Coaching Your Family Relationships

From Triggered to Centered: Tools to Rewire Your Reactions and Restore Family Peace

• Tina Gosney • Episode 192

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Episode 192 -  From Triggered to Centered: Tools to Rewire Your Reactions and Restore Family Peace

Are you constantly walking on eggshells with your adult child?
 Do you find yourself reacting instead of responding—and then beating yourself up later?

You’re not alone.

In this episode, I’m joined by growth coach Emily Layton, and we’re diving deep into how to move from survival mode to soulful connection. We explore what it means to operate from your “low brain” vs. your “high brain,” how fear hijacks your reactions, and the exact steps to regulate your nervous system so you can show up grounded, calm, and connected—even in the most emotionally charged moments.

If you’ve ever wondered:
 “Why do I keep reacting this way?” or
“How do I stop the spiral and show up better in my family?”
—this episode will give you the framework you’ve been searching for.

Meet My Guest: Emily Layton

Emily Layton has a Master's degree in Marriage, Family, and Human Development from BYU. She is a certified life coach who focuses on identity integration and personal restoration, centered in the gospel of Jesus Christ and informed by interpersonal neurobiology.

Download Emily’s FREE graphic:
Steps Up to the High Brain

Learn more about Emily’s work at:
www.GrowintheLight.com

Schedule a free 30-minute discovery call:
Email Emily directly at emily@growinthelight.com

Ready to stop the cycle of disconnection in your family?

Join me for my next free workshop:

End Family Disconnection and Rebuild Relationships that Last
Date: October 9, 2025
Sign up here: https://www.courageous-connections.com/end-family-disconnection-event_oct-2025

You’ll walk away with a clear roadmap to begin repairing and rebuilding the relationships that matter most.

 

Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She works with parents who have families in conflict to help them become the grounded, confident leaders their family needs.
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Connect with us:

Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tinagosneycoaching/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tinagosneycoaching

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Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach.
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Tina Gosney:

I'm here with my good friend Emily. We just met about a year ago, but it feels like we've known each other way longer than that, forever, forever, and I've been wanting to have her on the podcast for a long time, because Emily has mounds of wisdom just oozing out of her all the time. And we're talking about something that is really dear to my heart, but I'm going to let it unfold as we talk through this episode. You'll see what this is about. Emily. Do you want to introduce yourself?

Emily Layton:

Please? Sure. My name is Emily, above all, I believe in soulful living, that we are body, spirit, heart and mind. So I love to be in nature. I love to be with people, and I love to take time for stillness and just tune in to my inner knowing inside. And I'm a growth coach. I love growth and learning, and I'm a developmentalist by my education profession, and just believe we are meant to continue growing and developing through adulthood. So I'm excited to talk about today about some of these ways that we stop our own development, and what we can do to keep growing, enjoy life and embrace life.

Tina Gosney:

I love that introduction, and that introduction, as you were saying that I was thinking, and that's why we're friends, and that's why it feels like we've been friends for so long, because that just spoke to my heart, and I you know, this is a family relationship podcast, and I have a really big knowing, just a really increased knowledge of the more grounded and whole we become in ourselves, the more we reflect that out into the world. And there's no one that doesn't benefit from that, amen especially when we bring that into our families and we we radiate that wholeness out into our family relationships, everyone benefits.

Emily Layton:

That's so true. We're taught so often in our culture that it's selfish to focus on ourselves, but really as as we align, as we center, as we know ourselves, as we're congruent within we give so much more abundantly, so much more light and life and love to all the people around us, and it's just a beautiful way to live that makes the world a better place.

Tina Gosney:

So, right? Totally agree. Yeah. And as you were saying that, I was thinking, you remember that there's that analogy I've heard from my entire life, like, is your glass half full half empty? Or you can't pour from an empty cup, you know, things like that. So fill your own cup, like that analogy. But I don't think we really understand what that means to fill your own cup. Self care these days is, you know, get a massage, go on a vacation, go take a bubble bath, eat some chocolate. That's not what we're talking about. And we're not even really talking about self care. We're talking about wholeness, but, yeah, all in yourself and in who you are and in the way that you take care of yourself, that's what we're talking about. That is how you fill your cup. That is how you have more to give, to share with other people.

Emily Layton:

I love that. Tina, in fact, I teach a class that is based in that that has to do with so often, even just that question we ask Is the glass half full or half empty. It implies that this glass goes through emptiness, that like emptiness of the glass is a normal condition, right? But part of what I teach is orienting our glass so that by divine sources and by our own choices about nourishment, the cup is constantly being filled. And if a if a cup is full and more poured into it, what happens? It overflows, right? And then it's overflowing into the lives of all the people around you, and you're feeding them, nourishing them, and filling them, but not at the expense of your cup being full. It can come from a model of the cup staying full and the people around you getting filled from your overflow. So it's just a different way to look at

Tina Gosney:

it. Yes, beautiful analogy. Okay, let's get into what we have scheduled for today. So tell give me you're very into low brain, high brain. Yes, talk about like, what those are, and then how to move from one to the other. Perfect.

Emily Layton:

The human brain is a fascinating thing, and we just don't know a whole lot about it. We kind of go through. Autopilot in our lives without understanding this operating system, if you will, that's going on inside of our heads. And we were created by a Creator who wants us to live and survive, right? So we have this function that keeps us alive. This is our low brain. Sometimes it's called the reptilian brain, the limbic brain. There's, there's lots of definitions I just I simplify it to low brain and high brain, but our low brain keeps us alive. This is survival mode. This is our stress response when things are crazy around us. It's how we function. And just keep pushing forward to stay alive and to keep those around us in our families or stewardships alive, right? And it's not a bad thing. We need that, like I think about when I have babies and and functioned in this for a year, right? I was so sleep deprived, but everybody stayed alive, which was a really good thing, and all those things got taken care of. I was able to push forward, even though I was stressed, physically, mentally and emotionally, that that it's okay that we function at times in that the problem is when we get stuck there, when we stay there for a year or a decade, and we're just responding in our lives and to people around us, we're living like zombies. I don't know if you've ever felt that. Have you ever felt like you're definitely Yeah, and I think people really relate to that. We get stuck there in our low brain, but really our high brain, which is our prefrontal cortex, like the higher functions of our brain. That's where we can that's where creativity resides. That's where problem solving resides. That's where effective communication resides. That's where skills of spiritual connection and communion and being able to tune into our intuition, being able to connect with others and attune with others. All of those are higher brain function, and that's how we're meant to live. But when we get stuck in our low brain just surviving, we don't have access to those higher skills that we're capable of, so we miss out on so much of the joy and the fulfillment and the growth that's possible in life because we're just focused on survival. So that's what one of the foundational skills that I teach my clients, is recognizing what it feels like to be in your low brain, and knowing the steps of how to get out of our low brain once we've been triggered there, how to get back to our high brain, so that our standard baseline functioning is in the high brain, we're always going to get triggered back to our low brain, right? We all have triggers right to recognize we're there and to know what to do to return to our higher brain. That's our whole self. That's where we're meant to function and where you will find peace and joy.

Tina Gosney:

Tell me what place fear plays. What is the role of fear in that lower brain functioning and why? You know we can get stuck there so easily. Lots of decisions that we make are made from fear of something fear of something happening, fear of something not happening, fear of what will they think? So, so much fear. So let's talk about fear for a

Emily Layton:

minute. Let's do and I want to differentiate. Differentiate means explaining separating some differences we often group into fear, three main emotions. There are three main reasons why we do what we do, and three emotions associated with that. And agency is associated with anger. So a lot of times there's anger involved. Our need to belong is associated with sadness, deep sadness, and longing to belong and and then our need for certainty is associated with fear. So oftentimes those I want to group those things intentionally as fear, because a lot of times we get angry and it's it's a fear of having that agency gone. And a lot of times we get sad because it's a fear of not having connection, and a lot of times we don't have certainty. It's a fear of not being in control. So all three of those emotions are different, that they're all fear based triggers. Does that make sense?

Tina Gosney:

Yeah, and I think we're going to get more into that a little bit later, right?

Emily Layton:

Yeah. Okay, so those fears are what causes our triggers that can take we can be thriving, we can be communicating, and something is going to happen. Somebody says something, we enter a relationship, or somebody responds in a way, or past trauma or memories get it ignited and. And those fears trigger us just like a slide, like a game of shoot the ladders, where you're playing this game and going up the steps, and all of a sudden you roll and land on a slide down, and all sudden you're back at, like square four when you were at Square 60, whatever, right? It just slides us down to those low brain the fear does that because it's our threat of survival, and the brain, the human brain's job is to keep us alive. So anytime there's a threat for survival, it's going to put us into that low brain stress response survival mode. So all of those emotions, anger and sadness and fear are going to automatically trigger the brain we need to go into our low brain function, and

Tina Gosney:

it feels so automatic. And, yeah, it is automatic and it and it is, it is a survival response, so it feels like we don't have any control over it, correct.

Emily Layton:

It's just like if a tiger jumped out of the woods, you are going to immediately respond without even thinking about it. That's why we stay alive, and it's awesome. That's what kept you and me and all the listeners alive to this point, is that automatic response of responding to that here,

Tina Gosney:

and we don't have many tigers jumping out at us now, but our Tigers show up in different forms. Yes, they're maybe even a little more pervasive and present than our ancient ancestors that did have Tigers jumping out at them. Yes, our brain is still interpreting these things, like not getting invited to something as a tiger, or dropping and maybe late for something as a tiger. Or, you know that mother in law said to me the other day as a tiger, like all of these things are things that our brain is taking as a threat to our survival when they're actually not,

Emily Layton:

yes, that's exactly right, but they're our triggers, right? And I have different triggers than you have based on my experience, my family of origin, my trauma, my life experiences, the stories I tell myself that I believe to be true, right? We all have have triggers, and this is such a good journaling exercise, I'm going to encourage everybody to do this, to just tune in. What are my triggers? What is it that really ticks me off, suddenly ignites my anger, or suddenly makes me feel sad, or suddenly makes me feel afraid. What makes your heart rate right? And it's so good to know ourselves and know what those triggers are. So I would really encourage taking time to understand what are your triggers,

Tina Gosney:

which is so useful to know, yeah, yeah. Because then you start seeing patterns, and then you start seeing, Oh, actually, when this thing happens, I react this way. Yes, we can't do anything about it until we are aware of what's happening for us. So when we start identifying those triggers that's really helpful for us, it can also be really difficult to pull apart, especially if you're trying to do this in the moment when you're experiencing that survival mode reaction that it's really hard to do it in that moment, but later on, reflecting it's much you have more access to your higher brain, you have more access to see and pull apart a situation. And I think it's also helpful sometimes to have someone new, some neutral party, to help you pull those things apart. Can give you some even maybe you couldn't see yourself.

Emily Layton:

Yeah, and that really is we just want to emphasize we do need a collective. We do need friends. We do need people to help us see our blind spots. That's been a great blessing of our friendship is coaching that we do together, that I can say, Tina, help me see my blind spots. Like even though I have all of these skills and all of this training when I'm in the thick of that, I still need a friend to help me see what I'm not saying,

Tina Gosney:

right, right?

Emily Layton:

But this beautiful, the beautiful thing is also, the more that we do it, the more we get used to doing it right. Our brain, like when we first learned to tie our shoes, it took a whole long time and was really complicated. Now we can be doing three other things in our brain while we automatically tire shoes right and learning this process up from the low brain to the high brain is is slow and laborious at first, but then it can get to where it's really fast, like when I recognize I'm in my low brain, I can sit down and journal about what my triggers are. And then all sudden, it's like an escalator. It's like, oh yeah, I know. I know how to give myself acceptance. I know how to take accountability. I know what I need to do now. And it can just be a couple of minutes instead of a couple of days, sometimes that it takes, yeah, but the first step is, what we just tuned into a little bit is awareness, once we find ourselves in that low brain and that we're being reactive to people around us, maybe let's take a minute that, just to emphasize how do we know when we're in stress response low brain? You and I've talked a little bit about this, about Bite, bite. I by Yeah, the

Tina Gosney:

nervous system responses the fight time freeze, fun. You used a couple other ones.

Emily Layton:

Or Yeah. Dr Daniel Siegel adds in faint, faint, passing out, not being present, like just checking out totally. And I also like to add in fix, I think so often, especially we as women, want to be a little bit codependent and just fix the situation and fix other people. Then we don't need to be afraid about it. So when we get in those modes, bite, bite, breeze, fun, fixed or faint.

Tina Gosney:

And I think sometimes it's difficult for us to we, like most people, have heard of fight or flight? Yeah, actually, I was just talking about this with a client the other day. The other ones, like, sometimes it's hard for us to see, how in my life, am I showing up with a fight response? How am I showing up with a flight response, like, what does that actually look like in my life?

Emily Layton:

Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute. Yeah. What does fight look like for you?

Tina Gosney:

Tina, Oh, I get defensive. I start blaming. There's a lot of blame. Yeah, there's feel or a lot of feeling justified. For me,

Emily Layton:

it's a really high energy thing, right? There's a lot of energy now, a lot of energy and a lot of action. Whether we say those words or whether we're just like, expressing them very loudly in our heads, there's a lot of energy, a lot of volume, a lot of activity involved,

Tina Gosney:

yeah. What about you? What does fight look like?

Emily Layton:

For you? A lot of it is words, and a lot of it is, is just that energy, that tension inside of me. I'm not a physical fighter, like I don't act out physically, but I do carry a sword, so to speak, and and my and the way I wield that sword is, is by words, a lot of times when I'm getting defensive, I'll blame or I'll shame, which I hate to admit, but it's like, if you shame someone, it often is that sort of that you need to, like, cut him down. Yeah, and, and so when I'm doing that, I know I'm in my and, no, I'm not being my best.

Tina Gosney:

Yeah. What does flight look like for you?

Emily Layton:

Totally avoidance and denial and and it can be by avoiding it, or it can be like, there was a conversation I was having two nights ago with someone, and he asked a question, and it was like, Oh, I am totally not ready to answer that question. I'm totally going to avoid that. He said it out loud, like,

Tina Gosney:

I was off. You did say that out loud?

Emily Layton:

Yeah, I'm like, Oh, we're going to avoid that right now. And I came back to it last night when I was ready, like, in that moment, it felt too big, it felt too scary, and it was like I just can't go there. And sometimes that's conscious, like it was for me in that moment, and sometimes, most of the times, it's subconscious. We avoid and we deny. We escape into addictions, we scroll, we binge watch things as a way to to run away from what we know we need to face,

Tina Gosney:

right? I would say mine is very similar to yours. Yeah, that's what flight looks like for me too. Yeah.

Emily Layton:

How about freeze? What does freeze look like for you?

Tina Gosney:

Freeze to me, I you know, this is a little trickier, because, um, freeze to me, has some energy, but I can't do any. I don't feel powerful enough to do anything about it, but I still have the energy behind it. So it feels like stuckness, like I want to do something, but I can't. I feel immobile.

Emily Layton:

Yes, that's a great description. It's like it's stuck and it's swirling in a loop inside, but it doesn't have any way to get out. Yeah, a lot of times that's when I'm uncertain or when I'm insecure, or when I'm not confident, or when I'm afraid of how other people are going to respond, and I don't act and it's that. Stuckness, that stagnation side.

Tina Gosney:

Yeah, for me, it feels a lot like I want to respond, but I'm a I might be afraid of the person and what that if I say what I want to say, then I'm afraid of the reaction that I'm going to get from the other person, and so I just don't, but there I want to say it because I feel like I just want to. I don't want to say defend, but I just want to, you know, be heard. But then I don't. I can't because I'm I have fear,

Emily Layton:

yes, and do you know what this is, where we have to honor the human brain. Sometimes we really aren't safe to say it for whatever reason, right? And this is going to be the same thing with faint, Dr Siegel adds faint, where we just literally check out, like if someone faints, they aren't conscious. They're not making their choice or having the awareness. And it's the same situation where it's not safe to respond, right? And the best way that our brain can cope with that it's not safe to move forward is to free this or to faint and not move forward in this situation.

Tina Gosney:

You know, it's really interesting. I saw, and I can't even remember how I got there. I heard once that you can look up YouTube videos where animals, because this is an animal, yeah, totally. And like an animal, like a, I think it was an antelope. Maybe that was, you know, the one that got caught by the tiger, and the tiger drags it back, but it literally has shut down its body functions. Yeah, it is not dead, but its body functions are shut down, and it appears to be dead. And so the tiger stops trying to, you know, attack to kill. It's now just dragging it back to its its den, or whatever. And then once the tiger is off a little bit, the antelopes functioning comes back and it runs off. But it literally did shut down its body, heartbeat, breathing everything and as a

Emily Layton:

survival. And I just want to tune in to the reality of this. Like to hold space for this, because how many of us have been stuck in situations or relationships where, literally, we feel dead inside. We've shut down our joy, we've shut down our peace, we've shut down our sensitivity. We've shut down our connection, because we are just in this freeze or faint response. So we physically may be living a life, but just like that antelope, right, we've shut down functions, and we feel dead inside and right? That's a real thing. It is. It really is. But the beautiful thing is that we have hope, right? That there's

Tina Gosney:

there's skills

Emily Layton:

we can learn, yeah, and

Tina Gosney:

we have that fix, which, yes, I think you kind of went into that before, and I think we all feel what it fixes, but

Emily Layton:

there's a very active energy, and it's almost stepping outside of your own stewardship and your action to try and make it better, like, we could just make it better, then it won't hurt. That's kind of the fix.

Tina Gosney:

Yeah, I feel like that one's when I get in, like, my forceful energy, yeah, especially with other people, like, I want to make you see this or I want to want to make this thing happen, then that's fix. And it's not it's taking away someone else's agency or or getting into God's business, which is none of my business to get into.

Emily Layton:

Yeah, a lot of times fix will happen when we think we're in a power position over someone else, where we try and fix someone that we think we have more power up with. With fight, it's very similar to fight, but fight is when we're attacking against somebody that we think has equal power, or more power, than we do, and that our only way it's is to fight to be big, whereas the fix can tend to be like someone we think we are more powerful of and we want to,

Tina Gosney:

Oh, thanks for pointing that out.

Emily Layton:

Yeah, and respond. Tell us about fun. That's fun.

Tina Gosney:

Tina, I think of this as the people pleasing the just tell me what I have to do to get you to stop coming at me this way, or to fix this problem. I'll just do whatever I need to do to make this better. It's the giving up of yourself and not not looking at your own needs and giving in to whatever will make everybody else happy.

Emily Layton:

And this can be so fragmenting, right? Oftentimes, we do it in the name of, I'm just serving, I'm just sacrificing, I'm just loving. But it's so fragmenting. It's so damaging to our wholeness, because we're giving away parts of self, parts of our identity. We're letting you. We're choosing to give that away and and over time, that can be so hurtful long term for our own growth and development and home, right? And I don't

Tina Gosney:

want that to get mixed up with choosing to serve and choosing someone else's point of view. Because I think unless there can be really small nuances between fawning and making a choice. But I think when you start to be aware of how I have a tendency to find and just give in and serve and forget myself, that that selflessness, especially as a woman, that we get told that we're supposed to have all the time, that's different than using my agency to choose to to serve someone or to sacrifice, yeah, to sacrifice, it can be

Emily Layton:

the same behavior, but from a different place, the exact same actions externally can come from a low brain place and lead us going back to our metaphor, to have a very empty cup, right? Or we can be doing that from a high brain place, and we're sacrificing, but our cup can stay full, even though the outward behavior is a sacrifice, is a service?

Tina Gosney:

Is, you know, I think that a good reference point to kind of see, am I fawning? Am I serving? Am I, you know, I'm using in my agency, or am I giving it to the fond response? Does resentment show up? Resentment is usually a big red flag that something is not being addressed and that we might need to look at something. Yeah, it's been hiding under the surface,

Emily Layton:

yeah, very true. So that with this first step, this awareness, being aware, A, that we are in our low brain, right, and B, what it was our triggers that got us there, because that can really help us understand a, preventing next time, but also that be of what do I do about that? I like to use the acronym bytes to help us tune into our awareness, to come back to our body, our spirit, our heart and mind, and figure out kind of where we are. You know, when you use your GPS to get directions to drive somewhere, it first has to figure out where you are, to give you directions. If it doesn't know where you are, it can't tell you to turn right, right. So this bites is what helps us orient to what our coordinates are, where we are. So the B is the breathing I mentioned before. There's certain responses. I noticed when my breathing is shallow or rapid that it it's a clue. Oh, you're in your low brain. Oh, that triggered you. So B is for breathing, just tuning into our breathing, the power that we have through our breath to connect to our neurological system. And then the I is intuition. This could be a whole podcast in itself. We are very separated from our intuition. Intuition is just what beyond rational brain thinking. It's what you know in your gut is right or good or true or needful. We all have that ability. We just have muted it or ignored it for so long. Often we're not tuned into

Tina Gosney:

this, so we're overridden that Intuit, yeah,

Emily Layton:

over sensory. We are so sensory stimulated in our culture right now that it gets overridden. I really like that

Tina Gosney:

well, also overridden in that sometimes you feel a certain way, but you're the way that you've been taught, or, you know, the way that you have learned to carry yourself and to make decisions is not through intuition, it's through logical thinking. And so we can logic our way out of intuition very easily, very

Emily Layton:

easily. Yeah, so once again, maybe that's a conversation for another day, but the eye is tuning into our intuition, and what we know and feel is right. T is thoughts, and that's our rational thinking, right? What are we thinking about ourself? What are we thinking about this person? What's the story that we're telling? E is emotions. What's the feelings? This is the heart center, right? We have so many emotions and tune a lot of times we don't have words for them. This is where I like to go with my clients, to an emotions reveal, right? Let's learn to have the words for your emotions, because it can be very empowering to say I am feeling jealous. I am feeling, you know, these, these different emotions. I'm feeling lonely. Being able to put words to that changes the power that we have to do something about. Yes, so in mowing emotions is E and then S is sensations being tuned into our bodies. Once again, we as a culture are very disconnected from our bodies, so to recognize, my neck is tight, my jaw is clenched, right? I have pain or I have tension in my gut, being able to tune in to what we're feeling and where in our body we're feeling, it gives us a lot of information about what's going on, helps us slow it down

Tina Gosney:

and and it's hard to do any of those without having that body. What is happening inside of my body, yeah, react so often to what's happening inside of our body without even realizing that my body is experiencing exactly right now.

Emily Layton:

And we don't need to do these bites in order that just gives us all of those, those contact points with our soul, our breathing, our intuition, our thoughts, our emotions and our sensations in our body and and just doing those, whatever's most pressing can slow down our reaction and help pull us out of the slow brain into this place of awareness. That's that first step up.

Tina Gosney:

Yeah, and the emotions part are, we have a part of our brain that holds the emotions, and it doesn't have a lot of language, but it's it can also be very reactionary. So I love that you mentioned that we can name the emotion, because when that happens, it moves that, that what's happening, into the front part the prefrontal cortex, yeah, of our brain, so that we can actually see it and look at it and examine it and and learn from it. Whereas if we leave it back in the reactive part of our brain, it's very difficult, almost impossible, to do that. And yeah, kind of is running us instead of our higher thinking brain.

Emily Layton:

And I want to empathize too. This is just a nerdy brain moment, but it's not just hybrid and low brain. We're trying to bring online here. It's right brain and left brain. We want to show up wholeheartedly and whole brain Italy, and you mentioned that a lot of times you don't have words, and that's why it's so good just to tune into your breathing. You don't need words for that right to be aware of the sensations in your body. This lets us use our right brain some of these emotions. It feels I feel like I'm in a burst. It feels bright green, like I just want to puke, bright green all over. These are very right brained things, where thoughts are going to tend to be the left brain right or our logical thinking, our stories about why, but it helps us bring both our right brain and our left brain online so we're showing up more whole than we were,

Tina Gosney:

and we are a very traditionally left brain society. Yeah, we are very we teach people that to be in their left brain. We we celebrate people that are in their left brain. We value, tend to value them more, but the goal is not to just be stuck in left brain, because that can also be very limiting in our life. The goal is to, like Emily said, integrate both. Yeah, we integrate both the right brain and Val and even more value. Put more value on it than we have in our own lives and in our societies, in our relationships, and because it does have wisdom, yes, and wisdom is not all found in the left brain, right? A lot of wisdom and a lot of wholehearted living like you were talking about.

Emily Layton:

Yeah, exactly. So our second step up, I think we want to talk about that here too, once we are aware of what's going on within us in all those right brain and left brain wholehearted ways. Right we have acceptance, and we are really not good about accepting it. Once we know what's going on, we often want to jump in and fix it. And I find this step is the hardest step for us to do. I have a beautiful friends, Kay Cox, who, when I was in a very difficult time in my life, was so good at modeling acceptance for me. She will forever be the mentor of this where I would just explain or throw up about, oh my goodness, this just happened, and this is how I'm feeling, and this is how I'm thinking. And she would just, with this maternal, gentle lovingness, say it makes so much sense why you would feel that way. It makes so much sense why that story would be so hurtful to you. I could totally understand why you would be reacting that way, like there was no fixing in it. It was just holding space for it, for me. And she would do that again and again. I just realized I suddenly am relaxing. I don't have to fight anymore. I don't have to worry about running away. I don't have to keep trying to fix this, all those stress responses. It just. Held this space. And so that's I like to say, hold space. This is the sit acronym, hold space for it. And once you hold space and give it permission to just be there and validate that it's there, you can have this inquiry, this curiosity about it. I is inquiry. Just inquire like, why is it there? Why was that a trigger give space for that, and then T is that it just takes time accepting things? Sometimes means it just takes time to sit with it, to change, to dissipate, and we don't always get to have it gone right away like we want to. We just need to be patient. But over time, you will find, as you sit with it and give space for it and and explore it with curiosity, a little bit more that it dissipates itself instead of us having to invest so much energy in that,

Tina Gosney:

right? I think it's really easy to get stuck in our stories when we, like you said, you have, I have this thing going on in my life right now, and this is how I'm feeling. And you're talking to someone, and they're they're validating old stories like, oh, but they're such a good person or, or even internally, you think, like, I shouldn't be feeling this way. There's a there's something wrong with me that I'm feeling this way. Like, why do I always get stuck with this? Everybody tells me I'm supposed to forgive or that I'm supposed to be this way, but I'm not, and so we judge ourselves, and we get really stuck in that, or we just, well, I can't let space for that story because that person needs to change, like I can't accept this, because they've got to change. They're wrong. I'm not okay until they're they've changed this, or they've apologized, or we get stuck in all of these stories, this is not anything space. Yes, okay.

Emily Layton:

And I think it's important right now to clarify what acceptance is not and what acceptance is. Acceptance is not saying that you're okay with it. It's just saying it is, it is right. I'm accepting that it is. I'm not saying I'm okay with it. I'm not giving permission for it to keep happening. I'm not I'm not validating that I like it. I'm not agreeing with it. So to get in our brains, it's we're not, acceptance is not saying any of those things. Acceptance is giving space and and and taking on the reality that it is right now, this time through in my life, it really is. I really feel this way. I really have this story, whether or not I think I should I do Yes,

Tina Gosney:

and it's also not saying that I'm not going to do something about

Emily Layton:

it. Yes, right? Exactly.

Tina Gosney:

Because if we have this idea that if I accept then I'm just letting go and never going to touch it, and I just have to become good with it. That's actually not what we're saying. We're actually, I want to go back to your GPS example, because if we're trying to get somewhere, let's just say we're trying to feel better, but we're trying to get to with a map analogy, we're kind of trying to get to New York, and we tell we're tell ourselves we're in Florida, but we're actually in California.

Emily Layton:

We're never accepting. We're gonna get so lost. We're gonna get

Tina Gosney:

so lost. It's not gonna work. We're gonna go in the totally wrong direction. Accepting is just saying this is where I am. This is the truth of where I am. It doesn't mean that I like it, that I'm not going to do anything about it, that I'm saying that it's okay. I'm just saying this is where I am. This is the truth for me right now.

Emily Layton:

And there's so much power in that that I think we don't access because we get caught up in the should. We're worried about being judged, or we're worried about or we judge ourselves that we're not good enough, or we're not righteous, or we're not kind, if we're doing that, but there's so much power in just saying. I am feeling really judgy. I am really, really indignant about that. What this person did. I am feeling really jealous, like it's hard to say that sometimes, but there's such power I didn't experience this weekend, where I was having a really hard day because of something that had happened, and my adult daughter came in, and we had the most beautiful discussion, and I just said, I'm feeling this way, this way and this way, and I can't make dinner right now. I just need to sit in it. And she gave me the biggest hug, and she said, Mom, it's so validating, and it feels so good because, as I hear you say, that I can go make. Dinner and help you and love you and serve you that way, but it also reinforces to me, it's okay for me when I'm having a hard time to admit that. So thank you for modeling that. So I think with acceptance, we're holding space, but we're also creating space for one another to show up in our humanness. We really do have a common humanity, and it just holds more space for that compassion and that common humanity as we're honest and humble with ourselves and without it,

Tina Gosney:

I've noticed in parenting, and maybe not just parenting, but with people that we love a lot, and we see them holding on to a story that is hurting them or maybe hurting the relationship in some way. And we want to talk them out of their story. Yes, we want to tell them that that's not true, that didn't happen. You're great, you're awesome. Don't feel that way about yourself. We want to, like, invalidate how they're feeling and where they are. And when we do that, we think that we're being helpful. Like, it's human nature to want to help the people that you love, and it feels natural to do that, but it's actually when we do that to someone, and we don't hold space when we try to talk them out of their story, it actually makes them grab onto that story even harder, because they don't feel seen and they don't feel heard, and so they have to keep holding on to it, and they have to even go further into that story until someone is going to finally See me. Someone is going to finally hear me. But sometimes it's hard for people to find that person that can be allowed, that can see them and hear them and allow them to like you said, loosen up the story. You said, Kay Cox did that for you.

Emily Layton:

Yeah. And I think what happens is what you just described, is the fixed energy of the low brain survival mode, right? We're aware, and then we get up to the second step, and we're wanting to do acceptance, but then we slide right back. It's like that shoots and ladder slide. We slide from that second step back to low brain because we're trying to fix it. So as we are standing in that place for someone else, holding that place of whole brained acceptance is so important. It's such a beautiful gift to help hold that space of grace for someone else. And the more we do it for others, the more we naturally are going to be able to do it for ourselves. Then that times comes where Kay's not there. But I can say to myself, Emily, it's okay. It makes sense why you're overwhelmed with this, right? We give ourselves and

Tina Gosney:

and giving up that fixing, especially if we're used to using that fixing energy, yeah, that. And we then move, try to move and not do fix. And we try to stand, you know, in our wholeness that's very uncomfortable, we have to be okay with our own uncomfortableness inside of our body as we give space to someone to have a story,

Emily Layton:

yes, and this is why the acronym sit is so relevant, because you just have to learn to Sit with the uncomfortable. There's a beautiful quote from Michelle Craig, and it even came up my son was at a at a rock climbing activity with some youth in our congregation last weekend, and and the leader said that you you just have to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable. Right when you're on the face of that rock, you're going to feel uncomfortable, but just sit with it for a minute and don't give up and keep pushing forward right in, whether we're pushing forward actively or pushing forward in in stillness like let ourselves sit with it. Be comfortable being uncomfortable, and that's going to take us to a place that we haven't been before, which is growth, which is development, which is greater love, greater compassion.

Tina Gosney:

And you know, we were talking about the nervous system this fight, fight, freeze, fun. All these that we went over, these are nervous system responses as we sit. I love how you said space and Korean time. As we learn how to sit with the uncomfortable, it's like we're taking our nervous system to the gym and we're exercising it so it has more capacity than for uncomfortableness. Yeah, building a muscle.

Emily Layton:

Yes, totally. Dr Daniel Siegel talks about the brain and in order to move out of this, like we talked about how fear triggers us down, what the momentum that propels us upward is feeling safe, and when we and he describes safe as being seen, soothed. And secure, and all of that is going to happen as we slow down. My friend Kay gave me the gift of being seen. It's like I see you. I see why that is a trigger for you. Like when we feel seen, we feel safe, and our momentum is going to go upward when we soothe ourselves by slowing down that neurological system, by being in our senses, by being aware, we're going to feel safe and we're going to have that momentum upward. And when we feel secure, like there's not a should it's okay to be where you are. You're validated. That momentum is naturally going to take us back to our high brain.

Tina Gosney:

I love it. Okay. We're going to we're actually breaking this up into two episodes. So we're going, will you just recap what we've done, and then we're going to break and then the next part will be in the next episode. So recap what we've covered. Right? So far,

Emily Layton:

we've talked about what it looks like, feels like, to live in survival mode, in that stress response in our low brain and how to recognize that we don't want to be there, encourage journaling on what our triggers are that often gets there just to increase awareness. Awareness is that first step up and that we can tune into, our breathing, our intuition, our thoughts, our emotions and our sensation to help us be aware of where we are, our GPS location, if you will. And then our second step up is accepting being able to sit with the difficulty motion, to give space for grace, space to feel what we really authentically are feeling, and inquiry, just to inquire, be curious about what's going on, and then the t give it time. And that is, we do that our neurological systems are going to feel more safe and we're going to be more capable to do the next step. So we'll talk about the next step

Tina Gosney:

of the great thank you so much, Emily. This is great, and it's, it's things that we don't usually think about that are playing into our lives every day, every day and every moment of every day, every relationship always at play behind the scenes. You.