Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous Dr. Stephanie Fein here with weight Loss for fertility. And today we are talking about a helpful concept called the five minute funeral. Now, first I want to say I thought about changing the name. I first heard the term from a mentor of mine who heard it on a TV show. And this is not to make light of loss or grief. Never. I never want to do that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:24]:
I don't want you to do that to yourself. So that's never the intention. Funeral can be a heavy word and a time of deep feeling and ritual. It's the juxtaposition of the five minute part and the funeral part that hopefully puts it in perspective, like when you have those two things together. So I kept it. And together we're going to explore what the meaning is when we put five minutes with funeral. And in brief, it's the idea that we can be with uncomfortable feelings. That's the funeral part.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:57]:
But I'm going to further explain that these are relatively tame ones. These are not deep, uncomfortable feelings. That's the lighter part of this. For a short time. So we can be with uncomfortable feelings for a short time. And if we are, we allow ourselves to acknowledge and name the feeling. We create space, space to move on with more clarity, clarity we wouldn't have if we denied the feelings that we were experiencing. That's five Minute Funeral in a nutshell.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:36]:
And now the rest of the podcast is going to be explaining that in more detail, which is really helpful. So most often the feeling here that we're talking about, the tame one, that's not a deep feeling, is disappointment. Not deep disappointment or loss, but a form of disappointment nonetheless. And the show my mentor was referencing was a real estate reality show. And the five minute funeral came up when one of the agents didn't make the sale. He said, have a five minute funeral and move on. And that's how one succeeds in real estate business. So that's a good example of what I'm talking about.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:15]:
There's business stakes involved with a real estate deal, but it's not life or death. That's the kind of disappointment we're talking about. So this concept of the five minute funeral can help us lose weight by helping us change behaviors we want to change. It gives us a path. And here's how to show you. I have to go back to thoughtwork now. Thoughtwork is a valuable tool when we're thinking about changing behaviors. And that's all that weight loss is, some different thoughts and behaviors.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:54]:
So thoughtwork, as a reminder, because I've talked about thoughtwork before, is Another way of referring to cbt, which is cognitive behavioral theory, and I've introduced this before as the model. That's the way my teacher Brooke Castillo put it together. There's a couple episodes where I talk about it in more depth in connection to other concepts about weight loss here at weight loss for fertility. And those episodes, I'm going to hook them up in the show notes, but I'm just going to say them here. 52, 98, 99, 114 and 133. Again, those will be put in the show notes. But if you're looking for more ideas about the model and cognitive behavioral theory and how it shapes behavior change and weight spread loss specifically, then you're going to want to go back to those episodes briefly. The model is representation of cbt, cognitive behavioral theory that points to the fact that thoughts create feelings, not the other way around.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:02]:
Feelings do not create thoughts. Whenever you have a feeling, there was a thought that created it. Sometimes we know what that thought is and sometimes we don't, but there is one there. So thoughts create feelings. Feelings motivate actions. So we always take action from a feeling and the feeling was created from the thought. So actions come out of feelings, are in response to feelings, are motivated by feelings. And all of our actions put together get us results, whatever results we have.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:42]:
That's briefly the model. Thoughts create, feelings create, actions create results. And when we learn or realize that thoughts create feelings, it occurs to us that we can change negative feelings by changing our thoughts. And that's technically true, but it isn't always easy, nor is it appropriate all the time. This seems like a good time to mention that the five minute funeral nor thoughtwork itself should ever be used to harm, shame or criticize ourselves. Never. We cannot use it as a weapon against ourselves. Thoughtwork in particular can be used that way.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:30]:
And I'd want you to catch it every time that we think we should be able to change our thoughts. But as I've mentioned, sometimes we can and sometimes we can't. Sometimes we can with support, and other times we really don't want to. And all of that is fine. There are hard feelings that we may want to keep. Many of us have had very difficult situations and losses and we want to feel sad about them like it feels appropriate. We don't want to change that. We don't want to transform them to happy, peppy feelings.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:07]:
And there is no need to do that. Thoughtwork doesn't say to do that. I'm certainly not saying to do that. That's not necessary. We get to keep all of our experiences and feelings. I'm discussing thoughtwork and the five minute funeral as ways to help us shift thinking. Difficult feelings do not mean we have to change them. The goal in life is not to be happy all the time.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:29]:
It's to have feelings. It's to handle our feelings. It's to experience the full range of feelings available to us based on what's happening reality. In talking about shifting thoughts, we want to change feelings that we want to change. We can notice a particular thought if it's preventing us from getting something we want that could be a candidate. And weight loss is such a good example of this. So thoughts like, I should always have breakfast even though I'm not hungry. I have to clean my plate no matter what.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:09]:
I can't lose weight on vacation or over the holidays. I'll start on Monday. These are all thoughts that we may want to change because they might be keeping us stuck and unable to lose weight. So these are good candidates. These are not talking about deep experiences. They may. It's true that they may end up hitting something core, but that's useful for us to be able to get there. If we are playing with these ideas and that's something thoughtwork can show us, we can play with it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:45]:
These thoughts are lower stake thoughts that can be challenged without shame. The risk when talking about thoughtwork is the misunderstanding or the hope that we can bypass feelings and just change thoughts to positive ones. And it just doesn't work that way. We can't bypass the human side of ourselves. We may want to. We may like to just live in our brains. Because feelings can be challenging. And the reason feelings are challenging really is because we never were taught how to deal with them.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:19]:
We were never shown how common, how normal, how real, how part of life they are. And the only reason we weren't taught that or shown that is because our people didn't know that this is new. It's not brand new, but it's newer thoughts. And it's coming into the public more and more and certainly it's now reaching parenting. You may have overheard some of these things, especially if you're thinking about how we interact with babies and what we teach them and little kids. You may run into this again, but when we were little, not so much. We just can't bypass the human side of us. We have to work with it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:07]:
The tender feeling parts of us where I see people using this concept against themselves is when we think we should be able to move on, like from something that was difficult so we shame ourselves for having feelings about it. And that's just not helpful. And we're not going to do that. There is a better way. And the way we want to is we want to acknowledge the feelings we are having. With a five minute funeral. That's where the five minute funeral comes in. We're acknowledging the feelings that we're having.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:40]:
And this is a great example of both. And as opposed to one or the other. Humanness is both. And we can be strong and sensitive, practical and whiny, certain, and have doubts. We can hold all that because we're humans. Brains don't like that. But humans with feelings exist this way. I'm sure you felt it before.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:09]:
Now, what often we do is we blame ourselves and we say we shouldn't be like that. But again, that's not actually how humans work. Humans do have nuance paradoxes. They have competing, seemingly conflicting feelings and thoughts, and that is okay. We are complicated and nuanced, and we always have very good reasons for it. Now, denying one part of ourselves means we reject that part of us. If we're denying feelings or denying doubt when we want to be completely certain, but we actually have doubt and we're just denying it, it means we're rejecting a part of us and that always feels bad. It hurts us.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:04]:
It hurts to be rejected. We have a feeling part, we don't want to have that part, so we reject it. That hurts us. The should, of course, is the problem, right? I shouldn't be feeling this way. I should be able to move on. I shouldn't have the. Whenever we're thinking of that or thinking that way, we are denying parts of us, and that always hurts us. We want to be some way that we are not currently.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:40]:
The want is okay, but the rejection of reality is not only because it hurts us. The reason that it's not is that we can't keep rejecting and banishing parts of ourselves without consequences. In order to keep those parts, the feelings, buried, we have to actively push them down because the feelings keep surfacing. That's what feelings do. They want to be heard and they surface in seemingly inopportune times. But if we want to stay in denial, we have to look away. We have to push it down. And how do we do that? With food, with emotional eating.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:24]:
An important part of transforming the habit of emotional eating is learning the skill of allowing feelings of feeling the feelings that we have. Sometimes it's big feelings, but a lot of the times it's small but uncomfortable feelings like disappointment, boredom, frustration, and this is where the five minute funeral comes in. And this whole thing came about because my client had a beautiful example of this. So her refrigerator broke and the food spoiled. So the electricity went off and they weren't home and everything in the fridge went spoiled. And she was able to relate to me the her thoughts and feelings that happened. And it started with what a waste. Like the thought, what a waste of the food in there.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:20]:
And she got to, and this was amazing. She did this on her own. She got to what an opportunity. So from what a waste to what an opportunity. What a waste about like throwing away food, but then got to what an opportunity because she got to clean out and start fresh with her refrigerator. Now she could have gotten stuck in the what a waste part, right? Because when we think that we want to recruit others and that looks like a stomp around, I love that saying, stomp around. When you're stomping around, righteous indignation, all of that sort of complaining, recruiting others into your story, you're fighting with reality. It shouldn't have happened.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:10]:
It postpones action. So by refusing to accept reality of the fridge being broken, wishing really hard that it was different, like who to blame? What could we have done differently? Instead, my client recognized the tension in her body that was frustration. She was able to track it to the thought, what a waste. Which by the way, is pretty amazing, right? So she noticed a feeling and she was able to find the thought. And when she tracked it to the thought, what a waste. She looked for another way to look at the situation. There was space that allowed her to have the five minute funeral. When she found the frustration, she tracked it to the thought, what a waste.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:03]:
She could feel the feeling of that, like, it's really disappointing and frustrating to have a refrigerator full of waste, spoiled food that no one can benefit from. She could identify that she was sad about the spoiled food, disappointed that it happened, and in that allowing of her hard emotions because it's no fun to a whole refrigerator full of spoiled food. Bummer. That's a bummer. Very disappointing. When she could identify that she was sad about that, disappointed that it happened, she allowed herself to have the hard emotions, disappointment, sadness. And when she allowed that to happen, allowed herself to be with the real situation and the feelings that she was having, then there was space to accept the reality of this situation, of the fact that this is what happened, can't undo it anymore. We are here now.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:06]:
When you accept the emotion of it, there is the space to see the reality of the situation and accept it if we're huffing around and stomping around and being righteous about the whole thing, there's no space for that. So allowing ourselves to feel it, that's the five minute funeral. Noticing the thoughts, noticing the feelings that you're having, feeling them and think. Then there's wiggle room to really see the situation. With the acceptance came the realization that she had to deal with the spoiled food. Right now. There's just no other thing to do. Now you have to deal with it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:49]:
And we could be huffy and deal with it, or we can just be in the reality of I have to deal with the spoiled food. And when she was in the realization, the calm realization that she has to deal with the spoiled food, not a huffy, angry, denying reality, throwing away the food, but a calm knowing about what to do with the food, the thought what an opportunity came into her brain. She thought, oh, I have to clean this all out anyway. Now I can clean the fridge and we can start anew. We can get all the corners. We can put only good things in here that we want. She saw it then as an opportunity. She did not go directly from what a waste to what an opportunity.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:42]:
There was the five minute funeral, the feeling, the feelings in the middle that allowed her to get there, like genuinely get there, not force herself to get there because she didn't have an, an agenda to get to what an opportunity. That's what arose when she was accepting of the situation and the feelings that came with it. And when she had the feeling and the thought what an opportunity to clean out the fridge, she had so much more energy to get the job done and she didn't have to like muscle through what a waste. I can visualize it so clearly someone who's being, being huffy cleaning out the fridge or someone who is thinking of as an opportunity to really for like self care clean out the fridge. There is such a different energy there. Can you feel it? That's what we're always looking for. We always want to be able to do things with the calm, intention, energy, the energy based in reality and decision, calm decision, kind conscious decisions. Really the fighting with reality and huffing around is much more uncomfortable.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:01]:
And it's riskier for behaviors down the road based from feelings that we're trying to get rid of or manipulate in some way when we're stuck in. It's such a waste and wallowing in it. The thought is it shouldn't have happened this way. And the problem with thinking it shouldn't have happened this way is that it did happen that way. This is a Byron Katie thing about accepting reality. We can rail all day long and say it shouldn't have happened, but it did. So this is what we're dealt with. And again, we could use this for deeper disappointments, but that is not my intention.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:48]:
I'm talking about using this for refrigerator lost power. And when we think it shouldn't happen and it did, we're fighting against ourselves and we're creating tension that does not need to be there. That's detrimental for us. But if she acknowledges that this sucks. Cause it does. It sucks. It's definitely something that's not on our list of things we'd like to deal with. There is disappointment there.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:18]:
She had the Five Minute Funeral. And she can choose another thought because there's space to do so when we're living in the acknowledgment of reality. And the thought what an opportunity was just as true as the what a waste. But it gave her energy for an action that made sense for her. I just love that example. I was super impressed with my client. We had been working on thoughtwork and all the rest of that stuff. This was a result of the work we'd done.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:55]:
But what a beautiful example for her to have lived through. It's really impressive and fabulous. So I'm going to give you some takeaways. The Five Minute Funeral is a way to acknowledge your feelings and accept reality. It requires awareness of the thoughts and feelings you're having, acceptance of them, the thoughts and feelings, and in particular, not judging them. Which leaves room for accepting the reality of the situation much sooner and with more clarity, much more cleanly, than if we didn't. Then we're free to make conscious decisions about how we want to proceed based on what we want. And when we do that, we will lose weight every time.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:21:46]:
Because when these are decisions about food, when we're eating, how we're eating when we do it. With the Five Minute Funeral, if there happens to be a thought that has us be disappointed. I'm no longer hungry, so I'm not going to finish this. We could be disappointed in that. And then when we allow the feeling, we have room for the acceptance of the situation and we can decide what we want to do next. It's exciting. If you want help with this, I'm always here. StephanieFeinMD.com is my website.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:22:24]:
You can press the Lose weight with me button there and we can start working together. Or you can follow me @StephanieFeinMD on Instagram and LinkedIn. I'm sending you so much love. Until next week.
