Listen to Your Emotions. Don't Let Them Drive. -Ep 132

Do you ever find you have been trying to solve the wrong problem?

I go through this with my daughter fairly often. I’m getting wiser and don’t follow the distractions as far, as often.

On my own issues, I can still get distracted too easily.

In my work with clients, God has gifted me with the ability to see to the real issue quickly. 

Once you see what the real issue is you can begin to make real progress if you have the tools and skills for that problem.

In today’s episode, I talk through the process I use with my daughter, myself, and my clients once the real issue has been identified. 

Listen to your emotions. Don’t let them drive.
Know when emotions are letting you know you need help.

I’m passionate about helping women discover the cause behind the obvious problem and giving them practical tools to remedy the problem once it is revealed. This passion comes from the longing I had for so many years as I was trying to grow and change myself. I found most Christian teaching for change focuses on the behavior ot the thoughts and often ignores the events and emotions that created the thoughts and behaviors. In my work, we listen to the heart and follow Holy Spirit. There is no trying to perform our way into God’s presence or favor. We are already there, and nothing we do removes us from his love.

I've done hundreds of hours of coaching with dozens of clients. I have written 4 books and produced over a hundred thirty podcast episodes.
I have space for two clients right now. Schedule a call to see if one of those spots is for you.

00:00 Wrong Problem Trap
01:04 Bedtime Mystery
02:10 Fear Underneath
03:27 Validate Then Logic
04:58 Sorting Thoughts
05:45 When Lies Feel True
07:21 Get Help Healing
09:30 Holy Spirit Memories
09:47 Lilacs And Safety
11:37 Emotional Neglect Trauma
13:47 Kingdom Way Forward
15:01 Work With Me 

I'd love to connect with you!

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Transcript

When The Problem Isn’t The Problem

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Do you ever put a lot of effort into something only to discover down the line that you were trying to solve the wrong problem? I see this in simple ways with my daughter. At times she'll be upset because she can't sleep. And that's never the real issue. There's always a reason that she can't sleep. Something that she's upset about, that she needs to talk about, that she doesn't want to. Or whatever it is. But the real problem isn't that she can't sleep. The real problem is why can't she sleep? I find the same scenario when I work with women. They say that one thing is the problem, but when we dig a little deeper and look into what we really need to work on, something else is the problem. Not the thing that you think is the problem. This is good news because once you know what the actual problem is, then you can figure out how to deal with it. So one of these scenarios with my daughter was she couldn't go to sleep. And so I was asking her what was really going on. And her first response was that she shouldn't have to. You know, I shouldn't have to go to bed if I don't want to. We dealt with her thinking she didn't need to go to bed and got her back to bed. And then a little bit later, she was up again and she was all upset. Because she still wasn't asleep, and now she was hot and she was still mad about having to go to bed. And I was like, okay, so that's not the real issue. What is the real issue? And the real issue was that she had heard a noise that made her scared because she felt like she was all alone. So now that I knew what the real issue was, that she was feeling scared and alone, I could help her to deal with it. Because trying to solve the problem of not having to go to bed didn't do any good because it wasn't the real problem. And so in this process of like once you discover the real problem and then dealing with it, often you'll find some feelings there,

Finding The Fear Underneath

SPEAKER_00 2:24

often some form of fear, whether that's anxiety or insecurity or worry, concern, however we want to frame it. Like at the heart of it, there's almost always a root of fear. In my method of working with people to get unstuck and move through those places that they're struggling, we feel the feelings. We don't want to just be like, oh well, I'm feeling fear, and the tells me not to be afraid, so I'm not gonna be afraid and I'm gonna move on. There's a reason that you feel afraid. And so we want to feel the emotions, but as I say in a hard to blame workshop, they don't get to drive. They have a say. We need to hear them out, but they never get to be in charge. They never get to be in control, they're just providing information and they're only one source of information. And we're not wired to be logical and emotional at the same time. So whether it's yourself or your child or your spouse or whatever. If they're emotional, they're feeling alone, they're feeling afraid, coming at them with logic of how they're not actually alone and afraid is not very helpful. They

Validate Feelings Before Using Logic

SPEAKER_00 3:46

need to feel that and have that validated that I understand this is how you feel. And once they can acknowledge that they feel understood of how they feel, they will calm down, and then you can talk to them about the logical side of things. Are you actually above you're feeling afraid? Are you actually in any danger? Look at what you can see and smell and touch and hear and all the things, like take in all that information. Is there something to be afraid of? Are you actually alone? Whatever the thing is. So listen to the emotion and then identify the thoughts that are going with that. Like, if you're thinking, I am alone, that's not true. Like my husband and I were in the house, so it was not true that she was alone. It was true that she felt alone. And in feeling afraid, like something bad is gonna happen. Once you identify the thoughts, then you need to sort out those thoughts. Do those thoughts agree with God or do they not? Are those thoughts even true? Like, I heard this noise, someone's going to

Sorting Thoughts Against Truth

SPEAKER_00 5:15

hurt me. Those are thoughts. They're not accurate thoughts. And as you're sorting through your thoughts and you see some of these thoughts don't agree with God, sometimes it's easy to see, like, oh yeah, I'm having this thought that I'm alone. And it's easy to see that no, there's other people right here with me, so I'm not alone. Easy to see that's a lie, and move on to thinking something different. But sometimes those thoughts feel really true, even though you know they're not true. That feeling that if people know who you really are, they're not gonna want to have anything to do with you. If they know the mistakes you've made, they're gonna run away. If you voice your opinion and it contradicts other people's opinions, that they're going to shun you and again not want to have anything to do with you. That you're gonna be in trouble if you rock the boat or if you don't keep the peace. All of those can be very intense feelings. And the thoughts that go with them, that that fear of being rejected, being abandoned, being discovered to be a fraud or being unworthy, whatever those things are, you can feel them very intensely. The thoughts that come with them can seem so true because the feeling is so intense. And when that happens, it's an indication that your heart needs attention. There's a place in your heart that was wounded at some point in the past, could be recent, could be distant, that believes that to be true. Based on their experience, based on what happened, that feels true and they can't just let it go because it feels so true. And when you discover a place like that where the emotions are overwhelming, your ability to choose truth, even though you know what's true, the lie still feels true, is a really good time to get help and reach out and see if I have availability. But if the emotions are overwhelming you in that decision-making process, then they're probably overwhelming you at other times also, and you're not going to be able, or it will be very difficult to navigate through the process on your own of listening to Holy Spirit from what does my heart need here to stop believing this lie? What does my heart need so that I can follow your spirit and I can hear your thoughts stronger than the lies and the enemy's thoughts? You might need someone to hear your story and validate that what happened to you was really awful or rotten or unfair. You might need someone to help you see that you're not wrong for having needs. You're not unworthy because somebody didn't understand you, or because things didn't turn out the way you expected them to. Those kinds of things aren't true and they're not helpful. But when they feel intensely true, it can be hard to work through that on your own. Sometimes you don't even have the information you need. To be able to see God or your circumstance differently, to know what scripture says about your situation and your feelings, either because you haven't been taught at all or because you've been taught wrong. So being able to ask Holy Spirit, what does my heart need here? And you might bring up a memory of something that happened where you felt the same way that you're feeling in this current situation. A client shared a story with me of in the spring when the lilacs were blooming and they were just like, Oh, the lilacs are out. And their child asked them, Well, what's your favorite flower? And

Memories, Emotional Neglect, And Trauma

SPEAKER_00 10:01

they're like, Well, I don't know. Like, I like all kinds of flowers. But I guess why I like the lilacs is because it reminds me of my grandmother. And as she pondered on that, she realized, like, oh, that means so much to me to be reminded of my grandmother because I felt safe there. I felt seen there. I felt liked and wanted there. And that was different from how she felt at home and in other situations. So just seeing the Lilacs and realizing like she'd always had this longing for Lilacs. That it was connected to this feeling of being seen and like just being like for who she was. That went back to a positive experience with her grandmother. So your emotions into that positive and negative. There could be something that you got in trouble for as a kid that now a similar situation happens, and you feel that same fear of being yelled at or being isolated because you're sent to your room every time you get in trouble or whatever it is. And sometimes you can just see that and make that connection, and Holy Spirit leads you through that. It's like, oh, okay, so much better. Other times, particularly with childhood emotional neglect, there's not one big event that happened. There's just a repeated pattern of being dismissed or being ignored, or being put in charge of your parents' emotions, or different things like that, that it's hard to pinpoint. And especially if your parents, you had a good Christian home, they loved you, they took care of you, you had food, you had clothes, you got to do activities, all these different things, it's hard to see. Like, well, how could they have caused me any trauma? But emotional neglect does create trauma. Trauma is when there's a disconnection. It's a definition of trauma, I just recently heard again is trauma is when you suffer alone. So if your parents didn't have the emotional capacity or the emotional skills to suffer with you, even if, you know, sometimes kids are suffering over a piece of paper getting destroyed or a stuffed animal getting left somewhere, or things that as adults were like, no biggie, it's gonna, like it's not gonna matter. But because it matters then, if they're not surrounded with people who can help you see that it's important to you and that it matters to you, it actually does matter for a long time. So sometimes there'll be a particular memory that comes up that you can kind of see, like, oh, this is what happened, and I decided to believe this. Decided to believe I couldn't trust people, that if things were going to be done right, it was gonna have to be up to me. I decided that I needed to earn love. I mean, to keep people from being upset with me, like whatever it was. And that is much more of a process to work through and see why what did you decide, and what has been the outcome of that? So that then you can sit with the Lord and go, okay, this is how I've felt a thought in the past, and that's how I've behaved out of it. What is the kingdom way? What's God's way to think about this and to feel? And how would I act when I believe Him and I'm walking in His ways and His righteousness? And it's not a I mean, there's principles of His righteousness, but there's not like this formula or curriculum that can hand you that, like, here's how you fix this. You can have the exact same scenario,

Your Unique Path And Getting Help

SPEAKER_00 14:16

the same why you're believing even the same behaviors out of it as someone else. But how you got there and what you've done since then is gonna be unique to you. And so being able to work one-on-one to make your unique path to see here's how you got here, here's all the things you've done since then, and so here's what you need going forward, instead of like giving you a curriculum or a checklist or whatever to be like, here you go, this is how you fix it. There's tools and principles that will come into play, but everyone's story is going to be unique. And if you would like to know what that would look like for you, you can schedule a call with me at the link in the description. I'll be back next week.