25. Fear of Upsetting Others | Coaching Call with Jo

Have you ever felt a knot in your stomach because you fear you've upset someone?

In this episode of Speak Honest, I have a heartfelt conversation with Jo, a long-time client, about her ongoing struggle with the fear of upsetting others. Despite doing extensive work on her self-worth and understanding her core wounds, Jo still finds herself trapped in cycles of overthinking and anxiety. We delve into the importance of somatic processing—getting out of our heads and into our bodies. Jo shares her vivid experience of feeling a fluttering bird with a sharp beak in her stomach, a metaphor for her anxiety. Together, we explore how recognizing and giving compassion to these bodily sensations can lead to deeper healing. Tune in to discover practical steps to shift from overanalyzing to somatic awareness and learn how to give yourself the compassion you deserve.

You might want to listen if:

• You often worry that you've said or done something wrong.
• You find yourself overanalyzing texts or conversations, fearing you've upset someone.
• You struggle with feelings of anxiety and a fluttering sensation in your stomach.
• Your childhood experiences with unpredictable caregivers still affect your relationships.
• You want to learn how to move from overthinking to recognizing and addressing bodily sensations.

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DISCLAIMER: Speak Honest podcast content is informational, not professional or medical advice. Jenn is an ICF relationship coach, not a licensed therapist. Consult health professionals for specific concerns. Client opinions do not reflect Speak Honest’s stance. We aim for accuracy but are not liable for errors or outcomes from this information.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Speak Honest. I am your host and certified relationship coach, Jennifer Noble. It has been my passion for over a decade to help women like you heal. What's been holding you back from having the relationships you deserve? Are you struggling with a relationship where you can't seem to voice your emotions, needs, and boundaries without having it blow up in your face?

Speak Honest. Then you have found the right podcast, my friend. Get ready for practical tips, empowering truths, and honest conversations. Now let's dive in.  Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest. On today's podcast, I get the pleasure of chatting with Jo. Now Jo has been a longtime client of mine.

For maybe a couple of years now, she's been on and off. She is one of the first people to ever go through my 12 week program and really came out of it on the other side in such an amazing light. But as you can see in my conversation with Jo right now, she's still struggling with this part of her that feels like she's always doing something wrong.

And I absolutely can relate to that feeling. And so what I wanted to do with her in this. Chat was to kind of move past doing the work, move past all of the doing that we are doing all the time and being in our head. And I wanted her to get into her body. So as you're listening to this conversation, I want you to really notice how.

Jo moves out of her head and into her body recognize part of that somatic processing that we've talked about in the last couple of episodes, how she really starts to identify with that part in her stomach. That is feeling that anxiety. One of my favorite things she says that I want you to listen out for is that the beak of the bird that she's picturing fluttering in her stomach has a sharp,  That kind of detail is what I'm looking for when we start trying to identify what we feel in our bodies. 

So with all that said, I am so excited for you to get to hear my coaching call with Jo.

Jenn Noble (00:04.791)

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest. On today's episode, I actually have Jo here to talk about what's going on with her. How can I help, Jo?

Jo Bo (00:15.502)

Hi and thank you for having me. Well, it's about my relationships in general really. Not one in particular, it's the way I feel about certain things that go on. It's quite normal stuff that goes on in friendships and I have this real, how can I put it, fear is what happens. It is a real fear when I feel I might have upset somebody or said something the wrong way. I'm really, really sensitive not upsetting anybody basically and that's I suppose the people pleasing trait which I know I have got and then I can be quite contrary at other times so I mean it's a little bit of a conundrum but if say for example you know I can somebody's gone quiet on texting or I've not heard from somebody for a while I start to sort of analyze or what why why have they not got in touch is it something I've done I might even look back at messages and gosh, I wonder if it's that. And then I'm really anxious until the next time I'm in touch with them. And it's something I'm very aware of. I've done the work with you on this program and I've done that, you I am not worthy, I feel bad, I feel responsible. And I've done all the work. I've done it over and over. But it's still, something happened sort of this week recently that made me think, really, this hasn't gone away. And it was with a real dear friend who would never ever, ever judge me or be mad or upset with me and if she was she would probably just say in a really kind way I have no worries really the evidence is not there to say you know I've got a problem or anything but I'm really conscious that it's just there and I just can't shift

Jenn Noble (01:55.009)

Hmm. But that's still coming up for yeah, okay. So I hear you saying that you just have this chronic problem where you are just so afraid you've done something wrong when someone starts acting differently. Is that right? Yeah.

Jo Bo (02:12.98)

Yeah, yeah, or I perceive them to be acting differently. I suppose I'm hyper vigilant as to if there's something wrong when there isn't.

Jenn Noble (02:17.717)

Yes. Yes.

Yeah, I'd love to give your hypervigilance some credit that you probably are absolutely right. Something is different. We just don't know why, right? It could be for any reason. And I love how you said you start overanalyzing, but I would love to get even more clear about that because it's not even the overanalyzing that is what's happening. Cause if that's the case, you could be like, Ooh, I wonder what's going on with them. I wonder what they have going on in their life. no, what happened? Right? We could be overanalyzing

Jo Bo (02:29.161)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jenn Noble (02:49.803)

they have something going on and, no, they must have so many issues, that's why they can't get back to me. But what's actually happening is the ruminating of you've done something

Jo Bo (02:58.484)

That's correct. And I will say, and I do know, I can say, well, they're busy, they're getting ready to go away, they've got family, you know, I know they've got a lot on. I can absolutely rationalise it. And I know that's real reason.

Jenn Noble (03:13.047)

Okay, yeah. So your logical conscious brain, as we call it, your rational side knows they're fine. Like we're fine. Our relationship is fine. But they've gone quiet, so I must have done something wrong. That's beautiful. So yeah, not beautiful for you, obviously, but thank you for the vulnerability of sharing that with us. I think what's really cool about this is...

Jo Bo (03:27.322)

Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Jenn Noble (03:37.847)

I know for a fact how hard you've worked. I know you and I have worked on my 12 week program together. I know that you've done the reprogramming work. I know that you understand what your core wounds are, your limited beliefs. I know you know your personality needs and how to set boundaries, which goes to show us that all of the work that we can do sometimes just isn't gonna cut it. And I'm wondering if this goes super deep for

Jo Bo (04:04.061)

Yeah, it clearly does. Yeah, how do we reach it?

Jenn Noble (04:05.227)

And so I would love to explore, yeah. I would love to explore this with you. And this is mainly because we've done this work together for so long, to an extent. With someone else, I would kind of start at the tippity top, right? I would kind of start with, well, let's just figure out why this is happening. But like you said, you're like, I know this. I know what's going on. I know how to equilibrate. I know how to reprogram all of this stuff. Something somatically is going on in your body. know, something is getting built up every time. So let me ask you this question.

Jo Bo (04:30.024)

sure.

Jenn Noble (04:35.413)

What is your kind of self -compassion like when this is happening? What are you telling yourself? What are your thoughts in your mind?

Jo Bo (04:44.552)

I'm kind of nitpicking. I don't know about which self compassion really. I obviously know to do that and I do logically go through it all and I tell myself they would never think that way of you, they love you, they wouldn't take offence by anything that you said because they know you well enough. yeah, I still, and that's, I mean obviously if I'm not as close with someone.

I don't have that to fall back on necessarily that knowledge. But it's the self compassion. Yeah. Where is it? Where is it?

Jenn Noble (05:22.027)

Yeah. Okay, so let's figure this out right now, like in your body. you right now, cause you're doing really well to keep going back into that moment where you're like, well, what did I do wrong? Like, and you said you even go back and you analyze the text or you analyze the things that you guys have said. In that moment, what's coming up for you? Can you feel it in your body? Have you recognized where that might be?

Jo Bo (05:45.531)

Yeah, it makes me feel quite sickly in my stomach. And I get sort of quite anxious feeling. My heart kind of maybe, my heart rate maybe goes up a bit. And then, you know, then my head goes a bit fuzzy with all the like anxiety of

Jenn Noble (05:48.619)

Mm -hmm.

Jenn Noble (06:04.683)

Okay, no, that's beautiful. So that part of you that feels kind of sickly in your stomach, if you could kind of describe it for me a little bit more, could you give it a color or a shape or feeling, anything like

Jo Bo (06:26.554)

It's a difficult one really, it's just kind of a, it is just a physical feeling and I can't really visualise anything. Yeah.

Jenn Noble (06:33.131)

You want to try something with me then? Perfect. So this is what I'm doing right now, just in case anyone's kind of listening and kind of following along to the coaching aspect of this is I'm trying to see how far along you are in the healing of this. And so some people would be like, yep, I've done this work already. I know she's a pink little fuzzy monster in my stomach and her name is Barb, right? Like some people are like there already. So in order to just kind of see where you are, we just kind of found, there it is. It's almost

If I was doing acupuncture points on you or if I was done of like doing something where my like surgeon does on me, sometimes he's like, do you feel it here? Do you feel it here? That's kind of what I'm doing right now. It's like, okay, where are we at? All right, so now the fun part, we're gonna kind of, let's close our eyes. Are you okay if we do this together? Okay, great, great. And remember you're in full control here. So if at any time this doesn't feel comfortable to you or you're like, this is not where I wanted to go with this, Jen, always let me know. So perfect. So let's take a big deep breath together and ground ourselves.

Jo Bo (07:14.936)

Yeah, cool.

Jo Bo (07:24.132)

That's fine, we'll do thanks.

Jenn Noble (07:32.116)

Picture your feet. Are they on the floor or are they tucked up in a bit of a crisscross?

Jo Bo (07:39.074)

on a bar on a stool.

Jenn Noble (07:40.991)

Yeah, us people with short legs sometimes have to do that. Yep, I know exactly that feeling. And your hands, are they resting on your lap? Are they folded? Are they twitching?

Jo Bo (07:43.94)

Unfortunately, yeah, that's me.

Jo Bo (07:52.451)

there on the work surface,

Jenn Noble (07:56.203)

Perfect. And what's the work surface feel like?

Jo Bo (07:58.603)

It's a cool kind of stone marble.

Jenn Noble (08:02.315)

Hmm, yeah, perfect. Okay, so that's where you are right now. And I want you to kind of breathe into that feeling in your stomach. I want you to picture that someone has not gotten back to you. Picture that situation you said you had recently, if you can, since it's forefront of your mind. And tell me where you're feeling that anxiety right

Jo Bo (08:28.387)

Okay so it is in my stomach and it's kind of fluttery like there's a bird in there fluttering around.

Jenn Noble (08:36.103)

bird in there. Okay, beautiful. Now that bird, does she have a color or a name or anything?

Jo Bo (08:44.376)

and I would say yellow.

Jenn Noble (08:47.511)

Beautiful. Okay. So you have like a little, with a sharp beak. Is that sharp beak hurting you sometimes? Does she poke you? Yeah. The way you said sharp was a pretty, pretty big thing there. That's beautiful. So this anxiety you have, this bird, this yellow bird with a sharp beak in your stomach. If she could speak, what would she want to say?

Jo Bo (08:49.079)

with a sharp beak. A sharp beak.

Yeah.

Jo Bo (09:18.61)

us.

Jo Bo (09:29.803)

Yeah, it's just sort of pay attention, pay attention. But I don't know more than that, just getting my attention.

Jenn Noble (09:33.697)

Pay attention.

Jenn Noble (09:37.525)

And what does she want you to pay attention to?

Jo Bo (09:49.205)

Yeah okay yeah so it's all about where it's coming from.

It's just a trigger from...

why I needed to be hypervigilant.

kind of a reminder.

Jenn Noble (10:09.281)

Would you like to get into that or would you like to keep that to yourself for right

Jo Bo (10:12.574)

Yeah, I would like to because I think it's where I need to go with it to kind of move it on. And I think it's definitely... It's like that knot in your stomach when you're frightened for the consequences of upsetting somebody in the past.

Jenn Noble (10:35.351)

Yeah. And in the past, what would happen when you did upset someone?

Jo Bo (10:41.159)

Yeah, well comes from my childhood and it's sort of like an unpredictable parent and yeah.

Jenn Noble (10:51.135)

Yeah. So, so this, beautiful bird, go on.

Jo Bo (10:53.247)

unsafe, unsafe, Yeah, trying to dig deep. Yeah, just that kind of had to be hyper -vigilant about my, what I said, what I did, even when I didn't know. I think it's exactly that actually. You didn't know what you'd done wrong, but you still got blamed for everything and sort

Jenn Noble (11:17.01)

He didn't, yeah.

Jo Bo (11:21.958)

the anger would come and the accusations and the blame.

Jenn Noble (11:28.671)

And you didn't even know what was happening. You didn't even know why you were getting blamed and what was going on.

Jo Bo (11:32.216)

No exactly and as yeah exactly that and even though as a child you're just a child or a baby even you're a toddler or whatever as you grow older you can kind of put the pieces together and think that's definitely not my fault but I'm still getting it you have to be hyper vigilant to sort of keep the peace and stay safe I suppose and I guess it's that trigger it's going all the way back

Jenn Noble (11:48.726)

Mm -hmm.

Jenn Noble (11:54.739)

Exactly. No, because if we think about that as a kid, you don't have the capacity, the capabilities to understand what you are doing could or couldn't be affecting this. You just see that you have these caregivers in your life that are meant to be taking care of you since you were a baby. They fed you, they clothed you, they made sure, you know, your diapers were changed, all your poop and pee was off of you, all of that stuff, right?

and then you got older and then you started getting blamed for things. But in your mind, what do you think a child is going to want to believe? That their caregivers are not capable of taking care of them or that there's something wrong with

Jo Bo (12:33.255)

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and it's much safer to just internalise it. you know, this is an issue that I've come to understand and worked at it from so many different angles, but yet it's still there. And it's a very, you know, a full understanding of it. It's just a, it's like it's in my DNA now. It's like, it's so, I think even before I was born, I was blamed for being there, you

Jenn Noble (12:39.351)

Exactly.

Jenn Noble (12:49.719)

Yeah.

Jenn Noble (13:00.855)

I mean, there are studies that show that babies are very affected by what is happening when they're inside of their mother's womb.

Jo Bo (13:08.75)

Yeah, I was unwanted. Well, I wouldn't say I was unwanted, baby. I was a surprise. An unmarried couple. And it was a very shameful thing back then. That generation. So it even started energetically, I guess, from being in the womb and, you know, and then it was very much the firstborn. I was the firstborn and I took the brunt of it all. And then my sister came along and she was the golden child.

Jenn Noble (13:16.369)

Okay. Especially, yeah.

Jo Bo (13:37.999)

which made me internalise it even more because she was very different with my sister. So it comes back to the same nugget of just how do you reach that part of

Jenn Noble (13:50.005)

Yeah, what did you like, what did I do? I didn't ask for this. And you said something earlier that I would love to kind of dig into a little bit, but you said, how am I supposed to even know what I did wrong? Like they are punishing me and I don't even know what I did wrong. I would love to kind of reframe that and say, I don't think you did anything wrong. I think that she, your mom, your parents,

Maybe even her parents or her siblings, all of these people in her life are making her in this type of way where she does something wrong and she can't even handle it on her own. And so she has to project that onto her child. It's really unfortunate, but it happens more times than you can count. Yeah. So you could just be sitting there doing absolutely nothing wrong and then get yelled at. But in your mind, you still see it as what did I do?

Jo Bo (14:31.253)

yeah, absolutely it does, yeah. It's common.

Jo Bo (14:43.768)

Yeah, you want to correct it. You don't want to do things. You don't want to upset your parents. You don't want to be shouted at all the time and feel unsafe and feel miserable. And it's like, okay, well, what can I do to change this thing? Clearly, it's my fault. But you can't actually change anything because it is just they are the way they

Jenn Noble (14:48.863)

Yeah.

Jenn Noble (14:59.823)

Imagine this, Imagine you're trying to cook, right? Imagine you're on a stove and you're trying to cook and in your mind, right, you believe this stove works properly. You turn the burner on and it should be able to heat up and you cook up your onions and your celery and your carrots, right? That's what should be happening. That's how we've been taught that things should happen. But now your stove is broken and your stove starts heating up really fast and you're like, why am I burning my onions? What did I do wrong?

Or your stove starts turning off and now nothing's cooking. Is this your fault?

Jo Bo (15:33.133)

No, no, but in the moment you feel, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and of course, know, this is the thing is I know kind of intellectually all that. I understand the psychology behind it now all these years of navel gazing and it's sort of, and all the work that we've done together.

Jenn Noble (15:34.271)

No. Nothing you've done is different than what you would have always done.

Jenn Noble (15:43.275)

Unfortunately, yeah.

Jo Bo (16:00.536)

and it's kind of like, I still have this trigger inside

Jenn Noble (16:06.559)

So now, let's get into the actionable side of this. So we've been through your somatic feelings, right? We've been through how you feel about this. And it sounds like you might've even discovered something a bit more. I really love how you said this yellow bird inside of you told you to pay attention. Okay? I really want you to pay attention to that later on as well, in terms of when you keep diving into this more and more over

But something that I think is getting thrown out there in the world right now, and part of my research and things that I'm starting to learn about myself is that I don't actually think we can shift as much as we think we can in our brains. So if as a child, your mom cut off your arm, I know that sounds terrible, but actually in fairness, this is what happens to us as children sometimes. So if as a child, your mom in a fit of rage or whatever it was, cut off your arm. When you get older,

If everyone kept expecting you to behave and act and live as if you had two arms and everyone kept getting mad at you and you kept getting mad at yourself because you kept trying to grow back this new arm and it was never happening and everyone kept saying, well we could just grow back your new arm. You know, what would, yeah, you can maybe get a prosthetic, you know, you could maybe do things, but that's still gonna be really painful. And honestly, that's even a privilege. Yeah, we can adapt, but you're never.

Jo Bo (17:17.494)

Yeah.

Jo Bo (17:23.988)

You can adapt. Yeah, you can

Jenn Noble (17:29.963)

going to get rid of this. That, exactly. That's one of the hardest things I think that we actually have to do. So every single time now what's happening is you have this part of you that's coming back up from your childhood. You have a little girl inside of you that is scared out of her mind that she has done something wrong again and there's gonna be a consequence. The only thing we can do in this moment is to give that side of you compassion. Now,

Jo Bo (17:32.062)

You can't change history.

Jenn Noble (17:58.581)

I can say that over time, by giving this part of you compassion and giving an attention and paying attention to it, like it's asking you to, it might actually ease up. I really think it could. But the caveat here is, if we go into this, doing the self -compassion to get rid of it, is that actually self -compassion?

Jo Bo (18:20.437)

It's kind of like you're trying to get rid of it. What's wrong with me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jenn Noble (18:24.343)

Yeah, like, it's so hard to explain that nuance, but it's like, can we shift it? Absolutely we can. I absolutely believe we can. I have gotten so much better on the internal thought processes that I have myself. know, if, even myself, if I drop something or I mess up because I'm so scatterbrained all the time with my ADHD, I forget to respond back to people. And before it'd be like, I'm a terrible person or I'm such a burden on these people. And now it's kind of like, ooh, that was familiar. Ooh, that was.

That was a familiar feeling. Where'd that come from? hold up. Let me just chill. Let me just breathe into that feeling. Like you could breathe into your yellow bird now. Pay attention to it as it's asking you to. And don't try to get rid of it. It's like if a little kid kept coming up to you and kept wanting your attention, wanting your attention, and you just gave it an ice cream to get rid of it. Is that giving the kid attention? Is that actually going to fill that kid's love

Jo Bo (19:18.332)

No, no, that makes so much sense. Yeah, and kind of, yeah, because the more you try and avoid that side of yourself, the more it'll keep pecking, pecking at you.

Jenn Noble (19:19.359)

No.

Jenn Noble (19:28.863)

My, what, thing, Pecky, see, you said Pecky, exactly, that sharp beak, man, that sharp beak that your little yellow birds got inside of your, in your tummy, that's great. But yeah, what is, what's the thing I love to say a lot, or I hear a lot, is what we resist persists, right? And so, and you and I both know, we both come from a similar, and even part of my program talks about wanting to kind of shift our negative thoughts, right? We wanna take like

Jo Bo (19:31.668)

Yeah.

you

Jo Bo (19:43.123)

Sure, yeah, of

Jenn Noble (19:54.655)

somatic repetition kind of exercise that we're doing or our reprogramming and we want to be creating new neural pathways. And absolutely that's possible. But think about it this way. Yeah, if you are, if you are sitting there doing the work, it's hard to explain, like if you're sitting there doing the work to, to take two neurons and put them back together for safety. But in addition to those two things you're trying to do, where you're trying to logically be like, I'm okay, I'm safe, there's a part of you that's also being like, get rid of this faster so I'm better.

Jo Bo (20:01.489)

Yeah, yeah, it is.

Jenn Noble (20:24.203)

You've just now connected that neuron to this as well. So now you've just kind of given yourself a level of impatience. So we've just rewired our brain kind of off.

Jo Bo (20:27.233)

ha

Sure, yeah. think it... Yeah, yeah. And I think that's actually what was, kept resurfacing for me. I could do all of the work, you know, I did it all. And it was kind of like, was still this little thing kept coming back into my brain saying, yeah, yeah, and, yeah, and. As if to say, you can keep doing that all you want. And it's gonna, yeah.

And there are some massive improvements and massive changes as we both saw over the 12 weeks working with you. Wonderful, absolutely amazing. But I think what you've just hit the nail on the head with for me, I felt it because I felt the emotion come, was just love that part of you. Don't try and obliterate it. That poor girl needs recognition and love. And don't try and get rid of it. Don't try and get rid of her. She is you. And I think

Jenn Noble (21:16.267)

Yeah.

Jenn Noble (21:21.527)

She really does.

Jenn Noble (21:26.741)

In fact, trying to get rid of her is just reinforcing what she believed in the first place was that there was something wrong with her. There's nothing wrong with her. There's... Exactly. And there's nothing wrong with you. Yeah.

Jo Bo (21:30.17)

like something wrong with her and she just wasn't worthy to even be alive. You shouldn't even been born girl, you know, this is what I was born with. And that's, yeah, and I think that's what's trying to get my attention and I wasn't seeing it. I wasn't seeing that. I was just like, gosh, I need to do more workbooks. gosh, I've slipped, I've not done enough of it. And so to punish myself in that way, I'm just, you

Jenn Noble (21:54.453)

Yeah, which you can actually see as just a similar thing too, which is like, I did something wrong again. I must do more. Right. But I want you to almost like, yeah, if I could encourage you for one thing for like this month, like for the rest of this month is stop doing and just be. Be with this part of you, be with, and maybe start exploring it more when you, when you lay down in bed tonight or this week, if you do any meditations or.

Jo Bo (21:57.647)

Yeah, I'm punishing myself again.

Jenn Noble (22:19.489)

kind of any inner work or journaling, I say get to know that yellow bird a little bit more and see if she morphs into anything more. If she does have a name, if she does, you know, turn into your inner child, or maybe she's a different part of you who wants to protect your inner child. Maybe she's got a sharp beak because if anyone comes near your little girl, she's gonna go out, okay? Like she's not gonna play. Good, you need that protection. We need those parts of ourselves.

Jo Bo (22:40.484)

Yeah, yeah,

Yeah, needs somebody to stand up for her instead of completely obliterating her.

Jenn Noble (22:52.875)

Yes! god that just gave me chills for you! Yes! Someone to stand up for her!

Jo Bo (22:55.63)

Yeah, I don't, you probably can't tell, but yeah, I've got tears. Yeah, so that's it. And I will do that. I will follow that through. Amazing.

Jenn Noble (23:01.675)

Beautiful.

Jenn Noble (23:07.809)

So how are you feeling right now as we wrap up? Is there any other kind of questions about what we've done or anything you still want to bring up before we finish

Jo Bo (23:15.424)

No, I think that was, you know, like really got to the point really where we needed to go with it. And I think that's heavy enough. But I feel lighter having said that, I feel like a sense of relief, know, a sense of relief. So it was deep, it was deep.

Jenn Noble (23:24.893)

Yes, we're good there.

Beautiful. I love that. Thank you so much for coming on here and being vulnerable about what you're kind of going through because I think it's really important for people to see that it's not always just about, you know, one person or one partner or a husband or a boyfriend. It could just be this overall sense we have around humanity, right? Like this is how we are with all of our relationships and just kind

Jo Bo (23:53.517)

So.

Jenn Noble (23:56.065)

Taking just that small amount of time to go through it like you did, like, no, this is not going to fix you. That's the whole point, right? We're not trying to. You're not broken. There's nothing to fix. We just want to understand ourselves better and kind of integrate all of those parts of ourselves to find a way to just better love ourselves, which I love for you. Thank you so much.

Jo Bo (24:13.485)

I love it too, it's amazing and to think I was coming on thinking, I haven't tried hard enough with all my homework and now I feel released from all that pressure.

Jenn Noble (24:24.375)

The best will be later on down the week when you're like, no, now you're trying too hard again. Stop doing that. And you're still going to think you did something wrong. And then it just continues on. Yeah. So we'll just again, anytime any one of these parts of you come up, anytime you feel that familiar feeling of I have done something wrong, I just want you to breathe into that feeling. And I want you to just give it compassion. like, sweetheart. honey. No. I know why you feel that way, but you haven't done anything wrong. Thank you for protecting

Jo Bo (24:33.504)

It's the loop, it's the loop. I'll try harder.

Jo Bo (24:52.49)

No, I'm going to record that. Well, I'm going to keep playing that back to me, that little sentence that you just said. Have it on a loop. No, thank you.

Jenn Noble (24:53.771)

Thank you for trying.

Jenn Noble (25:00.253)

that's beautiful. I love that. well, thank you so much, Joe, for coming on and for your vulnerability. And I can't wait to talk to you later. Thank you. Bye.

Jo Bo (25:07.606)

pleasure. Bye.

JWow. Right. I have to be really honest. I did not expect to get this many. Much out of my coaching call with Jo, not after all of the years I've worked with her and all the time we've talked, it was so surprising that we could still dive in to such a deep thing going on inside of her and get so much clarity.

And that just made me so excited. One of the most interesting thing was after the coaching call with Jo, and I was chatting with her a little bit afterwards, I was trying to explain to her that I also feel this way. A lot of times I feel this way where I've done something wrong or I've messed up. One of my limited beliefs that I have Have in my brain a lot of times is I messed that up.

Or you know, like, oh no, I effed that up, is really what comes up. Like, why are you always messing up all the time? Jen, why did you do something wrong? Like, why are you doing this? And I was explaining to her that as she was talking, as she was explaining how she feels wrong when somebody doesn't text her back.

I had a memory of a time when she reached out to me and I was supposed to get back to her and completely forgot. I mean, I have ADHD. I know that that's not necessarily an excuse, but it is a reason. And sometimes that can just happen where I read something. I think I respond. I completely forget. So here I am in the middle of this coaching call with Jo and my own feelings are starting to come up.

I'm like, Oh my gosh, is she talking about me? Is she upset with me right now? Oh, what is she doing here? Is she just coming on here to yell at me on this podcast? Can you see those thoughts and emotions coming up that quickly? But what's so cool about that is in the moment of me coaching her, and honestly, you could probably go back and see exactly the moment on my face when that starts happening.

I even just kind of started calming that side of me down. I didn't push it down. I didn't repress it. I didn't try to like shut it down and say, go away. There was a part of me that almost just came up and was like, Giggling and was just like, can you believe we still think this? Of course, Jo's not mad.

And even if she is, that's not on me. Like, we'll figure this out. We'll work through it because I trust her and she trusts me. And that's what relationships are like. And that was one of the most exciting moments that I had. So not only did Jo have her aha moments with what she's going through, but I had a breakthrough myself a little bit.

Where I started seeing that now in the moment, as quickly as that, when a big emotional feeling comes up for me, I get to recognize it,  breathe into it and allow it to do what it needs to do without having it focus or mess up or do anything to someone else. Because that's, what's not okay, right? We can have the beliefs, we can have the thoughts, we can have the emotions, right?

The BTEA. But it's our actions that other people see and that's what matters and that we want to hold true to our values. And so it was really important to me in that moment to just kind of wash through that so I could be there fully and presently to hold space for Jo. And I was able to and that was really exciting.

So through all of this as well, I just hope that you got So much out of this podcast, I hope that you were able to see that if you are struggling with that feeling that you did something wrong, maybe the person you're dating, you know, your new partner, your new boyfriend, he doesn't text you back right away.

You know, three days in a row, you said this really cute, funny meme and he sent you the cute, laughy emoji back and it made you happy. And then he sent him another cute, funny meme and then he didn't. Oof, what's going on in your brain right now? Is it not funny enough? Did I send too many memes? Did I not send enough memes?

Should I have waited and sent that meme two days later? In fact, I get these questions all the time. They come to me and they're like, Jen, okay, I sent three memes on this day and two memes on this day. When should I send the next one? And that's when we're getting a little bit too analytical, right? That's when we need to realize, You know what?

They are going to do what they're going to do. They are allowed to do whatever it is they need to do. They are fully autonomous. You're not perfect all the time, right? You're not always consistent. And that's just what's going to happen. So we need to get to a place where we can be okay, no matter what's happening.

One of my favorite quotes, and actually this is probably pretty topical considering Jo felt a yellow bird with a sharp beak, mind you, in her stomach. One of my favorite quotes in the whole world is, a bird is not afraid of the branch breaking. Because she trusts in her own wings.  That quote got me through so many rough days because I realized I had been focused so much on every single branch breaking.

And if a branch broke, I would immediately think it was my fault. What did I do? Did I rest on it too long? Was I too big and fat and broke it? Did I not jump from branch to branch enough? I'm the reason. The branch broke, but no, that's not true, is it branches break all the time?  And this is just going to be something that continuously happens in our life.

And we have to get to a place where we trust in our own self and our own wings. So that way, when the branch inevitably breaks, because trust me, it will, there's nothing we can do about that. You could just fly off to the next one. Or you can go take a lap around a cloud because we have the power and the ability to do whatever it is we need to do because our wings are fully functioning and we can do this.

I promise.  You got this. We got this, and I can't wait to talk to you next week. Take care. 

As we wrap up today's conversation, always remember that healing is a journey, not a destination, and it is an honor to be a part of your healing journey. If you want to dig deeper into the topics we cover today. Be sure to head over to our show notes where you can find all of the valuable information mentioned in today's episode, right there.

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