46 | 5 Signs Your Emotions Are Managing You (Instead of the Other Way Around)

Ever catch yourself snapping, spiraling, or shutting down before you even realize what’s happening? That’s not weakness — that’s your emotions slipping into the driver’s seat.

In this episode, I’ll show you how to recognize the five signs your emotions are managing you — and why awareness is the first step to freedom. From mom guilt to midlife irritability to the hidden grief we carry, emotions shape the way we see ourselves and respond to the people we love. But here’s the truth: you don’t have to be powerless to them.

✨ You’ll learn how to:

• Spot when anger, anxiety, or sadness has taken the wheel
• Understand what’s underneath your reactions
• Take simple steps to gently take back control

Because peace doesn’t come from pretending you don’t feel. It comes from noticing what’s really driving you — and choosing how you want to move forward.

👉 Grab your F R E E P.A.U.S.E. Guide: 5 Triggers Keeping You Stuck (and How to Break Free). ✨ Click Here Now. ✨

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🎶 Instrumental Acoustic Guitar Music by Viacheslav Starostin (original_soundtrack),

W E B S I T E - LisaCovert.com

I N S T A G R A M - @lisamcovert

Transcript

Ever feel like you’re being run by something inside you—snapping, spiraling, numbing—before you even realize it? That’s not you being weak. That’s your emotions driving the car.

The best way I can describe this is with the movie Inside Out. Maybe you’ve sat through it with your kids or grandkids… or maybe you only caught pieces of it while folding laundry or scrolling your phone. Either way, here’s the gist: inside a young girl’s head, her emotions are actual characters—Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. And depending on which one takes the wheel at the control panel, her whole day goes differently.

Then in Inside Out 2, when she hits her teenage years, new emotions show up—like Anxiety and Embarrassment. And when Anxiety steps in, it changes everything, often in ways that spiral out of control.

Even if you’ve never seen the movies, you can picture this: your emotions are like passengers in a car. They’re always with you. Sometimes one emotion is quiet in the backseat, sometimes another jumps up front and grabs the wheel. And once that happens—whether it’s anxiety, anger, sadness, or shame—the way you respond, the way you feel, even the way you see yourself gets totally shaped by who’s driving.

And here’s the thing—it doesn’t just happen with kids or teens. Every stage of life introduces new emotions. Motherhood brings guilt and responsibility that never seem to let up. Perimenopause and midlife bring irritability and shame that feel like strangers living inside of you. Loss—whether of a parent, a friend, or a dream—unlocks grief you didn’t even know existed.

So here’s why this matters: if you don’t realize which emotion has taken the wheel, you’ll feel powerless. You’ll wonder why you snapped, why you can’t hold it together, why you keep numbing out. But the truth is—this doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you. It just means an emotion slipped into the driver’s seat.

✨ And here’s the good news: once you can see who’s driving, you can decide to take back the wheel. You don’t have to be ruled by anger or anxiety or grief—you can acknowledge them, let them ride along, but remind yourself you are in charge of where you’re headed. That’s the start of shifting from being managed by your emotions to managing them yourself.

You know, we’ve got a lot more emotions than we think we do. I’ve heard people say there are over a hundred—some say 125—and they don’t just go away. They shift. They change. They evolve as we go through life.

And here’s the part that hit me when I thought about it: if we don’t actually see those emotions for what they are, they start running the whole show. They either get shoved down and come out sideways, or they grab the wheel completely and steer us somewhere we don’t even want to go.

That’s exactly what those Inside Out movies showed. In the first one, Joy wanted to keep everything happy, so she tried to push Sadness out, like sadness wasn’t important. But what happened? When sadness was ignored long enough, she eventually took over. Because sadness was important—it had a role. Then in the second movie, when Riley hits her teenage years, Anxiety shows up. And Anxiety doesn’t just hang out in the backseat—she tries to take control. She convinces Riley she has to be popular, she has to be accepted, she has to perform to be okay. And once Anxiety took over, everything got out of balance.

And isn’t that just real life? When we ignore fear, it finds its way out as anger. When we try to brush off sadness, it leaks out as bitterness or burnout. And when anxiety is running in the background, our whole world shrinks smaller and smaller, because we keep saying no to things we really want to say yes to.

It’s like putting a piece of black paper over your eyes with just one tiny circle cut out. You only see what’s in that one little circle—fear, sadness, anxiety, whatever it is—and you start making all your choices through that narrow view. And then when you finally lift the paper away, you realize, ‘Oh wow… I thought that little patch of green was just grass, but it’s actually part of a beautiful tree I couldn’t even see.’ That’s what happens when one emotion takes over—we lose sight of the bigger picture.

And maybe for you it looks like a morning in your house. You’re pouring cereal, someone says it’s too soggy, another can’t find their shoes, you’re running late, and suddenly—you feel that fire inside. Or maybe for you, it’s not about kids running late or cereal bowls. Maybe it’s something quieter, but just as heavy. Like you’ve spent the morning making fresh bread—kneading, waiting, pouring love into it—only to hear, ‘Eh, it’s a little soggy.’ And suddenly, it hits you like a punch in the chest.

On the outside, it looks like irritation. Maybe you snap, or you go cold. But if you peel it back, underneath is helplessness. Because what you really wanted wasn’t for the bread to be perfect—it was for your effort to be seen. For your care to be appreciated. And when that doesn’t happen, when the people you give the most to can’t—or won’t—see it, the weight of that responsibility and disappointment gets heavier and heavier.

And here’s the thing: often we don’t even realize we had strings attached. We think we’re just being kind, just doing what needs to be done. But underneath, part of us was hoping—please notice me, please value this, please meet me halfway. When that doesn’t happen, the sadness we’ve ignored shows up as rage. The longing we never named comes out as bitterness. And all of that stress keeps stacking in our bodies until it feels like we’re carrying the whole house on our shoulders.

So here’s the thing—you already know this about me, I read multiple books at the same time. It’s just how I’m wired. I’ll be halfway through a Bible study and then pick up a book on habits, and somehow, they end up talking to each other in my head. It’s messy, but it works for me.

Right now, I’m in the book of Amos. And in Amos, God is basically saying, ‘You’re blind to your pride. You’re worshiping golden calves and missing Me.’ And the people didn’t think it was a big deal until it wrecked them. They thought they could hold on to their idols, ignore what was really going on inside of them, and still be okay. But pride had taken over, and it blinded them.

Then I flip open Atomic Habits—and James Clear is saying almost the same thing, just in a different way. He talks about how willpower only gets you so far. Systems help, but even those break down if your belief doesn’t change. The strongest thing you can do is shift your identity. It’s not about saying, ‘I’m trying to quit smoking.’ It’s about saying, ‘I’m not a smoker.’ It’s not about, ‘I’m trying not to yell at my kids or snap at my husband.’ It’s about saying, ‘I’m a woman who chooses calm.’ Identity is stronger than willpower or systems.

And I thought—wow. Isn’t that the same thing Amos was saying? You can’t manage what you won’t acknowledge. If pride is driving, if fear is driving, if helplessness is driving—you can try harder, you can make new systems, you can even pray for change—but until you actually see what’s in the driver’s seat, you’re going to keep ending up in the same place.

And I’ll be honest—this is personal for me. I grew up with strings attached to love. I learned early on that if I did the right things, said the right words, held everything together, I’d get love back. And as an adult, I carried that into my marriage, into parenting, even into friendships. I didn’t realize that I was making bread, or saying yes, or showing up, not just out of love, but because I was hoping someone would finally say, ‘Thank you. You’re enough. I see you.’ And when they didn’t, rage showed up. Or resentment. Or despair.

That’s what happens when we let one emotion, often one we don’t even name, run the show. It blinds us. It narrows our vision down to this tiny little circle, like we talked about before, and we think that’s the whole picture. Meanwhile, the truth is so much bigger.

And the question I had to start asking myself was—what am I powerless to here? Because yes, there are situations I can’t control. I can’t control whether my kids move at lightning speed in the morning. I can’t control if my husband actually appreciates the bread I made. But I can own my part. I can own the schedule. I can own how I respond. I can even own who I make bread for in the future.

And James Clear puts it this way: so many of us walk through life in what he calls a cognitive slumber—blindly repeating the norms we’ve attached to our identity. Things like, I’m terrible with directions. I’m not a morning person. I’m always late. I’m horrible at math.

And for me, it sounded like, I always lose my temper with the kids. I get annoyed when things don’t go as planned. I get irritated when I don’t feel appreciated. These little statements might seem harmless, but the more we repeat them, the more we hardwire them into our identity. And when your identity is built around helplessness, frustration, or not measuring up, of course rage and resentment are going to ride shotgun.

You may not walk around saying, I’m not enough. But if you’re constantly saying, I never reach my goals. I always lose it with my family. I can’t ever seem to keep up, you’re basically living out that message. And that’s what keeps emotions in the driver’s seat.

So the real question becomes—if I can repeat I’m always failing, can I also learn to repeat something new? Can I step out of slumber and start saying, I’m the kind of woman who chooses peace. I’m the kind of mom who responds with calm. I’m the kind of wife who speaks with clarity instead of strings attached. Because the identity you claim is the direction you drive.

Alright, real talk for a second…

Maybe you’ve heard me mention the Empowered Living 6-week course, and you’ve already thought: “Yeah right… I don’t have time for that.”

Trust me, I get it. You’re already stretched thin, your brain feels fried, and honestly—another thing on your to-do list? No thanks. But here’s the truth… this isn’t just another thing. It’s the thing that’s going to help you breathe again, slow down your racing thoughts, and finally get your energy and your peace back—without adding more chaos to your life.

Or maybe you’re thinking, “Lisa, I can’t spend money on myself right now… my kids need things, groceries aren’t cheap…” I hear you. But let me lovingly say this—how much have you already spent on quick fixes? Numbing the stress with endless scrolling, late-night online shopping, trying to bandaid your burnout… but still feeling stuck?

The Empowered Living course isn’t another self-help book collecting dust. It’s a step-by-step reset to finally quiet the overwhelm, get your mind and emotions back in check, and actually enjoy your life again.

You’re worth investing in. Your peace is worth it. And your family? They deserve the best version of you—not the burned-out, resentful version just trying to make it to bedtime.

So if you’ve been stuck in the cycle, wondering “Is this really going to work for me?” — let me tell you: Yes. It’s working for women just like you every day, and it can work for you too.

Come check it out at lisacovert.com—I’ll meet you there.

Here’s the good news—this doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need to master all 125 emotions, line them up in a neat little row, and figure out how to control them. That’s not the point. The first step is simply awareness. You just need to know who’s driving.

And I want to pause here because for a long time, I thought healing meant I had to go back through everything—the childhood abuse, the broken relationships, the messy seasons—and relive it all to finally ‘get over it.’ And listen, if you feel called to do that, there’s nothing wrong with it. I’ve sat in the therapy chair, I’ve done EMDR, I’ve talked through the pain. But can I tell you something? That’s not what healed me.

What actually healed me was realizing it wasn’t about replaying the movie over and over—it was about changing the lens I was seeing life through. It wasn’t the specific events anymore, it was the emotions those events planted in me that were still showing up today. Powerlessness. Helplessness. Weakness. Those emotions were the ones sneaking into the driver’s seat.

So awareness is the shift. Not going back and proving to yourself, again and again, how wrong it was. You already know it was wrong. You already know it hurt.

And when my husband criticized the bread, when my kids pushed back on the rules, when I felt invisible at work—the question wasn’t, what’s wrong with me? The question was, what emotion is driving me right now?

Because here’s the truth: you can’t keep swatting at spiders if you don’t realize they’re in the house. You can smack one after another, but until you name what’s really there, you’ll keep fighting shadows.

And for me, when I finally started asking, what’s underneath this?—that was where the healing began. Rage wasn’t the root. Underneath was helplessness. Underneath helplessness was fear. Underneath fear was the old belief that I had no control over my body, no voice, no power. And when I finally saw that, when I pulled away the black paper covering the whole picture, I realized—oh, this isn’t just random anger. This is an old emotion I never named that’s been steering without me even knowing it.

And the moment I named it, I could connect with it. I could strengthen it. I could give it the attention it needed and remind myself: I have choices now. I’m not powerless anymore.

It’s the same way your body changes when you finally figure out what’s going on with your hormones. For years, you may feel like, I have no control. My body is betraying me. But the moment you find out, oh, this is perimenopause, this is my thyroid, this is inflammation, suddenly you feel hope again. You’re not broken—you just didn’t have the right information. Once you see it, you can do something about it.

That’s what it’s like with emotions. Once you notice which one is in the driver’s seat, you realize you have options. You can soothe it. You can speak truth to it. You can choose differently. And that tiny shift—from feeling powerless to realizing you have power—is the beginning of healing.

That’s been my story. I’ve carried the weight of helplessness from childhood abuse, from hard seasons in marriage, from times I thought I had no control. And for years it felt like I was living with my hands tied. But naming the emotions underneath—the ones hidden in the dark—gave me my voice back. Gave me my strength back. And that’s what I want for you too.

So here’s where this all comes together. You can’t manage what you don’t see. And that’s why awareness really is the start of freedom.

I know it can sound too simple—just notice your emotions—but this is the part that shifts everything. Because once you see it, you don’t have to keep fighting blind. You don’t have to keep reacting like you’ve got no control. You start to realize, Oh wait, that’s fear. That’s helplessness. That’s anger. I know who’s driving.

And when you know who’s driving, you can gently take back the wheel. You can tell fear, ‘I see you, but you’re not steering today.’ You can remind sadness, ‘You’re allowed to be here, but you don’t get to decide where we’re headed.’

That’s the awakening I want for you—the one I’ve lived myself. Because when I started naming what was really going on under the surface, I stopped feeling powerless and started living with peace. Not perfect, not emotion-free, but steady. Stronger. More myself.

And if this episode is speaking to you, if you’re nodding along thinking, Yes, I want that, then I’ve got a simple next step for you. Go grab my free guide, The 5 Triggers That Keep You Overwhelmed at LisaCovert.com/triggers. It’s going to help you spot the most common places where emotions slip into the driver’s seat—so you can start noticing them before they take over.

And if you’re ready to go deeper, to actually learn how to work with these voices and stop letting them run your life, then you’ll want to check out the Empowered Living Course at LisaCovert.com/EmpoweredLiving. In Week One, we walk through this process together so you can step into the driver’s seat with confidence.

But for today, your only step is this: just notice. The next time you catch yourself snapping, numbing, or shutting down, pause and ask, Who’s in the driver’s seat right now? That’s it. That’s the start.

Because awareness is the doorway to freedom. And you, my friend, are capable of walking through it.