These 2 Coaches Experience Intense High and Low Moods
Here are their potent lessons in emotional mastery
According to Human Design, our Emotional Solar Plexus (ESP) center is an energy center that processes emotional energies. The ESP also works as an energy motor to energize us to work more on our favorite activities.
Almost half of the entire human population is defined in the Emotional Solar Plexus center, and the other half is undefined in it. This means that half of us experience a consistent rhythm of emotional waves, and the other half of us tend to feel others’ emotional energies intensely within ourselves.
My two featured guests here Scott Walker and Suzanne Culberg, are defined in their ESP, and they have the same intense emotional waves as seen on their charts. Over the years, they’ve gained mastery in making peace with their emotional rhythms, which carry sudden high or low spikes.
More About Scott Walker and Suzanne Culberg
Both Scott Walker and Suzanne Culberg have been actively coaching their clients to honor and manage their own emotions.
Scott Walker has been living with bipolar disorder type 1 for the past twenty-one years and has been psychiatric medication-free since August 31, 2010 (with approval from his doctor). He is dedicated to serving and supporting people diagnosed as bipolar in going from surviving to thriving. He lives in Banff, Canada.
Suzanne Culberg is a mindset coach for weight loss, and has been lovingly called a velvet hammer by some of her clients! She offers a supportive, resonant community where her clients can be seen and witnessed in creating new sustainable habits and achieving lasting change. She’s also about to publish her first memoir titled: “The Beginning is Sh*t” on Sep 22, 2021. She lives in Sydney, Australia.
Here are their Human Design charts (shown below), which are similar in so many ways! They’re both Emotional Manifesting Generators with Profile 6/2 with split definition and are defined in the same 6 energy centers. Scott has another defined energy center in his Root Center (bottom brown square).
We had a pretty long interview over Zoom to chat about their journey and insights in building emotional mastery. Here are some of the highlights of the interview:
How do you manage the high highs and low lows of your emotions?
Suzanne
Suzanne often doesn’t notice her own emotional state until someone notices and tells her, unless it’s a very intense high or low mood.
Her default mechanism is to eat to numb and shove down her feelings whenever she feels upset. After working on her inner transformation, she’s now able to cope better by taking some time alone, so that she’s not enmeshed in others’ feelings and thoughts. She would take a long bath, go for a long walk, or read a book and start feeling better.
She calls her super low moods ‘burrito days’, where she just feels like wrapping herself up like a burrito, lays on her couch, and does nothing else. To prevent herself from spiraling down even further, she would connect to a friend she can easily confide in without judgment, or listen to music, or do voice journaling.
In contrast, whenever she feels super excited, it feels palpable to the people around her. She’s heard people say to her, “I’m really excited when you’re excited. Whatever you do, Suzanne, don’t pick up a new interest because when you’re excited and interested in something then I go and take it up, and then when you’re no longer around I don’t want to do the thing anymore.”
Suzanne has also learned to sleep on it and not make any rash, spontaneous decisions*, especially during times when she’s extra passionate and just needs to do something extreme, such as buying all the books of her favorite new author in one go.
*According to Human Design, people with emotional authority, like Suzanne and Scott, need to wait for emotional clarity in order to make better life decisions.
Scott
For Scott, living with bipolar disorder for the past twenty-one years and being medication-free for the past eleven years, has helped him to be more sensitive in noticing his low and high moods.
His super high points can lead to being a patient in a psychiatric hospital, though that usually happens over a course of a few days.
Though he still experiences challenging days from time to time, he no longer has those extreme high and low spikes in his emotional waves anymore. Scott attributes that to doing a lot of energetic work and practicing many mindset tools and strategies. He’s more aware of whether he’s just having a mildly depressed time, or about to spiral down to a super low point. When he’s at a low point, he reaches out to a few close friends for support and does a few key things to get himself in a better mental state.
Scott has also noticed his gift for getting people to tag along whenever he’s feeling excited and energized. One of his key passions is organizing various mental health awareness events, and he has been leading them since 2015.
What was your childhood like in learning about managing emotions from your parents?
Both Suzanne and Scott learned from their parents that children are meant to be seen, not heard. They learned to push down their emotions and ‘put a lid on it’.
Suzanne
She shared that just that morning before we met for this interview, her son was crying at the school gate as she sat with him. As a mom, she’s rewriting the old script by choosing to be present in her son’s sadness, and saying that it’s okay to be sad, but he still has to go to school. At the same time, she was also feeling this temptation to reach into her wallet, give him some money and tell him to buy some candy at the school canteen, because that was how she was treated in her childhood.
She teaches her children, “it’s okay to feel whatever it is that you feel. It doesn’t mean it’s okay to act on it.” This is such a valuable reminder for all of us to keep embodying.
Scott
Scott emphasizes that both his parents were loving and amazing people. They just tended to push down their own emotions. As a result, he learned to repress his emotions throughout his childhood.
He only managed to feel more comfortable expressing and talking about his emotions in his late adulthood as a middle-aged man now.
How do you use your emotions in your business?
“I show up regardless and then usually find my flow.”
I’ve always thought that it’s easier to motivate your clients and audience when people with defined emotional waves are experiencing high moods, which make them appear more charming and sociable.
I was so surprised and touched when they both shared how it’s much more important to show up authentically in both the high and low points in your moods.
Simply because that’s what life is.
Suzanne
Suzanne used to show up in her online business only when she was feeling positive, but doing this runs contrary to her intention to be as authentic as possible in her business.
“So for me in my business it’s really important to show up in whatever mood I’m in because I think that gives other people permission to do the same and to feel that full range of emotions, rather than think ‘oh she’s just so positive or she’s just so happy all the time’…It’s like going to the gym — most of the time, I’m not one of those people who magically feel like exercising, but once I get going afterward…My business is very much the same. I show up regardless and then usually find my flow.”
Scott
Scott used to only post on Facebook ‘ live’ when he was in a good mood. Then, Three years ago he experimented by posting a Facebook ‘live’ while he was in a non-ideal state. This particular post garnered his highest number of views and comments, even though that was not his main intention. He just wanted to be his authentic self instead of showing his positive side all the time. Because he was so honest and real, people picked up on that and appreciated him for it.
How do you hold space for your audience while being in a low mood?
Suffering is not a competition. Life doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
I think it’s amazing that Scott and Suzanne are able to hold space for their audience while being honest and real when they’re not feeling so good themselves. They are very intentional about why they are willing to be open and vulnerable.
Suzanne
Suzanne is deeply committed to her business. As part of her personal and business brand, it’s vital for her to show as authentic, even as raw and vulnerable sometimes, because that’s what her clients go through all the time as well. When she shares her full range of emotions, it gives them permission to do the same.
If she needs a little bit more privacy to be more vulnerable with her clients, she would record and share her videos in her private Facebook group.
Suzanne is very clear that she’s not sharing to garner sympathy, and suffering is not a competition anyway. It’s perfectly okay for us to share our struggles, even when somebody else has it way worse than the way we perceive it.
Life doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Shows like The Biggest Loser doesn’t work because the participants lost a whole lot of weight while being separated from their homes, jobs, and regular responsibilities, but the weight all comes back when they return to their real lives.
So even when certain unfortunate events erupt in her personal life, she would still share and keep doing the work in her business and in improving her physical health.
Scott
Piggybacking onto what Suzanne mentioned about how life doesn’t exist in a vacuum, Scott confided that even though he lives in a gorgeous tourist state in Banff, Canada, there are still many people living there who suffer from mental health issues. There are extremely high incidence rates of alcohol and drug abuse too. At times, he finds it difficult to cope with facing these depressing facts while living there.
Though he’s super grateful to be mentally stable now, he still faces challenges from time to time. When he opens up to share his struggles, it helps him in his mental health, and it helps his friends and clients to be more open and willing to share their pain as well.
Once, he met a famous Instagram influencer for coffee and found out how that person’s real-life outlook was totally different from his public persona. This incident inspires him to be as real and show all sides to him as much as possible.
Both of you are very open-minded. How does this mental flexibility help you, and how do you keep releasing limiting beliefs?
“You need to actively question all of your opinions and seek out the reasoning behind alternative points of view.”
Having open minds, literally as seen on their Human Design charts, helped Suzanne radically transform her relationship with her weight, and Scott gain mental stability without needing to take psychiatric medication.
With their open minds, it was also tough for them to release long-standing limiting beliefs that were conditioned by significant people in their lives.
Suzanne
Suzanne had a very strict Christian upbringing, but her open mind helped her come out of the spiritual closet, as she got exposed to practicing hypnotherapy, meditation, journaling, and other mindset techniques to finally release her from decades of yoyo dieting. She now uses these same tools to support her weight loss clients.
She had to work very hard in releasing limiting beliefs that prevented her from embracing her full range of emotions. She can still hear what her teachers used to drill into her, “You get what you get, but you don’t get upset.” Now, she sees embracing her emotions as a superpower!
Her mindset coach would keep asking her, “Is that a fact, Suzanne, or is that a story you keep telling yourself?” The work on releasing limiting beliefs is like uncovering new layers in an onion — the work is never done, but now she gets excited meeting new problems with a new layer!
She still has days when she just can’t be bothered and doesn’t want to do anything about her problems, but it’s still a vast improvement compared to going back to eating in order to numb, ignoring, and push down her emotions.
Scott
Scott does so many things outside the box for his mental health, and by the law of averages, he’s found some amazing things that are beneficial to him.
He practices radical open-mindedness, modeled by a famous billionaire and strong advocate for mental health — Ray Dalio.
“True open-mindedness is an entirely different mind-set. It is a process of being intensely worried about being wrong and asking questions instead of defending a position. It demands that you get over your ego-driven desire to have whatever answer you happen to have in your head be right. Instead, you need to actively question all of your opinions and seek out the reasoning behind alternative points of view.” ~ Ray Dalio
Scott shared that there are times where he still occasionally dips back into his limiting beliefs and giving them the power to pull him down. He’s doing his best to be guided by his bigger vision and the positive emotions inspired by his vision. Scott sees himself as a work in progress and he acknowledges his overall improvements in this. He still constantly tries out many different ways to release more limiting beliefs.
Closing Thoughts
I hope you’ve benefitted from Suzanne’s and Scott’s honest sharing of their experiences and insights in gaining emotional mastery and freedom. Here are some key takeaways from their interview:
- It’s okay to feel whatever it is that you feel. It doesn’t mean it’s okay to act on it.
- Our lives do not happen in a vacuum. Keep showing up with your struggles so you give others permission to do that same, and keep doing the work you believe in.
- Practice radical open-mindedness. Ask questions instead of defending a position.
- For any limiting belief, ask yourself — is this a fact or is this a story you keep telling yourself?
I wish you all the best in making peace with your emotions and living a fulfilling life!
If you’re new to Human Design and would like to read up more about it, please feel free to check out my list of articles here:
You can also book a basic Human Design chart reading with me at this link.
