Whether John Travolta in the movie Grease wore it better than Harry Winkler in Happy days is neither here nor there, the fact remains that the leather jacket leaves an impression. Is it just me, or does everyone consider buying a leather jacket at some point in their life? Maybe the subtle voice within tells us, “Be a badass,” It will look reallllllly cool!” Of course, as we age, most of us surrender to the idea that the leather jacket is best left to memories of years lived prior, for by the time most of us reach our midlife, a leather jacket of this sort would only invite giggles from teenagers, or concern from our adult friends. Yet, we all can agree that a great leather jacket is badass. So, where is the connection between a leather jacket and our emotions? Keep reading….

“Cassie called again; she is upset with how I handled my mom’s affairs,” Mary said. Those words might as well have trickled out of her mouth like water drops slowly dripping from a nearly closed-off faucet; she had shared similar words many times with me. As I heard the words, I visioned Charlie Brown’s teacher, “whah whah whah”. I felt guilty for thinking that way; the truth back then was that Mary’s dilemma challenged me. I questioned my ability as a coach to help her discover a new way of looking at her relationship with her adult daughter. Mary’s daughter Cassie continually criticized Mary about her lifestyle. Mary was celebrating a few years of sobriety; she held a steady job, probably spent too much money on her adult children, and was married to her alcoholic husband, who still drank, AND she was still sober and committed to her sobriety. Sometimes, concealing my frustrations about Cassie’s behavior was slippery for even me, and she wasn’t even my kid.

“Mary, I want to talk to you about the Emotional Jacket,” I said. As usual, Mary was eager to learn something new. She was studious in that way. I explained to Mary that Cassie (her daughter) represented an emotional hook of sorts. “Imagine a cool-looking leather jacket hanging in your closet. You know it’s not yours to wear, it doesn’t even fit you – it’s too heavy, but it looks very appealing and tempestuous. Although you understand it’s not your jacket, you still put it on. At first, it feels good. Looks good. You revel in your idea to try it on. But, the longer you have it on, you realize you are becoming uncomfortable in it. You feel the weight of it. It’s too heavy for you. It’s even bigger than you originally thought. It’s also hot. You suddenly regret putting it on. What were you thinking, you ask yourself. Next, you become pissed off at the person WHO owns the jacket – blaming them for your misery! It’s as if they violated you by putting their jacket in the closet. You then realize you have no idea how to take off the jacket that wasn’t yours to put on in the first place. Mary, you wear Cassie’s emotional jacket whenever she expresses disappointment with you or herself.  You emotionally wear her disappointment as if it defines who you are. Her emotions are not yours to wear; they are not your jacket.”  There was a long pause as Mary digested what I shared with her. She replied, “I get it; Cassie has her own opinions based on her life experience, and her emotions are a result of her life; she cannot possibly possess my perspective of the years I’ve lived, especially around my mother; how could she? Her fear, frustrations, and sadness are hers to own, and those emotions represent the jacket she wears. When I decide to wear her emotional jacket, I feel uncomfortable because those emotions are not my experience, nor should they be. My job is going to be to learn how NOT to wear her emotional jacket, or my husband’s for that matter.” I knew Mary understood another layer of how co-dependency and emotionally positioning herself within her relationships was working within her life.

When working with clients who seem prone to wear their family and friends’ opinions and judgments, I use the Emotional Jacket analogy. This allows a reframing of how they perceive their relationships and, more importantly, how they operate within them. Many people position their mental and emotional health in response to how they perceive the relationships in their life feeling at any given time. I base how I’m doing AFTER checking in with YOUR mood and disposition. I do not have my agency established UNTIL I see how you are feeling. Ever heard the saying, “I feel like I’m walking on eggshells around you?” This is a good example of someone treading lightly because when they are around someone who appears agitated, frustrated, or intimidating, they recoil and “stand down” per se. The goal becomes to identify when the Emotional Jacket looks appealing and learning not to put it on.

Susan Denee is the creator of the podcast, Know Your Crazy, syndicated through Transformation Talk Radio. She is a writer and a life coach. She is certified in High-Performance Coaching and is the creator of Emotional Elevation Coaching. She helps others identify the shame-based thinking and less desired behaviors that hold them back from accomplishing their next level of satisfaction. Her podcasts are known for their inspiration combined with genuine RAWNESS, in which she conveys the problem and the solution. Susan Denee is a sought-after industry speaker for the financial and healthcare industry and the addiction and alcoholism recovery community, focusing on healthy communication within relationships.

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Grief is Heavy

Over the last few years in working with women in recovery I have been on the receiving end of their words as they shared their heaviness, their worry, and their sadness with grief. During those times, the solutions which would flow through my mind were surrounded around meditation, prayers, and changing the thoughts.

Then my dad died within two months being diagnosed with COVID-19. This left my 80-year-old mother alone after 57 years of marriage.

I only thought I knew or could come close to understanding the pain and the hurdle in which those women were enduring. I only thought I knew the steps in which they could take to help ease the emotional roller coaster they were experiencing. I almost dismissed grief as a “phase”, and although to some extent this may be true, my recent experience has shown me I was far from utterly understanding.

The recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction taught me a valuable lesson, probably the most significant lesson I have had in my life – personal experience is everything. To give back wisdom, experience, steps to help someone, the best feedback comes from personal experience – experience, strength, and hope.

My recent months have been filled with illness, tears, fear, anguish, willingness, and confusion. There are times in one’s life when they reflect, they remember the hard times, the defining times. The character building times. The times when they were flattened to almost nothing and had to build back up. The times when they wanted to cry “uncle” but did not. Grief for me is one of those times.

Today, I look to the next indicated step; to not surrender to the paralyzing feeling of grief. The feeling that makes me not want to go to work, to clean the house, to pay attention to the kids, to not exercise. That feeling. My action today in grief is to wake up, drink a cup of coffee, get quiet with my god, and hang the fuck on. For this too shall pass. To not to ask – but when? When the hell does this heaviness in my chest pass? When does the bursts of tears that do not even have the thought of my father behind them stop? When does the worry behind the lack of energy stop? When does the doubt in my faith stop?

For those women I served to the best of my ability, god bless you for hanging on, for keepin on when the emotions were conflicting with the physical pangs of grief. The aches and pains, the tightness of the chest, the gasps of air as you wondered “why can’t I breathe?” Thank you for the time you gave me to do my best to help you. For now, I know.

In a time in our world where grief might be floating everywhere, where many people are facing significant loss of loved ones – hang on. Grab the moments that feel good and REMEMBER them. They may feel few and far between, but they are real. They are the god in you – the universal energy reminding you grief and grace are part of this existence. Grab a hold of the appreciation to carry one more moment through the anguish. For you are alive, you are human, you are a moving energy force to be reckoned with. The past loved ones (all a matter of belief – I believe my dad is helping me type this right now and is all around me) they love you, and they are on their next journey. A journey of experience that is never ending, is always in love, is always watching over you.

Grief may be heavy, but it is doable. It is part of this wonderful existence we get to have; we get to breathe through.

God bless,

Susan

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There is no better teacher than our own experience.  Our experience guides us, teaches us, and provides a barometer for which direction we should go next in our lives.  Unfortunately, when our lives have gone to hell as a result of our choices while suffering from alcoholism and addiction, we doubt our own barometer.  We no longer trust when our mind tells us to act on something because our past acts have had devastating results either for us or those close to us.  We become uncertain about what the next appropriate step to take is.  For an addict or alcoholic to rebuild their lives, the building requires a massive overhaul of our ideas, beliefs, and ability to trust ourselves.  There is a reason it is said “getting sober is the easy part, staying sober is the difficult part.”

If staying sober is the difficult part, why is that?  It would seem the drug and the alcohol have left the picture, therefore the recovering addict should be ten times better off?  To some extent this is true.  There is something to be said for no longer having to wrestle with the remorse and guilt of the next morning after making a fool of oneself the night before, and we stop the bleeding of hurt upon those we love in our lives.  The constant beating finally comes to a halt.  However, we are then left with the most difficult challenge we face…….our mind.

Eckert Tolle and Wayne Dyer both have excellent perceptions on what they describe as the “ego” part of our identity.  To paraphrase, the ego is a separate thing from who we are.  Meaning our thoughts are only thoughts and our true “being” is something internal which requires no thought, our spirit per say.  Try dropping that on a person new to sobriety! Not only would it be extremely overwhelming for them, if they have an aversion to spirituality they may never speak to you again!  So, what can be done to help reach someone, to help give them guidance during their difficult struggles with the mind in sobriety.  This isn’t just for a newcomer, this applies for anyone, anywhere – I purposely focus mine on recovered alcoholics and addicts because that is where my specialty lies.

To begin to explain where I am going with this –  I am going to ask a few questions of you:  1. What do you do when you are frustrated with yourself about something you’ve done or said?  How do you react?  2.  What do you do when you are frustrated with someone else who seems to have hurt you?  How does your physical body feel? 3.  When you have been in the darkest phase of your using, were you suicidal or homicidal?   All of these questions relate to the #1 technique I apply when working with someone in recovery – I determine if they are a “doormat” or a “bulldozer”.  Let me explain.

Of course, everything I am about to explain is derived from my own past, my own experiences.  I had my own moment of clarity with the above two terms when I was diligently working on myself to learn how to show up in a loving, intimate relationship.  Something those of us in recovery sometimes find difficult.

As I poured out my heart to my then sponsor/mentor she was silent, which I appreciated, then she spoke.  She said “you are a bulldozer”.  I, of course, followed up with “what does that mean?”.  She began to explain in her experience she has come across two personalities type – the bulldozer and the doormat.  I had another friend brilliantly define it as “homicidal vs. suicidal”.

The bulldozer or the homicidal one when under extreme stress takes it out on the other party.  They are angry and indignant, and they will tell you all about it.  This would be an extreme case of justified resentment – they feel they are not to blame because someone else caused them harm, which in turn is the reason they now have a license to more less scream at them, berate them, or a phrase I use to use “hand them their ass!”.  The bulldozer takes prisoners and never looks back – it’s all justified.  Ultimately, down deep they are nothing more than a victim.  They have convinced themselves they are not responsible because they only reacted to someone else’s action, they had to defend themselves.  For me, this was a convenient reaction to dealing with my upbringing – my mom was an alcoholic, and a messy, emotional screaming one.  Emotionally abusive.  My father made it his mission to raise my sister and I to “stand on our two feet”, “don’t take shit from no one” – sooooo, mom dished out the shit, and my sister and I verbally fought back, fully justified.  There is also a part of me that believes I was born a bulldozer – my initial reaction to a stressful situation (although not so much anymore) can be immediate anger.  I can feel it in my bones, my heartrate elevates, if the person or the situation I am opposed to are not present this might manifest in imaginary debates, and conversation where they are not present, but I am winning!   This was always my go to position in dealing with difficulties, that is until I began to work on me, and emotionally grow.

You might have figured this out already, the doormat is the exact opposite.  I remember when my mentor was explaining the two distinct types I began to immediately find solution to helping some of the women I was sponsoring and mentoring.  This perspective provided a solution to some of my obstacles in really helping someone.  She explained the doormat personality is one who internalizes all the “stuff.”  For example, if someone does them wrong, they don’t get mad at the person, they think it is all their fault, they begin to replay the situation and take 150% accountability for the problem.  This type of person suffers from extreme low self-esteem, and their mind has almost convinced them they are powerful enough to create all this misery in everyone’s life, therefore they are nothing, they are horrible people.  Therefore, a doormat personality would be suicidal.  They don’t see past themselves to the point self-induced misery.   It’s a delicate situation pulling a doormat up out of their own self-misery because they are already beating themselves up to an extreme.  In order to help them find their part in the situation so they can gain some clarity I must be cognizant of their internal dialogue, because it is so damaging – if I am too blunt too quick they will shut down and internalize again.

Now that I have covered the two personality types, I must clarify we all have some of both in us.  I for a long time was a doormat in my marriage – I took 150% accountability for the demise of it, always looking to fix me, afraid to raise any issue with him and ended up being miserable until I found my voice, and confidence.  I did the same thing at work.  I began to shut down and give all the power to the upper management, refusing to communicate – a kind of attitude of “it wouldn’t matter anyway” – (that is a quote by the way by “Eeyore” the depressed, sullen donkey from the Winnie the Pooh Characters).

Hopefully, providing some perspective into some basic personality types you might encounter when helping others, but most importantly discovering how you operate emotionally when under extreme stress can help with growth in your life and in the lives of those you are of service to, or one day will be.

Our sobriety and emotional growth is a journey.  The self-discovery phase can be extremely uncomfortable, however once I realized how I reacted to things it allowed me to catch the signs of my emotions and then pick up the phone and call my sponsor/mentor for guidance.  This aided in my ability to not take it out on others or myself to the point of misery.

Bulldozer or Doormat?  Which one primarily runs your stressful moments?  Please feel free to email me any questions you may have or comments @ [email protected].  You can also catch up with my daily motivational quotes and thoughts on Instagram @ susan_denee.

Have a great day, and enjoy the journey!

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If you haven’t caught my video on you-tube, please read along.  This post is for the individual who has several clients or sponsees or mentees, and has been coaching for a period of time now.  I personally have been coaching and mentoring a dozen women at a time for over 13+ years now.  Several of the women have stayed with me over this span of time.  I work hard to stay ahead of the curve as far as experience is concerned.  I pay attention to my growth and experiences, for they haven’t reached some of what I have – and there are experiences I haven’t had which they are growing through as I type this.

The motivation behind this post was a recent voicemail received by one of the women I have been sponsoring for 6 years I think?  I say think because I always under shoot the amount of time we have worked together.  It goes by fast.  They like to correct me and let me know specifically how long it is.  We have a way of remembering when significant help came into our life. Where we were mentally and emotionally – specifically what we were experiencing.  The ladies I coach tend to be very intelligent and motivated!

Her name I will falsify for anonymity.  Let’s call her Jane.  Jane left a message the other day, which gently reminded me of a teaching I wanted to provide earlier in the month.  Sometimes the “theme” carries across several of the women I coach, for they are at similar times in their lives.  If you come from the world of recovery you will understand they are at similar phases of their recovery.

In her voicemail, she said “Susan, thank you for your voicemail the other day.  Ya know, you reminded me to do something I practiced in the very beginning of us working together.  Now years have passed (probably 6-7) I realized the suggestion you provided doesn’t come as easy as it used to”, (she is referring to attending a meeting to help her with her recent fears) She said it was a great solution and she is going to look at that.

My coaching tip?  Well first I am going to provide some history.  I have been working my program of growth for close to 17 years.  I have several reflections prior to 17 years ago where I know I was growing, but 17 years ago was the time in which drugs and alcohol were removed from my life.  There in lied the massive catapulting of growth I started to experience.  For after the drink and the drug go away, the clarity comes much easier; not necessarily quickly in the beginning, but much easier.  So, the experience she was having, I had over 10 years ago.

I have for several years been “preaching” to the ladies I mentor, the importance to their “homegroup”.  Now if you are coaching clients – say spiritual clients – this might me the fellowship they find at church which they meet with weekly.  Or it’s a support group they go to weekly.  Or it’s a mastermind for the business person looking to grow.  The point is, it’s the weekly group of people the individual meets with to keep them accountable. This participation in the group or fellowship is about meeting with people who are on the same wavelength as the individual looking to change or improve.  In this case, your client.  It keeps them in the herd per say.  You see life happens, we get busy.  The difference for the recovering addict or alcoholic is if we don’t show up to our group (homegroup) we could give in to the drink or drug.  Which means if we stray it could mean worse case death, but on the way to death we take family, friends, and misery with us along the way.  It’s the nature of the disease which we suffer.  The normal person (non-addict, alcoholic) also has their group they associate with.  If they stray they start to feel isolated, less than – excluded. Soon enough they will not be motivated to keep going.  They will give up on their goals.  They must put themselves in the heard if they want to progress.

HERE IS THE TIP!! With Jane, I need to speak of the importance of this weekly meet and greet with her.  You see, I’ve been speaking of it for years.  Over 10 to be exact, because that is when I experienced the need for this group.  But it doesn’t matter if I talk it, if the other person hasn’t experience the need for it, they don’t hear the importance.  They hear it when they are in it!

TIP:  Coach them from they are, not from where you are.  REMEMBER what it was like for you, or pull from the tool box your prior experience.  It’s easy to get off track and talk about us, which by the way “us” is not for the mentee, that is for your mentor to talk with.

I’m amidst professionally learning different leadership skills as I manage 3 peoples 25 years my senior.  Old beliefs, old habits, etc.  How does that help Jane?

Sometimes it’s a combination of experiences to help the client, however if you are listening to your client you will pick up on where they are at mentally, emotionally, and physically and provide that specific guidance.   Now, I’m done!

As always Enjoy the Journey, you only have one!  You are worth it!

Susan Denee

Life coach and sponsor to women for over 13+ years.

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