You know what you should be doing with your money. So why aren't you doing it?

You know you should ask for the raise. Start investing. Stop spending on things you don't care about. And yet, somehow, you don't.

Counsellor and change therapist Charlotte Cummings has a name for what's stopping you, and it's not laziness or lack of discipline.

It's your unbearable feeling.

In this episode, Frances Cook sits down with Charlotte to unpack one of the most powerful concepts in psychology: the one or two feelings we hate so much, we structure our entire lives around never experiencing them.

And in doing so, we sabotage ourselves financially, professionally, and in our relationships — without ever realising why.

We talk about:

- What an "unbearable feeling" is and where it comes from

- How to figure out what yours is

- Why it's often behind the very thing making you successful, as well as being the very thing holding you back

- Common unbearable feelings that block people from investing, saving, or asking for more

- How to stop being run by your own fears (and what changes when you do)

This one will make you think differently about every money decision you've been putting off.

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This podcast was filmed & produced by Fanaticals

Video editing & content production by Lana Byrne

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You can be smart, capable, fully across what you should be doing with money and still not do it.

You know you should ask for the raise, you know you should start investing, and you know you should probably stop spending on things that you don't care about.

And yet you don't do the things that you know you should.

And what today's guest wants to tell you is it's because you're avoiding something and you do anything to keep avoiding it, including sabotaging your money life.

Charlotte Cummings has spent years as a counselor and now helps people through change therapy.

In her training, she found something that can be applied to so many areas of your life.

Many of us have an unbearable feeling, and we will do anything to make sure we don't feel it.

This is it.

This is the thing that is behind why you do what you do, when you know what you know.

This idea that we all have one or sometimes two feelings that, that we are completely on the run from, that we structure our lives around avoiding, and we just don't want to feel this feeling.

Whether we realize it or not, we often build a lot of our life around avoiding that feeling, even if it means you miss out on what you truly want.

I've stayed in jobs too long.

I've accepted less pay than I should.

I've not taken opportunities because I haven't thought I was good enough to put myself out there for them.

So.

Welcome to Making Sense.

It's the podcast people who want financial freedom without giving up their coffee.

I'm Frances Cook, a financial journalist and fellow financial freedom seeker who makes money simple for you today.

It's the hidden psychology that sabotages your money decisions and how to take back control.

This episode of Making Sense is supported by Odoo, the affordable way to get your business working smarter.

Go to odoo.com that's o-double o.com for more.

Welcome.

Thanks for having me.

Oh, it's so good, because I really love bringing in people with sort of alternative perspective.

And you've worked as a counselor for years.

You now help people manage change in their lives as well, which must be fascinating to be part of.

But one of the things that you have seen and practice a lot through your work is this idea of an unbearable feeling.

And I want you to tell me what that is.

Well, it's something that I learned about in my counseling training 20 years ago, and it's probably one of the most powerful things that I work with people around.

And it's this idea that we all have one or sometimes two Feelings that we are completely on the run from, that we structure our lives around avoiding.

And we just don't want to feel this feeling.

It is absolutely unbearable to us.

So there are a whole lot of feelings that are universally, you know, nobody likes them, nobody wants to feel unheard, nobody wants to feel left out or rejected or that they've failed or let people down.

But for all of us, there's one or two feelings that we hate more than the others that we actually find unbearable and not just unpleasant.

And what we do is we set up our lives so that we don't feel that feeling.

Sometimes in that process, the things we do to avoid the feeling, we actually end up, they cause pain in our life as well.

And we get into trouble as our life goes on around the impacts of the strategies we have to avoid this feeling.

But it shows up in our lives in so many different ways and, yeah, causes people a lot of heartache.

So there's different types of feelings that we might have as our own unbearable feeling.

Yeah.

So, you know, some of the common ones are an unbearable, terrible feeling of failure, of disappointing others, of being disappointed, of feeling unheard, feeling left out or not good enough or rejected.

There's a whole big list of them.

I have listed out everything that I've seen over my career into a little easy downloadable guide on my website if people want to grab a full list.

And it is just a chance to kind of read through that list and see what it is that stands out that you don't feel.

So that's the really key thing with it.

This is the feeling that you avoid so much.

You seldom feel it.

And if you do feel it, you end up really, really distressed.

So where do these things come from?

Is it like the classic, like, go back to your childhood or something like that?

When you first feel this feeling in your early years, you end up going, oh, I really hate this.

I don't want to feel this again.

This is really awful.

I'm not going to put myself in a position where I feel this again.

So it's kind of like we make a little promise to ourselves from that first experience of the feeling which.

Where we go, I don't wanna feel this again, I'm gonna avoid this one.

How much are we aware of these things?

Like, do we tend to know on some level what our unbearable feeling is, or does it sit quite deep?

Yeah, most of the time it sits beneath the surface.

And people will talk to you about the things that they struggle with.

Like people will say, oh, I'm a People pleaser.

You know, my struggle is that I'm a people pleaser.

Or they'll talk about something that they don't like.

Like, I'm a control freak.

And the questions really become, why are you that way?

For what reason are you doing those things?

And then we can get to kind of digging and exploring around what is it that you are avoiding by being that person?

Super interesting.

Okay.

So if you're sort of listening to this and thinking, oh, I don't know what my unbearable feeling is, you might start with something like, okay, I know this causes me problems.

And you might sort of start excavating on what's causing that.

Why am I doing it?

And that could lead you to your unbearable feeling.

Absolutely.

And the best question you can ask is, how come?

How come I'm doing that?

How come I struggle with that?

How come that's showing up in my life?

Like, what are the reasons why you are being the way that you are?

And I think sometimes that's one of our struggles as humans is we put a lot down to personality.

We kind of say, well, that's just how I am.

This is my personality.

But actually, your personality built on the basis of some of those really early childhood experiences that you had.

And we've ingrained those patterns and ways of being over time.

But your personality doesn't need to be fixed, doesn't need to follow you around as if it's kind of able to cause havoc in your life.

And so often those things that we hold dear to us, like, even stories like, I'm a perfectionist.

Well, how come?

Why are you a perfectionist?

What does it help you to avoid to be a perfectionist?

And I think one of the key things with unbearable feelings that I find incredibly interesting is that they actually cause some really good things in our lives.

So most of the time, our top achievements are due to our unbearable feelings.

You know, the things we get accolades for, the things that our friends and family love us the most for, are often also because of this feeling that is causing us pain.

So the juggle becomes being able to hold onto the good parts of this and let go of the parts that are causing us difficulty.

A really good example of that is with perfectionism.

Well, sometimes in life we want to be perfect at something, and we want to apply it.

I would like my brain surgeon to be a perfectionist, please.

Absolutely.

My husband's a helicopter pilot.

This unbearable feeling is failing.

I'm like, you definitely want to be flying around high up in the sky with this complicated machine with Someone who does not like to fail.

Like, if this is a good thing.

People build their whole careers around their unbearable feeling often as well.

It's the thing we're celebrated for.

If you want to be well paid, get great at your unbearable feeling is kind of how society works.

But we can come to a place where actually we are in charge of this.

So we're not on the run from the feeling.

We can risk feeling it.

So we might apply our perfectionism in areas of our life that really matter to us, in areas that line up with our values or that get us ahead.

And we might then be able to turn that perfectionism down on things that don't really matter to us.

We need to be in control of ourselves and how we apply ourselves across our lives.

That's so interesting because I so agree.

I hadn't attached it to the framework that you are describing.

This framework is new to me.

But I had, on some level, twigged to it with, you know, I've been very lucky to get to know some very successful people in various forms.

And some people who I've got to know as friends, who I originally were sort of like, oh, my gosh, they're this amazing person on a pedestal.

You get to know them and it's like, oh, they're just a person, you know, and a lovely person who I really like, don't get me wrong, but just a person.

And so many very successful people that I've met have a part of themselves that is deeply dysfunctional, you know, and it is often the same thing that makes them very successful.

And I don't think it's necessarily the.

The broken artist sort of trope.

Right.

But I think it's true what you're saying about there is a good and a bad side to a lot of things, and it's learning to control the bad side and lean into the good is really powerful for life.

Right?

Yeah.

And life gets better when we embrace those things that we're good at, but in a way that we're not being run by our own fears.

Our lives don't need to be dictated by these things that we're scared of, because it's kind of like the monster under the bed where you're really, really scared of feeling this feeling.

Like, I can't feel that.

That is too scary for me.

It's too much for me.

And then actually, what happens for people is when they do feel it, when we do expose them to the feeling, they go, oh, that's actually not that bad.

It's actually Just unpleasant, like other feelings I want to avoid bumping into through my life, and I don't need to be so on the run from this.

Do you find you must see people getting caught in loops?

Almost.

Does that happen?

Yeah.

And I think you can kind of sniff out unbearable feelings when you're a therapist.

Like, you know, you're looking at people going, hmm, how's that working out for you?

You know, what's.

What might be going on there.

You definitely kind of can spot these things quite quickly.

Twenty years into the therapy game, our unbearable feeling is the thing that stands between us and our goals.

So if there are things that you're wanting to achieve in life that you just haven't been able to achieve, things that you need to do for yourself or that you want to do for yourself, dreams that you have, this unbearable feeling is, I promise you, the thing that is standing in your way.

Because if you could allow yourself to feel that feeling, if you could risk the feeling and feel it to some extent and get over that fear that you have of the feeling, then you can make your way towards those things that you want or those things that are good for you.

So many people message me and say, I know what I should be doing with my money.

I just can't seem to make myself do it.

And I keep falling back into these habits, these cycles, and I know it's not good, but I'm still doing it.

Unbearable feeling to blame.

Absolutely.

This is it.

This is the thing that is behind why you do what you do when you know what you know.

And it is such an easy, powerful concept to be able to pick up something that helps you make sense of why you're doing things you don't want to do.

This is kind of frustrating as an adult, right, to be going, hang on a minute.

I'm like, I'm subconsciously programmed by some things that I keep bumping into and that keep getting in my way in life.

It is often quite heartbreaking for people when they realize the extent to which they've been controlled or limited.

And it has a compounding effect in your life.

So often by the time people get past the early years stage with kids or into their careers, they're starting to see some of these limits show up because they're the ceilings that we place on ourselves.

They're the things that are blocking us from our own progress and controlling us.

And actually our lives are really precious.

We.

We want to be able to live the best lives that we possibly can.

And so part of that is being able to be without those limits, without those things that are dictating who we are and how we are and the choices that we can make.

That makes a lot of sense.

Okay, so when people are trying to sort out their money lives, I mean, are there some common blocks that you see?

Think about somebody who has an unbearable feeling of being out of control.

They don't like to feel out of control.

They want to stay in environments where they do feel in control.

So perhaps they find their way into some kind of leadership position because they're good at control.

They're good at holding things together, at predicting what could go wrong, at kind of, you know, holding the fort within a business.

But perhaps what they need for their next step is to move outside of the sphere that they're in.

But they have to feel out of control in order to do that.

They have to put themselves out there.

They have to let people know that they're looking for another opportunity or, well, they have to apply for things where they're not the one deciding whether they get it or not.

They have to go into an environment potentially where they're not the big fish anymore, where they're under somebody else, where they're unfamiliar with the area of work.

Like, you know, what it feels like to start a new job, and you're flooded with all this emotion around.

I don't even know what I meant to be doing here.

And this does feel out of control.

Well, unless you can let yourself feel, feel that feeling, you can't do the things.

So you'll prefer to stay within your comfort zone, wherever your unbearable feeling is showing up.

Interesting.

I also find a lot of people, and maybe this is because I talk a lot about investing.

I find investing is the one where people are often the most interested and yet the most hesitant.

Is there any sort of unbearable feeling that comes to mind for you that could hold people back from something like investing into the share market?

Out of control is probably one of the top ones because it is a bit of a bumpy ride at times, and it's a long game that you have to stay in for most investments.

But things like an unbearable feeling of failure or of futility.

So futility is a really interesting unbearable feeling because it's about waste of some kind, wasting your time, wasting your money.

So very frugal.

People often have an unbearable feeling around futility and waste, but that can show up in all sorts of different spaces of their life.

So they don't want to waste whatever it is that they've got in front of them.

They Would rather something not go well and never take a hit than risk doing something that might place them in a position where they feel this feeling.

Okay.

Or, you know, if we flip that from the investing mindset to the saving mindset, where people often struggle to have that emergency savings buffer, anything that strikes you on that that could be maybe.

Linked out of control is a top one for the chronic savers, like, who have to have a buffer.

And I lived like this to some extent, but for slightly different reasons, where I was like, you know, thou shalt have this magical sum of money at all times and never drop below that.

Even when there was something that was like a really great opportunity or, you know, decision that I'm saving for something,.

It is still supposed to be used just consciously.

Yes.

And so that little bit of time where you're tolerating things, you know, moving below your own kind of line of comfort is a really tricky one.

But, you know, for some people, it's also about not wanting to be left behind.

You know, they're wanting to have money because they don't like to feel unsafe.

And actually, money is something that they need to hold on to because they feel unsafe or they don't feel good enough.

They have this unbearable feeling of not being good enough, so they don't back themselves that they could make that money again.

They're kind of living with this buffer because the emotion that's uncomfortable for them is not feeling good enough, and they don't back their ability to find another opportunity or make something work out in some way.

Yeah, there's so many ways there and the examples you've laid out that this could really sabotage.

Absolutely.

And we all have one, sometimes two.

Love that for us.

Yeah, lucky some.

Most of the time it's one, and sometimes there's kind of a secondary unbearable feeling, but usually there's one that is the kind of chief mischief maker of our lives.

And it's something that, you know, when we see it, we go, wow, I can see all of the areas that this is showing up in relationships and parenting, in our careers and in our money lives.

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So when you talk to people about figuring this out, where do you start this conversation?

Help them figure out what their unbearable feeling is.

Yeah, so usually it's a, you know, tell me about life.

What's going on at the moment?

What are the challenges that you're experiencing?

But then we're getting into what is behind the pain that you're experiencing.

So how come these things have happened?

How come these patterns are following you around?

You know, if people are doing the same things over and over and getting the same results and going, huh, you know, I'm unhappy, here I am again, or, you know, something is going wrong here, then we're getting into digging behind the scenes and trying to find that kind of, that basement level of what's the assumption or the belief that this all relies on?

So we have our conscious thinking, we have thoughts, cognitions that float around in our mind all day, but there are reasons why we think the way that we do.

There are reasons why we feel the way we do while we behave, why we behave the way that we do.

And we're wanting to get behind that to go, what is it that we believe that's behind our thoughts, our behaviors and our emotions?

How, I mean, is that the sort of thing where someone would need to sit down with a person like yourself who's trained in this, or is it possible to do by yourself or with friends?

How self aware do you need to be to figure this out?

I think that self awareness is a great muscle to be able to flex sometimes.

And I know that at the moment, accessing something like therapy is a luxury for a lot of people.

I've got a couple of podcast episodes on this that are free for people to access and to have a listen and do their own reflection.

But you can also sit down with that really good friend who's great at causing and questioning you.

Most of us have one of those people in our lives that we can chat with or talk this through with a partner, if you've got one, and see if you can work out what are our unique unbearable feelings.

And then how are they playing out in our lives?

How are they playing out in our relationship?

What's the kind of we call it a cross matching.

What's the interplay between those two things?

But you can certainly have a really good go at working this out yourself.

It's funny that you mention about couples because do you find there's often quite an interplay?

Yeah, yeah, hit me with that.

Yeah.

I mean, the couples that come to see me are usually in some kind of conflict, so.

So there's something big enough going on that they've come to see a therapist because there are issues that are recurring for them.

That's also really interesting because often it is patterns.

You know, it's patterns of conflict, it's patterns of communication, it's patterns of the things that we do that we can't stop doing.

So, you know, the person in the relationship who's, you know, got a fear of missing out and they're constantly out, you know, they're never home.

Or the person who's got really poor boundaries and they aren't protecting their time for their relationship, or the person who's never kind of speaking up in the relationship and saying what it is they actually want.

All of that really impacts our relationships.

And it's often the interplay between our respective unbearable feelings that is the cause of conflict in our relationships.

The person we love the most also sees the worst of us.

And if you've got some overreactions, which we all have, if there are some areas of your life where you.

Where you do overreact and you know it, then your unbearable feeling is most likely at play there.

When you show up in the world in a way that you think, what the heck was that?

You know, who was that?

Was that me?

And if somebody had taped you and you heard it back, you'd be like, oh, you know, that was terrible.

Did I really say that or did I let that escalate that far?

You know, where we are under that level of stress, where we are overreacting, I promise you, your unbearable feeling is right there.

Okay, so red flag on that one.

Absolutely.

And then so often what couples get really good at doing is pushing each other's buttons.

So, you know, an amazing skill of a long term relationship is the ability to very efficiently wind the other person up and to know what it is that gets a reaction out of them.

And for couples, I call this the dance.

It's like we have this little.

You'll start to notice this next time you're having a disagreement.

It's like you have these predictable steps between you.

I do this and then you do that, and then I respond with this.

And most of our fights are actually really boring as couples because they're just the same things on loop.

And then we end up with this massive emotional hangover from.

It's pretty, pretty awful.

And we can solve a lot of our relationship challenges by being aware of the feelings that we find most difficult and looking after our partner in that.

Like if you know that your partner has a particular unbearable feeling, you're going to want to interact with them in a way that avoids provoking that.

Let's say it develops for you as a young child.

Well, your emotional growth and maturity kind of is stunted at that point in that space.

And you behave like that six year old again, like that eight year old, you go right back to not having the skills to be able to deal with this feeling.

Which is why people then start behaving in ways that are uncharacteristic.

It must be interesting working in this space.

I imagine it prompts some self reflection too.

Are you comfortable saying your unbearable feelings?

Yeah, absolutely.

Mine's rejection.

So I had two massive experiences of burnout.

Really young, like I was in year 13, the last year of high school, covered in shingles.

I was an absolute mess.

I had really high expectations of myself, really didn't want to let other people down, was a real people pleaser and relationships and friendships.

And then that of course followed me into the workplace.

And I experienced a really profound burnout in my early 20s where I just absolutely crashed and I had to start to work on this.

And fortunately this was all at the same time of doing training as a, as a counsellor.

So I had a little bit of an advantage in that.

Cause you kind of have to sort your own stuff out at the same time.

But for me, rejection, being able to let other people down, being able to make decisions that benefit me has been really important.

I've stayed in jobs too long, I've accepted less pay than I should.

I've not taken opportunities because I haven't thought I was good enough to put myself out there for them.

And this is something that has held me back.

And my goal is to get faster at getting out of it.

So the aim of the game here is to notice the patterns, to notice how it shows up, but to be able to pull yourself out of the ways that you try and avoid the feeling.

So asking for the pay rise or talking about your value in a particular setting and working out whether you're actually aligned to that business or company or not, you know, being able to have those honest conversations, being able to think about your Relationships and friendships and whether they're working for you as well as you're working for them.

You know, being able to hold that reflective stance in our own lives is really important.

But you know, I still have some things that show up from time to time for me around rejection.

I have to be really aware of it in my life because it does pop up from time to time.

But I no longer need to structure my life around avoiding it.

Yeah, I was going to say, is it the sort of thing where you sort of become more aware and better at dealing with it, but it doesn't necessarily go away?

Yeah.

And you know, sometimes we're familiar with that phrase, it's like our Achilles heel, you know, it's the thing that holds us back and the thing that we need to be aware of.

So I'm aware for myself that I will stay in things longer than I should because I don't want people to turn around and reject me.

And I think that I need to be doing things for other people, for them to accept me.

When, you know, the people that love me the most accept me because I'm me, not because of the things that I'm doing for them.

And I think that, you know, for me, my reflection then is the moment I start to think, hmm, should I move on from this or.

Or is this the right place for me anymore or should I be doing this?

Actually, I've got a time lag in terms of how I operate.

So when I start to think that I'm actually probably due to go.

Interesting though, going back to what you were saying at the very beginning about the positive side of these things because obviously you've also ended up in a career where you are doing a lot for people.

It's very caring.

Do you think that's linked?

Absolutely.

And I think that, you know, this is one of those double edged sword scenarios where it is really precious to people and they often think, I don't want to give that up.

I don't want to give up that I'm a nice person that most people like, well, no, you don't have to give that up.

You just have to give up the parts of this that are causing you pain.

And most of the time people think there is, you know, something terrible is going to happen.

So for example, I might be working with someone around leaving a job and they think, you know, I'm just not going to be okay, this is going to feel awful.

And then they resign and they're like, oh, actually, surprise, surprise, I feel really free.

It's so like, so much of the behavioral side of this always comes back to, like, awareness.

Absolutely.

I always feel that's the biggest key because people will say to me, oh, I don't know how I'm going to change it.

And I'm just like, if you just know what's going on, things start to change anyway.

Right.

From being aware.

Journaling is really good for that.

Like, I am so not a journaling person.

People find this, like, really surprising when I confess to this.

You know, I've bought all the pretty journals over time and they just, they have like two or three pages written in them.

I'm not a 5am Wake up person that, you know, sits down doing their journaling.

I'm just not that person.

I'm a writer on the back of a scrap of a receipt or the back of an envelope or maybe in the notes section of my phone.

You don't have to do journaling as if it's like a practice that you're doing every day.

If you're, you know, some kind of amazing yogi unicorn and that works for you, go for it.

But that is not me.

We need to embrace, though, that idea of writing down what we're thinking of, being able to look at it on paper and go, oh, that's kind of a bit of a funky picture.

What am I going to do about that?

Or how come I'm thinking that?

Is that thing actually true?

You know, that ability to be reflective with ourselves is such an important life skill.

Especially when we think about how things like an unbearable feeling hold us back.

Yeah.

And you know, as you were saying before about it not necessarily going so, you know, trip you up at certain points because you had an issue recently, right, where you made changes to your home and it resurfaced some things.

So we had lived in the Same community for 10 years.

I went for a walk one day with a colleague, actually, who was visiting and we walked down the road to get coffee.

And here I am stopping, talking to the old man from the rest home that I always have a yanjo and saying hello to that neighbour.

And then I get to the cafe and they know exactly what I want.

And my friend said, oh, it's like you're the mayor of this little town.

And it wasn't that at all, but I just knew people everywhere.

I felt really accepted within this community.

I had great relationships and I loved it.

But for a variety of reasons, it was the right thing for us to do, to move towns.

I was absolutely terrified.

I was terrified of letting go of all those relationships and all of that stability.

I cried when I told the barista I have a home coffee machine because I'm reasonable with my money to not be going to buy a coffee every day.

But I cried when I was saying goodbye to this barista.

I was like, this is terribly tragic for me.

I feel so deeply sad about that.

And I think for me, letting go of familiarity, of a base level of acceptance as I moved around in my life.

And you'll know what it's like with little kids.

Like, you live in a little kind of triangle between kindy and the supermarket and your house.

So I kind of knew everyone everywhere, and I did like that.

That worked for me on some level emotionally.

And we downgraded.

We moved to a house that had threadbare carpet, that had ugly blue walls, that kind of smell a little bit.

But what we decided was the most financially savvy thing for us to do was to keep the old house, to rent it out, and to buy something kind of further down the ladder.

But to do that, I had to face my unbearable feeling.

I had to live in something I didn't like.

I had to live in something that didn't look flash.

But I've made relationships now.

There are people that I can go and have a coffee with and have a play date with my kids.

There are people that I can chat to at the school pickup.

Of course, I can back myself to have some people skills, to talk to people and to get to know them.

Like, that's it just kind of defies belief when you hear it out loud.

And when my career has been in this kind of people space.

But it is really important for us to be able to face those blocks and those barriers.

I thought, oh, my goodness, we are doing the wrong thing, and this is awful.

And what have I done?

And also, we project our unbearable feeling on our kids.

So I was thinking, oh, my kids are gonna be rejected.

They're not gonna make friends.

So a lot of my insecurities were things that I was projecting onto their experience.

Just none of it has turned out to be true.

Isn't that funny?

I feel like that's also the big power of, as you were saying before, even if it's not journaling the writing things down.

Because when you put these fears in front of the light, you suddenly realize that doesn't make sense, or that's so overblown, or that's a bit silly.

But when it's just sitting there in your mind, it can be this sort of uncontested idea that guides so much action.

And it's only when you really force yourself to speak it aloud, write it down and look at it that you're like, oh, that's so silly.

But it doesn't feel silly, does it?

It doesn't feel silly.

It feels like it totally makes sense.

Sense.

Sorry, terrible pun.

To use on this podcast.

It feels like, well, you know, why wouldn't I feel that?

It feels really familiar to us.

We know this.

We know this way of being in the world.

So it is quite challenging to give up.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is funny, though, you saying about the.

The making friends thing, because when we move from Hamilton to Tiramutu, I like having my little cohort.

Yeah.

I like my little tight click.

And I literally, a few months ago, said to my husband, I was like, I've chosen some new friend targets.

There's this one and this one.

You're in the market.

Here's my strategies for them.

What do you think?

They will be my friends.

I've decided they just don't know it yet.

You're recruiting.

Yeah.

And really, really actively taking control of some of those things and being quite strategic about it.

Because I need to have a little think about what my unbearable feeling would be, because I thought I had a little inkling.

But as you've talked through it, I'm like, oh, maybe not.

But, like, I definitely like to have my little cohort of people who I like, who I know.

And when I moved, we had to, you know, reshuffle some stuff.

And I just have found that being quite actively, like, oh, here's a bit that's missing from my life, and I'm chasing it has felt so much better.

But that probably also means it's not an unbearable feeling.

If I'm able to do that right,.

Well, there'll be something going on somewhere in there, I suspect.

It is so tough, especially for adult women, to do this friendship thing.

And I find so many people talk to me about this, men and women, actually.

I think, though, that the thing is we forget that other people are often looking for a friend, too.

And people have the same vulnerabilities.

We're all humans.

We all worry about whether we will be accepted or feel good enough.

Like, that is pretty fundamental to us as humans.

And it's one of the best things about our humanity is our ability to build those relationships and to find acceptance with one, with one another.

So I think go for it.

Definitely.

I've got my str.

It's working.

Yeah.

I do think we get stuck in These loops and these patterns that you've mentioned and it's so common.

So if someone's listening to this and they've thought, you know what, I do think I'm stuck in some patterns here that aren't working for me, maybe even you've mentioned some, that they're thinking, oh yeah, that, that could be me.

Where do people start in terms of really sitting down and getting honest with themselves and sifting through what could be holding them back and causing a bit of self sabotage?

I think step one is start writing down your reflections from today's conversation.

What has stood out from this chat that you might want to reflect on?

What are the things that you're noticing in your thinking and what are the areas of your life that you're not happy with at the moment?

Where is it that you're not doing the things that you need to be doing for yourself?

So not looking after yourself, not putting yourself forward for things, not prioritizing, socialising, whatever it is that needs to be further forward in your life.

Wherever the areas of unhappiness are, wherever the work ons are, start reflecting on what's holding you back in those spaces.

Because most of the time the fixes are quite simple, like go and make some new friends.

Well, how come that's hard?

What do you tell yourself?

What is the story that you tell yourself about that?

What is going on in your mind with that and how come you think those things?

That how come question is a really simple but helpful way to start finding that unbearable feeling.

And is it something you know, Especially if someone is in a committed relationship, should we do this with our partner or should we work on ourselves first?

Like how do we, how much do we intervene if we're thinking, I think my partner's got a one of those, but I don't know if they're aware of it.

Well, I've got a couple of lines for that.

I say to people, you are 50% responsible for your relationship.

It's a little bit like marital property when it comes to issues.

It's 50, 50.

There's just yours and theirs.

Like you can't be more responsible.

They're not more to blame.

Sometimes in that kind of dance of how conflict or communication issues work in a relationship, it's sometimes someone who starts it, but that part is quite irrelevant.

You're responsible for your 50% of the baggage.

And I always suggest to people, you start there and make it so inviting and motivating for your partner because they see the changes in you, they go, ah, what's different here?

Also, one of the things that is really powerful that we need to remember about our relationships is that when one of us changes, the relationship changes.

Because it's like picking up the goalposts and moving them automatically breaks that dance, automatically changes the dynamic between you.

And that is a really important thing for people to feel empowered around you.

Making changes changes your relationship.

You're giving me so much food for thought in this.

Okay, if someone is listening to this and there's only one thing they do differently after this, what do you hope it would be?

Get curious about what's driving you, why the things that are issues in your life have been following you around, what it is you'd like to be different and what's standing in your way.

I've got an old Irish great aunt who used to have this fabulous saying, and I'm not gonna do the accent, but she would talk about, I can't get out of my own way.

And I think that's so true of something like unbearable feelings, our fears.

We actually, we sometimes think, oh, life's hard and it's like this and I'm being held back by this and this is difficult.

We'll actually so often we are the person that is getting in our own way.

So being reflective, getting curious about where in life are you getting in your own way, Are you being your own worst enemy that you can actually have complete control over that.

In a time of human history when there is not much that we are in control of, we are in control of ourselves, what's going on and how we relate to the world and the people around us, especially the people we love, how we see opportunities, how we find our way through the world, how we feel on a day to day basis.

So being reflective about what's happening internally for us is just so important.

Oh, couldn't agree more.

Absolutely couldn't agree more.

It's like the flip side of the other saying that I also really like, wherever you go, there you are.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

If you don't deal with your own stuff, you're just going to keep dragging it around with you and it'll keep popping up in new places.

Yes.

And our thoughts and beliefs have this really annoying way of following us everywhere.

I don't really care how good you are at meditation, but then back afterwards, surprise, surprise.

And to not think about ourselves as these fixed beings.

Everything that the world of psychology has taught us in the last 10 years around neuroplasticity says our brains are just this really malleable lump of play.

D'oh.

We'll start treating it like that.

Start being able to shape what it looks like and set yourself up with the beliefs that you need to have the life that you want.

I love that.

Oh, that's so much.

Now you mentioned earlier about your podcast, so I want you to hit us with all of the wrecks.

Where can we find you on this?

Your website, your socials, your podcast?

Anything else?

Yeah, well, interestingly the Unbearable Feelings episode is the most listened to episode of my podcast.

People have really picked it up all around the world.

So my podcast is called Feel Better and you can find it on Spotify and Apple podcasts.

I've got a website, charlottecomings nz.

If you get lost, you can find the podcast.

There a whole lot of free resources on my website.

I'm on Instagram, Arlott, the counsellor and also I've got a course called give me 10 minutes which is a therapy alternative for couples.

So if you are too busy to make it to therapy and you wanna work on your relationship, I've got this really easy audio course.

You each listen to 10 minutes a week and then have a structured conversation with a guide that I give you.

And it is a great way to work on your relationships.

It includes a section on Unbearable Feelings too.

Love that.

So good.

Thank you so much.

My pleasure.

Such a delight chatting to you.

Now, if this episode was helpful to you, send it to a friend.

We can all level up together.

Until next time, have a great day.

This podcast can only give you general information about how things work in most situations.

It's not individual financial advice.

If you're after that.

A financial advisor is always the best bet.