E31 Tidal Wave Emotions: How To Find Balance When You Are Overwhelmed By Your Feelings

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Jen Cudmore (00:00)
Tidal wave emotions can knock you off your feet so fast. To be your best self, you’ve got to learn how to express your emotions properly. So in today’s discussion, Rosalind and I are going to cover what that process looks like and offer some valuable practical tools to help you handle your emotions with confidence. So let’s dive in.

Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me and Rosalind today. We’re excited to have you with us. We are going to talk about emotions and I don’t know about you, but one thing I’ve noticed is when I’m feeling emotional, I typically go two directions. I either go avoidance and ignoring because it’s uncomfortable and I don’t like it, or I tend to let that emotion rule over me. So all of my actions, my words, everything is

Jen Cudmore (00:45)
so just strong with emotion. And so what we want to talk about today is balance. Let’s find a balance. So let’s dive into that discussion. Hey, Roslyn.

Rosalynn Lasley (00:48)
Thank you.

Jen Cudmore (00:56)
point number one, think that sometimes we forget God made us this way. God gave us emotions. He actually created emotions. And I think that, I think especially for women, we have a tendency to forget that this is normal. We just have to learn how to handle it well.

Rosalynn Lasley (01:01)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

Right. So growing up, I was always told that I was too sensitive, too emotional, too tender-hearted. And so I’ve always had kind of a sticky relationship with emotions because I felt like having them was wrong.

Jen Cudmore (01:19)
No.

Okay. And I bet you there’s a lot of women who are listening who have been told that before too. Like you’re not allowed to get angry. You’re not allowed to be super sad or at least not in public. You can go do that in your room. And it’s really unfortunate. And I feel like that leads us to another point of most of us are not even taught how to handle emotions. So we grow into adulthood not understanding. We’re either taught to

Rosalynn Lasley (01:41)
Right?

Jen Cudmore (01:55)
avoid them and suppress them or we’re taught that it’s okay to be super loud and aggressive with them and do all of our reactions based on emotion. again, like because we weren’t taught that balance, we don’t, you know, we don’t know how to behave well because of it.

Rosalynn Lasley (02:02)
Right.

Right.

Well, there’s a lot of stereotypes surrounding women having emotions too. You know, it’s like people are, ⁓ women just and all their emotions and you know, it’s like having them is almost embarrassing because people make jokes about it or ⁓ brush it off as just being ⁓ overreactionary. And sometimes it is, but you know, there is a balance of healthy emotions and feeling them is not a flaw.

Jen Cudmore (02:21)
Right.

Yeah.

For sure.

so let’s talk about some biblical examples of emotion.

Rosalynn Lasley (02:41)
there’s lots actually. mean, God has righteous wrath in craves. Justice is the word I was looking for. ⁓ And so, I mean, God.

Jen Cudmore (02:47)
Yep.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (02:56)
has reacted in anger, but he’s also reacted in love. ⁓ if you think about when Jesus was crucified, God turned away because it was too much. And so God ⁓ creating us in his own image created us as emotional beings. ⁓ know, scripture talks about when Jesus wept, when Lazarus died, and Jesus knew that he was going to raise him from the dead. And yet he felt strong emotions so much so that he wept.

Jen Cudmore (03:05)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (03:22)
And we don’t know if it was a quiet tear strolling down his cheek, if it was like those guttural cries when your world has fallen apart. All we know is that he wept and it was significant enough that they wrote it down. ⁓ I think of Mary when Jesus was being crucified or even the birth of Jesus. It talks about when Mary pondered these things in her heart. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (03:29)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (03:47)
That was an emotional reaction to giving birth to the Son of God and God the Son. And so that was an emotion also. And they don’t quite tell us what she was thinking or how she was feeling, but because she was emotional, she kind of retreated almost internally to process the magnitude of what she had just done.

Jen Cudmore (03:53)
Yeah.

My favorite is David. I mean, you just read the Psalms and you’re like, this guy is all over the place. You’re like, one minute he’s like so excited and doing all these cool things for the Lord. And then the next one, he’s like, you know, ⁓ poor me. The enemies are after me. And I just love it because ⁓ it shows such humanness and that God is

Rosalynn Lasley (04:25)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jen Cudmore (04:31)
okay with our humanness, like he wants us to express emotion. I think of the concept of lament and the whole idea that he knew we were going to need an expressive way to handle grief. so lament is the releasing of that grief through the emotional language. so definitely I love

Rosalynn Lasley (04:46)
Right?

Jen Cudmore (04:56)
David so much because I feel like he wasn’t afraid even not only as a man like this major warrior king like this really tough guy was not afraid to cry and wine and be like, okay, Lord, this really stinks and I don’t like it. And I can’t believe you’re not coming through for me. But at the same time, still praising the Lord when you know, for his goodness, whether or not, you know, he got the outcome he wanted or not,

Rosalynn Lasley (05:01)
Wow.

Jen Cudmore (05:21)
obviously Job went through a lot of emotions with losing his family and being like hey what gives I’m a righteous person I didn’t sin. Why are you punishing me and ⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (05:24)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jen Cudmore (05:32)
you know, just all the different things with talking with his friends.

Rosalynn Lasley (05:35)
Well, I can think of even

like with, when they were in the middle of the storm and they woke Jesus up because they were afraid, like fear is an emotion and they kind of were panicky and like, we don’t know what to do. You know, he’s going to let us die, you know? And so they went worst case scenario because they were in their feelings and emotions of like, this is beyond what we can handle. You know, I think about Adam and Eve when they hid because they felt shame.

Jen Cudmore (05:45)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (06:04)
you know, when they’re in the garden.

so, you know, scripture is full of all kinds of different emotion. Is it Elijah? I always forget. I get Elijah and Elisha mixed up where he was so upset he wanted to die. You know, like, like, I mean, and that’s an extreme emotion too. But again, like God allowed this beautiful story to be written in a way that not only can we relate to it, but we can identify the character of God throughout it because

Jen Cudmore (06:17)
Elijah, yeah.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (06:33)
⁓ The emotions can rule our lives if we’re not careful about having the emotion and how we express it.

Jen Cudmore (06:43)
And that’s one of the things I love about Elijah’s moment of weakness, I guess you could call it. He was whining to the Lord, like, isn’t fair, and yeah, I want to die, however he worded it. And he had just had this really amazing miracle that he had performed. ⁓

And then now he’s hiding in a cave because Jezebel is chasing him. And what I love the most is God’s response. Instead of like, you need to get over yourself. God was like, OK, here’s here’s a little food. You get some sleep. Well, we’ll talk later. And I think that that is such a great picture for us. Like God gives us space to have emotions like he doesn’t expect us to handle everything perfectly every time. And so to recognize that he is in that that he created us this way.

Rosalynn Lasley (07:14)
Yeah.

Right.

Jen Cudmore (07:29)
And all it takes is just a little bit of nudging, a little bit of training, and then we can deal with them the right way. so again, developing a better quality of life by the way we handle it versus making life harder on ourselves because we made bad choices when we were emotional. anyhow, so yeah, I just wanted to really start us off with the concept of emotions are not bad. Even negative emotions are not bad. There’s nothing bad about emotions. ⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (07:40)
Yeah.

one on.

Jen Cudmore (07:57)
The only negative thing that could happen is if we choose to respond in an unhealthy manner. So, and we’re going to talk about ways to respond well with emotion. So.

Rosalynn Lasley (08:03)
Right.

Jen Cudmore (08:10)
I think it’s important too to recognize that emotions are an indicator. Like they tell us what’s going on. They’re a response to something. And typically, know, typically it’s a situation or a thought or, you know, a wound or whatever, but they’re, they’re neither good or bad, right? They help us process life. They help us understand life. What are your thoughts on that?

Rosalynn Lasley (08:33)
Right.

I think our culture, and then maybe it’s been this way forever, but our culture has a really weird ⁓ imbalance of how they encourage emotions to be felt. ⁓ There’s the kind of careless, you know, people just blow up and it is what it is because they feel their feelings and they’re allowed to feel them however they want to, regardless of how it affects them or other people. You know, it’s kind of like the free speech thing.

Or there’s a flip side of like, I think about how men are typically, ⁓ you know, taught or trained or ⁓ raised to not show emotion. And so it’s unfamiliar to them when they’re sad. Their only real experience with emotion is like anger or that sort of thing. And so they don’t know how to deal with feeling sad or overwhelmed or afraid because they’ve never seen that modeled for them or they feel like they’re not allowed to feel those things.

know, boys don’t cry, men don’t cry, and so then when they do it feels unfamiliar or embarrassing because they’ve never seen it lived out in real life.

Jen Cudmore (09:41)
Yep, I agree so much with that. And I think that’s actually kind of a common thing in our culture is that

I think there’s so many emotions that we don’t even know how to identify. And that’s a huge step. we typically just go for the basic ones, sad, happy, angry, right? But there’s so much more to it. And I think this is one of the things I kind of learned from writing novels is because you can’t use the same words over and over and there’s different elements to being sad or happy or angry. And so, you know, having that… ⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (10:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jen Cudmore (10:17)
having to dig into all the different types of emotions and feelings that are possible really opened my eyes to being able to define how I’m feeling in my own personal life, not just putting it on a page and a story, but being able to live it out.

One thing that is super helpful in handling emotions is learning how to identify what’s really going on inside. That was my book.

Rosalynn Lasley (10:40)
Right.

Yeah, and the emotion typically is an outward expression of an inward feeling, whether it’s being triggered or afraid or ashamed or any of those sorts of things. Like the emotion comes to the surface, but it’s so much deeper than that.

Jen Cudmore (10:46)
Yeah

Yes, and I think especially when you’re talking about having a strong emotion, when it hits you and you’re like, my word, it feels so powerful that I think that it ⁓ can like scare us. We kind of panic a little bit. We’re like, my gosh, what do I do with this? And so another, I think important step is learning to.

Rosalynn Lasley (11:12)
Right.

Right?

Jen Cudmore (11:19)
be okay with having strong emotions is normal part of life and you don’t have to do anything. Like you don’t have to panic. You don’t have to be like, oh my gosh, what do I do? If you just sort of let it have its way, you know, just feel it, go with it for a minute. You don’t have to be scared of it. You don’t have to panic. You can just sit with it and learn to be okay sitting with it. But

Because they can feel big and scary, a lot of people want to avoid it, get away from it, shut it down as fast as they can. And that’s not healthy.

Rosalynn Lasley (11:46)
Yeah.

Right.

For me, I imagine when Jesus calmed the storm, they were panicking and they like, we’re gonna die. ⁓ And Jesus is like, chill, I got it. I’ll take care of this. And I feel like that’s such a great reminder of so many different emotions, whether it’s shame or fear or sorrow or ⁓ any of anger, any of those big stormy type feelings. Jesus is like,

Jen Cudmore (12:04)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (12:21)
feel your feeling, but just know I got it. I’m going to calm the storm. I’m not going to let this overtake you. ⁓ It’s in my hands. You just have to trust me that I’ve got it handled.” And he’s very calm, cool, and collected. And then they’re like, how’s this guy taking a nap when we’re about to be shipwrecked? And he’s like, you don’t have to worry about it. I got this. And so I think sometimes just resting in that feeling of, yes, this is uncomfortable. Yes, this is scary. Yes, this is a big stormy type feeling. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (12:36)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (12:50)
but God’s walking through this with me. He’s literally on the water calming the storm. And so I don’t have to try and figure out how to do that. I know that He’s going to do that for me.

Jen Cudmore (13:02)
this is just another thing that we gain through practice is, I’ve never handled a strong emotion well. I don’t know what to do with it, right? Well, you can learn. That’s how it goes. Nobody just wakes up one day knowing how to handle their emotions well. It takes a little training. And if we didn’t have our parents showing us or a teacher or mentor or something, go to the Lord. I’ve had to do that a few times. I’m like, Lord.

Rosalynn Lasley (13:05)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jen Cudmore (13:28)
Something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is. I’m, you know, I have all these feelings. I don’t know what they are. Help me put language around this. I don’t know what I’m feeling. I don’t know what’s going on. I just know something’s not right in here and I need some help figuring it out. And when you do that, I have found he always helps you figure it out and help you handle it and deal with it. So similar to what you’re saying, he’s there. He’s right there. So if you’re confused, you don’t know, you don’t like it, whatever, just

Rosalynn Lasley (13:34)
Yeah.

Right.

Jen Cudmore (13:56)
you you can work it out with him. He will help you figure it out and move forward.

Rosalynn Lasley (13:59)
Well for me, when

I think about probably the situations where I felt the most emotion or a huge ball of all kinds of different emotions, it was very hard for me to identify how I felt. It just felt very messy and confusing. And so I was reading blogs and different books about my situation, not necessarily from my point of view, but other people that had walked through it before.

Jen Cudmore (14:09)
Yes.

Mm.

Rosalynn Lasley (14:24)
and being able to read their words and connect it to my own thoughts and feelings that felt so messy, helped me to be able to process them because I couldn’t figure out how to identify what it was that I was feeling and the multitude of things that I was feeling because it was many things at once. But being able to see somebody else’s words and say, you know, I felt like this because of this and I was going through this because of this and then this bothered me because of this or whatever it may be, ⁓ that just really helps me be like.

Jen Cudmore (14:39)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (14:50)
That’s what it is. This is unfamiliar, but that’s what I’m feeling. That’s how I think about this situation. This is why that bothers me. And it helped me, not that I ever fully overcame the heartache of what I went through, ⁓ but it did help it not sting nearly as much and it didn’t, it wasn’t so scary because finally how I felt had a name.

Jen Cudmore (15:12)
That’s so good. ⁓ how did you find those things? Was it just like a random Google search, help me figure out how to handle them? OK. Got it.

Rosalynn Lasley (15:19)
just think so. I feel like it was through Pinterest probably. ⁓

think maybe I was looking at quotes or something related to my situation and then through that the algorithm started sending blogs or something like that but it was just being able to put words to how I felt that it was really soothing for me.

Jen Cudmore (15:25)
Okay.

Gotcha.

Right. It’s

super helpful to hear other people’s stories. Super helpful. And gives us insight, gives us language, helps us feel not alone too. You’re like, okay, that person had these wild tidal wave emotions too, like, and they were able to figure it out and handle it. That means there’s hope for me to get through it. Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (15:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, it’s challenging too because sometimes, and it’s one of my habits, like I would vent, you know, or even like publicly I’d post a rant on Facebook or something, cause it’s like, felt good to get off of my chest, but in the end it didn’t really help my situation a whole lot. And so sometimes we have these habits of like exploding at people that will kind of come alongside us and amp us up like, yeah, you should be really mad about that. And yeah, what they did was so wrong and.

Jen Cudmore (16:06)
Yeah.

Right.

Rosalynn Lasley (16:24)
blah, blah, and it feels good to have somebody validate how you feel or kind of match your energy when you’re really worked up about something. But in the end it’s like, okay, now that I feel validated, what do I do? Was this the healthiest way to deal with this? Or am I sharing what I’m going through with somebody that can step aside and say, okay, listen, I know this is hard, but this is how we need to work through it. This is how you should approach this. Yes, you want to tell that person off and.

Jen Cudmore (16:38)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (16:51)
⁓ It will feel really good to hurt them back, but in the end, that’s not what the Lord’s calling us to do. He’s asking you to tame your tongue. He’s asking you to control your emotions. And so if you can’t, let’s work through this together because your ⁓ desire to deal with the situation this way or that way is not going to help in the long run.

Jen Cudmore (17:12)
Yeah, yeah, that’s so good. So examples of not handling emotion well, know, ⁓ needing that validation that or however you just described it ⁓ versus like, you know, overreacting and having a meltdown ⁓ over something but

Rosalynn Lasley (17:21)
Mm-hmm.

Jen Cudmore (17:29)
I think it’s important too to note that a lot of our emotions are connected to wounds. And so when we have a trigger, sometimes our emotions are going to be out of balance because there’s something unhealed that needs to be addressed. so, so it’s like, we’re not just dealing with that emotion itself, but we’re dealing with all the roots that go with it. And so it can really compound the strength of that and make it.

harder to handle and harder to deal with it. So again, the whole idea of learning to deal with the things in your heart and get freedom from the wounds of the past and learn how to heal ⁓ from the different things that have happened to you is going to be really important in helping you manage your emotions well, because then you’re not going to be, they’re not going to be quite as strong if they’re not being pushed up by those roots and those negative situations, right?

Rosalynn Lasley (18:08)
Mm-hmm.

Right. And it’s okay if we don’t know how to do that in our own strength because, you know, like nobody would choose to react in anger all the time. Like, most people wouldn’t choose to just have a full, it’ll down like meltdown where they’re yelling and crying and that sort of thing out of a reaction to something that’s somewhat insignificant. It’s just that, you know, maybe they’ve never learned how to handle it differently. And it’s like, if I could choose different, I would, but I don’t know how. ⁓ you know, I remember

Jen Cudmore (18:26)
Right.

Rosalynn Lasley (18:47)
years ago somebody would tell me, just don’t worry about it. I’m like, oh okay, that never occurred to me. Yeah, if I could just not worry about it, don’t you think I would? And they eventually saw something, I think it was a quote or a meme or something, said telling somebody with anxiety not to worry about it is like telling a diabetic to control their blood sugar. Like sometimes things are out of your control a little bit, from like the chemical makeup.

Jen Cudmore (18:52)
Yeah, just flip the switch, push the button.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (19:13)
⁓

But you can utilize the tools that are available whether it’s therapy or like you talked about tapping and things like that in the previous episode You can utilize tools that are available to help you be able to work through the things that are difficult the big feelings the big stormy emotions so that you are handling them in a healthy way and you The more times you practice that the easier it gets and the more familiar it gets when you need to use it

Jen Cudmore (19:21)
Yeah.

For sure. And I think another thing too is that people are afraid to feel it. And what we need to do is actually just feel it. Because the thing is science has shown, and I wish I had memorized this data, but it’s something like 90 seconds to three minutes, something like that. An emotion technically only lasts a short time. So less than three minutes typically. And so if you can just sort of stay still for…

Rosalynn Lasley (19:47)
Right.

Jen Cudmore (20:05)
you know, three minutes, let it do its thing. Then you can sort of come back to your normal self and be like, how do I move forward? But in the moment, like you’ve got to get to the place where you’re okay sitting in that emotion, no matter how uncomfortable or unfamiliar it feels and just letting it run its course, recognizing with the wisdom that this is going to be over in just a minute. I can, I can handle this. I’m a big

I’m a big girl, I’m an adult. I just need to let it take its course and then I can figure out how to move forward in a healthy manner.

Rosalynn Lasley (20:34)
Yeah.

Right. And I have a practice of literally telling myself inside, this is uncomfortable, but it’s going to pass. This is uncomfortable, but it’s going to pass this because that discomfort feels very intense sometimes and you want to escape it in any kind of way. not that you physically are, but like if I could jump out of my body and run around to get away from this, I would, you know, but just know that it’s not going to last. It will pass. It always does. And like,

Jen Cudmore (20:48)
I love that.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (21:07)
just repeating that over and over over over again sometimes will help or even there’s been times where my anxiety has been so high that I’ve not been able to focus on anything else except for the fear or the panic of whatever it is that I’m dealing with. And so the only thing I could recall was the Lord’s Prayer or Psalm and I would just repeat it to myself over and over and over and over. It’d be just the Lord is my shepherd, the Lord is my shepherd, the Lord is my shepherd. Cause I couldn’t think of the whole.

verse in that moment, my brain didn’t have the capacity, but it changed my thought pattern to the goodness of God and that he is with me versus this anxiety and panic that I’m experiencing.

Jen Cudmore (21:48)
For sure, one thing that I have definitely done a few times that has worked so well is just saying the name of Jesus over and over because there’s power in that name. And so when I’m like super fearful or super angry, so you can’t think straight, right? Usually when you’re super emotional, you don’t think straight. And so just grabbing onto that really simple, I guess you could say it, coping tool of just saying something like,

Rosalynn Lasley (21:56)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

Jen Cudmore (22:14)
a Bible verse or saying the name of Jesus or even sometimes I’ve because a lot of emotion makes you physically amped up. So sometimes just doing a few jumping jacks or I don’t know some sort of really quick burst of physical movement can help that emotion dissipate faster. And so there are like a few things that you can do.

in the moment where it’s super crazy intense. And then that will help you get yourself sort of back under control and then you can move forward. Yeah. There you go. Nervous and injury. Thank you. That’s it.

Rosalynn Lasley (22:45)
Right, that nervous energy that’s in there. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah.

Jen Cudmore (22:51)
once you get through the whole sort of what I call the tidal wave portion, that one to three minutes of, my gosh, this is crazy, to, okay, now I can begin to think straight. mean, this is why they say never write an email in the moment, right? You gotta give yourself an hour because you’ve gotta get that emotion sort of calmed down so that you can think straight.

Rosalynn Lasley (23:06)
Thank

Jen Cudmore (23:13)
And then you can begin to respond in a healthy way instead of a hurtful or mean or whatever you felt like in the moment.

Rosalynn Lasley (23:13)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah. So

I have, ⁓ I had a habit of, I wouldn’t say anything if something upset me, because I was trying not to make a big deal out of something small. And I just try and let it go and let it go and let it go and let it go. But in the end, I really hadn’t let it go. And so then something would be like, this was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. And then I would blow up about all the things I’d been mad about for six months or whatever. And that was so unfair of me. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (23:30)
Okay.

Yes.

Rosalynn Lasley (23:47)
and I would not be kind about it. would just spew out the most vile, ugly, hateful, hurtful things because I was hurting. And so I had seen a quote somewhere a long time ago that said, say what you mean, but don’t say it mean. And I really had to try and work on that. Like I can convey the same message of being hurt or being frustrated or being discouraged without like going for the jugular and ripping somebody’s throat out cause I’m upset. ⁓ Cause how unfair like,

Jen Cudmore (24:14)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (24:16)
I’ve been trying to let it go this whole time, but I wasn’t actually letting it go. And now I’m going to blow up at you about all the things I’ve been mad about for all this time. like, how unfair, how unfair of me to not deal with things in a healthy way when I could have this whole time and it wouldn’t have become this big fight if I just dealt with it instead of trying to avoid it. Cause I didn’t want to address a conflict.

Jen Cudmore (24:37)
Right. So definitely sometimes being quiet and walking away is the right thing to do, but you also got to be able to fully let it go. As you were saying, think sometimes the opposite though, we can sometimes get really,

Rosalynn Lasley (24:45)
Mm-hmm.

Jen Cudmore (24:52)
And what’s right word? We can get really hung up on that emotion and we can feed it and we can keep ourselves stirred up. So instead of lasting one to three minutes, if we jump on that bandwagon or like, you know, the squirrel wheel or whatever you call it, we can stay in that super strong high emotion for a long time, probably hours or days, because we chose to feed it instead of just letting it take its course and do its thing. there’s, mean,

Rosalynn Lasley (24:58)
Right?

Yeah.

Jen Cudmore (25:20)
It’s all in balance, right? Like we were saying at the beginning of, okay, so let’s go ahead and name it and feel it. But then also, how do we move forward? There’s so many different ways that are healthy ways that we can handle it with the right tool. So maybe it’s journaling, maybe it’s prayer, maybe you need to cry, maybe you need to scream into a pillow, maybe you need to talk it out with somebody. mean, sometimes just processing it with someone who just loves you and will listen, sometimes that’s all we need and then we can get over it and we can move on.

Rosalynn Lasley (25:36)
R.I.P.

Jen Cudmore (25:50)
Or like we said, if it’s linked to a wound, then we probably need to get somebody to help us to get some healing with whatever that situation was. So there’s several different things that we can do to begin to handle it well. ⁓ And I think that another thing is that one of the things I’ve talked about before on the podcast is that sometimes we get spun up because we make up stories in our head about what something means. Our perspective is off. And so that can feed emotions.

Rosalynn Lasley (26:12)
Right.

Jen Cudmore (26:18)
So that’s another thing is being able to recognize the negative thought patterns that you have and the negative mindsets and how that directly relates to your emotions because they are linked, your thoughts and emotions are linked. So.

Rosalynn Lasley (26:32)
Right, well in ⁓ like our past and even whether it’s unrelated or our past experiences with a particular person, that can influence the lens which we look at situations. And so we are automatically jumping to a fence when we shouldn’t. ⁓ know, and one of the things that I discuss with my team at work frequently and it came, it’s kind of from like the top down, but assuming positive intent. And so when somebody’s sending you an email about something, they very,

they might mean it very matter-of-factly. They could have intended a tone that was like bright and cheery and kind. But because you have a history where you’ve not, you know, cared for one another or they have hurt you in the past, you’re viewing it from a negative point of view. And so you are assuming they are meaning something differently than they are. Or you’re taking offense, meaning, this must have been a jab, but anybody else that read it was like, I didn’t read it that way at all. But that’s because you’re looking at it through a place of hurt rather than just, ⁓

Jen Cudmore (27:25)
Right.

Rosalynn Lasley (27:31)
taking it for what it is.

Jen Cudmore (27:33)
Yep, 100%. And we all do it. We get so spun up in our minds and we make assumptions and we choose to be offended. And then it just takes us down this really dark rabbit hole and becomes quite a mess. yeah, definitely recognizing your thoughts and your perspectives and how you may have some skewed ways of looking at things. It definitely affects your emotions. So

Rosalynn Lasley (27:36)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Jen Cudmore (27:57)
What are some practical tools for dealing with emotions in a healthy way and healing with God, like including him in this situation? What would you say are some practical, healthy tools for handling emotions?

Rosalynn Lasley (28:11)
There’s a thing that they say, practice the pause. so practicing pausing and taking a moment before, if you have a situation where it requires a resolution, take a moment before you try and address it. And there’s been times where my husband and I, it was a ridiculous misunderstanding, but we both took a situation differently than what actually took place. And now we kind of laugh about it and it’s been, you know, probably 20 years, but. ⁓

At the time we were both very upset and he wanted to deal with it right then and I didn’t because I was like, I’m gonna hurt your feelings if we talk about this right now. And so it’s like, I need a minute to think through this and to calm down before I can talk about this because I’m gonna make the situation worse if we talk about it right now. ⁓ You know, being willing to seek help, whether it’s professionally or personally from somebody that cares about you but cares about you enough to be honest if it’s you that isn’t approaching a situation well.

Jen Cudmore (28:44)
Hmm.

Rosalynn Lasley (29:06)
You know, like, listen, I know that this hurt your feelings, but I’m gonna be honest with you, I think they’re right. I think the way that they handled this was the correct way, or I think that, you know, you’re in this sticky situation, because you did X, Y, Z, and it stinks, and let’s try and find a way out of it. But acknowledging that ⁓ you aren’t perfect in every situation, and maybe part of this is your fault, or maybe you do need to deal with it differently. ⁓ I think being willing to…

accept emotions as they come. It’s okay to cry. It’s not a sign of weakness. God gave us tears for a reason. ⁓ Being okay to be vulnerable with people that you know and trust when you’re walking through hard things or you’re feeling big things because they can help you navigate something when you don’t see a way out yourself or when your emotions are so high. You don’t have the capacity to ⁓ be rational when you’re thinking of a resolution or a way to handle it.

⁓ So those are my perspectives and my take on it is practicing the pause and being willing to allow somebody to walk through things with you when it feels like it’s too much or it is too much.

Jen Cudmore (30:13)
Those are amazing. I love those. think they’re so great. I can recall, like especially Tim and I, the first couple years of marriage, my husband is very quick-witted and I’m not. A lot of times I have to ponder something or, you know, I’m much better now, just like as I’ve gotten older and sort of practiced moving my brain a little faster. But especially when we first got married, like he was always coming up with things and…

I don’t mean even just necessarily in an argument, but just in general, he is really quick on his feet and I’m not. And so he would stump me so often and I would get frustrated. And he would think it was funny not realizing how much it really bothered me that I couldn’t contribute to the conversation. so again, practicing the pause of, he learned to give me a little more space and a little more time, recognizing that that’s what I needed. And that did divert a few more arguments, because I would get frustrated that he could move so fast and I…

I couldn’t. So definitely I love that. And then the idea of being teachable or being, ⁓ being open to constructive criticism is so important, especially when it’s from a loved one who’s coming from a place of, complete compassion and wanting the best for us. I think I agree with you 100%. That is super important. Being able to have those safe people. And as the scripture talks about, ⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (31:09)
Yeah.

Right.

Jen Cudmore (31:36)
iron sharpens iron. need those other people in our lives who will push back and challenge us and be like, look, I think you were out of line here or look, I think you might need some healing over here or here, let me help you process that out loud and look at it just a little bit different. And maybe you could better understand that other person or whatever the situation calls for. Those are extremely important. I think you also kind of brought up the physical things. ⁓

of tapping or breathing, think, especially when you’re in the moment and something is super, super strong, definitely those are really good tools of moving your body or calming those nerves so that you can get to that place faster and calm down quicker. So I guess those are called grounding techniques. So I agree with all of those. Those are so good. Go ahead.

Rosalynn Lasley (32:24)
Yeah. Being

okay to sit in the discomfort like we talked about before, ⁓ just because an emotion is intense doesn’t mean that you have to get rid of it immediately. You know, we talked about that minute to three minute thing is when it’s the most intense, but that doesn’t mean that it fades right after that. Sometimes it does last a little while depending on the significance of the situation and the emotion. And it’s okay to feel it in its fullness.

even while it’s uncomfortable, like just reminding yourself that it will pass. It is intense, it’s unfamiliar. And you know, it even reminds me this past week I attended a birth and afterwards the mom was like, the way that, I think she said something like the noises I was making scared me because it was so unfamiliar. Like she’d never made that kind of sound before she was giving birth to her baby and it was intense and it was like, wow, that was crazy. It kind of scared me a little bit, but it was.

that it was just part of the process. didn’t scare me. I knew that was totally normal, but for her it wasn’t. And so having somebody walk her through it and say, no, like you handled this the perfectly normal way. You handled this well. handled, yes, it was unfamiliar, but it didn’t last. ⁓ Being okay with just sitting in that like, this is different and knowing that sometimes different is okay.

Jen Cudmore (33:43)
Yes, exactly. Yeah, we don’t have to do it the same as everybody else. In fact, we shouldn’t try, you know, it’s good to sometimes get someone else’s perspective or someone else’s suggestions on something we’re struggling with, but that comparison thing or trying to be like somebody else definitely gets us in trouble. So yeah, just the more you lean in, the more you talk to the Lord about it and try different things, you’re going to figure out what works for you. And you’re going to be able to be well on your way to ⁓ getting better at handling emotions.

Rosalynn Lasley (33:51)
Mm-hmm.

Jen Cudmore (34:13)
So any other thoughts on this topic before we wrap up?

Rosalynn Lasley (34:14)
Right.

emotions are important part of life and balancing how we handle them, not trying to avoid them is super important for our overall well-being.

Jen Cudmore (34:27)
Right, exactly. Very important for our well-being. We have to manage our thoughts and emotions well if we want to become the best version of ourselves and become all that God designed us to be. So that’s just part of the journey, right? Okay, well as we go about this week, let’s explore the depths of this final thought. When strong emotions come,

Rosalynn Lasley (34:38)
Right. Yeah.

Jen Cudmore (34:49)
Try to keep that balance, right? Don’t push it down, don’t ignore it, but don’t just power through it either. You want to sit with it, you want to face it, you want to invite God into it. That’s where the healing begins. That’s where you’re gonna develop those healthy habits of managing the emotions ⁓ that are gonna be helpful and beneficial to your life instead of handling them in a negative manner and making life harder on yourself. So that’s ultimately the goal, right? We’re trying to do what we can to heal.

Rosalynn Lasley (35:14)
Right.

Jen Cudmore (35:17)
get freedom and become the best version of ourselves and live the abundant life that God has for us. So that’s it for today, everybody. Have a great week. We’ll see you next time. Bye.

Rosalynn Lasley (35:26)
Bye,

thank you.