Processing Your Emotions; Part 2

Last week, we heard a story about allowing yourself space to process emotions! Today we talk about not letting those emotions totally rule the world! Join me, Danielle Stinespring, as we dive into emotional intelligence again this week. 

Transcript

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INTRODUCTION

Hey guys! I am coming at you today with "emotional health part two". If you missed last week I highly recommend you go back and listen. It's only about a 20 minute episode and it's got the backstory, that I'm actually going to be using quite a bit today, so I highly recommend you go and take a listen real quick and then we'll dive into this, this  portion. 

So why are we talking about emotional health again? Well, because I think it's important, and it's actually going to be a pretty big part of the "Hey There" brand, and what I'm kind of going after in the season. It's important to me and it's a huge part of my story and my own journey. I'm not going to talk about my journey today, but I did want you to know that emotional health is near and dear to my heart and so that's why we spend some time on it. 

So today, let's just refresh that the big takeaway from last week was to allow yourself, first of all, to completely identify your emotions and be comfortable with them, not shove them or be ashamed of them or pretend they don't exist. And then second of all, it was to actually allow Jesus into that process with you, not to hide them, or to hinder him from them, but to be real. So we're actually going to open that up a little bit more because I kind of ended up on a cliffhanger, and I want to go back to that a little bit. Hey. Everett, our son, and Juliet our daughter are going to know how to be comfortable with big emotions. They're not going to have fear, or shame or embarrassment surrounding their big emotions. That's the goal, anyway, that's one of my big parenting goals. They won't be afraid of their own big emotions and they won't be afraid of those of other people, that's really one of my goals as a parent, and if you don't have goals as a parent, then I think just hit pause on this podcast and go get with Jesus and somebody who's doing the parenting thing really well and actually make some goals because you don't have a target you're gonna miss it every time. That was free. 

Here we go. One of my goals is to raise emotionally healthy adults, not just well-behaving children. In fact, my goal isn't to raise well-behaving children, it's to raise competent wise, emotionally-healthy, grounded, kind, brave adults who aren't afraid or ashamed to be fully alive and fully human. And part of being human, if you didn't know, is having emotions. If you weren't aware part of your humanity is having emotions. He didn't come to create robots. He didn't say I want, I want perfect acting little minis, he didn't actually do that. He actually loves you right in the middle of humanity, it's how Jesus chose to come. He planted himself right in the middle of it, not to extract us from it, or to extract it from us, but to actually join us in it! That's crazy! Pause on that thought for a second that Jesus became flesh. He didn't despise it, he made himself one with it. He eliminated sin and he eliminated shame and fear and death and all of that. But he didn't eliminate humanity. He didn't completely eradicate humanity. No, he actually just got rid of the stuff that was killing us. So your job isn't actually to beat humanity out of yourself. It's to get comfortable with it. Yep. Part of my journey over the last year has been to get comfortable with my humanity to actually be really okay with my weakness and my humaneness. And that's part of your job to is to be okay with being human. So that from that place, you can walk, shame, free right up to the throne of grace and say, "this is where I really am not where I think you want me to be, or where the world wants me to be or where I for whatever reason have decided I should be, but no, this is where I actually am today. In this moment, I am a mess". Actually talk to the Father about where you truly are, at any given moment of any given day.  To say, "I'm a mess right now. I'm uncomfortable right now, I'm hurting right now. I'm angry right now." Because if we have shrouded all of that stuff in shame, then we won't ever actually be free to walk to the only one who can help us through it, we won't be able to walk right up to him and say this is where I am. See, that's what intimacy is, it's letting people see the realness of yourself, of your humanity, of being vulnerable enough to share your true insides with another person. Here's my insides, here's everything that's going on inside of me. I love, I think it was Danny silk that coined the phrase (maybe not maybe he just used it) "intimacy is into me see." I'm gonna let you see inside of me. I'm actually going to be okay to say, "hey you hurt me. Or hey I'm hurting" right? 

And God is the only one who knows it all already. He already knows every possible thing there is to know about you. He's as intimate as it can get. But when we open up and say, "Hey, this is where I really am today. Right now, I want you, God, I want you to see what's actually going on inside of me." I feel like when I do that, he takes a huge sigh of relief like, "Oh yeah,  there's my girl. I already saw you, thank you for allowing me to get to see you". The choice of my vulnerability and my intimacy is actually a gift to the One who knows me more intimately than I know myself. He already knows it, but my choice to engage him in it is a gift to Him. 

So, when we actually get real with ourselves about our emotions, and then we get real with him about our emotions, we create a beautiful space, where we don't feel like we have to pretend that we got it all together. And that is where he can truly heal the hurts and process the pain, and guide you through forgiveness, or anger or disappointment or bitterness, or grief or sadness, etc. But if you're still being fake about them or you're just not dealing with them, then you can't ever do that. And then that becomes the place where you get to be vulnerable with other people -- with people in your life with yourself, to get out of your pit so that you can get people out of their pits. 

Okay, so, processing all the way through Everett's sadness, from the last episode required two things really, it required him to be able to identify what was going on inside them and if you listen to the episode you can tell that a four year old was able to go, Ah, I'm feeling sad. And I think a lot of times, as a 32 year old, I struggle to go what's going on in front of me right now, but he knew. So it required him to identify what was going on and it also required a safe place for someone bigger than him to hold him to not pacify it not numb it, not into it for him, or get to the end of the quickly but to allow him to give the emotion, the space, and the time I didn't need it. 

Okay, so that's a recap from last week but now, what is the difference between giving your emotion, free space and full time and wallowing, and letting them control you?Because you certainly can't stuff your emotions and pacify them, or just deny them a voice that you also can't wallow in them. So this is where that incredible advice from an amazing friend and mentor of mine is so helpful. I sent her an SOS text last week, and she just quickly shot back and was like, "put your emotions in the backseat where they belong. They get a voice and not a choice." 

You guys, this analogy will set you free. Okay, your emotions get a voice in the backseat of a car. if my kids, if Everett, and Juliet are riding in the backseat of my car, they get to tell me when they're hungry when they need to go to the bathroom, etc. But they don't get to tell me that they only want chick fil a. I get to decide where we go and how we get there but they get to tell me what's going on from the backseat. I can't shove them in the trunk. That's not okay, that's kind of what we talked about last week and in our recap. But if they're sitting in the front seat, that's super dangerous. The trunk is child abuse, the front seat is dangerous for everyone involved, someone is going to get hurt. 

So if your emotions are ruling your world internal or external world -- which by the way, if your emotions are ruling your internal world they're actually ruling your external world too, you might just not know it yet. Put a pin in that one we'll save that for future episodes. But if they're ruling your world and they need to come under your authority, you have been given the authority to manage everything that Jesus has given you, you need to tell your emotions who's in charge here. And did you know that you actually get to choose which emotions you feed and which ones you starve? A wise person will know if I give an emotion, a lot of brain space. A lot of my time, a lot of my attention, if I give that emotion a lot of space, it's going to grow. But if you deny it space in your brain, if you deny it thought patterns, if you deny that emotion, any of your time, it's going to starve. So now you get to choose which emotions you magnify because that which we place our attention on grows. It's why worship is so critical, because when we place our attention on him in worship, he gets magnified not that we can make him any bigger, but he looks bigger in our circumstances. So whenever you choose to magnify whatever you choose to focus on what do you choose to give your attention to is going to grow. 

So your emotions act like a check engine light. You've got to take the car to be serviced if my check engine light came on and then I drove around for six months without doing anything no oil change nothing, it's gonna blow up on me. That's not good, the check engine light tells us what's going on inside. Here's a fun story for you. And not one that I'm too excited to share but I'm going to do it. So last week I had this beautiful parenting when I jumped on my microphone to tell you guys about it and unpack it as it as it really served as a reflection of what we do in adulthood, and that was awesome. And then this week I had a crazy parenting fail, and now I'm hopping on the microphone to share that too. 

So, today I completely freaked out When Everett was pushing back pretty hard on having room time. If you know the stinesprings, then you know that we are big fans of letting our children have their own space in their rooms every afternoon. So Juliet is still napping so it's pretty easy to put her to sleep she stays asleep, but Everett will sometimes nap and sometimes he will do what we call "room time", he doesn't have to sleep but he does need to stay in there, usually for about an hour, and he will read a book, or he will play with Lego or he will build a tower or whatever he wants to do we can do but it needs to be in his room, and it just serves as a reset for all of us for the day. We all have free time we turn off the lights in the house it gets really peaceful and quiet, and we all kind of need that. And Everett is my extrovert, big time like a huge extrovert. And so for him being alone is a pain worse than death and I actually feel like I need to teach my little extrovert how to be alone, how to be okay, how to self entertain and and play independently and all of those things. So anyway, again, maybe another podcast for another day but he was pushing back, big time, having a hard time  -- we're talking about major meltdown kicking screaming the whole shebang. And when he's doing that it means I know he needs a nap but he really was, he was pushing back kicking screaming the whole deal. 

Okay. And so, I felt myself getting really angry, really angry. I was not living my best moment I was freaking out, I was telling him he was gonna go to his room and was not having any pateiencce and was just really frustrated. he could feel it, I could feel it, I was getting mad. So here's the deal that emotion is not his fault. It's really easy to say, "Well, he was behaving badly so I got angry. So, he is the one who made me angry." And we can maybe rationalize that no a four year old didn't make me angry but if this was your boss and they did something to you and then you were angry, you can be justified in there, your anger is actually their fault, here's the truth. It's not his fault. It's actually a light signaling something going on here inside of you. Something is going on here inside of me. DANIELLE! ding ding ding check engine light, needing service! something is going on inside of me! 

Because you know what a four year old can't make me feel angry. He's not that powerful, I was choosing to get angry. So your best friend can actually make you jealous. you chose to get jealous. That guy that wronged you. He didn't make you get angry. He's not that powerful you chose to get angry. Right? Let that sink in.

So, whatever's going on inside of my heart, my soul My brain, my hormones my life, my circumstances, or whatever it is -- that thing needs attention. And my anger is showing up and going, "Something's happening, you're you haven't dealt with something and it needs your attention". That anger is a little red flag waving going we need a we need to work on something here. And if you keep driving this bus, eventually, the engine is gonna fall apart. So when I'm nailing it as a parent, which is not all the time. I will actually try to identify that feeling right in the moment, and I will think in my brain, I will say, "I'm feeling angry, that's interesting". And it almost kind of like it identifies the emotion and then it sort of disempowers in that moment so that I can identify it, Call it valid, call it real, and then deal with it at another time.

But this is something you can actually do in your conversations with adults too. "I'm agree, that's interesting." That's letting me know that something's going on. what's going on inside of me? It's not whatever the other person is doing it's actually what's going on inside of your world. 

So at that point, you have a responsibility, you have to identify your feelings, your emotions, then identify the need. Now, what's the actual need identify the source of the feeling, I'm feeling angry. What is the need. Well, today I realized I'm feeling angry because I have a lot on my plate. I have a lot going on and I'm feeling overwhelmed and whenever I feel overwhelmed, my stress meter is extra high and my fuse is extra short, so I'm feeling overwhelmed I'm feeling like I can't accomplish everything I need to accomplish today. And so Everett not having room time was triggering me to feel angry that I wasn't gonna have the space I needed to do the things I wanted to get done, but I had to identify the actual source. 

Okay, identify the source of the need the actual need because you might think well I just need the time. Okay, let's go a little bit deeper, why do you need, because I'm feeling. Why do you feel overwhelmed? Oh, because I haven't had my quiet time today and I know when I have my quiet time I feel like a better human or. Oh, because I haven't been sleeping, go deeper and deeper and deeper until you find the actual need, and then that's the place that you get to take it somewhere safe and process it shame free with the lover of your soul, the one who can go I'm here. Let's walk through this. Let's process this thing together. And sometimes that's gonna take outside help, it might take a friend to walk you through it. It might take a counselor, it might take journaling, whatever it is for you, but knowing that you first have to identify what is going on inside of your heart, not to show your emotions in the trunk and say, Nope, not gonna deal follow that up I don't have emotions I don't have needs I am not weak, I am not, I am perfect, whatever, but I can't let them rule me and drive the car, be in the front seat controlling how my day goes, That's not okay either. 

So, do a little check on yourself today. Ask yourself, have I been shoving my emotions in the trunk, bottling up, not dealing, denying their existence? Driving wherever I want to drive and not dealing with what's going on inside of the trunk?  have I been ignoring the check engine light trying to notify me? Have I been unable to name a process or manage my own emotions, or have I been letting my emotions drive or are my days completely dictated by whether or not I'm feeling happy or sad or angry or mad. 

Are my days dictated by what other people have done to me? Am I a victim to my own circumstances or am I actually able to say, these are my emotions?  I'm going to name them. I'm going to process them well. I'm going to own them and take ownership for them. And I'm not gonna let them ruin me. 

Step one for you today. Your only takeaway is to determine, have your emotions been driving the car, or are they shoved somewhere in the trunk. Once you can identify how you've been viewing your emotions, then you actually get to step into healthy management, and emotional intelligence. So, first do this check, and then jump back on here with me and let's talk about healthy promoting again since again, it's one of my favorite topics. I will more than likely be doing a emotional health part three. In the future, but for now just identify how are you processing your emotions today. 

Alright guys, I'm gonna hop off of here and go have dinner with my family. I'm so grateful that you chose to join me today. Hopefully there was something in it for you today some takeaway something that you caught that you can apply right now that's going to help you to be the healthiest best most joyful and abundant version of yourself as we're all just trying to go out there and live our best life. Hey, if you enjoy this episode or you have any questions for me or you want to be a part of the dialogue that's going on on my Hey There Instagram. The handle is @heythere_itsDanielle, I'm so grateful for you and I will catch you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai