On this episode of The Karen Kenney Show, I dive into the idea of how without awareness or tools, we can end up turning our feelings into felonies.

Maybe not literally - but if we’re not careful, the ways in which we react, lash out, or stew in negativity – can still be harmful.

I share about the importance of emotional regulation and how so many of us were never really taught as kids what the heck to do with our big feelings.

I talk about how easy it is to look at extreme acts of violence in the world and think, “That’s not me,” but the truth is, we all have moments where our emotions get the best of us.

Whether it’s snapping at someone, holding onto grudges, losing your shit in traffic, or letting our thoughts spiral, it’s all part of the same cycle.

The thing us, for most people growing up, nobody sat us down to teach us how to feel our feelings, or how to navigate those suckers in a healthy way.

Throughout the episode, I also share some of my favorite tools and strategies for getting a handle on those big emotions.

Things like slowing down, practicing self-awareness, and using healthy coping mechanisms like walking, breathing exercises, or even just getting outside in nature to shift your perspective.

I also talk about the power of community, whether it’s joining a group like The Nest or just finding people who support and uplift you.

My hope is that by sharing these stories and tools, you’ll feel a little less alone, and a little more empowered to pause, check in with yourself, and choose love over fear.

We can’t always control what happens around us, but we can choose how we respond.

So let’s practice being kinder to ourselves and each other, and remember: the real gig is to spread love - and not let our feelings run the show. ❤️

KK’S KEY TAKEAWAYS:

•​ Slowing down is the first key step to becoming more self-aware and emotionally regulated.

•​ Emotional regulation means learning to manage your feelings and responses in healthy ways.

•​ Unchecked emotions can lead to negative thoughts, actions, and even harm to yourself or others.

•​ Healthy coping mechanisms like walking, breathing exercises, and spending time in nature can help shift your emotional state.

•​ Self-awareness grows when you pause, reflect, and notice your patterns and triggers.

•​ It’s important to question your thoughts and not believe every story your mind tells you.

•​ Community support, whether through groups or trusted people, can make a big difference in emotional well-being.

•​ Practicing kindness, compassion, and love - toward yourself and others - can help break negative emotional cycles.

•​ You have the power to interrupt harmful patterns and consciously choose more helpful  responses.

•​ The real goal is to spread more love and to leave the world better than you found it.

BIO:

Spiritual Mentor and writer Karen Kenney uses humor and dynamic storytelling to bring a down-to-earth, no-BS perspective to self-development. 

Bringing together tools that coach the conscious and unconscious mind, Karen helps clients deepen their connections with Self, and discover their unique understandings of spirituality. 

Her practice combines neuroscience, subconscious reprogramming, Integrative Hypnosis, somatic work, spiritual mentoring, and other holistic modalities to help regulate the nervous system, examine internal narratives, remove blocks, and reimagine what’s possible.

A passionate yoga teacher, long-time student of A Course in Miracles, and Gateless Writing instructor, Karen is a frequent speaker and retreat leader. Via her programs The Quest and The Nest, she coaches both individuals and groups.  

With The Karen Kenney Podcast, she encourages listeners to shift from a thought system of fear to one of love, compassion, and personal responsibility. 

CONNECT WITH KAREN: 

Website: http://karenkenney.com/

Podcast: https://www.karenkenney.com/podcast

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karenkenneylive/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karenkenneylive/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KarenKenney

Hey you guys. Welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I hope he's

doing fantastic today. If you're watching this, you can see my

hair is still a little wet. I just got out of the shower

because I just got back from a run, and one of the things you

might be like me is that there's certain activities or certain

things that you do that, kind of, for lack of a better word,

it's when ideas come to you or thoughts, right? So one of the

things we know about walking and running and stuff like that is

that a lot of people, when they're doing that, it's like

the mind goes like, when I'm just kind of doing this, like

I'm opening up my arms, like the mind opens up and I'm kind of

open for business. When I run or I walk, it's like, I'm just

like, okay, ideas, you know. Okay. Spiritual team, feel free

to upload whatever you want me to know, or whatever you know.

So I was out on my run, and of course, before that, it feels

like every single day I'm just, first of all, hi. I'm just

diving right into this. But it just seems like every single day

we're being bombarded with more and more acts of violence and

atrocities and murder and mayhem and just people just losing

their damn minds. You know what I mean? And while I was thinking

about this, you know? I mean, I think it was either, I think it

was this morning that somebody in, I think it was Michigan, you

know, basically went into a church, a Mormon church, and was

like an LDS church, or whatever, and was opening fire and then

set it on on, you know, literally, like shooting, you

know, of course, more gun violence. Hello, America. And

then it was also set the building on fire, and I was just

thinking to myself, so while I was running, all of a sudden, I

heard this phrase in my head, and I said, Man, I'm like,

fucking people are out here turning their feelings into

felonies.

And that just kind of stuck with me right, turning their feelings

into felonies. And that's kind of what I want to talk a little

bit about today. And I want to make a clear distinction, right?

I mean, pretty much I most of us, okay, most of us are not out

there setting buildings on fire or shooting people with our guns

and murdering people and harming other people and stuff like

that, right? Those are, like, the really, the extremes. So it

can be really easy to disassociate ourselves from that

stuff and say, Well, I would never do that, or I don't do

that. Like I'm not murdering people or attacking people or

whatever. But in the Course in Miracles, we kind of talk about

it like this, like anytime we're not really having, like, loving

thoughts about our fellow brothers and sisters, our fellow

brethren, right? Our family members, your Sweeties, your

siblings, your co workers, whatever. Right people on the

left, people on the right, the others, like all the shit that

we do to anybody who's outside of you, basically right when

you're not having loving thoughts about them, it's just

like having attack thoughts or murderous thoughts like in your

head, right? Where we make them guilty, we make them bad, right?

We basically lose our own peace of mind because we're attacking

others all the time and blaming them, whether it's for our own

feelings or the state of the world or whatever. And so I

started to think about this, how it can be really easy to see

these people who take extreme measures and do heinous acts and

say like, oh my god, like, I don't do that though. I'm not

turning KK, I'm not turning my feelings into felonies. You

might not be turning them into felonies, but we all do this

thing where we let our feelings, if we do not know how to

emotionally regulate ourselves, we let our feelings treat us

like little puppets. We let our feelings be these little

dictators that boss us around and quote, unquote, make us I'm

doing little air quotes, make us feel things, or make us think

things, or make us do things, and then we're just like, Yeah,

I don't know what happened, you know? So I want to talk a little

bit about this so that our feelings don't turn into

felonies, so that we learn how to kind of just like, become a

little more emotionally regulated. And we can't do that

unless we kind of talk about, like, what, what is, what is

emotional regulation. And so I'm just, you can Google it, but

I'll just save you the problem, because I've Googled it, you

know, a gazillion times over the years, like whenever I'm trying

to learn something really well. And I'll just put it like this.

So emotional regulation is said to be, it's a term that we use

to genuinely describe a person's ability to effectively, like

manage their emotions, or to respond to when they're having

an emotional experience. So for example, something happens in

your life. Maybe it's something unexpected, maybe it's something

big, maybe it's something traumatic, but maybe it's

something small, and what is your ability to respond? Respond

and to effectively manage how you're responding when you're

having an emotional experience, and we can think of it easily,

is like, when people talk about, like, Oh, I got triggered,

right? Oh, they pushed my button. I got triggered, right?

So you're having a response right to an emotional

experience, and you're just like, Oh my God. Like, I

snapped, or I just, like, lost my patience, or whatever. So

when people are doing these really horrific things, a lot of

times it's because they're ruminating long term, and we'll

talk about that in a moment. But we also can hold on to our

gripes and our grievances and our grudges, and we can ruminate

on things too, but sometimes we're just so woundly tight,

like, we're like, like, wound really tight because we stay in

a space of chronic stress or chronic overwhelm, or we don't

really know how to feel our emotions, right? We're not, not

everybody is super emotional, emotionally intelligence, not a

lot of people. And I ask this all the time in the nest, and I

asked this with my clients and people that I know, like whoever

saw sat your ass down and was like, Hey, this is what you do

when a big emotion comes up. This is how you feel your

feelings. I don't know about you, but Gen X kids, nobody was

teaching us how to do that shit, right? We had to figure it out

the hard way. We had to go and read some books on our own. We

had to, we had to get our ass in crumble, to figure out, like, oh

yeah, maybe that wasn't a good response to that. Maybe there

was a better way for me to kind of respond to whatever was going

on, what that person said, what that person did. Okay, so here's

the thing, can you affect, effectively manage and respond

to your own emotions, or an emotional experience or

something that is coming up, okay? And so there's healthy

coping mechanisms for when you have, like some stress come up,

or a feeling come up, or a big emotion come up. And I just

mentioned one of them, I said, Oh, I was out for a walk. I was

out for a run. Walking and running is so good, first of

all, for your brain. It's so good for your nervous system and

just exercise in general. But it's doing more than just

working out your muscles. It's giving you an opportunity to

shift your perspective, to broaden out your perspective,

especially when you go out into like nature, that very calming

and grounding energy, to get some sunlight in your eyes, to

get some fresh air right, to move your body, to calm your

brain, to calm your nervous system, and to, you know, be

able to shift out of just foveal vision of like, just staring,

like focusing on your screen or your phone. And then, if you're

watching this, you can see, I'm bringing my hands in close to my

eyes. I'm like, limiting my peripheral vision, right? I'm

making it very focused. And then when you go outside now, into

nature, out into the sun, or out into the world, it's like, and

it just like, opens up. So we literally get a shift and how

we're visualizing, a shift kind of in how we're feeling. And

most people, not only don't know what they're feeling. They don't

know why they're reacting the way that they're reacting.

Right? They have a subconscious thing going on. So one of the

biggest first things for me, I don't, I can't say what the

therapist is going to say. But one of the biggest first things

for me is I have to be aware, first and foremost, that I'm

having some sort of a response or a reaction, right? If we're

not self aware enough, if we don't slow down enough in our

life consistently to be able to get a grip and a handle, to be

able to see ourselves clearly and how we respond to the world

and to the people around us into certain situations, if we're not

self aware, because we're always just staying wicked busy and

distracting ourselves and not trying to feel things or think

about things or go deep, if we're just like floating around

and not even floating around, maybe we're just like, just

always staying busy, or always like fucking on our phones or

always distracting and Not wanting to feel things. How are

we ever going to know when we're in it? Because if we don't, then

we just normalize it. We just normalize our being cranky or

being short with people or being passive aggressive or being

whatever. And we said to tell ourselves a story like, oh,

that's just how I am. No, no, no, no. So number one is we've I

should go back even more than than be self aware. You gotta

slow down that. That's how self awareness is actually going to

happen. First and foremost. You hear me talk about it all the

time, and it's one of the first things that I tell my clients,

is we gotta learn how to, like, dial things down a little bit.

We need to slow down. Slow down your breathing, slow down your

thinking, slow down your body a little bit. That doesn't mean

that you can't have times when you're moving fast and you're in

a groove and you're doing shit, but we have to step out of the

normal pace of the world that just drives so much fear and

separation and division and consumption and competitiveness

and otherness. Yes, we gotta slow down and kind of step out

of that river of like, always moving, moving, moving, moving,

moving. You know what I mean? Even the tides, like, even the

ocean has tides where it rolls in and then it rolls out. You

know what I'm saying, there are shifts, and we need the shift.

We need to be able to down, shift and slow down, so we can

take a good Gander, so we can take a look around, so that we

can sit with the feeling, so we can recognize that we're having

a thought that is not going to end well if we insist on staying

with that train of thinking. And if you're feeling what I'm

saying, like double A man hands, if you get it right, and if

you're somebody who who is like a shock, and you're like, Oh, if

I stop, I'm going to die, right? Like, no, no, if you don't stop,

you're going to die probably faster. So here's the thing

number one, we get to slow down. We got to be willing to take a

look at ourselves and recognize, you know, hey, I'm kind of a

little short with people lately. I'm feeling a little stressed

out of my mind. I'm finding myself more anxious, I'm

whatever. So we gotta be self aware. We gotta know yourself,

right? You got to know yourself, and you gotta understand what

kind of emotions often come up for you to how can I recognize

when I'm feeling a particular thing so many people, and

whether it's due to trauma or the pace of life, or they

weren't taught, or 1000 other reasons, they don't even know

what they're thinking and feeling half the time. I've seen

it time and time again as a yoga teacher over 25 years, right?

And you say to somebody, well, can you feel that? And they kind

of look at you, where can you feel that? How does it feel like

when I ask these questions in class, for some people, you can

see it's really hard for them, right, that interoception, that

like internal experience for them to be able to report it

back, right? It doesn't come naturally to everybody. And this

isn't making fun of anybody that might struggle with that or find

it hard, but it is an invitation to get curious about it, to

really kind of notice your internal experience, so that you

can notice the kinds of things or people or places or things

that like do evoke right, that are evocative, that do evoke,

like big feelings of in you, or what like people or places or

smells or whatever that make you feel, or that that happen, and

then you, you know you feel anxious or scared or worried or

overwhelmed, or some places in people, spaces might be happy

places, they might calm you right down. They might feel

really welcoming and inclusive and grounding, and you feel seen

and loved and heard and all that stuff, right? All that good

stuff.

But if we don't learn how to deal with our emotions, and if

we don't, first of all, we gotta slow down, then you gotta be

aware, and then you gotta be willing, right? You gotta be

willing to feel some things and to take a look at some things,

because a lot of people are emotionally dysregulated, and

they don't know it. So if emotional regulation is our

ability to effectively manage our emotions and to be able to

respond in what I would call a healthy way or a sane way, to an

emotional experience, emotional dysreg dysregulation is when we

have an inability to use like, good or healthy strategies or

responses, if we don't know how to diffuse like negative

emotions, like everyday things, moderate things, not even

extreme things, Right? If we're not able to moderate everyday

emotions or diffuse them or dissolve them, as I like to say,

right? A lot of times people like, oh, I have this problem

like I have to solve. And I'm like, well, it's more about

dissolving it, right? It's more about like, dissolving it,

removing removing it so much as I need to fix it, right? So when

we have emotional dysregulation, we do not have the ability to

put healthy strategies into place. And instead, a lot of

times, we just go like, really big. You'll start to feel like

intense emotions or overwhelming emotions or negative emotions,

and they just feel big and unmanageable, like literally

think about that and these things when you have a big

emotion consistently over time and you have no support now, of

course, granted, sometimes there is mental health issues at play.

We see it time and time again in mass shootings and people who

use guns for violence against people and just walk into a

random place and just stop murdering strangers, right? It's

fucking awful. It's horrifying. And these are people sometimes,

yes, that needed mental health intervention. They needed mental

health care. But we also just have a lot of people who don't

know how to manage their emotions. They don't they

haven't gone to therapy. They're not. Even aware that the way

that they think is is not like right or healthy or good or

helpful to them or to obviously others, right? And if we're not

able to use emotional regulation strategies, if they're not

taught to us, or if we don't self recognize, I have a

problem, right? I am wound really tight. I'm very reactive.

I get angry really easy. I have no patience. I am like, you

know, zero to 60. When they say that I can go from zero to 60

really fast with anger or reaction, or whatever, this

defensiveness is attacking, right? It's not really helpful.

It's not really healthy. We all know this, but what happens is,

and this is one of the things we don't often talk about, is that

the experience of emotions is not bad. It is simply human. We

are human being. We have receptors in our bodies, right?

We have pain receptors. We can feel temperature, whatever we

are sensory creatures, we can kind of clock our environment,

right? Like we feel things. Emotions are not per se bad

things. They're just part of the human experience. And sometimes

the emotion is going to be a joyous emotion, a happy emotion,

a feel good, quote, unquote, feel good emotion, right? We

feel loved, we feel accepted, we feel valuable, we feel seen, we

feel heard, we feel like we matter. We feel whatever,

patient, peaceful, calm, curious, compassionate, all

these things, right, beautiful, great. But sometimes we have

emotions and we labeled them as like, bad, anger, fear, guilt,

shame, blame, attack, jealousy, envy, all the things right? And

sometimes, if we don't know how to regulate when those emotions

like show up in the body, show up in our mind, when we have a

visceral reaction in the body, and then we have this thought

system like going on in our head of fear, which, you know, just

makes everything feel bigger. It exacerbates everything. So a lot

of times, what it is is it's not the emotion itself, and it's not

even the thought itself. It's the interpretation that we give

to the emotion, even labeling it like good or bad, I don't think

anger is a bad emotion. I think it's just part of the

kaleidoscope in the you know, if you look at like a color wheel,

you know, I just think like, oh yeah. Like, anger is on this

color wheel. It is available to me. It lives inside of me, and

some people see it as bad to me, anger isn't bad unless you start

inflicting your inability to cope or deal with or manage your

own anger onto others, human, animal, the planet, etc,

yourself, right? That's where self harm and self injury comes

in. People get get all these feelings they don't know what to

do with them, and they don't want to inflict them on other

people, but they inflict them on themselves. And that's where we

see things like cutting and self harm, and, you know, addiction

and abuse of alcohol and abuse of drugs, and like, 1000 other

ways that we can harm ourselves. You know what I mean. And so we

have these emotional cycles that happen that aren't very loving

and aren't always very kind, and they're sometimes called like a

vicious emotional cycle. And the thing is, is like when we have

emotions that we don't know how to regulate, we start to have

thoughts about them. We start to tell stories, right? We

interpret what we think they mean, and we start to tell these

stories, and we start to get these beliefs, and we start to

have these thoughts we ruminate on, the thoughts, the language,

the words, the self speak, the way we talk to ourselves. And

it's those things that then create behavior. So sometimes we

get a feeling, or we get a thought and then a feeling. And

if we ruminate on these things, if we have no way to break the

pattern of these thoughts, these emotions and our response to

them, they can often lead to behaviors where we act out. And

there's this little kind of like cycle wheel that I've seen

before. I'll just break it down for you. How they they say that.

They say these things, kind of like, go, go down. And in one

example that they give is like, let's say that, just to give you

set it in context. So let's say you have a friend. Let's call it

whether you're in high school or it's work. So just imagine, for

a younger kid, it could be school, and for an adult, it

could be work, and you have a friend. And I saw this on

Cornell research. They kind of broke this down. That's where

I'm getting this particular thing from. So and they say,

okay, so you have a friend, and they walk by you in the hallway

and they don't acknowledge you, and immediately what happens is

you start to have like a rapid fire set of thoughts and

feelings, and it might be like you feel confused, or you feel

disappointed, or you feel angry, like, why are they dissing me?

Like, why aren't they. Paying attention to me, like, what did

I do wrong? Or are they? Is she? Are they mad at me because of

this thing I did or didn't do from a few weeks ago? Right? I'm

sure it's nothing. I'm sure I'm just being over sensitive. But

like, maybe she's in a hurry, but still, right? And all it

takes is one person just walking past you, and then all of a

sudden, we're off and running, right? The brain is off and

running. The emotions come up in the body. Maybe we feel

embarrassed, we feel a little ashamed, like, what they didn't

see me, like, what's that about? We start to write a story, we

start to get pissed off, and there's this initial kind of,

like flood of feelings, and it's like one after another, like a

bizarre little parade, right? Of course, miracles is that great

line, right? And if you can just sit back and watch it like a

parade, like not take it personally, just notice. And

this is where it goes back to step one. Slow down. Step two,

self aware. Be aware. And if you're able to just pull back

and notice this bizarre little parade of thoughts that, like,

floats on by and you don't get hooked by them. You don't get

triggered by them. You don't feel like you have to do

anything. You just notice, like, wow, look at my brain doing that

thing, right? Like, look at, look at my kooky monkey's brain.

Like, doing that thing and writing all these stories when I

don't even know, because I haven't even talked to my

friend, I don't even know if they saw me. Why am I assuming

the worst, right? Why am I assuming the worst of my friend?

What if something did go down? We'll just have a conversation

about it or whatever, right? And what happens is, though, we

start to have these thoughts in these feelings, and then we feel

like we got to do something about them. Well, I'm going to

text them and I'm going

to be like, That was rude, or I'm going to like, da, da, da,

da, da, da, da.

Well, the action only comes from this place of feeling like that,

like again, you get these thoughts. So again, your

feelings, your thoughts and your behaviors, your actions, they're

all connected. And if we don't have ways of interrupting the

pattern when we're dysregulated, we might do some shit that we're

going to regret, and we can see how. And again, I'm not inside

the minds of mass shooters and stuff like that, but most

people, that's not like a one thing happens and they snap.

Usually it's something that has been building up and building up

and building up. And whether that is a thought system of

hate, or whether that's an incident where they got like, I

think I go back to like, when, you know, people talk about,

quote, unquote, that phrase of, like, going postal. Because the

big thing like, when, when the guy shot did a mass shooting at,

like, you know, the at a post office or whatever, and that's

where that whole going postal like, came from, right? And it's

like, so who knows if it's just an incident that, like, Finally,

like snaps somebody, but usually, my understanding is

it's like something that has been built up over time, and

whether that's an ideology, or somebody got radicalized, or

somebody was bullied, or somebody, again, has mental

illness issues, but but a piece in all of this is that there's

the inability to emotionally regulate, right? So here's the

pattern that they talk about it like this. So number one,

there's a situation, and this is where the trigger happens, and

whether it triggers a problem, like you're criticized at work

or again, somebody walks past you in the hallway and it snubs

you, or ignores you, or whatever. The thing is, there's

a trigger and the situation, quote, unquote, the situation.

Slash the trigger. It then, now goes to your thoughts, okay? And

it's like, so what's going through my head? What are the

words I'm using? What's the language I'm using? What is the

the self talk? This is me kind of building off it, right? Like,

so what are the kind of things are you thinking to yourself,

and it might be, oh, that person's an asshole, but it

might also be, I must not be good enough, I'm not worthy, I'm

not lovable. There's something wrong with me. It's all my

fault. I'm bad, I'm wrong. I'm not loved, etc, etc, right? And

then this, obviously, now they're in different schools of

thought. Some people will say the body speaks first, the body

has the emotion, and then it sends a thought up. Other people

think it's from the top down. The thought goes first. And I'm

just telling you what this model says. So you have the situation,

the trigger, something happens, then you have a thought about

it, right? The self talk, the language you use, whatever. And

then you have your emotions. And this is like, Well, how do I

feel? And then this is when I start to go, Well, how do I

feel? Do I feel anxious? Do I feel scared? Am I angry? Am I

pissed? Do I feel worthless? Do I feel exhaust? Like, what's

going on? Like, how do I feel? And those feelings, how I feel,

and that's what this whole episode is about. Often will be,

how do I react? What am I going to do about it? Am I going to

create a problem? Am I going to isolate myself? Am I going to

avoid contact with other people? Am I going to become aggressive?

Am I going to go pick up a gun? Am I going to if x, y and. Z

right? And this place between the emotion right, being able to

like, have a feeling and not feel like you need to do

anything about it. Can I regulate my nervous system? Can

I sit with myself? Can I kind of talk to myself and shift my

perspective, right? So then you have the how do I react, my

behavior, what do I do? And then what you do, the next step is

what I call they call it My body's physical reactions, like

after I do something about it. How do I feel? Do I feel tired?

Do I have a loss of appetite? I call this step how that feels.

It's the reaction to my reaction. So I went and did this

thing, and now I feel guilty, and now I feel bad, and now I'm

in this victim lube of like, Oh my God. Now this is gonna

happen. And I start to get anxious, I start to get scared,

I start to beat myself up. I double down and make them twice

as wrong. See what you made me do, quote, unquote, nobody makes

you feel or do anything. If more people knew this, we'd be in a

totally different world. But then we start to blame the other

people, right? And then we go to right back around to how I

continue to think about this situation, that other person and

myself. So that loop comes right back to my thoughts about it.

And then, if you don't have a way to do something about this

little circle of hell that you're kind of putting yourself

in, we've got to be able to pause. We've got to be I'm doing

a little time out with my hands. We've got to be able to hit time

out. We got to be able to, like when Viktor Frankl right man,

search for meaning. When Viktor Frankl talks about, in between

the stimulus and response. There's a space. There's this

moment, right? And if you don't know how to hit pause and take a

deep breath or to slow down your thinking or pump the brakes,

this is how we end up doing shit that we regret. This is how we

end up doing shit and saying things we can't take back. This

is how people end up in prison because they have no emotional

regulation, and they turn their feelings into felonies. Well,

I'll show you. I'll get you. I'll do this. Just you wait, and

this becomes really deeply patterned over time. And unless

something changes to shift the cycle, it's like you just keep

getting into this cycle. And it says here, it's easy to see how

even a small event can cascade into something hugely, hugely

triggering. So then, if you take a person, right, if you take a

person who has experienced a lot of trauma as a child, a lot of

drama, just basically cruised on in life, and I don't mean cruise

like it was easy, but just kind of operated in the world all on

trauma responses, like, literally just surviving,

holding on. I'm like, white knuckling it right now. Like,

just think of a guy like doing some think about the people who,

like climb. This is what I kind of think about emotionally,

that, you know, the climb is who climb without clipping in,

without ropes, and they're on these really fucking, like steep

cliffs, and they just have, they find the tiniest little edge to

hold on to, the tiniest little grip with their fingers. I'm

kind of doing this thing with my hands right now, like they're

gripping this wall of granite. And the slightest little thing

can be disaster. It can end in disaster. Well, if we've been

white knuckling in our whole time and just holding on by

those fingertips, it does not take much to knock us off. And

at some point, those old strategies that kept us alive

and kept us safe, those old ways of being, those patterns, those

conditioning, the things, the habits, the things that you

know, again, were put in place to protect us and to allow us to

survive, sometimes some hellscapes, some really terrible

things. They stop working at some point. And I always say,

like, I don't beat up my younger self anymore. You know, I used

to look back and be like, What the fuck was I thinking? Like,

what was that all about? You know, I used to really be unkind

to the younger version of myself, and now I have, like, a

really deep appreciation that those younger parts of me, man,

they were really doing the best they could with what they had,

you know. And God bless Vicki, with 2k from Lawrence, she was a

little bit of a knucklehead, but I'm also really, really proud of

the fact that she held on, you know, she didn't give up, and

she might have not always made great choices, but here we are.

You know what I mean, and it took all that to get me here, so

I I'm grateful for it, but it's really important that we learn

to understand. You. Um, and work with our own relationship to our

thoughts, our feelings and our behavior. And this is why, like

a lot of people end up going to therapy right to talk some

things out. But CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, it's it

doesn't work for everybody. Some people need to do more than

talk, and some people just get tired of talking about the same

thing again and again and again. Some people need more somatic

work. They need to kind of get into their body. Some people

need more kind of, like visceral like, you know, like techniques

and tools that help them to interrupt their brain and their

pattern when the brain starts to go down that pattern highway,

right? When the brain starts to do its little dance that it's

done 1000 times. And people who are like, for example, I've

talked about this before, people who are quick to anger, right?

When people say, Oh, he goes from zero to 60, that's a person

that's practiced being angry.

People who are anxious. You've spent a lot of time practicing

being anxious. I'm not saying you're doing it consciously.

Hello, me too. Double A man, hands like I get it right?

People who are nervous, people who overthink, people fill in

the blank, whatever your particular pattern is, right? We

all have our patterns and our conditioning, and we all can now

find ways and have access to tools that help us to break that

pattern. And we need to, first of all, again, really take a

look at the way that we're responding to the people to the

whether it's the news or social media or the internet, or your

family or your partner, your sweetie, your friends, your

siblings, whatever the world that you have created. There's

the external world that we're all kind of moving around in,

and then we have this internal world. And it's the internal

world that you actually can do something about. We can't often

change what's happening out there, but in here, the

emotional response network, as I like to call it, sometimes,

like, how am I going to respond to this? And we have to, first

of all, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta know ourselves. We gotta

talk to ourselves. We gotta ask ourselves some kinds of

questions, right? And we gotta know like, what, like things

like, what emotions are really hard for me to navigate right?

What feelings really trigger me? What behaviors do I do to

usually calm down big feelings right? Like, we gotta get to

know ourselves and ask ourselves these things, right? What are

the, what are the some of the strategies I use short term to,

just like boom, pattern interrupt. And there are things

that are literally called pattern interrupts, right, like

certain breath, breathing techniques, EFT, Emotional

Freedom Technique, right, tapping. It's sometimes called

self hugs, right? Peter Levine's work, bilateral stimulation, so

many tools, right? NLP, tools, and tools to kind of like, you

know, bust up anxiety and stuff like that. We also have to

question, right, the perspectives that we have, the

perceptions that we have, the the the lens at which we look at

the world, and those are the things too. It's like we have

certain beliefs, right? We have events that have happened. We

have our interpretation of those events, where we assign meaning

to them and to ourselves. We start to create beliefs that

become these stories that become our identities. And a lot of

times, when we're getting triggered, it's because some

part of us feels threatened. Our identity is getting threatened.

The way we view ourselves is getting threatened. Our view of

the world is getting threatened. Your politics or your religion

feels threatened, which is a belief structure, right? It's

just your thoughts, your opinions, your beliefs, and when

those things feel threatened, some people don't know what to

do with that. So it's like, if you disagree with me, you're

bad, you're wrong. And this is how you see people. That's where

there's why there's political violence. Is that really

dysregulated people who have no ability to let go? Like, okay,

well, how is this? How is murdering somebody else going to

solve this problem? Mm, yeah, and you see it all. I mean, talk

about a world, right? Because there's a all, all a country is,

is a bunch of individuals. Just like all a government is, it's a

bunch of individuals. And when you talk about people who have

no emotional regulation, and you think about some of the greats,

some of the greats that have been murdered. When you look at

Gandhi and you look at Martin Luther King, Jr, and you look at

Bobby Kennedy and you look at JFK, they kill these people.

They murdered these people because they're a threat to

somebody else's ideology or somebody else's belief system,

or they get threatened. Threatened, right? Like, what do

you mean? Why? Why is he? Why is he working on behalf of civil

rights? Why? Why are they talking about, like, oh, like,

the real reality of the Constitution that all men are

created equal. Oh, we're expected to actually act that

way. All the white people get threatened, right? All the

people get scared. Like, wait, what you know. So what do they

do? Panic and we get to assert our authority and not control

them. We can't have things changed. Let's just like murder

people. I don't believe in violence. I do not believe in

violence. I can't stand it. I abhor it. Of course, that's not

surprising the kid of a murdered mother, right? We can talk about

that another day, but I see so much that goes on in the world

when you just even think, what's really big right now online is a

bunch of people doing what reaction videos, and even if

those videos are quote, unquote happy or healthier. Like, oh my

God, listen to this person sing, or, Oh my God. Like, we love to

react, and the media loves to get you to react. You got to be

paying attention, because that's one of the things. When you

start to slow down and check yourself, check yourself before

you wreck yourself. When you start to slow down and pay

attention to you and how you're reacting in the world and how

you're showing up and how you think and how kooky your own

brain is, you start to see it around you. What a dis regulated

nervous system America fucking is. I wish some more people

would like to do some yoga, take some deep breaths and and find

some pattern interrupts that work for them, and do some

hypnosis and calm their freaking overactive amygdala is, you know

what I mean? Because we just have, we have too much going on,

and there's not enough gap between the emotions and the

thoughts and the behaviors. There's not enough space to

contemplate the consequences of the action. Do I want to be the

kind of person who can't experience negative emotions? So

if I'm going to feel a negative emotion, what? Then I have to

yell or scream or hit you or push you down or bully you or do

something extreme. We need to learn how to sit in the

uncomfort, you know, the discomfort, and that's the

thing. A lot of us don't like to feel uncomfortable. A lot of us

don't like to be in the uncertainty of things. We go

into the what ifs and the worries and the worst case

scenarios, right? We go all those W's, and we don't know how

to be with ourselves and each other and our differences. And

what's really, really fascinating is, is that when you

actually talk to people, you find that we do actually have a

lot of things in common. And I know get like I get it right

now, and I've said it before, the world feels so divisive

right now. It feels so insane. It feels so divided, left and

right, and you know, Republicans and Democrats, the liberals and

the conservatives and all this stuff. There is so much hate

speech. There is so I'm all for free speech. You know, I think

that you got to be crazy to think that you can have like I

believe 100% as a writer, as a speaker, I believe in free

speech. It's one of the things I do love about this country. I

just wish more people would not use their free speech to do hate

speech. And a lot of people do some hate speech and call it

something else. And it's a very confusing time to see a person

say hateful things, and you have one group of people that's like,

oh yeah, that's just being a good conservative. That's a man

of God, and everybody else is like, what the fuck are you

talking about? This is hate speech, right? This is what I'm

talking about. The world feels like overwhelming and crazy. So

those of us who are like paying attention and understand that

there's a lot out there we can't change, but do understand

there's a lot that we can change in here, and if we change enough

in here and enough people change in here, I'm pointing at the

self, that's how change out there. Ultimately happens is if

we can learn what to do with our emotions and how to navigate

these suckers without reacting and then feeling the need to go

out and cause harm to others. You know, we would have, we

would have a different world, and there's so much fear. And

really, for me, it comes down to all of this. There's a reason

why I love A Course in Miracles and why it has helped me to make

a lot of sense of the world. Yeah. And when you come down to

those basic tenants, you have but two emotions, two thought

systems, love and fear. That's it. And so much of this world

operates on fear. And then we wonder why people have such

jacked up nervous systems, right? Have just dysregulated

nervous systems and have emotional dysregulation. And so

we want to be able to

help ourselves, and by helping ourselves, and also, if you're a

parent, of course, or a teacher, an educator, or whatever,

somebody works with, kids, being able to have tools in your

toolbox that also help children to do emotional regulation is

like, so fantastic and so important as well. Okay, so one

of the things that happens, though, is, if we don't have the

ability to regulate our emotions, we go into what I

would call like, over stimulation or obsessive

thinking, or sometimes we call it rumination, right? So this is

just like, think of it like a loop, an obsessive thought,

where you just keep it's like a snake that, they say, a snake

chasing its own tail, and you just keep thinking about a thing

and thinking about a thing and thinking about a thing, and it's

really, it's really a precarious situation. You know? It's just

like people ruminate on it and they keep replaying. Like, let's

say somebody at work said something unkind to you or mean

to you. You see it like you see it at like, it like, if you're

driving in a car with somebody, I'll go back to the work

example. But let's say you're driving in a car with somebody,

and somebody cuts you off, and you might have that initial

reaction, like, Jesus, right? Like, like, they almost hit you,

or they made you slam on your break, or they weren't using

their blanket, or whatever's happening, and you're just and

let's just say there's somebody else in the car, and you might

have an emotional reaction like, Oh my God. But then it passes,

it's like, okay, my hat was hammering there for a second

now. I'm calmed down, or whatever. But the other person

would be like, just keep talking about it and talking about like,

how dare they. Who do they think they are? Don't they see this?

And if they went on and on like this, let's say for like,

another half an hour, 45 minutes, and you'd be like,

Jesus Christ. Like that was a split second incident. It ended

for, you know, 10 miles ago, like you you're insisting on,

like, driving this thing forward. There were just certain

kinds of people like they they're like, Velcro to a

negative thought, right? They can't let it go. They just keep

attaching it and attaching it and holding on to it and holding

on to it, like, dude, like, not helpful, right? So that's like

an instant, kind of like rumination. But we're talking

there are people who will replay a snub in their mind, or replay

a thing in their mind where they felt disrespected or they felt

offended, or they felt like this is like you are not you're going

against my religion, my whatever, my whatever right. And

they ruminate on it, and they obsess on it, and they play it

over and over and over again, and that kind of compulsive

thinking where you cannot interrupt that pattern of

thought. First of all, they're not trying to because they're

getting something from that. They're getting something from

feeling victimized, not consciously, right? They don't

often know that they're doing it. I'm not saying it's an

excuse, but we often think about a time when you became obsessed

about an ex or a situation or something didn't go your way,

and you just replay it and replay it, you know. And we see

it like, I tell my clients all the time. It's like, you know,

and it's scientifically, quote, unquote, proven. The science

says that there's a chemical emotional wash that happens in

your brain, into your body, so like, for anger, for example,

Joe Dispenza talks about this. So do a lot of other

neuroscientists that it really only takes about 90 seconds. And

I'm always generous and say two minutes. I'll give people like,

two minutes for a biochemical reaction of an emotion like

anger to flush through your system so you have the feeling.

You feel it. You're like, right? Like you have the emotion you

like, it comes up in your body, and whether it's in your gut or

your heart or your throat or your shoulders get tense, or

whatever, your face, wherever you hold your anger and your

rage, or how it self expresses and biochemically, it flushes

through you. And then it's done, and we see it sometimes with

crying too, right? If you ever, like, you know, you're upset

about something, and I'm not talking like your loved one just

died. I'm not talking about that like, kind of an extreme thing,

but most everyday, kind of like things, right? You get pissed,

you get mad, or you're crying, and you cry, and you're like,

Huh? You know, big sobs, ugly cry, whatever. And then there's

that moment when you go, and you take that breath and you go,

when you let it out, your nervous system starts to

regulate,

and then in your brain you go, but then they do and you just

start playing it all

over again, like I can probably make myself cry if I make myself

think about some. Something really sad, like about an

animal, or, like, whatever, right? And it's like, if we

ruminate on it, it's just like we restart, we restart the

biochemical watch, we restart the thing again and again and

again. And if we don't recognize that we're doing it a lot of

times, this is how we end up in a victim loop, because we're not

choosing to think something differently. We're not choosing

to actively feel something differently. We're not choosing

to change our story or change our mind, change our or shift

our perspective out of fear to love. We sometimes don't

actually want to feel better. We're getting something out of

staying in that emotional dysregulation. Again, it's not

always conscious, you know, so we end up kind of in that loop.

So there's a bunch of different things that you can do. I mean,

even just the basics, the basics is, first of all, is like in,

and I think it's in 12 step programs. They say, you know,

are you angry? I mean, are you hungry? Are you tired? Are you

lonely? Are you? You know, thirsty, like these things they

ask, like the basics of like your physical comfort, right?

Take care of your physical needs, like getting good sleep,

the quality of food. We know that the gut, the belly,

literally sends so much information up to the brain. So

if you're eating nothing but shit food, right? And like, even

they say your gut biome, like your belly is like, where so

much serotonin is produced. So if the belly is off, if you're

not taking care of yourself, if you're not staying hydrated,

you're not getting good rest, you're not moving your body,

you're not eating well, if you're not exercising, that

right there, that right there, just tips us in the wrong

direction. So getting out, going for a walk, getting out in

nature, getting some sun on your face or in your eyeballs or

whatever. Right, breathe some air. Move your body. Go to

better to read all these things we can do again, staying off of

social media as much as you can, right, stay connected to the

people who love you. These are just like the basics, things you

know, and then also, like, engage in activities that give

you a sense of purpose, that give you a sense of achievement,

like where you feel connected, these positive things where you

feel connected, you feel committed, like you again, these

things that bring you joy. And whether that's finding your

people, finding a group, finding an activity, starting a hobby,

walking your dog, spending time with your pets. Like pets

totally release so much oxytocin in us, right? That love

chemical. It also gets produced in them when we're kind and we

give them belly rubs and we pet them and we snuggle with them

and we spend time with them. You know? I mean, animals are like a

saving grace for us in so many ways, and it's easier, right?

It's often easier to change our thoughts than it is to change

our feelings, because a lot of times we're like, I just this is

how I feel. It's just how I feel. But we can start to

question our feelings. We can question our thoughts, and that

doesn't mean get rid of them, don't allow them, whatever, but

really learning how to be with your feelings without feeling

like you have to do something about it. We don't have to

believe every thought we think. We don't have to go in all in on

crazy. We don't have to ruminate. We don't have to

whatever. But if you don't know how to pattern, interrupt

yourself, and one of the fastest ways to do it. So you practice

Rick Hansen says this, Dr Rick Hanson, we practice an emotional

state until it becomes a neural trait, like in your brain, it

becomes unconscious, subconscious. You do it enough

times, like tying your shoes, brushing your teeth, driving

your car, you practice it a thing, enough times it becomes

automated. So many of us are automated for anxiety, for

depression, for meanness, for anger, for short temper for lack

of patience, right? We are deeply conditioned and wired to

be particular ways. And what I'm saying is we can use that same

thing practice an emotional state until it becomes a neural

trait. We can practice kindness, we can practice compassion. We

can practice tolerance, mercy, forgiveness, goodness, right? We

can practice love, the state of love. We can practice being who

we want to be, less reactive, more patient, better listeners.

Practice an emotional state until it becomes a neural trait.

But again, we gotta start with slowing down. One of the fastest

ways that we can help our nervous system, one of the

fastest ways we can shift our state, is with a breath. And

whether you practice simply breathing in through your nose,

fully and deeply and then exhaling twice as long out

through your mouth with a little bit of sound. And you probably

can't hear this, because my mic will dampen it, but just imagine

like I'm making like a like I'm whispering, you know, when you

go tell somebody to quiet down, right? And just like you. You're

breathing through a straw, like nice long exhale. It's one of

the fastest ways. The physiological sigh is another

good breath when you breathe in through your nose, nice full

inhale, and then you take a second little sip of air in, on

top of that, also through your nose. So it's like a double

inhale, full inhale, and then a little fill up on top of that,

and then twice as long exhale out through your mouth. It's one

of the fastest ways to down regulate your nervous system, of

course, is all those other tools, right? Tapping bilateral

stimulation, self hugs, like getting yourself out of a

pattern of thought, move your body. Sometimes I'll just get

up. I'll just get up out of my chair and do some jumping jacks.

I'll get on the floor and do some sit ups. It sounds silly,

but when I'm trying to change an emotional state dance, listen to

music, take a whiff, right? I'm not a wicked big like, I'm not

picking on people. Meanwhile, some people are, like, really

into essential oils. And they what you know, and they like

make mixtures, and they do all this up. I'm not one of those

people, but there are certain scents that I can like sense,

like smells that I can smell that can really shift how I

feel. And for some people, it's like calming lavender. For some

of us, it's like smelling peppermint to liven yourself up,

or lemon, or whatever. The thing is, like, you gotta figure out

your own scent, right? Things that ground you or calm you, but

really, it's just breaking that pattern of emotion, thought,

action, reaction, right? It's like, no, no, no. Can I find a

little space here? How can I slow down? Why do I feel like I

need to attack, defend or prove right? Why do I immediately go

into that reaction state a lot of times again? Because it's

patterned and conditioned. And if we don't know our own

patterns and conditions, and you do not know yourself, and that's

where I think so much of the problems in the world come from.

And this is why, and I stand by it. I think the work that I do

with people in the world, and it's not about me and making me

special. It's like there are 1000s of people who do the kind

of work that I do all around all across the world, helping people

to know themselves and to find more freedom, and whether that's

freedom from suffering, freedom from their anxiety, freedom from

their patterns, freedom from their old stories, so much of

it, the way that we think, the way that we interpret, the way

that like, the prisons that we create for ourselves. And of

course, in miracles, is a line that I love, and I'll maybe talk

about this another time. And I'm paraphrasing, but it basically

says, your chains have been loosened. The prison door is

open. You can, like, get up and leave at any time, but we don't

even know that we've put ourselves in a prison. We don't

know that we're in these mental prisons of our thoughts and our

stories and our beliefs and are very limited. That's what a

prison is. It's a small fucking cage that we are in, and we

don't even know that the door is open. We don't even realize how

much freedom is available to us, and the only people who go

around feeling like they need to harm or maim or be uncut, like

mean or murder people is people who have created prisons of

hate. And the thing is, is when you have a prison inside of your

own mind, you are also you're you're not like, yeah, you're

holding the key because you think that you're the jailer,

because everybody else is wrong and you're right, or whatever

story you're telling yourself. But if you create a prison in

your own head, you also have to, not only are you now in the

prison, you're walking around with the keys, because you're

the prison God. Now you got to God this story. You got to keep

this story alive, or your prison falls apart. You're also the

warden. You don't go home at night, you're in the prison,

but you hold the key, and part of it is this emotional

regulation, and so many people don't know what to do with their

big feelings. We see it all over social media, where people are

just in the comments with their verbal diarrhea of negativity

and attack and slander and making fun of other people and

attacking personally attacking people's looks and their body

shapes and and like people are like out of their minds. And

yeah, maybe some of it is bots, but mostly it's people who,

under anonymity, anonymity, just try to be so hateful, there's so

much fear. And I don't know about you guys, but one of the

reasons why I do this show is it's one of the cheapest and

it's the freest way right, to get a little love, to get a

little dose of where I'm coming from, using spirituality and

storytelling and stuff like that to spread spiritual principles,

to spread a little more love in the world, but really, so much

of what I do is to help people to have more freedom, freedom

from suffering, freedom from shifting out of these old

stories, these old patterns that keep us stuck, keep us stuck in

our old ways of being, keep us separate, keep us guilty, keep

us in fear. And it's a. Block. That's what fear is. Fear is a

block to love. We build these blocks and barriers to our own

awareness of love's presence. This is what A Course in

Miracles tells us, right? So so much of this is about dissolving

it's not so much about solving all the it's about dissolving

them. So I hope that this has been helpful to you in some way,

you know. And if this kind of work appeals to you and you want

to work one to one, I call it the quest. That's my four month

one to one mentoring program. I love to work with people one to

one. And if that's not, you know, available to you, it's not

in your budget or a time or whatever. We also have the nest,

which is my spiritual group, mentoring program and community,

which is fantastic and amazing. It's 50 bucks a month, you know,

and you come in and you get an incredible community and an

opportunity to receive coaching, support, mentoring, to be seen,

to be heard, when you're navigating this whole being

human experience, you know, and all of it, all parts of you are

welcome there, all parts of you and locally, I teach yoga and do

workshops and other stuff like that, right? Thai Yoga, massage,

whatever. So you can find it all at Karen kenney.com if you want

these podcasts delivered right to your inbox every Thursday

morning, just sign up. Go to Karen kenney.com/sign up, and

you'll get those suckers delivered. And that's what I

have for you today. Let's not turn our feelings into felonies,

you guys. Let's get a grip. Let's get an understanding of

what's going on inside of us so that we can make conscious

choices that represent who we truly are, which is love. That's

who we are, love, and our only gig is to spread that love, to

get better at giving and receiving love. That's the gig,

to be the love that you are, and when we're reacting all over the

place and going into murder and mayhem, obviously, and it's not

just like it's those are the extreme things, but again, to

reiterate, we all in our own little ways each day, murder and

attack and go after and cause chaos in our own minds. Right?

It doesn't even mean you have to take action on it, but you're

thinking things in your own head about yourself and others that's

not very loving. It's not very helpful. It's not good for your

health. It's not good for the collective consciousness of the

world, you know? So if we can learn how to step out of our

rumination and step out of that self talk and step out of we

find that gap right between the thought, the emotion, and the

action, we can change the world. So I hope this has been helpful.

I appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening and wherever

you go, wherever you go, please leave yourself in the animals

and the planet and the other people and the environments that

you find yourself in better than how you found it. Wherever you

go, may you and your energy, your presence, your love, your

emotional regulation, may it be a blessing. Bye.