45: Your Feelings Are Valid

In this episode, I discuss how to process your emotions. You hear people say to feel your feelings all the time, but there isn't much information on how exactly that happens. I introduce the steps to help you feel your feelings, and it starts with validating your experience and acknowledging that what you are feeling is real and valid. The second step is normalizing your feelings. Normalize that, of course, you feel this way, which is separate from justifying. Last step is permission to feel. How many times were did you suck it up? How many times do our missionaries have to suck it up? 

Share your missionary stories where you agree to allow me to share them:
michellesevans.coach@gmail.com

Missionary Mom Journal: https://www.amazon.com/Missionary-Mom-Chronicles-Michelle-Evans/dp/B0CFZ9GZS8/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2FMSPY3SBZMDG&keywords=missionary+mom+journal&qid=1704483351&sprefix=missionary+mom+journa%2Caps%2C181&sr=8-4

Meet with me for additional mission support. Book your free call: https://calendly.com/michellesevans-coach/consult-call

Follow me on social media:

IG: https://www.instagram.com/michelle_evans.life/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082926154445

Transcript

0:29

Hello and welcome to the pod podcast. Oh, let me try that again. Hello and welcome to the podcast. So. There's I've had gone through a recent emotion cycle and I wanted to share a few things. That are helpful when you become dysregulated. And this is also really helpful to know for your missionaries sake. On how to kind of go through emotions. Cause people talk about that all the time. You need to feel your emotions. You need to go through your emotions, but we don't really know how so I learned that some of these ideas from Leah Davidson. I've had her on the podcast. And I've mentioned her before. She is a nervous system expert. So first off, if you're viewing life at the moment and you're in an activated state. The lens that you're looking through may be colored differently from what it. You're looking through when you are regulated. So my recent state of dysregulation definitely had me seeing through a red lens, if you will. The first thing to do is just to be able to see that your empirically safe. Being able to look around and say, okay, am I empirically safe? Am I safe? Is my life being threatened in some way. And then it's just being able to validate your feelings that whatever you're going through in the moment is completely valid. And if you have a hard time validating yourself, then maybe a trusted friend or a person that you have a close connection to. Can help you provide that validation. But you don't want to get stuck in behaviors where you're always looking outside of yourself for validation. But in the beginning, that may be a little bit helpful. So I want to share just a quick story about validation. I was going through. Some pretty heavy stuff with questioning a lot of things with the church. And I had sent a message to my state president and a podcast link, and he got back with me. And he just said that he liked to come over to my house and, and chat and just hear about some of my issues. And so I was like, okay. And that was a little bit leery, just because of where I was at with my head space. At the time I was a little leery, but I thought. You know, it, it was an open invitation to have. Frankly, a very honest dialogue. So he came over.. And I said, these are my issues and I kind of went down. The list and I distilled them down to five things. And then. And he said, is there anything else? And I said, well, there's other things, but. You know, there's not anything that you can help with. And he was like, I don't care. I want to hear what those are too. So I said, okay. Just kind of some of the typical things that people struggle with. Those were the things that I was having issues with at the time. And interestingly enough, what he said to me was. All of your feelings are valid. And I was like, What. Because my whole life had been explained in certain ways. And then when I had questions or I had doubts or had issues that came in. People always wanted to explain how I was thinking wrong or how my feelings. Basically weren't valid and I didn't know, and this is no fault on anybody else. It was just an interesting, Experienced when I went through it with my state president, because I was like, What do you mean? My feelings are valid. Like that really took me off guard and it w and what it actually did was soften me, like really, really softened my heart. And, and I think that the reason it did was because. Even if my experience is different than somebody else. And everybody's experience obviously is different than everybody's. Our experiences are valid. And our feelings are valid. And learning how to be able to see. That we're not wrong for feeling this way and we don't have to prove ourselves. Right. That we're just. Who we are with the feelings that we have and they're valid and we don't have to try and change that. We can just be with it. So when your missionary calls being able to validate whatever they're going through. And being able to tell them your feelings are valid. Especially when they're struggling. Because that really allows them to, you know, start to feel into those emotions instead of resisting them. The second step is really to normalize. That are feeling sometimes we've we feel like we are. Let me try that again. We judge our feelings. We judge our emotions. We think they're wrong in some way, but if we normalize them, of course, I'm feeling sad. My missionary, my. My youngest son left. Of course, I was sad. Or. My, my missionary called and had a really difficult experience. Of course, I'm feeling overwhelmed with what's happening on their mission. Also being able to normalize their emotions. So when you, after you validate, you want to normalize, of course you're feeling that way. Course you're feeling homesick. Of course. This is happening and, and normalizing is totally different than justifying. And I had to look up the definition because I wanted to make sure I was clear. And justifying is trying to prove that you're right. Normalizing means that you're bringing it to the condition. The actual condition that you're in. And so it's, it's very different. So being able to sit with I'm sad, I'm angry and not trying to prove that your point of view is right or your missionaries point of views. Right. Just normalize, of course, that they're feeling what they're feeling. So my, my mom. Had a stroke. And I was having just. A ton of anxiety. And I, and it took me to cycle through that. It took me almost two weeks. And my, my body was in this very, very heightened sense of activation and anxiety. And. Of course it was. And there's nothing a matter with the anxiety that I felt. And then also the layering that was going on. Cause I was feeling so many different emotions. My mom had a stroke. My son had a farewell. We had home MTC. Then my son left the election. All of it is all very, you know, kind of an activating state. And so. Of course I was feeling anxiety. And the. So just being able to normalize that, like, You know, of course those things are happening. And then the third step is permission to feel. So, if you were ever, if you grew up being told that you can't be picky about food because there's starving kids out in China or in Africa or. You know, wherever, whatever was maybe used. Basically you were told, and this is not a slight on any parents for saying that. It's just. Basically that. It's basically being told that. What we were, what we were feeling about food. I wasn't valid. And so it's giving you permission to feel all the things that come up. How many times where we told to just suck it up. How, how many times did we just like, I just need to get through this and then I'll be okay. And that's all. Not giving yourself permission. And it really reminds me of The movie inside out to. When they put all those, the basic emotions, they put them in a jar. And how many times do we put all of our emotions in a jar? And w you know, we're not willing to just. Feel them. And we don't even give ourselves permission because we're so busy judging. One of the things that I had judged myself initially about when my first son went on a mission was. I felt like I should be happy and I should be excited. And so I was really judging the sadness and kind of this. Morning that I went through. And I, and I placed a lot of judgment on myself that there was something wrong with me. Or that I didn't have enough faith and none of that's true. My faith was fine. It was actually. Just not being given permission to feel. Whatever I felt. And so one of the things that when I talk to other missionary moms, or when I'm coaching, And when I'm talking with anybody, that's struggling with any type of mission things, that's come up. Be it trust issues or. You know, just being fearful, whatever those feelings. Are valid and you have permission to feel them. And so making sure you give yourself that permission, like. Of course, this is what's coming up and just totally normalizing it. There's nothing wrong. With the emotions that you're feeling. And that really helps you start to be able to digest those feelings so that you don't end up in a state that is stuck. All right. You guys, this was a short one, but I really wanted to make sure that I got it out there to you. And I'm going to do some deeper dives into validation and. And probably do each of these in their own podcast and kind of deeper dive into them so that you guys have more. Information, but if you just start to notice. When you're feeling some of those really charged emotions. Like, how can you validate yourself? Without getting into justification. How can you normalize those? Those feelings. And, and then lastly, how can you give yourself? Permission to feel them. And I cannot tell you the amount of phone calls. And the amount of coaching calls that I've done. Where somebody is going through something and I've said of course you feel that way and they've just broken down into tears. Because it was like, they, they felt like they were wrong to feel the way they did. And. So give yourself permission and that all of it is all right. All right guys, we will see you next week. Bye bye.