In this third installment of the How to Heal series, I’m talking about radical honesty - why it’s important, what happens when we’re not honest with ourselves, and how to get more honest.

You’ll Learn:

• What it means to be radically honest 
• Why it’s so hard for us to be honest with ourselves
• Signs that you might have some healing to do
• 4 strategies to increase your self-awareness and honesty

You can't heal from anything until you’re aware of what it is that is causing you pain. Listen to learn how.

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In this healing process, we’re trying to tap into our most pure state of being, where we have a deep sense of peace and wholeness so that we can be okay no matter what is happening around us. 

Why Honesty Matters

You can't heal from anything until you’re aware of what it is that is causing you pain. 

Often, we are unwilling to look at our patterns and our pain because it creates a discomfort in us that we don't know if we can handle. But the truth is, what you resist persists. If you resist your pain, it will stay. 

Being willing to really look at ugly, hard, difficult things about ourselves and our lives requires us to be radically honest with ourselves. 

Ultimately, you’re healing yourself so that you don’t harm your kids. Because, in full love and safety, yelling at your kid, shutting down, or being rough with their body hurts them. I want your children to grow up and not have to heal from childhood wounds.

Now, everyone is gonna get hurt in childhood. In life, pain is inevitable. It's how we deal with pain, how we talk about pain, and how honest we are that actually creates the healing in real time.

When you start to get honest with yourself, you’ll probably start to notice some clues.

Thinking negatively and critically of yourself…

Feeling despair, discontentment, discomfort, anger, resentment, confusion, or lack of clarity …

Behaving in ways that hurt you or others (like your kids)...

These are all really good indicators that you might have something to heal from.

Why Honesty Is So Hard

I think of radical honesty as being willing to admit how you are thinking, feeling, and acting - even when it’s uncomfortable. Being honest about your pain is the key to healing your pain. 

So, if honesty is so important, why aren’t we honest with ourselves and each other about our pain?

We often don’t even realize how cruel we’re being to ourselves with our thoughts, we don’t understand why we’re feeling or acting the way we are. 

We also live in a society that tells us we should be happy all the time (good vibes only😒). And we’ve taken a lovely thing like gratitude and weaponized it as a way to bypass negative emotion. 

Maybe you feel ashamed if things aren’t going well - embarrassed because you think you should have it all together.

Sometimes, we’re scared to get honest about what we’re really thinking and feeling, especially if they’re negative thoughts about our kids or our life. We’re afraid that if we have a problem, we won’t be able to fix it - and we also won’t be able to ignore it anymore.

And what I see more than anything is that most people are simply unaware. They’re just not paying attention. They're going through life a little bit unhappy, a little bit dissatisfied. It’s all just kinda meh. Sometimes it all feels too big to deal with, so we avoid feeling the pain by shutting off awareness. 

Pushing the pain away actually blocks you from getting a life filled with hope, healing, love, joy, peace, and all the things we want. You can’t heal something unless you take a look at it. 

Think about if your kid has a physical wound, like road rash. They are so afraid for you to get in there to look at it. They’re holding on so tight. Even though the pain of the wound already happened, they’re almost more afraid to have it cleaned and taken care of. 

The same is true of emotional wounds. Even though the initial trauma has passed, there is fear around examining it. Before you can fix any problem, you have to narrate what it is and acknowledge it. 

Radical honesty means that you get to be really honest about how you think, feel, and act. And when you look at those thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, you don’t have to judge them. Instead, you can love yourself and be compassionate. Understand that that’s unresolved pain talking, whether it’s fresh or from years and years ago.

Patterns to Look For

First, I want to let you know that if you notice any of these patterns in yourself, it’s okay. You’re human, and this stuff is hard. Our goal is not to judge, but to notice and make gentle shifts toward healthier responses.

Here are some common signs that you have some healing to do.

Difficulty feeling good about yourself. You might feel purposeless, like you're a bad parent, or notice yourself being defensive or trying to prove your worthiness. Some clues might be that you find yourself being hyper-productive, thinking that you have to always look a certain way, plan the best parties, or have your kids or your home look a certain way. If you are doing these things out of insecurity, trying to do something on the outside to make you feel good on the inside, that’s a clue that there’s something to heal.

Difficulty coping with emotions. Life is very challenging, and it comes with a lot of emotions. There’s nothing wrong with this. We pass through emotional states like clouds float through the sky. But if you have trouble coping and bottle those emotions up, it can lead to outbursts, feeling anxious, depressed, hostile, or panicked. 

Difficulty forming healthy relationships. This can also show up as relationships that are strained. We’re talking about any kind of relationship here - with your partner, colleagues, siblings, parents, your own kids, whoever. You might notice lots of misunderstandings or hurt feelings. You might feel drained by people, betrayed by them, or have a hard time trusting others. You likely feel disconnected or lonely. 

Frustration in your career or role. This could relate to your job or your role as a parent. The biggest clue is that you feel bored and unsatisfied, even when you do something well. Even when you’re in a role that has a lot of purpose and importance (like parenting), it can feel meaningless to you.

Lots of bad habits that you can’t break or goals that you want to achieve, but you can’t achieve them. If you’re using drugs, overusing alcohol, dissociating with endless scrolling, obsessively shopping, dieting, binge-eating or generally over-doing it in any area of your life, it might be something to explore. 

Your body starts to break down. If you’re ill a lot, even when other people aren’t, or you seem to catch every single cold that comes through, it might be a clue. Hair loss, weight changes, stomach issues, or joint pain can also be indicators. Maybe your emotional pain isn’t allowing you to fully relax, so you aren’t sleeping well. Or you’re feeling so overwhelmed that you’re not really able to take care of your body the way you’d like to. You might find yourself skipping appointments, healthy habits, and other things that you would normally do to take care of yourself. 

If you notice physical symptoms, yes, go to the doctor to see if there’s a medical reason. And also, explore what might be going on emotionally. When you feel better inside, you’ll likely also feel better on the outside.

Strategies for Radical Honesty

Later in this series, I’ll talk about how to get what you want out of life. But the first step to that is being honest about what’s not working for you right now. 

Self awareness is the biggest key to radical honesty. It is the recognition of your own emotional state at any given point in time. When you can observe and be a compassionate witness of yourself, you’ll be able to notice patterns.

Here are some of my favorite strategies for practicing self awareness.

Take a Pause Break. This is one of my favorite tools. When you notice that you are feeling stressed or upset - maybe you’re sweating, shaking, yelling - STOP what you’re doing and reset. Ask yourself what you’re thinking and feeling, why you’re acting the way you are, and what you need. Check in with yourself and observe.

Write a brain dump in your journal. Pick a topic. It can be related to yourself, parenting, work, volunteering, or relationships. Choose a circumstance in your life and write out a bunch of thoughts - stream of consciousness style. Get them all out there. Then, you can assess - is it actually a problem? How do you feel? Do you need to make a change?

Try morning pages. This exercise comes from Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. Each day (typically for 90 days), you wake up and write 3 full pages in a journal - just exploring yourself and your thoughts. I’ve gone through this a few times in my life, and each time I find so much stuff underneath the surface.

Quit stuff. Over the years, I’ve quit a lot of things - some for a set period of time and some for much longer. For example, I’ve quit drinking, sugar, yelling at my kids, name calling myself, restrictive dieting, TV, and I’m doing a shopping ban for this whole year. I don’t do these things to become a “better person”. I do them to explore the reason why I do those things in the first place. What’s the urge? What’s the feeling that’s driving the behavior? How else can you process and move through that emotion? What will you do instead?

I’ll leave you with these final thoughts to practice:

• I know I am unconditionally loved and completely safe. 
• I can be honest with myself. 
• I'm willing to admit the things in my life that aren't working anymore because I want to heal from the pain that drives those painful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

If something's not working in your life, I challenge you (in full unconditional love and safety) to take a look at it, explore, see what comes up.

Resources:

• Episode 161: Radical Self Love [How to Heal, part 1]
• Episode 162: Radical Self Trust [How to Heal, part 2]
• Episode 2: Getting to Calm with the Pause Break
• Episode 43: Weaponized Gratitude
• Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg
• The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self by Martha Beck
• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

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Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlene

Childress. I'm a life and parenting coach. And today we're

continuing in our how to heal series. This episode

is part three titled Radical Honesty.

And on this episode, I'm gonna talk to you about what I mean by

honesty, why it's important, what happens when we're not honest,

and how to get more honest with ourselves. Remember, this

series is about how to heal from

emotional pain and emotional wounds. Those wounds could be from

trauma from our childhood. It could be just our self esteem.

It could be the overwhelming aspects of motherhood and modern

life. Whatever it is that you wanna heal from, this

series is here to help you heal. I wanted to start

with a quote from the book loving kindness by Sharon

Salzberg. I've referenced this book a few times in the series

so far because this book has really been monumental

in my life about how to just heal for myself.

And it's a book really that teaches you how to meditate. And,

I just think Sharon Salzberg has so much wisdom to offer to

us. So I'm gonna read this quote to you, and it's about

healing. So it goes like this. No matter how

wonderful or terrible our lives have been, no

matter how many traumas and scars we carry from the past,

no matter what we have gone through or what we are suffering now,

our intrinsic wholeness is always present,

and we can recognize it. I think that's such a

beautiful quote. And what she means by our

intrinsic wholeness is really that

core self that we've talked about in the

radical self love episode. This essential

being that you are, this this essential

core self that is your divine self, your

Christ consciousness, your God consciousness, your

purity of personhood that is in all

of us. And that's what we're really trying to tap into in

this healing process is kind of our most pure

state of being where we are okay with

whatever's happening around us, that we have this deep

peace. The Bible says peace that transcends all

understanding. And I think that's really what we all want.

Right? We want a deep sense of peace and wholeness

no matter what's going on in our life. And that's what we admire when

someone feels really present and very

calm is that they seem to be able to handle whatever comes

at comes at them. Right? And that's really the foundational

pieces of that is loving ourselves no matter what and

trusting ourselves no matter what. That's why the

past two episodes have been on radical self love

and radical trust because these are the foundations. I've

been talking about the hierarchy of healing and how the

foundation of healing, the base level of

this pyramid, if you think of it that way, is self love. And then the

next level is self trust. And now today, we're going to

talk about being radically honest with ourself.

Now here's why I wanna talk to you about honesty.

Because we can't heal

from anything unless we're aware of what it is that

is causing us pain. And a lot of times, we are

unwilling to take a look at our patterns,

at our pain, because it creates a discomfort in

us that we don't know if we can handle. But the truth is you've

heard this phrase, what we resist persists. If

you resist your pain, it will stay. So this how

to heal series really requires that we are willing to take a look

at ugly, hard, difficult things. And that means

being really ruthfully honest, with

ourselves, radically honest. So the path

to true happiness is this path of integrating and

accepting everything about us. But we don't know

how to accept all that unless we're honest, and we won't be honest unless we

feel safe and feel loved. So that's why this is the third

level of this hierarchy of healing. So what do I

mean by being radically honest? I think of it

like this being willing to admit how you are thinking,

how you are feeling and how you are acting, especially if

you're feeling despair, discontentment, discomfort,

anger, resentment, confusion, lack of

clarity. Those feelings are clues.

If you're feeling despair, discontent, discomfort,

anger, resentment, unsure, confusion, that's a really

good indication that you might have some pain to uncover. And it's going

to be it's going to start with just being honest with yourself

by saying like, I'm unhappy. I'm not at peace.

I don't I don't feel good. You also want to look at

your behaviors. When you're behaving in a

way that hurts you or hurts others, these

buffering behaviors, these strategies, these coping strategies that we

have that hurt us or hurt others. Yelling at your

kids hurts them. But it's a coping strategy

for you. And in full love and in full safety,

I want us to be honest about our behaviors, especially

this is a parenting podcast. So all of this healing that

you're doing is ultimately to heal yourself so that

you don't harm your kids. I want your children, like I've

said, to grow up and not having to heal from their childhood wounds.

Now everybody's gonna get hurt in childhood, everyone's gonna get have

pain because pain is inevitable. It's how we deal with

pain, and how we talk about pain and how honest we are with pain

that actually creates the healing in real time. So

that you don't create wounds that get scarred over that don't

ever get healed and that fester. Now, of course, you have your thoughts,

any of your feelings and you have your behavior, but you also have your thoughts.

Now a lot of us, we don't even know how we're feeling

because we don't even know how we're thinking. We don't even realize that we're thinking

so critically of ourselves, so negative, so catastrophic

that we're being cruel to ourselves or we're taking out some of these

feelings and being cruel to others, being critical of others, being

negative for others. That anxious feeling we have

comes from that catastrophic thinking. Stinking

thinking. And that those thoughts are

sometimes things we don't want to be honest about, especially if they're

negative thoughts about our kids or about our life.

Some of the reasons that we don't aren't honest with

each other about our pain is partly because we have this

society that's supposed to be happy all the time. And we've

weaponized gratitude as a way to bypass negative

emotion. So when someone starts to talk

about pain in their problem pain in their lives and problems in their

lives, they will get sheepish about it and then, you know, go, oh,

well, it's first word world problems or, like, I shouldn't complain

because right? Now I love gratitude, but I don't want

you to use gratitude as a whip to prevent

you from feeling the pain that you have. So radical

honesty is this idea that you get to be really

honest about how you think and feel and act.

And when you look at that behavior, we don't

judge it. We love that. We love ourselves and we're

compassionate about our behavior. We understand that that's

pain talking, That the behavior we have, the thoughts we

have, the ways that we feel, that is unresolved

pain, whether it's long, long ago or really

recent. And being able to be honest about

your pain is the key to healing your pain.

You cannot heal something unless you take a look at it. It's kinda

like if your kid has, like, a wound. Right? And I've talked about this

before, like, a road rash, and they just are so afraid of you getting

in there. They don't, like, hold so tight. They, like, don't open their arm up

so you can see their, you know, where the wound is, like, where they're, you

know, covering it with their their arm or something or their hand.

And your child is just so so scared of the pain of

the cleaning. They've already experienced the pain, it happened, they're

over that the road rash happened. But now they

you're saying I'm gonna clean it, they're almost more afraid. And

that's can eat be easily what happens to us as we get even more

afraid of our pain and we don't want to take a look at it.

So not only are those feelings and those behaviors and those

thoughts, a clue, some of the other clues

that shows us that we might need to do some healing

is if you notice any of these other patterns. So the

first one is like difficulty feeling good about yourself, feeling

purposeless, feeling like you're a bad parent, always be being

defensive, trying to prove your worthiness, trying to

produce out produce others or, you know, you're, like, hyper

productive or plan the best birthday parties or always look a certain way or have

your kids looking a certain way or having your house look a certain way. And

if that's coming from an insecurity from not feeling good about yourself

and trying to do something on the outside to feel good on the

inside, that's a clue. Right? We want to

have that feeling that internalized safety, that feeling of safe

and peace and calm and joy and love in the inside,

no matter what's going on on the outside. But when we're using

the outside to feel better in the

inside, that is a clue that maybe we wanna do some

internal work. Not feeling good about yourself, difficulty

coping with the emotions. Life is very challenging. There

are a lot of emotions. There's nothing wrong with emotions.

Emotions are like clouds, like the weather, you know, they pass through

the sky. You are the sky and

the clouds and the weather are these emotional states

that pass through you. You know, you think about an airplane

and it goes through like a storm or whatever, and it gets up to a

certain 30,000 feet or whatever it is. And it's above

the clouds. It's above the weather. And

it's safe up there. Right? As long as it doesn't, like, you know, have a

problem with the plane or something. It can just coast. It doesn't have

to worry about weather. Now sometimes the clouds get really high and

there's some turbulence. Right? Because the plane can't go higher,

I guess. I don't know how planes work. But you, you're not

limited. Right? So you're down at the earth and you're like experiencing all the

turbulence and all the weather of life, all the emotional states,

but your true essential self is up above all

that. And they can go 30,000, 50 thousand, a hundred thousand feet

up and get away and observe the emotional

states. But if we have difficulty coping with those

emotional states, then we might bottle up our emotions and that

can lead to outbursts. We might feel anxious and

depressed and hostile and panicked and grasping. We might just

have emotional misery. And that's indicating that maybe you're

not being honest with yourself, that you're not you're trying to push away the feelings.

You're not sure how to cope with them. Again, everything I say is with such

love and no judgment. There is no way

possible that I can judge you because this is normal.

You're normal and healthy. And you're here listening to this

podcast on your walk or, you know, driving the car or waiting for your

kids to get picked up. And you're listening to this because you want

to feel better. Right? You're not comfortable

with misery. You want to have a pure

more whole life. Other ways that and I just

wanna commend you. Like, you're amazing. Okay. I really

do. Like, yes. Yes. You're great. Like, I'm not judging you. So we're just

being honest. We're being honest in love and safety. If you notice

that you have difficulty forming healthy relationships or your

relationships are strained, then that may be an indication that you have

some stuff to heal from. What that looks like is you have a lot of

misunderstandings. You You have a lot of hurt feelings. You're drained by people.

You feel betrayed by them. You have trouble trusting others. You feel

disconnected or lonely. We're just need to start with honesty.

Like, yeah. A lot of my relationships are are like, you

know, not going well. Either your partner, work,

siblings, parents, kids, whoever it is. Other moms

a lot of times. Other moms. Right? You

might, be frustrated in your career. You might

feel, like you're bored. You're not feeling satisfied when you

do something well. It doesn't really land. You feel unhappy

whether you're in your career or you're working, a

stay at home parent, primary parent. That isn't your

job, right, raising kids, but it is a role. It has a lot of purpose.

It's very important. And maybe it feels meaningless to you.

We can be honest with that. It is meaningless. I started to

work when the boys were five and seven because I

felt so restless and I wanted to do more with my

life than just take care of the kids. But I have I

have amazing friends who I love and respect deeply, and

they chose to not work and they were really satisfied.

So again, this is all personal and internal. If you're

not satisfied, then that's a good indication that there's

something to do about it. So we're being honest. If

you have a lot of bad habits that you can't break or you wanna achieve

some goals and you can't achieve them. It's

another thing to be honest about. If you're doing drugs, if you're,

you know, overusing alcohol, if you're over scrolling on

your phone, trying to get that feeling of goodness over

your want to disassociate from your life. If you're obsessively

shopping or dieting or binge eating, or fixing

other people's problems or a busybody or over volunteering on

things. That's maybe something to explore. Why

why are you saying yes to so much? If you have capacity and

you love it, great. But if it's draining and you're bitter and resentful and

you're just trying to get appreciation, well, let's figure out a different

way. Another clue that things aren't going well in your life is if your body

starts to break down. Like if you have if you're

ill a lot and you're ill when other people aren't

ill, or you seem to catch every single cold that comes

through. Now, if you have, like, a three two or three year old, you might

just be ill for a year. But if it just kinda keeps happening where you're

sick a lot, then that might be indication that

you are avoiding something that's keeping you from

staying healthy and well. Sometimes that

we're ill a lot because we're not sleeping well because that's another part

of emotional pain is it shows up in our sleep. We can't

relax completely. We can't rest. Also, we don't end up taking good care

of ourselves. We don't have good daily habits of walking and moving

and eating well because we're just holding

on by a by a thread or whatever the phrase is. It's like

you're feeling so overwhelmed that you're not able to really take care of

your body. I see this when moms have things going on in their lives or

their kids are really struggling. They'll stop going to the doctor, to the dentist, to

the haircut, you know, getting their annual exams, stop going to

Pilates or walking or whatever the things are that you would normally be doing to

take care of yourself. People just stop doing them. So if you're not

doing your healthy habits, another indication

that things aren't going well. If you have hair loss or weight

changes or stomach issues or joint pain, particularly

for women, our joints tell the story. So

if we're achy or we just have like pain in strange

places, there could be a medical reason for sure. Go to

the doctor, but also let's explore. Maybe there's areas in your life that you're

unhappy. So we're gonna heal those areas and

see where we're at physically. Once you feel better

inside, you'll feel better on the outside. The rest of the series, I'm gonna

talk about strategies of how to get what you want out of life. But

we have to start with like what's not working and being honest with

that. What's not working? I'll see this sometimes in my practice,

like, especially if I work with a couple. But sometimes I do a little. I

dabble in a little bit of marriage coaching since I've been married a

long time and I use the same tools, right, for parenting. In many ways,

there's similar tools in any relationship. You can see

that not it's hard to admit that maybe things aren't going well because

people get scared that if we admit that there's a

problem, that we won't be able to fix it, but we won't be able to

ignore it. And so there's a lot of fear or I'll, you know, mom will

be like, you know, oh, it's it's not going well, but it's going fine. But

it's not going what's going fine? It's like this discomfort with

sharing. Honestly, I think we feel ashamed if things aren't

going well. That weaponized gratitude thing comes up.

We feel embarrassed. We don't know how normal it is, and so we

feel really uncomfortable talking about things that are painful.

And so the telling the truth is, like, this required piece

before you can fix any problem, you have to narrate what the problem is. Before

you can change any pattern, you have to acknowledge it. So like I

said, a lot of times we don't wanna talk about it because we're embarrassed. We

don't wanna talk about it because we've weaponized gratitude. We don't

wanna talk about it sometimes because in childhood, we might have an

old old childhood wound where our authentic

self, like, our core self, was not

valued or validated. What I mean by that

is you only felt loved if you behaved

well, or you only felt accepted if you lurk looked

a certain way, or you got an a message from your parent that your

body was too big or too small, that your face

wasn't good looking, that you weren't smart enough, that your

grades weren't good enough, that you weren't nice enough, that you didn't show up

as a nice person in the world. There might have been some of

yourself, your core self that you were expressing or

showing. Maybe you were gay and your parents

didn't validate your sexuality, or you were

exploring your gender and your parent was not validating

your exploration of that concept for you. And

so anytime that we have, like, our,

authentic self isn't valued or validated or not being seen,

it can be really hard for us to feel safe to share

hard things because we've been so habituated

into thinking, I am my behavior, I am how I present,

I am what I look like, I am what I act like. And

if you take a look at some of those things, it might be really

difficult for your self-concept to explore that.

So I wanna acknowledge that it's not easy to be

honest. The real reason why I see most people

struggle with radical honesty is because they are unaware.

They're just not paying attention. They're just going through life

a little bit unhappy, a little bit dissatisfied,

you know, or chronically dissatisfied. Meh. You know,

there's not a lot of joy. There's not a lot of pain. It's just sort

of meh. That is this almost this fear

of pain that makes us push away and not

pay attention to the parts of ourselves. Because we so sometimes we

avoid feeling the pain by shutting off awareness.

Even though shutting off awareness is actually blocking us from

getting the fuller life and hope and healing and love and joy

and all the peace and all the things that we want. Sometimes we dull our

awareness because the pain feels too big. It feels insurmountable.

It doesn't feel possible to get what you want. It doesn't feel possible to

feel good. I feel great. I've been reading this book

while I read it a while ago and I was reviewing it. And it's,

a Martha Beck book. I have often referred to her on the

podcast. She's my mentor and the coach that I did my life coach

training with. And she wrote a book called The Way of Integrity,

and she had a 28 question quiz in the book. You

can find it on her website or we'll link it in the show notes. And

there's 28 questions, true or false, like how do you feel in your

life? And I just did it because I was curious.

And I had 26 out of 28, like, positive answers.

And, when I'm really honest with myself, I actually

don't have a ton of unresolved pain. And when it

does come up, I just move through it. And the biggest

way that I have access that is self

love, self trust, and being really honest. I

am almost too aware in some ways

of my emotional state. I'm constantly paying

attention to myself and that's just been training. It's like

a little kid, like you watch them all the time. You train yourself, you

train your ear to hear them. You're almost hyper vigilant for it. Right?

You train your brain to always be thinking about your kid and to look

for them and to make sure they're safe and all of those things. That's the

hyper attention. Right? A hyper awareness, a hyper vigilance

that is required ish in parenting, especially when they're little. And

then we kinda get in the habit, we don't release ourselves. For you as

a person, I want you to become hyper aware of yourself

and what you're looking for is your emotional

state. What is self awareness? It

is the recognition of your own emotional state at any

given point in time. Now I just noticed in one of my journal

entries, I wrote, am I bored?

And then I explored it because I wasn't sure

if I was bored or not. Because I'm constantly like, am I happy or am

I not happy? And I don't mean to sound neurotic about it. I'm

not. I just decided at some point that I was

gonna pay closer attention to myself that I was gonna be

a witness, a compassionate witness of me. And I was

gonna compassionately come alongside and say, hey, darling, how

are you doing? What are you feeling? What are you thinking?

How are you acting? Why are you acting that way?

What's going on? What do you need? And I just ask myself

these questions over and over and over again. I observe

myself. I'm willing to be honest about whether a

strategy or a behavior or a thought pattern is working for me

anymore. So I'm just paying attention. How do I do that? I do a

lot of journaling, and I do a lot of pause break. I've talked

about it last episode, but I check-in. If

I notice that I'm having a physiological reaction, like,

I'm starting to sweat or sometimes I talk

too much or I stop talking and I, like, check out or I get

in my head or when the boys were younger and I would yell at

them or get overwhelmed and start barking orders,

whatever behaviors, I just start paying attention. And I would take

a pause break. I would stop whatever I was doing and I would check-in with

myself. Am I having a activated stress response? Do I

need to move my body? Do I need to connect with myself? What am I

what am I thinking? What am I feeling? Can I shift

that? And I was always looking for

patterns, patterns of behavior, Patterns of where I

felt uncomfortable. Just paying attention. My friend

Becky tells this story about me when our kids were

like, maybe second grade. We were in this parent meeting

with the class. And the school that my

kids went to was a no homework school from kinder

through third grade. And there was a dad in the meeting

who was asking for homework because

his older child, the fourth grader, had homework and he

wanted his kid, his second grader, to have homework too because it would

help him with his parent management. And

I was, you know, opposed to it because I went to this school because

there was no homework. And at one point, I don't remember doing this,

but I put my hand on my heart and I said out loud

to the room, oh, I'm just getting very upset by

this. And then I calm my body and I

then gathered my thoughts and I expressed myself. So

I was honest with myself. I listened to myself and then I took

action. And after that meeting, my friend

said, oh, it's so funny. You just, like, stopped in the meeting. You put your

hand on your heart and you're like, I'm just getting really upset by this.

And I didn't remember doing it, but I, in retrospect,

realized that I was doing that all the time, either aloud or quiet,

Checking in, checking in, checking in. So that's one of your main

tools that I'm offering in this episode is

just observing yourself, being honest. Now, another

way that I do this with journaling is I do a brain

dump. So what that means is I just pick a topic

like parenting or myself or volunteering or the

other moms or my house or my body

or I don't know, Kevin. I just pick a circumstance

in my life. And then I write out a bunch of

thoughts on a piece of paper. I just brain dump, and I just kind of

stream of consciousness, write out my sentences, and that is

really helpful for me to think about, like, to get it all out and

then assess. Like, is this a problem? Is it not?

How do I feel? Do I need to make a change? Do I not you

don't have to worry about what to do with it yet. I'm gonna teach you

that in the next few episodes. For today, I really just want you to

start thinking, like, okay. What's going on for me?

What am I feeling about this? What am I thinking about this? What's my pattern

here? The other cool tool that I got from Julia Cameron's

book, the artist way, is called morning pages. You can

just look it up. Morning pages. It's pretty famous. But

it's a practice that you commit to three months

is technically the, you know, recommendation ninety days

where you wake up and every day you write three

full pages long long hand handwriting in a

journal of stream of consciousness writing. And in

that writing, you're just exploring yourself. You're getting to know

yourself. You're getting to know your thoughts. You're getting to know what's happening.

For me, I could do one and a half pages easily and then I kinda

get stuck and so you can just keep writing like, I don't know what to

write about. I don't even wanna be doing morning pages and then something

else will come up. I've gone through morning pages a few times in my life

and every time I find so much

stuff underneath the surface. Maybe I'll commit to it

again. But you really need to want to, like, heal. Right?

It's like you're making a commitment of ninety days to

explore yourself, but super powerful practice.

Another practice that I do, so I brew brain dump, I observe myself, I

do morning pages. And then the other thing is I quit stuff.

And I don't know if this is a great strategy for the rest of

you, but I have quit things. And for,

like, thirty days, ninety days, as many of you know, I'm doing a

shopping ban for the whole year. The I've quit

drinking. I've quit sugar. I've quit, yelling at

my kids. I've quit, name calling

myself. I've just decided to quit things. And the reason why I

do it is not necessarily to become a better person.

It really is to explore the reason I do something

in the first place. So what I've noticed about myself is when I create

sort of an external boundary of like something like a pattern

or a behavior that I wanna figure out. Is it healthy or

not healthy for me? And, like, why do I do it or why don't I

do it? I will put a boundary where I decide I'm not doing it anymore.

Like, I quit it for a while and I make up a date however

many days. I've done this with my clients, like, no gossiping

or, you know, no name calling to yourself or whatever it is. Obviously, other

things too, like drinking or whatever. And

when you put that boundary in front of you, then you get

to explore why do you do that behavior? What's the

urge? What's the feeling that drives that behavior? And then you

have to explore that feeling and see if you can

resolve that emotion, move through it, process it in a

different way without giving yourself the tool you

usually use. So if you decide you're not gonna yell at your kids anymore,

now that's, you know, an impulse thing. So you might

not be able to catch yourself before you do it. But

anytime you get your oh, I'm not supposed to do that anymore. What do

I do instead? And that question of what do I do

instead is really, really important, really valuable.

I'm thinking about other things I've quit. I've quit restrictive dieting,

I still am in a quit for that because it's very unhealthy for me.

I've quit TV before. I've just quit so many different things. It's

really fun. I like quitting. And just seeing what

comes up. And then of course, sometimes for many of

us, we can't do this awareness alone. It

can be really challenging to ask ourselves these hard questions

to become aware of our own patterns. I believe it's

possible for every person to do it on their own, but not everybody,

has the bandwidth or the discipline to

sit and journal every day or whatever. And that's why I love having a

life coach or a therapist or being part of a loving community like

Call Mama Club, Because you can kind of go, oh, that's my hour

where I deal with that stuff. Or that's the program that I'm

in where I'm actively working on my Call

Mama ness. Right? So I'm in this place that's that's full of

love, full of safety, nonjudgmental where I can be brutally

honest and get to the other side

with a coach, with support, with tools. And that can

either be with therapists are great for this, especially

if you go with a very specific, agenda in mind where

you're like, hey. You know, I wanna look at my patterns of behavior and change

them. Or a life coach can be really helpful because that's kinda what

that's our thing we're mostly trained in doing is, like, changing patterns.

So getting a life coach, you can hire me as a one on one private

coach to explore any of these areas. You can obviously go to

a therapist, use your insurance if you can, try BetterHelp,

whatever, Or join the Calm Mama Club for $30 a month

and explore it and see what comes up for you there. Wherever you

go, you just wanna make sure you're having someone ask you questions

like, what are you doing? Why are you doing

it? What do you want from this

behavior? What do you need? And then giving

you those tools to get your emotional needs met in a new way.

So this episode is really all about

being honest. If something's not working in your

life, in that unconditional love, unconditional

safety, take a look at it, explore, see what comes

up, and then let me know about it. You can message me on Instagram if

you want at Darlyn Childress. You can reply to an email,

and I'm happy to kinda hear your thoughts of what you're going through or where

you're struggling. I'm gonna leave you with our sentences for

today, And they are, I know I am unconditionally

loved and completely safe. I can be honest with myself.

I'm willing to admit the things in my life that aren't working anymore

because I want to heal from the pain that drives

those painful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. So

please tell yourself I am unconditionally

loved and completely safe. I can be

honest with myself. We're halfway through the

series, and I hope you have been enjoying it and

getting a lot out of it. And, yeah, going on

your emotional health journey and

healing from some of your wounds. I'm happy to be part of it, and I

really appreciate you listening. And I will talk to you next

week.