Hey, we’re here starting year two of the podcast and I am so glad you guys are here with me. If you haven’t yet, take two minutes and go review the podcast on Apple Podcasts.

It’s really simple, and you can win a $100 Amazon gift card. Just take a screenshot of your review and email it to Amy at Smooth Stones Coaching. Dot com and you get three extra entries. If you share the podcast with your friends on social media or in some other way, just send me that too, and I will get you entered reviews.

Just help more angel moms find the podcast. So I really appreciate your feedback and it’s really, really helpful. Now we’ve made it through another October 15th, and I know a bunch of you are still spreading awareness for the next few weeks about baby loss, and it can be very emotional. Brene Brown says vulnerability is not winning or losing.

It’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. She also says vulnerability is not weakness. It’s our greatest measure of courage, but I know it really doesn’t feel like courage when we are in the middle. A vulnerability hangover. It feels kind of terrible. I wanted to help you out if you are feeling that at all right now.

So I am gonna relate these tips today to helping yourself feel better after too many drinks, but I actually have to say that I have. Never had a drink of alcohol because I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as the Mormons. And I’ve never had a bad morning after a night out, but I definitely know what a vulnerability hangover feels like.

I. In this month, a lot of us had a goal to share about our babies, so I’m gonna talk about that specifically, but you can really use this for any situation where you feel like you really said or did something vulnerable, and you’re regretting it a little the next day. What do you find yourself doing when you feel this way?

What triggers a vulnerability attack for you? I want you to really think about this as I go through these tips. ’cause that’s really gonna help you identify just what’s going on, why you’re feeling that way, and generally when does it happen. So my old go-to cure was to backtrack, delete, or just never actually put myself out there to begin with because I was way too worried about what people would think or how they would react.

But it’s really hard to reach your goals when you play it safe like that. So we’re not gonna take it back. We are just going to take care of ourselves and then get up and go back to it. I went to the internet for the best hangover cures, and I want to use them to, as a guide to take away some of the pounding headache, the aching gut and the exhaustion that comes with letting ourselves share our hearts and our babies and our raw experiences.

Tip number one is eat beforehand. Now, this step is one we often forget, but it goes back to the old adage of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The point is that we do what we can before we head out to make everything easier on our system. When we’re talking about our brains and our hearts, what we want to do is figure out why we want to do the vulnerable thing in the first place.

What are we trying to accomplish and do we like those reasons? Why do you talk about your baby, especially in October? Why do you light a candle and share it on the 15th? Why do you post pictures that you rarely share? You can use the C T F A R model to really figure out what result you want. This stands for circumstance, thought, feeling, action, and Result.

If you wanna hear all about it, go back to episode seven, which is called How to Coach Yourself. But when we use the model, we can choose. What we’re going to do to get the result we want. We can choose an emotion that will drive the action and some thoughts that will create that emotion. This is called an intentional model.

It’s where you choose how you’re gonna feel first, instead of just waiting to see what happens. It’s where we use our higher brain to override that primitive brain that just wants to yell. Danger. Danger when we even think about putting ourselves out there. So figure out your reasons for sharing and then commit to them when you feel the anxiety and the vulnerability creep in, remind yourself what your why is.

Things will go so much better when we fill our own proverbial bellies first. The next tip is to drink lots of water. Now, this seems to be the cure all for everything, but it’s good advice. The systems in our bodies all need water to operate at their best. During a hangover, you can be dehydrated for a number of reasons, which only makes your symptoms worse.

You may be nauseous and water won’t be easy to get down or keep down, but it will help. This is a lot like feeling our feelings. We are emotional beings. Everything we do is driven by these emotions, but when we’re feeling an overload, the last thing we want to do is experience them. Our brains want to get away from being uncomfortable, but the best way to get everything running smoothly again, is to allow our feelings to be there.

Sit with them, feel them inside your body. Spend some time describing the sensations in your body so you can see that they’re not actually going to hurt you. I know it seems like they will, and your brain is freaking out that you are going to die because you laid your heart in front of some people, but I promise you will survive this.

Feel your feelings like one zip of water at a time. The next step is to eat carbs. Carbs are gonna get your blood sugar back into balance after a night of partying. Many people forget to nourish their bodies when they get distracted by alcohol consumption. And the same goes for when we get vulnerable.

We get really caught up in what we are doing and saying that we forget to center ourselves in the one thing we can control us. That’s why it feels so vulnerable, because it’s all about what other people think, and if they’re gonna hurt us when they know the deep down truth, it’s exposing the soft underbelly and just hoping we don’t get sliced to shreds.

I want you to think about this. A lot of people share the story and memory about their babies because they think that we should be able to do so just like our other children. But when we share our living children, we don’t get a vulnerability hangover, right? Even if we share every day for a month about our kids’ school fundraiser, it rarely creates a level of emotion that talking about our angels does.

So why is that? Because we don’t have the same thoughts about them sharing our living kids is quote unquote, normal and acceptable. Sharing our angel babies is vulnerable and dangerous. At least that’s what we think this level of vulnerability means. You need to take some time and manage your mind. This is a part where you do a thought download and write out everything you were thinking and feeling, and why.

Write down all the things you’re scared are gonna happen. Even the worst case scenarios. Dig into all of it. Once you have it there in front of you, that’s when you can start deciding what thoughts you want to keep with you and which ones you can let go of. And yes, you really can decide. This is one of the most powerful things I can teach you.

You are not your thoughts. You don’t have to believe everything. You think. What separates us from every other animal in the world is the ability to think about our thinking. This all happens in our prefrontal cortex, and you do have control of what you believe. For example, when I think about sharing pictures of my babies, my biggest fear is that people will steal them.

I’ve seen other pictures be taken and used for scams or just by people wanting attention. I’ve known moms whose living Rainbow baby was turned black and white and used on a graphic for baby loss. When I think about these things happening, it feels unsafe. Even if it’s rare, it’s possible and it’s right at the front of my brain.

But when I think about the real reason I want to share, which is to help others to normalize baby loss and to lift even one person, plus to show off some super cute toes that not many people got to see, then I feel happy to share When I choose on purpose not to dwell on the weirdos out there and just on the goodness of others, I feel much more empowered and comfortable.

Then if something crazy does happen, I will still have my why to fall back on and I can be confident that I shared for the right reasons instead of beating myself for doing it in the first place. The next step is sleep. I think this one we can all get on board with when we’re feeling that vulnerability.

It can get intense and everything seems so big and so urgent. If you’re like me, it can be hard to sleep with all kinds of thoughts whirling in your head. Now this should be a little less. If you’ve already followed the steps above and gotten these thoughts out onto paper, you’re probably still scrambling to know what you should do, but your brain is very tired.

So do what you need to do to sleep. Let your body rest. Take a hot shower, go for a walk so you can settle down. Put on a guided relaxation to help quiet your mind. You’ll feel so much better in the morning light. The next cure is to take vitamins, replenish what you might’ve lost for a minute. In the midst of putting yourself out there, what’s something fun you like to do?

Go and do it. Blast your favorite music, dance, clean. Go to lunch with friends who can make you laugh, snuggle with your man when you are feeling emotionally exhausted. It can be hard to do anything, but finding something that gives you a boost will be worth it. Next, don’t take painkillers. The last advice every single hangover cure had was to be careful with painkillers, especially Tylenol.

You may have a pounding headache, but it can be dangerous to mix painkillers with alcohol. Now Tylenol is one of the safest drugs out there, and it’s often our first choice with a headache. And I wanna compare this to our go to buffer. Buffering is anything we do to get away from our feelings, like getting on our phone and scrolling Instagram, watching Netflix, eating comfort foods, et cetera.

You probably could identify your top few buffers when you are feeling vulnerable. Avoiding it will tend to just take you down a rabbit hole because your buffer isn’t going to make you feel any better. Then all of a sudden you hit the bottom of the gallon of ice cream. You may not make great decisions when you’re feeling weak and just keep setting off a row of dominoes that make things worse instead of better.

This is kinda like in every romantic comedy when we are almost to the end and love is blossoming, and then the leading lady accidentally overhears something. She misinterprets and she runs off and won’t answer the phone and everything gets all messy. That’s what happens when we operate from a frantic feeling.

So don’t try painkillers, go back to the other steps and keep doing them over and over until you feel better. The good thing about a vulnerability hangover is that they tend to fade away in time, but if you follow these steps, you’ll make it go away even faster or avoid it to begin with. It’s truly a miracle cure, and the best part is the more you use it, the easier it gets, and the effects will spread to other areas of your life where you find yourself really focused on what other people think.

It’s so freeing, so definitely. Try it. If you wanna learn more about curing this awful feeling once and for all, so you can stop being controlled by your emotions and start being in charge. I’ve got your back. You can sign up for a complimentary session with me. I provide this service for my listeners and you should definitely take advantage of it.

It’s there for you, so if you wanna connect and get some help or you’re feeling stuck, let’s talk. All you have to do is go to sw stones coaching.com and sign up for a free consult or visit the link right in the show notes. All right, have a great week, you guys. I’m sending lot of love and I.