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5 min readDistracted By Our Feelings
The most stubborn obstacle in your life is probably not the difficult situation, the impossible goal, or the challenging person. It is something far sneakier: your feelings about your feelings. Chris Wale, a life and health coach, opens this episode of Little Bit Better with a confession: "I'm annoyed that I'm annoyed." That meta-emotion—being mad at yourself for being mad, frustrated at yourself for feeling frustrated—is the real handcuff. It keeps you stalled, prevents healing, and blocks the very changes you want to make.
The Two Layers of Feeling
Wale draws a crucial distinction. There is the feeling you have about a situation—anger at a colleague, grief over a loss, frustration with a goal. That is one layer. Then there is the feeling you have about that feeling—shaming yourself for being angry, berating yourself for not being able to let go, judging yourself for grieving "wrong." That second layer is where the real damage happens. It distracts you from the actual issue and creates a self-perpetuating loop: you feel stuck, so you get frustrated at feeling stuck, which makes you more stuck.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:36) **Introduction: The Sneaky Obstacle of Distracted Feelings** - Chris introduces the core problem: we often get distracted not by external situations, but by our own feelings and thoughts about those feelings.
- 2 (04:22) **The Dog on a Leash Analogy: How Fixation Weighs Us Down** - Chris compares releasing negativity to unclipping a dog's leash, allowing you to move forward freely and joyfully.
- 3 (06:04) **Grief as an Example: When One Emotion Monopolizes the Picture** - Chris uses personal grief over his father to show how fixating on a single feeling (like guilt) creates a whirlpool of negativity.
- 4 (09:23) **Beyond Grief: Past Shame, Blame, and Present-Moment Distractions** - The pattern of distraction applies to past shaming, blaming others, and even lighter moments like over-posting on social media.
- 5 (12:12) **The Core Question: What Really Matters?** - Fixation is a form of escaping or self-punishment that denies us the freeing answer to the question of what's truly important.
- 6 (14:54) **How to Know You're in the Cycle & Tools to Break Free** - Chris offers practical tools to recognize and break the cycle of being distracted by feelings.
- 7 (17:22) **Conclusion: You Have the Power to Unclip Your Own Leash** - Chris reiterates that you have the power of choice to release your own fixation and bound toward what you desire.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
In 'Distracted By Our Feelings' Chris talks about how getting distracted by our feelings about ourselves, others, or situations, instead of dealing with the challenge, can keep us stuck and even created bigger issues. Being absorbed, fixated, or pre-occupied by our feelings about a thing, can hold us back from achieving goals, building or repairing relationships, and can have a negative impact on our confidence, behaviours, and actions Chris offers examples from her life and tips on how to identify when you're distracted by your feelings instead of dealing with the issue, and how to work through those distractions so you can get out of your own way!
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Chris Swail, certified Life Coach and Health Coach, founder of A Little Bit Better
IG @chris.swail
web www.alittlebitbetter.ca
I help people step into the person they want to be and the life they want to live!
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