Trudy Goodman on Working With Strong Emotions | BHNN Guest Podcast Ep. 264

With compassion and presence, Trudy Goodman teaches listeners how to bear the unbearable through our own willingness to hold it. In this episode, Trudy Goodman offers her perspective on: - Learning to be present and okay with our strong emotions - Recognizing our emotions as the first step in working with them - Allowing difficult emotions without being swept away - Surrounding our pain with compassion - Noticing the bodily sensations that arise with strong emotions - Self-regulation and soothing the startled heart - The powerful statement “it’s like this” - Merging with the world of intuitive wisdom This was recorded at Spirit Rock and was originally published on Dharmaseed About Trudy Goodman: Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats, engages in activism work, and teaches workshops worldwide and online. She is also the voice of Trudy the Love Barbarian in the Netflix series, The Midnight Gospel. “By allowing reality to be as it is, since it is that way anyways, we’re making a relationship with it that’s based on clarity. It is a paradox that I think most therapists know, that by allowing something and accepting something and even by positively connoting what needs to change, not struggling with it, surrounding it with metta and compassion, we actually stop our war with reality. When we stop resisting what’s true, we aren’t fixating on it, and it’s free to move and change. This is called radical acceptance.” –Trudy Goodman