It’s funny to even write that out, because it just doesn’t even sound like me—not the “me” that others know, nor really even the “me” that I know.

Admittedly, this is not my favorite thing to admit to you.

I’m supposed to be teaching this stuff, right? I’m supposed to have it all together, have all the answers and be past all the BS, right?

One of my strengths I believe is my steadfastness and how I’m able to hold things down even in the toughest, scariest and uncertain of moments. Maybe it’s the Boston in me. Maybe it’s the German in me. Maybe it’s just the family I grew up in. But I’m strong, I’m capable and I’m confident.

So what the fuck?

Well, as Jade who was with me at the time reiterated, “Jill, this is normal human stuff, you are justified in the way you feel. Of course you feel that way.”

Wow, yes, of course.

And we all do this every once in a while, don’t we? It looks something like this:

We caught up in our emotions, we cry or yell or go all in on the victim-thing, and then, because we think we should be better, we should be over it, we should be more “evolved” than this, we judge ourselves and say things like, “I wish I wasn’t like this! I’m so embarrassed! I don’t like being this person! I wish I was better! I should be better! This is ridiculous! I’m sorry!”

Looololol. I’m laughing even thinking about it all, now. Of course in the moment, everything feels very NOT funny. We actually feel like an immature, incompetent baby.

But Jade was right. Self-judgment on top of an emotional response that we already don’t like only compounds the issue.

Beating ourselves up for how badly we’re reacting to something else that we don’t like is like pouring gas on a flame that is already out of control. It doesn’t help, it doesn’t serve us and most importantly, it keeps us from solving the issue.

Looking back on the incident, I see that the problem was not my response, but instead my insistence that my response was not okay. My response was valid, it was what needed to happen for my attention to be pulled to an underlying issue that I should deal with.

If I experience an emotional hit that strong, then man, I have some work to do on that thing! Our emotional responses are not bad (or good, in fact they don’t need to be judged at all)—they are simply red flags that point us to where we have some work to do on ourselves.

My friend Liz DiAlto—whose book just came out yesterday and is free for the next 48 hours—says:

Of course, it’s all actually fine, but the key here is that being triggered and having emotional responses is normal, human and justified. But what is not productive is continuing to go down the black hole of that trigger, compound all our hurts and pile a whole bunch of self-judgment on top of it.

This is something I’m sharing because I think it’s a good reminder for all of us. It’s weird because judging yourself and saying things like, “I wish I was better, I can’t believe I’m acting this way,” kind of feels good. It kind of feels like a justification for our breakdown. If we can just say that we know it’s absurd than maybe the people witnessing (and ourselves) will think that we really don’t mean it and look, we really are normal, this is just a bad moment.

It’s why we preempt comments about our body to acquaintances we haven’t seen in a while: “Still gotta lose this baby weight!” and “I know I’ve still got about 20 pounds to lose.”

It’s why we call ourselves fat before anyone else gets to it.

It’s why we deflect compliments, so that we can be perceived as humble or self-deprecating, when all the while we’re perpetuating a message to our higher self that we are not good enough.

It’s is a convenient justification for anything we don’t deem perfect or good or acceptable or attractive.

Self-judgment allows us to maintain our shame.

And the opposite of self-judgment is self-compassion. Watching ourselves with objectivity, as a good friend would. Self-compassion doesn’t take us off the hook (like self-judgment does!), it’s actually a productivity system.

When we can look at all our “human” moments with love, acceptance and even gratitude, we are open to learning, introspecting and solutions.

Truth is, it’s hard to do in the moment. Pretty much impossible to remember those things—that’s the nature of an emotional hijack—but what we can do is what Liz described: practice awareness, catch ourselves doing the old self-berating act, then turn it around to kindness as fast as possible and ask, what’s the underlying insecurity here? What can I learn here? What can I work on here?

Embrace those moments. Love on them, and it will help you love on yourself.

And hopefully you’ll have a friend like Jade there, too, who can hold it down for you, and to remind you that you are just fine. Human. Normal. And even pretty amazing. And remember to not let that kind of emotional bandwidth go unappreciated.

Though it feels super vulnerable to share this moment with you, it also feels really liberating because it reminds me that it's okay to be human, and like Brené Brown says, "Shame can't survive being spoken." So here's to exposure!

So ... this ever happen to you?? Haha, I’d love to hear about it!

Xo,

Jill

P.S. Been working like crazy lately so I’m enjoying some downtime in Costa Rica this week. If you want to hang with me day-to-day, be sure to follow everything on Instagram!