49: Mapping Emotions

Feeling overwhelmed by your own emotions and nervous system? In this episode, we explore how emotions show up in your body, what your nervous system is trying to tell you, and how you can map your emotions to build resilience. Learn simple, practical tools to stay calm and connected, even in stressful moments.

What You'll Learn:

• How to recognize emotions in your body and map them.
• The role of your nervous system in managing stress and emotional responses.
• Common triggers for missionary moms and how to handle them.
• Practical tools to calm your nervous system and regain clarity.

Why This Matters:
Understanding your emotions and nervous system helps you stay grounded and show up as the supportive mom your missionary needs—without letting stress take over.

Resources Mentioned:

• Journaling exercise to map your emotions.
• Simple calming techniques like deep breathing and grounding.

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

0:30

Hello, everybody. Welcome back. First of all, I just want to thank you all for listening. I want to thank you for sending episodes to the people that you love. And thank you so much for coming back week after week. It really means the world to me, that I've been able to help some people and the messages and notes that I get have been so impactful. And so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Today we're going to talk about something that affects all of us and that's our emotions and how they show up in our body. And this is a really great topic, especially when it involves missionaries, because we tend to have a lot of emotions when it comes to our kids. And there's a lot of letting go of control. When we send them off on mission, so it can feel very jarring, kind of like being on a rollercoaster. So my last missionary left during this past presidential election. I'm not going to get any into anything political, but it's important for this story. So someone close to me posted some political things on social media. Well, my son was in home MTC. And I have a lot of emotions around missions. And in a previous episode, I shared about the mission trauma that I had for my oldest son's mission. And so when this person posted something on social media, I felt all of these emotions and all of this triggering in my entire body, it was vibrating like. I remember looking down at my body and thinking, oh my gosh, what is happening inside my body? So I've talked about this before that our nervous system can get activated and go into team hyper. Or even to team hypo. And team hyper feels very anxious. That's where fight and flight. Kind of reside so I was already in an activated state with my son and home MTC and getting ready to leave. And this political post for whatever reason. Really got me. In team hyper even more so. And because I've been working on mapping my own nervous system to see. What happens. This was like a perfect opportunity to gain, gather some data on myself. Now at the time I had the wherewithal and enough CEO function to know that I was gathering data, but it took me a couple of weeks. Passed it. To really get some clarity around it. So, what I did was I thought that because I was having all of this vibration in my body. That going on a walk would be really helpful because everything. I've ever read and studied talks about walking. And connecting with nature and being outside and fresh air and all the things. So I went on a walk. And what I found was when I got home, I was more angry. I was more furious. I was gnashing my teeth. And so I was like, Okay, this is really interesting. Maybe it's a fluke because. This goes against, you know, kind of what I've read. And so the next day, I was still spinning in some of these emotions. They sometimes when our emotions are running really high, it takes a while for them to calm down. So here I am, I wake up I'm in team hyper and I was like, great. This is a great opportunity for a data check. Cause that was super weird that I was so much angrier. So I went on another walk just to test it. And by the time I came home again, I was furious. And I walked into my husband's leather shop. My husband does custom saddle making and a lot of custom leather work. And I walked in there and I was just almost sobbing. I was so angry. And so what this tells me. About. My nervous system is that certain situates sent certain situations. Instead of walking, I actually need to soften. And try to. Let go of whatever muscles I'm tensing. So. Team hyper is already a little more hypersensitive and has more energy. And so I didn't need more energy. I needed less. So everybody's nervous system is different. And so that's why it's really important that you map yours and you get to know your nervous system. The goal by the end of today's episode is you're going to have some practical tools to help you. Map your emotions. Better understand your nervous system. And then this is going to help you build some resilience. So that you can feel more in control even during those hard moments. So for me, that was what this was. Understanding my nervous system. So let's first talk about emotions. So basically emotions are signals from the brain to the body. The nervous system is scanning for danger all the time. And they're not emotions aren't good or bad. Sometimes we like to talk about emotions like, oh, I'm feeling all these good emotions, like happy. And peace and Colm, or we have these bad emotions like anxiety, but they're not actually good or bad. All they are is information. So if we can treat them like information, And sometimes we can't do that in the moment, but if we can treat them afterwards, Then you're going to get to know yourself a lot better. See how emotions manifest themselves. As sensations in the body. So for me. Like when I read that political post, what happened for me was my entire body felt like it was a vibrating. And everything was super, super tight. Even my scalp felt like very, very tense and it could feel like a tight chest for you or maybe butterflies in your stomach. Or like, maybe you feel like you're going to throw up. Maybe you have sweaty poems. My hand, my, my body was shaking. So, what are the physical manifestations that happen? When you have a sensation of an emotion in your body, and it's a different physical sensation, like anxiety and excitement, sometimes people talk about anxiety and excitement that they feel the same. And so I've tested that in my own body, when I'm feeling kind of anxious about something versus when I'm really excited. And I find those emotions very, they feel very different in my body. And anxiety. I have a lot of sensations in my quads, my thighs. When I'm excited, it's more in my chest and my hands, my fingers are like, oh, this is so exciting. So it feels the sense, the physical sensation is very, very different. For you, it's also going to be very different. And so trying to figure out and understand. What's happening in your body. And mapping helps you kind of pause. And understand what happening, and then it also helps you respond instead of react. Now in this situation that I had with my son leaving and my emotions running really high. I was able to pause in certain situations, but I definitely reacted as well. And so if you react, there's nothing wrong with you. Because you're still able to gather some information and we don't want to use any of this as a club or a way of judging ourselves. All of this is a tool to get to know ourselves. So here's like a kind of a step-by-step guide. So when you feel an emotion. You stop for a moment and you ask yourself. Where do I feel this in my body? And then you want to describe it and you want to describe it as best you can. And sometimes it's very difficult especially when we get kind of in an activated state because we lose access to more of our CEO brain. But if we can start to try to describe it, it helps us kind of regain some of that access to our. CEO. So it also gives us a pause where we're actually becoming the observer of our body. Which helps us be able to assimilate and digest the emotion that's happening. So you use like a descriptive word. This feels tight. It feels heavy at those fluttery. For me, it felt very, you know, high vibrating, like my whole body. Was vibrating. And then you want to label the emotion once you've identified it, you want to name it? So for me at that moment, it was definitely. My nervous system signaling some danger. Right. And so then I was able to name it. Like I don't feel safe. But then empirically, I knew I was safe. But it didn't feel safe in my body at the moment. So we're going to just do like a quick exercise. Close your eyes, if you're safe to do so, please don't close your eyes. If you're driving. Think of a moment like that was recent in the last week or two, where you felt very stressed. And think about where you felt that and see if you can kind of drum that up a little bit in your body. So that you can kind of feel. Where that sensation happens. Okay. So now I want you to pause. And take a deep breath and we're going to clear everything out. We're going to let go of all that stress. And I want you to think about a joyful moment. And what does that feel like? So I want to share another really quick story. I have two boys right now that are serving missions and they have a really, really good friend. That's also serving a mission. And I went to bed the other night and I had been thinking about them and praying for them and just being very mindful and just thinking back about, them growing up together. And the next morning I woke up and I had this sensation of love. Just almost pouring out of my body. And so I was just laying there. Feeling what love felt like. It was really big in my chest. And it felt. Soft. These are really important moments. For you to really feel what's happening in your body. And being able to really map this. So. Let me just make a suggestion, keep a journal. That's for body mapping only where you can record sensations and emotions over time. And this is not a quick process. You are going to be getting to know yourself over and over and over again. So just start to record them and you'll start to see. That they evolve. And one of the things I've seen as I've gotten to know my nervous system better. And my emotions. Is that I am. When I'm in kind of a fight flight freeze team, hyper. I am usually tensing muscles somewhere. When my missionary that left last summer, when he left. I went to the dentist. You know, like a week or two later, and he said this is the new you are grinding your teeth. And I was like, I am. And he said, yeah, you've never done that before. I've never, I've never made any notations. So this must be new. And I said, yeah, I think it is. So I, because he helped me like gain a little bit of awareness. I started to notice when I was clenching my jaw. And so when I was sharing the story earlier about how walking didn't help. But softening did when I'm talking about softening. It's a matter of like, okay. Where in my body am I holding tension? And like taking some deep breaths and letting it go. And often it is in the jaw and the face and the hairline. And the scalp. And so being able to really find it. And being able to relax and, and letting it soften. So let's just do a really quick, brief thing about the nervous system. Your nervous system is like a thumb mometer for stress. And it tells you in your safe. Or when there might be a threat. The problem is it doesn't know the difference between. Burnt toast and the house burning down. So when my body. Reacted to this social media. Post. It immediately felt like I was not safe. And so it was a very, very good moment for me to look around the room. And be very present and say to myself, Michelle. You are safe because you have to start to send those signals. To your nervous system so that your nervous system can calm down. A common trigger for. Mom with a missionary is when we get some information that they're struggling. Then all of a sudden we can get very activated. We can get very upset. We can get in team hyper. We can try to fix it. One of the reasons we try and fix it is because in our body. Our body is having a response. It's having an elevated heart rate. It starts to feel. You know, dangerous, our muscles start to tense. Which we need all of those things. Because if we ever are in a dangerous situation, we definitely want our nervous system to react. But in a situation like this, where it's not like that, then it's a matter of being able to take some deep breaths, find those areas in our body where we're tensing. The grounding method, the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method. Or even the senses method where you're like, okay, what are three things or four things I can touch. What are four or five things I can see. Let me describe those. And what that does is it brings you back into the present. And so it helps you gain safety so that you can. Ground back into your zone of resilience. What about after you feel you start feeling kind of anxious because our missionary has the difficult companion. This is all data. This gives you some. Points where you can gather some information about yourself. And it can also help you map the emotion, calm your nervous system down so that you're replying in a very grounded state so that you're not replying to maybe an email or. A conversation. In activated state. And this really helps you as you're parenting your missionary. You're staying calm when they're struggling. That way you show up as the safe place, they can help anchor their nervous system in safety, if you are safe, but if you're not safe, it's hard for them to feel that safety. All right, you guys let's just do a quick recap. Emotions are signals. The mapping them gives you some clarity on what's happening. Your nervous system is a tool. It's not the enemy. You can train your nervous system to tolerate more things. And remember moms, this is a practice it's not perfection. The more that you do it, the better you'll get at managing some of those overwhelming moments. And I just really want to invite you to. get them journal that is solely for mapping your emotions. And start to get to know you just like you would, if you had a brand new baby. So start to map out the things that bother you. The things that activate you, if something comes up, this is a learning opportunity for you to grow and next time I am actually going to be sharing with you in episode 50. All about my faith journey I'm hoping that if you have ever had a kid or you have a spouse or you have a family member or anybody that you love that has been on a faith journey or a faith crisis, I'm hoping that by sharing mine, That you can gain some peace. In that. Uncertainty. All right. You guys. I will see you next week. Thank you so much for joining me. Bye. Bye.