Ep75: Emotional Potty Training: A New Approach to Healing with Rachel Kaplan

It's not often that I hear a metaphor that really sticks. When I heard my guest's approach to processing emotion and healing trauma I latched on immediately. Rachel talks about emotional movement through the metaphor of digestion. When we're kiddos we learn what bodily sensations mean (time to hit the loo!) when we're being potty trained. But who is teaching us about processing emotion? What do we do when we have normal emotional sensations in our bodies? We often learn from our caregivers to stuff them. Don't express them. That there are emotions that are bad or wrong. This results in backed-up emotional systems and it takes work to learn how to process our feelings. Rachel has dubbed her process "Emotional Potty Training" and she shares practical insight, tools, and personal stories on this week's episode.    ----   Rachel Kaplan, MA, MFT is a licensed psychotherapist, mental-health educator, and author of “Feel, Heal & Let that Sh*t Go: Your Guide to Emotional Resilience and Lasting Self-Love” (New World Library). She is the creator and host of the award-winning podcast, The Healing Feeling Sh*t Show. Her therapeutic and educational offerings can be found at thefeelingsmovment.com.   Find her on Instagram @healingfeelingshitshow @thefeelingsmovement on TikTok and YouTube   ---   Find Morgan at https://www.morganmotsinger.com/   Chapters 00:00 The Journey to Emotional Potty Training 06:39 Understanding Emotional Signals 13:45 Tools for Emotional Processing 24:44 Core Wounds and Their Impact 33:33 Healing Through Self-Compassion 40:25 Understanding Overwhelm and Emotional Check-ins 46:14 The Nature of Emotions: Finite vs. Infinite 52:05 Navigating Emotional Expression and Intellectualization 57:48 Parenting, Emotions, and the Balance of Needs 01:04:47 The Power of Anger: Understanding and Expressing It 01:12:34 Transformative Anger: Harnessing Its Energy