Responding, Not Reacting 🦋🤍

You don’t have to react the way you used to.

Healing gives you the power to pause… and choose differently. Day 20 — Responding, Not Reacting 🤍

#40DaysToWholeness

#BeautifulMe

#HealingJourney

#EmotionalHealing

#SelfControl

#MentalHealthMatters

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Father, we come before you today with thankful hearts and with mouths filled with praise. God, you are amazing, you are beautiful. How excellent is your name in all the years. Father. Thank you for the journey. Thank you for keeping us in the words of Sinash. You are way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper. That is who you are. Thank you, God, for being who you are. Our Ebenezer. Thank you, oh God, for being our restorer. Thank you, God, for being our friend, our teacher, our confidant. Thank you, oh God, for being healer. Thank you, oh God. For being our renewer, if there is such a word. God, you are just awesome. And we just big you up. We give you glory. We give you honor. We give you praise. Father God, we salute you. We respect you, sir. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, O God, for who you are. And because of who you are, O God, we worship you. We adore you. Father, this morning we join with the elders and with all of heaven's hosts. And we cry, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy are you, Lord. Hallowed be your holy name. Our King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Alpha Omega. Beginning, end. Hallelujah. Your author. You are our strength, God. Thank you. Provider. You are our source. Thank you. You are our constant. Thank you. Hallelujah. You are the solid rock on which we stand this morning. You are our anchor. Thank you, Jesus. Hallelujah. And today, God, we are truly, truly, truly grateful. Hallelujah. Thank you, God. Thank you, oh God, for the journey that you have taken us on. Thank you this morning, Daddy, for revealing what still needs healing. Thank you, oh God, for not leaving us the way you found us. Hallelujah. Thank you, oh God, for coming to our rescue. Time and time and time again. Hallelujah. We are grateful. Father, we ask you this morning for forgiveness. Forgive us for the times that we have doubted you. Forgive us, oh God, for the times that we've allowed fears, oh God, and other voices to whisper in our ears, mighty God. Forgive us, oh God. For the moments, oh God, when we allow anxiety to take over and panic. When your word already tells us to be anxious for nothing, but in everything, in prayer and supplication and thanksgiving to make our request known unto you. You also tell us, tell us, God, that you have not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power and of love and of a sound mind. Forgive us. And this morning, oh God, we take our rightful place as joint heirs of the kingdom. Hallelujah. We take up our kingdom authority this morning, Abba Father. And we step away from anxiety and fear, oh God, and doubt. And we declare this morning that we have the mind of Christ. Hallelujah. We are sons and daughters of the King, the one King of Kings. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Father, we thank you. Today we receive your word in 2 Timothy 1, verse 7. For you have not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. We receive that today, Abba Father. And we declare this morning that we have a sound mind. We declare this morning that we have the power to pause. We have the ability to respond with wisdom, mighty God. Father, may the spirit of discernment sit on us, mighty God, like never before. Hallelujah. May we be able, oh God, like the sons of Ishakar, to discern times and seasons, and not just to discern the times and the seasons, but God, but to know how to respond, oh God, in the times and different seasons. Hallelujah. Father, teach us how to respond from healing instead of reacting from pain. Slow us down, Daddy. Slow us down in moments, oh God, where our emotions rise quickly and help us, Abba Father, to choose peace over impulsive reaction. Daddy, we give you all the glory. We give you all the praise this morning. We ask you, Daddy, that you will go before us, behind us, beside us, and all around us. Cover us, mighty God. Cover our sons and our daughters, Abba Father. God, I pray this morning that you will seal even the very infant, the very infant, the child that is still in the womb, Abba Father. I pray, God, that you will seal them, Abba Father, and that none of the parents' moms or dads' trauma, oh God, will spill over on them in the wound, womb. Sorry. And as you're doing that, I pray, oh God, that you will continue your work in the mother, in the father, in the aunts, and in the uncles, in the environments that this child, oh God, will be brought up into. I pray, oh God, that you will place a seal even on the baby, oh God, who is on breasts. Because so much is passed down, oh God, to them from mom. I pray, oh God, for healing for that mother this morning. And I pray, oh God, for healing for the generation. Hallelujah. Restore them, revive them, renew them, refresh them, anoint them afresh this morning, mighty God. Hallelujah. Cover our young people, our teens, Abba Father. They are struggling so much. I pray, mighty God, that you will seal them. I bind up every principalities and every powers, every rulers of darkness, every spiritual wickedness in high places. I bind up every powers, every weapons that is forming against our young people. And I declare, oh God, that it will not prosper in the name of Jesus. Because even right now, God, you're gathering heaven's army, and you have given them charge over every single one of our young girls and our young boys. I pray, God, that you will seal their minds above Father. Hallelujah. I declare this morning that they have the mind of Christ this morning. I bind up every spirit of anxiety and depression and frustration. Mighty God, in the name of Jesus Christ, this morning, I bind up every spirit of suicidal ideation, every spirit of self-harm, every spirit of low self-esteem, every spirit of I am not good enough. My God, hallelujah, in the name of Jesus. And I declare this morning that our children, oh God, they will walk in the liberty of that which you have called them as healed, as sons and daughters, royal diadems, prince and princesses. Hallelujah of the kingdom. I thank you this morning, oh God, that we are standing and we're moving from a place of victory. And we thank you, God, in Jesus' name. Amen. Hallelujah. Thank you, God. Yesterday we talked about emotional triggers. By the way, good morning. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Of course, you know, it's your girl Monique Anderson. And welcome to the Beautiful Me Empowerment Ministry Podcast. Amen. This is the space where we heal and we learn and we grow together. Remember that beautiful me is a movement. You are beautiful me. I am beautiful me. We are beautiful me because God has somehow taken our ashes, the ashes from our past, the ashes in our lives, and He has made beautiful with them. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Woo! That was a moment. So yesterday we talked about emotional triggers. And we learned that sometimes our reactions are not just about the present moment, but they are connected to past wounds. Yeah. So uh today we're gonna take it a little step further because the goal is not just to recognize triggers, but the goal is also to learn how to respond differently when they happen. And this is where real transformation begins because healing is not just what happens in prayer, but healing is also what happens in real life moments because life is life in, you know, the conversation, the disagreement, the misunderstanding, the moment you feel ignored, rejected, or disrespected, those moments right there, that's where growth is seriously tested. And I made reference the other day to that meme that they have where uh it talks about that moment when you are responding to that text message or even that email and the Holy Spirit have you delete the whole thing, right? That moment right there, and you know, we are tested uh in relationships, we're tested at work, we're we're tested when we're having conversations, and you know, it is very important that you we are able to realize, recognize our triggers, and even how to respond in those moments, the pause, right? So what is the difference between a reaction and response? A reaction is immediate and it's emotional, so it is automatic, you know. We talk about the brain's alarm system that for some persons who have experienced trauma, your brain's alarm system it is always on high alert. And so the tiniest of things, the moment you feel triggered, the moment a trigger happens, that alarm system can move from a six where it is always at to an eight or even a ten. And so you react from that place immediately, right? And that is from that response is from our emotions, so it is it's fast, it's automatic, and again, it is often driven by past pain. A response, however, is intentional. So a response is slower, it is thoughtful, and it is guided by wisdom. Reaction says I feel it, so I express it immediately. But response says I feel it, but I choose how to express it, and I walk my students through a grounding technique, right? And over time, like it doesn't come automatic. We have to ask the Holy Spirit to just step in and to just teach us. I have spoken to the Holy Spirit on many occasions, and I say, I said, Holy Spirit, I am teachable, teach me is one thing you know. Sometimes we ask the Holy Spirit or we ask God for some things that we have to be careful what we ask for, because what He does is He sends a trial or a test, that's how He teaches us, and sometimes we don't like the test, you know, or the trial, but that is how He teaches us, and so I teach my kids the grounding technique, so and this might not be the order that it actually goes uh falls in, but I always ask them to identify five things, so we're using our senses, so it's five things that you can see. So in the moment when there's a trigger and you want to respond emotionally from emotions, I say, All right, what are think about it? Five things that you can see, then four things that you can touch, then three things that you can did. I say see already, three things that you can hear, two things that you can smell, one thing that you can taste, or on therapy Tuesday, we practice box breathing, so we inhale for four, we hold it for four, we exhale for four, and then we just relax for four, and those are some techniques that you can use so you don't respond, you don't react, right, in the moment, but you wait, you feel it, and then you choose how to express it. And James 1 verse 19 says, Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Thank you, Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit would bring something back to me, you know, ladies. Sometimes men like we should know ourselves and we should know our triggers, and I know that for a lot of men, instead of addressing the issue immediately, and I know it can be a pain because as women, we are very emotional. I want you to know that we're more emotional than men, and sadly, it might very well be because of culture, you know, where men are taught not to feel because feeling is weakness, but we are more emotional than men, and so we tend to act immediately or we want a response immediately, but men they are going to delay the response and they're probably going to walk away, and it is good sometimes because when they walk away, they they get a moment to think, to think through their responses, and then they instead of responding from emotions, anger, because by no anger boiling up, because sometimes us as women we can get very loud. So instead of responding from that place and saying things that are hurtful that we don't mean, they walk away. And when I was in my marriage, I had a big problem with this because I felt like he should answer me no right now, and so and he would ignore me, he would take a walk, and then he would want to come respond to me the way when he wants it, not when me want it. But like I said, the Holy Spirit has taught me a lot over time, and he is still teaching me that sometimes it is better for them to walk away and to calm down, and we need to practice that because the scripture gives us a framework for responding, it says, quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, and there's a pause, and that pause is very powerful. Them walking away is a pause, it's very powerful because it creates space between emotion and action, and in that space, wisdom enters. Yeah? Proverbs 29, verse 11 also tells us fools give full vent to their rage, but the wise bring calm in the end. Wisdom is not the absence of emotion, but it is rather the ability to manage the emotion. Yeah, and if we look at it from a psychological perspective, and we talk about the power of the pause, when we are triggered, the brain's emotional center, we talk about it the other day, the amygdala it activates quickly, and this can cause an immediate emotional reaction. But when we pause, when we do box breathing, some of us walk away. Sometimes, as I said, you can do the grounding techniques, so we pause, and you will see that the thinking part of your brain, which is the prefrontal frontal cortex, you engage it, and this allows us to process the situation and to regulate our emotions and choose a more balanced response. So, ladies, as of today, when your partner, your husband, or your boyfriend, or even your friends, your male friends, even your dads and your sons, when you see them walking away, don't get angry, don't get all up in your feelings. And when they come back, you say, I don't want to hear nothing. When I wanted a response, you did a response. Listen, hey, Holy Spirit helping us this morning. Thank you, Lord. Alright, so remember that they are regulating, and maybe that is something that is something. Something that's a page that we can take out of their books, and I don't mean that you should accept sometimes when they ignore us for days. Yeah, all right. It is okay for the moment, you know, a couple hours, take a walk, take a breather, so you can engage your prefrontal cortex, process the situation, regulate your emotion, and choose a more balanced response that is taking back control, and that also is growth, and of course, it is regulation. Amen. All right, we are choosing spirit over flesh, and Galatians 5 talks about walking in the spirit versus reacting in the flesh because the flesh reacts impulsively, but the spirit produces love, peace, patience, and self-control. Responding instead of reacting is evidence that the spirit is working in you. It means that you're no longer led, or you're no longer being led by old patterns, but you are now being led by transformation, and I can make it practical for you. Again, instead of reacting immediately when triggers happen, I want you to try this. So, this is another technique I'm giving you. Pause, breathe, ask, then choose. Pause, do some box breathing, ask, then choose. So pause means we're not going to respond immediately when you breathe, box breathing, inhale for four through your nostrils, hold it for four, release for four through your mouth, and just hold it there, just relax that calms your body, and then ask, What am I really feeling? And then we can choose to respond from healing and not from a hurt. So instead of snapping when you feel disrespected, pause, pause and say, you know, that didn't sit well with me. Can we talk about it? Yeah. Instead of you know, shouting and getting angry, and that's growth. And celebrate. Listen, you need to celebrate your growth, people, and it doesn't have to be big things, it might just be writing a letter to yourself, amen. All right, your reaction can either reinforce old wounds or reflect new healing. Every moment you choose to respond, instead of react, you are rewiring your mind, you are strengthening your emotional regulation, and you are aligning with God's transformation. Wholeness is built in these moments, yeah? It's not just in prayer, but also in practice. So today I want you to think: where do I tend to react quickly? What situations trigger strong emotional responses? What would it look like for me to pause in those moments? And just remember that growth happens in awareness and actions. All right, Father, thank you for giving us the ability to grow. Help us to pause in moments where we would normally react. Teach us to respond with wisdom, patience, and peace. Let our lives reflect the healing you're doing in us. Continue, Daddy, to make us whole in Jesus' name. Amen. Just remember that healing shows up in real life, and every moment is an opportunity to choose growth. And tomorrow, of course, we dig a little deeper into emotional maturity and stability. You don't have to react the way you used to. Healing gives you the power to pause and choose differently. God bless you. What good? Just remember that I love you, but God loves you even more.