Social Media Friend Drama: IME Reverse Your Insulin Resistance Challenge Week 5

Coach: How did you feel when she blocked you on IG?

Teen: “I don’t know.”

Coach: Can you describe it? Where is it in your body? What color is it?

Teen: “I don’t know really. I just felt upset.”

Coach: Why did you feel upset?

Teen: “Because I just did. I have no idea why she blocked me. I didn’t do anything. I can’t think of any reason why she blocked me.”

Coach: What do you do when you feel upset?

Teen: “I was doing so great before she blocked me and then had so many more cravings for food and ate so much and felt out of control again.”

Defining and Accepting Emotions

In IME Community, teens are learning the skill to allow emotions instead of numbing out with food, how to show up as a friend to themselves first, and how to show up and where to put their attentional focus on social media.

I love helping teens to stop self-judging, to have the self-confidence to achieve their health goals and create a big magic dream for their future.

So, what is an emotion or feeling? It’s a vibration in your body created by your thoughts. Your thoughts create your feelings.

I can’t believe it’s already Week 5: “I Gotta Feeling” of the Reverse Your Insulin Resistance Challenge!

This week is for all of us, social media friend drama or life drama.

This week, I’m coaching you to give yourself permission to allow all your human feelings and emotions.

If you are an adult, don’t you wish you had learned these skills when you were a teen?

Week 5 Reverse Your Insulin Resistance Challenge Plan

Are you ready? Let’s go!

Mood Ring Monday! Do you remember mood rings? I had several that turned my fingers green. I was obsessed with checking in on the current color of my many mood rings to find out what my mood was at any given moment and if my many mood rings were in sync.

Mood rings are a perfect metaphor for how our culture externalizes our emotions. It’s just like our society to teach us to watch the changing color of a mood ring instead of giving us permission and teaching the skills to allow us to get internal, check in with ourselves throughout the day and create emotional awareness.

What’s your mood this Monday?

Try on a metaphor Tuesday! As someone who has had to learn the skill of allowing my emotions, and as a pediatrician for 25 years, and a Mom of 20, 17, and 14 year-old humans, and mostly from what I’ve learned through the amazingness of coaching teens, I know it’s super tough for all of us to describe how we are feeling.

One tool I use when I coach teens who are stuck is to create a metaphor for their feelings and emotions.

What’s a metaphor that works for you to describe how you are feeling? Calm like in a swimming pool, sad like a weighted blanket is on you, excited like it’s your birthday?

I’m sure with school starting no one feels excited. Well, I always did. Nerd alert.

Welcome all emotions Wednesday! In our society and culture, we are not taught the skills or even given permission to feel our human emotions. That leads us to think there’s something wrong when we perceive a negative emotion, so we end up reacting, resisting, or avoiding, instead of allowing all emotions to pass through us, so we can be present in the moments of our lives.

Whether you are resisting, avoiding or reacting, your emotions are there under the surface or buried deep.

When you learn to allow and even welcome all your human emotions, you find a freedom you never had. You find freedom from buffering with food.

Ask yourself, “What would it feel like if I welcomed all my human emotions?”

Don’t ride the Thought Train Thursday! Thoughts create your feelings, but that doesn’t mean you have to do anything other than recognize feelings and how emotions come up in your body. Don’t overthink your feelings. Don’t spend a lot of time chasing down the thought train of what’s creating your feelings. Later, you will be able to do more thought awareness, but recognition of feelings is key at the beginning.

How are you feeling Friday? When was the last time someone asked you, “How are you feeling?”

Did they truly listen and care about your answer? You can listen to yourself and care about your answer.

“I care.”- This is a super cheesy line Luke Skywalker says in Star Wars. It’s Mark Hamill’s super cheesy delivery that gets me every time.

So, I will ask you on this find Friday,

How are you feeling?

Permission to Feel Saturday! Do you get critical and judge yourself for feeling sad, anxious, tired, disappointed?

Recently, I’ve been feeling disappointment, but instead of allowing the feeling of disappointment, I was depleting my energy stores by resisting it. I was making feeling disappointment mean that I was disappointed in myself and that didn’t feel believable.

So, through coaching, I created a space, took some breaths and decided to say to myself, “I feel disappointed.” Then, I left it at that. It felt empty and gray and hollow to me. I just accepted I felt the human emotion of disappointment and didn’t make it mean anything else.

Ask yourself, “How can I give myself permission to feel all of my emotions and not judge myself for having a human emotion?”

Sunday Mindfulness. I coach teens to recognize what they cause and control, which is mainly deciding how they want to show up and where they put their attentional focus, and that all feelings are part of the human journey and there’s nothing going wrong when they perceive a negative emotion.

What would it feel like to respond to your emotions instead of reacting, avoiding or resisting? What mindfulness practices help you calm your mind so you can respond instead of reacting, avoiding or resisting?