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Hello, ladies. Thank you for clicking Play and joining me for today's episode on how to rein it in after losing your shit. Before I get started, I want to offer you a coaching session with me. If you're looking to create more of what you want in your life, more outside of motherhood, or to figure out what that want is, please get in touch.

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As a certified life coach, my goal is to support you in creating the life you deserve. And trust me, you deserve so much more. We often as women, as moms, we hold ourself back because we're afraid of change. We're afraid what the impact it'll have on our family. And we're also afraid quite often of what others might think. These are all beliefs we hold about the world and how it works. Sometimes it's as simple as shifting a small belief.

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Other times, it requires deeper work to heal old wounds while defining who you want to be moving forward. If you're interested, you can visit my website, kylievangelder.com, or DM me on Instagram. My handle is at Kylie van Gelder. And now to the goods of the show. I don't know about you, but sometimes it's hard not to lose my shit. There are days when all my buttons are pushed. Times when I want to scream at everyone, just explode in order to release some stress.

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But I've learned not to. I've learned that I'm being triggered based on past experiences. We all have triggers. Your triggers are yours and not someone else's responsibility. Just like my triggers are mine and not your responsibility. If you feel like someone is being an idiot and you rip them a new one, this is on you, not them. It sounds screwed up. After all, to you, they were the ones being they were being an idiot. But to them, they were just being themselves and are not responsible for you having a problem with it. Even if they tend to be an intentional idiot.

0:02:37
This is theirs to own and figure out. You are, of course, allowed to feel how you feel. Yet it's not a permission slip to lose it on someone. The same goes for your kids. Now, I'm not saying I've never yelled at my kids. I am human, after all. But I don't freak out at them like I would have, say, ten to 15 years ago. I mean, yeah, okay, I'm laughing now because my poor kids had I had them ten to 15 years ago.

0:03:05
Back then, I thought it was everyone else's fault, but actually it was totally mine and my responsibility. I mean, I was bitter and angry and frustrated, and I had explosions all the time like crazy. You know what, too? I worked with someone, and she helped me understand my emotions. She helped me understand I mean, I didn't really understand different emotions that much. I had a hard time making a distinction between them, and the only thing I understood was anger, frustration, and rage. Those were like I understood those. I knew what they were.

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But she helped me also separate them from other things, and she helped me really realize I mean, I worked with her for nine weeks really intensely. It was just eye opening to understand and learn about things like triggers and learn about reactions and things like that. So now it's come to the point that when I yell, if I yell, or mostly now, it's raised my voice at my kids. It's to call their name, to get their attention, to let them know that Mommy is now on her last straw.

0:04:12
And now I mean business. And yet, even then, how I react is up to me. I'd actually prefer to respond than react. Responding feels more like it's a choice, a conscious decision, and not a thoughtless reaction. I mean, I don't have to yell their name, right? And there's a quote I love from someone named Charles R. Swindle. I don't know much about this person, but this quote came up in something, somewhere that I had read, and it's fantastic.

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Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react. And this is so true when you overreact, you blow things out of proportion, so much so that even your bodily responses get into it and you start to literally feel angry or enraged. I mean, hands shaking, heart pounding, like you want to just attack something or someone, right? That happens when you feel that much frustration when you are about to explode.

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And this is yeah, it's how you're reacting. Something has triggered you this way, and this is what you've learned, is how you're supposed to react to this trigger. On a side note, if you have been yelling at someone or at your kids, you can fix it. If this is something you want to do in relation to your kids, along with what's in this podcast, I highly recommend the book called Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy. It is flipping awesome for all ages. I mean, the main focus is on younger kids, but it's also on repairing things with a teenager, say, with maybe your past reactions from when they were younger. And my kids are six and a half and five, and I use this book to fix anything because I am by no means perfect.

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And nor was I in the past when I first became a mom. So I use this book, I use the tips in this book to actually help. What she calls what Becky says is to repair to repair the past situations. And she gives you tips on how to do that so that your kids don't carry along that behavior into the future. Okay? I mean, I've gotten better since I was a mom, and things changed, like I said, ten to 15 years ago.

0:06:26 
Oh, God. Sorry, kids. But they weren't there, thankfully. But I still have triggers. I still had triggers when they were first born and as they were getting to the age they're at now. And this book has just been so, so helpful. And no, this is not an affiliate shout out. I get no money. If you buy her book, I'm not going to quote a link or refer you to a link of any kind. It's just a good book. And you'll likely hear me talk about it in other episodes, too, because that's how good it is.

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But okay, remember back to the show here. Your behavior in any given situation is yours and not the other person's. And it's weird to think about because I know my kids will sometimes intentionally do things to annoy me. Like when I'm talking to one other, say, if I'm talking to my daughter, my son will come up and repeat every single thing I'm saying. Especially if I'm saying to my daughter, like, sweet pea or honey or whatever, please don't do that anymore. He'll come up and repeat everything.

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And it could be that he's trying to protect her. Of course, it could also be that he wants attention in that moment, or that he feels he hasn't gotten enough connection from me. But in any case, he'll do it over and over and over, say, and it will drive me crazy. That's my trigger, right? That's not on him. But giving into his behavior by exploding, or you giving into someone else's behavior who is intentionally doing something by exploding only gives the other person ammunition and causes more problems.

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Now, what happens when you do go batshit crazy on someone personally, based on former experience, because I did it often, I think two things happen. First, you feel this awesome sense of power and release all at the same time. It's like you're filled with screw you energy, and you feel massive, like a silverback gorilla who just want to fight. Next. The second thing, you will likely feel some sort of guilt, embarrassment, or even shame once you've cooled down.

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At the same time, you'll wonder if there was another way you could have reacted or maybe put some thought to it and responded nicely. And if this happens, regret sets in. And when regret sets in, you'll likely play the scene over and over and over and over and over and over in your head, wishing you could change it. It takes up so much of our mental space and time and we are so not in the present moment.

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That's what happens when we do something that we regret. We ruminate over it. We think it over and over and over. Assuming I think that we could change it based on how many times we repeat it over in our head. And you can't. You can't change the past, but here's what you can do. Forgive yourself for losing it. This is called self compassion. Say the things to yourself that you would to a friend who lost it on someone.

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That's how you should speak to yourself. You are a person too, so treat yourself the way that you would treat someone else. This is a big thing when you're healing, when you uncover something about yourself that you don't like or that scares you. And then you start to question it and you cut yourself down. When you do that, it only makes it that much more difficult to heal. So forgive yourself for losing it. Show yourself some compassion. Be nice to yourself.

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You deserve to be treated nicely to yourself, by yourself, to yourself. Next thing is to apologize also. Always, and especially to your kids mum. It's hard, but you know what you want to teach yourself and the other person who might be your kids that you can own up to your poor choices just as much as you can accept your good ones. If it's someone who you know is intentionally seeking negative attention or an explosion by pushing your buttons, you can still apologize.

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But also tell them why you exploded and that in the future you'll simply walk away. Pay attention now to what triggered you in the first place. Next thing would be to investigate why this triggers you. Do the actual work. Figure out why this is happening so it stops triggering you. You can do this through journaling, coaching, therapy, meditation, whatever works for you and heal this part of you again.

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You might turn to journaling, coaching, therapy, meditation, or some other form of you can even turn to. There's a lot of holistic healing out there that is just phenomenal. I will get into more of that as the shows progress. But there's so much out there that you can try to do, to use, to take advantage of, to heal the parts of you that are hurting, that are causing these triggers. You don't lose your shit because something doesn't bother you. You lose it because something does.

0:11:11 
Maybe you don't want others to see you as being associated with that so-called idiot. So you lose it on them for fear others might see you like that person too. What's so wrong with that person? Why do they bother you so much? Who cares? What would it mean if other people saw you like them? Maybe your kids are doing something that embarrasses you. It might be that when you were a kid, this is how your caretakers reacted when you behaved in a way that embarrassed them.

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And now, guess what? You're living full circle. It doesn't matter what it is. Figure it out and heal it. We are the adults now. It is our responsibility to take responsibility for our own behavior. Now, what if you start to lose your shit but you want to stop it? In other words, how to rein it in after you've started to lose it already? This is really hard. Maybe even harder than losing it in the first place and then apologizing later.

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However, if you want to stop losing it altogether, you also have to learn to stop yourself. When you're in the middle of freaking out again, it's hard to do, but it is so worth it. You start to feel better instead of worse. The second you realize you're seeing fire and all guns are a-blazing. Step away. No matter how hot-headed you are, you are an adult now. You have to take steps. You have to take adult steps, and this includes sucking it up and walking away.

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Next thing, when you walk away, find a place, a quiet place that you can be just by yourself. Lock yourself in the bathroom, whatever it may be, and breathe at least ten full, deep breaths to the count of five on the inhale and six to eight on the exhale. The exhale should be longer. If you still haven't cooled off enough to speak about it without getting triggered, immediately breathe another five to ten breaths.

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This helps to recenter your mind and to get you back into thinking instead of reacting. It literally cools you off. And once you've cooled off, the first thing you do again is apologize. Even if the other person is still angry and you come out and apologize. Or if the other person feels really small, maybe you've really started to tear them a new one. Or you tend to do that with this person and they tend to shrink.

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Apologize. You will immediately see the dynamic shift. Now forgive yourself. Look at what triggered you. Investigate why it triggered you and work to heal it. When you get all worked up and hot-headed, you go into the survival part of your brain. This is sometimes referred to as the reptile brain. When you're in this mode, it's hard to think clearly, and people tend to say more hurtful things to protect themselves.

0:13:57 
Hence survival mode protection. But later you come to regret what you said. You might even beat yourself up for it. Guilt, embarrassment and shame set in. And that is not going to help you grow and figure yourself out and become more of the woman you want to be. This is why it's so important to learn what is triggering you and why it triggers you. It will help you to learn to step away when you start to lose it the next time. And the more you learn to do this, the more you learn about what triggers you, the more you end up learning about yourself and the less likely this trigger will bother you in the future especially if you start to heal it. By the way.

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Now, our behavior it often comes from our subconscious mind. Any reaction, it is part of our subconscious mind. It's a pattern that we have learned. So meaning that we're not aware of it, of that particular behavior or why we reacted in a certain way. Sometimes we're like why did I freak out like that? We often don't know. It is buried deep in our subconscious mind. And even for the most general things that is in our subconscious mind. Things like picking a particular type of food at a grocery store, picking a certain type of partner, why we might struggle with weight loss, or why we even if we're not struggling with weight loss, but we want to be in shape and we don't do anything about it. All of these are part of our subconscious mind programming.

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And depending on what year of research you read or the researchers, that if you decide to dig up research stuff on this I mean, I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to this and I studied some of it so I like this stuff. But times have changed. Roughly though I'm rambling now so I'll stop. Roughly 90 ish 595 ish percent of what we do in a day is done on automatic pilot from our subconscious mind. That means behaviors and decisions.

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And this the reason why is because it saves our brain energy. It saves resources. That way resources can go to other things like well, for example, breathing, circulation, fighting off illnesses, boosting our immune system, blah blah blah, all that stuff. So we save energy and resources by doing most of our stuff on automatic pilot. We are conditioned, wired or weirdly programmed based on our experiences growing up.

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To become aware of why we do the things we do we have to dig into our subconscious mind and bring out our programming to the surface. Bring our programming up so that we can learn more about it. And I know we're not a computer but how we were raised and what we took in to be true about ourselves and the world is what drives our decisions and behaviors. It's not like we become an adult and all of a sudden we're like oh, I'll do everything however I want to do it. No, we have some sort of foundation there.

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It is our wiring. It's our programming. It's what we have learned. How we see the world, what triggers us that is entirely our own. Nobody sees the world the way we see it. No one ever, not even a sibling because we've all grown up experiencing things differently just like we've all grown up with different triggers. And I'll be honest with you, I'm now 44. For the first 18 years of my life. Like most people, someone else made most of my daily decisions with the exception of my rebellious years. Ha, those were pretty crazy.

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During those times I was solely driven by my subconscious mind though I never consciously made a decision saying this is how I'm going to behave just depends. And for everyone, it's different why we do things. And it took me another 20 years to realize my choices weren't consciously mine. I mean, I had very few conscious choices when I decided to travel. That was a conscious choice. But you know what? It was likely driven by the need to get out of the situation I was in, right? So there was some subconscious impact there.

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So basically I've only been making consistent conscious decisions for like six years now. Even still though, many of my choices are still driven by autopilot from my subconscious programming because 95% of what we do roughly is automatic programming. It needs to be to save those resources. The difference is I'm now aware that this is happening. And some of my I've learned to reprogram parts of my I don't want to say faulty programming because again, it sounds like I've said this before in another show, like we are broken and we need to be fixed. But the wiring that wasn't so good and so that my autopilot now makes better decisions.

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Okay, so you can reprogram, you can rewire recondition whatever it is your subconscious mind so that you start to make better decisions. Does this make sense? I ramble and I love this stuff so much that I just get all excited and I want to toss in tons of information when it might not be beneficial. So sorry if that's the case. So I hope this makes sense that I've said it clear enough because that may also be something I need to work on here for these shows.

0:19:07 
I'll try to explain it a little bit here. When you make a conscious deliberate change and you implement this change over a period of time, it eventually moves to your subconscious mind and your conditioning, wiring, programming changes, whatever you want to call it. So it's basically you change a habit because a habit which I will do a show on habits as well, this is just a little mini thing when you remove the need to make a decision. So when it moves to autopilot, that becomes a habit. Most of what we do as human beings are habitual. They're all habits. That is automatic pilot, it's habit. So when you reprogram, when you pick up a new habit, a new behavior of any kind, you can change what was pre programmed before.

0:19:52 
Okay, so yay, we can change ourselves. And it's the same with losing your shit. If you rein it in enough and dig into your subconscious mind to heal the trigger part of your 95% autopilot reaction will reflect this and then there's no more need to consciously rein it in because it will happen naturally. Amazing. AR brains. Our brains are amazing. It's something called neuroplasticity where you rewire or reprogram your brain.

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And with neuroplasticity you can even make more connections, more healthy connections if you choose to. As with all areas of your life, you can reprogram the behaviors you learned in childhood with the behaviors you want to learn as an adult. Anger, rage, and frustration are no different. What's even more amazing is now as the adult, you get to decide what those behaviors are. You now get to teach yourself based on what you see as appropriate and not what your parents saw as acceptable and not acceptable behavior.

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This is where it gets tricky though. Of course, there's always a clause in these things as adulthood. In adulthood, when we want to get better at something, there's always like but hang on a second. The tricky part here is learning to uncover those unsupportive behaviors and replacing them with new ones. Because as a kid, you just soak up everything that was your job, soak up everything in your environment what was and wasn't acceptable.

0:21:16 
Now, as an adult, you have to consciously override the not-so-good programming. This takes self-awareness, self-control, self-monitoring, self-regulation. Self, self. It has to come from you. You are the only person who can change you. Just like we can't change other people. No matter how hard we try, no matter how often we hit our head against a brick wall, we have to change ourselves. That other person, that person that you see as an idiot is responsible for their own behavior.

0:21:46 
Just like you're responsible for interpreting them as an idiot. Right self. It's all about the self. These are all costly resources to your brain. This is why it's so hard to change. But I promise you, with the right intentions, the right support and the right motivation, you can change frigging anything. Like really follow the steps here. Read a self help book or two and learn about the behaviors you want to change.

0:22:13 
You can rein it in after losing your shit. And when you do, you will feel so empowered. Sure, it will be frustrating because you're fueled with anger. Especially if you stop in the middle of when you're freaking out or at the beginning of when you're freaking out, or when you're just about to lose it. You'll be fueled with anger and it will be frustrating. But when you realize that you took control of your own behavior, total control, by consciously reining it in, you will feel like you're finally the one making the decisions rather than anger popping out of nowhere. And you asking questions like where the frig did that come from? Why did I behave that way?

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That won't happen. Because you'll have stopped it. And you'll have learned to stopped it. And you will have figured out what your triggers are and you will have healed your triggers. It is possible. I hope this has helped you in some way. Again, feel free to reach out to me if you have questions or you just want to chat. I'd love to hear from you. My details are at the beginning of the show and I'll also put them in the show notes.

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Please share this show with other moms who are in need of more. Thank you so much for spending your time with me and have a wonderful day.