Release Relationship Blocks and Baggage with Natalie Lue

A Personal Note From Orion

In this super inspiring episode, we’re going to teach you how to release excess baggage so that you can break habits that affect your relationships and self-esteem. I always love an approach that focuses on working on yourself and transforming into a better you.

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity. This also applies to inner work. If you want to transform into something better, you must be willing to do the work. How you show up will be so much brighter if you release all that old baggage.

Whenever I work with clients, I work on their internal energy because when you change your vibration, you heal. When you love and celebrate yourself you can become more successful. And when you’re happy with yourself, you attract the right people.

To talk more about this I invited Natalie Lue. She’s an author, speaker, and podcaster. She’s great at helping people-pleasers, perfectionists and over thinkers tidy up their emotional baggage so they can enjoy, love, care, trust, and respect themselves. Natalie is extraordinary and I’m sure you are going to enjoy this episode tremendously. Without further ado, on with the show.

In this Episode

[00:57] – Orion introduces Natalie Lue, an author, speaker, and podcaster.
[04:49] – Natalie shares that she started blogging 16 years ago, she blogs her stories and anecdotes about her life and struggles in relationships.
[09:33] – Natalie explains how the mind works and why people can experience trauma, whether they are aware of it or not.
[14:43] – How do you clear emotional baggage?
[19:55] – “What’s the baggage behind it?” The question Natalie asks when she feels a strong or negative emotion. This allows her to acknowledge and heal.
[23:25] – Orion shares a story of how she responded to an old lady screaming at her while she was walking down the street with her husband and 7-month-old baby.
[30:08] – Natalie shares tips and recommendations on how to handle your emotions.
[35:08] – Natalie shares how journaling helps her pour and unload her feelings. She writes when she feels overwhelmed, anxious, or feels that she can’t explain.
[40:16] – Natalie shares her wisdom for couples going through hardships during this tough time of the pandemic.
[48:18] – Visit Natalie Lue’s website baggagereclaim.com to check out her blog, podcast, books, and courses to live and love with self-esteem and freedom from your past

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hey, Natalie. Welcome to Stellar Life Podcast. It’s a pleasure having you. Thank you so much for being here.

Oh, thank you, Orion. It’s lovely to be here as well.

Thank you. Before we start, can you share a little bit about your passion and why you chose to help people release their old baggage?

Well, as is the way, there’s a lot of us who get into this work of helping people with their lives; it’s where you’re coming from yourself. And so back in the day, sort of the late 90s/early 2000s, I struggled with forming healthy relationships, liking myself, and not burning myself out at work. And then, I had a health crisis. It was at the same time that I was also involved in an affair with a co-worker, and everything came crashing down. And I was forced to take a really good long, hard look at myself and what I was doing. And what was interesting is like a lot of people in these situations, you think “I’m confident” or “I’m smart,” or “I think I like myself.”

Actually, I didn’t like myself very much at all. And I would think that I was really good at relationships and was like, “I love commitment. I love relationships.” In reality, I only wanted to be in a relationship with people who either didn’t want a relationship or who absolutely were not the people that I should be in a relationship with. So, in looking to heal my body, I stumbled into healing my relationships and my self-esteem at the same time. I was working my way through that and talking aloud about it on my blog at the time. I’ve been blogging for coming up to 16 years.

Wow.

Yeah, so it’s a long time. I feel like a geriatric blogger, I always say. I started off with a personal blog in 2004. I immediately had people who were interested in me just sharing stories and anecdotes about, you know, life here in London and my struggles with relationships. What’s interesting is when you can read this stuff back to yourself, you notice patterns. When I started talking about what I was experiencing and what I was letting go of, people were like, “please keep talking more about this,” and “please teach us more about this.” And here I am, 16 years later. I really felt called to speak more openly about the effects of feeling abandoned and the experiences that you go through as a child, such as trauma or confused beliefs. And I felt called to talk about that because I thought, “if I can help at least one person avoid what I’ve been through. Or if I could help one person, get out of what I’ve been through, then I’d feel like I was paying it forward in some way.” And here I am, all these years later.

Our subconscious files everything that we've been through in life. We don't know the overwhelming entirety of its content, but it's all linked up. Click To Tweet

So, you said you didn’t know that you don’t like yourself, and you didn’t know that you were great at relationships. What was the ‘aha’ moment of “I don’t really love myself”? What did you do to heal that?

I think there were a couple of things which was I was seeing a guy, and I say that very loosely for about four or five months. It’s one of those where it starts off, and you feel like, “This is amazing!” And then it was really just struggling along. And I realized that it wasn’t working, and I got on the phone with him. And the usual, “You’re so great, blah, blah, blah, but I’m not ready for a relationship.” And I heard myself saying, “What makes you think I’d be the type of woman who will put up with being in this kind of situation?” And as I was saying it, you know when you sort of feel like everything shifted around you? People sometimes talk about their life flashing before their eyes. Suddenly, I could see myself across a lot of relationships, putting up with all sorts of stuff. I could hear myself in my head going, “He knows that you would put up with this because you have been that person.” And that really set off this chain reaction.

Sometimes we humans, we don’t realize how we sometimes delude ourselves, and it takes something or someone to come along and shake us out of that. For instance, when we find ourselves in these Corona times that we are in, I will hear from people who be like, “I’m totally fine not being in a relationship.” Or “I’m totally fine on my own.” Or “I like myself.” And then we’re in these Corona times where we have this social distancing. There’s all this upheaval, and suddenly, all the things that built their identity around become destabilized. Suddenly, it’s like, “Actually, I am really not comfortable being on my own.” “I actually don’t know or like myself.” “I spent all my life at work, and I don’t know what to do with myself now that I’m stuck in the house all the time.”

People have to face their demons and deal with things we have never dealt with before. One thing that happened to me lately is I get floods of childhood memories. Good and bad. I don’t know what it is, but there’s so many, and it’s like never before. I think something is clearing. I don’t know.

Yeah, I think so. Our bodies remember everything. Our nervous system remembers everything. Like it’s recorded everything that we’ve been through before. And so, when we find ourselves in a sort of a “shock situation.” And this is a shock. Our lives have changed dramatically in the space of a few weeks. So, our body has experienced a shock as well. I’m not necessarily saying we are all traumatized because some people are handling things differently. Still, we are experiencing trauma, whether we’re aware of it or not.

I think it was also because I grew up in Israel, and as a small child, I experienced many wars and terror attacks and all that. When I was a small child during the Gulf War, we had to wear gas masks for like a month and a half. Not all day, but every time there was an alarm, we had to go to the sealed room. So, I guess this situation is bringing up memories. Maybe that is the link for me.

Yeah, because that’s the way that our mind works. If you imagine in detective or cop shows and they’ve got the evidence locker room, and it’s like, filing cabinets and shelves upon shelves just packed full of boxes of evidence. That’s what our subconscious is like. It’s filed everything that we’ve been through in life. But we don’t know the overwhelming majority of the contents of what’s in there. It’s all linked up, and it makes all these connections. I call this batch filing. Certain feelings are filed with certain types of events, only when we’re in certain situations. And it could take a very unique type of situation like what you’re in now, where certainly it’s like things have maybe been suppressed. Because of the situation that you’re in, they’ve been activated, and they’re coming up. Still, you don’t necessarily have a context for them because it’s not a like for like situation. However, your body sees and feels a connection to that, even if you don’t consciously feel that connection. It’s quite fascinating.

Whether it’s a friend, family member, or romantic partner, setting healthy boundaries can strengthen bonds between each other.

It’s pretty powerful. I think this is a good time to work on clearing our emotional baggage because this transition to the post-COVID-19 world is not going to be easy. And we are in a place where all of us are creating a new world. Interactions between people are going to be different. I think people are going to be more suspicious of each other. It’s going to take time to get used to the new normal, and we want to build a new normal from a place of healing rather than a place of struggle.

That’s so beautifully said. When this first happened, I remember speaking on my own podcast and saying, “Us, humans, we’ve needed to pause, to slow down, to feel, to think about certain things, but we didn’t want to, we didn’t want to slow down. We don’t want to pause. We want to do any of these things. And then this is like a hard stop. A hard reset. And all the things that we have resisted doing somehow are going to come up.” I will talk to people who really need to have a dating break or a dating hiatus. I’m not saying for an inordinate amount of time, like years or something like that. It’s not like taking a vow of celibacy. Perhaps sometimes saying, “Geez for three months, take a rest.” Like, no text and random people that you just started chatting with on Tinder or Bumble or whatever. Just put a pause on that note, catching up with exes or whatever, a total break from dating to focus on you and your life and just calm your body down, including your mind. And many cannot do that. They resist that, and they will start a course, and a week or two in, they are on some app, or they’re hooking up with their ex or whichever else. And then you have something like this come along. And of course, if you choose to, you might decide to do video dates or whatever.

But actually, I’ve heard from people over this last one, saying, “You know what? I feel like I finally have the permission I wouldn’t give myself before to do what I needed to do and to face what I need to face. I’m a great believer that our past experiences, relationships, and feelings – basically our emotional baggage – contains messages, clues, and guidance about who we are, how to heal, and who we can be. But these are the very things that we actually resist looking at.” It’s like, I don’t look at my past. And I’m not saying we have to go on some massive excavation. But if we don’t even look at the thing that is practically smacking us in the face going, “Please deal with me, so that I don’t have to continue taking over your life.” Basically, it’s creating self-destruction. We just avoid all of that. And now, whether we do it now or in the coming weeks or months, we have to face that stuff. In some way, we all have to face things that we didn’t know we needed to address or change in some way.

Right. How do we do this detective work? How do we identify, and how do we clear our emotional baggage?

Something I suggest to people is you can take any topic you want. But I think that the two particular good places to start are anger or something that is a bit of a hot issue in your life. Let’s say that we are really bothered, angry, stressed, frustrated, resentful, disappointed, whatever it is about something or someone. So, it’s not that that situation or that person isn’t whatever we think it might be. It’s not that we shouldn’t feel how we feel. But we wouldn’t respond emotionally, mentally, physically, even spiritually in the way that we do if we didn’t already have something in our baggage. If we didn’t have something in our past, that was coming up for us at that moment.

It’s squeezed out of us. It’s like if you are lemon and you’re being squeezed, you’ll have lemon juice. And if you’re orange and you’ve been squeezed then comes orange juice.

I love that. People think feelings are like, “I can just stuff them down, and then they die off.” No, they don’t. They’re there. They just seep out in other ways. And so, what we tend to do as humans is like, “I can have all of this anger and resentment, and frustration, and craving or whatever it might be that I’m carrying around with me. And I could just pile and pile and pile it up.” But we can only carry around so much. At some point, it becomes too much to carry the excess that we have to offload along the way. So, it’s why I ask people when they experience anger or negative emotions. Actually, those emotions are just as valid because they’re giving us clues about whatever it is that we need to be or do or have. But to say, what’s the baggage behind it? If we feel sort of disproportionately affected by something. If we’re freaked out by somebody? Having boundaries, if we’re freaked out over disappointment, if we feel overwhelmed because we’re in the situation we’re in right now, it doesn’t take away from what we’re going through in the present.

But what is going on in our past that also reflects what we’re in? So, for instance, boundaries are a really good example of this. I will hear from so many people that they do want to not just experience more love, care, trust, and respect for themselves, but they want to give it. But these are the same people who really have an issue with batteries. And it’s not because it’s like, “I hate boundaries because I want to do bad things to people.” No. They seem to feel really uncomfortable with boundaries because they think it’s bad. They think that there’s something wrong with you if somebody has to have boundaries or maybe boundaries are selfish. When that comes up, and you feel uncomfortable about saying no or somebody else saying no to you, and maybe you feel angry or resentful of disappointed, what does that reflect in your past? Who does that remind you of? If you can’t think of who? What does it remind you of? Where else have you felt similarly? Even if you think, “Well, that doesn’t make sense that that’s the thing that pops into my head.”

That’s the thing that is reminding you off. That’s why you’re responding in the way that you do. And then we can look at like, “Well, how can I evolve my response?” I’m a good example of this. I had negative associations with criticism and feedback because of my upbringing. My mom could be very critical of me in my teens. And after a while, I couldn’t distinguish between her trying to give me loving feedback, and yes, giving me very inappropriate criticism. So, I got into adulthood, and as somebody expressed feedback and what I perceive as criticism, I would basically respond like a teenage girl inside and sometimes externally as well. I treated these people like my mother. After a while, as I became more conscious as I started really connecting with myself, I became aware of “Hold on a second, how old am I right now? Why am I behaving and feeling like I’m 12 or 14 when I’m 28?” And it was making these connections and going, “Okay, so this is happening right now. But what does it remind me of in the past?”

Our past, experiences, relationships, feelings, emotional baggage contains clues and guidance about who we are, how to heal, and how we can be. Click To Tweet

And then I could be like, “But it’s not the same situation. This person’s not my mom. I’m not that kid anymore. How can I respond differently that would make me 28 instead of 14?” And these were really big game-changers for me because then it made everything so much less personal. In the past, I would get so triggered by any criticism, even if it was very useful feedback. And it wasn’t really criticism at all even if it made me feel so wounded. But as soon as I became aware of “I behave like everybody’s my mom,” that was a game-changer for me. My relationship with criticism dramatically changed. And I’ve applied that same attitude across the board to anything in my life. When Coronavirus really kicked up a notch, and there was a lot of talk about this, it could be like the death toll and the economic impact and that type of thing. Schools are closing, and this was like, maybe about a week before schools closed here in England. I had terrible anxiety for about 48 hours. And when I really started to try to get grounded, I was like, “Okay, well, there are obvious reasons why I could feel anxious right now. But what else is coming up for me? Where else have I felt this way? What does it remind me of?”

It reminded me of other times in my life in the distant past when I got out of control, and reminded myself, “Hold on, like you’re not back there anymore. And you can respond differently.” I speak back to myself so that I don’t end up freaking out even more. I sometimes think when our baggage comes up, we just go into autopilot. We just start heaping, throwing more stuff at it that makes us feel even worse. If we can recognize, “My past is coming up. Was this about the childhood memories that I put away?” You’re making a judgment about you. As these come up, you’re holding the space for whichever memory comes up. As humans, we do like to go positive or negative. Still, whichever memory it is, it’s like there’s a curiosity like, “What’s the what’s this about?” rather than somebody else might experience that and be like, “Oh my gosh, what’s wrong with me? And what kind of weirdo am I, that I am this way?”

So, I think that in any given situation where we find ourselves feeling a very strong emotional reaction, we might term it as “negative.” So, what’s the baggage behind it? That’s the fundamental question that I probably ask on every single podcast that I do. It allows us to return to who we are, and to acknowledge, “My past is coming up in some way, shape, or form. And now I have an opportunity, even if it’s a teeny tiny bit to do a little bit of healing here.” That’s what we have in any given situation. Our relationships help us to heal, grow, and learn. Not just our romantic relationships, all of our relationships. When we encounter an issue with a person, we have an opportunity to evolve our response even in a teeny tiny way. So that’s just as a little bit of healing. We don’t have to get rid of all of our emotional baggage because we’re always accumulating. Not necessarily in the same ways that we have in the past, but there’s no such thing as being baggage-free. But I think that when we have that awareness of “This stuff is coming up for me, how can I respond to it a bit differently here?” Healing ourselves just becomes a part of our everyday life. The thing I have to remind people of is, there’s no such thing as being like, “I’m reaching a destination of being healed.” Because that’s not how human beings work. It’s like healing can be a part of our day to day or of our relationships. Once we become aware that we are humans, you have baggage that comes up in various situations, and we can respond differently.

You were talking about responding differently. I had something that happened about a week ago where I was walking down the street carrying my baby, I have a seven-month-old, with my husband. We had a really lovely walk, and we took some funny videos. Then, down the street came this crazy old lady wearing a mask, and she started screaming, “Why aren’t you wearing a mask? I wish you would all get sick!” It was crazy, and I was wearing my little baby, and I don’t want to be a bad example. So, I just yelled back at her, and I said, “I’m wishing you healing, and God bless you.” I just said good words. But when I went home, it shook me, and in my heart of hearts, I did want to punch her in the face and be like, “How dare you?”

The mama bear comes out.

Yeah, I am such a mama bear. Especially when I’m wearing David or when he’s near me, everybody has to be careful.

But also, it can feel very violating in most situations. Somebody’s bellowing at you in the streets.

Yeah. That was even before we were ordered to put masks in grocery stores, not in the street. If you’re walking down the street and exercising, you don’t need to wear a mask. She was obviously mentally ill, but it’s still shaken me from the inside. Even though I gave her good words, when I came home, I was still shocked, and I felt this dark – I guess what happened to me felt like, “How can someone wish such bad things on a stranger and on a baby?” That was mind-boggling for me.

I think at that moment, some people like, for instance, in that situation, she is clearly very triggered by what is going on around her. And I think that sometimes people kind of lose themselves. And they say something absolutely outrageous when you really look at it in the cold light of day. And I think when you’re in a situation, and you try to choose love at that moment because you think, “That’s not who I am.” You’re not somebody who would do the same thing as her, so you wouldn’t turn around and just start screaming at somebody in the streets and wishing it on them. But at that moment, you were like, “You know what? I’m going to just say kind words.” It’s actually not necessarily how you feel, because what you felt first, and understandably so, was anger. Amongst that anger as well, I think, is a level of fear. But also, when you feel shaken that way, it’s the shock of that person’s behavior.

I think the shock came after because when that happened, I didn’t feel much. When I came home and processed what just happened, I was, “Oh my god, this just happened.”

At that moment, as you say, you don’t necessarily have time to feel or think too much, and you just do what you need to do. When you sort of felt like it was a near-death experience, or you think about “What could have happened?” You suddenly start playing things over in your mind. And then in your head, you’re gone. “She said, what?” Now, as you’re playing this, it’s like when you have those conversations in the shower?

Understand everyone handles trauma differently. What may work for someone may not work for you. What may work for you may not work for others.

“I wish I’d done this and that.”

Yeah. And that’s how you can actually end getting fired up. It’s like when we’re imagining a situation that’s sort of doom and gloom. Our mind doesn’t distinguish between what’s actually happening and what we’re imagining. Sometimes, when we’re working ourselves up and replaying things over in our minds, it actually stimulates the same emotional responses as if we were going through that experience with the person. I had somebody really treat me quite appallingly and in a professional situation. I remember, very similar to you, you get that sort of composure, and you somehow managed to hold yourself together. Still, you really want to tear them up deep inside. But outwardly, you’re polite. That happened on a Thursday, and it took until Tuesday for me to stop shaking. I was actually shaking for a good three/four days afterward.

There was a lot of release going on.

Yeah. I mean, this person basically was racist towards me in a professional environment. And she was in a bit of a similar fashion to your story where she clearly did not express any remorse. Other people would be like, “Oh my gosh. I can’t believe I just turned around and said that. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that. Please forgive me.” But instead, she’s just kicking off at you. There’s a part of us that will say, “But I didn’t deserve that. Why would they speak to me like that? That’s so unfair. This is just not warranted.” And so, you go over and over, “I should have said this. I can’t believe that.” I think it brought up a lot of stuff from childhood as well, which was sort of a sense of unfairness for me. So yeah, it took three or four days until my husband turned to me. He said, “Look, I totally get why you would be upset and angry about what’s happened. However, I’m seeing the effect, and I know you can’t just switch off like that and forget. I think that you also need to look at how you can choose to park this.” The following morning, I got up, and the shaking had stopped. I was steering myself away from replaying the event over and over in my mind and thinking about it. It’s like what we were talking about before, to set that intention. I’ve had three or four days of this. I can’t continue on with my body like this, I’m choosing to let this go. And I’m going to keep choosing. And this is where we take ourselves, you know, we zig instead of zag, zag instead of zig so we don’t do what we did before.

These days, I think all of us are experiencing so many emotions. In a sense, we’re all grieving and old way of life that is probably going to change. There are five stages of grief by Elisabeth Kubler. The first is denial, and then it’s anger, bargaining, depression, and then acceptance. They don’t always necessarily happen in the same order, and they can all happen at once. What are some of your best tools for handling emotions?

I always recommend this to people. Of course, everybody has a different relationship with writing. But journaling can save you in what can feel like your darkest moments. It can help you make sense of how you’re feeling on a day to day basis, and help you understand how to take care of yourself. It doesn’t have to be some war and peace, an enormous novel that you’re writing. Even if you spend a minute or two going, “Today, I felt this, this, and this. And this was where I struggled today, or actually, this was really good for me today.” You spend a week or two doing that you will see patterns in your life. And you will start to notice “that thing sets me off” or “that person sets me off.” I had recommended that to somebody a few weeks back because they were feeling so triggered, and sort of feeling very out of control. And I said, “Look, I’m not saying like it’s a fix-all.” I think sometimes we can kind of have this attitude: “If it’s not going to fix everything, I’m not going to do it.” But I say to people, have a go at keeping like a feeling’s diary, very brief. These are the emotions that I found today. It doesn’t matter what you call them. It’s your language. It’s trying to make sense of how you’re feeling on a day to day basis.

It’s like answering the question, how am I doing today, or how did I do today? And that’s it. Because what can happen is, we can feel very disconnected from ourselves. And we’re so busy just cycling through our days that we feel a range of emotions. Some may be wonderful ones, and some maybe not so wonderful ones. Still, we’re so immersed in work or parenting or exercising or rushing around or whatever it might be that sometimes we forget what we felt and why we felt it. And then maybe a few days later or a week later, we find ourselves losing it with a loved one, or raging at ourselves all day long. We don’t realize that it’s the cumulative effect. It’s like a buildup of things that we haven’t noticed about ourselves things we haven’t noticed about what we’re feeling. So, I said to this person, just have a go at keeping a feelings diary. Just keep it brief. You don’t have to spend more than two or three or five minutes on it. And that’s it. Don’t pressure yourself to like to be a master writer and write like your favorite author. It’s just your notes on what’s going on in your life. They came back and were like, “Wow, a couple of weeks of doing that, and I’ve realized that every time I spend a lot of time on social media, my mood sinks, and my anxiety goes through the roof. And then I end up eating this, and I end up doing that.” She said she wouldn’t have had that Intel without actually bringing herself into awareness with journaling.

It also helped her to vent her frustrations about not feeling in control of her life, not feeling neutral about work, not feeling control about the kids being at home. Having a space to do that and realizing how that was churning her up and then offering herself solutions sometimes through her writing, like understanding how she could take care of herself. And it’s not necessarily that every time we journal that we’re going to be like, “This could be the solution. This is the thing to provide here.” I think we don’t give enough space to ourselves to feel and to think. When we don’t do that, we are far more likely to feel depressed, to experience deep anxiety, to feel overwhelmed, to feel resentful, to feel guilty, and not even understand why we feel that way. So, I think that in these times, like doing something even if it is one sentence, a paragraph, and if you can do that daily, wonderful. Even if you can’t do it, catch up with yourself at least two or three times a week, or even once a week is better than nothing. What you will find is that when you look back on this in a few weeks or a few months, you understand who you’ve been in this time, and what you may have needed and what you might need a few months down the road. You start to have an understanding of your life.

It sounds profound. I always wanted to journal. I used to journal when I was a little kid. I am very funny when I’m journaling even when I’m journaling about the bad stuff, and I think I should do that. I think it’s a great idea. Thank you for that.

In some way, shape, or form we all have to face things that we didn't know that we needed so that we can transform in some way. Click To Tweet

I was like you. I used to keep diaries and notes as a child. In journaling. I can honestly say I lived with my mother-in-law for about eight and a half months. Funnily enough during another pandemic. My husband is from Sierra Leone. And when the Ebola crisis happened, she came here to England, and she stayed with us for eight and a half months. And let’s just say that we fell out about halfway through.

I can imagine.

Obviously, she was not in a position to go because you know, pandemic and all that. Journaling honestly saved me because so much different conflicting feelings came up for me during that time, and I needed an outlet. I also wanted to feel like if I’m going to bring up something, I wanted to process it a bit rather than being a jumble. That’s when I really rediscovered my love of journaling. And sometimes I was just pouring out a whole load of stuff. If you write what feels like quite heightened feelings, just write whatever comes into your head, even if what you’re writing is, “I don’t know what the hell I’m writing here.” Because after about six or so minutes, my acupuncturist told me this years ago, he said, you get into your subconscious, about six or so minutes into it. And that’s when the real stuff starts coming out. So, it might be a complete jumble, where you’re jumping all over the place, maybe in the first few minutes, and you might be ranting about whatever. And then I see it every time. About six to eight minutes into it, I’m starting to get the truth of why I feel the way that I do or about what’s bothering me. And if I just left it at, “I’m just annoyed with that,” I wouldn’t really get the truth of it.

You get stuck in your head, and you won’t get into the subconscious mind, which is the source of why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling, and also the source of the answer to how to deal with it.

Yeah, I truly believe our experiences, feelings, even memories contain healing, guidance, and messages for us. And if we don’t even bother to ask ourselves the question of, “How am I doing today?” or “How did I do today?” Not like when you go to a store and they’re like, “How did we do today?” and you press the happy face or the sad face or whatever, it’s not that. So many people have awareness about how everybody else is doing and what can happen. You become so attuned to other people’s needs and wants and how somebody else is feeling. Still, sometimes you forget how you’re doing.

Especially when you’re a leader or coach. You’re so used to be there and be the strong one for others. People who are coaches and healers need to heal ourselves, and we need to take care of ourselves as well.

Absolutely. We can sometimes be so caught up in what everybody else is thinking and feeling and doing, we sometimes are entirely disconnected from ourselves. Even if you don’t get the journaling yet, start your day by asking, “How am I doing today?” You can do it in front of the mirror. You might be surprised by what you say. Because sometimes, what we do is we just get up and go. And that makes us very ungrounded. And imagine that we just keep doing that and doing that and doing that. If we snap, if we break down in exhaustion and burnout, if we end up feeling low and depressed, we might have no clue because we can’t remember the last time we checked in. Some people ask me, “What happens if I asked myself how I’m doing, and it turns out I’m not I’m not doing too great?” Well, then you can accommodate that in your day. You can maybe go a bit gentler on you.

Maybe you can feed yourself some breakfast for once. Maybe you can take a few minutes to acknowledge, “If I don’t feel that great today, why might that be? And what can I do for me even if it’s teeny-tiny? What can I do for me, even if it can’t fix the situation in all its totality? What can I do for me now or throughout today that would just mean that I had my back a little bit, and I was just trying to help me out in some way?” If you wake up, and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I actually feel really, really low today.” You know what? Actually, going to work is helpful, but taking on way too much, not so helpful. So this is where we can take better care of ourselves. We are the thinker of our thoughts, the feeler of our feelings, the keeper of our needs. If we don’t tune in and stop asking how am I doing today? What can I do for me, but who else is going to do it?

Take this quarantine as a time to slow down and think deeply about your life. Since we are encouraged to not go out, start looking within. Dive deep.

Amazing. I want to talk a little bit about the new course that you have online. It’s called Break the Cycle. It’s about handling relationships, especially relationships during COVID-19. Sadly, domestic violence has increased, and those ladies, mostly ladies, have no work to go, or it’s scarier to leave, I guess. One thing that I think everybody can do is watch out if you hear something from your neighbors. Don’t ignore it, report it. This is really important. But generally, I think some couples have this lovely honeymoon feeling. Still, I think most couples, especially with kids, it’s a bumpy ride. It’s hard to be cooped in, it’s hard to handle all the uncertainty. We all have all those emotions bubbling, and then we take it out on our partners. So, what is some wisdom that we can take with us to handle that?

I think what’s interesting is that some people I had spoken to pre-COVID, and they felt very frustrated about how things were in their relationship. And what’s been interesting is that this enforced time where they thought it would actually make things worse, it seems to have reshuffled things. They realized that sometimes they were latching on to petty stuff and keeping score. And so, for some of these people, it forced them to take on a new perspective. They have a new appreciation for each other. That can be a place to look at because sometimes when you realize, “I can’t just walk out of the house and go to work and commute. I can’t just drive off and go shopping or whatever. We are here.” You have to pick and choose your battles. And I’m not saying that we should be like, “I need to dismiss most of the things that bother me…”

Peace, love, and ice cream.

Yeah. If you start to have levels and understanding the difference between something that is, like, for instance, if you put things on a level of naught to five. Clearly, something that’s naught is not really bothering you that much. But if everything is five, then nothing is a five, you know? Whether it was taking the trash out, or disagreement about how you do something with the kids, or whether somebody’s been tidied away, everything was level five. And I said, “Honestly, you can’t take it too seriously in your relationship if everything is going to result in Armageddon, like everything war and artillery.” You have to have levels and really start to get an understanding of what really warrants things kicking off. I find that myself and my husband very rarely disagree about something that’s going on in the house, like with chores. I think that’s because we realized we sort of established it that that’s not what we want to be getting into arguments about. But obviously, there were other things that we could get into arguments about.

Still, we don’t get into arguments all the time because I think we realized what some things don’t warrant an argument or a disagreement. Sometimes, I’m irritated with the kids or with my husband, so I’m going around, and I’m banging the vacuum cleaner around the house or making him hyper-aware. When I really examine my irritation, I’ve noticed most of the time when I end up getting really irritated, it’s not really about them. It’s because something has peed me off at work or something else has gone on, and I’m frustrated. I don’t know. It could be like, I wanted to get a whole load of stuff done, and it didn’t so I’m frustrated with myself. And then I go in the house, maybe I see that something is untidy. And rather than acknowledge, I’m really frustrated with myself. Now I’m like, Ooh my gosh, why isn’t everybody tidying it up?” And I started to notice this thing about myself. I think this is very present in a lot of relationships. Sometimes the irritations that we’re expressing to our partners or about them are not really things that are about our partners.

Sometimes we don't realize how much we delude ourselves, and it takes something or someone to come along to shake us out of it. Click To Tweet

Sometimes they are things that are really about other things that we don’t feel that we have control over, or that we haven’t addressed. And that was a real eye-opener for me because then I was able to sort of step back from some of my irritations. Other times, it’s me not expressing a need. I don’t need to pump the vacuum cleaner around the place and make loads of noise while cleaning and sort of getting into this sort of frantic thing. I could just turn around and say, “guys, can we just spend like 20 minutes doing a big tidy around the place? Can you guys put this thing away?” But instead, I’m trying to drop hints by the vacuum. Is there a way that you can say this, instead of only going part way and dropping a hint? I think that everybody’s relationships would change dramatically if we cut down on hinting. I think it is a massive source of strain. And people will argue, “Well, I don’t want to cause an argument. I don’t want to upset feelings.” But the problem actually kicks in not from talking about what bothers us or being direct. It comes about just hoping that people will figure it out by osmosis, that they were mind readers, that we can Jedi mind trick them with the housework.

That would be lovely.

Honestly, if I have to clean the kitchen one more time. I feel like I clean the kitchen three or four times a day.

I’m with you. I feel like I’m constantly cleaning. That’s quite frustrating.

Yeah. But then I say to myself, “Yes, you can voice your desire for people to pull their weight a bit more. But also, are you sometimes fixating about this unnecessarily? Are there other times when you could just let this go and not try to be in control of all the things?”

When something like that happens, just put on a song. Let it go. Let it go.

I think that these times have been interesting. We’ve been all home continuously or been pretty much together now for about 29 days or something like that. My husband was in Canada for work and when he came back and then his office closed. So that’s like, four weeks ago. I think it’s been 29 days since he got back from Canada. So, this is like, day in day out, we’re pretty much together all the time. Somehow, we’ve all managed not to murder each other in the process. Still, I think we have to humanize ourselves and others because I think it is so easy to be like, “They don’t do this, and they don’t do that.” It’s human to have those moments, but then we have to give ourselves and others grace.

Right. Beautiful.

When we do that, I just think that “Yes, we are still going to want the house to be tidied up. Yes, it would be great if they could clean up the crumbs after they sliced bread and just put it away.” But then you choose the grace for yourself and for them, and you go, “You know what? This will get sorted one way or another. You don’t have to fall apart over this.”

It's only when we're in certain unique situations that our past trauma and experiences are reactivated. Click To Tweet

That’s beautiful. I have two questions. What are your three quick tips to living a stellar life, and where can people find you?

Three tips. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. Though, in all seriousness, 1.) boundaries. I feel that if everybody had a little more boundary, we would live in an entirely different world. Our relationships would be so different. If we all had more boundaries for ourselves, we also have it for our relationships. Boundaries are just knowing the difference between your feelings, thoughts, body, and somebody else’s. And I think when you take responsibility for yourself, that’s boundaries. And it’s so loving and caring and trust and respect for you. 2.) Journal when you can. Don’t make it into some editorial project, but honestly, have a go at journaling. See how it could change your life. Even if you’re only doing it occasionally, I still think it can do wonders for you. And 3.) take time to breathe. In times like this, you don’t even realize how high you’re breathing up in your chest with all of the stress and everything. And I do think that there is a really great benefit. Honestly, sitting even for a minute, just watching your hand move up and down with your belly, doing a few deep breaths, helps you to kind of reground yourself as well. And the more connected we are to ourselves, the better our life we live.

Beautiful. Where can people find you and maybe get your books or courses or work with you?

People can find me at baggagereclaim.com, where you can find my blog, and my podcast, and links to my books and courses. And I have my course Break the Cycle. That’s basically for helping people to work through the relationship blocks and baggage that stands in the way of them being who they really are or having the loving relationships they want.

Perfect. Thank you so much, Natalie. This was really awesome. I appreciate you.

Thank you, Orion. This is lovely.

And thank you, listeners. Remember to have more boundaries. Journal. Take the time to inhale and exhale and inhale and breathe and have a stellar life. This is Orion. Until next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓} Don’t allow others to disrespect your boundaries and vice versa. Whether it’s a friend, family member, or romantic partner, setting healthy boundaries can strengthen bonds between each other.
{✓} Understand everyone handles trauma differently. What may work for someone may not work for you. What may work for you may not work for others. Either way, at the end of the day, you alone know what’s best for you.
{✓} Take this quarantine as a time to slow down and think deeply about your life. Since we are encouraged to not go out, start looking within. Dive deep.
{✓} Don’t be afraid to face things that are challenging and difficult. Life is not always about peace, love, and ice cream. Sometimes your most difficult trials are what make you who you are.
{✓} Offload anything that feels like excess. It’s hard to move on with life while carrying heavy baggage.
{✓} Make peace with your past. Sometimes our past is what we want to hide from the most, but in reality, we wouldn’t be standing here today without it.
{✓} Recognize your negative patterns so you become more aware of your emotions and way of thinking. When you know what your triggers are, you develop a better sense of dealing with them.
{✓} Be patient with your healing journey. It’s not a one-time or fix-all thing. Once you embark, it’s going to be a long road ahead.
{✓} Journal your feelings. It doesn’t have to be novel-like. All you need is to write down how you feel at least two or three times a week to keep track of your emotions.
{✓} Check out Natalie Lue’s website to access her blogs, podcasts, course, and books.

Links and Resources

About Natalie Lue

Natalie Lue is an author, speaker, and podcaster. She helps people-pleasers, perfectionists and overthinkers tidy up their emotional baggage so that they enjoy love, care, trust, and respect-filled life.