Navigating life's storms: Finding resilience even during crisis (165)

Hello, my beautiful friends. I gotta say, I am kind of sick.

I actually feel okay, but we had a hockey tournament this past weekend for my daughter, and I screamed so much during those five games, just cheering them on and trying to be supportive. And everybody on the team will tell you that I am the loudest and the best screamer. So yeah, here I am with my very low kind of irritated voice. I've been drinking some warm tea and it's been good, but you'll just have to excuse me for today.

I thought for today, it would be super valuable to talk to you guys about what it's like to overcome or move past something big happening in your personal life or your community. As you guys know, I am in Tampa. We just had a couple hurricanes come through and everybody's talking about hurricane fatigue. And I'm here to tell you what that is and how you can see this play out in your own lives in different ways.

I want you to come with an open mind and with the ability to use your emotional intelligence and say, how does this play out in my own life? What kind of situations have I been in where I felt this same way? I think you guys are going to get a lot of value from this. And we're also going to speak about the difference between having a personal, very big trauma and one that contains a community and also how you can relate to both of those.

So without further ado, let's get started. I am so happy to be here with you guys today. All right, let's go. Hey friend, welcome to Deep Healing for Creative Entrepreneurs. My name is Aubrey Barr and I am a subconscious release technique practitioner and photography business owner. I know you are sick of ending your day feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and you are seeking a solution to help you feel creatively inspired and actively engaged in your business as well as personal life.

In this podcast, we are going to dig into any limiting beliefs or subconscious programs that are keeping you in a space filled with anxiety and stress. This work is not a temporary solution for your life. No, this is a complete transformation. So grab your coffee or tea and let's start you on the road to healing. And let me just say, you can do this. You are worth it and you are meant to thrive in life and business. So let's dig in.

All right, let's get started. We're going to get into the nitty gritty of what's really going on energetically and emotionally when you deal with big things like we've been talking about. I'm going to read directly from my friend group. There's about five of us ladies that keep in touch. We met at a gym years ago. We are super close. We are so different. But we have similar things going on in life, and obviously we are all local to where I'm at now. So here it is.

Hurricane fatigue is a real thing. After a significant hurricane event, many people who are no longer running on adrenaline will crash, both physical and emotionally. And it often doesn't happen right away, but sometimes weeks or months afterwards. You are not alone in feeling this way, and it's very normal. So this is something that's gotten passed around in my local community here for the last few days. And okay, 100%, I do agree with this.

Obviously, you guys, this is something I talk about a lot. Almost all of my episodes I have on this podcast are about dealing with those personal and big traumas that come up in life. It's about nervous system dysregulation, right? And also tips on how you can overcome these situations, how you can reset your system, either emotionally or your nervous system or physically. So this is right up my alley.

And one thing that you may not know about me, but you probably do, is that I'm not really a huge fan of labels. And so when I look at this message, I'm like, yeah, duh, you know, and I don't mean that in a mean way, just of course you experience these things. But at the same time, I don't love putting a label on it.

So I wanted to talk to you guys about this on a real level today, on a level of what we've experienced here in this area, but also how this relates to you and how you can see this happening in your world.

There are a lot of situations that come up in our everyday life where we end up going into that hyper adrenaline kind of mode. Let's say, for instance, a car accident. I know that doesn't happen every day, but the majority of people will experience that at some point in their lives, whether it's a little bumper to bumper situation, or it's something big and more dramatic, there is absolutely a phase where you go through an adrenaline rush followed

by an absolute crash. Okay. So what happens in between and how fast that may go, sure, sometimes it has to do with how stressed out you are. Sometimes it has to do with how much of your past you're still holding on to. From the outside, some of us might think, well, why is she so upset over this? It's just a fender bender or it's just a hurricane, right? There is, but there's so many factors that go into it.

And on the flip side, some people may lose their home and they may actually recover faster than you would think. So when you look at your emotional and mental health going into a trauma, that usually has a really big impact. Pull on how you deal with said trauma, okay? Some of us have a very long-term logical approach to a lot of our problems, even though initially we might feel shaken up, we might feel like, oh my gosh, I almost died, right?

But if you're able to tap into that kind of long-term availability of your mind, you will see, okay, in the scheme of things, is this the most important thing that's ever happened to me? Do I have to stop my entire life, at least for the next couple months? Like wherever you're at, it does have to do with that outlook and that initial ability for your nervous system to re-center, to re-adjust. Those are huge in how you handle your individual traumas.

Now, Some of us go through things that take days, months, or even years to process. Some of that is because maybe it's a divorce where you continue to go to court and you continue to bat heads. And, you know, things change where you have to take different routes. So it's almost like re-traumatizing as time goes on. Keep that in mind.

That is going to be more difficult, right? You are going to want that cake at the end of it that says, I'm finally divorced, right? So that's a good way to look at it is, am I in a situation where I'm being constantly re-traumatized? That's kind of what it was like with this past hurricane season. We had two right in a row within, I think, 10 or 11 days where we had a storm that was so far away and yet people in our area had devastating results of because of the flooding and all of that.

Then we had another storm that came right in and. Hit some of us, but also just caused so much destruction. As far as, you know, I have these huge grandfather oaks down in my neighborhood. And I mean, there's probably a hundred plus that I've seen 200 year old oaks just completely knocked over. You can see they've been uprooted. This is because we had so much rain before. And then you add in that wind and it just took them down.

So we personally had only outdoor yard stuff that happened at my house. But at the same time, it's very sad. It's very traumatic. And a lot of our trees broke off like entire 10 foot limbs that went into our fence and destroyed our fence and destroyed the neighbor's yard. And it just wasn't something that you just get up and you get over because then you have to work, right? Then you have to work through it. Like everything that goes in our lives, we have something that happens to us.

We have to get up the next day. We have to look at it a little bit different.

Yes, breaks are going to be awesome, but you have to be able to physically work on it in order to get your life set up where you can retain normalcy at some point, right? So that adrenaline rush is your body's way of saying, hey, here you go. I know that was scary. I know that was shocking. Here's a little bit more energy for you to work through the physical things you need to get through in order to get to the other side and then we can handle the emotions.

That is what your body is designed to do to help you in these situations. So once that adrenaline leaves your body, you realize that, okay, maybe I'm not completely safe, but I'm feeling a little bit more safe now. What do I do next? Well, some of us are completely exhausted, right? We've put all of it into it and now we need to take a little break before we get things back in place.

Quote, control. I personally, I look at this and I just say, yeah, I totally understand why people are dealing with this on this level. Me personally is more of the physical cleanup and getting over the fact that, you know, we were a little, we were scared that night. It was very loud. It was the loudest storm I've ever been in. And hearing the wind was very creepy. It did honestly creep me out. Like I wasn't really sleeping.

And that's the other thing. Most of us didn't sleep that night because it rolled in about midnight and stayed until four. So it's just like, what do you do? You hear like these winds in the background that sound like a jet plane. It was just crazy. And so me personally, yeah, I was tired the next day. We had to put in 10 hour days to get things cleaned up. And then the next day as well, we had to clean up at Dave's work. We had to help out in ways that, you know, for our community.

And all while we didn't have service, we didn't have power. Of course, we didn't have Wi-Fi, but we literally, I wasn't able to get any emails for two days. I did not receive text or emails. I used my husband's phone to text my girls and tell them, hey, we're okay. I just don't have any service whatsoever. And so when I left the area to drive into Tampa a couple of days later, I ended up with all of these texts.

I had so many emails, so many messages, and it was super crazy to be like, okay, now I'm on, let's take care of these. Let's say hi to people. Let's tell everyone we're okay. Cause I have a lot of family and friends out of state. So it was definitely a crazy experience, but at the same time, I can liken that to things that have happened in my life before, where we've experienced things that are out of our control, things that feel traumatic, right?

Like I was saying before, it doesn't have to be this massive issue for you to have this nervous system response, okay? It could be something small. If you are running on empty already. That quote something small is going to throw your body into a mess. You have to be able to address what you can. You have to be able to have that long-term sight to be able to see, okay, is this a priority for me? How do I get over this? How do I move past this? And how do I look forward to the future, right?

If you don't have those, it's very hard to pull yourself out of these situations that cause you so much anxiety.

So that being said, I wanna spread a little bit of hope. For you. Okay, I want you to know that even if you need a break right now, even if you need a nap, even if you need a couple days to kind of reset your system, just know that you're not always going to feel this way.

Just know that the path that you are on, where you are learning to emotionally regulate, where you are in a growth mindset, where you've looked forward to the future and know how to be positive, yet also logical, where you're working through your problems and not just masking them through positivity or through ignoring. You are absolutely capable of moving past this current situation you're dealing with. Not only are you capable of it, you are listening to this because you are ready for it.

Okay, so stop whatever you're doing now and ask yourself, what kinds of things can I add into my life today that's going to help me to be able to regulate my nervous system?

Whether that's walking outside in the grass, maybe just feeling the sun on you if you're somewhere that's getting cold right now, feeling that aliveness at some point in the day, playing with your dog, reading a book to your kids, being present in the moment, eating foods that fulfill your soul, that reach you on a level that's actually fueling your body instead of just erasing the emotions that you're feeling.

These are all ways you can get your nervous system back on track after these kind of traumas. Friends, I hope that this finds you feeling invigorated. I hope that it gives you some hope. I hope that you can play out these scenarios in your own life and see how this applies to you because I have listeners all over the globe. And I know for a fact that some of you have just seen news about what's going on over here, but you can relate in other ways.

So I want you to take this opportunity to allow yourself to release those emotions and those things that are holding you back so that you can move forward in hope, in faith, in love, and reset those parts of your life that absolutely need it.

If you guys are overwhelmed, feeling burnt out. Feeling like you just cannot move forward with your business or with your life right now, I invite you to join us in the Lit Up Collective. We're starting next Wednesday. This is the perfect opportunity for you to, once a week, give back to your mind, to your body, help yourself to learn to release some of this stress and the anxiety and the overwhelm.

We're going to be adding things into your day that involve meditations, personalized activations, which are something I don't normally give away in groups like this. We'll do some group sessions where we'll, as a collective, talk about the things going on. And I will then use that information to really build out this next eight weeks with you guys, where you're going to absolutely feel a reset going into the holidays.

So you don't have to get to January and February and have a complete adrenaline drop and just burn out like we do year after year after year. This season, I want you guys to give back to yourselves in ways that you have forgotten, ways that you yourself have not prioritized. I want to show you how to prioritize your own emotional and mental health. And I'm going to do it right alongside with you. So I'm so excited about this opportunity.

And please remember that I'm going to run this course as a BOGO. So if you buy a seat and you want to give it to a friend, that's fine. Shoot me an email and tell me who they are so I can give them access. But if you buy a seat and you want to donate that BOGO spot to someone who has dealt with the past couple weeks of hurricanes and needs this reset, but maybe can't afford it because of the recent events going on in this community and further up into North Carolina as well.

That would be an amazing gift to give someone. So if you're a local friend of mine and you're listening now and you'd like to be considered for one of those BOGO seats, please shoot me a message. I am happy to distribute those. I'm not asking questions. I just want this community to have the opportunity to give back to each other and we can build something that is absolutely incredible and uplifting and caring and all of the things that I love about creative entrepreneurs like you guys.

You literally light up my world. I love working one-on-one with you and in a group and I look forward to this journey that we're going to have together.

All right, friends, I will put the link in the show notes and I'm so excited to see you. Have a beautiful day and we'll talk soon. I hope this podcast spoke to you in some way. If it did, please go ahead and leave me a review and subscribe so that I know you're enjoying what you hear.

And further, if you know somebody else who owns their own creative business and struggles with anything that we spoke about, please pass this on because it is my hope that we will be able to build a community of like-minded individuals who love on each other and appreciate the many facets that make our creative business so unique. And lastly, check out the show notes to find my free Facebook community and other useful links to work with me. All right, friend, see you soon. Music.