Soaring Over Stress, Episode Three ~ Where to Begin

In this episode of "Soaring Over Stress," host Amy Rae shares her experiences and strategies for dealing with stress and anxiety. She emphasizes the importance of finding a quiet place, like an egg, to escape from the noise and chaos of life. Amy discusses the concept of holding space, which involves being present and providing support without judgment. She also suggests using diaphragmatic breathing and somatic exercises, such as art and poetry, to cope with stress. Amy shares personal stories about dealing with a difficult boss and an abusive marriage, and how she found solace by going inside the egg and creating a grace bubble to protect herself. Good day to all. I want to thank you so much for tuning in. I'm your host and creator, Amy Rae, offering you another episode of Soaring Over Stress, an SOS for navigating stress and anxiety in the workplace and beyond. Now, before we get to today's episode, I want to remind you to check out a few of my different platforms and ways in which you can get in touch with me. There's my website, EagleExercises.com, all lowercase, as well as my social media platforms on Facebook and Instagram, also called Eagle Exercises. I'm currently working on booking speaking engagements at colleges and universities throughout the East Coast and abroad. But I'm not only speaking at colleges and universities. I also, my speech is also for businesses, corporations, 501c3s, public health outreach, and more. So if anyone's interested and would like for me to come speak, I'd encourage you to get in contact with me through one of these platforms. Now, on today's episode, today's episode is episode three. We're going to talk about going to the beginning, back to the start of all things. Well, maybe not all things. I mean, we aren't recreating the universe or humanity or even existence. Nothing like that. But we all need to start in a quiet place. Ironically, while I was trying to develop this episode, I was at the library, and there was so much chatter and talk I could hardly think. I know, who would expect that at a library, right? I decided to leave the main room and went into the left wing, set my computer down, pulled up a chair. But before I could attempt to type one word, the people started talking again. It's like that annoying feeling when you hear an insect buzzing near you, even if it's not necessarily close by, you still want to swat it away. Thankfully, there was a room right off of that one that's tucked away, shut behind a wall of glass. I walked in, and I could immediately feel the silence encapsulating me in some sort of proverbial protection and peace. It's exactly where I needed to be. And it's the exact type of place that I want you to escape to as well. Your own personal egg, if you will. I want you to go back, tuck yourself in the fetal position, lock out the noise and chaos of life. Like an eagle, go inside the egg, curl up in the fetal position and simply be. After all, we're trying to follow the life cycle of this magnificent bird and to mirror our own flight patterns after it. So we can learn how to soar above the stress and anxiety in our life. Navigating and overcoming anxiety and stress, also trauma, depression, and more, is a step by step process. And the first step is to take a step back. I'm going to teach you how to go inside the egg. I have no doubt that I've used the egg, quote unquote, throughout my life without even realizing it. It became a safe haven for me during turbulent times where I didn't have the option to leave. And this is something I want to pass on to you as well. So this is a concept titled Holding Space. And I want to share with you a story about it. So once upon a time, I had a boss that enjoyed intimidating me. I swear he enjoyed watching me cry. He was so good about quietly tearing me apart, assuming I would never stand up to him. One particular day, I wasn't feeling well. I have Hashimoto's disease. It can cause flares that bring on debilitating fatigue. He knew about my health issues and saw this as an opportunity. So he started making me do all the running. He would send me up into what's called National, a different part of the building. And then he'd make me come back and go in the storage room and pick up a whole bunch of boxes and then go back to National. And I had to do all of the running that day. And I swear he was doing it on purpose. Well, after it got to a point where my legs were no longer keeping up, because again, I had a flare going on. I asked a coworker for help. He saw this and decided to reprimand me. He said, Did I say you could ask someone for help? I told you to do it. You don't get to decide who does what here. I'm the boss, not you. I looked him in the eyes, body shaking from stress and fatigue and said, I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to tear me down. You're trying to break me. You are hoping I will quit. He just stared at me. I think half in astonishment that I saw what he was doing, and half and not knowing how to respond to somebody who decided to stand up to him. I went into the bathroom, body shaking, trying to remember how to cope. The egg, go inside the egg, Amy. Shh, quiet. I began working on my breathing. Slow breath in, 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3, 4. Out, 2, 3, 4. Rest, 2, 3, 4. This is known as diaphragmatic breathing. This practice allows me to find calm amidst the chaos, a holding space, if you will. And this is crucial in dealing with stress and anxiety, specifically in environments where you don't necessarily have the option to leave. Now, maybe the concept or the wording of holding space is new to you. So just let me explain. Holding space means that you're 100% present, putting your focus on support alone. Holding space allows us to simply be no fixing, no correction, no advice. An author on the subject, Rika Pearl, says it this way, holding space for yourself allows you to have a place devoid of judgment, but overflowing with empathy, compassion, and grace. Practicing this type of loving kindness is the reverent present moment cultivation of compassion and love for oneself. The egg is your personal container to do this. So during my speaking engagements, I like to bring artwork with me that I create or have created, I should say. Some began as just an expression of what was going on inside of me. I will end up teaching about creating art or writing poetry, things like that. That's called a somatic exercise. And that also helps the brain and body deal with stress and anxiety. So there's this one particular piece that I made recently, and I wish I could show you. Maybe one day I'll actually do live, not only audio, but video as well for my podcast. But for now, we're sticking with just audio. Anyway, it's kind of funny because the paintings that I did were on industrial size coffee filters that I got from the job of that boss that liked to berate me. Anyway, so this is a picture of lungs, and it's my artistic expression of what happens in the lungs when we are undergoing stress and anxiety. I remember a few minutes ago, I was talking about diaphragmatic breathing and how doing that can actually, it applies a bit of a psychological break. And so when we go through times of stress and anxiety, if we are overstimulated, I don't know, maybe you or somebody you know, I'm sure we've all seen people hyperventilate, and they start breathing erratically, and we're like, calm down, calm down, or maybe you're breathing erratically, and somebody's telling you to calm down. Well, there's a reason for that. And it's a little thing known as dyspnea. What happens is when we're extremely overwhelmed with those strong emotions, the body actually takes oxygen from your lungs, and redistributes it to your muscles, so you can more effectively flee. But the question is, how are we going to outrun ourselves? Moreover, how are we going to outrun our problems? Like when our boss is berating us, and we still have seven and a half hours left of work to go. Or maybe our spouse, or a co worker corners us in a room, and there's no way for us to escape. Perhaps your anxiety is over something seemingly little. Maybe your current environment is actually safe. But you're being triggered by something from the past. Our body and our brain are constantly trying to help us. But sometimes the signals gets messed up. And that's why it's so important to know how to speak to and through your body. So your brain and heart can make the best decisions for you. When we hold space for ourselves, we're allowing an opportunity to rest, to recalibrate, to find a place where we don't have to have all of the answers. But we just meet ourselves in loving kindness. You know, the fetal position itself is actually calming and helps the body regenerate. It helps the body to recalibrate, just like rocking back and forth does. There's so many different ways to help our body when we're going through overwhelming amounts of stress and anxiety. So another story about me and finding the egg. I recently left a 23 year marriage. There were good days and there were bad days and there were a lot of days in between. My then husband will now admit to you that he was abusive at least 50% of the time, emotionally, psychologically, financially, and more. There were times he would go on seemingly never ending rants. He would raise his voice and get angry and project all of his self-hatred toward me. In those moments, I could feel his daggers of disgust penetrating my heart and psyche, breaking down all I believed about myself. Sometimes it would be snide comments under his breath, just loud enough to make sure I heard him. I remember one specific day, he was going on and on about something. I felt trapped in the room with him, knowing I could not leave, just wishing I could stop the pain of his verbal assault. Then, almost like magic, I had this idea. I thought to myself, what if I create a bubble around myself, like an invisible force field where his words can't touch me? I immediately named it the grace bubble. In an instance, I was no longer listening to the words he said. I could only hear his voice rattling off sounds and imagining the frequency hitting the grace bubble and falling to the ground below. They no longer had their power. I remember standing there thinking to myself, oh my God, this is so wonderful. A smile escaped the corner of my mouth as I quietly began to take back my power, one broken syllable at a time. He asked me, why are you smiling? And I just kept smiling. He got furious, said I wasn't listening, and stormed off. Now I know for some of you, to smile back and defiance would only exacerbate the situation. But for me, I felt it was something that just came naturally, and I couldn't hold it back. This is the power of the egg. The power to go back and reclaim your peace, to sit in calm amidst the storms and say to yourself, I got this. I'm here for myself now. I'm going to be okay. I don't know if you've ever gone through an abusive situation, or even like the situation with my boss. That is also abusive. And he did it quite frequently. I can remember several times where I would be standing at the cash register, just bawling my eyes out. And the customers would come in and they'd ask me what's wrong. And I would just shake my head and continue to cry. One particular day, I think one of the customers had had enough. And he actually stormed back into the kitchen and reprimanded my boss for giving me a hard time. Unfortunately, he's still the boss there and my Lyme's disease made it so that I could no longer work. But the point is, no matter what kind of situation you're going through, whether it's a boss, or your current spouse, an ex spouse, even times where you're going through debilitating chronic illness, whatever it might be, if you could just offer yourself the egg, offer yourself the holding space, so that you can get through these times. Remember, you're just there to provide support, no correction, no fixing, no advice. I want to encourage you to remind yourself that it is okay to feel your feelings. So many times we are told to talk ourselves out of it or to have a positive mindset. And while a positive mindset is important, it can also be destructive. So we just need to be careful how we apply that. Please don't talk yourself out of your pain. I never want somebody to say, well, you know, I'm, I'm feeling upset and frustrated, but I have so much to be thankful for. I mean, it's good to count your blessings 100% it is. But it's also okay to say, I feel hurt and it's okay that I'm hurt or hurting. I feel frustrated and it's okay that I'm frustrated. People, it's okay to be human. I just want you to know that. Okay, please offer yourself the holding space. Please show up for yourself and say it is okay. What I'm going through right now. I'm not less than because I'm struggling. I'm not less than because I'm angry. I'm not less than because I'm sad or scared or upset. No, you're, you're human. And it's okay to be human. So I want to encourage each of you today to continue to just be there for yourself. And the more you're there for yourself, the more you can be there for others can't work the opposite way, you'll eventually burn out. You can't pour from an empty cup, as they say. So to all of you that are struggling with stress, anxiety, even depression and trauma, I just want to remind you once more that you are not alone. I see you, you matter, and your story counts. Until next time, friends, this is Amy Rae from Eagle Exercises saying, I hope you have a great day. Keep showing up for yourself. And I'll keep showing up for you. Thank you.