860: Pursuing Positive Emotions and Avoiding Negative Ones Can Hinder Growth With Mastin Kipp

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and I’m back today with Mastin Kipp, who if you missed our first episode, I will link in the show notes. It was phenomenal. He’s amazing. This episode, we delve into the topic of how pursuing positive emotions and avoiding negative ones can hinder growth and also be a negative experience in and of itself. Mastin is so well-spoken and I really enjoy following him and learning from him about things related to mindset, nervous system health, and growth, and so much more. He is a life coach, an entrepreneur, an author, and a self-taught expert on the human mind. And I love his approach to bridging the gap between therapy, coaching, and personal development from largely things that you can do yourself at home that are either free or very, very inexpensive that can drastically shift your relationship with your nervous system, with your emotions, with your mindset, and with so much more. He has over two decades of experience in this, combining psychological research, neuroscience, and evidence-based concepts with practical tools to help individuals unlock their full potential to live a life with passion and purpose. And we even delve into the parenting side of this today. And I absolutely loved this conversation. I took so many notes. Those will all be in the show notes as well. But let’s join Mastin Kipp. Mastin, welcome back. Thanks for being here again.

Mastin: Oh, let’s do it. This is so much fun. And Katie, this is such a great interviewer. And these questions are just like, I’m just, my whole system is like lit up right now. So thank you.

Katie: Oh, I love it. And I will link to our first conversation in the show notes. It was awesome. The best explanation I have heard of nervous system regulation and tangibly how we can actually pinpoint what’s going to work for us and achieve more nervous system regulation, which I think as moms changes the entire family. So very grateful for that conversation.

And this one, I really honed in on a topic in researching for this episode that I really want to go deep on with you, which is kind of the idea that pursuing positive emotions and avoiding negative ones can actually sort of hinder our success and our growth in a lot of ways. Or kind of the idea that I’ve heard quoted before of like pursuit of positive emotions is in essence a negative experience, whereas acceptance of negative emotions can essentially be a positive experience. But I feel like even the categorization of emotions as sort of good or bad can be a little bit problematic. And I know this is present for a lot of people. So I would love to sort of dissect this topic today and bring some practical wisdom and tangible takeaways to how we can unpattern that.

Mastin: Love this. That’s so good and so well said. So let’s just frame the conversation with this. We’ll talk about positive and negative emotions devoid of them being good or bad. So because let’s not put an appraisal on them. We’ll just say like in a battery, something’s positively or negatively charged. We’ll just think of it like that. One is neither good nor bad. Because every response we have is a response that makes sense if we are curious enough, every single response that we have, right?

So in traditional coaching, we talk about limiting beliefs as this idea that, like, I have this belief that limits me. I’ve never met someone that tries to limit themselves. I’ve met lots of people that try to keep themselves safe. I don’t believe in self-sabotage because sabotage is the intentional stopping of something on purpose. Self-protection is very different. It’s unconscious. It’s not on purpose. So self-sabotage is self-protection.

And when you think about, let’s just say, being aspirational, you have desire to grow, okay? Well, most people’s dreams, desires, ambitions, usually are the opposite of their childhood conditioning, right? So when I was younger, maybe I was silenced. Now I want to speak up or I had financial lack and now I want financial abundance or something like that. And so it’s important to recognize that Freud identified this very early on in the psychotherapy field. He called it repetition compulsion. What that means is we have this impulse to repeat something over and over and over again until it’s resolved, right? So why do you do the same person in different shoes? Repetition compulsion, right?

Well, repetition compulsion also shows up when we go into personal development or growth because if I’m going, say, for example, towards financial abundance and I’ve never really experienced it, well, as I approach a new desire that I’ve never experienced, all the reflexes, learned behaviors, and relational outcomes of certain behaviors are unconsciously happening in my system. And as I go towards something new, they’re going to speak loudest and they’re reflexive and they’re very fast.

And so that’s one thing to say that’s super important to understand is that we have to break our childhood conditioning to live life that we want. And so we have to recognize there is childhood conditioning that keeps us in a certain nervous system set point, if you will. And why is that? Because, well, when we were younger, we learned that we get a positive relational outcome for a certain behavior and a negative relational outcome for other behavior. And then that behavior is rewarded with positive or negative emotions.

The problem is we have a desire to individuate, to become ourselves. And that’s very much in conflict with maybe rules or environments or circumstances that we were raised in. And so the very nature of personal development is going to create inner conflict. And inner conflict is a sign of emotional maturity, just so we’re really clear about that. And you don’t have inner conflict about things you don’t want. So if you’re like, if you want to be with somebody, but you’re not too sure, like that means there’s attraction there, right? If you want to start a business, but you feel insecure, that means there’s a desire to start a business. So we don’t have inner conflict about things that we don’t care about.

So the presence of inner conflict indicates a desire. And that desire is coming from a place inside you that says, I want to resolve something from my history through this desire. So I look at goal-setting as a therapeutic process of completing something that was incomplete in childhood as one approach. Okay.

The next thing to understand is, is that there’s basically seven primary emotions. And depending on how we were raised, certain emotions were praised or not praised, allowed or not allowed. Example, anger would be an emotion, a primary emotion. A lot of people that we meet have a hard time expressing anger because it was either like violent when they were younger or not allowed, right? Well, as you step into the next level of your growth, you’re probably going to meet all the parts of you that are holding anger back and think that you’re not allowed to express it, you shouldn’t express it.

And then you hear something about, well, what you focus on expands. Well, if I focus on my anger, it’s going to expand. Well, that’s actually a good thing in this case because we need it to expand. It’s been too small in that case. It’s not going to expand forever. But we want the anger to come through in a safe and healthy way.

And we have parts of us that hold wounds, parts of us that hold experiences that were dismissed when we were younger. So as we mature, grow, and evolve and have aspiration, we want to learn to turn towards those parts. That’s what reparenting is all about, to say, hey, that part of me that’s angry, sad, frustrated, guilty, et cetera, I love you. Maybe my mom and dad never told you that, but I love you. I’m here. I have another part that’s frustrated. You know what? I love you too. And this is called becoming internally organized.

And we have multiple parts or multiple emotions, multiple experiences. And we want to be able to use our nervous system and our full functioning brain to start to come into contact with the things that we shut down and to bring them into consciousness.

And then the most important piece is, especially in this internal family systems parts work world that we live in today, is not let the most traumatized parts of us drive our life. We don’t do this type of work to say, oh, I discovered this part that’s holding a trauma or a procrastinating part or an overwhelmed part. You should be in the driver’s seat of my life. No. You put them in the passenger seat. You don’t kick them out of the car, but you don’t let them drive. And eventually, if they know that you’re going to be there, they kind of hold back and they don’t hold on as much.

Also, when we look at like, what makes a safe and good relationship, ultimately there are no negative consequences for being your authentic self. So usually when we’re younger, there’s negative consequences for being your authentic self. And so as we grow in aspiration, we want to start to reprogram those expectations in our nervous system and say, it’s okay for me to be assertive. It’s okay for me to speak up. It’s okay for me to disagree. It’s okay for me to want something different. Then there are no, now, there might be short-term upset, but there’s no long-term negative consequence for you being your authentic self. I’m not saying that if you authentically want to abuse somebody that that’s okay. That’s not what I’m talking about.

And then the last thing I’ll say is that a lot of people think that once they do either a certain level of emotional work or trauma work that it’s resolved because that’s what the trauma field tells you. The problem is the trauma field doesn’t look at the performance. So most people’s problem isn’t that the work they did didn’t work. Their problem is that they’re ambitious. And so if you’re ambitious, now you want to go from a six-figure job to starting a business. Now you want to start a business with your partner. Now you want to have kids. Now you want to move in together. Everything gets more and more complex. It gets more and more stressful.

And every time we increase complexity or stress, we reactivate old networks also. And so it’s like level one Jumanji, level two Jumanji, level three Jumanji. We hit these different levels. And so we want to start to realize every time we level up, we’re going to revisit old stuff because it’s uncertain, because there’s more stress.

And so it’s a constant state of tending to parts of ourselves that reemerge. I have a part of me that was put into an incubator for three days, the first three days of my life. That part of me, every podcast, every book launch, every product launch, every seminar is like, no one’s going to show up. And I’m like, bro, I love you. Let’s go do this seminar that no one’s going to show up to. Let’s go do this retreat that no one’s going to show up to. He has 15 years of evidence, and he still doesn’t change his thoughts. And he’s not, he still thinks that because that’s the experience he holds. But he’s not the CEO of my business. Does that make sense?

Katie: Yeah, it does. And I think like even recognizing that alone can be so powerful. And also that reframe you’re speaking to of like reframing sort of emotional resistance as a source of valuable insight rather than something to avoid or push back on. I know this could be like a little bit of a tricky topic, too, because at least for me, like childhood things can feel very sticky.

And you mentioned the word reparenting. I would love to get into the details of like how if we become aware of these things, these emotional resistance or patterns that come up, especially in growth. What are some of the ways we can begin to address it? Because I’ve also had the experience of just like mentally deciding I’m going to not do that anymore or let that go was not super effective. And I know there are things that help to integrate that a lot better.

Mastin: Yeah. Think of it, it’s really simple, actually. So everyone that I’ve met is pretty clear that they have an inner critic. Some voice in their head that’s not that nice to them, okay? So let’s call that something different. Let’s call that your internal parenting voice. So your inner critic is like how you parent yourself. And you can see how far along you really are in your work based on the quality of that voice inside.

So if you are able to go through something hard, make a mistake, not get something right, et cetera, and have good internal communication to yourself, that is a sign that you are going in the right direction. And if not, that’s what good trauma-informed functional life coaching or therapy helps with, is it helps you start to understand all these different parts that you have and to form a positive relationship with them.

And what happens is you start to form a positive relationship with the part of you that is sad. And then all of a sudden, this frustrated part speaks up. I can’t believe we’ve been sad for so long. It’s like, oh, okay, now I’m going to form a positive relationship with you too, right? And then there’s like an angry part. And then all of a sudden there’s this overwhelmed part, right? Now we’ve realized there’s like four parts here that we all get to form relationships to that our parents, for whatever reason, couldn’t attune to, couldn’t acknowledge, couldn’t drop into us with, right?

And my faith, Jesus talks about this idea of sometimes you have to leave your whole flock, leave the 99 to get the one, right? And parts work is very similar, right? Like you have all these parts you want to amplify and all these parts that you want to love and all these things you want to do. But the one that you won’t look at, the one that you don’t want to pay attention to, that’s the one that needs the most attention. The grief, the anger, the rage, the frustration.

And not to amplify it or to make bad things happen. I think the law of attraction material has made us turn us into these emotional superstitious beings that says, if I feel negative feelings, then I must be doing something wrong or bad or I’m going to manifest bad things. No, it’s the not feeling it that’s the problem.

And so when we feel it, when we integrate it, when we bring it to our prefrontal cortex, when we make it okay in our system, that is called internal integration. That improves the inner critic voice. The problem with the work of, say, someone like Joe Dispenza, who I respect tremendously, but however, when you go to a non-ordinary meditative state and he tells you to find a feeling bigger than depression, that sends a message to your system that your depression experience emotion part is not welcome here and it sends it into exile. And so you have this big sort of quantum or expansive experience, but when you come back in, that part gets paid back. Because our nervous system is a set point.

It would be so much better to find a feeling that loves the depression, that loves the anger, that loves the sadness, that loves the frustration. Because we want to bring them into our awareness. And a lot of the sort of like, I would call them like last gen teachers teach a lot of this stuff. And I’m not against Dispenza’s meditations, I still do them. But I don’t find a feeling bigger than the feeling. I find a feeling that embraces the feeling. I find a feeling that brings the feeling with me into the expansion.

And we look at the work of Byron Katie. First question she’s going to ask you is, is that true? And then we get into reframing, right? Well, a better question to ask is, when was that true? Because parts hold memory in the present moment. And so if I say something like, well, is that true? And they say no, and I just move along as if it’s not true, I’m gaslighting parts of myself that have valid experiences, which doesn’t mean that we should let them run the show.

So we have to recognize that trauma and experiences that we hold that are not resolved live in our bodies in the present moment. So for certain parts of us, it is true right now. It might not be factually true on the outside that it’s happening, but it is factually true that something on the inside is still holding it as if it’s now.

And so understanding these things helps us be more effective in our expansion because we realize that, like, basically no emotion is an enemy. No emotion is a bad thing. And if you look at the devil, Lucifer, what caused his pain? He was cast out. He was exiled, right? So we think about these metaphors, when we cast things out of our awareness, that’s when we get the rebound. That’s when we get the negative bounce back. But when we bring them into awareness, we don’t leave them behind, that’s when everything starts to shift and change, especially with the hard emotions.

Katie: Oh, I love this. I feel like this perspective is so powerful. And it reminds me of so many quotes, but the idea that like the magic you are seeking is in the work that you’re avoiding essentially. And that like in this categorization, we’ve actually shut down the part of us that might be the most valuable in healing and in integrating. And that really stood out to me, that idea to find a place that loves that negative feeling and ask when instead of if because it would seem in adulthood, our developed prefrontal cortex and our logic brain can go, oh, that’s not true right now.

Mastin: That’s right.

Katie: To your point, our bodies might be screaming at us, yes, it is here in this particular place or in this particular experience. And I’ve read like our nervous systems don’t actually know the difference between an imagined experience and a physical experience happening in the moment. Like our nervous system can engage even with that past memory as if it were in the present moment.

Mastin: That’s correct.

Katie: So this seems like this alone could shift so much for so many people.

Mastin: That’s correct, yes. It can.

Katie: That’s so fascinating. So I’d love to go a little deeper on like, especially the not-allowed emotions, because as you were saying that I was thinking of my own life of areas I can recognize that that shows up and, you know, vulnerably for me, it was actually my parents are both hard of hearing. So I grew up in a completely silent household for the most part. And I’m recognizing now in my current life, the places where it’s hard for me to show up and use my voice because that didn’t exist in my childhood. My voice was never heard.

And just how profoundly those like small childhood experiences. And I had awesome parents. They did an amazing job. And still I internalize these sort of negative parts of myself. So can you walk us through, like, I think that when question is super valuable, but if we become aware of when and what those things are, how do we then start to love them? How do we find the part of us that does love them?

Mastin: Love that. So I love that so much. And I’ll say a couple of things. One is, first of all, what is an emotion? Okay. An emotion is biochemistry. It is hormones and neuropeptides that fire off automatically in our system. Think of it as, you know, we hear about peptide therapy today, right? Emotions are basically peptides, basically. Okay. There’s a lot of things that can go into emotions.

They are distinctly different from body sensations, which are somatic sensations. So emotions are these peptides and these biochemicals that run through our body. They could be loving, angry. They could be lots of different things. And then there’s physical sensations that we have in our body. So those are separate.

The difference is, and why the field of affective neuroscience, which is the study of emotion, is so hard is not only are emotions biochemistry, they come with what’s called appraisal or meaning. So we have a biochemistry that means something.

And there are seven emotional pathways in our body. And so they tend to fire off automatically and then we have to make sense of them. But here’s what this means. If you have a fear of an emotion, you are afraid of yourself. You’re afraid of yourself. You’re afraid of your anger. You’re afraid of your joy, your sexual desire, your whatever it might be. There’s about seven primary emotions. But ultimately, the fear of emotion is the fear of you and experiencing yourself. The fear of feeling something in your body somatically, that’s the fear of you.

So there were parts of you or emotions in you that were not able to be internalized by your parents. John Bowlby, the founder of Attachment Theory, has a quote that says, something like that which cannot be expressed to the mother cannot be expressed to the self. So we learn to shut certain things down because if I express it here, I get a negative relational outcome and I don’t get emotional proximity. I don’t get care. I don’t get love.

And I learned that if I shut it down and I don’t get love, now I have to push it out of my awareness because it must be bad. And then we grow up and the first 25 years is basically programming. And the next 75 years is undoing the programming of the first 25 years basically, right? We get to start to figure these things out and realize, wow, the emotion of anger wasn’t allowed. Or being loud wasn’t allowed.

I can imagine, also my father’s hard of hearing too, some people will tell me I’m yelling at them. But to me, it sounds normal because I had to speak very loudly to talk to get through to him sometimes, right? And so like I would feel sometimes shut down if I couldn’t speak up and stuff like that.

But whatever emotion we’re feeling is first of all, recognize that’s you. That’s you that you’re afraid of, not something outside. There’s no spiritual warfare happening. It’s just something happening inside you. And then let’s create positive relational outcomes with becoming in contact with the emotions, the ideas, the thoughts, the feelings that you shut down because there were negative relational outcomes.

It’s always interesting in general, I meet fitness people who could do like, I don’t know, a million burpees or CrossFit or hike Mount Everest. But then they’re conflict-avoidant in a relationship. They can’t surface something because it’s too hard to talk about emotionally. And there’s some people who are really good at emotional conversations but can’t do a push-up. And that’s not always true, but it’s kind of interesting how different people are oriented to do different things that we consider hard but are easy for them.

My buddy Adam runs between Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach with a tire dragging through the sand both ways as a warm-up. I’ve never done that once in my life. That’s easy for him. And there’s a positive relational outcome for him by doing those things.

For me, I had a positive relational outcome when I was younger by taking care of my mom. So when I caretaker, my whole nervous system is thinking, oh, I’m going to be safe. But once I start to choose myself, I start to get all this fear or worry or anxiety that like if I choose me, that strategy didn’t work when I was younger. And guess what? The fear, the grief, the sadness, the guilt, where does that live? It lives inside me. The only way that I’m able to get to the next level is to start to pay attention to those emotions and realize I’m afraid of myself. Because this behavior wasn’t safe in the past. I’m afraid of other people’s expectations and the outcomes of this choice. So maybe I should understand where that comes from.

And then, a really smart person, but get in cahoots with a safe person in their life, maybe a partner, a friend, and let them know what’s going on so that you can work together to help you create a new outcome so you’re not holding it by yourself. But that’s called interoception, where I’m becoming aware of what’s happening inside my body. Extroception is what’s happening outside my body. And we want to become aware of what’s happening inside our body and then befriend it, not dismiss it.

And then also realize that just by befriending it doesn’t mean that we’re going to let the depression drive or the sadness or the anger drive, but we are going to admit it into consciousness and express it to ourselves, and express it to somebody else. And then not let that part make decisions about our life, but certainly give it a voice. Like thinking about this very practically, okay? You ever had a situation where you were trying to share something and someone tried to solve the problem and they didn’t listen to you? What’s that feel like for you and your body?

Katie: It feels like a very like shut down feeling, like a tightness.

Mastin: Right? So that’s what we’re doing to our negative emotions. We’re doing that. And that’s when they, that’s why they hold on and they form these problems and somatic problems and chronic illnesses and stuff like that. But when you feel heard and someone doesn’t try to solve the problem, they get your experience, that feels usually, how does that feel for you usually?

Katie: Usually like a deep breath, like a very relieving, like, ah.

Mastin: So we want to give that experience to the part of us that’s angry, the part of us that’s sad, the part of us that’s grieving. It just wants to be understood. It doesn’t want to be in charge. Just like when you’re trying to share you want to be understood it by definition active listening does not involve problem solving. We just want to listen and validate. And by the way, in a relationship, two people will rarely agree on things, but if they can at least understand each other, they’ll get along. And we owe it to our internal parts, emotions, thoughts, feelings, et cetera, to have that same relationship.

Katie: Oh, I love that. And I love that active listening does not always involve or often involve problem solving. I think that’s a really valuable piece. And as you were explaining this, I was thinking for all the parents listening, because most of our listeners are parents, the ways that this also applies to the way that we parent. And I would guess, obviously, doing that work ourselves and having a better relationship with ourselves and our emotion will, of course, ripple out into the energy of our entire household and into how our children learn to develop that skill.

But I’m curious, since so many of these things for so many of us and me and therapy certainly go back to childhood, even if we had what we would categorize as a great childhood, there’s still these things from childhood. So none of us are going to do this perfectly at all to begin with. But are there things we can do with our children as they’re forming their prefrontal cortex, as they’re developing their nervous system regulation that can help them have a more solid foundation than perhaps some of us had in childhood?

Mastin: Yes, there’s lots of things that could be done. A few things. One, don’t have kids to get unconditional love from them. Number one. Children are a place to contribute unconditional love, but not to extract it. Next would be is we don’t want to parentify children, meaning put them in a parental role. Turn them into your friend. Make them more responsible than they need to be when they’re too young.

The other thing is we want to help them set boundaries and set boundaries with their behavior and to distinguish between their identity and their behavior. And we want to model it for them in our own nervous systems, ideally, the behavior that we want, the state that we want, because they follow. And unfortunately, there’s an unfair biological burden on mothers, both because you’re the first literal attachment for the child, but usually wherever mom is, it’s like the energy center of the house. It’s kind of how it is, right? And so it’s like understanding that is like super important.

And so whatever can be done to help support the mother to be regulated is so very important. If I had billions of dollars to distribute, I would give it to single moms. I think that would help to solve the trauma problem faster than almost anything. But understanding that, I think, is super important. And I think also limit-setting with children, not being a pushover, also super important.

And I think probably the best thing you do for your kids, in my opinion, as a non-parent, but I work with lots of parents, is to not abandon your purpose. Don’t make them your sole purpose because like the, I think it was, maybe it was Carl Jung. The greatest burden a child bears is the unlived life of the parent, right? And so if like you’re not able to self-actualize and you put the burden on them, then it causes a whole other cascade of issues. And so it’s far better, it’s not so much about how much time you spend with your kids, it’s the quality time that you spend with your kids that really matters.

And the worst thing you could do, I think, is if your kid is having behavioral issues, send them off to therapy as if they need to be fixed. If you’re going to put your kid in therapy, do it with them. Do therapy with your child, not send your child to therapy because the problem isn’t them. We’re super clear. You’re the problem. If you have a problem with a child, it’s your fault as a parent and your responsibility. And improving your relationship with your child is super important.

There’s a great institute called The Theraplay Institute. And it’s for mostly like babies and stuff like that. But basically, the therapist will watch a parent and a child play and point out moments where the parent was misattuned to the child. So they can improve their relationship, right? So it sends a really bad message to kids. It’s like, you need to go to therapy because you’re misbehaving. And what are they going to talk about? You, the parent, in therapy. So it’s better to do something together to improve your relationship and understand how you’re coming off than it is to tell them, you’re bad, you’re wrong, go away and get fixed and come back and be a good person. That’s not the message that we want to send our kids, in my opinion.

Katie: Oh, yeah, that was awesome context for that. And I truly, Mastin, I wish we could just talk all day because you are so good at this. And I feel like you have so many valuable resources. I hope that you will agree to more episodes in the future.

Mastin: Yes, let’s do it.

Katie: But for today, where can people find you and keep learning from you? I know I just followed you and I’m excited to keep learning from you. And you have an amazing book as well. But where can people find you?

Mastin: Yeah, so my new book is called Reclaim Your Nervous System, and it’s all about creating positive change after overwhelming experiences and really helping your next level be your best level. And it’s called Reclaim Your Nervous System. It’s available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever books are sold. And then my name is Mastin Kipp, M-A-S-T-I-N, Kipp, K-I-P-P. And I’m on Instagram and website and Facebook and YouTube and all the places under that name. So, and you can get Reclaim Your Nervous System and pretty much wherever books are sold.

Katie: Amazing. Well, truly, thank you so much for your time today. I am so grateful that you’re bringing a voice to all of these topics we got to discuss. I loved your book, highly recommend it, and we’ll link to it in the show notes, but also deeply grateful for your time. Thank you so much.

Mastin: It’s been my pleasure, Katie. Thanks for having me.

Katie: And thank you, as always, for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama Podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.