How to NOT Shut Down When Things Get Hard with guest Anji Harris

Have you ever quit a job, stopped a project, or ended a relationship suddenly? Did it feel like you were just shutting down? I invited Anji Harris, a marketing guru and prolific writer, to share with us her experiences of shutting down and her tried-and-true strategy for avoiding shut-downs in the future.

Take Aways 

• "Yes, He [God] had delivered me from that suicide attempt, but what didn't go away were the triggers. The situations and the circumstances that would pull me back into that place of wanting to retreat, wanting to isolate." -Anji
• Get to know God and His love for you
• "There was a pattern in my life that showed up every time I was critiqued, I was overwhelmed, or I was on the verge of success. The same exact thing would happen. I would self-sabotage. I would retreat. I would go into isolation. The negative self-talk loop would start." -Anji
• Anji's pattern of faith:

1. Recognize the familiar twinge or desire to retreat.
2. Call it out. Acknowledge it. i.e. "I know what this is. Anxiety, you're not gonna get me. I'm not retreating. I am not going to go backwards."
3. Call out to Jesus. i.e. "Lord, help me."
4. Speak what He [God] has said.
5. Move forward. Listen to the Holy Spirit and do what it encourages. 

Want more support? ❤️Click here to talk with me. I'm currently offering a free 20 minute consultation call to help you get clear on where you are and how to get to a better place. 

Free resources:

• Heidi's website
• Heidi's YouTube

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Transcript

Episode 108: How to NOT Shut Down When Things Get Hard with guest Anji Harris

[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Living Well with PMDD podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Bradford, certified life coach, mom of five, and PMDD survivor. Happy to have you here. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered health advice.

Hello, Angie. Welcome. Hi, Heidi. Thank you for having me. Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's my pleasure to just be able to chat with you today, and to be able to share with everyone as well, so thank you again for having me here. Mm-hmm. I appreciate it. Yes. Okay. Everybody listening or watching, this is Angie Harris, and she is my marketing collaborator. And all around amazing person. She helps keep [00:01:00] me grounded when I'm like, "Nothing's working. I don't know if I can do this." And, and then all the tech stuff. I'm gonna let her tell a little bit about herself. So Angie, tell us, where you're from and what phase of life you're in.

Again, my name is Angie Harris. I am born and raised, in Chicago, Illinois. A proud Southsider. I'm currently living in Medellín, Colombia, and I've been here for, like, a year and a half. My profession is I am what I call a multi-passionate entrepreneur. Currently, I have my own, um, small business agency, that's the Brightly Small Biz Agency, where I help coaches as well as small business owners, set up all of their backend, tech, email, marketing, CRMs, all that good stuff.

But then also, I'm a writer. I am creative. So I have, like, the design side and kind of like the technical side both married together. But I'm [00:02:00] a writer, and I also have a blog that I launched back in 2021 called Live Love Dream Now, and that's my passion.

Writing is my passion. Helping others is my passion. And that's why I'm here today. Yay. That's awesome.

How I met Angie was she was recommended to me by a friend, a fellow coach. What I love, I love everything about Angie, but- Aw ... it was really amazing that I had all of these ideas, and I had a vision for my business, and, what I wanted to convey to people. When we got on Zoom and talked these things over, she was like, " I can see it. I can see how to put this out there." Her vision is really amazing.

Okay. Angie, what do you like about working with me? Well, first I have to say that being connected to you and meeting you was truly, divinely [00:03:00] orchestrated. I truly believe that God put us together for a purpose, and that it was not by accident. And so for that I am very grateful. I love working with you because, again, I just see so much in you. I see a light that has yet to even fully burst into burst to the surface, you know, to just shine in its full potential and brightness, and that excites me.

I find in my life that the connections that I really gravitate towards are those kind of connections when I can see the brilliance in someone, and I just wanna pull it out of them, because I see it, and it's, it's, like, hidden right below the surface. I just wanna be that person to speak life into other people and to pull that out. And so that's what I see in you, is I see this brilliance underneath the surface that I know, um, is gonna have a great impact in so many other people's lives. What excites me is that I get to know you kinda first. Mm-hmm. And so I get [00:04:00] to know you, I get to experience Heidi, in all her glory, and how God made you, and that's what I love about you. Just everything. I love your tenderness, your heart. I love your desire to, um, help others, and to pour into others, and so that's what really draws me to you.

Working with you has just been such a joy because, you know, we brainstorm together. Like you said, those days where it's like, "Ugh, I don't know what I'm doing. I just wanna trash all of this and give up," and it's like we're there for one another, and that's what I love. We started out as clients, but have become friends. Yeah. And so that's very dear and near to me.

Aw. Well, thank you. And that was- unplanned, but there it is. Yes. Um, I think we definitely strengthen each other, and I wholeheartedly agree that God put us in each other's lives. Only He really knows where it's [00:05:00] gonna go and why, why- Yes ... us right now, but that's part of the beauty of it. We are along for the ride, and He gets to- That's ... we just get to take it as it comes. Okay exactly. Yes. Yes.

Today our topic is how to not shut down, and this came up when Angie and I were talking a few weeks ago. Angie was like, " i've experienced this. I've been through it." You know, when you meet someone at a certain time in their life, you might see them at a low point, or you might see them at their awesomest.

Mm-hmm. Sometimes in that moment, the temptation is to compare yourself and think, oh, they haven't gone through hard things. Mm-hmm. And they have it all put together . But I think this is really good because Angie does have things really put together, but she also has gone through hard things, and we all know we all still will, so. Yes, I'm still going through [00:06:00] hard things. Yeah. This life, is to refine us, and to help us learn to turn to the Lord, right? To let Him- Yes ... carry our burdens, to walk with Him, let Him walk with us.

Let's get into how to not shut down, and let's start with you just giving us background on what used to happen.

Heidi, what you said was absolutely correct. In this lifetime, we're gonna experience highs, and we're gonna experience lows. And it's very easy that when we see someone at their peak to think and compare ourselves and think that they haven't gone through anything, because I know I used to do that, and that was one of the things that would send me into that shutdown stage and cause me to retreat. I'm just gonna share a few examples of situations that happened in my life where I was experiencing a challenge, and I completely, utterly shut down, and the impact that it had [00:07:00] on my life.

Then I'll talk about how God divinely and just so sweetly began to heal me and to give me strategic tools to walk me through those challenging times. Because like you said, this is life, and we're gonna continue to go through things, but we need to know how to go through things and know that it's okay and that we're gonna be okay.

When things got hard for me, it showed up for me first in isolation. So whenever I experienced a great challenge in my life, and I'll get to those examples in a moment, but I want to share what it kind of looked like, and then you guys will be able to kind of see the pattern that was in my life.

Whenever things would get hard, I would immediately just withdraw and shut down. And when I say shut down, I mean shut completely down. Whether I was working at a job or whether it was in a relationship Whether I was working on a [00:08:00] project, whatever it was, Angie had left the building.

I'm gonna date myself, but some of these situations happened back before all the technology with texting and things like that, so I would just disappear from people. I would just get into this place of isolation, but then in that space would begin the negative self-talk. So it would be this continuous loop because now I have isolated myself, and now I feel bad because I haven't shown up for someone, or I have missed work, or I failed at this project. Now I am going through this negative self-talk loop- to where I am, like, thinking that I'm not good enough. That I'm too weak or too broken for anybody to love me, or thinking that I couldn't measure up.

And then that negative self-talk would then take me into depression. And unfortunately for me, depression would take me to [00:09:00] having suicidal thoughts. And so for me, shutting down wasn't just like backing up on things. Shutting down for me literally meant shutting down on life.

That's why when you asked me to talk about this, I said yes, because it's something I'm very passionate about because I have been to the darkest of darkest places, and I'm only able to speak and share my story with you guys today and share my testimony because of the grace and love of God.

I'm just gonna share with you guys a few of those situations where I completely shut down, and one that came to mind when you sent me the questions was the big shutdown, which was thinking about or even attempting to try to take my own life.

That situation came about where... the challenge for me was I was losing people. I was losing relationships in my life. I had [00:10:00] just experienced a situation where a very significant relationship in my life had come to an end.

Mm-hmm. And then a relationship with a family member was now also coming to an end. I felt broken. I felt like no one loved me or no one understood me or got me, and so I felt like I wasn't good enough. And if I wasn't good enough- For them, then why am I here? And I felt like I didn't have a sense of purpose in life because these are the people who were the closest to me that I felt like knew me, and now I was being rejected.

So I went into that period of isolation where I just completely went into my inner shell, and then I completely shut down. And then that, again, that took me to a very dark place. But God supernaturally delivered me from that situation and I'm here today. So praise God for that. Yeah.

When God [00:11:00] delivered me from that and I began to follow and walk after Him, then I was going through this period of trying to find my true identity- Mm

because I didn't know. So I am entering into this relationship with Him and still feeling those feelings because, yes, He had delivered me from that suicide attempt, but what didn't go away were the triggers. The situations and the circumstances that would pull me back into that place of wanting to retreat, wanting to isolate.

I always like to say that when I came into a relationship with God, the first thing that He did with me was get me to know Him and His love. That was kind of like stage one of our relationship, was me getting to know who He was and truly receiving His love for me. For me, that brokenness that I was feeling was because I didn't feel love. I didn't feel protected. [00:12:00] I didn't feel worthy. So having His love and understanding what His love meant for me completely changed my life.

With me d- dealing with depression and anxiety, I dealt with when I was a teen. And what I didn't know at the time is that it came from something that happened to me in my youth that I had completely, utterly suppressed. Oh. But it continued to play itself out in my adult life.

Another situation that came up for me to share as an example was so this is like 2003. Okay. And I am working at a job. I am now fully into ministry and just doing everything. Things are going pretty good. I'm working at a hotel in Downtown Chicago, and I'm thriving at my job.

I'm getting excellent reviews, things are progressing, but then I started to notice something started to [00:13:00] tick in the background. I started getting this old familiar feeling again of wanting to shut down. I had just had a review. A great review. And in all of that wonderful review, and the bonus and the raise that I got. I got one critique. That one critique sent me into a downward spiral. I ended up quitting my job.

This critique was about my attendance. I had this excellent rating review, but they started to notice that I was calling off a lot, and that was happening because I was having some struggles in my faith. I'll get to that part in a moment, but I was having some struggles in my faith. I was calling off of work 'cause I was heading into a period of depression, and I didn't have a outlet for it. The struggle with my faith [00:14:00] was anytime I tried to express this to anyone at the ministry that I was attending, I was just met with Christian cliches and no real help. And so now I'm feeling like, "Well, I can't even get this right."

So I started to feel inadequate and started to go down this loop, you know, this downward spiral again. I remember I had gotten fully dressed for work one day. I'm in my suit, and I remember it was this pretty mint colored green suit. Mm. Heels on, everything, bag, and I get to my front door to open it- And I couldn't. And I ended up on my floor right there in a puddle of tears. I couldn't leave my house, and I couldn't leave my house for three days. I'm just having a full meltdown, and thinking, "What am I gonna tell these people?" I lied and I said I was sick, even though I actually was sick. At that [00:15:00] time, I didn't know what I was dealing with mentally and emotionally. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I was not well. I was not emotionally and mentally well. I told them I was sick, and so I was off for three days, and I was so terrified to go back to work because I had to produce a doctor's note.

And I was like, "I can't get a doctor's note because I'm not sick," quote, unquote. What am I gonna do? And because I felt so guilty and so ashamed, I literally went back into work and left to put in my resignation because I was too fearful to tell anyone that I wasn't doing well mentally and emotionally. So I lost a job.

Angie, I just wanna pause 'cause I think there are probably some women listening that have already been through that. Yeah. Wherever you are be kind to yourself, but it's also okay, what Angie's sharing with us, it's not wrong [00:16:00] that she went in and cleared out her desk, and that she did that because that was what she felt like she could do.

It's okay to say, "I'm not well," and hopefully each of us can find the- Yes ... the support that we need, and maybe it can't always be in the medical field. Yes. Maybe it can't even always be in the mental health field- Mm-hmm ... if we're required to follow a certain way of doing something or they will say you're not helping yourself.

I think it's really interesting that even in the areas and ways that the world has developed to help us with overwhelm, with burnout, with anxiety and depression- Sometimes we just might wanna choose a different way, but we also want to express how we're feeling, and it can be tricky.

But don't give up. Keep looking- Yeah ... for help and support. [00:17:00] Yes, that was one of the things for me back then, Heidi. Again, and especially in the African American community, I was not encouraged to go to therapy at all. And I remember when I was in high school my high school homeroom teacher, Ms. Greeny, I'll never forget her, she was one of the first people to notice that I was depressed in high school. They called my mom up to school, and we're sitting in the counselor's office, and they said, "Your daughter is showing signs of depression." And my mom was like, "Depressed? What does she have to be depressed about?"

I'll never forget it. Here I have my mom saying like, "Well, what does she have to be depressed about?" So that was my first time receiving counseling. I think it was on Fridays during eighth period, I would go see this counselor, and I remember her name was Sandra, and I gave her such a hard time because I was like, "I don't need no counseling." Nothing's wrong with me. I didn't know what was going on with me, right?

Anyway, long story short I didn't get [00:18:00] help. Mm-hmm. And so I didn't feel like I had a outlet with therapy because it was frowned upon in my family. You know, I loved my mom. When I got older, my mom and I had a really close relationship, but then I would later find out that the reason why she didn't believe in counseling and therapy is because she hadn't dealt with

her own issues. Yeah. And she hadn't sought help. Now there's so many tools and so many resources for people today to get help. So, yes, if you're feeling depression, you're feeling anxiety, you know, seek some help. And like Heidi said, that help sometimes may not be in a form of a therapist.

It may be a close friend. It may be a coach. It may be just someone where you feel like you have a safe space. Hmm. And you gotta have that, um, that place of being seen, being heard, and being fully loved and accepted for who you are. Yeah.

So Angie, let's get [00:19:00] back to the examples of you shutting down. Are there any others you wanted to share?

I shared with you about being critiqued at my job. That was a challenge for me, and I began to shut down. The failed relationships, so feeling that sense of rejection caused me to shut down. But then also, there were some good things that were happening in my life that caused me to shut down that I wanted to share.

That would be when I was attempting to launch my magazine. God had given me this wonderful, beautiful idea for a magazine, and I had moved to California and I was working on this magazine, and everything was going the way that it, like it should. There were so many amazing testimonies and miracles that were happening, and this shutdown happened when someone questioned my faith.

Oh. This person didn't understand what God was doing in my life, because I was literally starting this mag- magazine with zero [00:20:00] dollars. I had people- Wow ... writing for me all over the not country, all over the world. I had writers in Spain, the UK, Africa, some from South America. I had one girl from Italy, because they really truly believed in the vision that God had given me.

This particular person who was close to me didn't understand the vision God had given me- Mm-hmm ... and questioned me very harshly, and it fractured my faith, honestly. It caused me to question, "Well, do I really hear from God? Did He really tell me to do this?" And I began to shut down and to retreat.

That was in 2009, and then I tried to launch the magazine again in 2015, and this time when I tried to launch the magazine, I still couldn't move forward.

And that's something I wanted to talk about too, was that a lot of these [00:21:00] shutdowns for me were I was doing something good. I was actually excelling, you know? Yeah. I was excelling in my job. I was excelling with the magazine. I was excelling when, this lady who I met in Chicago wanted to groom me to take over her PR company because she saw something in me.

Even before God had given me the idea for my magazine in 2009, someone else back in the '90s saw potential in me and wanted to work with me to create a magazine for youth, and I shut down with that opportunity too. So for me, it was a pattern of me reaching a certain place in my life- Mm-hmm

even if it was good, and I would begin to shut down.

So the shutdowns for me would happen if I was challenged or critiqued, or if I was hitting a peak in my life, something internally inside of me would just [00:22:00] begin to, like, self-sabotage, and I would begin to shut down. That will lead us into, you know, the next question I think that you have for me, and I can talk more about that.

Yeah, okay. So what changed? How did you break this pattern, or what do you go to when you're tempted to go back to this pattern?

Yes. I'm so glad that you said that because that's exactly what it was. It was a pattern in my life that showed up... Oh, that's so good, Heidi. There was a pattern in my life that showed up every time I was critiqued, I was overwhelmed, or I was on the verge of success.

Hmm. Yeah. The same exact thing would happen. I would self-sabotage. I would retreat. I would go into isolation. The negative self-talk loop would start. "You're not good enough. You're not smart enough. [00:23:00] You don't have enough education. You're not worthy. You're too weak. You're too broken." Like, it would start to play, and then that would lead to the depression, which would then lead to that really deep, deep darkness.

So what changed for me, Heidi, was my relationship with God and Him showing me my true identity in Christ. That literally changed everything for me. Like I said a little bit earlier, Him teaching me who He was and His love for me. Now, His love for me and my identity in Christ is what truly rescued me out of that pit of darkness, because that's why I was in that pit.

I didn't feel love. I didn't feel accepted for who I was. I just felt like everything about me wasn't okay. [00:24:00] Yeah. But when God began to show me that His love for me was unconditional, that He loved me with all my flaws, He loved me despite of my imperfections, that there was nothing that I could do that would separate me from His love- Mm

that gave me the strength and the comfort to be able to know, I was gonna be okay. All of those little triggers or those little dents made me feel not okay, and I didn't know that it was okay to not be okay and that I was going to survive this.

After He showed me who He was and who I was in Him, so my identity in Christ, then He started to teach me how to love myself. And that is where the true inner healing came in for me, Heidi, is during that process because during that process is when He began to unveil the root cause and the [00:25:00] triggers, and that's when I realized that they were patterns.

Okay. That's when I began to realize, i'm repeating the same pattern in my life over and over again. And that's why I'm so passionate about talking about this because if I can stop somebody else from going through that loop over and over again- Mm-hmm ... to save them the years of anguish that I had to go through.

Again, I suffered with this pattern and this loop from the age of 13 until my mid-30s. So much of my adult life, I could have been so much further along in life had I had these tools and these resources, you know, that I'll share with you a bit later. But had I known my identity back then, had I known that I was accepted and loved, had I known that, just because something didn't work out didn't mean that life was over and that it wasn't me. I could have been so much further along. But then on the flip [00:26:00] side of that, I wouldn't have this amazing testimony to share with the people who are coming up behind me to let them know that you don't have to spend another day in guilt, shame, or condemnation, that it's okay. You're gonna be okay, and that you are loved. That inner healing process for me helped me to realize that those triggers for me were when I was criticized, whenever I felt inadequate, whenever I felt embarrassed or something like that- Mm-hmm ... or when I was overwhelmed, and those were the triggers that would cause me to shut down when things got hard.

The root of all of that came from one incident that happened to me when I was in eighth grade. Oh, my goodness. Yes. Wow. Now, when God revealed that to me, Heidi, I was like, "I suppressed that memory?" And then He just- Wow ... began to bring things to my remembrance, and I [00:27:00] was like, "Oh my gosh, that really did happen."

I'll just share with you very briefly. This process for me began in 2015, I was launching the magazine again. I think this was my third attempt. Everything was done, Heidi. The issue was complete. It was laid out. It was ready to literally go to the printer.

I'm sure it was so beautiful. It was, and it is. It's sitting on my hard drive in Chicago. Okay. And guess what? I had a full meltdown, and guys, it felt like... like, something just shutting off. It was like my brain disconnected from my body. I remember sitting on the bed, I was staying with a friend at the time, and I was just sitting there staring at the wall and I'm like, "What's wrong with me?

Why can't I pull the trigger? What is going on? Why I, why am I shutting down?" Hmm. I remember having this image of, like, a big giant Angie. Okay. And I was standing in a desert, and on the other side and right [00:28:00] one step over was, like, grass. So it was, like, desert and then grass. And the grass, it was lush, so think of it as like the Promised Land, and then I was, like, in the wilderness in the desert.

Yeah. And a big giant Angie, and there was, like, a little Angie on this shoulder, so it's three little Angies, right? Okay. Two, two little Angies and a big giant Angie. And one Angie was saying, "Just take a step. Just take a step. You're there, just take a step." And then the other little Angie was like, "But you can't. You can't do this." And it was like a complete disconnect.

I began to pray and ask God, "Why is this happening? Why can I not go across this threshold?" Mm-hmm. And that's when he brought back this memory of me being in eighth grade. I was in one school from kindergarten through sixth, and our school only went to sixth grade, so then I had to go to, a junior high. And I [00:29:00] get to this school and I am, like, a straight A student, I'm excelling. Everybody is like, "Oh my gosh, you're so smart," and everything. So all these things are happening, and we get to the end, and everyone, including the teachers, and I hadn't of never even thought about it, 'cause I didn't know anything about being a valedictorian.

Okay. Angie's gonna be the valedictorian. 'Cause I was the top of the class, straight A student, and all that stuff. But what happened was the assistant principal did not like me. So for some strange reason, this adult grown man had something against me, but what he really had against, I think, was my mom.

Mm-hmm. And because of that, he, they took it away from me. Oh. So I remember that I was supposed to be the valedictorian, and then it got taken away from me. This is the, the memory I'm having. And I was [00:30:00] like, "That did happen." Then the Lord brought to my remembrance confirmation of that happening, because when Facebook came out, one of my old classmates reached out to me.

This guy, his name was Gary I'll never forget him, he reached out to me on Facebook Messenger and said, "Ingenette Harris, I'm so glad to have found you." And he said, "I remember what they did to you. I remember when they took the valedictorian, took that away from you, and that was so wrong of them to do that." I was like, wow, he remembered that. All these many years later, 'cause now at this point I'm like 40, but he remembered that situation happening. That embarrassment- caused me to retreat. It damaged my identity. I'm a child, right? So I don't know how to process my emotions, and so that [00:31:00] trauma and not knowing how to handle that rejection and handle being embarrassed. I remember people coming up to me and saying, "Well, I thought you were supposed to be..."

And me just feeling like, oh, my gosh. And I think I even, missed school , I didn't even wanna go to graduation. Yeah. Because I felt so inadequate. I didn't realize that that feeling of inadequacy would stay with me for many years to come. That running and hiding whenever I felt criticized or inadequate or embarrassed or being overwhelmed, it all came from that experience as a child that I didn't know how to deal with. And so whenever anything that felt like that happened in my life, I would shut down. I would start to retreat, and I would go hide. Who knew that it would play out in my life, in my 20s at work, [00:32:00] in my relationships. Mm-hmm. Play out in my 30s as I'm trying to pursue the dream that God had called me to.

Knowing Him and His love helped me to realize the root cause in those triggers, and then He began to give me strategy on how to overcome that. Because, again, like you said earlier, the challenges and the things are gonna still come, but now I had to be armed with tools to help me to move forward.

Yeah. It's so insightful. Thank you so much for sharing. It's amazing that God gave you the understanding of what the root was. At least one of them, right? Maybe other things happened too, but he wanted you to remember this So that he could show you that your worth was amazing then even when this happened to you, and it's amazing now. Without that memory of that being taken away from you and that it impacted you [00:33:00] so much, it would be harder for you to connect the dots of why making a beautiful magazine and putting it out to the world would be safe and okay, and that you were even worthy- Mm of doing that. Yeah.

What God has taught me is to first acknowledge it.

So whenever I feel the hard times coming or I feel like that familiar, that twinge of I wanna retreat I acknowledge it. I call it out. I say, "Oh, no, no, no. Anxiety, you're not... No." I call those things out. "Oh, no, embarrassment. Oh, no, feeling unworthy." I call those things out because that is a trick of the enemy to try to get us to come into hiding, to come into- darkness, to hide ourselves.

I remember hearing someone say that you can't heal what you don't name. So if you don't call it out, if you don't name it, you can't heal from it. You're not acknowledging it. And so I acknowledge it, [00:34:00] and then the next thing I do is I call out to God.

I call out to my Father. I call out to Jesus. Help me. 'Cause again, I can't do this, and we're not meant to do this alone. That's the beautiful thing, i'm meant to partner with Him. And so I get to call upon Him. A good example of this, and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, was last year.

Last year was OMG, hard, all caps, three underlines, five exclamation points. It was hard. Oh, man, 2025? Yes. 2025 was hard. But I got to see just how much I had grown in Christ, in my relationship with him, and just how amazing he is. OMG, I only got through that by, again, acknowledging what was going on. I would be sitting at my [00:35:00] desk completely inadequate, didn't know how to do what I was supposed to be doing- Mm-hmm

and saying, "Lord, I have no clue how to do this thing that you called me to, and I feel inadequate. I don't have all the education to do this. I don't have all the monetary resources to do this." Yeah. "I know that if you call me to it, that you're gonna provide." And so I had to acknowledge what I was feeling, and I had to call that 'cause I literally could feel the wheels starting to, eh, eh, trying to turn.

And I was like, "Oh, no, no, no. I know what this is-" Mm-hmm. "... and you're not gonna get me. I'm not retreating. I'm not going backwards." And so I called it out. I called upon God, and I gave it to him. I said, "Hey, this is what you've given me to do, so I'm trusting and believing in your word, your promises, that where you say in your word [00:36:00] that you work in me both to will and to do of your good pleasure.

So that means that I'm not doing this at all. It's all you. " Mm-hmm. "It's all you, Father. And so I'm putting my faith and my confidence and trust in you to get this thing done." And sure enough, Heidi, I would be sitting there looking at my computer, looking at that little cursor blinking like, "I don't even know how to do this."

And OMG, Holy Spirit would just begin to just speak to me and just tell me, "Hey, do this, research this," or whatever. And things started to come together. But when I tell you, it was like one hurdle after the other, one after the other. But I kept doing the same thing. I kept saying how I was feeling. Calling it out.

"This scares me, Lord. I don't know. This seems too big. I don't know if I can handle this." And asking for His help, but He's like, "Oh, I got you 'cause we're doing this [00:37:00] together." So I'm partnering with Him.

Then I just had to receive His love. Anytime I'm feeling some type of fear coming up, that means that whatever area of life that's showing up for me is I'm not receiving the fullness of His love.

So then I'll pray and I'll say, "Lord, help me in this area of my heart that is still unsurrendered to you, where I'm not receiving your full love." I always think of that scripture where, the guy goes to Jesus to heal his son or his servant, uh, 'cause it's two different accounts, but where He asks him if he believe.

He's like, "Yes, I believe, but help my unbelief." Yeah. And I always pondered on that scripture and I was like, He said, "Yes, I believe." He's like, "Do you believe?" 'Cause Jesus asked him, "Do you believe I can do this?" And he was like, "Yes, I believe, but help my unbelief." Yes. That's where I found myself last year, was like, "I know God, I have faith in God.

Yes, I believe- Mm-hmm ... that you can do this, [00:38:00] but help my unbelief. Help that part of me that is unsurrendered. Help that part of me that's still holding onto some fear that this thing you called me to is too big for me."

So I receive His love in those areas, and then I just begin to speak life over myself and start to say what God says about me, that I'm fearfully and wonderfully made.

That I'm created in His image and in His likeness. I just begin to speak what He's promised me. And I put Him in remembrance of His word. Mm-hmm. I say, "Lord, you sent me here. You put this in me. I didn't ask for this. You implanted this in my heart, so that means that You're gonna help me walk through this.

The confidence and the faith that I have is not in myself to do this. It's in You to do this." So I'm gonna let you do this through me however you wanna do it, when you wanna do it, by what means you wanna do [00:39:00] it, and I'm gonna just surrender to that.

The last thing is I just move forward.

Wherever I hear the Holy Spirit telling me to do and move, I take action. I put that faith into action. That is kind of like my, I have a new pattern now. All right. And that's a pattern of faith. That's my pattern of walking this thing out, because again, the challenges and the things are gonna come, but it's how I respond to them.

So I just thank God for walking me through this journey and being able to look back in retrospect and see the progression, to see how far He's brought me. I just love Him for it. Oh, it's so amazing.

I love that you gave us kind of your process now. You called it your pattern of faith.

Yes. You still have that twinge, that shadow of what used to come and take over, and now you just recognize it and [00:40:00] you have a way to face it. I think for everyone listening, maybe your pattern won't be exactly like Angie's- Right. Yep ... but you need to find yours.

It's okay to have one of those. It's good. It leads us to be able to do more good in the world- Mm-hmm ... and to be open to receive whatever the universe, whatever God has for us too. Yeah. We should all have our, um- our little arsenal, our tools. Those are my tools to put in my tool belt.

I have a really dear friend who is one of my safe spaces. One thing that we have with each other, so we both have a song. So if she's feeling a certain way, like if she's having a really hard time and she really doesn't have words- Yeah

she'll send me her, you know how they say, your safe word? She'll send me her safe word, and then I'll remind her of her song. Aw. So, [00:41:00] yeah. And so when I send her my safe word, she'll remind me of that song, and the song that we both chose is a song that we believe that God sings over us, like a song that really truly means something to us.

It's sometimes in those hard spaces where you can't even pray. Look, there have been times I have just been in places where I can't utter a word I don't have words. I'm going through it. I'm like, I don't have words. And so, when we have those times, if I reach out to her and I don't hear from her, and if she sends me back that word, I know what to start praying for her, and then I remind her, I put her in remembrance of that song of God singing over her. That has truly helped me having that kind of connection with someone where when I can't have the words for myself, I know that there are people praying for me. Yeah. There are people interceding for me, and I always thank God for that.

I [00:42:00] always thank Him for the intercessors, the people that are praying for us that we don't even know.

Whatever that looks like, 'cause like, like Heidi said, it's not gonna look the same for everyone, and that's the beauty of relationship with God.

Mm-hmm. We all have our own unique relationship with Him. And Heidi, you're a mom. You know that you have a unique relationship with each and every one of your children. You don't communicate to each of them the same. You know exactly how to speak to each of them to make them feel seen, heard, and loved, and it's the same thing with God, our Heavenly Father.

He knows exactly what I need. He knows exactly what you need, Heidi, and He knows exactly what you need, those of you listening to this podcast. So it doesn't have to look like anybody else's journey. It doesn't have to look like my story or Heidi's story, or your friend's [00:43:00] story, or someone in your family.

It's your own unique story, your own unique relationship with God, and He is just waiting and eager to walk with you through this and to show you how much He loves you and how much He adores you. And so, um, yeah. Oh, thank you. I think it goes without saying, but I just wanna put it out here.

Having these type of feelings, feeling anxiety, getting depressed sometimes, doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. If you are feeling an absence of the Holy Spirit, there is such a thing as non-sinful absence of the Spirit. I can't explain it, but I can- Mm ... testify that it is true and that- You just hold on.

You do some things. Like Angie said, maybe start with this exact thing that she laid out for us, and I'll put it in the notes, that pattern. Or maybe there's something else that you wanna try. But just hold on and the [00:44:00] Holy Spirit, it will come back. The love you've felt in the past, security, safety, it will come because God does love you.

That's a good point to bring out, 'cause I know so I had, uh, that conversation with a friend here in Columbia, a few months ago, and she was feeling like, "I just feel like I'm not hearing God right now.

Like, he's being really silent." And she immediately went to, 'cause in our human flesh, we, our immediate thought is something gotta be wrong. Mm-hmm. "I must have did something. I must have, you know, got some hidden sin or something going on." And I shared something with her that I wanna share, if you don't mind, really quickly. I told her, "You know what?" I was like, "Have you ever thought that maybe there's nothing wrong, and maybe this is just another form of intimacy with God?" And I shared with her, an experience that I had.

This guy who I was madly in love with, and we had this [00:45:00] really great friendship. And I told her, "That friendship that I had with this particular person, I really truly believe that God used that relationship to mirror his love for me." And one of the things that he used that relationship to show me was true intimacy. And I told her that me and this particular person were able to be in the same room at the same time and not say one word to each other but say everything.

Mm-hmm. And I was like, "And that is true intimacy, to be able to be in stillness and quiet and say nothing but say everything." And I told her, "imagine if this is God's way of letting you know that He loves you, He trusts you-" And that's enough. And [00:46:00] is that enough?

Because sometimes we want and I was like, "'Cause sometimes we want the bells and the whistles and all the things. We want all these things, but everything settles down, is that stillness enough for you? Is that, being in that, just that quiet space enough?

Is he just enough? In that quiet space, not saying anything, nothing spectacular or miraculous going on, is that just enough?"

I remember him asking me that before. "Angie, am I just enough for you? If you never wrote anything, if you never wrote a book, if you never had your podcast, if you never did anything amazing, would I just be enough for you?"

I had to sit with that for a moment. Right. I couldn't answer right away. I was like, "Ooh, like nothing, Jesus? Like that?" And he's like, "Nothing. It's just, am I just enough?" So she was like, "Wow, I never thought about that." She began to see that time of quiet [00:47:00] as something precious instead of "There must be something wrong with me.

There must be something wrong with me." Mm-hmm. "I must need to repent." Mm. And started to look at it as like, wow, this is another facet of God's intimacy that I am getting to experience, that stillness. Are we okay just in the stillness?

Yeah, that's really interesting. It's a cool thing.

Okay, so let's finish up. Angie, if someone wants to reach out to you, or if they wanna see what you're working on and all of that awesome, amazing stuff, how can they find you? You can find me over at my blog at livelovedreamnow.com. That blog is also attached to my YouTube channel, which is Live Love Dream Now on YouTube.[00:48:00] 

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you, and really appreciate you being here with us today. Thank you, Heidi, so much for having me. Mm-hmm and I just pray that every listener will continue to grow in their faith, in their relationship with God, and know that you are loved and accepted, and that all is well. Go forth. Love it.

Thanks so much for listening to the Living Well with PMDD podcast. To learn more about life coaching with me, visit my website heidi, H-E-I-D-I, bradfordcoaching.com. Until next time, keep hoping, keep loving, and remember that you are not alone.