Unpacking Positivity & Processing Emotions // with Jen Rafferty

Jen Rafferty: 00:00:00

it's not about feeling happy and positive all the time. It's about knowing who you are, knowing who you wanna be, and then making your actions, thoughts, beliefs, language aligned with that.

undefined: 00:00:16

Welcome to know them. Be them. Raise them. Uh, show to help busy, mindful growth oriented moms stand formed and inspired, especially as they're navigating their daughters tween and teen years, I'm your host Carmelita Tiu.

A couple of housekeeping things before I launch into this episode. Number one, shout out to Roxanna Elden who left a really lovely review on apple podcasts. She said, "great advice I didn't even realize I needed. I'm the mother of an almost 10 year old girl. So when I stumbled onto this podcast, it seemed worth listening to a few episodes. Great advice, not preachy, a combination of new ideas and reminders to help with the type of mom I hope to be. Looking forward to recommending this to other girl moms."

Thank you Roxanna, this made my day. It definitely motivates me to keep putting out content that hopefully will be useful to girl moms everywhere.

Secondly, if you haven't heard about, the rise and raise collective, make sure to stick around till the end. I provide a little more information after the episode. So, reach out to me if you have any questions on that.

And lastly, if you like what you hear today, please follow or subscribe, tell a friend and leave a review on apple podcasts or Spotify. As you heard, they do mean a lot and you might get a little shout out. anytime I have the opportunity to understand our brains better understand our wiring so that we can approach life with an informed perspective. I just geek out over that.

So I was very excited to be connected with Jen Rafferty, founder of the empowered educator. An author international public speaker and educator, Jen started as a middle school music teacher and taught for 15 years in central New York.

Jen is a certified emotional intelligence practitioner and is currently pursuing her PhD in educational psychology. Since its inception, the Empowered Educator has reached teachers and school leaders all over the world. Jen has been featured in authority magazine, medium, thrive global and was on the TEDx stage with her talk, generational change begins with empowered teachers. She's also the host of the podcast, take notes with Jen Rafferty, which is rated in the top 3% of podcasts globally. Jen's insatiable curiosity continues to make the empowered educator programs relevant and reflective of the most up-to-date research in mindset leadership and cognitive neuroscience. She's committed to inspiring teachers and school leaders to discover their voice and maintain a healthy longevity throughout their careers. Here's our conversation.

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:03:06

Let's start off with who you are and why you do the work that you do and why it's important to you. I'd love to hear that.

Jen Rafferty: 00:03:12

Sure. So the, the skinny of it is, I'll start in 2019, everything was going great. I was a music teacher in the public schools in middle school for about 15 years, and I decided, I, I published my book right then also, and I decided that, I wanted to get a divorce, which was a mutual decision between me and my husband at the time, and I moved out of my house with my two kids who were five and seven at the time, the same weekend. The world shut down in March, 2020,

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:03:39

Hmm.

Jen Rafferty: 00:03:39

and it was a pretty significant. Shift because everything that I thought that I was, the day before a wife, I lived in that house. I, you know, teaching choir, uh, you know, and, and now I, I'm all of a sudden homeschooling my kids. I'm a single mom. I'm figuring out how to teach music online and I. I really hit this place where I needed to reconcile with who I wanted to be and, and who I was and, and how to kind of bridge that gap. And it's not very often we have those moments where we can ask ourselves those questions in a place where it seems like the world has well, and. Around us to the ground.

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:04:18

Mm-hmm.

Jen Rafferty: 00:04:19

while it was a very difficult, you know, transition, I am very grateful for that moment moment because it provided a beautiful opportunity for me to shift and rebuild and really think about what's important to me and how do I wanna structure my life based on my values instead of based on what I thought I was supposed to be doing, because society tells me I'm supposed to be doing those things. So I was able to make a lot of decisions that kind of led me in this new direction. I took off what I thought would just be a semester of teaching to homeschool my kids. That fall of 2020 dove into the work of mindset and cognitive neuroscience. That's when I started my PhD in educational psychology and went on my own healing journey. And through that realized, you know, there's a missing piece here in what we're able to provide our kids, not just as parents, but as teachers. And when the time came to. Decide whether or not I wanted to go back to school. My logical mind was saying, of course, Jen, you're this is what we were supposed to do. You wrote a book about teaching. This is who you are. And everything inside of my body was screaming at me that there is something else. Don't go back. Follow your intuition. Do this new thing. And I was in a place where I was in the work enough to trust myself in that. And so I wrote my resignation letter. I felt amazing. And then four days later I was sobbing on my living room floor. Like what did I just do? Um, cause that's terrifying, you know? but that's part of how we change and grow and expands and make impact. We do scary things and it's knowing how to bring your body along for the ride, which we can talk about in a little bit. And so I started my company, which is Empowered Educator, and now I work with schools and, uh, particularly teachers, school leaders, front office staff, and now even parents, about focusing on the social and emotional wellbeing of the adults in all of the kids' lives. We do a great job really focusing on what we need for kids and to, to do our best, to provide them with what they need. But when we leapfrog over the, the adults, these programs are not, Effective or they're not as effective because the people who are delivering the information are not embodying the practices. So that's where my work comes in.

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:06:27

Something that, uh, came up as you were sharing this, this idea of embodiment and, you know, trying to support our kids, as we navigate life's struggles, I know you've done a little bit of work or maybe more than a little bit of work on the idea of positive psychology versus toxic positivity. Can you shed some light on, you know, what's the difference? Let's start there.

Jen Rafferty: 00:06:51

Sure. So positive psychology in and of itself. Is wonderful because it opens up a door to possibility. Oftentimes when we're like in the situation, we're in the weeds, we, we have one perspective of how it is, and it's usually just like, doesn't feel good. It just, everything just is gross and terrible and, and it's difficult to see our way out of it. What positive psychology tells us is that if you use what's we call a reframe, then you are able to reframe a situation where it's as if you're sitting at a dining room table and you're looking at something from where you were sitting at the head of the table that's in the middle of the table. And a reframe essentially is if you get up from your chair and you just move to a different chair and that same thing that's in the middle, you actually see from a different perspective and therefore you can kind of shift into something that's maybe not so terrible and awful, but something that has now. a positive outlook or a new opportunity or possibility and. That in of itself is great. However, where it gets a little bit sticky and becomes toxic is when we throw like glitter and sprinkles and rainbows and butterflies on a problem that really doesn't feel good. And so what we do is this like gratitude bypass or this positivity bypass where we we're experiencing something that is not great, where we feel resentful or angry or frustrated or overwhelmed, but then we say to ourselves, well, I wanna stay positive so at least I'm healthy. Or at least they still have a job, or at least, you know, my kids aren't in jail or like, whatever. Like fill in the blank, right? It doesn't matter what it is. and so we bypass the emotion of what we're feeling in an effort to think positive, and that's where it becomes toxic. Because what happens then is that we're not actually processing our emotions, we're just shoving them down in our body. Now, thoughts happen in our mind. Feelings happen in our body. And when we feel these lower level emotions that are disempowering, not negative, no emotions are negative, they just are. Some are empowering, some are disempowering, but we're in that disempowering lower level frequency of an emotion like anger, frustration, depression, hopelessness. We have to actually process through that and feel it, which doesn't actually feel good, but we have to do that in order to get to the other side where we can say, okay, now I'm ready for a reframe. And I do have one more thing to say about that because there's lots of places we can go. But this is an important thing also, is that, until we do That process. we're never going to get to a place where we feel aligned. And I think this is where a lot of what my work comes into is. I don't like to, even, to use the word positive, I use the word aligned

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:09:40

Hmm.

Jen Rafferty: 00:09:40

it's not about feeling happy and positive all the time. It's about knowing who you are, knowing who you wanna be, and then making your actions, thoughts, beliefs, language aligned with that.

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:09:53

ah, I love that. Seriously, uh, because I was just about to say that positive kind of has a negative connotation and perhaps justifiably in some way because it does represent that, uh, Positivity bypass for so many people, which is another term that I love because I've never heard it articulated that way. That instead of, sitting with the feelings and working through them, you just almost pretend that they don't exist. Like you're gonna

Jen Rafferty: 00:10:20

well, it's easier, right? Because it, it's just like, you don't wanna, it doesn't feel good to not feel good,

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:10:25

right.

Jen Rafferty: 00:10:26

you know? So on some level you're like, oh, I'll just like think my way through this one and it'll be cool. Uh, but it's not because fast forward a couple of days, couple weeks, couple months, couple years, what happens? You end up having these manifested feelings in, um, illness and

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:10:40

Mm mm mm that mind body connection too is something that I didn't really start to notice and feel the truth of until I was a little older. But to be able to kind of communicate that to our kids, I could see being so helpful and so empowering to let them trust their gut, trust how their physical, you know, feelings are coming up and what that might be telling them.

Jen Rafferty: 00:11:04

Yes. Well, how often do we say when kids are not feeling, an empowering feeling? You're okay. It's fine. You're fine. And what we're doing then in, in an effort to take away their pain, cuz of course we're adults. We love our, we love them and we don't want them to feel any pain and we want them to be okay. And so we, you know, we just wanna protect them. And so we, we try to take that onto ourselves. But when we do that, we actually prevent them from experiencing an emotional process that is essential for their growth and development and connection to one of the most beautiful things that's a part of their humanity, which is their emotion. And you know, we often take that away because we, as the adults feel uncomfortable with it.

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:11:48

Right, right. On that point, the idea of not circumventing, but dealing with those feelings, whether it's our kid or ourselves, what are your thoughts on how to approach actually sitting with it? Like, how does, how does one do that if they're not used to it? If they're used to taking that bypass all the time?

Jen Rafferty: 00:12:10

Such a good question. One of the reasons why we don't sit with our emotions in a way that's helpful and productive is because it doesn't feel safe. I mean, I'm, I'm gonna assume here for a minute, but I, many of us have not grown up in homes where it was safe to feel lower level disempowering feelings. Does that, does that ring true

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:12:30

mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jen Rafferty: 00:12:31

Yes. Okay. Same for me. Right? Yeah. And like, and my, you know, I grew up in a great household. I had two loving parents. You know, I, I had a great relationship with my sister. Yet we were not modeled how to handle emotions that are anything other than, like, happy and excited and pleasant and content. So, you know, growing up doing this now actually doesn't feel safe. And what I mean by that is your nervous system. You know, which is mind body is how, I'm gonna, you know, kind of, talk about it right now. Your nervous system is wired to keep you safe. This is your biology and so anything that is familiar. Is safe. So if you are comfortable and it is familiar for you to do emotional bypass, then that's what your nervous system is going to do because it is an adaptive behavior that's kept you alive this whole entire time. And which by the way, it's done a great job because we're here. You're either listening and like you and I are having this conversation. You know, it did a great job. However, that adaptive behavior is not serving us anymore because we know that we need to process through our emotions in order to show up as our most authentic selves and live our best lives. So what you need to do then is recognize how do I create safety in my nervous system to make it feel okay? So I can process through this thing. So how do we create safety in our nervous system? First of all, You have to recognize when you don't feel safe, and those are all of the telltale signs that you're feeling stressed. So you know your chest might be tight, you might have a headache. Your shoulders wanna be earrings. All of a sudden, you know, you have a knot in your stomach. And when you recognize what's going on with your body physically, then you can create safety by doing certain exercises like. Breathing. You know, it's, it sounds so simple because it is sitting for just, you know, 30 seconds and doing three rounds of a box breath, which is inhale for four, pause for four, exhale for four, pause for four, and just paying attention to your breath will lower. Your heart rate will slow down. Your breathing and your nervous system will be like, all right, like, I think Joan's safe now. I think, I think it's okay to cry for a minute. And you get to do that as many times as you need to do. But it is a process, and this is really what being empowered feels like. This is regaining your agency and what we're doing is not only increasing our capacity to hold space for our kids for when they have these moments, but we are modeling another paradigm for them to know that it Oh, okay. I see mom processing through her sadness. I see mom processing through her anger that's safe and they grow up with that new paradigm. And that's the generational change that I'm really interested in.

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:15:16

I, I love that. Oh gosh. I keep saying I love that because I do. But

Jen Rafferty: 00:15:21

Me too. It gets me all fired up because this is, this is the stuff like this is the, you know, once we start learning how our minds work and. How our behaviors are, really just adaptive behaviors from trauma responses. Like we're all walking trauma responses, like, you know, we, we need to just talk about like, this is just part of being human. And once we get it all out on the table and know that you and me and everyone listening, we are all the same, we can start really to heal collectively and make significant change.

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:15:51

Yeah. Yeah. So, going back to this idea of kind of breathing and regulating your own emotions so that you can, you can process them. is there a part of that, that involves kind of just noticing and checking. To your point about we gravitate towards the familiar, and I, I kind of love how you described that whatever's familiar is safe, even if you know on an intellectual level that it's maybe not good for you or maybe not healthy for you, but it's familiar and it's that familiarity that your body sees as equating to safety. So, so breathing and noticing the feelings. And then choosing something different. Is that kind of the next step to get you through?

Jen Rafferty: 00:16:37

Yes, it can be, it can be choosing something different. Sometimes the step is really just in the noticing

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:16:42

Hmm.

Jen Rafferty: 00:16:42

can't change something you don't notice. So, you know, oftentimes people come to this work and they're like, okay Jen, this is great. I've been doing these breathing breaks throughout the day, which is something I highly recommend. I. Still set four alarms in my phone. They go off, I stop what I'm doing. I do three rounds of a box breath just to check

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:16:58

It's amazing. Yeah.

Jen Rafferty: 00:17:00

just to notice, because I can't, you know, you're on autopilot. That's another function of your brain being super efficient and keeping you alive. But if you're not interrupting your autopilot, nothing is ever going to change. So creating some sort of, you know, alarms that I work with educators, they do it even with their classes. I do it with my kids sometimes when they're home. And that is, that is a, an opportunity for you to strengthen that notice muscle. Just pausing what's happening with my body right now? What am I feeling? What am I thinking that's causing me to feel this thing? Is that thought true? Do I wanna think this thought? And we start getting really curious as to what's going on because. 95 to 97% of the time, we are operating on our subconscious. Our subconscious is running the show. That means only three to 5% of our existence is actual conscious choices. Isn't that wild?

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:17:51

That's crazy.

Jen Rafferty: 00:17:52

That is crazy. And so what we're doing with these practices is that we are increasing our level of consciousness. We are raising our conscious awareness so we can be active participants and co-creators in our life instead of just like wandering around being reactive to everything all of the time, which is a result of our wiring. And that's, it's nobody's fault. This is just how we're wired. But now we know better. We have the research now, which is still relatively new. I mean, neuroplasticity is only about. 20 or so years old at this point, maybe 20, 25, 30 now that I'm thinking about it. but it's new science, so understanding how to have a working relationship with your brain is, is great. And I do wanna say one thing before I move on to the next topic, cuz I know you're itching to talk about neuroplasticity, but sometimes in those moments, breathing isn't enough. And I need to also be really clear about that. Breathing isn't always the answer. Sometimes the answer is getting in your car and screaming. Sometimes the answer is going to a rage room. I mean, I take my kids to a rage room when I am feeling really angry about stuff and I need to like, yeah, like I get out the, and it has to be physical. I bought a little punching bag on Amazon that sits on my desk and I just like take a few punches sometimes. Breathing sometimes isn't gonna cut it. If you're really feeling it and you're deep in resentment and you're deep in anger and you're deep in frustration, you're not gonna think your way out of it. And breathing might help temporarily, but that feeling needs to be released in your body because that's where the feelings are.

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:19:21

Um, I noticed that in my kids too, like, or I suspected that and I, I sort of let myself believe it because to your point, I can come at them with all of these tools and, you know, mindfulness exercises, but sometimes they just they just need to do something physical that kind of wears them out to get that anxiety out of their system. And I, myself was not an athlete, so I can't relate to a lot of that, but even, I know that there are times when that feeling of spentness is the only thing that kind of checks off a box.

Jen Rafferty: 00:19:54

A hundred percent. I'm not an athlete either running there's nothing you can do to get me to go on a run. There's no amount of money that you can pay me. It's just not happening. That is not my, you know, mode of, you know, release that I choose. But going outside, I love to be outside. Sometimes I'll go outside, barefoot because putting my feet in the grass and connecting to nature is something that actually helps me release. And again, just doing something to create safety in your nervous system, what your, your nervous system mind, body can just be like, okay,

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:20:28

Yeah.

Jen Rafferty: 00:20:28

good. We're not, we're not gonna die right now

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:20:31

Mm, So on that note, do you have a parting thought or some affirmation or maybe a phrase you'd like to turn to when thinking about, emotions and positivity or alignment that you'd like to leave with the listeners?

Jen Rafferty: 00:20:46

Sure. I think one of the most important things to remember here is patience and grace. That often the impatience becomes the sabotage. We wanna feel good so, badly that we want to be here now and we can't rush the process because when we do, we want to control it. And control is an illusion. So, you know, understanding that wherever you are is perfectly beautiful and give yourself patience. And give yourself grace. And when things aren't going the way you think you want them to, you're gonna recommit and try again. And that's it. That's all there is to it.

undefined: 00:21:38

Ugh. So much goodness, hard to pick, but here are my top takeaways.

Number one positive psychology is a good thing. It encourages us to see situations from different perspectives so we can shift into a less awful place. Or see the opportunity or possibility that can arise from something we initially see as negative.

Number two. Uh, gratitude, bypass or positivity bypass, is when we're experiencing frustration or anger or overwhelm. But instead of processing those feelings, we shut that down and bypass the emotion by saying things like, well, at least I'm healthy or at least I still have a job. This becomes toxic.

Number three. We have to work through our feelings. If we don't address them, we'll never get to a place where we'll feel aligned internally. That pent up emotion builds up and throws off our intuition and inner compass.

Number four. Your nervous system is wired to keep you safe. And what's familiar. Feel safe, even if the familiar is not really good for you. This one blew my mind because we often hear and wonder about why people are attracted to toxic relationships or bad habits. And this kind of explains it.

Number five to evolve beyond negative patterns that our nervous systems want to default to. We have to recognize when we don't feel safe, and then use tools like pausing to notice how our bodies feel, and taking deep breaths or practicing box breathing even just for 30 seconds. This will calm our nervous systems and make space for us to make different choices.

To learn more about Jen and her empowered educator programming. Head to empowered educator.com. Follow her on Instagram @jenrafferty_, and find her podcast, "Take notes with Jen Rafferty" on your favorite podcasting platform.

Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: 00:23:53

Thanks for listening today and being the committed intentional parent that you are. If you enjoy the podcast please follow, tell a friend and leave a review on apple podcasts or Spotify if you haven't already.

Also, I'd like to invite you to be one of the founding members of the rise and raise collective. It's a mastermind I'm starting of mindful growth oriented moms. Who want to grow as individuals as well as parent with intention.

Now, when I say mastermind, this does not mean you have to be an expert. I am not an expert by any stretch. It's really the sense of curiosity and a commitment to personal growth that qualifies anyone to be part of this. So, you know, what really triggered this was thinking about how, when I first became pregnant, I had all the books. I also took classes and became involved in a variety of mommy and me groups. And connected with other new moms.

I vividly remember when I was on maternity leave, going on walks with another new mom and we were both pushing our strollers and we'd meet for an hour. Because that was about the length of time that our babies could take it And we would just talk about all things related to where we were in this stage of life. Dealing with the babies, how to make everything work, how to get more sleep, you know how to feel normal when there's so much going on, that feels up in the air.

That intentionality and focus around becoming a parent, it's a really special thing. And it made me realize how being deliberate about how we spend our time thinking about things can make such a difference.

So my vision is to provide a safe and celebratory space for moms to learn, grow and connect with other moms of tween and teen girls. think virtual gatherings where we can cheer each other on, get advice from other moms who are on the same journey as we are.

We can share stories and ask tough questions sometimes from experts, um, people like you hear on the podcast. But also just of each other. Questions, like how do we talk about sex or sexual assault with our daughters? How do we talk about setting boundaries? How do I get my kids to do the things I like them to do without sounding authoritarian or saying because I said so.

And I'd love to offer monthly group coaching sessions where individuals can come forward with a particular place where they feel stuck and I can offer guidance as well as we can tap into the wisdom of the group. That's a huge thing I love about groups is we are only capable of sharing our own perspectives. When you have a group, you have multiple perspectives, a diversity of experiences, multiple Backgrounds that can provide different alternatives and possible solutions to the problems that we're encountering.

So if this sounds like something you might be interested in, shoot me a direct message on Instagram at @knowberaisethem or visit the website knowberaisethem.com And you can send me an email from there. Or head to the show notes, all of these things will be linked. I'll also be posting additional information on the Instagram feed. So again, that is @knowberaisethem. I look forward to hearing from you. If you have questions, if you want to connect, please just reach out.

Thanks again for listening. And here's to strong women. May we know them, may we be them, and may we raise them.