Ep 83 Unsticking Midlife: 3 Breakthrough Tools

[00:00:00] Meegan Care: Hey my friend, how’s your week going? I, how is my week going? Let me reflect on that for a moment. I have had some hard conversations with family members and that’s never an easy thing to do and it often takes up a lot of our emotional and psychic energy.

So that came to a peak yesterday and I have to say it went really well. There was respect on both sides, not an easy thing to converse about but came to an agreement or at least an outcome.

And that’s a good thing, right? I am such an advocate for having the hard conversations. And often that’s with people that are external to us, but it also works on an internal level as well. We very often are in avoidance of our own Hard conversations to have with ourselves because avoidance feels easier.

It feels like we don’t have to navigate our way through confronting something that we are not happy with or we don’t like or we’re afraid of and we’re avoiding. But that ties up so much of our mental, emotional, and physical Psychic and psychological energy even though I don’t enjoy them like everybody.

I really dislike the feeling of avoidance so much more than having the hard conversations and I’m just so For me, it’s about letting myself feel the feelings, feel a bit afraid, feel the pissed offness, feel the awkwardness, not know where to start and not know what to say, be accepting that we’re not going to agree on everything, and then work towards a solution together.

I think that’s such a liberating tool that we have as adults, but nobody’s taught us it. Most of that I’ve learned through my counseling training, working with people for so long, being in an intimate relationship with my partner for so long, having to work through things, and how do we learn how to do that skill right?

I think it’s an interesting topic. It is not the topic of our conversation today, but it definitely feeds into it because the main point of our Today’s podcast today is three midlife breakthroughs for when you’re feeling stuck. And I’ve got three other tools that you can use, strategies that you can employ, but I think that one around having the hard conversation.

It’s a very fast way to get you unstuck, because if you pay attention to your inner landscape, you will know where there is the open tab of something that you’ve been avoiding. Some of us are very, very good at avoiding and fooling ourselves, and we hide this important information from ourselves, and that is.

Nothing to get down on yourself about. That comes from a coping mechanism. That was the only way we could keep ourselves safe, to keep ourselves emotionally settled, was to go into a pattern of avoidance. And very often if our parents were avoiders, we learned it from them. And you could be like me, whereby my early life trauma caused me to be quite an oppositional person as a young child, and probably now.

And so I took the other route where I saw a lot of avoidance in my early life, a lot of sweeping it under the rug. That’s what that generation did, right? And, like many of you. I decided that I didn’t want that for my life. And for me, having those hard conversations is one way that I’ve broken that chain.

And every single generation breaks chains of unhealthy, dysfunctional behavior. I’m not blaming my parents for how they were in their life. They were a product of their generation. And my children, like your children if you have children, they’re next generation. will break our dysfunctional behavior.

They’ll change, they’ll evolve, they’ll grow off the back of what we have developed. And that is a good thing that is healthy and that is not about blaming. Let’s get stuck into them. So the first thing to look at when you’re feeling really stuck or you’ve got something boiling that is bubbling up, that is very difficult, that is a situation, for example. And it could be a situation that’s external to you that involves other people or it could be something that’s going on inside you.

For example, your mental or physical well being when we’re going through perimenopause. So this first tool is looking at what is in my control and looking at what is outside of my control and getting very clear about that. Because what is outside of your control is really a waste of time to try and change.

You’re better off figuring out what is actually inside my control and then taking steps to change that. Now, in any situation, any difficult situation in my experience, there has been many aspects that have been outside of my control and some that have been inside my control. I would take for the example of when my mother was really unwell and in the hospital.

There was so much about her health that was outside of my control. And that was really, really hard to navigate. But I had to become aware, figure out what was outside of my control. It might seem really obvious, but what our brain does, if we, if we don’t, Define what is outside of our control and what is in our control.

Our brain will try and fix and control and sort everything out, all of it out. But when you’ve separated and defined things into these two different camps, you can then have much more agency in what is happening. So when my mum was sick in hospital, I couldn’t, heal her. I couldn’t fix her. Even the doctors and specialists that were looking after her didn’t know what was going on.

There was so much that was out of their control. And so it’s very normal and natural that my brain was trying to get to that conclusion where she is healed, or at least she would know. We would know what her treatment protocol was, but they didn’t really know what was going on for her. There was all sorts of diagnoses flying around, as you will know if you’ve had a loved one who has been unwell, or if you have yourself, there’s often a, quite a bumpy path to figuring out the diagnosis.

And so when you understand what’s outside your control, then you can bring radical acceptance to that. So this piece around my mother’s health, I can’t control this. This is way beyond, obviously, anything I can do to change. And so I work to bring radical acceptance to that, and radical acceptance is acknowledging what is, even when we don’t like it, even when it frightens us, even when it is, goes completely against what we Would choose for ourselves or another person it is facing into reality as it is right now So that was helpful for me because then it freed up my mental energy once I had that acceptance and awareness Then it freed up my mental energy to focus on what is in the realms of my control here with my mother being unwell And what was in the realms of my control was how I was with her.

We had a we had a complex relationship, my mum and I, and, and so I made a conscious choice and I still remember the moment in the hospital, I had quite a lot of barriers to my mum, and it sounds awful to say it now. Because she loved me so much, but these barriers came from trauma, as they often do, and so I found it hard to be close and intimate and really loving with her.

And I remember being in the hospital and she just had a really bad reaction to some medication Some kind of mental break from the medication where she was not lucid and she was seeing things and saying things that were outside of reality and this happened really really fast once she’d had that medication and I realized in that moment that I needed to let my walls down and I hadn’t been able to do it before.

I had tried, but I hadn’t been able to do it before, and in that moment though, I could feel it in my body, and I can feel it now as I talk about it, I let my, the walls down of my heart, and I let myself be close to her, like emotionally really close to her. It’s not to say that we didn’t have a loving relationship, we did, but I always kept myself a little bit separate and that is a pattern of mine that comes from some really early life trauma.

So I made that, I don’t know if I made the decision or like in my conscious mind or my heart made the decision, but anyway, those barriers came down and then I was able to be there for my mother as hard as it was through all of those months. I was a really an open book for her and a person of support.

My other two sisters weren’t living here so it was really my stepfather and myself and I feel like there was a lot of healing that happened because I was able to show up for her. So getting back to the strategy is that I was able to focus on what was in my control and really the only thing that was in my control in that moment was how am I going to be with my mother while she goes through this really painful, scary journey that nobody asks for this, right?

That she doesn’t want. How often am I going to show up and how am I going to be with her as I show up? And I really had to stretch myself. And, I’m really glad I did, because there was healing beyond, I’m sure, what I can even imagine right now, across my relationship with her, across our entire family, through that experience.

So, to summarize,

The first strategy is around understanding what is outside of my control, what is inside of my control, and then bringing my attention, awareness, energy and focus to what is inside my control, what I can change, and leaving the rest as it is, practicing, practicing radical acceptance with the rest of it.

That’s the first tool. The second tool that I want to share with you that is going to help you break through that stuckness that you have in your life. Now, this is something that so many women, and these are like you, you’re listening. I know you’re an incredible woman, whether you feel that about yourself or not, I know that you are.

And so many women that come on the midlife upgrade course with me, We, they start out feeling really stuck and not sure how to create change because we often think that we have to create this big, big external life change to create change within ourselves. And that’s not always or often the case.

We can create these perception shifts within ourself and Our blinkers come off and we see the world in a different way. So, this next piece, if you’re feeling really stuck and you know what you need to do. So I had a lovely client and she knew what she needed to do, but she just couldn’t gather herself to make the steps to reach out to start doing these new things in her life.

She knew that her world was getting smaller and that she didn’t want it that way, but for some reason she could not get herself into action. To go out and do those small new things, meet new people, try new activities, which was what her goal was. This is also further complicated when we’re going through perimenopause and our energy might be shit, our sleep is in the tank, and we just don’t have the physical energy for it.

So very often we figure out, okay, so what support do you need within your physical body, within your sleep right now, so we can just improve your well being a few points. When that’s improved, then you’ll often get the the mental energy and clarity to do the changes that you want to make. That in itself is something we do through the course and that is not the strategy I want to share with you, but it is a really, really important piece.

So the strategy, and you might’ve heard of it before, is the rocking chair test. And the rocking chair test goes like this. I ask myself, what if I do nothing to change my current state, my current behavior, if I do nothing to change this, in 10 years time, what will my life look like? And you let yourself project forward 10 years.

I’m 53 now. I project myself forward 10 years to be 63. Something I struggle with is having, having consistent motivation to exercise. It pops up, it goes away, it pops up, it goes away, but I’m on the path and that’s the most important piece. What if I’m really struggling with that motivation? and that intentionality, and I’m not doing it.

I haven’t done anything for a month, as an example, right? Let me project myself forward 10 years. I’m 63, and I haven’t strengthened my muscles. I haven’t done those squats. I haven’t done those, whatever they’re called, split squats that drive me bananas. I have just walked. What is the outcome going to be for me?

We know the outcome is going to be deterioration of my physical strength, stamina and fitness. I’m going to be losing muscle. Over that 10 years I would have lost muscle. My posture probably would have declined. My fitness certainly would and my strength certainly would. And would I be feeling good about it?

Very unlikely. Right? There’s no way, there’s no way I’d be feeling good about being in my body in that way. And so the rocking chair test, you can do that for any, any aspect of your life, anything that you know that you’re stuck with, but that you just can’t seem to get the impetus to create the change.

This rocking chair test helps us to. Realize the cost of not taking those small steps to create change. And this is where we are harnessing intentionality. Motivation comes and goes. That’s just what motivation does. That’s okay. We don’t need to always be motivated. But I have an intention to be a strong, Active 63 year old and 73 year old and 83 year old.

Ongoing, right? If I want to be that person, I need to do the work now. So that is one way to kickstart a breakthrough. on something you want to create change with, that you’re feeling very stuck with. We can’t rely on motivation and we really can’t rely on motivation when we’re in midlife because it’ll wane, it’ll leave the building and go and live somewhere else.

We’ve got to engage with this deeper intentionality, envisioning ourself Not having done that thing we know we need to do, or we want to do, or create that change in 10 years time can actually harness more of that so you can take that next step forward for yourself.

And lastly, we have a little saying in my family, and it goes, and it’s said every now and then when somebody needs some help, or they need something carried, or they need an extra pair of hands, and that is, share the load, Mr Frodo, from Lord of the Rings. Right? Share the load. And this relates very specifically to when we’re all in our head, we’re all in our self about our problem.

Okay, so as an example, I’ve got something going on at work where I feel like I’m being bullied by a senior staff member. I haven’t talked to anyone about it. It’s been going on for a long time. It’s something that’s really consuming my energy and my focus. This is where we want to share the load.

 Because our inner turmoil ramps up when we’re just inside our own head thinking about it. Same goes if I’m having a particularly hard time emotionally, which is really common in a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. perimenopause. We can feel very low and weepy and down. We have no idea why, it’s just kind of hit us like a ton of bricks.

We’ve woken up in the morning and you can feel in your body, it feels like it’s not going to be a good day. And then this can go on and on and we try and figure it out, we try and figure out what’s going on. why we’re like this. We try and look at our beliefs. We try and look at all sorts of things, but we just remain in the same place.

Now, if this goes on for any length of time, it’s really important that we share the load of what is going on for us with someone else. For those of you that I can hear who are, I don’t want to trouble other people. With my shit. I don’t want to give that to them This is how I see it Someone who can hold space for you without judgment and Not giving advice unless you ask them for advice They hold the space so that you can externalize your problems, your thoughts, your emotions, those circles of thoughts that just go round and round and round that we get stuck in.

And they can, from a non judgmental place, reflect that back to you, just kind of let you know what they’re hearing about what you say. It is a very, very empowering experience that creates a shift in our own perspective. And it actually opens up the doorway for the possibility of new This is why counselling is really helpful at certain stages of life. Now we often think that we’ll go to a counsellor and they’re going to give us lots of advice. They’re going to tell us how to sort out our marriage, our finances, and how we relate to our kids. But good therapeutic counselling and psychotherapy helps you to find those answers within yourself.

It doesn’t mean that they’re always sitting there not saying anything and just saying, Mm hmm. Huh. I see. Like we see on television. There’ll be more interaction than that, but ultimately, when you’re in therapy, you are being supported to discover your values, your choices, your way through problems.

It is that trusting environment when done so well. from a therapist that makes all the difference. But we don’t always need a really good therapist to hold the space. A really good friend can do that as well when they come from a neutral place. And sharing the problem, whether it’s the workplace problem or the emotional, I’m feeling really low problem.

The funny thing is, when we share what’s in our mind and in our heart when we’re really troubled, even if we don’t get a solution from the person we’re sharing it with, just the act of speaking it out to that neutral listening ear helps us to make sense of our thoughts and feelings and emotions and struggles.

Helps us to see what we’re actually dealing with. Helps us to let off a bit of the emotional pressure that builds up when we try and navigate everything by ourselves. And because we live in such an individualistic culture, Western culture anyway, we’re kind of, I think we’re raised to think that we need to sort the shit out inside ourselves.

And if we don’t, we’re weak. And I wholeheartedly oppose that. I think that is detrimental, so detrimental and so wrong and that is why so many people struggle with sharing their difficult feelings. They feel shame around sharing what they perceive as their weakness and vulnerability. But being able to share what is in your heart and in your mind when you’re going through something difficult when you’re feeling stuck.

And you have that reflected back, not in a way of somebody like telling you what to do or, or, or shutting you down, but being that neutral listening person. It really is an incredible doorway to creating change. There is an internal psychological pressure that is released. And then what happens is we have much more access to our frontal brain where we can make rational logical choices and because we’ve expressed ourselves in all of that storm that’s going on inside of us, we have more access to our heart and our gut and our inner knowing and we can.

Regulate, again, we’re co regulating with that person who is hearing us. And we might not have solved the problem in one conversation, but we’ve definitely relieved the storm that is inside. And that is a powerful step forward to creating change and getting unstuck.

Those are my three breakthroughs for when you’re feeling stuck for you. Think about which one you’re going to engage in your life and practice with for the next week. Is it the what’s in my control? What’s outside of my control? Strategy, is it the rocking chair test or is it share the load, have an amazing, amazing week my friend. Let me know which one spoke to you the most or if you’ve got another breakthrough that you use when you’re feeling stuck. I hope that’s been really, really helpful. So much love from me to you and I’ll talk to you real soon.