, disconnected from our felt experience, it's hard to really relate from that connection because we're feeling disconnected or constipated. Am I hearing you? Tell me.

Yeah, that all really lands. There's one thing I'll come back to, but toward the end of what you were saying. I think the reality is, for whatever reason, as organisms, we're trying to avoid pain, and being fast and being in our head and being productive. On one hand, the demands of the world require it, but for most of us, more comfortable. I think the problem in what you were just speaking to about how hard it is to attune is, if we can't be in ourselves because we're afraid of our pain, there's virtually no ground to connect to anyone on. There's also no peace. I think we're living in this world where everyone is anxious, I would call it fear, but the stress and anxiety. It's like, when we have pain, if that's what's happening in our body, when we're sad, when we express our anger, whatever is actually happening inside, there's usually this landing that feels so peaceful, so relaxing. Because it's like: Oh, there's the body I get to live from, and we're all in it.

I appreciate you sharing that you work on it. I do too. In these days, I think it's virtually impossible to be embodied and in feeling all the time. I'm not saying people need to be in their pain all the time, or even people need to be in their body all the time. I think the more time we're in our body, the easier it is to know what we need and take care of ourselves. But I think we need to check out here and there, and that's great. It's like finding a good way to take care of yourself. We're all in it.

Yes, for sure. It's reminding me of a couple things in what you're responding to. One of which is, I've had clients and I've even had guests that are in service of people in the field of self-help, and really achieving all the measures that society or that we're in the dream or the vision of what they wanted to accomplish, and really feeling quite dissatisfied or vacant. I know you speak about that, and just the recognition that for us to be in contact with self and to be really living in expression, that's a moving, developing, evolving thing. To try to meet some external expectation or where we even got the idea that we wanted to do X, Y, or Z, and just the disconnect there when we do so-called arrive to a place where we're not striving. We're like, I met my goals and still…

This is what it feels like?

Yeah, exactly. Then the other thing quickly to respond to is, I interviewed, and he is really much in the polyvagal and that whole world and teaching, I'll post his episode on today's show notes. But really, quite frankly, just saying we live in a disassociated society. We are largely having to be disassociated from self to be functioning in modern living. I was like, wow, that's very dramatic. But also, I don't disagree.

Yeah, and we're very easy to profit on when that's the case. To feed us the entertainment and the drugs and the alcohol and the food, and all the things that we're going to do instead of sit and feel our little human self.

Yeah. Just to underscore what you said, how human it is to avoid. The tendency to avoid the discomfort is absolutely human and natural, and the long-term effect of that, you're really shining light on. So you've mentioned, I've kind of hinted at it, you have the analogy of emotional constipation. Talk to us a little bit about that. It's kind of what we're saying.

The one other thing I just wanted to speak to real quick is just, you said this thing in high school saved your life. It's very beautiful, and ultimately, I think that this experience was meant for me and that this is what called me to be a very helpful companion. I honor that, and I feel like in the last many years, I've been able to really hold both. Since so many people have had such trauma and devastation in their lives, it both was this immensely initiating, like I said, experience. But also, I've been living with scars, being that injured so young. I know you know that, but just to say for anyone who has had one of these experiences that maybe great medicine flows from eventually. It's been really powerful for me to hold both the scar and the gift. Sometimes you're on one side more than the other, but I think they never go away. Even though right now I might be in a season of the medicine and I don't feel particularly messed up about that experience. But anyway, I just want to name that.

No, it's so important. The grieving, and when you were talking, I was feeling just being ripped, like shattered. These experiences, or people who have had them, to myself in some respects, not that experience. I don't know that I would want that, or the pain around it and the devastation around it. Also, what the medicine can come from, but also that the other doesn't make it something that doesn't still cause pain or grief or loss.

Yeah. I think, in my own healing, and it actually came through anger toward this young boy, until I was really able to stop pedestalizing and just living in this one version of the story, I don't think I fully claimed my life. There is a way that, I think just in the world of meaning and spirituality and things happen for a reason, and I teach a lot about this in the book. I don't know if you've got into those parts where I'm just like, let's not just try to affirm our way out of our pain. It's like, there's just so many places where, because we're a disassociated culture, we want to vacate the ouchie of the thing. I just think the deepest, most powerful way is to move through the ouchie. 

So let's move on to emotional potty training. Or do you want to say something?

I know we're never going to get to what we want to talk about if we keep riffing off each other. But I do want to comment that what you're describing is so important. In the field of spiritual and religious people and their practice, there's the concept of spiritual bypass. So I imagine that there can be this emotional bypass, that the tendency to affirm or how we put the positive spin on it can actually have an impact. Personally, I will share, when I've done my EMDR somatic therapy myself, that was one of the things that was so beautifully mirrored back to me. What I was processing was, it can be really and awful, and also, the gifts or the medicine that come. They can both be true, and it's sometimes hard to hold both.

Beautiful. So emotional potty training, basically after looking at what were the tools that were different between, like I said, compensated and resilient self-loving me, and looking at what do I think is most necessary. The metaphor that made the most sense is equating emotions to poop. The reason is, hopefully this morning—we're on the west coast, but we've been up for a few hours—you probably got a signal from your body that it was time to go to the bathroom. I imagine that you didn't eat or check downloads or do something, or turn on Netflix, to try to get rid of that feeling in your body. You went to a bathroom, I went to a bathroom, and we left a poop. We say we take a poop, but we really leave it. Thank God, when we were tiny, we were taught that. We were taught that the only thing to do to relieve that feeling is to go to the bathroom.

Emotions are similarly intense clusters of sensations that are also signaling that something needs to move through us. But our parents didn't understand that, our caregivers didn't. It's really hard. I don't know if you're a parent, I'm not. But I know how hard it is to keep a kid alive, and how ridiculous a lot of their feelings might seem and be. Like, the green cup or the blue cup, utter devastation. So it's very hard. I have compassion for parents, especially people who their parents probably understood even less. It's hard to make space for all feelings to move through. But we were likely plopped in front of screens or given treats or told there was nothing to be afraid of.

So most people, by the time they turn toward their healing, they have literally decades of pain that was pushed away. If you think about it, as tiny little human organisms, we can't hold our head up, we can't feed ourselves—we're completely dependent, and we rely on people. Therefore, you talked about attunement, we're so attuned to what makes them happy, what keeps them close. So every time as a kid, we start crying, our parent glasses over, and then eventually we get more concrete messages like: you're too needy, you're too loud, you shouldn't walk on your toes, whatever the things are. All this messaging around how we're doing it wrong. We're so desperate for love, to survive, that we are willing to compartmentalize and push the parts of us that cause that sense of loss or distance with caregivers away. So the parts of us that are holding the most pain, that got pushed down, are usually outside of our experience, like we talked about the disassociation. What that looks like is: Okay, I'm going to try to not have any needs, or I'm going to try to be really easy, or whatever it looks like. I'm going to try to be like a man, like my dad says, boys don't do this or whatever.

The first part, before learning how to move your feeling through you like a poop, which is ultimately what needs to happen. The first part of emotional potty training, the first wing is, how do you find the part of you that you're so sure causes you to lose love? How do you cord it back into your experience enough to actually have the ability to feel how much pain is there? Then, how do you work with the various emotions to learn to skillfully move them through you, so that you're not walking around backlogged with all this constipation? All this pain that keeps us feeling dependent, vulnerable, worthless children, and keeps us in all of the patterns, like what you were speaking to around, once you achieve all the things, where we're trying to win at a life that isn't really based in who we are.

So there's this two-winged approach of like: find the parts, cord the parts, start to take care of the parts, help the parts, poo out their pain one little movement at a time, and then you feel woven in like who you really are, and lighter, brighter, and less full of emotional.

Yes, yes, yes. So thank you for, just even at the end of that, being able to summarize a little bit. Because when you were talking, I was like, oh right! So my understanding of emotional process, sometimes emotions have a beginning and middle and an end, and just to have the process and help metabolize and have the release. Also, that as we live in life and how we learn, and it's fascinating to me, I've even heard someone reference in utero, we're learning our role. That before we even birthed, we're recognizing who we need to be to get love and be in a survival state, and be likable and lovable to the family or the parents. So I get chills thinking about how strong that is, and it's a survival mechanism as you're describing. So in that living experience, that there's certain parts that we perhaps disconnect from, compartmentalize off, suppress and deny.

So that it might be both, that there's parts. I'll just use myself as an example. One of the things that I'm feeling as you're describing, and I probably still have a lot of work to do, or maybe some work to do around this. I had a parent that was very emotionally expressive, I felt like volatile, or not even quite stable by some definitions at times. So I think, while I've been comfortable expressing, and I do have the fight instinct, so I will advocate. But through my training and my learning, I'm very diplomatic about how I assert or how I advocate. Sometimes I think that clamps down on my experience of anger, or even fear. I think fear was another one. I feel fear in certain ways, but I think there's certain parts that haven't been able to feel the full fear. I've been in previous therapy working towards that.

But to ask my question, and how I'm hearing you frame this is that perhaps, there's psychosynthesis, or Internal Family Systems, there's a part of us that has wounding or pain and that we've cut off from. That we might be able to identify that part, almost like it has a name or a personality or a certain experience and traits or characteristics. Then, like you just said, that that part has certain feelings that maybe haven't been able to be attuned to or responded to or didn't get guidance around. So is it both, is it part and emotional processing?

Absolutely, it's two. Parts work, I'm not IFS trained. In fact, I have a crabby attitude about the fact that parts work has become synonymous with this very recent model, which is beautiful. Although, I haven't even read the book. I think the more people that are like, is this IFS, the more I'm like, I'm not even going to. I started to when I was finishing my book, and I'm like, don't even read it yet. From what I understand, it's a beautiful model.

It's not the first, I agree with you.

No. But anyway, parts work, like how do you find those parts? The reality is that those parts were so scapegoated and truly felt so much like the problem, like I refer to them as like, they feel like little ghouls. We bring them into the emotional basement closet and lock them away, and we really pray that people don't discover them. Mine was actually aspects of my sensuality. I became very connected to pleasure as a child, and then horrifically ashamed of myself. So that's been a big journey for me of how to work with that part or being fiercely independent, like I said. I was called a bitch before age five. Don't I know I'm part of a family?

So these parts felt like the problem. The reality is, initially, this happened externally, but for most of us, by the time you're trying to heal, you are the one caging these parts. I quote Radiohead: we do it to ourselves, we do, and that's what really hurts. So it's really about rebuilding trust. People might say: Well, I don't know which parts are in there. Do I need to know? Do I need to know the memories? What if I'm not sure? I mean, it makes a fun horror cartoon to imagine these caged ghouls that are like, I'm your sexuality, or I'm your fear, whatever it is. It's not so specific. There's a whole chapter in my book, and an episode in season one of my podcasts, around how do we find these parts and how do we bring them back in? I think it's really about moving gently. Because at this point, we want them. We didn't want them our whole lives. Now we're like: Oh shit, I need you to be okay. So that's kind of exploitative.

Now you want to look at me? Now you want to relate to me?

Exactly. So it's really about like, how do we create consistency and curiosity and show these parts: Hey, I'm so sorry, and I want to know you. What does that look like in our lives? So there's a lot of just a few practical tips for people. I do think it's helpful, it's the one place in my paradigm where I suggest thinking. I don't think thinking gets us all that far, and we can get into that later if you want. But just doing a little reflection of what are the things that I felt made me unlovable? How did I compare myself to my siblings? What am I still maybe embarrassed about or try to give a lot of caveat to if I'm dating someone new, if I'm meeting new people? Just so you have a sense, some general sense, of what you might be hiding from. Then, if that part or that quality of you correlates to an age, or where you felt the most awkward, the most lovable, doing things like putting a picture of yourself at that age on your phone home screen, or building a little altar. 

I think working with alarms in the phone. Set an alarm. Decide what time of day are you willing to talk to this part? Is it in the morning? Is it in the evening? How can you, throughout your day, personify it? Like, little Rachie, little Jesse. It's like, what do they want to eat, when do they need rest and when are they actually up for connection? If you're with a partner, when are you really genuinely open to connection, and when are you just playing out some kind of strategy or peacemaking thing?

So you start to truly listen to the parts and try to shape what you're doing in a way where they can feel safe. As we do that consistently—and it really is over time, because we've been asshole to these parts—they start to be like: Really, you're going to know me? They're full of pain. It's not a problem. Pain is no different than something intense that we get to learn how to release.

It's so delicate. Our intention does matter. I think the most useful word there to focus on is, this is about care. It's about caring for the part of you that's been hurting. It's about allowing yourself to feel as bad as you feel. When we do that, there's this upwelling. Just like if you squeeze a shit out, you might hurt yourself. It's about relaxing. It's about allowing. It's about releasing from a place of being with. Like anything, including yoga, any wellness practice, therapy, it can all be done from the place of: There's something broken about me I need to get better with, or just like, I really want to care for how I am. Care is what works best.

Yes, and I can appreciate just your real emphasizing how this can be a real delicate balance. Of course we want to feel the metabolizing and the integration, and the interest in that. And also, approaching a part, approaching our present experience from this agenda or goal-oriented way is going to, in its very essence, pivot away from the thing that really is needed in this present care and just the intention to be with, as you said. Super important.

Did you ever study Gestalt at all?

Yes. Not heavily, but yes.

One of my favorite lines in Gestalt is: contact is curative. 

So if we sit with these parts, if we allow them, if we care for them, we start to feel lovable. It's like there's nothing in us that makes us unlovable, and so it transforms us.

Yeah, I love what you're saying because this is so important. That oftentimes, these parts or these emotions or feelings are below the field of awareness. So getting access, in part, you're really recommending to make frequent and consistent contact, as you're describing. I do think there's many techniques. You mentioned journaling, I love that people can just. Even with journaling, I don't know if you've worked with the non-dominant handwriting, but it's a way. So what I understand, and I'll put a link to it, I'm not trained in it, but I have experimented and done it a bit, that through our dominant hand, or the hand that we typically write with, and maybe many of us don't write as much as maybe we used to in the past.

Or read.

Yes. But that it goes through the channels of auditory executive functioning, and the non-dominant is a little bit more direct access to what we're experiencing in our body and our feelings. So it's quite awkward, unless you're ambidextrous, to write with the non-dominant hand. But there can be a way to access the unconscious or what's maybe subconscious.

The other thing I'll add, psychosynthesis, sometimes when we have an inner conflict, that can be revealing around parts that live in us. That maybe we like certain part of the part, and then the other part we don't, or they're in conflict and they don't get along. More feminist part of me, and then very nurturing, loving part of me. Sometimes in my past, I was like, how do these fit? So there's lots of ways to work with these parts.

I know our time is limited, and I want to make sure we do some focus on relationship. What I'm aware of, Rachel, is that when we're unconscious and we're feeling things, or we have parts of us that are repressed, or we have fear around that are disconnected from, and we get a trigger or we get activated. Oftentimes, that will happen in relationship, intimate relationship, we feel threat around something. So we're approaching a partner from this place of addressing the trigger or the threat. But there's all this stuff going on internally, and that can get off-track so quickly, because we have our protective moves. Tell me about how you frame the couple dynamic, and what can happen here and what you're recommending, as far as the things you're sharing.

Yeah. Well, yes to how messy it can get when we're so motivated or informed by parts that aren't in current time and don't feel like they really have a place at the table yet.

Wait, can I stop you right there? That seems super important. When you talk about the analogy of being in the basement, tucked, locked away, not seeing daylight, not getting fed or nutrients. But they have a way of showing up. Talk to us how that works. They're having a reaction. Can you say?

I think what happens is that, at some level, it's about they never integrate. So I might feel the example I gave, and this isn't quite true to my experience, but it makes sense at some level. If I felt like I was shamed about not wanting to be close, then if I need space on a given day, and my partner seems to be something about it, I might react with the force of being called a bitch as a tiny child. Not perceive that they're just like: Oh, I miss you. I might be like, there's nothing! Being defensive. You used the word protective. If these parts don't know that their feelings are real, and they haven't felt the care of our resourced grownup, then they're going to be in a battle with anyone that activates them.

Worthlessness is a strong version of it. The experience of shame, I think, can be like a nerve that's exposed, where it's like everything hurts. If you have a nerve in your tooth, you have a cavity or whatever, cold water, hot water, air. So if you imagine, you could just be sitting in a cafe, drinking your drink, someone walks by. You're like, did they look at me funny? If everything hurts, then definitely something is going to hurt, and partnership is going to fucking hurt. I guess I'm assuming we can swear on this show. When there's a swear word in the title of my book, we're kind of like up against it.

Anyway, the challenge with that in a relationship is, if you are trying to prove, if you haven't done this healing work, and so there's a party that still feels unlovable. For most of us, there's a little bit of that. Even someone, I feel like I really love myself and have a baseline of self-love and resilience, there are still parts of me that I still feel insecure. I notice it right now, I'm staring down the barrel of like, perimenopause is coming in, what's going to happen? Am I going to be lovable? Am I going to be moody? There's fear for me around what will this bring out in me? There are still parts that I have moments of being like, will I be accepted or is this too much?

So I'm not expecting anyone to get to a place where there's none of this. Having lived through that shame being my baseline, and having been partnered with many people where clearly shame is their baseline and just all the work. It's like, when that is the case, criticism, feedback, a request is all going to hit like an attack. Because we are so hard on ourselves, and we are in so much pain that hasn't been allowed yet, the experience of lighting up that network is just excruciating. So we're going to fight and push back, versus be able to see the other person and to be able to experience the love that is usually connected to the request. When people are giving us feedback, it's usually they care about us enough, they care about the connection enough to want to bring it forward.

So that's just one thing I think, as a baseline, of why it's so hard. The more that those parts feel accepted, the more they get the care from us, where they feel like we are the primary caregiver of them, the less they're going to need to freak out or push away, or pull for a certain kind of validation that isn't about the adult relationship. The more generic thing I would just say, is it okay to say one more thing? I'm sure you have something to respond, because we vibe. But I think the simplest way to understand how does emotional potty training relate to relationships? It's like, you can love someone so much, like so, so, so much, and you both have dinner, you both eat your burgers. Maybe someone has a veggie burger, someone has a meat burger. 

No matter how much you love someone, no matter how much you want to take them away from their suffering, you cannot digest their food for them. So I think what's really useful, just as a quick analogy, is once you have a feeling in your body, even if it's because your partner did the fucking thing again that you asked them to not do. Once you have the feeling, at some level, it is yours to process.

This hits up against attachment styles, depending on how your system wires in conflict, depending on how safe you feel and what your way of being out of balance looks like in a relationship. Some of the partners of a relationship, if you're more explosive, more volatile, maybe more anxious, usually those poles of people need to learn how to separate and have their feelings for themselves. It's really a lot about self-responsibility. This was a big journey in the marriage that I was in, that led me to leaving, was I had to learn that I was responsible for my emotions, and not go to this person who was terribly shut down, not in touch with himself in any way, literally terrified. I would find him in laundry baskets of closets. So trying to get something from that guy in that moment was a bad idea. But there was this uncontrollable urge to do that, and I was not in a receptive place.

So I had to learn, how do I go to my little safe space? How do I have my feelings? How do I care for the part that's feeling so rejected or whatever it was? And have the feelings at full blast enough to get to a place where I could somewhat soberly say: Hey, this is what you need to know, or this is what I'm feeling, without being so escalated that he had no chance of tolerating himself? Now, in the end, I learned how to do that. He never really learned how to tolerate me. Even just one degree of my feelings was too much for that person. Blessing, that was such a great container. It wasn't a viable situation.

For someone who might fall on the other side of the spectrum, someone who maybe had to get smaller or who felt engulfed or overwhelmed in relationship—I wonder if you felt like that a little bit with the parent you were talking about—what can happen is, the person actually loses access. They're going to leave their body, leave their feelings, get really cold, just vacate. So that person, they also might need a little space. They're definitely going to want space. That is the person that's like, get out of here! They probably need space. But that process is really like, how do they step into their feelings? It's not like the feelings are just flooding them. It's more like, how do they conjure up or agitate their emotional self, enough to get back in their body and to be able to take up more space in the relationship?

I'm not trying to say there's only two poles. 

It's very different depending on who you are and how you're wired. But it's essential for everyone.

Yes. I love the word sobriety, when you're talking about things that are tendencies that are automatic, habitual learned, unconscious. I also wanted to comment on just your underscoring and really emphasizing how human and how much we need or want to feel accepted. So when we're feeling this strong motivation or pull to have things be in a certain way, or to get the thing we want in partnership or in the relationship, that perhaps you're saying there's a driver there. Maybe there's some things that this is touching on that tender nerve around not feeling accepted around or loved by, and all the things that might be insecure or tender there. I had a lot of loss when I was young. So mine typically lives in the field of abandonment or worried about disconnection, or are we good, that type of thing. I actually have a little bit more of the anxious attachment tendencies, and I have worked really hard to get more secure functioning.

Nice! Same.

Okay. So speaking about that, I think in my healing journey, early, early on in dating my now husband, I was working so hard, Rachel, to recognize my tendency to loo. It was diplomatic. It looked on the outside like, I felt I could evaluate that that was a fair thing to say, but the energy behind it was very pursue-y to get the need of more reassurance. Anyway, it didn't work. So to be with the part that felt fear around: Oh, is he into me, or does he like me as much as I'm into him? Or these type of things. Just the grief and the loss of like, I don't know, and it's a possibility that he might not. But I got you, girl.

That's the part of the responsibility and just the continual, fast-forward 19 years, just this sense, I still feel. Because life presents different obstacles or life events, and we're growing and our relationship grows. So there's always going to be more opportunities. If I can feel discontent or look at him with this kind of criticism that you're talking about, to really query, what would that allow me to feel, what's in this for me? Then to be with that, so that I can take responsibility. Maybe show him, but maybe not. Maybe there's things I need to do to care for the part or what it is that I'm needing. Or that perhaps he wants to help or be supportive, but not that he's responsible for it. So the acceptance and the responsibility are so beautifully pointed out in what you're describing.

Yeah, and we don't want to have to invite our partner into the shitter with us every single time we need to have a movement. I actually killed the chemistry of a relationship, it was probably bound to die anyway, that way. It's okay to have some of our feelings on our own. I think especially for people wired like us, and I think there are so many people who are wired with fear of abandonment, even just the parents being unable to be with the feelings, it's so deeply wired, I think widespread. To know that you can provide yourself probably the safest support. I mean, it sounds like if you're 19 years in, you guys got a good functional mechanical situation going. But so often in conflict, the people we're trying to get something from are not the right people. They're not in their right head. They're probably barely dealing with their parts.

I think it can feel like: Oh God, now I have to go and deal with myself. But I just want to plant the seed for people listening, that it can be just such a sense of peace. Like, oh, you mean I have what I need? Like you said, I got you girl. It's so empowering. If we know that, and if we feel that, just to go back to emotional potty training for everyone, once we have connection to those parts, it really liberates us. Once we know that we can move our anger, we can be with our shame, we can release from it, we can recover from it, that's where the emotional resilience comes in. It's that sense of, I have myself, and I can handle whatever feelings my relationship or my life bring to me, because I know how to move them through me like a poop. That's where you get those qualities that I put on the cover of my book, and it's so helpful. 

Yes, I will absolutely just affirm what you're saying. And also come back to what you said earlier around, some of this isn't easy, but when we have a process that we can trust and we can lean in, it's in service of what we're intending. And what comes from that practice, we can believe in and feel faith in from practicing it. It doesn't mean that it's always fun or sexy or joyful. Sometimes, some of this is difficult to turn towards, and the relief and the process. I will say, in my own relationship, the more I can be with myself in clear and show the vulnerable, I've yet to feel him respond. But if I do all my other mechanisms or try to explain all this stuff, it usually doesn't go that well. So it's like, I'm not going to get what I want anyway.

If what we want is the love with our partner, being vulnerable and willing to put our underbelly up in the room, versus come at them with knives and swords and desperate please, that's going to get us what we want. That's what feels good. 

I think that's what's useful about talking about something so mechanical and basic as shitting. It's like, you just have to do what works. I think that it's useful to look at, we've all tried avoiding our pains. It doesn't work. We've all tried desperately going for the external validation when we're not giving it. It doesn't work. So just more like, try what works.

Yes. Speaking of what works, let's talk about your book. Say the name again.

It's Feel, Heal, and Let That Sh*t Go: Your Guide to Emotional Resilience and Lasting Self-Love. But Feel, Heal, and Let That Shit Go will get you there, you don't have to remember the whole thing. It's in all the places you might buy a book. Obviously easily on Amazon if you do that, which I do, for better or worse. All of the things in my wheelhouse can be found. I have a lot of coursework and DIY healing courses. You can find all of my socials and my podcast and all of it through TheFeelingsMovement.com.

I will put the link to the website. It sounds like you offer a whole host of things there, as well as how to connect with you, be a part of what you're offering on a more continuous basis, and then also the link to the book. I mean, you've really put together so much to help people orient and then have a process that allows them to really work with this. So thank you for what you're doing.

Yeah, thank you so much. I was going to say, there is an audiobook. Also, season one of my podcast is really like this, but like a six-year-older, less refined version. But there's poop stories in the episodes, and there's funny. It's a great way to do it. If you like podcasts, The Healing Feeling Shit Show, which you can find through the website also, don't have to remember that, will give you the same body of work. I do think if you want to listen to something, the audiobook is more refined. Lots of editors helped, eight years later.

I will put the link to the podcast on the show notes as well. I very much enjoy your style, and if people are resonating with your voice and what you have to share, it sounds like there's lots of opportunities. I think there's lots of gift in the six-year-old version.

Yeah, it's true. I love that. So however people want to get it. Thank you so much for having me. It's truly lovely to speak with you.

Awesome. You're welcome.