Justine Harrington: Homecoming: A Guide to Get Out of your Head and Into Your Heart

Transcript

[0:00:33] JB: Turns out, there’s a difference between acknowledging feelings and actually feeling feelings. Even though the latter is a lot harder and uglier, it’s the only way to heal, according to author Justine Harrington. In her new book, Homecoming: A Guide to Get Out of your Head and Into Your Heart, she has taken her own journey toward healing and turned it into a workbook, creating a path for others to follow. On Author Hour today, she discusses how to get to the root of our behavior patterns, how to break out of the shame spiral, and how to make friends with fear. Yup, you heard that right! Hi, Author Hour listeners. I’m here today with Justine Harrington, author of Homecoming: A Guide to Get Out of your Head and Into Your Heart. Justine, thank you so much for being with us today.

[0:01:32] Justine Harrington: Thank you so much for having me.

[0:01:34] JB: You’ve written a book about healing and the book opens with a description of an experience you had, of feeling your feelings for the first time and being overwhelmed by that experience. Now, I didn’t realize this was something that could happen and it sounds like it was a really profound experience, can you just tell our listeners a little bit about that?

[0:02:01] Justine Harrington: Of course, yeah. That is the opening of my book because really, I believe that’s kind of the start of what I refer to as my healing journey and I think that that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people and I try to encapsulate that in the book and capture what it means to me in this moment but I came to a point in my personal growth and development where I realized that I kept running into the same obstacles over and over again and a lot of the things I was facing, they were really fear-based, kind of based in like shame and kind of those lower emotions and I had gone to therapy for years and I got to the point where I really intellectually understood the obstacles I was facing and it clicked to me that I understood my fear but I never actually allowed myself to deeply feel it and that’s what was keeping me blocked. That’s what was keeping me from being able to ultimately, I don’t know if we ever overcome fear but befriend fear if you will or push through it, kind of get to the other side, that lack of feeling was keeping me from doing that. I still was kind of keeping this year at a bay. I intellectually understood it but I didn’t really delve into it and I was still facing obstacles because of that. I worked on healing my feelings, which is quite the process and I’m not sure it’s a process that ever truly is finished but I did several things to work on connecting more with my feelings and actually feeling them. I go through a lot of those in my workbook and I offer a lot of journaling exercises and other exercises to connect with your feelings but I intentionally made a decision, I want to feel this sphere, that’s specifically what I was facing in that moment in time but honestly, I was distancing myself from all the broad spectrum of emotions. I made the decision, I want to feel, I want to really deeply feel these emotions and it took time and it took energy and it took intention to get there but I have this moment where I think I kind of like so they say, opened the Pandora’s box and a lot of really overwhelming feelings came up and bubbled to the surface to the point where the opening of my book is that moment when they all bubbled up, it was my 30th birthday. In the book, I describe the scene that I woke up, I sat down to breakfast, my husband had to cook me a beautiful breakfast and I just started to cry and I went my whole day, my 30th birthday in bed crying and just feeling like waves of really intense emotion and what I learned, I think that the – I learned a lot. I think that the biggest piece of that experience that I came out of that with was, those emotions felt very overwhelming like I describe it in the book. It felt like I was going to be stuck there. I literally felt like I was going to die like that was the feeling and I didn’t. I didn’t die, they didn’t overwhelm me, on the other side of it, I actually was able to feel more of the good side of things as well more of those late feelings and so, yeah, I think that was the big lesson. Even when an emotion – I think that’s why I kept emotions at a distance for a long time because they can feel very overwhelming, like you’re going to get stuck. That was the biggest lesson I learned is it’s not going to overwhelm you, you're not going to get stuck, you're not going to die, you can get through this.

[0:05:20] JB: I feel like we’re also – I don’t know if we’re taught or if we just assume that you manage feelings by intellectualizing them which you write about a little in the book and it seems like that’s maybe been leading us backward. How did you start to do this work and then how did that lead you to decide to write a book about it to try to help others?

[0:05:46] Justine Harrington: Yeah, I’ve been reflecting on this recently with my book launch, I’ve been reflecting on the process of not just writing the book but everything that led up to writing the book, which really is again, what I refer to as my healing journey. I believe it’s a culmination of lots of mini decisions that like are so subtle and at the time, I just felt like imperceptible. In reflection that I made a lot of small choices that ended up making really impactful changes in my life and at the time, I wasn’t thinking like, “Oh this thing that I’m doing is going to have a huge impact or it’s going to drastically change my life” but over time, it has. I would say, what originally brought me to kind of this path of really self-discovery. Also, something I talk about in the book is and part of why I started writing the book was to define what is healing. It’s this really broad, generalized term that people use a lot, hear a lot and I do think it can mean something different to everybody. Part of my intention would be getting to write the book was to really define what this healing mean to me, what does it look like for me, what has it looked like, what have I learned, those are kind of the questions that I had when I started to write. For me, healing just really is an intentional process of getting to know myself. Deeply understanding myself, being curious, asking questions about why am I doing certain things, why am I might behave in a certain way, just really seeking to understand myself and then also, seeking to connect with my emotions. Those are like the big pillars of healing for me and that’s a lot of what my healing journey has been. I would say, it started, I share this story as well in the book, I call it my breaking points but it’s really – I think it’s that towering moment where you kind of like things crumble a little bit so you can rise up and so you can build. I don’t at all think it was a breaking point in a negative way, it was really the foundational point, there could be another way to free me but I had this moment actually working at Scribe, we do this exercise called strength and obstacles. It’s this exercise where the whole tribe and back then, the whole tribe was much smaller than it is now. The whole tribe gets together for a multiple day summit where we do bonding exercises, just time to like really enjoy each other’s company and intentionally connect with one another and so one of these exercises that we’ve done historically is called, strengths and obstacles. It’s a really caring, loving environment where one person is in the hot seat. They’re the one, the focus of the exercise and whole tribe gathers around them and shares all the many strengths that they see in that individual and oftentimes, the individual creates their own list of strengths and it’s like, way too short, like a couple of things and the tribe is like, points out all these other areas where they are amazing humans and really excel and exhibit all these strengths. That’s a really fun part of the exercise. Then the second part is obstacles. The tribe member shares their goals and then basically the tribe workshops with them what might be keeping them from achieving those goals. If there’s any blind spots, anything that they may not be able to see that’s keeping them from being able to achieve anything that they want to achieve and this is spread across their work life, their personal life and their relationships. It’s work, self and relationships. In this exercise, a little bit of a different experience for everybody but there you know, it can be emotional, at times it can be a little bit of contention, ultimately it ends up being a really beautiful experience and profoundly impactful for the person who is in the hot seat. I saw lots of different examples of what this looks like and then when I had my first time in the hot seat, it was just like, very easy. It’s the only way to explain it. No emotions, easy, no one really pushed me. I remembered coming out of it like, “Oh okay, I made out pretty easy here” and after that initial experience, I was speaking to another tribe member at Scribe and I said, “Wow, you know, my strengths and obstacles is really easy” and these words are forever burned inside my mind. He said something to the effect of, “Well, you know, you have really high walls up, we don’t want to push you too hard” that was like a, “Wait, I have walls up?” It was the first moment that I ever recognized in my life that I had walls up and I’m sure that people have told me that in the past that it was just the way that it was said and the way that it clicked in my brain at that moment in time that really hit me. Part of the feedback that I did receive in strengths and obstacles was in order to grow into a leadership position at the company, which is one of my goals, I needed to be able to connect with my own emotions and when that was said in strengths and obstacles, I honestly didn’t really know what that meant. I was like, “I connect with my emotions, I think I feel things.” I didn’t fully feel things, I intellectualized things a lot, I intellectualized feelings a lot and at that point in time, I didn’t – I wasn’t fully emotionally connected. I was like, “Okay” took the feedback, not really knowing what it meant but when that tribe member said that to me, something clicked and I realized, “Oh my walls, I don’t just have walls up with other people, I have walls up with myself.” That was kind of like the moment where I decided, I don’t think these walls are serving me anymore. I’m going to work to even begin to see these walls so then I can begin to bring them down because it was such a blind spot for me at that point in time, I was just beginning to see the wall, never mind starting to deconstruct it. That was like the big moment of ‘something needs to change’.

[0:11:24] JB: Yeah. Trying to get beyond these walls or inside them, depending on the perspective of the metaphor, is this what you mean when you write about going within?

[0:11:36] Justine Harrington: Yes. Yeah, going within is kind of what healing is to me, I guess to put it in a different way. It’s definitely seeing and deconstructing those walls is a piece of it. It’s really what healing is, what I describe as healing before as far as the process of getting to know yourself, being really curious about yourself, asking yourself questions, connecting with yourself emotionally, just allowing yourself time and space to feel your feelings, to connect with those feelings. To really just seek self-awareness in your life, that to me is all those things in a nutshell is a process of going with it. The process of going within is actually something that I created from my own experience. My whole intention or writing the book was to – in the beginning, it was really for myself to understand like, what have I done for myself because I knew that I had done a lot of emotional work on myself, I knew I had done a lot of healing, I knew I was in a much different place but I didn’t – I’m a very process systems-oriented person. I work in operations at Scribe so it’s like my nature to try to understand things in a more analytical perspective too. I started to write the book to try to understand, what have I done to get to where I am and through that, I developed what is called the process of going within, which is the final part of my book, leads the reader through that process but the process of going within really is the process of peeling back all the layers of ourselves. It’s going from the outward behavior that we want to change, all the way back to the emotions, to the thoughts that are tied to it, to the emotions that are tied to it and then to the core belief that that behavior is really rooted in. I firmly believe in order to change our behaviors or our actions, we need to dig within and change the roots essentially. We can’t change what’s outside if we don’t tend to the roots and so I believe that those beliefs, which are often outdated beliefs that we learned a long time ago or from somebody else that these tendencies or behaviors are thoughts, whatever it might be, that’s what is making it challenging for us to change those things because it’s rooted in something much deeper. The process of going within is really peeling back all the layers to investigate what is this behavior rooted in and then how do I change the roots so I can change the behavior so I can change the – what’s coming out of those roots.

[0:14:17] JB: Yeah and it’s not as easy as it might sound. I mean not that it sounds easy but to talk about it in a way of like knowing yourself, you know I think like, “Oh okay, well I can get to know myself” but as I’ve learned from your book, there’s all of these things blocking us keeping us from doing that, protective mechanisms some of them. You’ve dedicated a fair amount of space to shame and you quote Brené Brown at the beginning of the book, that’s also of course written about shame. Tell us about the power of shame and how we can free ourselves from it?

[0:14:51] Justine Harrington: Yeah, so shame is actually in the exercise portion of the book, it’s the very first chapter in that portion and it is the very first exercise. The reason that was very intentional, I believe I also mentioned this in the book, it’s one of the very first chapters, it’s the last one that I wrote because shame is not a fun thing. It is not easy to talk about and that’s honestly, I believe what makes it have so much power over us is that often times, I believe that I am not going to say this exactly correct but one of the quotes that I share in the book from Brené Brown is that shame is the belief that we are not good enough and because of the nature of how humans operate, that’s something that we try to hide. We want to be good enough, we want to show the world that we are good enough, so if we hold something inside then you’re not good enough, which is what shame is, we try to hide that. The thing with shame is it’s a universal human emotion. We all felt it and yet, we all try to hide it and pretend that we don’t have it and this could be consciously, this could be totally unconsciously. I do think that for me and my experience, shame is such a part of who I was that I didn’t realize it was there. It wasn’t until I became really intentional about starting to peel back those layers and ask questions with myself and connect to my emotions that I realized, “Oh wow, it’s holding onto all of these shame about past experiences and things that I’ve done that I wish I would have done differently.” I was holding on to all of that shame around with things. Hiding it from myself first and foremost and then of course, I would hide it, hiding it from everybody else. Yeah, shame I do believe it thrives in the darkness, so when we hide it from ourselves and then we feel like a shame spiral, we feel ashamed of our shame and then it’s like just keep piling it on and piling it on and for me, that’s the point where I was overwhelming to even start to examine it. The thought of it was overwhelming. It turns out when I actually started to really examine those emotions and experiences, it was not easy but it was not as hard as holding onto it. I do believe that it’s really important to talk about shame because again it’s like one of those universal things. I think it thrives in the dark and I think that – yeah, I think that it thrives when we try to hide it from one another as humans but really it’s a part of all of us and when we can just openly examine it first and foremost for ourselves and then share that with other people, we realize like we all have the same feelings. We all have similar fears just dressed up in different disguises. We all have the same stuff going on and so I think that there’s a power and healing that within all of us if we’re able to first and foremost, share it with ourselves and then with everybody else.

[0:17:52] JB: Yeah, I really connect with what you say about the spiral aspect of it being ashamed of the shame and you know on the occasions when I have had enough courage to talk about it out loud with someone else, the experience is almost always like, “My gosh that was nothing. I can’t believe I was so ashamed about that. It wasn’t even a big deal.”

[0:18:16] Justine Harrington: Yeah, I think it’s the shame of the shame that is even I think that’s the worse part, that’s the part that is hard like the shame itself to face of an experience like it’s not always easy but that like shame of shame and trying to hide is so much harder.

[0:18:36] JB: Yeah, speaking of spirals, you also dedicate a chapter to fear. You call it the fear spiral of doom, so what does that mean and can you tell us a little bit about how we can break free from fear?

[0:18:52] Justine Harrington: Oh, well, breaking free from fear – I believe the lifelong pursuit, I believe that we need to ultimately befriend fear. I don’t think it’s going anywhere, but there’s a balance where I used to be as fear very much controlled my life. My dear friend and mentor, Jamie Gray, has this analogy of essentially you’re driving a school bus and you have all of these emotions in the school bus and fear is definitely going to be there. You can let fear have a seat on the bus but fear is not taking the driver’s seat. You are in the driver’s seat, so with that in mind like historically, fear is in my driver’s seat. Now, fear is just a passenger on the bus that I can very easily tune out. I listen to fear when it has something to say, I give it a voice but I am not going to let fear be in control. Really, the fear spiral of doom, which, I laughed because it sounds so dramatic, but it feels dramatic when you’re in the middle of it. It feels very powerful and very dramatic, so what it is, is historically and even still at time although not as often, it’s just you get caught up on one thing. Your brain gets caught up on one thing. Let’s say in the course of this interview, I absolutely love everything that I said 99% of the time but there is one thing I wish I would have said differently in the fear spiral of doom after I get off this interview, that would be the one thing that I focus on and I ruminate on and I kind of go down this path of like, “Oh, I ruined the whole interview and people are going to think I’m stupid. Why did I say it like that? People think I’m stupid, then maybe no one will read my book.” “If no one reads my book then I’m a failure. If I’m a failure, I should just quit my job and if I don’t have a job, I should just go move away” and it’s like this snowball effect that goes into this one minor thing that happens to like I’m worthless essentially is what my fear spirals would often be and I wouldn’t verbatim end up in a place that I was thinking I’m worthless but that’s ultimately kind of what was encapsulated in that fear spiral. It would end in a place of what I call in the book the “inevitable doom” which again, sounds dramatic but in those moments like that’s really kind of what it felt like to go from like something very small and you spiral and you spiral and spiral and it ultimately, that very small thing then defines how you feel about yourself over who you are in your mind of course. That would happen in my mind.

[0:21:25] JB: Interested in what you said about how we have to befriend fear because it is never going anyway anywhere. Is there a way to use fear in more positive ways if we are going to keep it around?

[0:21:40] Justine Harrington: Yeah, I believe so. What has really helped me with that relationship towards fear is better understanding it and better understanding why it’s in our lives like why as humans do we feel fear. What is this emotion trying to accomplish in our lives like how does it serve us? Ultimately, fear is tied to our survival instincts. It’s there to keep us safe, so in the same way like we would be scared of a hungry looking tiger or a lion running at us, that’s like a, “Oh my life is in danger. I am in fear.” I feel fear let me kick in the fight or flight and run away from this lion. In the same way, fear tries to keep us safe in those instances, it is trying to keep us safe in all instances where it arises. Whether it can be fear about something that is like not life threatening at all like a lion running at you but in that moment, there is something in us that wants to protect ourselves and keep us safe and a lot of times when fear comes up like your body and your nervous system and all of the complexities that I probably can’t do justice to speak about but like what’s happening in your body is a survival instinct. It is a fear response trying to keep you safe and when I started to understand that, I was able to appreciate fear more and I was able to better soothe it. I think that understanding where it comes from and why it comes up is really helpful. There is definitely a period of time and even now sometimes when I am just really annoyed by my fears or I am angry, there is definitely a period of time where I was angry like, “Why do I feel this, why do I feel so afraid?” and there is connecting with that emotion helped me to work through some of that but also understanding there’s nothing to be angry about. I can thank myself for trying to protect myself and also not let that fear run the show and I think that really building that relationship rather than trying to – because it is always going to be there so I think trying to sever ourselves from ever feeling fear is just setting ourselves up for failure. It’s not achievable but building a relationship and understanding fear is what has allowed me to continue to recognize it, appreciate it, which is so much like it’s such a different perspective than trying to banish it or have it go away to actually show appreciation towards my fear, that really allows me to listen what it has to say, say, “Thank you, I’m going to do this now.” It puts me in the driver seat to go back to that analogy rather than the fear.

[0:24:16] JB: That’s great, fear is just like people just want to be heard and acknowledged.

[0:24:22] Justine Harrington: All the emotions just want to be heard and acknowledged, yep.

[0:24:25] JB: I mean they are us, we are our emotions, right? Last question, what has been the effect of all of this? How do you feel, live, behave differently as a result of this ongoing work?

[0:24:38] Justine Harrington: Yeah, it’s like it’s hard to put words to it honestly. I feel like this is like very grandiose to say my life has completely changed. It’s funny because externally nothing about my life is really different than it was four or five years ago when I started this journey. Externally, most things are the same but in my internal world is completely different and because of that, I have a different relationship with my external world. I would just say, the biggest thing is because of the emotional work I’ve been doing, the curiosity that I’ve had around myself and understanding myself more because of all of that, I would say the biggest shift, again, it’s internal but the biggest shift has been just feeling a sense of ease where I used to feel tension. I feel like if I could kind of put a more physical feeling to how I used to feel, I was tense all the time. I just walked around like a really tense ball of anxiety and I don't feel like that anymore. It’s not that I don’t feel anxiety at times anymore, I don’t feel anxious or it’s not like, I just have a different relationship with those feelings now but yeah, I used to walk around very tense and now I just feel, for the most part, ease. Again, that’s not to say that I don’t feel challenging feelings but it’s like, my whole orientation to myself and to my world has changed.

[0:26:14] JB: May we all have similar experiences, perhaps in part, after reading your book. Justine, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you, congratulations on the book and again, listeners, it’s titled, Homecoming: A Guide to Get Out of your Head and Into Your Heart. Justine, in addition to reading the book, where can people go to learn more about you and your work?

[0:26:35] Justine Harrington: They can visit my website, it’s www.justineharrington.co, there you can learn more about me, you can find more information about the book. I often put on workshops, I have some other really awesome resources available on my website. That would be the best place to go to see everything else that I have going on and be able to access the book.

[0:26:59] JB: Great, thank you so much.

[0:27:00] Justine Harrington: Thank you, Jane.

[0:27:01] JB: Bye-bye. Thanks for joining us for this episode of The Author Hour Podcast. You can get Justine Harrington’s book, Homecoming: A Guide to Get Out of your Head and Into Your Heart, on Amazon. You can also find a transcript of this episode as well as previous episodes on our website, authorhour.co. Make sure to subscribe to The Author Hour Podcast for more interviews and insights into life-changing books.