Stuck in an Emotional Rut: 7 Reminders and Best Practices to Dig Your Way Out

Paul Salter: Hey 5% podcast listeners, welcome back to another episode of the 5% Way podcast with your hosts and sustainable weight loss specialists, myself, Paul Salter, and Micheala Barsotti. Micheala, how are you doing today? Micheala Barsotti: I’m good, Paul. Good to be back. I was so excited going into the community this morning. I mentioned it, I made a story about how just happy and excited I was reading through some of the wins from the weekend of just our members and just how many people are doing so great. It’s just so, it lights me up inside. Paul Salter: I couldn’t agree more. I think the best way I would describe my inter or my reaction, rather, is my heart is just full. I think actually, oddly enough, I might have posted that this weekend after reading them too. It just, it’s wonderful to see how well everyone’s doing. In fact too, I wanted to kind of brag on some of our community members. We put out this big survey in December, kind of our end of the year survey for those of you listening, to really gather feedback on our core elements about where we could make improvements, what could we add, what could we subtract or what could we do better just to really make sure we have as much candid information as possible to improve everyone’s transformational experience? I just want to take a moment to read a couple when we asked the question, how beneficial have you found our private community? Some of the answers to that question were as follows. “Just having the community and folks of like-minded goals. I have really enjoyed the Wednesday night calls, so much great information in those.” Another person went on to say, “Being part of a community with like-minded individuals who have similar goals reminds me that I’m not on my own. Everyone, including the coaches, are friendly, really honest about their journeys and always support one another and help with accountability.” Yes, I could read a million of these, but the last one I’ll read is, “Having support from like-minded people is priceless.” I really just want to just use those to reinforce the power of community, because when you truly surround yourself with like-minded people, it removes all feelings of loneliness, isolation, hopelessness, and despair, and instead replaces those feelings with positive ones, inspiration, excitement, and you get to really feed off of every everyone’s energy, feel more driven, committed, and accountable to doing what you need to do even when you do not feel like it to reach your goals and aspire to be the very best person you want to be. For those of you listening who have been on the fence about the 5% community, both Micheala and myself have been sharing more and more feedback from the surveys we sent out, sharing a ton of wins on a very regular basis on each of our respective Instagram profiles, which you can find in the show notes below. And oh, by the way, the 5% Way just got its own brand new Instagram that just kicked off earlier this week as we’re recording this episode. What is today? January 24th. I think yesterday, the first post officially went live. This particular profile is going to specifically speak to women who have undergone a long period of time stuck in that yoyo dieting cycle, struggling with body image, self worth, their relationship with food, dieting or simply themselves, and really be a go-to to educational resource. If that is what you need a bit more of in your life, we can not only help, but encourage you to give that profile a follow. It’s just simply at The 5% Way. Again, if you really feel that you are missing out on having that like-minded community in your corner, send Michaela or myself a DM, let’s talk about the 5% community or simply click on the link in the show notes to learn all about what it is, what we do and how we can help you not only lose the weight you desire, but experience a total transformation to feel, look, and be your best from the inside out. But let’s get on topic. As you know, I could talk about that all day Micheala, and really dive into the nitty gritty of what we’re going to speak about in today’s episode. Today we want to dig deep into the depth of chronic emotional pain, pain that can be felt when we’re simply in a rut and discuss some personal experiences and strategies to help you, the wonderful listener, take what we’ve learned going through plenty of emotional ruts and help you get out of that rut, even 5% quicker so that you can refocus and get back into your group. Before I dive into a bit of education here and some personal stories, I want to preface this episode with this. We aren’t licensed therapists. We’re not psychiatrists, psychotherapists or anything like that. But each of us have battled our fair share of emotional ruts because like you, we too are human beings. I just want you to keep in mind as you listen and absorb this information here, that this is simply a conversation between you, a human, and us two humans. It’s going to be real, relatable and simply aimed with having a desire to help you break out of a rut you may be in now or may experience in the future just a little bit quicker. With that said, and out of the way, let me dive in by laying a little bit of foundational ground work on emotions and energetic. When I’m referring to emotional ruts, what I specifically mean for the context of this episode is when a feeling has become so strong, it has elevated a thought to a belief and really attached itself to your daily actions. It’s a thought that ruminates and takes over your mental environment. It showcases itself in your actions or perhaps lack of actions, and it is so strong and so lingering that it really begins to take shape and alter your identity and your reality. It’s not until some traumatic breakthrough, massive change in your environment or doing the deep work within that you’re able to shake that emotion and get back to thinking, believing, acting, and cultivating your identity on your own terms. Because as you’re going to hear me talk about it a little bit more, when we are in a rut, our emotions can really hijack, excuse me, our thoughts and our control center in our brain. It can really make it significantly harder to let the logical portion of our brain be the one behind making some of our decisions and when our emotions are in control, well, you and I both know that doesn’t always end well as we are more prone to irrational knee jerk reactions and decision making that really never works out in our best interests in the short or the long term. The best way to really begin thinking about emotions are as energy. See, emotions are energy and they’re felt as vibrations within the body. The best example I can have to really illustrate and demonstrate some relatability that is think about when you are walking into a room of people. If you are paying attention, the first thing you may notice is you can often feel the energy of the room. If you were to walk into it, I hate to use this grim example, but bear with me for the sake of trying to illustrate this example simplistically, you were to walk into a room of individuals just gathering after a celebration of life, you’re going to feel the somber energy, the sadness amongst one another. That’s going to be displayed yes in body language, maybe lack of conversation, but you’re going to know the instant you walk into that room, make eye contact with the surrounding environment that this is not a happy ecstatic mood at the current moment. Conversely, if you were to walk into maybe a surprise party, a promotional party at work, a holiday celebration, you can walk in and have an instant read on the situation and note that there is something joyous and positive radiating from this room and that’s emotion, vibrating at a specific frequency. It’s commonly shared that when we are vibing and feeling really good, we are really just vibing at a high frequency. When we’re walking around feeling over confidence, joy, all or happiness, we are described to be operating at a high frequency or vibrating at a high frequency. This is when, this is important, this is when we are most expansive, present, ready for connection and growth and feeling fulfilled. But conversely, we can also operate at a very low frequency. When we’re plagued or bogged down by negative emotions, we’re said to be operating or vibrating at a very low frequency energy. This is usually when we’re in a position of closed mindedness, maybe sadness, frustration, bitterness, and irrational decision making. What I want you to take away and remember is that emotions are literally vibrations of the body. They’re energy being given off and sent or transmitted between you and your respective environment. More often than not, those emotions, that energy, those vibrations are going to manifest physiologically in your body. I mean, think about the last time you felt incredibly nervous. Maybe you had to speak in front of some coworkers, give a presentation, lead a seminar or workshop, those butterflies or feelings of nervousness, anxiety, maybe lack of preparation even, are felt physiologically in your gut, in your stomach. Similarly, maybe you’re incredibly stressed about something, you’re feeling anxious about something unrelated. You may feel tightness in your chest. One of the best pieces of advice, if you take anything from this episode other than that foundational knowledge and groundwork we just laid, is that gaining clarity on how emotions are felt in your body is a fast track method to being able to quickly bring awareness to said emotion and to being able to quickly make a change or take an action to alter your emotional state so that you can either get rid of said emotion, or if you notice a positive emotion being present, you can amplify that emotion to really make the most of that situation. But returning back to emotions here, operating at a high or low frequency, more often than not, we are quick to notice and experience and feel those negative emotions, which is where I want to spend the rest of today’s conversation. Because when an emotion really takes hold deep at your core, well, we often find ourselves stuck, really experiencing and feeling that emotion, not only physiologically, but in our thoughts, our self-talk, our word choice amongst others, our beliefs, our actions, maybe our lack of action, which slowly showcases itself as a habit, which ultimately influences both our identity and our reality. Like I mentioned earlier, when emotions are in the driver’s seat, they take over our decision making and completely block out the logical or the rational decision making part of our brain, which can lead to those irrational knee jerk, often regretted decisions, and unfortunately, further prolongs the time we spend in this rut. Some of those emotions most commonly felt when we’re really stuck in a rut include, but by no means limited to, guilt, regret, anxiety, frustration, anger, sadness, and like I mentioned, among many others. Depending on the depth and the intensity of said emotion, how it is felt, whether or not you recognize it, where it is felt, this experience may last a matter of moments, but could also last hours, days, weeks, or even months. As I mentioned earlier, which is incredibly important to reiterate, the first proactive step you can take is to really gain clarity on identifying some common emotions you experience and how you physiologically feel them. How does sadness show up physically for you? How does anxiety or stress show up physically for you? What about confidence, happiness? I know I feel very light on my feet when I am confident in an uber good mood. Similarly, when I am stressed or anxious, I feel immense tightness in my chest. You want to be able to really start practicing some awareness, mindfulness of how emotions are showing up physiologically for you. Because when you do that, you create awareness. As you’ve heard both Micheala and myself say over and over again, bringing awareness to something is that first essential step to even creating an opportunity to make a positive change, to write a wrong or solve a problem. You want to start noticing throughout your day, I am feeling blank, maybe journaling in the morning or the evening, just sharing how you are feeling, trying to put an adjective or two to the present state of your feelings, and then sit with yourself quietly. Do you notice where you feel that the emotion or that adjective you just described? Gain clarity there. It will serve you incredibly well. Micheala, I just want to check in. Anything I missed do you feel that you really want to highlight or go over here before I kind of transition us into a personal story about being stuck in an emotional rut? Micheala Barsotti: I mean, what you said, it was so good. I’m like over here taking notes. You can’t get enough of this stuff. But honestly I think it’s so amazing when you are able to make that connection and understand your emotions and create more awareness around it because you can also use this to work backwards. Let’s say you have a negative habit that you want to ditch. Well, dive into when you’re experiencing, let’s say it’s late night snacking and you always go for the sugar late night. Well, understand what are your feelings and emotions late night when you go to grab that snack. This is your wind down time so you’re starting to become less stressed or maybe on the flip side, you are very stressed. You’re able to identify that emotion and then realize, okay, I need a different crutch in that moment because this certain habit is not serving me. It just goes to show, if you have a negative habit that you’re trying to kick, this can be an awesome way to do so. Paul Salter: Absolutely. It’s all about feelings. Everything in life is about a desired feeling or feeling we want to get rid of. That’s a great example. Even just now, I clearly know, because you hear me talking a million miles an hour, I’m vibrating at a high frequency. I feel really good. A sign I just noticed that reinforced how I’m feeling right now is my ability to while Micheala was talking, I took one single deep inhalation and one exhalation. My ability to control of my breathing, slow down, feel like I only need two or three breaths per minute is amplified when I really feel in control, positive, high energy and confident. That’s just a sign for me that I’m feeling really good when I can quickly go back to my breath, control it, inhale, pause, exhale, pause, a box breathing technique we’ve talked about a great length in the 5% community, on demand in control, 100% of the way. It’s a wonderful sign for me to just continue to enjoy being present in this state. But like I mentioned, we’re talking about emotional rut. I want to share a personal example where for about, man, probably six to eight months, I was absolutely stuck in an emotional rut, really harboring feelings of bitterness, anger, frustration, and a little bit of the familiar phrase we all know, why me, if you will. This took place back in 2015 and bled into 2016 a little bit. When I was living in Idaho, I was very much into competitive power lifting. I had competed twice and I had my sights set on a meet about 10, it was 10 months down the road where I felt that my current position in my training with where my squat and my deadlift were, I could have a really good chance of breaking the Idaho state record for both the squat and the dead lift in my respective weight class. I believe I was 30 or 40 pounds away from each with 10 months to go and still very early into my power lifting specific career, meaning I was more prone to being able to make strength gains a bit quicker than had I been 10 or 20 years into my career. Like I said, had a couple competitions under my belt and I had really began to alter my lifestyle to really identify as a power lifter. Not only were my nutrition and training habits reflective of this, but my sleep habits were, my interests were. I’m spending time in power lifting forums, reading books on programming design and technique and this, that and the other, connecting with like-minded individuals in the power lifting community. I’m flying across the country to attend seminars and workshops in person to go squat with these dudes who have brains bigger than my quads, just to learn and absorb as much information as possible. Unfortunately life happened and I was rear ended in a car accident. I didn’t think too much of it at the time. The car wasn’t going too quick, but was later diagnosed was too herniated discs and some severe strain and muscle damage to a muscle underlying layer of muscle I truly can’t pronounce. It’s like the quadro labro lateral something, something. QL is the short term. Again, I know I probably should have prepared to pronounce that before the call, but I just came to note as a QL. I found myself in intensive massage therapy multiple days per week, trying out this chiropractor and that. Because I would wake up every morning after this accident, about 24 hours later, it sat in and I couldn’t really get out of bed very well. I kind of had to roll myself out of my bed onto my floor. It would take me anywhere from five to unfortunately, 30 minutes to actually be able to confidently stand up, wobble to my bathroom, go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, get down my stairs without tripping over my cat and make my way into the office, which obviously shows you any thoughts of lifting were completely out of the question. This happened in, I believe it was a November or October or November of that year. I saw physical therapist. I saw chiropractors, massage therapy. I was going a massage three or four days per week and nothing was really helping. Being so committed to identifying as a power lifter, I was finding every which way to try to train around the injuries only using machines, taking a couple extra days off, modifying this, that and the other. I mean, by no means, did I step under a bar belt or even attempt to deadlift, but I slowly started to know progress, I mean, to notice progress. It took about three months to notice a significant reduction in my pain. Later that year it was, or the following year, excuse me, it was early May, I was rear ended again. This was when I was just feeling comfortable getting under a barbell again, working my way up to some competitive weights for myself based on where I was previously to being rear ended the first time, and I felt as if my world had just come crashing down. I had spent again late October, November to May rehabbing, being in so much pain. There were days where I thought I would never lift again, days I legitimately struggled to physically get out of bed. Walking was an issue. Sitting, I had a standing desk fortunately, when I was at work, there still working for another company at the time, I couldn’t really sit much. I was standing some of the day, I’d sit for five minutes. It was very uncomfortable and I felt like I was finally out of it, and then I was rear-ended again. Maybe the real takeaway here is people in Boise, Idaho can’t drive really well. I’m not sure, just kidding, but it set me back 10 different steps, if you will. If the first accident sent me back five steps and I was able to finally take a few forward, this set me back at least 10. I was right back to square one, but in so much more pain. Now the pain radiated down my leg all the way to my foot, up my shoulder, into my neck, and I was a mess. I was told I should not be lifting in any way, shape or form for months. I was told that I had no chance of squatting or dead lifting again and the sooner I accepted that, the easier my recovery would be. As you can imagine, someone who completely identified as a competitive power lifter and not only could I not compete in power lifting, I couldn’t even execute one of the three components, let alone get in the gym safely. I was an absolute mess. I spent so many nights crying myself to sleep, like who am I? I lost all sense of identity. My actions and consistency in the nutrition realm, in the personal growth realm, obviously in the exercise realm, all took a major hit, multiple steps back because I did not know how to pull myself out of this dark place of bitterness, resentment, anger, frustration as I continued to tell myself the sob story of why me. It took a very noticeable toll on me to the point where I am someone who typically operates very much as a lone wolf, can handle my emotions well and go about my day, even when shit is tough. But my parents started taking notice that something was off in my demeanor, my friends, my coworkers, and it was a very unfortunate reality where this sense of a loss of my identity had begun to bleed into other areas of life, impacting my work, impacting relationships in my life. It took me a very long time to slowly but surely pull myself out of it, come to the opportunity to really create a new identity or detach my self worth from power lifting. I fully recognize that this may seem like a very simplistic or surface level example, but for me at that point in my life, that was who I was. It was stripped out from under me in the blink of an eye, twice really in less than a year. The way it forced me to rebuild myself proved out to be incredibly rewarding, but it never felt like that during the entire process. Those emotions I described took a strong foothold. It’s as if they partnered up with some Gorilla Glue and really stuck to my self-talk, my thoughts, my beliefs, as well as my action, in action and identity, and really shaped my reality for a long period of time. Like I mentioned, it took me a while to get out of it and I want to share what I learned, of course, hindsight being 20-20 and what I’ve learned in similar yet different situations in the five or, I guess six or seven years since when I found myself in emotional ruts, not quite to that extent, because I’ve been able to get out quicker. But before I do that, Micheala, I know I have been dominating this conversation. I always love to get your insight and hear your experiences. Anything you want to add here at this point? Micheala Barsotti: No. That was good. I’m ready to hear what you’ve learned. Paul Salter: Absolutely. Again, like I mentioned, not a psychiatrist, a psychotherapist, anything like that, but I’m really fucking good at acquiring knowledge and finding simpler ways to execute it, implement it and do so efficiently and effectively, which is why I am so good at helping people like you who know what to do when it comes to losing weight, keeping it off and feel your best, actually do it and really step into that identity of someone who does it. Here are a handful. I think I’ve got seven, maybe eight takeaways and learning lessons I’ve been able to specif glean from that particular chapter of my journey and use repeatedly during other chapters in which I found myself in a similarly emotionally charged situation. The first thing is that pain, negative emotion is always temporary, seasonal, if you will. There are seasons of winning. There are seasons of losing. There are seasons of pain. There are seasons of incredible growth, confidence, joy, and real strong contentment. But anything you may be going through right now, physical pain, emotional pain, spiritual pain, mental pain, remember that it is temporary. It is not who you are. It is a chapter of your life. If you can really lean into this mentality, which is far easier said than done, I’ll be the first to tell you that, it really helps keep levels of hope and inspiration and positivity alive and at the forefront of your thinking, which we know has a positive trickle effect into your actions, your beliefs, your identity, and your reality. The second one I can’t stress enough. I don’t care how cliche it is, is there really is always a silver lining. Find it. Find that silver lining. One of the exercises and actions that we encourage, Micheala and I both do it on a daily basis on Instagram it seems, but definitely within the community and the 5% Fundamentals program, is the action of writing down positives, nonsense scale victories, or gratitude, every single day. I mean, I write down three things I’m grateful for when I wake up and before I go to bed every single day to help train my subconscious to always be scanning my environment for positives, positives, positives. When you are in an emotional rut, it can seem like that is impossible and the last thing you want to do, but you need to do it. Find the silver lining. It is absolutely there. Specifically for me, there were actually multiple silver lining during that power lifting identity crisis, if you will. But one of them being it really gave me an opportunity have more time. I wasn’t spending two, two and a half hours in the gym. After I was able to pull my head up a little bit out of that tough time, I was able to use that increased time, if you will, productively. For those of you who are throwback followers of myself on Instagram or bodybuilding.com, I was able to launch the Nutrition Tactician University, which was a nutrition education based online course platform talking about nutrition basics and whatnot. It created this opportunity that ultimately showed me how much I loved teaching and coaching others and well, here Micheala and I are today so many years later, coaching and teaching others. That really is what instilled this aha moment of how much I enjoy giving other people aha moments. The next question is kind of a tough one. Why are you feeling this way? Be brutally honest with yourself. Why are you feeling the sadness, the bitterness, the frustration, the anger? Are you blaming someone else? Because you should be taking ownership as best you can in some way, shape or form. There’s a layer of ownership that needs to be taken here. If you can really peel back the layer of the onion and have some honest objective conversation with yourself to learn why you’re feeling this way, chances are you’re going to quickly find more control in the situation than you once thought, which means you’re going to have more control to find more positives, silver linings and get yourself out of the situation much sooner. Another theme that now I keep in top of mind very often, I wish I had this knowledge back when I was going through that experiences, remember that life happens for you, not to you. If you can keep that in mind, it’s an excellent opportunity to reframe the current situation you are in to really prime you to do a better job of finding those positives and silver linings. Building off of the previous prompter reminder, I went a little out of order on my notes here, of why you’re feeling this way, be honest with yourself with this second question too. How would you rather feel? You feel sad and bitter and hurt and anger or guilty right now. How do you want to feel? Do you want to feel forgiven or in a position to forgive others? Do you want to feel happy, in control, certain, inner peace and calm? It’s great to know you don’t want to feel how you’re feeling now, but to really help you get out of that situation and make the necessary changes, you need to get really clear on how you do want to feel so that you can appropriately align your action steps to get there at an accelerated pace. Building off of that, what do those action steps look like? What is one single action step? Specifically, I would encourage a self-care related action step that can bring you 1% closer to the feelings you just described of how you want to feel. The last one I’ll share is be vulnerable and confide in a supportive community. How are you feeling? Because I want you to remember this, if you are not speaking it, you are storing it and that can get heavy as fuck really, really quickly. If you’re walking around life trying to feel bad and be your best, and you’re carrying this heavy emotion, this negative energy, remember, negative energy, these emotions, these vibrations in your body, if you’re carrying this, it’s only going to make your journey much more uphill. Suffering in silence really leads to those feelings of isolation and hopelessness and doesn’t put you in an environment to succeed. I truly remember connecting with a few close people I had met and I’m going to shout this guy out. He probably doesn’t listen to podcast, but Matt Palmieri [inaudible 00:30:50] was this guy I met. I was living in Idaho at the time. I flew down to, I think it was Boca Raton, Florida for this power lifting squat workshop. I met this dude. We were partners when we just did a million squats with each other and we just stayed in touch via texting. I was able well to really confide in him how I was feeling after I was just devastated I couldn’t lift anymore. He had the relatability of navigating injuries, training through injuries, while being a competitive power lifter. Just having someone who understood where I was, was incredibly supportive and helpful when it came to accelerating my emotional, a sense out of that position, out of those negative emotions and that emotional rut. Confide in a community, surround yourself with like-minded people or people you trust, support, can relate to your journey. Know there’s inevitable ups and downs who can quickly help you find the silver linings and pull you out of the deepest depths of darkness. I feel good about that. Micheala, anything to add? Micheala Barsotti: Well, what really stood out to me there, honestly, I mean, I love all of those, but I always tell myself now, and I think I’ve mentioned this before on this podcast, but it was you when I went back to one-on-one coaching with you, who told me to take the emotion out of the equation. It really helped me gain so much more awareness. It’s crazy that one statement, but I say it to myself all the time. If there are ever situations where I just don’t want to do the thing that I know that I should be doing, I always try to stop in the moment and ask myself, “Why am I feeling this way?” Just taking that single moment to figure out what, what it is. Am I feeling tired? Am I stressed? I use the same kind of thing with I have this checklist in my mind that I use on days that I don’t want to work out. Believe it or not, I have those days too. When I get up and I’m not feeling like working out, I go through the checklist. How did I sleep last night? Where’s my stress? Where’s my recovery at? Am I sick? Depending on my answers to those questions, it’s like, “Oh no, I’m just, I’m not feeling it today. Okay. Get your butt up and do it anyways.” But then also the importance of having structure in your life. Because structure is so important that it can help us make the logical decision rather than just giving into our emotions in the moment. Paul Salter: That was gold. I really like that. I appreciate you sharing that. I couldn’t agree more. Taking the emotion out of the equation is a game changer there. When you’re clear on how you’re feeling and how you want to feel makes that process a lot easier. Well, 5% Way podcast listeners, thank you so much for listening to another episode. If you found it valuable, we would greatly appreciate you sharing with a friend, coworker, colleague, your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, whoever it may be that you feel would also find in this particular episode in this show as a whole valuable. If you have not done so already, hey, 30 seconds to leave a genuine rating and review on Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast would mean the world to us. We’d love to connect with you and love to hear what has resonated with you. If we’re talking about things that aren’t resonating with you, maybe, obviously we’re not up the podcast for you, but if you have feedback, we would love to know. If you have ideas you’d love up to discuss and explore further, send either myself or Micheala a note on Instagram. You can find those links in the bio as well. Like we mentioned, if you are feeling so good about progress towards your goal, clear on where you want to go, but you just feel like what’s missing is that support of uplifting community that is really entrenched in continuous growth, support and unmatchable communication with one another, I encourage you to apply for the 5% community, which you can also find [inaudible 00:34:34]. Thank you again for listening. Have a fantastic rest of your day. We’ll catch you in the next episode.