Have you ever experienced starting your day off in a good mood, but then your boss says something to you making you feel like he thinks you’re not doing a good job?

Suddenly you find yourself obsessing over why your boss would say something like that, or worrying about how you’re going to prove your value.

Or maybe you feel judged by a friend after getting vulnerable with her. So, you call up another friend complaining about how annoying she was.

Or your partner says something and you instantly feel like he doesn’t care. Having you swirl in your head about how he could say something like that, and how awful he is.

Each of us experience something like this daily.

Where a situation, someone’s look, or words throw us off emotionally. We then spend hours, days, weeks, even sometimes years before we get over it.

I have found when we don’t take care of our emotional health, we get pulled out of being present and pulled into obsessing in our heads.

And this obsessing isn’t serving us, it’s keeping us from really leaning into and feeling fulfilled by various relationships.

It keeps us believing and thinking we are judged, different, alone, and misunderstood.

Closes us up and shuts us down.

There’s another way.

I call it Emotional Attunement.

Being Emotionally Attuned is recognizing when you’re obsessing or overthinking a situation or relationship, and getting into action to face those emotions through a conversation with that person or by asking that person questions to clear things up for yourself emotionally.

This allows you to move through the overthinking rather than letting it have a hold on you.

Here are the 3 simple and powerful steps to follow:

1. Catching when you’ve just gotten pulled into a state of obsessing or overthinking.

We know when we are there.

We’re in our heads, trying to answer questions that can’t be answered, assuming, justifying, feeling unsettled, upset, annoyed, trying to talk ourselves out of or into something.

Simply notice and catch it.

2. Ask yourself these questions:

What do I need to ask to clear this for myself?
Am I confused about anything that I need clarification on?
Have I assumed something that I need to ask about?
What conversation can I have to help me move through this feeling?
Am I being honest with myself and others around what I expressed?
Do I need to take accountability for anything?

3. Then have the conversation with that person to clear it for yourself. You could reveal that you felt judged and weren’t sure if they meant it that way. Or that you wanted to ask a clarifying question because you didn’t totally understand. Or that you wanted to share that the comment they made didn’t sit well with you and so you wanted to know what they really meant.

Now, I understand if conversations like this were easy for us then I wouldn’t even have to write this post today.

It requires us to feel comfortable in opening up, getting vulnerable, admitting we don’t know, or identifying a feeling. This is where The Parent Work ™ comes in.

All of us in one way or another have been conditioned out of being comfortable fully expressing ourselves, instead we were taught that our emotions were too much, or that when we did open up we were criticized, or ignored.

Our emotions and expression have been stunted within our childhood within our families.

Many of us have been taught it’s too much to be fully expressed. That you need to be polite, quiet, easy, agreeable.

This is because our parents didn’t know any better.

Maybe they were stuck to a way of being or belief that served them in their life so they automatically assumed that’s what you needed.

They wanted to protect us so they felt this was the best way for us to be safe. It could also be something you translated, but it was never what your parents wanted you to feel or think.

That’s the real true deeper work to really release what’s keeping us from naturally being Emotionally Attuned.

But I will say this, it can be as simple as committing to YOU.

Committing to facing and working through your emotional health to FREE yourself in each moment, so you can be and feel more connected, loved, understood, and present.

It’s one of the most powerful ways to relate to your life so that you live with little regret.

I use this practice daily.

Whether it’s a conversation where I feel like my brother judged me, or a friend misunderstood me, or I felt my husband didn’t care for me. I go back have a conversation and clear it for myself.

This practice allows me to stay in flow and feel connected within my relationships, to realize there’s another perspective, to admit I’m not always right (taming the ego), and most of all LIVE versus being stuck in my head.

In Love,