Ever had a moment where a spilled coffee or a missed bus sent you into an emotional tailspin? You're not alone. On this episode, join me, Mukkove Johnson, as we delve into the world of repressed emotions and how they can disrupt our lives in unexpected ways. I'll share my own stories of emotional eruptions over seemingly trivial matters and what they've taught me about the unattended emotional needs that simmer beneath our day-to-day awareness. We’ll explore techniques to tune into these hidden signals, using physical sensations as clues, to better understand and address our innermost needs.
Our emotional closets can become as cluttered as a teenager's bedroom, but there's hope for tidying up. We discuss the parallels between physical and emotional hoarding and how to sift through years of stored feelings that may be affecting our peace of mind. From prayer and journaling to meaningful conversations, we'll cover an array of methods to begin decluttering our internal spaces. And we won't stop there; we'll also examine the strength found in taking small steps towards emotional resilience. By isolating challenges and conquering them one by one, we learn to manage our feelings effectively, setting the stage for a more harmonious and structured life.
Heart Doodling with Jesus is a monthly membership with live workshops and practical tools for growing spiritually and emotionally mature.
Music by Romarecord1973 from Pixabay
Discipling mothers to disciple generations
Kingdom Mothers Rise Up is here for you. There is encouragement and practical steps to improve your relationship with yourself, God, and your child.
I'd love to connect with you. You can find me at:
Ever had a moment where a spilled coffee or a missed bus sent you into an emotional tailspin? You're not alone. On this episode, join me, Mukkove Johnson, as we delve into the world of repressed emotions and how they can disrupt our lives in unexpected ways. I'll share my own stories of emotional eruptions over seemingly trivial matters and what they've taught me about the unattended emotional needs that simmer beneath our day-to-day awareness. We’ll explore techniques to tune into these hidden signals, using physical sensations as clues, to better understand and address our innermost needs.
Our emotional closets can become as cluttered as a teenager's bedroom, but there's hope for tidying up. We discuss the parallels between physical and emotional hoarding and how to sift through years of stored feelings that may be affecting our peace of mind. From prayer and journaling to meaningful conversations, we'll cover an array of methods to begin decluttering our internal spaces. And we won't stop there; we'll also examine the strength found in taking small steps towards emotional resilience. By isolating challenges and conquering them one by one, we learn to manage our feelings effectively, setting the stage for a more harmonious and structured life.
Heart Doodling with Jesus is a monthly membership with live workshops and practical tools for growing spiritually and emotionally mature.
Music by Romarecord1973 from Pixabay
Discipling mothers to disciple generations
Kingdom Mothers Rise Up is here for you. There is encouragement and practical steps to improve your relationship with yourself, God, and your child.
I'd love to connect with you. You can find me at:
unpacking repressed emotions or emotions that have been stored for a long time. Welcome, and if you're just joining me, I'm Makove Johnson. I have been for a lot of years over 30 years most of those like desperately trying to figure out what to do with my emotions and how to be the person I liked. A phrase that's been coming up for me a lot lately is like silencing the war within, like there should not be a war inside me over what I want and what I feel and how I should do things, and Jesus came to bring peace, and that includes peace in me. So what we're going to talk about today is a question I kind of paraphrased it, but one of you asking like how do I identify, how do I even start to identify my emotions if they've been repressed, if I haven't been paying attention to them for my whole life? How do I, how do I start? Like emotions feel just like downright scary and especially our little kids big emotions of like oh my goodness, what do I do with this? Like I don't want to shut it down, like it was done for me, but what do I do? And I think where I want to start is like how do you even know you have repressed emotions and maybe you're like there's no question I have repressed emotions, um, but maybe you're like no, I feel like I'm doing pretty good, like I'm pretty even keel and not much ruffles my feathers. You know, like very good, if you overreact, that's a good sign of repressed emotions, and they could be like repressed from your whole life or it could be like a current season where you're stuffing things and not taking the time to deal with it. I unfortunately have an example of my own life that just before coming on, I was throwing a tantrum, just like my seven-year-old, like why wasn't this stuff done ahead of time? I want to be mad at you for not having it done ahead of time, but really I'm the adult, I'm the one that needs to have this stuff done ahead of time. I know this, I've been saying this for ever and like still haven't taken the steps to make my life easier, make my life the way I want it to be. So there's all this like repressed frustration with myself that was coming out in this tantrum being a bad example, but also just being honest of like yes, I'm incredibly frustrated and like part of it's at you, but a lot of it's at me and we need to fix this. But I'm supposed to be doing a video right now. So when you're overreacting to things, small things happen and you have, you know, a thing at this level happens and you have this level reaction. There's some emotions there that need your attention.
Speaker 1:Identifying your emotions is through stopping to think. What would it look like if you put it in a picture, particularly if you grew up with childhood emotional neglect and you are concerned with doing it right and identifying your emotions properly and all of that kind of stuff. You can be like I don't have the words, I don't have the vocabulary. Is it this emotion? Is it that emotion? Don't worry about it. How do you feel? Pay attention to your body. How does your body feel? Like?
Speaker 1:When I did the book Unstuck, I made all those different pictures of how it felt to be stuck Like. Sometimes it felt like I was literally in a cast and I couldn't move. Other times it felt like pushing against a boulder and just nothing working, no progress. Other times it felt like being in a cage, like again, like there's just no way out. It was a cage with no door and paying attention to your body Like is your chest tight, Is your stomach in knots, you feel weak in your legs, you feel tension and stiff or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Just start paying attention to how you are feeling and acknowledging I feel that I don't need to, I don't need to fix it. There's no fixing emotions. There's recognizing emotions, there's listening to emotions, but there's no fixing emotions, because they're not broken. They might not be pleasant, we might not want to have them around, but if we feel like we need to fix them, then that is definitely a place of being stuck, because emotions don't get fixed. They get heard, they deliver their message and then they can move on their emotions. There's motion in that word. They're supposed to come and go. They're not supposed to come and stay. They're not supposed to come and get stuffed. Opening up space to start to listen to them.
Speaker 1:I understand that that feels scary, because it can feel like if I open that door, I'm going to be completely overwhelmed and like I'm just not going to know what to do as first for your own emotions, starting to make that space to listen. And your emotions are trying to tell you that you need something to listen, and your emotions are trying to tell you that you need something. So, like my tantrum before getting on here, is telling me very clearly again I need some structure, I need some boundaries. That means I need to make some decisions, I need to communicate those decisions and I need to practice following through on those decisions. That's what it's telling me and I can probably dig deeper into that of why have I resisted setting the boundaries? There's probably fear in there of most fear of not being able to follow through. There's fear of the backlash, of trying to create a structure and have it not go well, bad attitudes coming back at me and me needing to be strong and like no, this is, this is really what I'm doing, this is really what I need. I can look at my tantrum and I can see what I was feeling and from that I can see what I need as I listen and so, like the big obvious thing, I need the boundaries, I need the structure. As I listen more and listen to the, you know the fear of the backlash or not being able to handle it. Then I will probably identify some other things of like needing some support, talking things through with my husband or a friend, sometimes just reminding myself you can handle it because you're the one that gets to make the rules.
Speaker 1:You get to decide how this is going to work, and making decisions is a hard thing for me. You get to decide how this is going to work and making decisions is a hard thing for me. I grew up not trusting myself or my decisions. Compounded with the I need to do everything right so that I don't get in trouble and have people mad at me Makes it really hard to make decisions and be like, nah, if it doesn't work, we'll change, getting better, but there's still still a lot of that residual there.
Speaker 1:So when you're dealing with your kids big emotions what they need is for you to create that space for their emotions to be expressed. They don't need it fixed. They don't need to learn the lessons. They don't need any of that to start with. They just need a space for those emotions to be expressed and mirrored back to them. You know, it seems like you're feeling stressed. It seems like you're feeling sad. I can see that you're really frustrated. That kind of starts to build the vocabulary for them.
Speaker 1:But it also works really well with them to ask them if you made a picture of how you feel right now, what would that look like? Those pictures are very insightful and it doesn't matter if they draw them or just tell you what it would look like. Very insightful, and it doesn't matter if they draw them or just tell you what it would look like. It's very helpful to to see how they're feeling instead of just putting a label on it, and to be able to have those conversations of like oh wow, you feel like the whole world is on your shoulders. That's rough, like no wonder you're responding the way you're responding, because that'd be a really big hard thing if you have the whole world on your shoulders. And once they feel heard and once they've calmed back down, then you can talk to them about if they maybe need to make different choices next time or whatever, if they maybe need to make different choices next time, or whatever and ask questions so they can start to learn the messages from their own emotions, asking them what they need yeah, just bringing things up out of the blue from two or three weeks ago.
Speaker 1:So, um, since we came home from the hospital, tegan has been sleeping in our room, because the whole fear of being in her room by herself came back with a vengeance after the hospital, for some reason that I still haven't gotten to the bottom of. So last night, when I asked her how full her buckets were, I asked what was in the buckets and she was kind of like oh, I don't know. But then at like three o'clock this morning she wakes up and tells me that one of the other things in her sad bucket was regretting something that she had spent money on, but she was wishing she had spent it on something else. I think that's part of just their like living in the moment on something else. I think that's part of just their like living in the moment. But then, as their brain is processing and putting things away, things come up of like oh, but I'm upset about this, and, um, it can take a bit to figure out. Like, what are you talking about? Because we're not expecting them to bring up things from two or three weeks ago, but still just allowing, allowing the emotions, not allowing the behavior. So you know, reminding them like I see you're sad and I see you're upset. Regardless of how sad and upset you are, it is still not okay for you to rage at me. It's still not okay for you to rage at me. It's still not okay for you to be disrespectful, sometimes, like with Tegan being mad that she spent money on this thing that she's now regretting, or with her like it was totally her fault that her paper got wet. So she was really mad at herself and that was where a lot of the rage was coming from. Like she was just so mad at herself and that was where a lot of the rage was coming from. Like she was just so mad at herself. So I'm hoping that there'll be more things that will come out of like what's in the mad bucket, like what's going on, so that you can just fly off the handle at yourself and then, like my tantrum this morning is like okay, so there might still be some more generational stuff there, because clearly I'm acting the same way not to quite the same level this time, thankfully, but still totally inappropriate for a 49 year old through her snow gear on the floor and ranting and not pretty.
Speaker 1:The analogy that I was thinking of is I started this idea several years ago of decluttering your emotions and like sometimes clutter let's say clutter is anything that doesn't have a home in your home or routinely is not in its home, but anything it doesn't have a home in your home. So sometimes the clutter is like the mail that came in today and there's some junk mail or there's something that you're deciding what you're going to do with. Or I just got a shipment of supplies for my next in-person heart doodling. So there's the packaging and and there's stuff that, like it's only going to be in my house for a few weeks, so it doesn't really have a home. There's that kind of clutter and our emotions can be the same of like there's just this current situation. That's a temporary thing, that's not a big deep thing, it's just yeah, I need to take a couple of minutes and acknowledge like that situation frustrates me. Here's what I'm going to do. So, like with the supplies for the heart doodling workshop, I want to do like an unpacking video to help promote, and so as soon as I've done that, then I can designate a space in my office that that stuff is going to stay until the event and it will have a home as long as it's here. So for temporary emotions of like frustrated about a situation that just happened, or concern over something that's not going the way, I wanted to to take a few minutes to sit with that and see what's actually there, see what's current and see what I need, and then can be done with that.
Speaker 1:But then also in our homes we have places where they're just kind of catch-alls and I'm not sure what to do with this. So I'll throw it over there and it might be a drawer, it might be a cabinet, it might be a whole room. It's still a more short term, like every once in a while we get that space cleaned out. You know, when we do our spring cleaning or, you know, switching the seasons or whatever, we kind of get to that and get that space back under control, and so their emotions can be that way of. Maybe there's a more long-term situation with a parent's health or a relationship that has extra tension because of some new thing that's happening. You know, somebody's making choices that we don't agree with, but we're trying to maintain the relationship, kind of like setting stuff aside but like knowing like this is going to come to a head and I'm going to deal with these emotions.
Speaker 1:And then we have emotions that are like in the attic or down in the basement and the stuff that's. You know, we hear stories all the time of people that moved 10 years ago and they have boxes they haven't opened or you know, I cleaned out this space to make myself an office three or four years ago and I still have boxes that I haven't gone through from that. And so we've got that, um, that long-term stuff. That was like, yeah, this stuff needs to be dealt with, but I'm going to put it in a box and I'm going to put it away. So we have those physical things, but we have those emotional things and some of those things like our parents or environment told us to pack those things up and get rid of them.
Speaker 1:But we can't get rid of emotions until they have given us the message that they have for us. So I try to get away, get rid of them, but they're really just being stuffed down in the crawl space or stuck in the attic or whatever that space is, where, like out of sight, out of mind, except emotions aren't. It might be out of sight and out of mind, but they're not out of our heart, and so they keep trying to like I have a message for you, I have a message for you, and at times they come out like my tantrum this morning or my daughter's tantrum last night. So, having compassion for yourself that if you have that eruption, if you have that attic full of emotions, you might want some help in unpacking them, or you might be able to just acknowledge like, okay, it's time to deal with that, and you can deal with that on your own. Through prayer, journaling, the heart doodling, talking to safe people you can get through stuff on your own.
Speaker 1:It's also like when you're working on decluttering your stuff. I know for me it's so much easier and so much more effective if I have someone with me, because then I have to justify what I'm keeping. I don't have to, but I feel like I have to, like I have to explain to them why I'm keeping this, and if I don't feel like doing that, then I probably shouldn't be keeping it. So having someone to help you with your emotions not in the telling you what you can keep and what you can't keep, because, like you're just need to make the space to listen but to bring the perspective that we often don't have for ourselves of it makes sense that you feel that way. It makes sense that this feels completely overwhelming. It makes sense that this feels impossible Because if you were told to shut down your emotions when you were younger, you weren't given the skills to self-regulate. You were younger, you weren't given the skills to self-regulate and, like you can do practical things like taking a deep breath, taking another deep breath, moving your body around.
Speaker 1:A super helpful thing to do is to visualize a time when you felt really safe. Visualize a time when you felt really safe, really connected to Jesus, to the Father, and be able to picture that space so that, if the emotions come up and feel overwhelming, you can go back to that picture at any time and remind yourself that you're safe, yourself that you're safe, reminding yourself that you are not your emotions. You're experiencing emotions, but they're not who you are. So, creating some distance instead of like, if I open up those emotions, they're going to destroy me. They're just emotions. They're over here and I'm over here and I can just look at them as long as I can handle, which might just be 10 seconds to start with, and then I can go back to my safe place. And then I can look for another 10 seconds and I can go back to my safe place. Another 10 seconds and I can go back to my safe place.
Speaker 1:Um, I can maybe, like in the visualizing decluttering, like I can go to this box of emotions and pick one out and bring it back to Jesus and be like okay, help me, help me look at this. What is this trying to say to me? With the heart doodling is my favorite way to do that, to be able to say, okay, um, like I'll need to take the tantrum I did this morning and see, like, what were all the emotions there? What were the thoughts there? Jesus helped me sort through this. What do I need and how am I going to take action towards getting what I need, instead of just being like, yeah, I need that, because identifying what you need and then waiting for someone else to meet that need is still a childish response, a childish stance where, as an adult, you can say this is what I need and then do something about meeting that need.
Speaker 1:Again, if you weren't given those tools and skills when you were young, it can be really confusing and overwhelming because you still feel like that young child, that young child who didn't, who doesn't have the skills, and so, again, separating from like okay, that's how it feels, but the reality is that I'm adult, now I can. I can talk to God, I can breathe, I can make decisions, I can put it down on paper and sort out my thoughts from my emotions, my thoughts from the enemy's thoughts, my thoughts that just aren't helpful and I want to change, and scary and they can be big, but you're not without resources to take a step back and say, okay, I see you, and I think that's part of why putting them on the paper helps in doing the heart doodling or journal or however you do it is. It creates that separation. This is a tangible thing I can put on paper and look at, as opposed to having it just entirely inside and feeling like me rather than something I'm experiencing. So, creating that distance to go. Okay, I see there's a lot of frustration there, there's a lot of hurt there, there's betrayal and frustration and devastation. What do I need? Do I need comfort? Do I need to be heard? Do I need support? Do I just need, like that acknowledgement of like I see you, I hear, I hear you, I understand.
Speaker 1:Sometimes our approach to unpacking cluttered storage spaces or whatever is to like pull everything out and like try and get through it all, and that's not a good approach emotionally. A small, gentle approach, like maybe you can handle a whole box, but if you're just starting the journey, maybe you're going to open the box and pull out one thing and just sit with that one thing, and that's more than enough. There's no, there's no reward for getting through it faster, and so much of it is learning new habits and new ways of thinking and new ways of responding that just take time. You're not. You're probably going faster by going slower.
Speaker 1:If you take out one thing at a time and don't get completely overwhelmed with it, you're still practicing the skills and things that you need so that, after you've done one thing at a time for a while, you'll be able to take a whole box. You've done one thing at a time for a while, you'll be able to take a whole box, and then, after you can take a whole box, you can take out several boxes, or you can take out a box and get through that whole box much faster, because now you have the tools, you have the practice of being able to listen to this emotion and not have it define you and not have it dictate your life. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.