Let's Talk About Emotions | Jennie Allen and Lysa TerKeurst

wow what a joy to be here with you Jenny because you're not only a wonderful Ministry partner but you're a dear friend we've known each other for a long long time a long time oh we've been doing this a while Lisa we have um I am very excited about your new book untangle your emotions and I love the subtitle because you follow that um all the way through the book and I love it so it's naming what you feel and knowing what to do about it and of course in each chapter you're focusing on notice name feel share choose and I love that and I love the way they um highlighted which one were covering in which chapter it's just really fantastic ah that means a lot to me from you okay so we're gonna start out and I'm gonna ask you your least favorite question you ready for this yeah Jenny how does this make you feel it is my least favorite question but I will say I've gotten way more comfortable with it so this question most often um was asked to me by my counselor who was looking for a lot of feeling and I didn't feel it and that was really hard for me but I do feel better now and so I would say today I feel really happy to be talking to my friends who I love and I feel really grateful for this season that we're in right now our grown kids are nearby you get that it's fun um I feel I feel like it's a good day that's awesome so I'll do a check-in with you um how do I feel today today I feel excited about living in answered prayer well and also a bit tired from probably packing my schedule a little too tight which for me when I pack my schedule a little too tight I really do have to watch my emotions because that's one of the number one indicators that U my emotions can get all tangled up when I'm tired and so how does it come out Lisa oh okay are you turning the interview on me yeah okay here's how it comes out um I will get upset about something that I otherwise could normally keep in perspective right but I will I'll get upset about something and I will attach it to something bigger so in other words it's not just about the thing that I'm upset about I'll attach it just that it has some deep meaning and until I know why this is happening when it's going to get better how if it's with someone else how we're going to work together to make it better until we can have that depth of a conversation my thoughts start to spiral and my thoughts get caught on a loop and I can't escape it and suddenly it went from this little thing to suddenly I've made it a big thing that has deeper meaning and that needs a big conversation to process when in reality one little thing just needs to be changed and we don't really need all that attached depth and processing and big emotions oh yeah that's really good and a sign that you're really self-aware so yay um for me I need to get into my counselor's office right so for me it is I get irritable about little similar but I don't over I don't blow it up I it just I will blow up and I it's not always been the case for me but that really has been the one lately in the way it shows itself that yeah working I get it I get it okay so Jenny what did you realize was going on in your own life I know you said lately you've been recognizing that when you're tired you blow up or whatever and so many so many of us can relate to that but what was going on in your own life that made you consider even writing a book on a emotions well I think it's helpful to First say that a lot of my dearest friends laughed when they heard I was writing a book about emotions because I'm not the best at this so I was writing a book to my weakness and to really research and understand what what it meant to embrace sadness and fear and worry because I only saw those negative things that needed to be fixed and pushed away and what's sad really a a grief in my own life today is I because I wasn't comfortable with those emotions in myself I often would try to push them away in other people and I would try to fix everybody instead of what they're feeling which is amazing because in the work that I did the Bible and science both will say the greatest road to Healing our brain and our health and our emotional health especially is to be with other people in their pain so for you not to feel isolated in your pain that actually does heal you but I needed evidence of that because I didn't believe it I just felt like what's the point why go back and revisit things from the past why sit around and so about something let's just get over it you know I mean I wrote get out of your head you've read that like I was like let's fix this problem like quit thinking it quit being cynical be grateful and all of that is possible and true I still stand by that book but that book was way more comfortable for me to live than this book this book was harder because I I had been trained that that emotions were dangerous and that they are harmful and they really can lead to a lot of negative um impact in your life and and certainly that can be true but that is not at the base of emotions that is not the truth that that emotions are gifts from God and they're given to us to help us navigate a really mixed up world and to help us connect more deeply with the Lord and with each other and so that's the goal of emotions and once I understood that I had to reframe my life around that and I had to go why am I so afraid of these if they're good gifts that that are given to me to work through and to walk through my life then maybe I need to pay attention to them so it was it was a really transformative two years I was in a small group with um several other leaders and so we were living this out together and that made me a Believer more than anything because for the first time they were kind of forcing me to feel negative emotions about things and I was watching myself heal and I was moving from places of anxiety that I couldn't quite understand or mentally um get out of my head about to places of freedom and all of a sudden those triggers didn't cause anxiety in me anymore so there really was a profound difference in my life that I believe this was worthy to give away to the world that's great so was there something specific that you were struggling with that was kind of the Catalyst to think about all of this yeah so I I was I was struggling with my work actually and I don't even write a lot about that in the book but um just I'll I'll be super vulnerable here um it the the real Catalyst was just I was very um discouraged and I was I would say numb and checked out from my life and so I was tired of work and I was tired of the pressure of work and I wanted to quit and that was that was a pretty strong feeling and a regular feeling for me and and yet I did still feel called to it so I kept going but but there was just always in the back of my mind this desire to quit and when I did the work so I was asked to join this little cohort of leaders and I really went in we each kind of picked something that we knew needed attention in our lives and for me it was I want to enjoy work I I should enjoy work I am doing what I'm made to do and I really love it I feel God's favor on it um I want to work through this and so when I when I began that group I remember sharing very vulnerably all of that and really I mean hitting the table and crying and being so angry and feeling like what I felt like at the time was I had gone out if you know the song Oceans um I gone out where feet may fail and it felt like my feet often failed and it felt like God was nowhere to be found a lot of the so I'm sharing that with tears with anger with like I feel like he he called me out here and where is he and after I shared all my friends in the group this was like our first Gathering we ever met they began to correct me they began to fix me they began to fix my Theology and say God is with you always like you know you shouldn't feel that way because God is with you and basically Lisa they did to me what I do to other people and it felt terrible and I misunderstood and I wanted to push away and I wanted I felt I felt angry I felt like I regretted sharing all of that I knew the truth it's not like I don't know the theology I know the theology I went to Seminary I know the truth and I believe the truth on a very deep level I believe that God is always with me and always for me but what I was experiencing was valid too and it was it was um a bid for connection with them and praise God we did have a counselor there with us and he interrupted and just said okay I want y'all to change from saying I think to I feel rather than telling Jenny what you think about what she just shared I want you to tell her what you feel about what she shared and Lisa I've chills thinking about it it was the most profound 10 minutes of my life they began to say things like um I feel sad that you felt so alone I feel um Angry that you have you've you've been in this position and not been able to share with anybody I feel um sad that we made you feel push away and that we we used words that weren't help and all of a sudden I felt unbelievably safe I mean in a minute it all changed and so that was when I was like okay there is something to thisn there is something to that verse there's something to actually being in feelings with other people that actually begins to heal your soul I don't know if you've ever felt this Jenny but sometimes as a Christian leader especially in a situation like you just described where I'm with other leaders I get a little I'm a very vulnerable person and so I'm willing to share but I hold back being honest about my exact feelings because sometimes emotions can feel to me spiritually immature yeah and like I just haven't matured to the point where I don't feel angry or I haven't matured to the point where I feel gratitude all the time or I haven't matured to the point where I can better manage my disappointments and all of that and you know so my journey has been recognizing that it's not a sign of immaturity spiritual immaturity it's actually a sign of emotional wisdom and it's a sign of self-awareness and I think self-awareness is a big a big precursor to self-control which obviously is a fruit of the spirit right and so when I started processing my emotions that way I recognized that I had some faulty belief systems about emotions and it was hindering me from those deeper connection like what you just talked about it was necessary for everyone to get vulnerable in the expression of what they felt not necessarily vulnerable with all the details of their life but the expression of what they were actually feeling it and I know a big thing for you in this book is helping people name the emotion they felt now I have a confession um I when I was raising my kids I look back and there is one thing there's probably several things that I would change um looking back now but there's one big thing I would change and that is I remember when my kids would Express sadness disappointment or something that smelled a little bit like ungratefulness you know to me I wanted to do a pep rally and I wanted to say like no no no no no you're not sad we have the joy of the Lord no no no no no you're not disappointed because look at all we have to be grateful for you know and I remember when one of my kids went to some intensive therapy because you know with my family story um when my marriage fell apart there were ramifications for everyone in the family and so um one of my kids went to therapy and came home and just said hey Mom I realized for the first time it is okay for me to say that I'm sad because I actually do feel sad and I was able to have a moment with um my daughter and just say you know I recognize that I did that and to some extent I still do it and I'm GNA really work on that so that's the magic I mean that that magic right there that that's the Hope because as people are reading this book so often what they realize is Wow first I never felt permission in my home growing up either to feel that way and so this is universal nearly and and then the next thing you think is and I didn't let my kids feel sad or worried or angry and and so there that that is so normal and I think what I've learned at this stage in life with older kids is the Beauty and the depth of a relationship that can come from owning mistakes and saying exactly what you just said I want to work on that and still my daughter will correct me she's the most emotionally intelligent one in our home and my oldest she will just correct me and she'll be like Mom you're trying to fix me you know she'll just and so I just think this is a messy road because we were not trained we were conditioned from Young ages to judge any negative emotion in ourselves and therefore we judge it in the world so there's a lot of Grace here I hope that one thing people feel when they read the book is just tremendous compassion compassion for yourself as you go man I haven't ever felt my feelings in a healthy way or I've felt them and they've led me off cliffs over and over again and I want to learn how to handle them better it really can speak to both ends of the spectrum because both ends of the spectrum whether youve suppressed and concealed and controlled your emotion or you've you know been very loud and wild with your emotion both can come from a place of unhealth where you just don't know what to do with it and so you know I think oftentimes it's way later in life when we learn that and so yeah we we get to go back and apologize that really is a beautiful story though it's it's a sad story and I know why you feel like it's sad because I feel that same sadness I wish I could go back but I also believe like our relationship is is even closer because we're we talk about all these things now yeah I agree so what are some signs that someone needs to read this book like I don't want to call them emotionally unhealthy because honestly I know that I need to study this and I'm so thankful that you've written a book so that I don't feel like it's all pointed at me but we're in this together you know but what's a sign that someone can recognize in themselves that hey there's some emotional unhealth here and I need to tend to my emotions and reading this book would be a great thing for me to do right now well let me speak to to maybe some fears people might have first so maybe you're someone that thinks I never show emotion and that's okay I'm not very emotional and I would just argue that you are emotional that God built You In His Image and he is emotional so let me just clear the deck of like this this actually is for any human because all humans have emotions and All Humans largely we have not been trained well about what to do with them many of us have to therapy and it's fun one of my friends wrote about the book in the back put at the back of the book this is worth thousands of dollars of therapy and it's true and I'm a believer that every single person needs a counselor at some point in your life you need to be under the care of somebody helping you understand yourself in a deeper way because we are not good at understanding ourselves we are and so what a counselor or a third party can do is to help you see yourself more clearly which scripture is clear about that we are supposed to look in a mirror and not just walk walk away but to actually confess sin and to change and so that is that is a spiritual practice to be aware of your weaknesses to be aware of how you come across I always tell people if you think you don't need this book why don't you ask the people around you that are closest to you that you live with your roommates or the people you're married to or your kids and say do you feel like I'm an emotionally healthy person and see what they say if they feel safe enough to tell you the truth and and there's I mean that's one way to find out like do do I need to grow in this area and I think we all need to keep growing in this area for the rest of my life I just wrote a book on emotions and for the rest of my life I will be getting better at this it is not something that you ever arrive somewhere because you have new emotions and you have new things that bring out other emotions and so rather than fear it or feel like we've got to accomplish something or arrive somewhere I think a better way is what I wanted to do was provide a guide for your journey you are on an emotional Journey every single person and what I wanted to do was give you handles I wanted I'd read so many books in my research and I appreciate them all it's a lot of counselors and there's a lot of feelings and there's a lot of but I was turned off by it as a fixer because I was like I just want somebody to tell me what to do and I know they probably all would judge that but I that's what I needed and so that's what I wrote and so for me it was like let me just give you some simple handles to notice let me teach you how to notice notice what you're feeling because you may not know or you may say oh I feel all the time I feel all this but you're actually never slowing down to put a word to it and to actually share it and to feel it and to choose what to do with it so it's a healthy process i' like here's what you do when you feel a little anxious and you don't know why you pause before you come inside your house and snap at your kids you take a minute and you notice what you're feeling and you consider why you're feeling it and you give it a name and you feel it and you share it with the Lord and then you walk in and you're going to have a whole different experience on the other side of that door just because of that two-minute exercise you did in the car that's my hope is that we would be able to all universally grow in this area and to quit demonizing negative emotions I think if that was a takeaway I mean I hope pastors read this I hope leaders of churches read this because I don't think we have a good Theology of emotions and my hope is this gives people language and a new category because what I did was I took the Bible and I looked at God the Father the Son the Holy Spirit and you can't deny they felt all of these emotions and they felt them pretty intensely and weren't afraid to show them so got you know I do think a big shift has to happen I think that's great um I think for me there's a couple of tail taale signs that I need to do exactly what you're talking about I need to take a pause and sometimes I like to call them holy pauses because I I need some space between what I'm feeling and how I react and if I if I can give myself just a little bit of space then I'm able to better understand what my emotion is doing because sometimes my emotions I feel like are a driving force for me to have reactions that I may regret later or that really were just out of out of some intensity that if I can just have a little bit of a pause the intensity it's down so I can I can have a little bit better reaction and um so I think for me when I recognize this when I start personalizing what other people are saying that that's where I know I'm like oh I need to I need to pause and not immediately get defensive of like well I didn't say that or like what um what are you talking about like I'm not defensive you know I don't personalize and my kids if they're listening to this right now they're going to be laughing um because they want to inform me of something and then I want to personalize it and immediately get defensive and that's where I know like wow this is a this is a little space that I need a holy pause and maybe I need to um ask myself some questions just like you were saying my counselor Jim Crest often encourages me get curious not Furious that's good and so instead of immediately getting furious about something that triggers a strong emotion in me if I start asking questions and here's some good questions ask like help me understand or can you clarify you know and th those kinds of things um really help me what are some of the favorite tools that you teach in the book that um that you feel like will be those practical um Pathways or like you said you want the book to guide us into healthier processing of our emotions so what are some of the your favorite practical things so I think there's several in the book and I I hope it feels insanely practical especially the second half of the book so the first thing is just to understand the five steps the first step is to notice and that begins really simply are you okay are you not okay and then the second one is to name it and in the book um I talk about different feelings and lay out sadness four main feelings and every single book had a different number but I liked four because I could remember four sad afraid um uh happy and angry and so under each of those in the name chapter is a list by varying intensity of more specific words to choose from for your feelings because sometimes I just need a guide I just need a word like I go okay that's the one I feel right um and then and sort of to really narrow it down because you could be feeling you could be feeling disappointment over not being included in a friendship Gathering or you could be grieving a loved one that you've lost you know two years ago and it's coming back up again so not just saying sad like sad it could be either of those disappointment or grief so really naring down and I have a lot of those words and tools in the book and then the next step is to feel it and this was a hard one for me because what do you do like how do you even do that and so just to take a minute to take a beat and to go okay I I'm not going to feel every feeling when it comes at me but there's going to be times where I choose it's time I need to work through this I need to feel this and it can be as simple as getting turning up a worship song in your car or laying outside in your backyard or just doing something where you can be alone and to actually feel it and that can scare people I know that that um but I promise you that step is going to bring you that connection with the Lord and ultimately in the next step with other people which is to share it to share with somebody and not to share every feeling you feel it could be a mood I mean it'll pass fast but but if it's one that has lingered more than a day or two it's time to share it you need to tell one of your friends what's going on and if it's an extreme emotion that you're feeling up just today one of my best friends called me and I pick up and I was like Hey and she's weeping I mean she's balling and I am so in awe of that that she just called me in the middle of a cry right that's so brave but that sharing is she knows that that brings healing for her and so she's not afraid to do it and so we share it and then lastly we make a decision and we choose what to do with it and that that isn't always simple for many people this journey for my husband I talk about his story in it it might be that you're in a point of clinical depression or anxiety and you really need help you need medicine or a doctor you need a counselor you need real help and and so it's important that you take that step of choosing you know what this has become a stronghold in my life this is an emotion that has moved from something I feel to something that's controlling me and it's okay like this happens this happens because of our chemistry this happens because of suffering over a long period of time this happens because the world is broken but we need to get help and so choosing what to do with it can be as simple as making a doctor's appointment or it could be choosing not to yell just like you were talking about like not to react or overreact but to go you know I'm going to feel this and I'm G to share it in a vulnerable way and a good example of this is if you have um if you have a relationship where you're really close and you get mad at someone but it's really coming from something in your childhood where you felt the same way you felt trapped you felt like you had no control over the situation and you say to your friend or to your spouse instead of reacting you say you know know this is reminding me of a feeling I felt when I was 12 and I know you're not trying to make me feel this way but man it's coming up strong right now can I have a little time to to process all of a sudden you just switch their reaction to you into one of compassion you have to be self-aware enough to notice that and that process can help you do that and the more you practice that process and those simple steps the easier they become to where you can do them more quickly in your mind and your body you can notice and name and feel and share and choose in shorter amounts of time but it does it is like a muscle you have to kind of practice it and grow in it that's so good that that helps me so much and I love the fact that it's memorable so now I'll think about this and throughout the book you have so much good advice but one of my favorite things about you Jenny is it is practical it is memorable and it's personal and so for all those reasons I think everyone who reads this book is going to really have some solid takeaways and it's not going to be a book that you just read but it really is going to be a message that we sit with that we apply to our life and and one that we return to I do think this is going to be one of those Evergreen books it's like wow I need to pick that book up and I need to read it again so Jenny thank you so much for all the work all the personal work that you did um in order to really be able to live this message in such a beautiful way thank you for your honesty that you still have pitfalls and times that you don't get it right because that gives us hope for those of us who recognize we're not going to get this right all the time either um and for all those reasons thank you this is a treasure you are a treasure and I'm so grateful for you thank you for having me

Channel: Proverbs 31 Ministries with Lysa TerKeurst

Views: 10,517

Keywords: Lysa Terkeurst, Proverbs 31 Ministries, Jennie Allen, jennie allen made for more, proverbs 31 ministries, lysa terkeurst, proverbs 31, the bible, how to deal with emotions as a christian, emotional intelligence, emotions, why am I so emotional

Id: TaWLay9eIos

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2024