Transcript: Emotions and Muscles!

Welcome to the Us and Kids Podcast! I am excited to be your host, Jan Talen. I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a wife, a mom, and grandma.  

This Us and Kids podcast is about how to be married forever while you parent together!  You and I know this isn't an easy task. And that's why I encourage you to subscribe to Us and Kids in your favorite podcasting app. If, after this episode, or another one that you listen to you would be inclined to leave a review, that's always helpful to the other people that are wondering what's the best one to listen to. Your feedback is really helpful to them. 

And today we are going to talk some about effort because we're going to talk about emotions and muscles. Our last two podcasts have been such a pleasure because Mark VanDellen has taught us more about emotional intelligence, and how to become more emotionally smart, and why that's important. Today we're going to just continue that theme a little bit more. We are going to think about how we become more emotionally smart. What is that? When I think about it, I think of muscles, because I think of emotions becoming stronger as we use them. And that's why we like to develop really wise and good emotions, so that we can carry out our life in a confident and strong manner. And that is true as well when we live with just our physical body. The stronger our muscles are, (we don't have to be mega strong, just when they're strong enough for us to go about and do our daily lives), we then can live more into who we are and achieve what we want to do, because our muscles are strong enough and work well together. The same is true with our emotions.  When they are balanced in working together, then what we have to carry out in our lives, emotionally and relationally becomes smoother and easier to do. 

So, in this podcast, we're going to talk about what muscles are really important. How do they play a role in our lives, how to keep our "muscles" in shape and how to repair a "muscle", that's been damaged, too. All this talk I'm going to invite you to think both about your physical muscles, but also the word "muscle" could be  pulled out and put in or replaced with the word emotion. So what emotions are really important and play a significant role in our lives, how to keep our emotions in shape, and how to repair any emotion that has been damaged or overused. Everything I'm talking about today, can be applied to you as an adult, as well as to helping your kids develop their emotions in a healthy, balanced and strong way. 

But for fun, let's have some muscle trivia. I did a Google search and found out some really fun things I didn't know. So I wanted to share them with you. Did you know that the tiniest of our muscles is in our middle ear, controlling the vibration of our stirrup. Who knew it!?! Boy, I want that little muscle to work because I want to be able to hear clearly what is going on around me. And that little tiny muscle can set the tone for all sorts of things around us. Not only do we want your physical little muscle in your ear to work well so that you can assess danger and safety in conversation and interaction and other noises accurately. But, we also want you to pay attention to what is a tiny little emotion that often for you quickly tells you whether or not you were safe. I don't know which emotion that might be for you, but I want you to be aware of that often we have a very quiet emotion that we don't pay very much attention to. that quiet emotion is  often giving us a lot of feedback. 

If we have been abused in the past, that emotion might prompt this thought, "I'll be a little hyper aware, always keep looking. Never let your guard down. Don't tell anybody about this emotion. It's always on. And it makes it so that I can't even sleep deeply." This little muscle in our ear is also supposed to turn off when we go to sleep, except for when we hear our little one cry  or when we hear the doorbell rang. When we hear birds chirping outside, that muscle turns on, very quickly. And you it might be true for you as well, that you might have a muscle that you think it's all calmed down and you're just at peace when all of a sudden something tips it and there you go again. That's our tiniest muscle. 

Well, what about our biggest muscle? But the internet wouldn't give me that answer.They had all sorts of other types of muscles.  So here we go. Here are a variety of other things about muscles. Your longest muscle longest - not strongest but longest - is sartorius. I'm not sure I'm saying it right. It runs from your upper thigh, to the inside of your knee. This helps keep us balanced, make it so that we can walk and move and run and twist and turn smoothly and easily. Of course it has to work in combination with a whole bunch of other muscles. This is one that is the longest. So from an emotional place. I want you to think for a minute about one emotion that helps you move through your world, fluidly or freely. It helps your body and your experiences have a variety of things where you can move quickly in and quickly out, or where you need to shift from one emotion to another. What lets you do that? It's not necessarily strong in terms of power, but it's an emotion that helps you shift quickly and move around quickly. It might be... I don't have an emotional name for this, but it might be the ability to let things roll off your back. It might be the ability to change or see other people's perspective, or opinion and ability to be gracious and forgiving. Now,if  this muscle gets stuck the actual muscle gets stuck often then we have like a leg cramp or we just can't walk quite that way anymore, or that knee doesn't work just right. Emotionally that might be. I hold grudges. I compare myself, and everybody else up against a standard that nobody can reach. I'm able to complain about everything, but it keeps me from moving in places that otherwise might be interesting. Watch for yourself. Don't look at other people as you listen to this. Think about yourself. What's happening to your emotional muscles. And where are they catching you up so you can't just move freely from one space to another to another. 

Our next emotion. It's the widest of the muscles and is the latissimus, which I believe usually we shortened to be your Lats. It runs from the lower and middle of your back to  the inside of your upper arm bone. Interesting. Wide to narrow. This muscle helps us stand up straight. It helps hold all of our back in line. Well, what's the deal with this? There is a little story about my dad who suffered from Parkinson's disease. And I took him to my chiropractor and began to get him into that space of care a little bit more. And when he climbed in the car after his first appointment, he started to cry. He was with my brother and my brother, not very experienced with chiropractic care, though the chiropractor had hurt him. My dad was crying because he could see over the dashboard and out over the front of the car. He hadn't been able to do that for years. Now some of this might not have been an adjustment of just his back but also his neck. However, what I really want you to hear here is that when we can see the world around us it gives us courage and it gives us joy. Joy that my dad felt as he could see the world again. It didn't make him stronger. It didn't take our concerns away, but it helped his perspective. So, this is what I want you to think about in your emotions, what helps you stand up straight. Pay attention to that self talk about “ I'm no good or I'm okay." "I can do this, or I can do that", and build that strength of standing up straight talk. 

I told my granddaughter once ...I think we were visiting her school when she was a kindergartener. She was talking about being scared. And I said, "Oh honey, I'm always scared."  And she looked at me, because I was doing what I was teaching her to do. Stand up straight. Look forward. Walk into that fear, with confidence that you will figure it out. She was worried about going to kindergarten, but grandma was a little worried about her going to kindergarten, too. And so, I was facing my fear of holding her hand and encouraging her to face her fear and see that we were going to be okay. 

This is our widest muscle, and often fear wants to cripple us, curl us up and take that courage away that would help us look up and around to see that we can do and what we need to do. We have lots of skills, and we're going to use them. It builds optimism and it builds self confidence. 

Our next muscle is the strongest muscle. I thought this is gonna be your glut, or your quads or something like that. Right? Wrong! It's the masseter. It's the muscle on each side of your jaw. And when it works with three other muscles it creates forces up to 200 pounds!! Who thinks that?? Those muscles in our mouth, help us hear and communicate. Just think of that! Two of the things that are most crucial in life are in your jaw. The ability to keep ourselves physically strong and emotionally well are in our jaw because communication is crucial to being well connected, which feeds into our physical, emotional and spiritual strength.  

So, what emotions might match up? I'm going to work three different groups together because there are three muscles working here. So I might think I could have anger, determination, persistence, or confidence in one group, and any blend of those. I'm going to talk about anger. I got angry - this is going to be a strong, powerful bite at 200 pounds kind of sound coming out of my mouth and my body until I blend it with kindness.  And with kindness my anger doesn't chomp so hard, it moves a little slower. It looks and considers other flavors and things that are going on. And then I can blend that in with gentleness, and with self control. Now I have anger, done with kindness, and with gentleness, which is very similar to self control. This brought about clarity and direction about what I wanted to do with that anger  and what I wanted the end outcome to be. And it keeps, when we do it that way, just like that muscle. It's strong, and it's got a lot of energy and power in it in terms of what's going to go into my body, and what's going to move out of my body. It keeps the relationship connected. While you chew on the experience, or the situation and change it, swallow it, spit it out, influence your world. Just to think about what you take in and what you chew on. Consider whether or not it's good to swallow, or whether or not it's something that you should quietly put in a napkin or down the garbage disposal. Not everything that we take in, not every emotion we have, we need to keep.  Some of them we need to just let go of.  

Our most active muscles are our eye muscles. Did you know that?? It's because they blink so much and they have to move all around all the time. Clearly they help us see the world around us by being accurate. We want to be sure that what we think we saw is accurate.  So, we might grab the binoculars for me. For me,  I'll try to blink and move my contact around a little bit, because we don't want false information coming into us. 

An emotion that often works like this - is very, very active in the background - we don't even notice when they blink. It might be like anxiety, always working, and always watching. Useful one when we let it sleep. You know, anxiety is always working, and always watching, being a little bit hyper aware, taking in all sorts of information and making sure that we are seeing  - very much like what our eye muscles do. Just like our eyes need to rest from time to time, it's wise for anxiety to rest as well. 

What about our hardest working muscle? That muscle would be our heart. It is also the most crucial muscle that we have because without it the rest of the muscles can't function at all. How do you stay vibrantly, emotionally alive? What is the muscle/emotion that is the hardest working and crucial for every aspect of living? That emotion, I would argue, is the love emotion. It is often the hardest to use. And yet the most important to us. And when we use the emotion of love as well as the act of loving, or caring, it makes the rest of our muscles, the rest of our emotions, move in ways that really impact our world for good. It's not always an easy muscle to use. And yet it is the only one that really brings power and emphasis into the actions of the other muscles. I encourage you to make sure that your heart muscle, your ability to love - freely unconditionally - yourself, the Lord God, and those around you: your kids, your spouse, your neighbors, people you don't like. Practice doing that in unconditional and generous ways because it makes the rest of your muscles and emotions, settle in and work efficiently as well. 

 One other muscle - the most unusual muscle is the tongue. It's the only muscle that can actively contract and extend and is not connected with a bone on each end. And I would like to suggest that this most unusual muscle would be, emotionally, a unique part of you. It's what interacts with the rest of you, just like the tongue communicates. It digests, it chews, it takes things in, decides whether or not to keep it and put it into your being, or not. And it's also true for parts of our personalities. All of us have different tastes about what we like and what we don't like -  food wise.

We also have different things that we'd like or we don't like as a part of our personality. Some of us love loudness. Some of us like soft. Some of us like fast and furious. And some of us plain and slow. Some of us love speed or unexpected spontaneous things - take on the adventure?? And others want it planned out and don't want to go outside that plan. Thank you very much.

You see, the tongue, the part of you that makes you uniquely you is really important because without that you can't really live as well. This tongue provides and works with your most powerful muscle,  your jaw muscles. It feeds the rest of your body by what is unique to you, and learning how to value that and appreciate it. So, how to protect it? As you look at who you are. and realize that you need it, and it's wise to protect your own personality.

Now there are some things that we put into our bodies via our tongues in our mouths, that are not the wisest, I might say. Maybe too much sugar, maybe to much alcohol.  Whatever usually is too much, and whatever is not enough, can harm the rest of our muscles and the rest of our well being. The same is true when we are looking at our tongue muscle as being the guard, or the space that lets things into our personality and into our thoughts which builds out how we see ourselves. This, of course, then impacts how we feel about ourselves. Just like food. If you taste it and you don't like it, you don't necessarily have to eat it. Those words of:  "I'm not worthy. I'm not worth it. I'm just not good enough. I'm not rich enough or smart enough or savvy enough." All of those "enoughs, and I'm not..."...Be careful how you judge yourself. Eating those things begins to erode all of the other emotional muscles in your body. But so can the "too much's".   "I'm so great. I never do anything wrong. It's not my fault, someone else's always to blame." Be careful and make sure that the balance of what you're taking in emotionally and mentally, socially, and electronically is giving good strength to your muscles so that you are not torn and conflicted. But instead, that your muscles/your emotions can work well together.

Let's tell a little story.

Sally is married to Bill. Bill likes his routines to vacation and he'll do things on the weekend but Sally has learned that these go best for Bill, if he knows the plan and they do the plan. This isn't' a slam on Bill. This is a part of his personality. Sally is a bit more unstructured. She doesn't mind the planning but would find it sometimes more fun if their weekends could take on the unexpected as well. Like when Julie and John invite them over for a bonfire, but the plan was to stay home. So Sally would like Bill to go with her. She would fall a little more in love with him (the heart muscle), if they would do something a little unusual. But Bill says, "No, he's fine". And he is fine if she goes alone. That creates a little bit of anxiety inside of Sally. So she's working her heart/Love muscle every day. It's not hard because she's used to it. She's grown to love Bill as he is. And she understands that's why he wants her to go to the bonfire alone. For him it's more loving that she goes alone, than it is to force her love for  him while he sits around waiting for her to be done so they can go.

While Sally does wish some time Bill would use his muscles, those long ones and those wide ones and stretch them a little bit more so he could experience a little bit more of the world, but at the same time she knows that she does need to use her emotional muscles and go to the bonfire. Being alone is not necessarily good for her. She just needs more people and more people interaction around her to keep her thoughts moving, her optimism high, her sense of security just a little bit more stable. 

Do you hear  how that works? They're doing a little bit of a muscular, emotional love dance here as they figure out how to give to the other person, while also taking care of themselves. They've been together for a while and so they are used to this dance. And they're not distressed by it because they can see that both are acting out of love. 

Now let's think for a second about our kids, because they're all born with their physical muscular set. So, emotionally,  it's just like teaching them to do tummy time, or to rollover and then to sit and to crawl and to stand and to walk and climb and jump and skip, do somersaults, kick balls, throw balls . along with eating real food or drink from sippy cups to using real cups and using silverware. We teach them all those things by demonstrating how we do it and by giving them the right tools so they can do it. We try to give them the right size for their little hands. And then we think we don't have to teach them how to do emotions!?! They're watching us. And they want to learn. They want to learn how to laugh and giggle, but they also want to learn how to cry, and how to stop crying. They want to learn how to calm down. They want to learn how to understand and cooperate, they want to learn how to have courage to try new things. They want to figure out when something's funny. And when they're in trouble. They're gonna learn that from you as you show it to them and teach them about it. It's our emotional interaction with them, that helps them know what emotional muscle to use. That's how we encourage them, or berate them or nag them, or teach them, or help them. That helps it to develop their personality and their go-to emotions. Let's not be too uptight about this. We're just helping them become aware. Just like we use certain exercises to build up certain muscles. We will help them do certain actions and thoughts to build up those emotions.

So, to become more calm, more quickly we might practice using courage in the face of fears. We might practice balancing our optimism over our worries. Using our thoughts and planning to reassure ourselves in the face of change. In order to settle down anxiety and anger, we might blend it with prayer. We might exercise checking in with truth and using healthy self-evaluation. We might intentionally use skills, thoughts and emotions that build courage and confidence even when we have to default to Plan B or Plan C.

You see, to keep these emotional muscles in shape, just like our muscles, we have to use them daily. And we need to intentionally practice and strengthen them. Like I said, all things function around your heart. It's the only muscle that impacts everything else and that love matters to the rest of those emotions. When your emotions need some repair, take a breath and rest. This keeps your heart alive, which is going to feed the rest of the emotions. So let your heart settle down.

Let it calm down and come to a normal heart rate, so that you can once again look at the optimism and the positives. Notice that things are okay. And as you do you'll be able to look around a little bit, and see how you can compensate in places where you became too uptight or too angry or too distressed. You know, my knee was going bad, maybe two years ago, and bit by bit we figured out that it was really my hip that went bad first. That was wrecking my sleep, wrecking my overall strength. Emotionally, it was like this, my patience had gone bad. And so my perspective went off and I became more anxious and more tense and more short fused. I started to blame others and myself and push people away. I didn't want them to see that my body was not cooperating very well. When I finally figured out that it was my hip, my perspective of hope grew. I began to work with a physical therapist who gave me more courage and motivation to work on my balance and make my knee work. You see, as I changed my perspective, through the help of someone else, that also helped me realize that I could get rebalanced and become strong again. 

This is true for our emotional strength as well. When you can sort of nail down what your perspective and self talk is then your emotions can move back into the normal and healthy zone.  Now you can begin to figure out a path out. Do it slowly and intentionally.

 I'm sure you're noticing, just like we have that variety of muscles and rely on them, we want you to have a good variety of emotions that you use every day. So, here's your assignment, make a short list of those emotions that you experience every day. Do it for about a week and see what you notice, what emotions show up often, what showed up that you never thought was there. If you're a little puzzled, then either use a printable that's attached here, or hop on the internet and just say show me a list of emotions, You'll find a number of different drawings or lists out there. Notice what emotions you have, and what emotions you would like to have. And just like muscles, the more emotions you have working well within you, the stronger, more confident, more gracious and more loving you can be.

So, I'm cheering for you  - grow some emotional strength here and let it all work together because it will help you. 

And that will help your marriage, which will help your parenting, which will then help your marriage, which will then help you. And even then you can look at your family and say together we grow stronger because we are well balanced with our emotions as a unit.

Okay, I've chatted about this a long time. So, once again, thank you for joining and listening to me today. I'm so glad that you did!

You know, our course about DNA for Fun Communications Course has a whole segment on Managing the Emotional Me. There we don't talk about emotions as muscles, but we certainly talk about emotional development, and that winds its way through the entire course. It's so crucial to how we connect and how we develop our little ones. They encourage you to take a look at that on the Us and Kids website, encourage you to grab the printable and enjoy conversations and just grow awareness of what emotions are important and bring value in your relationship. Notice, also which emotions would be very wise to add. 

Take good care of everyone around you. 

With Love and with joy, I look forward to talking to you again, probably next week!

 Bye bye.