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Ep 13: Transforming the Emotional Rollercoaster to an Emotional Revolution
28 Plays2 months ago
In this episode of the Aligned Living podcast, Dr. Autumn unpacks the power of emotions and their impact on our lives, challenging the notion that they are just fleeting feelings. She reveals how emotions shape our decisions, influence our well-being, and why embracing them is an often overlooked key to personal growth. You'll also learn some practical tools for building emotional resilience, plus how aligning your emotional health with your values can lead to a more fulfilled life.
Intro and Outro Music Credit: Savage by Beat Mekanik, Free Music Archive, License type: CC BY
Please visit: www.autumnswain.com
Contact: [email protected]
IG: @drautumnswain
FB: Autumn Alena Swain
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Transcript
Introduction to Dr. Autumn and Align Living Podcast
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Speaker
Hello there. I'm Dr. Autumn, leadership consultant, wellness coach, author, and I'm incredibly grateful to be your host of the Align Living podcast.
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I'm here to equip you with the tools, inspiration, and practical tips necessary to lead a life of wholeness and pursue greater Shalom in your life and that of your families, teams, and communities.
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My mission is to empower you to lead from a place of holistic wellbeing.
Moving Beyond Fatigue and Frustration
00:00:39
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It's time to say peace out to the fatigue, fog, and frustration of living in a place that lacks abundant wellbeing. Join me as we embark on a comprehensive exploration of spiritual, physical,
00:00:56
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mental, emotional, social, and economic well-being all within the comforting embrace of one podcast.
Emotions and Overall Well-being
00:01:10
Speaker
Hey, good people. Dr. Autumn here and welcome back to the Aligned Living Podcast. I'm really excited today to have the opportunity to chat with you about emotions, okay, and really more specifically changing the narrative around how we view and manage and maximize these emotions. Because let me tell you,
00:01:30
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What I have discovered in, you know, just growing my knowledge in all of these areas of of health and wellness is that emotions are not exempt when it comes to how they are super intimately connected with every other aspect of our well-being. And if we don't acknowledge this, like I strongly believe that part of this gap, these gaps I'm always talking about in a line living,
00:01:53
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between our desires and our reality or maybe even your intentions and your actual implementation of the things that you know that you want to do but maybe aren't doing like are really really related to understanding emotions and understanding that emotions are are part they're expressed throughout our entire body like physiologically they're intimately connected with our thought processes and I'm going to talk more about the specifics of this and I think your mind might be blown a little bit um because a lot of this is things that like I'm like wow I did not know that and this is so relevant to our day-to-day life and it can often you know I would argue be a big part of the missing piece of you just like living the life that you want to live is like understanding the space and the reason I start with talking about changing the narrative is because
00:02:39
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you know, I think narratives really, really influence like how we prioritize things, like
Six Areas of Holistic Well-being
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how we view things. And so if you don't think that they're that relevant, they're just like there and it's just something you just live with. um That's a very, very, um you know, it's not the best perspective, right? Like I want to help you see or change your paradigm around just understanding that, you know, emotional regulation skills, emotional wellness, like is really, really connected.
00:03:07
Speaker
to all aspects of how we live our life. So, um, just, just stick with me because I think like, you might be thinking like, it's not really a goal in mind to learn more about emotional wellness. Well, let me tell you, like, if you want to be more physically well, if you want to be, you know, have, you know, healthier relationships, understand social connections better, if you want to, you know, impact your thought processes in life, if you want to learn how to manage stress well, if you want to learn how to, um, you know,
00:03:35
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show up well when you don't feel like it. If you want to you know navigate the really tough emotions like sadness and anger and grief well and keep moving forward, like this is like really important information for you. So thank you for plugging in and I welcome you to this journey because I'm on it with you as well.
Emotional Health Research and Mind-Body Connection
00:03:53
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um Those of you who you know aren't new to this podcast or my Line Living membership community,
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um When I was ah doing my dissertation research like and looking at the holistic well-being for leaders and communities, like I knew that there was these six areas of focus that were all essential and integrated in this like more complete like pursuit of wholeness and in our journey towards Shalom.
00:04:17
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um which to me is just this like beautiful picture of wholeness. and I started out in community development and I was working with leaders, and so I wanted to identify these areas that were not only relevant to individuals, but also communities. and so um For me, those six areas are your physical health, spiritual, mental, emotional, social, and economic. Now, the interesting thing about this pursuit of a land living, my argument is that if one area is out of whack, it's going to be hard to make progress in the other areas because they are connected.
00:04:44
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imagine them like imagine these six areas however you want to imagine it being physically linked and so if one is suffering it's going to negatively impact the others and you will see that today just how relevant that is when we start talking about emotional wellness and how it will significantly impact these other areas of your life so um with that being said i just want to like jump right in but i wanted to give you a little bit of background there so interestingly you know as i was doing my doctoral research um There were some spaces I already just had like a lot a lot of knowledge on.
Emotions as Decision-Making Tools
00:05:16
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right like Generally, I could probably talk for hours and hours off the cuff about physical health and spiritual formation and social wellness. But when it came to emotional um health, i've actually it's been such a joy to um continue to dig deeper, even after I finished all my schooling, right just to dig deeper and deeper in understanding emotional health and even mental wellness. right and
00:05:37
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the mind-body connection as it relates to emotions as well. And there's some amazing experts out there that know way more than I do. But my understanding, um what what I want to present you with is a ah really practical starting point for like moving in a really positive direction in your life, right? Because, you know, you're listening in probably because you want to feel better. You want to prioritize your self-care. You're like, man, I'm just like running myself ragged and I'm just not leaving any margin for my health. Well, um If you want to be more physically toned or more energized, right? Like you often have to fit, you know, have intentional goals in your physical health. But I'm telling you to make certain progress, maybe, you know, giving some margin to your emotional wellness and even understanding
00:06:23
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Applying even a couple things you learned today in this episode might be the difference um from where you are to where you want to be like it might be a big part of bridging that gap and bridging gaps is like what a line living is all about and I'm so excited to keep talking about them if you're not following me on Instagram like please do at dr autumn um at Dr. Autumn Swain at DR Autumn Swain because um I use a lot of like visual and other types of analogies to just break down, you know, how we could move through these gaps in life so that I can in some way help you move a little bit closer to where you want to be. So with that being said, um this having this healthy narrative around emotions is so essential because that's the only way you're gonna give space to growing in your emotional wellbeing, right? Like if you don't
00:07:10
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evaluate or see its importance, you're not going to prioritize it. So um emotions are just way more relevant to your day to day life and how well you live than you likely realize. So um they're just like impacting us constantly at all times. So you will see that in a minute here.
00:07:26
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But one thing i I was like blown away when I
Understanding the Emotional Brain
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learned this. But for example, did you know that all our external input goes through the limbic part of our brain? That's the emotional part of our brain before it gets to our prefrontal cortex, which is the thinking part of our brain. So basically, this emotional part of our brain receives information before the thinking part does, okay? Prefrontal cortex is is really, really responsible for like,
00:07:50
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navigating the consequences of our actions and problem solving and delayed gratification and all of this thinking stuff, okay? So you have input coming in. It's going through the emotional part of your brain first. And so, like, there is no way around it. Like, you cannot ignore your emotional expressions, your emotional stewardship, your emotional wellbeing, because our thoughts are our personality. Like, our, most of our life, um our actions, what we do, what we think, our it Is our non-conscious our subconscious and our conscious thinking right combined with of course we have a body we have a spirit but if you think about your personality or day-to-day, you know choices and in the things that you're Doing like that's your non-conscious subconscious and conscious thinking. Okay. Now if your emotions are Like present before the thinking part
00:08:41
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imagine, like, how much our thoughts are informed by that. And so we really need to be aware. Self-awareness is something I think is so important on this journey. I'm actually going to devote other episodes to that entire com concept because it's that important. But um basically, this reality would just apply that attention given to emotions will impact our thoughts then, right? And therefore, our actions, okay? So again, that gap, like, why do I talk about this later?
00:09:09
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because the spiritual formation part of our wellbeing is really connected to emotions. Because think about it, like, why do I, and this is when I did so much health coaching, people always say, I don't do the things I wanna do and I'm doing the things I don't wanna do, okay? there's the There's a gap right there. So if we know that our emotions are connected to our thoughts and therefore actions, and you know that it plays a role in that question, like, why do I do the things I don't wanna do? And why am I not doing the things I wanna do or need to do or know I should do?
00:09:38
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Okay. So I want to capture capture this concept of narrative early on, you know, in this episode, because there's this barrier in front of us in this pursuit. So we just need to understand it because there certainly are parts of our society that have embraced an unhealthy narrative around emotions. Okay. And this narrative just negates the importance of working on our emotional wellbeing, which is is such an essential part of life real well-lived, you know, as as I said earlier.
00:10:03
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Now, uh, what's interesting, you know, when you start talking about this narrative is you probably heard somebody say, well, I'm just not very emotional or so-and-so is super like overly emotional. But I want to kind of debunk that for a second. Now, this is not a conversation around different personalities and some people like might Feel certain things more like deeply than others or whatnot. It's not I'm not really talking about that right now I'm talking about the physiological reality of what emotions are in our body and how they play a role in our actions because Every person okay, generally I'm speaking generally every person is has emotional expression taking place in every aspect of their being down to the cellular level, right? Like, that's how our bodies work. So, you know, somebody gets scared, their heart, you know, they experience ah an emotion of fear, their heart rate probably is gonna go up, right? Okay, it's just, it's part of how we are created. And then we all have equal access to all the emotions, okay? So,
00:11:04
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no one person is necessarily exempt from the ability to expression an emotion, right? Like we all could be sad at some point or happy at some point, right? um Just maybe you've suppressed a lot of them and I'm going to talk later on like super, super practical. Like I think it's six or seven areas that you should be really mindful of and you could probably identify at least one that you could work on growing in that has to do with how you are handling your emotions, but suppression is one of them, right? Something you should not do. um Now, a lot of this just has to do with, you know, when you talk about emotional health, it has to do with emotional regulation. All right, and I actually love um Dr. Becky's book, Good Inside, about parenting, because it applies to a lot of like adults living too, like her principles and like, oh, this would apply to any adults as well. But like, the the idea of emotional regulation is like super important because that has to do with like, how healthy
00:12:00
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We respond or versus react to things and um and even just our internal like thought processes and whatnot. So, you you know, maybe you had a a really solid childhood that encouraged the development of this healthy emotional regulation, or maybe you didn't, or maybe, you know, you could stand to like grow in this area a little bit. All could probably.
00:12:18
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um But it's just kind of understanding that. And then emotions generally are expressed or managed in and healthier ways when you are are willing to work on this emotional regulation. so um Okay, so let's just jump into this a little bit more.
00:12:37
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Um, for those that know me, I'm a big nerd when it comes to talking about nutrition and self-care and spiritual formation, okay? But as I mentioned previously, I really am falling in love pun intended for sure with this discovery of emotions and their role in wellbeing and relationships and this life well lived. Okay. But what I am finding so fascinating is how our bodies and emotions are so like tight, man. They're like,
00:13:13
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They're like the homies. like You can't separate them. and so um These emotions are just a significant part of us as our mind bodies, minds, and spirits. okay and God created us intentionally this way with all of these parts, so we need to give them all intention. They're all important right in order to find greater alignment.
00:13:31
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so um I will talk in a bit about some really, really practical tools for building emotional health and resilience, okay? Because you've heard me talk about stress management before, but a big part of coping well with stress because we can't avoid it. We're exposed to it all the time. Is this idea of emotional resilience? Is life changing? You might be like,
00:13:54
Speaker
not really picking up what I'm throwing down just yet, but I can't tell you how important it is to build your emotional resilience. So I'm gonna give you some super practical things that you could do um a little bit later on in this episode when, for example, your emotions are just so strong and things that could just really help your your body find inner calm, even when you're feeling a certain way. So if you're grieving, you can't make that grief go away overnight but you can help your body not be responding in a negative way to the stress of that grief, okay? Fascinating things, really practical that if you could grasp onto these because let me tell you when I went through some of the hardest times of my life I was
00:14:37
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exercising and praying and um eating well and doing all the things. I had support and I had community, but if your body is in fight or flight because of you know certain emotions causing stress and you're not helping your body find that inner calm, your body is going to have a negative response which could impact your health long-term. So you see like our emotions are helpful in our social wellness. They're important you know, to just our ability to pursue our dreams and, um you know, in our thought process, but it is super important to our physical health, okay? So let me share with you what I've found most helpful and interesting in this just journey towards greater wholeness, okay? When you're striving to make good decisions, what do we do?
00:15:27
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We take in necessary information and let that information inform our choices. Okay. So you have a big decision coming up. You're like, okay, let me like start writing some things down, the pros and cons of things. Like what's my next move going to be, you know, based on my goals and my plans, like I want to make a good decision here. So you take in this necessary information.
00:15:48
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Well, our emotions are super valuable information. but They're equipping us with knowledge, okay? And so emotions are the expression, simply put, of met or unmet needs, okay?
00:16:05
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so If your emotions are telling you that you have certain needs that are being met or unmet, that's really valuable information for navigating your life because they're they're telling you maybe where you need to focus or maybe, you know, if you understand that, oh, I'm responding in this unhealthy way because I have this unmet need and this is my emotional expression here.
00:16:29
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understanding that that's where that need is might help you try to fulfill or do something about that need in a healthier way so that your emotional expression isn't um going downhill a little bit in that moment, if you know what I mean. So the important part to note here is that emotions Um, this is a really important side note. You, they're not to trigger negative feelings of shame or guilt. Okay. That's like super, super important in this process. Like we want to elevate just the value of them when we handle them the right way. But, you know, historically, you know, from.
00:17:10
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As far back as you can go to present day today, like, you know, we know people that just will struggle with shame and guilt and these other things when you're not handling
Practical Tips for Emotional Regulation
00:17:21
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your emotions well. And so, um, this is just part of the awareness that I'm referring to. Okay. Like the emotions themselves aren't bad.
00:17:28
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But you got to be aware like if they're leading you into more negative places. okay So if you're feeling some of these things right now, just discover where this is coming from. right like Use the information to grow. It's like homework. And I know like we're all so busy with families and jobs and side hustles. and you know, all the personal growth journey and all of these things, but if you if this is relevant to everything else, then it might be worth taking some time to do some of that um deep work. The other encouraging thing for you to note that is if emotional regulation is a skill that could be nurtured and grown, then our level of emotional maturity needs to be addressed by asking the question, how well do I regulate my emotions?
00:18:17
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Okay, like it's a very simple question like how well am I regulating my emotions okay and we'll get to some like if you're not sure I'm going to ask you some specific questions in a minute here, but that's really encouraging because sometimes we just talk as part of the the negative narrative that's out there is like just your emotional.
00:18:38
Speaker
truth today is just how it is. It is what it is, but that's not true. Like your emotional reality today can improve tomorrow, okay? So how healthy is my foundation of emotional awareness and expression, okay? We're talking about how do I regulate my emotions? If emotions give us important information, then emotional health has to do with how well we respond to that information, okay? Because when you respond poorly,
00:19:07
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Or in other words, like this often plays out in reacting instead of thoughtfully responding. Okay. So you don't want to respond poorly. You want to thoughtfully respond. Um, then, you know, if, if you find yourself reacting, then you're lacking the emotional wellbeing. Okay. So again, this is hopeful though, because wherever you feel that you land on that spectrum, we all have room for growth, but that growth track has to do with awareness.
00:19:32
Speaker
and intention and execution. Now, if you have kids, you know, like a little thing could happen and then their emotional response is just way bigger than like the the thing that just happened. But again, that's regulation. But how often does that happen in life where something happens and it sends us on the spiral, right? Like this is a skill because we set out to teach our kids this or maybe you work with a team and you're trying to help a team or maybe it's relevant to your professional background or you're dealing with some family issues.
00:20:00
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or your personal issues yourself, again, like recognizing like this can change, okay?
Spiritual Formation and Emotional Health
00:20:07
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Now, why do I continue to say intention isn't enough? like This has been a common theme throughout all of these episodes that you can intend to do something, but there could be a huge gap from that intention to actual implementation. That's why the whole purpose of this is to give you some practical, tangible things that if you just do it, it will start to shorten that gap, okay? Because you could say, yes, my intentions are to do XYZ. But intention without a plan and implementation is
00:20:44
Speaker
It's going to get you nowhere, all right? Okay, so what I want to do for a second is address this gap, you know, because emotions are so real in us that if we don't understand the connection to our spiritual formation and our emotional health will kind of remain in this perpetual state of frustration when, you know, something comes up and we're dealing with some like harder emotions, okay?
00:21:10
Speaker
So I just want to speak to a couple, um you know, spaces in the way of spiritual formation that can help address these gaps. um No matter what you believe, this is relevant because you could pull something away from it. But ah specifically um in Romans 7, there's this verse that I love. It says, I do not understand what I do for I don't do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate. Okay. That's what I was talking about before when I said like,
00:21:37
Speaker
I do what I don't want to do and I don't do what I want to do, okay? So this is like exactly, you know, somebody who's following Jesus is like, I'm like, I'm struggling with this and I want to break this down a little bit more because if we have this gap and let's say you can have the best intentions in the world, something hits you hard and then you start to spiral. well Why are you not making the decisions you know you should be making ok And you could think about this when we talk about anything. We talk about exercise or nutrition or relationships or um business goals or ah financial goals or you know your thought patterns. like Again, when you think about why am I doing the things I don't want to do, why am I not doing the things I want to do? Okay, so let me talk about this for a second.
00:22:23
Speaker
um Another um ah book in the Bible, so James, talks about, um basically I'll just read this for you, says, my friends, consider yourself fortunate when all kinds of trials come your way. For you know that when your faith succeeds in facing such trials, the results, the ability to to endure. Okay, endure is the key word here because You know if you and take a step and let's say you do successfully do something that you don't want to do. That you know you should do and now you're making a step forward in this pursuit of wholeness okay but. To be able to keep doing that over and over again now granted we all know we're humans and none of us are perfect.
00:23:02
Speaker
But the point here is that these trials that we face, the struggles that we come into contact with, we need our faith to succeed, okay? Because um otherwise then we're trying to do these things out of sheer willpower. And I personally have seen this attempt fail over and over again when it comes to holistic. It might help temporarily, it might help with some areas, but it's not going to help you in this complete pursuit of Shalom, okay? And so what I love about just kind of these two verses together is we're acknowledging this gap in that our our personal struggle. But it's saying like when you embrace your faith,
00:23:46
Speaker
it through these trials, like when you hold on to the reality that we need God to get us to help us shorten this gap, then that is going to build our endurance. I've talked about before like when we experience stress and we manage stress in a healthy way, it increases our tolerance for more stress to be able to handle that stress in a healthy way and actually even have a positive outcome. And so the more that we could do this, it helps us endure like through life as life is life in, right? Like things are happening like all the time. And so um it just it goes on to say, happy are those who remain faithful under trials because
00:24:28
Speaker
when they succeed in passing such a test, the receive is the reward, the life which God has promised to those who love Him, okay? So this, you know, trials aren't fun, right? But the integration of our faith with our emotions is going to be a really, really key part in being able to live this life well-lived, right? And so Basically, what I'm saying here is we have this gap naturally. It's just the reality, right? Like back to it again. I do the things I don't want to do and I don't do the things I want to do. All right. We have this gap, but faith in God bridges that gap. Being faithful isn't a list of rules. Like I'm so passionate about this. I probably can do an entire episode and I for sure have at least a few soap boxes on this idea alone.
00:25:13
Speaker
But Paul's struggle is in relation to proximity to God. It's not about you know following certain rules. It's about having a mindset of loving God and loving our neighbors. And when we draw closer to God, that helps us do the right thing, right?
00:25:29
Speaker
And what's so interesting about all of this is in the same section, um James goes on to talk about like this kind of faith is what cares for the poor and their oppressed, okay? Again, it's leaning into the fact that when we tap into our spiritual health, when we pursue this relationship with God, it will help your emotional expression so much more than if you attempted to do it on your own because We know that we continue to fail at doing the things that we know we should do Until we invite God into that equation. Okay, and so um It's just helping you do the right thing because again life is life and I keep saying that people ask like how's it going autumn? What's happened? I'm gonna say life is Life and let me tell you that like things are constantly happening. They're constantly coming your way You can't there's too many things outside of our control
00:26:26
Speaker
Like I would rather work on my do my internal work right and grow my spiritual and physical and mental and emotional wellness because I can't control what happens on the outside right I can control how I respond to it and so if you're wanting to make the right choice in a relationship let's say you know you are in a toxic situation or some in a situation that's not best for you and you want to get out of it, um but you're just struggling to make that choice. like Your emotions are like um guiding you towards ah kind of an unhealthy decision. So the emotion itself isn't bad. It's touching on, it's giving you information. In in order to steward that information well, we need Jesus. okay it' just like It's just the way it is. like We need to go into prayer. We need to meditate and process like what is happening so that we make this right decision.
00:27:14
Speaker
Um, same thing with your health. Like you're trying to make a good decision for your health. You have something that is tempting you, you know, it's not good for you or with your finances. Like you keep saying like, I'm gonna do better. I'm gonna do better. I have this goal. I want to save more. But then you're not doing things you need to do to make the changes, right? You're tempted to do what you don't want to do.
00:27:32
Speaker
And then what you really want to do feels like such a struggle. Here is the good news. It does not need to be such a struggle. Now it is not easy. No one will ever say that life is easy. No one will ever say this pursuit is easy, but the choices become easier to do what you want to do.
00:27:49
Speaker
or to do what you know is best when you're in proximity to Jesus is just the reality, or when you are pursuing your faith, or when you're tapping into the spiritual part of who you are, okay? Because that is just an essential part in bridging this gap. Now, with that being said, I could say the same thing about physical health. You could be trying to improve your mental-emotional well-being and letting your physical health suffer. Well, those things are also integrated, right? There's just certain things that when God created our bodies, we need certain nutrients, you know, we need to take care of our gut, and it's going to be hard to achieve a certain level of, you know, mental well-being without taking care of your gut. It just is because they're too interconnected.
00:28:30
Speaker
And so talking about the connection between spiritual and emotional wellness is just a reality, just like any of these other things are. All right. So again, this sheer willpower is just not enough. You could try it and it might work for a little while or might work in some awesome areas, but let's you know get hard hit hard with with something. and you know And I could tell you my personal journey, it it was everything for me to know, like, okay, like I am confused right now. I am hurt right now.
00:28:58
Speaker
But I'm trusting in God, okay? The peace that that brings about is like none other. So again, um maybe at first, you know, you're working it out, but then this really big trial hits you or a temptation hits you.
00:29:16
Speaker
and you know Actually, earlier in James, um it talks about asking God to give her a wisdom for more of it. okay so this is Wisdom, to me, is like the balance of eat emotions. right so Emotions are a good thing. They give us information, but we need wisdom.
00:29:33
Speaker
to take that information and do something good with it. So part of that enduring and doing the things you want to do to bridge that gap is just letting the Spirit of God in you have greater influence. Again, it's that proximity word. It's not about um you know rules, not about church, it's not about religion, it's not about any of those things, it's about proximity to God, the giver of peace, the giver of wisdom, okay? So it's relationship, it's all about relationships, right? And so we wanna tap into that wisdom and that's how you do it.
00:30:02
Speaker
Now um the last thing I'll say about the spiritual and emotional wellness connection and then I'm going to give you some super super practical scientific insights to how emotions work in our body so that you next time you're feeling some type of way that you will feel equipped to do something about it.
00:30:19
Speaker
Okay, but ah first, um ah there's a guy, Pete Cesaro, I think how you pronounce it. um He's a pastor who wrote a really successful book, Emotional Healthy Spirituality. He actually subtitled it, it's impossible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature, okay? So if you are on this like spiritual journey, you're like, I'm good, but I'm not paying attention to my emotions, it's not really possible to be I'm good over here and not good over there. So um But I just want to read this quote from this book because it's like super good. um is Actually, he quoted ah somebody else in The Cry of the Soul, Dan Allender and Tremper Longman talk about the importance of being aware of our emotions. Okay, so listen in.
00:31:01
Speaker
This is really good. Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality. Listening to our emotions ushers us into reality, and reality is where we meet God. Emotions are the language of the soul. They are the cry that gives the heart a voice.
00:31:21
Speaker
However, we often turn a deaf ear through emotional denial, distortion, or disengagement. We strain out anything disturbing in order to gain tenuous control of our inner world. We're frightened and ashamed of what leaks into our consciousness.
00:31:38
Speaker
In neglecting our intense emotions, we are false to ourselves and lose a wonderful opportunity to know God.
Scientific Theories and Emotional Responses
00:31:46
Speaker
We forget that change comes through brutal, honest, and vulnerability before God. Okay, that's end quote there.
00:31:54
Speaker
I love this and actually like as I mentioned before I am going to do a deep dive into self-awareness because um as I talked about like really early on I think one of the early podcast episodes or maybe I know for sure I dive deep into this in my course but um honesty is like a non-negotiable like if we can't create space to be honest with ourselves it's just a non-starter okay but I just want to put a pen in that spot and then just dig into emotions a bit more um understanding like what they actually are in a body So let's say that you're super stressed, you're overwhelmed, you're tired, and then something happens, okay? And then you react instead of responding to your emotions. Changing this is like changing your body or changing your thoughts, right? Like your body doesn't change overnight. You need to work at it. You need to do some HIIT exercises, some yoga, some clean eating, all the things, right? And then you start to like, woo, I'm liking how I'm looking. But it's the daily practices. Same thing with forming healthy thought patterns.
00:32:53
Speaker
So, if you're feeling angry or sad or frustrated or apathetic, you need to have just kind of that same plan for managing how you respond to those in those moments and choosing the right thing in that moment. And that just requires emotional health, right? So, just think.
00:33:08
Speaker
When we make poor choices affecting our other areas. So let's say you find yourself, you're making some more choices around relationships or around your physical health or around your finances. It's just often attached to um an emotional reaction. It just is. Okay. So if you're like, Oh, why am I not making progress in certain areas? Let me break down like what is actually happening um and what you could do about it.
00:33:32
Speaker
So, um first, we need to respect our full humanity, okay? Like, if you are just not addressing your emotions, like, then you're ignoring part of your humanity. So again, that goes back to changing the narratives, but so they're to be embraced, okay? And if you want to bridge some of these gaps, they're really to be embraced. So I've talked about, like, the gap between your reality and then your desired living.
00:33:57
Speaker
There's other gaps in our day-to-day life, though, that emotions play a huge role in. So your words, let's say what you say, and then your everyday life. Like saying how you feel versus what you want people to hear, okay? Or this gap between your beliefs and then your actual experiences. So, for example,
00:34:14
Speaker
Let's say you believe that you're trusting God, but then your experience plays out differently. Okay, so there's gaps everywhere. So understanding emotions helps with this. um Because as I was studying, I actually came across a lot of various ideas that weren't always in alignment, actually. um I don't think there's necessarily one way to look at these. um I think that there can be different um orders to expression just based on various circumstances.
00:34:41
Speaker
um so these different theories there's three of them i'm going to tell you about i think all of them could be correct in some way right and so i think it's really interesting to understand these because it'll make you more aware to how you can like practically actually improve certain areas of your life okay so the first one is physiological theories, and they suggest that the responses within the body are responsible for emotion. So, you know, again, it's back to that example of being scared, and then your your body physiologically responds, and then it produces an emotion, okay?
00:35:15
Speaker
That's one thought. Now, there is some truth to that, but it's not the full picture. It can't be, um because listen to these other theories. So neurological theories proposes that activity within the brain leads to emotional responses. Well, we certainly know that if you're feeling like really bad about something and um your thoughts are like spiraling in a negative way, will you speak some truth or positive over it? And then your thoughts can in reverse also impact your emotions. So we know that there is you know reality to physiological theories because you get scared, your heart rate is fight or flight. there is real There is truth to neurological theories because our brain is connected to our emotional responses. um But there's also truth to cognitive theories and they argue that thoughts and other mental activities play an essential role in forming and emotions. And um whats what's super interesting about this last one, this is where like
00:36:05
Speaker
I'm really glad to get to break this down for you because I had to read a ton of material to come to this really simple conclusion for you guys. So if, you know, some would say that, again, I mentioned that emotions come in, they hit our limbic system and then our thought patterns. Okay. Then that prefrontal cortex part of our brain. But, um, so, so what that would state is let's say something happened in your childhood and your non-conscious mind is saying, okay, when that thing happens, this is my emotional response. Cause that's what's been stored in your non-conscious mind. Okay. So that emotional input taps into that non-conscious mind is like, okay, this is like how this plays out. Now this is where Dr. Caroline Leaf's work is so amazing because she talks about like the reversal of thought patterns. And so emotionally, like you can have that initial emotional response
00:37:00
Speaker
because of input and because of something that happened in your past and you have this non-conscious part of your brain that's at work because it's very big and powerful. But what is also powerful is how our conscious mind, how we can make choices consciously that will reverse. So if you start reversing thought patterns, so I've talked before, you you have to listen to my episode on thought patterns. I can't remember what number it is,
00:37:26
Speaker
But, you know, thoughts are neurological presences in our body, right? And negative thoughts can look like these ugly dead trees. And um healthy thoughts can look like these, like, thriving, beautiful trees. And Dr. Carolyn Leaf's done some videos where you can actually see her talk about these analogies. But basically, you could reverse conscious to subconscious to non-conscious and reverse some of those negative thought patterns. So then when emotional, you know, when things come in that cause an emotional response, you could start to tap into a healthier response and reverse some of those negative responses. So if you know you have some self-sabotaging patterns because of just the way that you think about certain things, you can actually reverse that response. How amazing is it how God created our bodies? Like this stuff blows my mind. The more that I learn about how our bodies are and the tools that we have to help
00:38:16
Speaker
bring us to a healthier space and move us towards Shalom, not just individually, but collectively, because we are connected with one another. Like that is pretty amazing. And so the more that I learned about emotions in the mind, the more I realized that it's just not one way. There's not one way that things are expressed. Okay. Emotions don't just happen by accident or randomly either. They are reflections. And I'm going to wrap up here. And this is a super, super practical tool. Remember earlier I mentioned I was going to give you like,
00:38:46
Speaker
a handful of um examples of how you may or may not be handling your emotions well, I'm going to touch on those because the self-awareness, like how can you change something you're not aware of, okay? So I love what I'm about to share with you and then I'll wrap up.
00:39:02
Speaker
so Again, they don't happen by accident. They're reflections, hence doing the deep work, like in working out, right, challenging your muscles to see change. Like we need to do some of that deep work because if these emotions are, you know, reflections or or their information, right, then they're reflecting something, okay? And some of them are reflecting the condition and beliefs of our hearts.
00:39:26
Speaker
All right, this is super important. And I will tell you personally, like I have seen how this has transformed my reality. So it's not just speaking from what the experts are saying. This is like my reality that I could testify to. Okay.
00:39:41
Speaker
and Now I'm going to pull a little bit from biblicalcouncilorcenter.org. I'll put that in the show notes just because they did a really good job of kind of breaking this down. But our emotions are a gift from God, okay, um to help us experience life more fully. Just think like we're talking about the negative side of it, but also so much goodness in life. Like we need these emotions for that expression of this fullness of life. So every emotion is good and You know, in some way, right? Like, some of them make us feel good, but some are just telling us important information to help us move in the right direction. um So ultimately, then, how can we discover the peace of God and how can the God of peace help us shape shape these healthy expressions of emotions, okay?
00:40:22
Speaker
um that not only like honor God, but actually bless other people, right? Because how we emotionally are ah expressing our emotions for sure impact other people and then how it benefits yourself, okay? So if we're going to experience this piece around us, um we have to become more skilled in identifying expressing and managing our emotions so um here's these areas that i want you to think about like are any of these relevant to you and this begins your journey of self-awareness you could write it down you can start this journey of doing some things to improve in this area.
00:40:54
Speaker
Um, but, uh, just, these are just some common ways that emotions can become disordered. So. Number one, none. Like some people struggle to express emotion at all. Okay. Like this could be chalked up to the suppression, right? Because we, we all experience them. They're just going somewhere and not coming out. Right.
00:41:14
Speaker
Number two, out of control, like some struggle to control their expression of emotions, okay? Like, I just can't help how I feel and write this is emotional regulation issue. Number three, um exaggerated. So some experience emotions disproportionate to the circumstance, okay? Like what I was talking about, that example sometimes happens with our kids. Four, impulsive, okay? Some pursue emotions as a substitute for wise planning or thought. And again,
00:41:41
Speaker
This is why we need to tap into our spiritual wellness for God's wisdom in helping us not be impulsive. It's also why like when we grow in our emotional maturity, when stuff comes into the limbic part of the brain, we could allow the prefrontal cortex to have more control right because that's the delayed gratification and the the wise choices.
00:42:01
Speaker
and then um oh let's see we're in one two three four five dismissive some people will dismiss others emotions because they find it personally uncomfortable okay like this is why empathy is such an important and valuable gift because we want to be able to like stay in that uncomfortable place because it's really important. And then lastly, six, disown. Some will disown their emotions because they find their expressions embarrassing. Okay, that's not exactly repressing, but it's like similar in that you're not
00:42:33
Speaker
taking this really important information and doing something good with it, okay?
Practical Tools for Emotional Management
00:42:39
Speaker
Emotions reflect our hearts, our hopes, and our beliefs. Hmm, I'll say that again. Emotions are reflecting our hearts, our hope, and our beliefs. So for example, emotions are steady when our hope is secure.
00:42:54
Speaker
Note that you can totally have hope and still be sad or angry. It's not saying those emotions go away, it it you know, that when more difficult emotions happen that you don't have hope. What it's saying is that there's an issue with your heart or hope or your beliefs if you're not managing those emotions well, okay? So you could find a place of peace in the midst of the heart emotions when that hope is secure. That's what I'm saying. Okay, this is just an example again, because it's a reflection of our hearts, our hope, our beliefs. And saying that how you respond to any and all ah emotions is just a reflection of those things. So let's say you experience heartbreak. If you have hope,
00:43:35
Speaker
You'll still be sad and disappointed. Okay. It's not like that's going to go away in 30 minutes, but you have hope that God has a plan for your future and wants what's best for you. So it helps you work through it in a more healthy way and helps you move forward and make good choices and do it as needed quite necessarily, even when you're feeling a bit low. So there's a big difference there. If you don't like how you're responding to your emotions or how you're feeling, just take some time to reflect on your heart condition.
00:44:02
Speaker
what your beliefs are, dig a bit. Cause maybe you thought you had a certain belief, but it's not being reflected in your emotions. Maybe you need to kind of dig a little deeper. Like why is that not translating?
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:44:12
Speaker
So with that being said, um I want to just give you a couple of really, really practical tools, ah because life, like I said, is often outside our control, and what can you do? So here's some solutions. One, you could anticipate, and then, so basically that's just understanding yourself and and growing. So it's doing the self-awareness. You anticipate that something's coming, so you're gonna do the work in advance. Some preventative tools.
00:44:42
Speaker
These are all super straightforward, but so important. You know, is sleep. eating well, managing stress well, anticipating like life changes or hormonal changes, or even addressing past ah ah trauma or abuse. Like these are all like taking initiative to do things that are going to help when it comes to managing our emotions. Okay. Um, so if you watched prior to my launch of this podcast, I actually did a countdown on social media.
00:45:15
Speaker
I use basketball analogies and I love it because I love sports analogies. I think they're just fun. and So anticipation was one. You can go back and watch those um those social media posts because they're really good. And I dig into this a little bit more. But number two is shoot your shot. Okay. You got to take the shot.
00:45:31
Speaker
And how that translates here is do the thing when you don't feel like it. Just do it anyways, okay? Make one good choice. You're not feeling like it. Make one good choice. This is emotional resilience, okay? This is in the moment, having awareness, choosing to regulate and not repress. um This is just a super, super important thing when it comes to emotional resilience, which is necessary.
00:45:57
Speaker
Number three I talked about was finding your rhythm, being willing to pivot. So when life happens, when things come your way that you can't control, pivoting is a perspective. Okay. Emotions are providing this lens through which we interpret information. So you pause and then you reflect. You remember things are interconnected. So, okay, if I need to pivot, I'm going to change my perspective here. Okay. It's just shifting a little bit.
00:46:23
Speaker
Pivoting in the game of basketball is like super, super important. it's like It gives you so many options that you otherwise wouldn't have. So pivoting in emotional wellness is, let's say you're in a funk. Just to move out of the fog or see more clearly, just change up what you're doing a little bit. okay Just change your perspective. So let's say you're feeling angry. Walk away and breathe. You're feeling sad. Move to a space that brings you joy. You're feeling frustrated.
00:46:51
Speaker
Speak something that you're grateful for. You're feeling overwhelmed. Pause, find a truth so something, so that you could, you know, think about something that you feel good about and then you'll get back to it. So you're feeling overwhelmed. Pause, have this like positive moment and then get back to, to the work that you were in. Okay. So you know what I'm saying? It's just, it's changing your perspective and it's pivoting. Number four I talked about was teamwork. This is simple. Don't go at it alone. And then five, have a coach. So if there's certain things that you're struggling, despite good efforts, get some support. All right.
00:47:28
Speaker
Now, for Coach Autumn's Practice of the Day, because practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent, so today's tip is simple. It's a one sentence.
00:47:42
Speaker
The very next time an emotion is keeping you from doing something you know you should do, the next time you're like, I just don't feel like doing this, do it anyways. Have an amazing day.
00:48:02
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in to the Aligned Living Podcast. I'm Dr. Autumn, your guide on this journey to Shalom or wholeness. Ready to embark on this journey of self-discovery and transformation? Head over to autumnswain dot.com to learn more and to dive deeper into the world of Aligned Living. Until next time, stay a Aligned.