FLIPSIDE OF MIDLIFE®: HOW TO TALK TO OTHER WOMEN ABOUT FEAR

I'm back with another episode related to fear in midlife and beyond. 

Here’s something I’ve learned…Fear shows up on the daily for me. Usually in small ways I notice and can move through, but sometimes it lies a layer or two deeper than I’m used to digging. 

Unearthing these deeper layers is when big breakthroughs happen. The thing is, I usually don’t reach them on my own. It’s usually through conversation with another woman when I feel the hard clunk at the bottom of my shovel, cueing me to keep digging.

Hit play to hear how to start a conversation about fear with another woman, questions to ask to dig down into the layers of fear, and tips to manage your emotions during these conversations.

Any light bulbs appear over your head as you listened? Send me your thoughts and feedback at karli@flipsideofmidlife.com. I'd love to hear from you and answer your questions about midlife and beyond on an upcoming episode. 

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Transcript

Karli: 0:08

Welcome to FLIPSIDE OF MIDLIFE®. I'm Karli Newman, your favorite Gen X dealer of positive vibes, community builder, and Life and Wellness Coach for women in midlife and beyond. Thank you so much for joining me here today. If you haven't listened to the past few episodes, you may not know that this month I am covering a topic that we all deal with on a daily basis, and that is fear. I sent out an email on October 15th. Hopefully you are on my email list. You can join in the show notes or transcript if you're not. I wrote an email about a conversation I had, and realized how I can work through fear more easily when I am talking about it with another woman who is able to see things I cannot and can give me feedback, can point some things out to me in kindhearted ways that help me grow, that help me expand, help me move through my fears. This is what I want to talk to you about today because in that email I promised some tips for how to get started in a conversation about fear, questions to ask when you're in this conversation, and how to manage your emotions when you're in the conversation as well. Because let's be real, fear is an emotion, but it also stirs up a lot of feelings in us other than fear too, right? So in order to get beneath that to dig deeper, having some tips at the ready, some tools at the ready for you to manage your emotions during a conversation like this is pretty important. Because it helps you take away the lessons and to let them soak in so that you can process them and have your subconscious mind give you the way through the fear to see that it's not as big as you maybe thought it was at first. So let's get started. How do you get into a conversation about fear with another woman? First, I encourage you to have these types of conversations with women you trust, with women you know, at least a little bit, to assess if they are the right person for a particular conversation. It's important to know your audience and who's going to be the right person to talk to for you. Maybe you have a connection where you can talk about certain things and not others, and that's perfectly normal. It's just important that you know that before you go into the conversation. So how do you start a conversation like this? I find that they start with being vulnerable, with listening compassionately, with sharing kindly and releasing any kind of judgment on yourself or the other woman. To be able to have deep, honest, productive conversations, even though I don't like describing it in that way, these are productive conversations because they help you get to the bottom of things. They help you move through things. Here are two ways to bring up or to start a conversation about fear. I'm really struggling with this fear that I have, and I'm wondering if you've had a fear that you've worked through successfully, and if you can talk to me about how you did it. How about this one? Can we talk about something that I'm trying to understand in myself right now? I think you might see it from a different perspective and I'd love your feedback. Obviously, starting a conversation like this does require you to continue to be vulnerable and to open yourself up to hearing things that may feel challenging for you. So here's some questions you can ask within the conversation that help you to dig deeper, and to see the layers underneath your fear. What do you think I might not be seeing about my fear? When you've had to move through fear before, what helped you? How did you do it? And another question you can ask that helps you reciprocate in this conversation is, if fear wasn't holding you back, what's one thing you would try or change? Hearing how to get started in a conversation and some questions to ask within this conversation may already have you feeling some things. You might have some butterflies in your stomach. You may be feeling a pit in your stomach, and this is where managing your emotions during the conversation is important. You are doing your best to remain open and to listen compassionately and to keep your emotions in check. Breathing is the number one tool you can lean on. Being sure you're not holding your breath. A lot of times when fear does come up or discomfort comes up, or we're starting to be affected by words we are hearing, we start to hold our breath. So really focusing, as you're listening intently, on your breath, making sure you're breathing a nice and steady pattern that isn't too quick, because that's going to keep you calm. You can do that while you're listening, and take a moment to take a nice, good breath in and out before you speak. That gives you that pause to think about what you're going to say and how you're going to say it. Being calm in your body will help you respond in a way that is kind and filled with gratitude. Another way that you can manage your emotions when you're in a conversation like this. When you're listening, stay curious. Continue to think about what you can learn from the words being shared with you and this woman's experiences with fear, this woman's insight into what she can see in you that you are not able to see in yourself. When you can stay curious enough to learn and listen and breathe, you will have things sink in and you may not know it for days. So staying curious is another way to manage your emotions. The last way to manage your emotions that I'd like to mention is to express gratitude. Remember to thank the woman in this conversation with you for being willing to be vulnerable herself, to put herself out there to share her thoughts with you, for her honesty with you, for her space that she's holding for you, to be able to work through these things with you and to give you some insight that you may not see. Your gratitude, your curiosity and your breath will help you manage your emotions. When you're in a conversation about fear. Guess what? Those things will help you when you're in conversations about many topics, not just fear. When you've had a conversation like this, it's really important to give space for these lessons to present themselves. I mentioned it earlier, things get into your subconscious. You've been digging underneath some layers that you may not have understood before, and it's not like a light switch gets turned on, my friend. You need some space to just be, to let these things process without you focusing on it. For me, sometimes it's in the middle of the night, sometimes it's in the morning when my alarm goes off and I just know I have an answer. And it's pretty amazing when that happens! And sometimes it happens to me in the shower. Those are the two places that I notice that things come to me from my subconscious, they bubble up to the surface, and they're answers that I've been seeking. I know that you'll experience this too, my friend. I encourage you when you have fear that is holding you back in some way, finding that woman you can talk to about your fear. 99.9%, okay, that's not researched or statistically accurate. I'm pulling it out of the air because it sounds pretty real to me. 99.9% of our fears are shared, my friend. And so many times we tend to isolate ourselves and think that we're the only ones experiencing that type of fear, and it's just not so. I would think that we're hard pressed to find fears that we didn't share with other women. So, having these conversations that are open, they're honest, you get to engage with one another about fear. And a woman who has already been through and worked through the fear that you are stuck on that has not been flexible in letting you pass, she can see it so clearly in other women because she's already done the work herself. You've worked through fears in your life, in your experience, so you can see those fears more easily in other women. So it's a reciprocal thing when you have these conversations, when you engage in these types of conversations and you do it frequently it deepens the relationship you have with this other woman. It deepens your trust. It deepens your awareness and your ability to stay curious and to see the lessons within. And then the practice of allowing yourself space after the conversation to let it soak in and not struggle to solve it. But to let the magic happen. Your mind is amazing, and when you engage in conversations like this, so many answers will come to you. I promise, my friend. Thank you for joining me here today. I'm so grateful for you listening for tuning in to FLIPSIDE OF MIDLIFE®, and I'd love to hear from you. Please send me an email karli@flipsideofmidlife.com. Let me know what you think about the episode, about the podcast, what questions you have. I'd love to get those from you so that I can answer them in future episodes, um, yeah. I hope you have an amazing week, my friend, and I will be back next week. I have a meditation coming up on the 19th for you, and I have another regular Wednesday episode coming up next week right here. Don't miss it. Take care, my friend. Be well.