I want to share a story of a video that I found on Reddit it's titled "Houses Swarmed After Being Listed in Raleigh for Under $300,000". This is posted on the Raleigh subreddit. It's was also posted on the first-time home buyer subreddit and a ton of other subreddits. I want to share this video with you and then let's talk a little bit more. Here's the link: 0:21 Listed as 300k in Raleigh, NC
In the video, the lady narrated: Okay everyone. So I am here showing my clients a home, and I just want you to take a look at all of the people who are alive. To see this property. So when we say that there is a housing crisis, we really mean that it's absolutely insane. The line goes all the way in the back. It's not even 5:30 fully, and someone stopped me and they wanted to know what was going on in the neighborhood. And I just told them the truth. I said we're having a housing crisis. And this is a home that is priced under $300,000 here in the Raleigh area. And as you can see, there are just cars upon cars, and there are a ton of people."
This is the gist of the video. So this home in Raleigh was being listed under $300,000, which is super low for the area and cars lining up, people driving by asking what in the world is going on. Somebody provided the link of the home on that video so I checked it out. It's nothing too out of the ordinary. But this is listed for 260k currently pending of course, like we saw all these people out there.
It's really interesting to know your reaction to seeing something like this? What's the first thought or the emotion that comes up in seeing these types of videos or hearing these stories, because, for the past, at this point over a year, I think that's what a lot of people have been feeling. They've been hearing these stories and feeling, "oh my gosh, there's a buying a home is difficult. It's overwhelming. It's frustrating.
And in this video, I want you to know that I have no solution for you. Unfortunately, there is no advice that I can give.
Really what I want to do is help you understand and feel like you have permission to feel the way that you do. Because, I think for a lot of people, they hear these stories and they see videos like this. Videos like this are really interesting to see because when I saw it come up on Reddit, I was like, oh my gosh, this is like really cements a lot of those stories of, I, almost imagined myself being there and feeling like I can't imagine if I was wanting to buy a home like this. I got beat down on so many other offers and then this house comes on the market and I say, great, I really want to try for this home. And then all of these other people show up just the feeling of being defeated and frustrated. Like I, I was just imagining what that would be like, and I imagine you might be feeling the same way.
What I've recognized is I think a lot of videos turn a little prescriptive and they do this thing where it's like, Hey, this is a bad thing that's happened, and here are the solutions. Our brains are always trying to figure out the solution. How do we rally around the solution? And then maybe I can feel a little bit better.
But that just doesn't actually work like physiologically for us. We actually ended up making pretty bad decisions long-term when we don't allow ourselves to actually feel the emotions that come up when things like this happen.
So I want you to know, first of all, you're not alone in how you're feeling about the housing market, whether you have started putting bids on homes, or you haven't even got a pre-approved or you're still working on savings, or maybe you're under contract or whatever stage you're in the process, you're not alone in how you're feeling. With what's going on right now. All of the feelings that you do have are justified.
I don't want you to feel shame or guilt or anxiety around those feelings because emotions are things that help your body do one of two things, either mobilize or immobilize. But our motion server really good purpose. That's why we have them. They're really good at helping us either move towards an action or a move away from inaction. They teach us something about what's happening in our environment if something isn't right. That's why emotions exist.
Unfortunately, we've been taught a lot is those emotions like we shouldn't have them or we're weak if we have them or they're not helpful, they don't help us make good decisions, but it's actually the opposite. When we actually allow ourselves to feel emotions and feel them fully, we actually realize that emotion wasn't as strong as I thought it was. It wasn't as big as I thought it was. It wasn't as scary and it actually helps us make better decisions. When we allow ourselves to fully feel an emotion that allows us to access a more wise cognitive thinking.
What's frustrating is we can't out-think the problems that are happening with housing right now. We could sit here and rant about this needs to happen, this needs to change, and this is the thing that's causing all the problems, this is the thing, that's the issue. Those can be good discussions, but they don't actually alleviate the feelings of pain and frustration and anxiety and loss and suffering that you're feeling.
So in the midst of the whole home-buying process, we need to start exploring how do we move into a space of feeling calmer, more confident in where we're at, and really taking full ownership and acceptance of what the situation looks like even if it's frustrating. What's really hard is we want to outmaneuver what's going on and then go, oh, I just need some, I need something to change so I can get a leg up.
And unfortunately, a lot of situations that we run into in life are just shitty and it's sometimes not deeper than that. Sometimes the situations that we encounter. They're just really shitty and there's nothing that we can do about it, but we can cause even more suffering for ourselves if we don't actually process how we're feeling. If we don't respect the fact that our body is saying, "Hey, you know what? I need you to slow down and pay attention to this". When we can feel those emotions fully, we move to a more core authentic state where we can actually make better decisions.
Maybe you won't need to go back through that video again and re-watch it and start noticing what comes up. Because I imagined for a lot of people there's a whole range of emotions, right? In the beginning, there's probably a lot of anger, a lot of anger that comes up. Then for some people, maybe they're at the stage where they're past the anger and now it's moved into sadness or maybe the opposite. Maybe start with sadness, and now it's developed into full anger, or maybe you're at the point where it's developed into apathy and cynicism and it's way past those emotions.
That's where we create a lot of our own suffering sometimes where things happen to us externally, but we allow them to become so deeply ingrained within us that all of a sudden it really starts affecting a lot of our life.
It goes from this is a really bad situation that we need to navigate. This is a bad situation and all of the other stories that I'm telling myself about are what that means about me and what that means about the world and what that means about other people. That's when we start getting to the point of we become jealous of our friends because they got something that we wanted.
That's when we start getting irrationally, angry and bitter at people that were in a relationship with. Because we're taking all of this unfelt anger and emotion out on somebody else. And it gives these points where if we don't actually allow ourselves to just take a moment and feel them. We start making bad decisions, not just with buying a house but with the way that we interact with people that we care about and the way that we're going to move through the rest of life and navigate all the other problems. We can do those in a way where we just continue to cause more harm to ourselves through the process.
So I think it's helpful when you hear about these stories or you have your own experiences of these things is to come at it with a mindset of yeah, of course, I am frustrated about this. Of course, I'm sad. Of course, I'm angry. Of course, I was really looking forward to being able to buy a house in this neighborhood. Of course, I ran into this issue.
And the mindset is not one of, "oh, everything is bad". It's just that life inherently is going to have these things that are really frustrating and that can be devastating. Of course, this is difficult. and that's been a really helpful phrase for me as whenever I run into something where it's, this is overwhelming or frustrating, or I'm afraid of this, or I feel anxiety. It's oh, of course, I feel this way. This is what's happening, and using that phrase to validate how you're feeling is really helpful. It actually adds a little bit of some levity to it. It takes off some weight because we should shame ourselves with these emotions.
We see this and all of a sudden we become jealous and angry and then it's me versus them. Then I feel bad that I'm angry at the whole situation, and I feel ashamed of why I should be able to buy this house. And if I got this job and worked harder then I'd have more cash to be able to put in an appraisal gap, and I maybe I could pay cash for that house, or maybe if this didn't happen and that person didn't do that thing to me, then I could be in a better situation. We shame ourselves inside of this narrative, instead of being able to recognize this is the situation that happened. Of course, I feel this way in allowing ourselves to give ourselves permission to do that.
Because I think for a lot of people like we're not given the permission to feel that way and we always view emotions as these are bad. I'm sure there's gonna be somebody in the comments too, who was like, "this is dumb video emotions aren't going to do anything for you buying a house". And I didn't say that they would, but what we can do, like we can't change the situation that's happening externally, but there's a couple of things that we could maybe do in the tweak, but really what I want you to feel is a broader space of calm, contentment and joy, even when everything else that's happening around outside of you or the situations that you're running up against are really tough. And they're really frustrating and they're causing a lot of issues.
So I want to introduce you to this tool called The Change Triangle. It really helps. It's helped me a lot in understanding kind of how emotions work and what's really interesting too, is like when we think of emotions, I think we can often think of these like long periods of like sadness or anger or whatever that looks like. But like retreat researchers have actually studied emotions, and emotions only last on average 90 seconds.
It seems a little counterintuitive at first cause you're like, no, I've been sad for a long time after somebody has passed away or something like that. The actual wave of emotion on average lasts around 90 seconds, maybe up to a few minutes, but emotions don't actually last for 10 plus minutes an hour. They don't last for days.
But what ends up happening when we actually have waves of emotion that come. So when you feel something like sadness and it comes in as this wave I think before it comes, we see it and we're like, this is too big. No, no way. I'm not handling this and we push it back. But when we step those things down, they always end up coming back.
Like your body is trying to show you something about the environment that you're in. It needs you to just see it. It doesn't need you to do anything about it. It just needs you to observe. What's happening. That's the whole point of the emotion is I just need you to pay attention. I just need you to see what I'm trying to show you. I don't need you to do anything. Maybe if you do something great, but I just need you to see this when it comes up. That's the first thing that we need to do with emotions.
So what's interesting are they come in a wave and then if we feel them fully. It ends up passing. There's going to be a time in between that, that you're going to feel better, that's like our bodies are really good at writing them themselves where you feel this big wave of sadness and then at the end you feel better. It's like when you've had a really good cry and at the afterward, you're like, I feel better.
That's what the emotion did. It like helped you recognize something, maybe something that you want to change, but then you feel better afterward. That's the whole point of the emotion. Then you might have a little bit of a period in between, and then another wave comes and these waves are different.
But, I remember when I first started going to therapy, for me a huge wave that I always pushed down was just a feeling of like tremendous loneliness and I always remember getting so close to that feeling and recognizing it and immediately shutting it down. Then say, there's no way, we're not going to touch this.
I've been trying to push away that thing for 23 years or something, I don't want to feel that. So what's interesting is that I remember being with my therapist and us walking through kind of some work experiential emotion-based therapy and all of a sudden getting into that phase where I felt that emotion there and I felt safe enough to be able to feel that full emotion, and it's so strange. To, to have that experience where I was like, that was the most profound sense of loneliness that I think I've ever felt in my life.
What's interesting is that it's there and it feels immense, but after 60 seconds to two minutes, it passed like that thing that I didn't want to feel for my entire life. It only lasted that long, and then I felt a lot better afterward.
What ends up happening is there some time in between, and then I've had other waves like that come, but what's interesting is when we deal with them early on the new ones that come up, we're like, oh, okay, this isn't as bad. Like this, the I've dealt with this.
I know it's going to come and it's going to feel really strong. It's going to feel overwhelming. So I feel like I'm drowning and then it's going to feel. I'm going to feel calmer and more connected and more curious on the other side of him. What happens is these waves feel huge and then they crash over and then they pull back.
Then the next one's a little bit softer and a little bit softer and a little bit softer. And so these waves become so insignificant that you run into situations and you say, okay, this thing happened. Let me feel what my body wants to say about this.
It wants to tell me something, it has wisdom just as my mind wants to help me analyze things. It wants to help me understand the safety of the environment that I'm in. Let me give it the attention that it deserves and allow it to happen. And on the other side, you're going to be wiser, more curious, calmer. More connected to yourself and everyone else around you.
So I'm gonna introduce you to this tool called The Change Triangle. So this is how we explore emotions. This is an evidence-based way like a clinically backed way of how to view emotions.
This is adapted from a type of therapy called AEDP, which is Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy.
As I explain to you, motions usually happen in a cycle. We have a defense to anything that we do to avoid emotions. Maybe it's, we're scrolling through Zillow to try to push away the fear of maybe if I can keep searching for homes. Maybe I won't feel some of the feelings of loss or of fear of desperation. Or sometimes it can just be more of the common ones it's drinking. It could be any sort of like addiction anything that we do to avoid emotion.
But what ends up happening is somewhere along the way in our life we learned that emotions were either too big or we're not allowed to feel them. And for most people, it's the, "I was taught I wasn't allowed to feel emotions", which is such a strange concept because we teach other people that everything below their head doesn't matter. Like you're, you are more body than you are head then your mind. And there, there is all sorts of wisdom that comes through the sensations that we feel inside of our body and being able to recognize those.
So it's interesting that we do this culturally. But somewhere along the way, we learned that emotions were dangerous either because we weren't allowed to feel them. We wouldn't be accepted by our parents or people that we love if we felt and showed and expressed emotions, or we learned somewhere along the way, these emotions were too big to deal with on their own because we didn't have the tools to actually explore them.
So what ends up happening is our body actually has a survival mechanism of saying if the fear is too big, then instead of the fear, I'm going to allow you to feel anxiety, shame, or guilt. And these are inhibitory emotions that are maybe if the core emotion is too big or I'm not allowed to show it. I can at least show anxiety, shame, and guilt.
And so what you can do with this change triangle is you use it as a map for your own emotions to help you navigate how to get down into your core emotions. Maybe you're recognizing right now, I just feel, I don't feel anything. I just feel numb. Also, it's funny as a defense is also going in YouTube comments and saying, this is stupid. This is dumb. This is going to be really interesting to see if people didn't make it this far in the video. And we can see a little bit of where they're at in the change triangle.
Maybe you're on Defense, or maybe you're at the point where I'm feeling a lot of shame around my financial situation. Because if I had this, then I could buy this house, then I could get approved. Then I wouldn't run into this issue. Then I could fill in the blank.
Maybe it's also coupled with a lot of anxiety because for a lot of people buying a home is something that's necessary. Maybe you're in a home that is infested with mold and it's becoming a health issue. Maybe you're in a home that you can't stand because it has stairs and it's unsafe for a child or someone that may be an elderly parent that you're taking care of.
Maybe, there's a whole list of reasons why. For a lot of people buying, moving into another home, isn't just this casual thing that they want to do. It's not just this. Oh, I want to move up to a nicer home. Sometimes there is a lot of logistical reality with it. And so maybe you're feeling the anxiety with that. Maybe there's also the guilt.
I think this can come a lot for men too, especially if they're in that role of feeling like "I have to be the provider and I feel a lot of guilt because I should be providing these things as it was told, I should be providing these things for my family. And if I don't then what does that mean for me as a man? What does that mean for me as a provider? What does that mean for me as a fill-in?" whatever that role is that you have been told you should be. And that is supposed to look in a very specific way that somebody else told you it should look like.
So what we do is we move from the defense. When we're recognized we're on the defense side, for me, defense often is I'm going to scroll through YouTube and TikTok and whatever, and anything to get my mind out of feeling, whatever thing that feels overwhelming. We recognize that and start to see where in me do I feel any of these inhibitory emotions? Do feel anxiety? Do I feel shame? Do I feel guilt? Okay, if it's anxiety, that's the one that often comes up for me. Let me first validate the anxiety and actually work to feel a little less anxious. So you can do different things like breathing techniques.
You can sometimes what really works well for me with anxiety is calling a friend. What a lot of people do is they're here and then they get into anxiety and they're like, you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to get something to drink. I'm going to make a cocktail or get a beer. And then they moved back to defense and we often flip back and forth between these two.
We just go defense and inventory, defense, inhibitory, defense, and inventory. And you can see how in here, we create a lot of suffering. We never allow ourselves to move down into a state where we feel a lot more.
So when we recognize this, we allow ourselves to feel these things and really feel it, if I feel shame or feel guilt, really allow myself to see what is this shame telling me about myself? What's the story that it's creating? What does it feel like in my body? Is it heavy? Does it weigh on my shoulders? Is it in my stomach? Do I feel it in my chest? Does it feel like electricity? Is it dull or sharp? Is it strong? Is it light? What are the physical and sensations that come with it along with what is a story that's coming with it?
Then we moved down into core emotions and the core emotions are fear, anger, sadness, disgust, joy, excitement, and sexual excitement. Core emotions are really when that wave comes, and that's really where we want to set with these emotions, but often, we get into, let's say that the situation with the Reddit video. Is that core emotion starting to bubble up and maybe it's anger and we're angry? But instead, what we're going to do is we're gonna use inhibitory emotions, like shame and anxiety to cover over that anger. And then what ends up happening is instead of actually being true anger, it becomes frustration and cynicism, which are not anger. They're actually defenses.
If I can be frustrated if I can yell at people, if I can say, that's the problem, this is the problem. You're the problem. If I can say this video is dumb, this suggestion is stupid. Then I don't actually have to deal with my own anger.
So when these core emotions come up, we actually need to allow them space. And sometimes all we need is five minutes to sit down and to actually be able to give ourselves space to feel these. And in the beginning, if you're not used to doing this is going to be hard. It takes a lot of practice to get to the point where you can sit and say, I'm going to allow all of this feeling to come and wash over me because I know at the end of this emotion, what always ends up happening is you move into this final stage, which is an open-hearted state of the authentic self.
This is where you're calm, curious, connected, compassionate, confident, courageous, and clear. These are all things that I imagine everybody reading this wants to have. Could you imagine walking through the home buying journey, whether you're working on saving or working on credit, you just got out of bankruptcy? You're under contract, you put in offers or wherever you're at. If you could feel more calm, curious, connected, compassionate, confident, courageous, and clear in the midst of all of the other shit that's happening.
This is a lot better place to feel. This is a lot better place to be than in the anxiety, shame, guilt, defense, and some of these more negative emotions that we don't want to experience.
So I'd encourage you to read this again and maybe start to explore what's happening here. Use this as a map of seeing, okay, did this come up? And then all of a sudden maybe all of a sudden discussed. But then guilt showed up. Okay, that came up. Let's deal with the guilt first. We need to deal with the top-down stuff, like work inhibitory emotions down to core emotions, and then we're in the authentic self.
So let's deal with the guilt first. Let's recognize it. Let's validate it. Let's talk to somebody that we care about. Let's talk to them about it and really allow ourselves to feel seen because I think. Especially with the core emotions, but we do this with the inventory emotions too, it's we don't talk about it.
It's so interesting. Whenever I talk about anxiety with other people and they're like, I have that too, but yeah. Yes, we all experienced these, and one of the core principles of this AEDP, this type of therapy is the practice of undoing aloneness.
Because through our emotions somewhere along the way, we've learned that they're bad and that showing emotions to other people makes them reject us, and with some people that's true. There are very unhealthy people around who will do that. But separating ourselves from the pain that we're experiencing only creates more and more suffering when we can undo the aloneness. By becoming more familiar with ourselves, more friendly with ourselves in experiencing these emotions as we walk through them and sharing those with other people who are safe, who we care about, who love us. That's what allows us to work through this to feel less alone and to move into a more open-hearted state of the authentic self.
I really encourage you to allow yourself the permission to feel these things and to talk with people you care about. Because I want you to move into that more authentic self when you're up against all the other problems. There are always going to be things in life that are not going to work in your favor, and they're going to make things complicated and really annoying. And sometimes just impossible, but it's so much easier to navigate those when we feel connected to other people and we feel connected to ourselves.
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