030: Releasing Resistance

Resisting how you feel can sometimes be even worse than just feeling the feelings! Whether it’s anxiousness, sadness or whatever it may be - you have to let go of that resistance!
In this episode, I am talking all about releasing resistance. You’ll hear how this can be beneficial for minimizing the suffering you feel from your emotions.
I chat about my own struggles with anxiety and how releasing the resistance around my emotions has helped me tremendously.
What you’ll find in this episode:
A segment on what I am currently creating
My struggle with anxiety and the resistance I’ve had with it
When most resistance emotions come up
How you can take off a layer of the resistance and accept the emotions that come with it
Why you have to get honest with yourself about emotions you may feel
How to use creativity to get in tune with how you’re feeling
Read the transcript of the episode below:
Today, we are going to talk about how resisting how you actually feel and feel so much worse than just feeling the feelings. This is episode 30, releasing resistance.
Welcome to the Committed to Create Podcast. I'm Lisa Funk, and I am so excited to hang out with you here. As we talk about the power of creating with our hands and our minds. I like to keep it real, remind you that you are not alone, and share specific ways that creativity and mindfulness can help us live even more meaningful and joyful lives.
I am so glad that you're here.
Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. This is episode 30, and we're going to be talking about releasing resistance. I am going to start with a segment today, which is currently creating.
I have been doing quite a few of these segments of currently creating lately because I have just felt a little surge of desire to create in so many ways recently. And one thing that I've been trying to do is recognize all the times throughout the day when I am already naturally in a creative space in a creative mode.
So this isn't necessarily me creating some new project or sitting down to letter or do my embroidery, which I love all of those things. As, you know, embroidery is my new thing that I'm into. But it's recognizing any time that I'm actively doing something which is generally creating something in some way.
So if I am cleaning my kitchen, I am creating a clean, peaceful space, and that act of creation can be mindful for me. It can be a moment where I can be present and really enjoy the fact that I am using my creativity. I might be creating an experience for my kids. I might be like the other day when I told you about juicing all the lemons and that was creating something because I was actively doing something that was creating an outcome that was changing something. And I'm not going to dis on consuming because we all do it. I don't think that it's necessarily possible to be in the state of creation all day, every day. And I think that we can be inspired by things that we consume.
Of course we want to be careful about the things that we're consuming and making sure that they aren't putting us into a place of comparison and kind of feeling down on ourselves to where we don't want to create. We want to eliminate those types of consumption, but I've been trying to pay attention to just the simple things throughout the day when I'm creating.
I really believe that we were all born to create. And so even if it's something really simple, I just got to take that moment to enjoy it and to remind myself that I'm a creator and that we really do have an incredible power because of our ability to create. And so I just want to encourage you to pay attention to all the times throughout the day that you're creating, you're creating with your mind. You're creating with your hands. And it might be that you're creating a moment of conversation with a child. It might be that you're creating a clean space or an organized space, or it might be that you're doing something that would be considered quote, unquote, crafty or artsy or creative, like decorating a room or something, but it also could be reorganizing your closet or cleaning something, or doing something fun with your family. 
 I think that the more that we pay attention to the moments that we create throughout the day, the more we're going to tap into that creative power and become more aware of the opportunities that we have to change the way that we create, if we want to. 
Like I mentioned last week or the week before, when I was talking about how this has changed my experience with even cleaning my kitchen at night, because I am really thinking about my power to create a clean space that I feel really happy to wake up to in the morning. And believe me, I am not the type of person that always has a clean kitchen, or that has always cleaned up the kitchen before bed.
As I mentioned before, I've struggled for years and years with my mental health. And so I didn't always feel up to it. I didn't really feel good. I felt exhausted. I felt kind of down and overwhelmed. I felt really overwhelmed for a long time. And so the thought of cleaning up my kitchen at night was just too much.
And I'm not saying that I always will be able to keep this up, but recently I've had the capacity to do it. And it's just been something that I am thinking about differently. And I believe that we can think about the ordinary tasks throughout our day in a different way. When we realize that they are an act of creation, that it's something that we are doing that's changing our environment. That's changing our experience. It's not sitting back and being the recipient of someone else's actions of what someone else is saying of what someone else's doing, whether that's somebody in our physical realm, like right around us, or whether it's somebody on the internet, we're just consuming what they're doing.
It's us taking  action and creating our day, creating our experience. And it's really powerful, just not even to necessarily change what you're doing, but to, really kind of tune in to the fact that you are creating so much throughout your day already, and that you are creative, you are a creator. And I want you to start to just identify with that more because I feel like it is so empowering and it helps us to just own what we are doing and to kind of maybe tailor it a little bit differently if we want to, because we realize, oh, wait, I am creating this.
Maybe it would be fun to create this a little bit differently, whether that's with your mindset, like saying, you know what, I'm going to really enjoy, you know, making dinner and I'm going to have fun with it. And I'm going to maybe try out some new recipes or makes them on my grandma's recipes or find some recipes from, you know, our ancestors or like the lands that we've come from or is something like that. And, and it's something that you're already doing, but you're changing the way you're thinking about it. You're changing the way that you approach it. So that it's a little bit more creative and a little bit more fun.
So much of creativity for me is finding ways to have more fun and to enjoy the ordinary day to day activities that I am already doing. So I've just been kind of tuning into that lately. And I thought I would share kind of what's been going on in my mind. And just in case it's helpful for any of you. I always love hearing from you.
If something like this resonates with you, so feel free to reach out, leave a review on the podcast, letting me know, or a DM on Instagram or something like that. I just think we have the best community. I love all of you so much. All right. So for today's topic, we're talking about releasing resistance and so I just want to talk about feelings that we have, and then the resistance that we have to those feelings, and I'm going to start with the example of anxiety. 
So I have struggled with depression and anxiety for over 20 years. And I think most of us have experienced some of those emotions, even if it's not to an extreme, we've felt a little bit anxious or we felt worried, or you can apply this to many other emotions as well.
So when you are feeling anxious, And you do not like the feeling generally when we have what we would consider a negative emotion, anxious, angry, sad, annoyed, frustrated. Those are emotions that I would probably categorize as negative. I then have resistance to feeling it because it feels so uncomfortable to me.
I view it as a negative thing when I feel anxiety. I'm not saying I always do, but typically, historically, if I were to feel anxious, I would feel like, oh no, this is not good. This is bad. I do not like this. This is uncomfortable. And I don't even know that I would use the word uncomfortable. That would be too mild for me.
I would just be like, oh my gosh, no, no, no, no, no, no. And so what is happening then? First I'm feeling the anxiety, which might mean that I'm feeling like tightness in my chest. Maybe I'm feeling kind of like a churning in my stomach. I really like to take the time to identify what is happening physiologically is so powerful. Any emotion that you're resisting, trying to get to the core emotion that your feeling and what it feels like in your body and explaining it to yourself, describing it to yourself, especially if you can do it out loud. I know may sound a little silly if you're worried that someone might hear you, but it really is powerful to say, okay.
First, I'm going to name this. This is anxiety. I'm feeling some tightness in my chest. Okay. I'm feeling, you know, some churning in my stomach. That's interesting. But what happens is we don't name it. We don't sit with it to feel where it is. We start resisting it. And a lot of the resistance for me comes because I believe that the initial emotion is negative.
And I believe that I shouldn't feel it. And I sorta believe that maybe there's something wrong with me for feeling it. And I want it to go away as fast as possible. So I resist it. I get tense. I get even more frustrated. And then I started to have these additional emotions on top of the anxiety that are things like shame, shame for feeling anxiety.
I feel frustrated, frustrated that I'm feeling anxious. I sometimes get angry that I'm feeling anxious. I might get embarrassed that I'm feeling anxious. Oh my gosh. Now look at me. I've got like five other emotions that are connected to the resistance. Of feeling the anxiety. It's so ironic because what I'm trying to do is avoid feeling the anxiety.
And so I'm resisting it, but with the resistance comes all these other negative emotions on top of it. I don't want to feel shame, embarrassment, anger, frustration on top of feeling anxious. Is that really helping? Is it helping to add four or five additional negative emotions on top of it? It's not. Now we can also look at the emotions and say, maybe they're negative.
Maybe they're not. What if they just are what they are? By judging our feelings and our emotions, we often add that resistance and we are just sometimes judging ourselves. Like I don't want to be a, someone who is anxious. And so I am going to try really hard, not to be. And I'm just gonna let you in on a little secret, once we're feeling something, telling ourselves that we should just ignore it and turn away from it and resist, it really doesn't help.
And it just doesn't work. I wish it did work. If it did work, I'd be here saying this is how you can resist emotions or ignore emotions or turn them off and just forget about them and, you know, leave them in the dust. But it just doesn't happen. I think about like a little baby who has air in their tummy and they're screaming and they're so upset and they just can't calm down and it's painful for them.
And you just think, oh, sweet baby. You just need to calm down and relax. And you know that it's not going to feel great for them to have that air in their tummy. They hate it. But once they finally relax, They're able to burp or whatever, get it out. Right? I think about  toddlers who are so tired, they're just fighting it. They're just screaming and kicking and so upset. And they're resisting that fatigue. How many times have you said that or seen a toddler and said, oh, they're just resisting it. They're just resisting sleep. They are so tired, but they're fighting against it. So now not only are they tired, but they're also angry and sad and upset and have all of these other emotions added on top of it.
I find that a lot of these resistance emotions happen when I'm judging myself, when I'm judging the way that I'm feeling, because I have all of these beliefs about, you know, what's acceptable or what I want to feel. And it's so fascinating that as humans, we know that there's going to be positive and negative.
We know that we have lived our whole lives feeling what we would consider positive emotions and negative emotions. And yet we still hope that somehow in the future and in the present, we will be able to avoid all of the negative emotions. We don't plan for them. We don't, we don't plan for them and we don't accept them.
We resist them. When we look towards the future, we aren't like, oh my gosh. And then I'm probably going to feel really frustrated. And then I'm probably going to get really upset. It's like, no, we're thinking, Ooh, then I'm going to be super happy and then we're going to feel totally connected. And then we're going to feel amazing.
If I were to ask you to tell me your vision for the future, it's probably going to include a whole lot of positive emotion, you know, or positive things we knew. We look towards the future. We're not saying, well, there's probably going to be a lot of heartbreak or there's probably going to be a lot of struggle because we don't want to think about that.
We don't want to think about the negative. It's super uncomfortable for us. So what I'm want to talk about today is how can we take off the layer of the resistance so that we can accept the negative emotion, which is non-negotiable hate to break it to you, but we're all human. We all have positive and negative and it's just going to happen.
So how can we take off that second layer, that layer of resistance and just start to accept that initial emotion. So for example, with the anxiety, one thing that I want to suggest is taking away the judgment. So instead of telling ourselves that there are emotions that are acceptable and that there are emotions that are unacceptable, what if we told ourselves that all emotions are acceptable? 
You might be resisting me even telling you this right now. But what I want to tell you is even if you disagree with me, I think we can all agree that when we actually look at it, that resisting the emotion doesn't work. It really does make things worse.
So, believing that all emotions are acceptable, and then it's okay to feel all of those emotions, and that we know it's going to be uncomfortable. If we can start to change the story that we tell ourselves about how we feel, and taking off the judgment. I believe we will be able to stop the resistance so that we can just allow ourselves to feel the initial feeling.
I want you to think about this with something in your life. Think about a time when maybe you felt really sad and it could have been over something big and it could have been over something really small. How many times have you said to yourself? Oh my gosh, I shouldn't be sad about this. I shouldn't be sad about this.
This is no big deal. How often hear people saying things like, I shouldn't be sad about this. People have way bigger problems than I do, and they resist their initial emotion and they resist it because they're judging it. They think that it's inconsequential. They think that they shouldn't feel that way.
And I do this too. We all do it. And so being able to recognize when we're doing it is so powerful. I really tried to start doing this with depression as well. And again, you may or may not struggle with depression, but this might be helpful if you know, and love someone who does, but you can definitely apply this to yourself for sure. Any emotion that you're feeling. We all do this so many times. 
When I have felt depressed over the years, the worst part of that depression was the resistance to the depression. I would layer on so much judgment where I would resist it and say, I shouldn't be feeling this way. And I can't believe I'm feeling this way again.
And I'm trying so hard not to feel this way. And I've worked so hard to not feel this way. This is so frustrating and I would get so frustrated and it's like, so poignant for me to even tell you about these experiences, because I can like drop into it. I can feel it. I can hear myself talking to my mom or my husband or a friend.
Just crying saying, oh, I've tried so hard. I've worked so hard. I've tried so many things. I've spent so much time and effort and energy working my butt off to feel better and to not have this happen again. And here it is, it's happening again. And I would just been in this resistance and it would make me so upset and so sad, and so frustrated, that if I were to drop the resistance, and say, wait a minute, I'm getting really upset about the way I'm feeling. That's resistance. Let me just go back to the initial feeling. I'm going to name it. I'm going to describe it. I'm going to sit in it. It's not going to be really fun. It's not going to be super comfortable, but guess what? Neither is resisting it. 
So while am I sounding really cheesy to talk about sitting in your emotions, naming them, describing them, feeling them it's better than resisting them, which is what a majority of the population does. So, this is not another reason to beat yourself up and say, oh gosh, why am I doing this?
Why am I resisting emotion? No, no, no, no, no. We are not going to beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up. Only on this podcast probably are, is somebody talking about that? Because I am really good about overthinking things. Okay. So this is really simplifying, it's simplifying, getting to that initial emotion, and just allowing it, accepting it and not judging it because you and I, we tend to judge ourselves pretty harshly.
I've had such a negative self-talk for so long, and I wasn't even aware of it. I didn't even know that I was really doing it. If anything, I thought it was kind of maybe the right thing to do so that I could improve and grow. I thought, well, yeah, I need to like, make sure I'm in check and make sure I'm doing the right thing and feeling the right thing instead of saying, oh my gosh, this, this is not encouraging to hear a voice telling me that I have a problem and that there's something wrong with me all the time. So I just want to remind you that there is nothing wrong with you. You are a human being, you have emotions, you are not a robot. You are here to feel and experience and, if we can just be honest with ourselves, that life is full of positive and negative emotions.
And when we think about our day ahead, I'm not saying that you're going to get super excited to feel anxiety. I'm not saying that you're going to get super excited to feel angry, but what if we expected it? If we said, all right, here's my day ahead. I'm excited for this. I'm expecting that this might happen and I'm not talking about like, oh, let's have a self fulfilling prophecy where I expect I'm probably going to get really angry at my kids after school. And then I do. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not saying like, oh, I'm probably going to get mad at this point. Let's plan for it. No, I'm just saying that. What if we were just a little bit more aware that, throughout our day, we're going to have the negative emotion. It's going to show up.
It's going to be there and it's okay. We accept it. We accept ourselves for feeling it. We don't judge ourselves. We don't think that we're less than because we are experiencing that. We know that it's a normal part of being alive and we're okay with it. It's not fun. It's not comfortable, but we're learning to sit with it and to love ourselves through it.
So let's just all try to be a little bit more aware the next time that we, you know, maybe feel some anxiety and then we get real negative about feeling anxiety. We resist it, we fight it. We are going to see that so much of the suffering comes from resisting. 
The actual initial emotion is going to be uncomfortable. It won't be fun. To sit with, but I believe that when we release the resistance that we're also releasing some of that unnecessary suffering that gets added on when we start judging how we're feeling, when we start tensing up against our feeling, when we start fighting, how we're feeling. 
And so just remind yourself that all emotions are acceptable. That you are open to feeling them and that it's okay. 
And I hope that it helps. We all are just making our way through and none of us are doing this perfectly. So if you're like, oh, I already learned this and I tried it and now I'm doing it again. No, we're not, we're not beating ourselves up for that. We're just being gentle and helping ourselves so that we can, like I said, minimize some of that suffering. 
One of the reasons why I love mindful creativity is because it just helps me to kind of get tune with myself and to release some of those secondary resistant emotions. And. To help myself just kind of get in tune and feel what I'm feeling. And I love to journal about it. I love to letter sometimes some of the emotions that I'm feeling. 
I know that there's been a lot of emotion lately about the state of the world and everything that's going on. And I want to encourage you to try to use creativity to help you to get in tune with how you're feeling and to also try to nurture the feelings that you want to feel more often, and sometimes lettering those feelings can kind of help me to think about them and move towards them and get in tune with them. And I think it's a kind of a powerful process to maybe write out some of the emotions you're currently feeling. 
If you haven't yet gotten our freebie, which is five creative steps to less stress, it helps you walk through how to be present with your feelings and to use your five senses and creative ways to kind of get in touch with your body.
And it really helps to process an initial emotion before resisting it. So you can get that if you head over to committed to create.com and you'll see it, it's a freebie called, like I said, five creative steps less stress and more joy. It's got some worksheets that you can do and also a video that talks you through it.
And it's really helpful. And it's something that I think can really help our kids as well. This is such a powerful thing to teach your children. And one thing that I've noticed is that as adults, we are very uncomfortable, oftentimes with other people's negative emotions as well. We want to stop them. 
So notice that if you have kids or you're around kids or other people that are upset and how we just want to resist it, we want to stop it. And it doesn't always make it better. It might seem like it does, but teaching our kids how to allow their emotions and that all emotions are acceptable, they can learn a better way. They can learn how to accept and feel their emotions instead of resisting them, which causes so many additional negative emotions on top of it. As we have seen, as we have talked through this episode. 
So I recommend trying this free guide with your kids as well. It's got some fun drawing and creative activities. You do not need to know how to draw from perfectly. This is not for anyone else to see. This is not something that you're going to be hanging up on a wall. It's just for you. And it's really powerful. 
So anyway, I hope you check that out. I love coming on and chatting with you and I just encourage you to find your five minutes a day first, a mindful creativity, find the times during your day when you already are creating and kind of lean into those times and enjoy them. And I just love having you here.
Thank you so much for all of your reviews on the podcast. I read every single one and the mean so much to me. I also love seeing when you share the podcast on Instagram and you tag me. It's just so nice to share the love. My goal here is to really help people to feel less alone and to share some of the things that have helped me along my journey.
So thank you for being here, have fun creating, and I will talk to you again next week.
Links:
5 Creative Steps to Less Stress & More Joy
Ready for a fun activity to feel less stress? Come get our FREE Guide - 5 Creative Steps to Less Stress & More Joy while it's still available!
I hope that my podcast has left you feeling inspired and excited to create the life that you want. If you’ve enjoyed listening to this podcast, I’d love for you to subscribe so you can continue to hear more. Want to get to know me better? Connect with me on my website or on Instagram to keep up with everything that is going on with me and my business.
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Jennifer L. IN LOVE!! What a perfect idea! I am a plant mama too, like Lisa. I also manage a great deal of anxiety. I got into lettering a couple years ago as a creative outlet and discovered a multitude of treasures in the lettering community! This book that Lisa created with her daughter is just perfection! It's all the feels for me! Thank you both!!!
Cinthanie C. EXCELLENT BOOK! I really enjoy taking a minute each day to slow down and apply my hand to something that is not only emotionally supportive but relaxing and fun to do!! The mantras for everyday are very helpful for me. Thank you for your work and bringing such a high quality product into my life!
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