Hello, my loves! Today, I am going to be having a conversation with the beautiful Chantelle Raven, who is the founder and lead teacher at the Embodied Awakening Academy. 

When I first heard Chantelle speak, I remember being blown away by her energy and deeply feeling her integration of the masculine and the feminine. She is the real fucking deal, and I am so excited for her to share with you today and help you unf*ck some things.

Emotional Dumping

Michelle: First off, I feel like we could have seventeen million different conversations, because there are so many topics we could cover. But as I was looking at your Instagram, I noticed one of your reels was about how to express authentically from your heart without all the bullshit.

That really spoke to me, because I really see you as someone who’s so deeply integrated in their feminine. You’re all about self-expression and telling the truth of what’s on your heart, but not in a way that’s emotionally dumpy, which is so important.

When I first discovered my voice, it often came out as, “I’m having a feeling, and you better sit the fuck down and listen to it.”  It was very much a projectile vomit of all of my emotions, which…wasn’t great. But I just thought, “Well, you’re the masculine. You should just hold this.” So I would just love to hear your perspective on that side of learning how to integrate these things without dumping your emotions all over your partners.

Chantelle: Well, first of all, I want to give a disclaimer that we’re all humans. Sometimes emotions just spiral out of control. We’re feeling a lot, and it doesn’t always come out perfectly.

When I talk about expressing truth and vulnerability without the bullshit, what I’m really speaking to is that it’s so easy to put all the focus on the external object of our upsets when we’re working toward resolving conflict.

I’m really glad you brought up how when you first started expressing and trying to be vulnerable while resolving conflict, you were dumping everything on people. Just about everyone does that, but not many people admit it.

In fact, some people are still doing that years and years later. But there are ways we can shift away from that method of resolving conflict.

Calm, Communication, and Clarity in Conflict

Chantelle: Instead of dumping everything we’re feeling from a place of stress while resolving conflict, we want to come into our vulnerability. That starts by us breathing deeply into the body and shifting the focus from who our enemy at the time is. We want to stop focusing on whoever we’re in conflict with and start focusing on what’s happening inside ourselves.

The first step in coming into our vulnerability for resolving conflict is to welcome whatever’s there…even if we don’t want to. A lot of times, that emotional “projectile vomiting” is actually a resistance to what’s there. We have an inner conflict with what’s happening inside, so we create outer conflict instead.

By welcoming whatever we’re resisting instead of pushing it out, we’re already ending an inner war. We’re resolving conflict internally.

Once we’ve done that, we’ve opened the possibility for resolving conflict through conversation, which doesn’t have to be a war, right? It can just be a calm discussion.

For example, let’s say your partner has not done something that you wanted him to do. You asked, he agreed, and it didn’t get done. That’s pretty common for women.

So, you’re angry. Your emotional body’s hit. But underneath the surface-level anger is probably disappointment and sadness, right? There are feelings that probably remind us of other experiences where we relied on someone and were let down.

That hurt makes resolving conflict harder, because if we act on that first hit, depending on whether we’re more avoidant or anxious, we’re either going to blow up and get angry—which is definitely my default—or we’re going to withdraw and hide.

Either way, what’s actually underneath that reaction is this deeper feeling that you need to welcome instead of warring with.

So once we can stop ourselves from acting on that immediate emotion and breath into it instead, we can take it deeper and shake out what’s actually happening. We can sit with ourselves and say, “This is a strong reaction. What’s happening here?”

If we can give that emotion some movement, that can also be helpful. Movement can discharge some of the energy feeding into those emotions and make them more manageable.

I’ve done this by covering my mouth, shaking my hips, punching the air, stomping, etcetera. That gets the anger out.

Once I feel like the energy has been discharged, but I’m close enough to the emotion to still come in contact with the vulnerability, that’s the best time to communicate. And at that point, what I really want to get clear on in order to get into resolving conflict is what I actually need from my partner.

If you go at resolving conflict by spilling out all the immediate emotions and the backstory behind them, it’s just going to go in circles. It’ll be like, “I just wanted to talk about the fact that you didn’t follow through with what you said. And this is a trauma for me because of blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And this is reminding me of when my dad didn’t show up.”

This isn’t resolving conflict; this is you going off and rambling this whole story, and he’ll end up defending himself or attacking you back with things, because you’re making him feel like shit.

This is why conflict is so rampant in these moments, because the expresser is not actually expressing something that has a point. What is the point of going off like that? Are you just wanting to sit in judgment on your partner, or do you want to move toward resolving conflict by expressing what you need and seeing if your partner is actually capable of it?

Personally, I generally don’t share my process with my partner unless my sexual abuse has been triggered, because I feel like that’s important. He needs to know that. But otherwise, I’m not going into all of the background details to my approach for resolving conflict.

Instead, once I’m in my clarity, I can sit and tell him what I’m feeling without making it an attack. “I’m actually feeling really frustrated and angry and sad. What I need is for you to show up when I need something, because that is actually really important to me. It’s really, really important to me that if you say you’re going to do something, it happens, and I don’t need to remind you. That’s what creates a feeling of being held for me.” That’s a much better method for resolving conflict.

Curiosity and Capacity

Chantelle: It’s also good to remember that, when it comes to communicating what you need to your partner, things that are important for a woman are not always important for a man.

In a very polarized example of masculine vs. feminine, what the man needs is some form of space, and what the woman needs is some form of connection or commitment or intimacy.

These are opposite needs. And part of communicating those needs in a healthy fashion is having compassion for each other and not judging the other one if they can’t meet those needs.

When you’re asking for what you need, don’t ask for it from a place of, “You’re a piece of shit if you can’t give it to me.” Ask for it from a place of genuine curiosity. Say, “Is this something that you’re capable of? Is this something that you could do? Is this part of your truth and part of what you feel is going to be good for you?”

You’re not necessarily saying that last part every time, but I always make that clear to my partners that I don’t want them to give me that thing if they don’t feel like it’s going to serve them. I need it to be genuine. I need them to be honest. 

Sometimes they’ll agree and say that they want to show up for you that way, and then they do. Other times, it won’t happen, even when you work on finding your vulnerability and resolving those conflicts. If you’ve asked for what you need a lot of times, that need hasn’t been met, and you feel that the relationship doesn’t work without that need being met, it’s time to call it.

There doesn’t have to be resentment or bitterness around that. It can be as simple as, “Look, I’ve asked for this. You’ve tried, but it isn’t working, and that’s all right.”

We can do that without hating the other person. I’m so close with all of my exes, especially my first husband. He comes around here several times a week. We talk about everything. It’s beautiful. And the way that we can have that relationship is because both of us are capable of the kind of unconditional love where we’re genuinely curious about what the other needs, and we don’t crucify the other for it.

In general, men just want peace. So the less confrontation, the better. You can still get your needs across, but by communicating more from vulnerability than anger, there are fewer words, more feelings. Less story, more direct communication. You don’t have to worry about resolving conflict if you can find ways to communicate without it.

You don’t have to go into all the different layers of your process and your anxious attachment. It’s very simple: How do you feel? What do you need? What will that provide you with?

Get the Full Experience

This isn’t even close to everything Chantelle brought to the table, and trust me, if what you’ve read so far is resonating, you’re going to want to hear the whole thing on Episode 147 of Unf*ck Your Relationships.

If you’re new to Chantelle’s area of expertise, good news—she has an incredible free offering for Tantra beginners. It’s an eight-day journey that covers all of the foundational principles of Tantra at a cerebral level, but also offers some embodiment practices you can experiment with (and it’s totally insane that it’s free, btw. She could for sure be charging for that shit). So if you are totally new to Tantra and you’re getting reeducated in the area of love, sex, relationships, boundaries, asking for what you need, etcetera, you’re going to want to get into that.

And when you decide you want to work with Chantelle on all the things, you can access her other offers in the links below.

Don’t keep settling for a relationship where your needs aren’t being met…or for a relationship where you don’t even know what your needs ARE. Slap on your headphones, breathe deep, and start diving into what you’re actually needing from your partner as you listen to Episode 147!

WORK WITH CHANTELLE:

Website: https://embodiedawakeningacademy.com/ 

Follow Embodied Awakening Academy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/embodiedawakeningacademy/ 

CONNECT WITH CHANTELLE:

Follow Chantelle on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_chantelleraven/ 

WORK WITH MICHELLE: 

Get instant access to SHADOW HUNTER, a FREE 3 day event all about WTF shadow work actually is, how to do it, and how it’s going to completely change the way you do relationships forever: https://michellepanning.thrivecart.com/shadow-hunter/

Join The Connected Woman EXPERIENCE: https://michellepanning.com/the-connected-woman-experience

CONNECT WITH MICHELLE:

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/michellepanning

Website: http://www.michellepanning.com