74: Nervous System or the Spirit? How to tell the difference.

When something feels off with your missionary, it’s easy to wonder—is this a prompting from the Spirit, or just anxiety in my body? In this episode, we’ll talk about how to tell the difference between a nervous system response and spiritual guidance. You’ll learn how your body signals fear, how the Spirit usually speaks, and what to do when you’re not sure. This episode will help you calm the chaos inside so you can respond with clarity and love.

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Transcript

Michelle Evans: 0:31

Hello and welcome to the podcast. This is a podcast dedicated to missionary moms. You're either sending missionaries out, you have missionaries serving, they've come home wherever you're at. That's kind of the concentration of where we focus the topics. And today's episode is gonna be something that I hope resonates. It's a really common question that I get from moms and it's something that I wrestled with for a long time. And that is, is the spirit prompting me to act? Or is my nervous system having a reaction and how do I tell the difference? You might be wondering. That after an email from your missionary or a phone call, or you wake up at 3:00 AM 3:00 AM with a pit in your stomach, or when your heart drops after seeing a photo of your missionary where they maybe don't look quite as okay. We totally wanna follow the spirit, and we also want to be emotionally grounded and wise. How do we know which is which? And today we're gonna talk about that, what your nervous system is doing behind the scenes, how the spirit usually speaks, how to tell the difference and what to do when you're not sure. Let's talk about why this gets so trick tricky for missionary moms. So you're already living with a baseline of stress, so you're already potentially stepping into team hyper or whatever because your child is far away. The communication is limited. We're totally used to having, like their location, being able to ask'em where they are, if they're safe at all times, and we don't have that anymore. And you're trying not to interfere and you're holding space for all the struggles and you actually have no ability to fix them. And you add that to that deeply spiritual layer. So you believe in like personal revelation. You're used to following spiritual promptings and you're deeply invested in your child's mission experience and their safety. When something feels off, your nervous system goes into high alert, and often you interpret that feeling as a spiritual prompting. And here's the thing, sometimes. It is, but sometimes it's your body doing what it's supposed to do. Trying to protect you from perceived danger. And learning to tell the difference is one of the most sacred skills that you can develop, and so, so helpful, and it will serve you everywhere in your life. Quick rundown on the nervous system and just do a quick review, which I've talked about a lot, but just to be sure. Your nervous system has three states that I like to refer to. You have team hyper, which is fight or flight. You're feeling anxious, urgent, wired. It's very hyper aware. Lots of energy. That's why it's team hyper. Then there's team hypo. That's where freeze or shutdown is. You're numb, you're exhausted. You kind of check out. And then right in the middle of those is team resilience and it, and we have this window of tolerance where you're calm, you're clear, you feel connected, and you're open to the spirit. And the spirit almost always speaks clearest when you're in team resilience. But your nervous system might flood you with emotions before you ever get to that quiet space. Let me give you an example. So I, when my oldest son was serving, older son was serving his mission there was a number of times when I was kicked into Team Hyper based on his emails because that's before we could have phone calls and. So I would start feeling really anxious and then I would get into team hyper and I would want to interfere and interrupt.'cause, and I kept thinking like the spirit's guiding me. I'm pretty sure the spirit's telling me to go get him. I need to fly to, to his mission, like immediately. Right. And so it kind of just kind of just threw me really. And it really kinda knocked me. Off my, my team resilience and my balance and my brain had this huge dramatic. Response and had all these stories running like, this isn't safe. His mission president isn't looking after him. I don't know if God's looking after him. Does he even remember he exists? I don't know. And so I went, my body went into Team Hyper, so my stomach. Clenched my jaw got tight, my breathing started to get shallow, and I had this wave of do I need to call somebody? Do I need to call the mission president? Should I ask him more questions like, and did the spirit prompt me in all of that? Maybe. But it's more likely that my nervous system was doing what it's designed to do, which is keep me alive, keep my offspring alive. So let's just talk about for a minute how the spirit speaks, and it's a little different for everybody. And I think we've talked we've heard a lot of conference talks about this, and I like the idea that it's kind of like trying to figure out how to tune into the radio station. And I just picture an old. Dial radio that we're just trying to fine tune to under, like, to really get a good reception. So what does it feel like when the spirit is speaking? So this is great question for you. So in Galatians it says, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness. So just let those words sink in. It doesn't usually scream, it's not usually a panic and it usually. Isn't rushed. So even when the prompting is urgent, it tends to come with clarity, peace, and kind of a quiet strength. And here's what I notice in myself. When it's the spirit, I feel calm. Even if it's hard, I feel invited, not pushed, kind of like I'm being pulled in a direction. It usually comes after prayer or during but, but not before. Like a very anxious spell, and it aligns with love, not with fear. And usually my anxiety, my anxieties are driven by fear. So. If it's aligned with love, then that's definitely the spirit speaking. And something else that, just to note, and this is good practice for anybody that's listening is if you think about the spirit, you normally have a physical response. Does something happening in your body. And so it's really good to get very clear of what it feels like when it's the spirit versus your nervous system. So I have been able to get very clear about my nervous system because I've had emails from work, or I've had an interesting text from somebody, or somebody's makes a post and you know, for whatever reason, my nervous system gets activated. Right? And so. It's really helpful to start to notice and be very, very aware of what that feels like in your body. And the contrary to that is the feeling of the spirit and the promptings. And for me, usually is a very grounded feeling. It feels very like, like it, it usually happens when I'm in a very calm, centered space. So, and I have never experienced it when it's coming from. From fear. So one time I'm just gonna you an example. When my kids were little, I was in the other, I had, I had a newborn baby, like maybe a month old, two months old, and I had him sitting in a car seat and I was blow drying my hair and he was just outside the room. And one of my other boys, you know, were kind of playing there with him and not, you know, just kind of playing by him. And my blow dryer was going and I. Like, nothing was happening, nothing was anxious. A lot of noise was happening inside my brain with the blow dryer like in my ears. And all of a sudden I had this like very distinct, go check on your baby. And it, and it wasn't out of fear, it was very calm. And I was like, that's so weird. And it just one more time, like, go check on your baby. So I put my blow dry down and I stepped outside the bathroom, which is where he was sitting, and my other son had dropped a dime in his mouth and he was choking. And even in that moment, right, I could totally be panicking, but I didn't. I was. So calm. I knew exactly what to do. I picked him up, I put him over my arm. I hit him exactly where, like in the ba middle of the back where they had taught me to. The dime flew out and. Afterwards, my nervous system kicked in, right? Because then all of a sudden fear came to light and it was like, oh my gosh, that's so scary. That's so terrifying. He could have died. Like, do you see how my brain kind of like all of a sudden hijacked it? But in the moment, it came from a very grounded. Place it was very calm and even though it startled me, like I didn't get scared until after the fact. And so one of the ways to help you question and discern for yourself is to ask yourself some questions. Here's some main questions. Is this coming from fear or love? Because the spirit speaks in peace. Fear speaks an urgency. Your nervous system can feel the urgency. Ask yourself, if I knew everything was gonna be okay, would I still feel this way? Okay, so that's like one question, another question, what is my body doing? Scan yourself, like, is your, is your chest tight? Do you have racing thoughts? Are you fidgeting? Do you have shallow breathing? Most likely you're in team hyper. So before you act, you wanna breathe. Like, try and ground a little bit. Say to yourself, let's come back like, like we're, I'm safe. My missionary's safe before making a decision of what to do. And sometimes that's like, let's sleep on this and let's see, you know what tomorrow brings. I don't know if you're anything like me, but I, when it feels urgent, it's almost something I cannot. Stop. If I'm feeling like I need to contact the mission president, I have to really talk myself off that, ledge, and I have to like really like, okay, let's think about this. Like, let's calm down. I. And the, you know, one of the other reasons you always wanna do that is because you don't wanna project your own nervous system on, other people. Can it, wait, that's the third question. Can this wait. The spirit is not afraid of time. God's not panicking. So if it's truly from God, you can act on it later, after you've prayed, after you've regulated, after you've felt love again, safety again. If you feel like you have to act right now, this is a really good opportunity to check in. That might be your nervous system. And the fourth question I ask myself, what happens when I pray? This is big. If you pray and the emotion escalates, that's not the spirit. But if you pray and you feel a deep breath of peace, trust that, right? Always thinking about how is this interacting with me? How am I, how or what are my emotions doing? And it takes a lot of awareness and it takes a lot of time to practice this. I wanna give you a tool for regulating. Just something practical goal you can do in the moment. I've talked about it before. Put your hand on your heart, take a deep breath in, and as you exhale, you wanna whisper. I am safe. God is with me, and I have done that a ton. I am safe. God is with me. God is with my missionary. I am safe. God is with me. God is with my missionary. And the another one that I do is I'll put a hand on my heart and I'll say, I am safe. I trust God that he has this, and that really helps me kind of turn that over to him and like, demonstrate faith, but also it reassures my nervous system that I am. It starting to get back to regulation and it signals safety, and that part really invites the spirit in. You're creating this little sacred pocket of stillness in your body, and that is often where discernment comes. Okay, so what happens when you get it wrong? Because let's be honest, sometimes you're gonna get it wrong. You're gonna act from fear, or you're gonna wait too long and you, you're gonna wish you hadn't. But that's okay. This is what we're here to do, is to practice. And God doesn't require a perfect discernment to guide you. He works with your intention. I think God's really good at meeting us where we are and he knows where we are in our growth. He knows what we can hear, and I feel like he does a masterful job of, you know, meeting us and, you know, giving us things that we need even when there are things that we don't think we need. So this is what I wanna leave you today. Your nervous system's not your enemy. It's trying to keep you safe. The spirit is your companion, and it speaks clearest when you're in team resilient. So if you practice soothing your body and you'll find that the whisper becomes a little bit easier to hear, hear, or a feeling gets a little bit more clear and you don't have to figure it all out all at once, you just, if you start to take. Some pauses. Check in and ask yourself, is this fear or is this love? All right, you guys, I'm so grateful that you joined me today. It really does mean the world to me. And if this episode has helped you and you wanna share it with another missionary mom or just another mom you can kind, you can come find me on Instagram. It's in the show notes and tell me how you're learning to tune into your own inner knowing what you've learned about your nervous system. And if you are interested in additional tools like this, I am gonna be launching the Missionary Mom Academy. It's gonna be my coaching space where we go deeper into nervous system work, emotional resilience, and spiritual discernment. And hopefully I'm gonna have that ready by July. So if you would love to join me. There is in my show notes, there is a link to my email. Send me an email and I will put you on our wait list. Alright everybody, I hope you have a great week and I will see you next time. Bye-bye.