I’m Diana Swillinger, and you’re listening to the Renew Your Mind podcast. Episode Number 72.
DIANA: Hey. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another podcast episode with Rianon. Hi, Rianon. Hi. How are you doing?
Rianon: I’m good. I’m happy to be here again.
DIANA: Awesome. I’m happy to have you here. So you and I were just talking a little bit before we started recording because this is just the second time I’ve had you on. And we’re, um, figuring out what this is and just had some good discussion on, like, what does this mean that you’re bringing questions to me and we’re answering them and what are we an expert in? And all that kind of stuff. And it’s not necessarily that we’re experts, but a lot of podcasts just have great discussions, and that’s kind of what I think about this as you and I are each coming with some of our own thoughts. Um, and I love the stuff that you add, because if you all haven’t listened to when Rianon was on a couple of weeks ago, just having her repeat back what she heard and add her own thoughts, she has a lot of wisdom, and that’s why I’m so glad that you’re here with me. But at the same time, no pressure. We’re just having a conversation.
We’re bringing, what we’ve learned from education, what we’ve learned from life experience, what we’ve learned from reading the Bible in any of the studies that we do and conversations we have with other people, and we’re talking about it. And seeing what can we apply to our own mind renewal? What can we apply to how we think about life and relationships and faith? And what can we apply that helps us mature in our emotions and regulate our emotions and grow in our wisdom and grow closer to God? And so, no, we’re not theologians, we’re not psychologists, though we’ve both studied it extensively. Um, but we’re just bringing what we have to the table and take what helps you elevate your life and grow and mature and have more joy and more peace and more hope in your life. And if it doesn’t quite resonate with you, that’s okay, too. We’re having a discussion, and if you think this is interesting, I just want to remind you all you get to ask questions if you want. Asking questions is super easy. You just join the Renew Your Mind community on Facebook, and Rianon puts posts in there to remind you all that you can send her a message. If you’d like your question to be anonymous, you can just send her a direct message. Of course, we’re not going to say the names anyway, but no one in the group will see it if you do that. Or you can just post it right in the link in the group. And we’ll have your question answered right here on the podcast. And so today we have two questions that were brought into the Facebook community, and one of them I previewed but just a couple of minutes ago. So I haven’t really thought about it. The other question, I have no idea what it is. And I don’t know, I think it’s fun to just talk a little more off the cuff and try to prepare a bunch of researched answers and just try to sound good and have some real discussion. So let’s do it. Let’s see what we got. Rianon all right.
Rianon: Well, before we get started, I’m wondering, um, because you have some new listeners, would you be willing to just briefly tell people what life coaching is and why it’s beneficial? The reason I’m asking this is because I think that there are some people out there that have the impression that a life coach is just sort of like a cheerleader and that they, um, are telling you to think positively. So can you just speak to that?
DIANA: Sure. And let me first say, if you’re struggling in life to a point where you don’t feel good, um, you might be feeling down, you might be having some stress or anxiety. You might be feeling frustrated or overwhelmed or whatever. I do not recommend just slapping a positive thought. You RA. Let’s all feel better about life and just think happy. Don’t worry, be happy. That stuff doesn’t work as far as I’m concerned. And I think that’s part of why I felt stuck for so long. I, uh, knew all the things I should be thinking. I knew how to think joy filled thoughts, supposedly, right? I could just think I’m amazing and I’ll be amazing and all that. But it didn’t work. And so I would try to think something for a day. I white knuckle it. I’m like, I’m a good person. I’m a good person. It’s true. I’m a good person. And then I’d make it through the day. And I was exhausted. I believed I was a good person for that day. Then I wake up the next day and I’m like, I’m a terrible person. My life is so hard.
My husband even called me on it. He’s like, why are some days you’re happy and you think you’re a great person, and other days you’re so down on yourself? And I think that was just that roller coaster of trying to think positive on top of pain, and it doesn’t work anyway. That’s just mentioning the think positive thing. There are life coaches out there who will take you down that road. If it works for you, great. Didn’t work for me. And that’s why I do the kind of coaching I do, which I’ll mention in a minute.
So, counseling I have been to counselors in my life, and I have had a, uh, valuable experience with all but one counselor that I saw. And ironically, somebody else chose that counselor for me, and that was a bad fit. But all the counselors I chose, uh, really helped me. And at different times in my life, when my sister died of leukemia, I needed somebody to help me process some grief. After a couple of years, when I was still hanging on so tight to the pain of grief, I needed help, and that was super valuable. And another time with some family drama, my dad and stepmom were getting divorced, and there was so much turmoil going on around me. I was getting sucked into the vortex. And she really helped me. In fact, I’ve mentioned that in a podcast I did a couple of weeks ago about family drama. And then a marriage counselor that has been he’s been on the podcast, Rick Marks, outstanding marriage counselor. And if anyone, at any point ever wants more information about him, you can send me an email, and I would be glad to help you get connected with Dr. Rick Marks.
So counseling, in all those instances for me and what I know for how it’s helped other people, and my sister was a psychology major and got a master’s in psychology. And, um, I know with your history, you know a bit about this as well. And I am not a counselor, so I say this from my perspective, and a counselor might describe it a little differently. That’s fine. From what I know, from my experience, is counseling is great for helping us process painful emotions. It’s great for helping us explore vulnerable places or places where there’s been trauma. And, uh, a well trained counselor can help you navigate some deep pains very well. And I think that, uh, there’s huge value in that. I believe I’ll be going to a counselor again in my future. I know there’s situations that that is the place I need help, and I think that’s true for many people. There’s probably other ways to describe that, too. I want to hear your answer on that, too, when I’m done. Well, actually, let’s do that first. Why don’t you tell me what you think or how you’ve seen counseling, and then we’ll talk about life coaching.
Rianon: Sure. Yeah. I would agree that counseling has been very helpful to process through painful things or even just discovery from past and present situations. And I’ve also had mixed experiences too, I think. Well, and just like life coaching too, you have to find the right fit for you. But I felt like counseling kind of takes you from not functioning or not functioning well. You might look like you’re functioning on the outside, right? Like you’re going to work, you’re going to school, you’re doing the things but inside you’re a total mess. And so it kind of gets you from that place to functioning where you’re like, okay, I’m okay. But what I noticed, and from the last experience I had, was just when I felt like, oh, this is good stuff, I’m learning, it was like, okay, you’re done. No, I have so much more.
DIANA: But you’re functioning now.
Rianon: I know, and it was like, I wanted to pursue more because some of the things I learned were helpful, but there were still other things that I felt like I needed help with. And I feel like there’s some overlap with counseling and life coaching because a lot of it uses the same principles and techniques. Life coaching, there’s like, a little bit of an overlap where it’s like if you’re in a lot of pain or need to process through things, it just kind of helps to take you to a place of moving forward. Mhm, and it’s funny because the last counselor that I had, and I loved her, she left to become a life coach.
DIANA: Yeah, there are a lot of counselors that are doing both right now as well. Some leave and become a life coach, but some will incorporate life coaching into their counseling or counsel people until they get to that place. It’s like, oh, now that you’re at this place where you’re not in that darker, deeper place or that tangled area you were before, you have more clarity, you’re functioning better. Now we can start using some of these life coaching tools, mhm, and you can start moving forward with them, which does lead right into what I think life coaching is. Now, some people that I coach are simultaneously doing therapy and coaching because they want a little bit of both.
And then I’ve also coached people who have done therapy before, and now they’re at a place where they want to feel like they’re moving more forward, which I think is why I often I can’t tell you how many times people have said, I have made more progress with you in three months than I made in three years with therapy. And I understand that. I think that’s great. I don’t take that as, oh, life coaching is better than therapy. But that speaks to what we were just talking about, is it doesn’t feel like you’re progressing as much in counseling because you’re, like, hanging out here. You’re hanging out with your trauma, you’re hanging out with your anxiety, you’re hanging out with your, um, difficult relationship. You’re hanging out here and you’re figuring it out, you’re going deep, you’re seeing what’s going on. It’s like, let’s just sit here and let’s get this figured out and start healing it.
Now that you’re healed, you can start moving forward. Great time for life coaching. And now you’re, like, on the move and it feels like you’re making so much more progress. So I understand why they say that if you’re ready, if you’ve done that work. If you’ve been in a difficult situation, I often recommend counseling. I also had somebody who did go through twelve weeks of coaching with me, and I said, before you continue, you need to do more work with counseling. And I knew she had so much going on there. But when you’re on your feet and you’re like, I want to show up better in this relationship, I want to work on getting a promotion. I want to figure out why I’m so, um, shy. At every family gathering, I actually feel pretty healthy, but there’s anxiety keeps creeping up here and there, and it’s not debilitating, but I think this could get better. Mhm.
So that’s kind of where life coaching comes in. Because the style of life coaching I’m doing is just about finding thoughts that are keeping us stuck because we want that forward motion. It’s not happening. We feel like we’re hitting a wall or something’s keeping us stuck. It’s usually because we have some story or some thoughts or some beliefs that are just in there that we don’t notice, or they just feel kind of tethered in and we get to loosen it up and get you thinking in a new way. So now kind of back to the very beginning when I said positive thinking doesn’t work. We can’t go from I’m a terrible person to I’m an amazing person, but if you come into life coaching, it’s like, I just think I’m a terrible person. Okay, cool. We all think that sometimes, so let’s just explore that. All right? Is it true we kind of get to a place where we’re, like I said, untethering it. Let’s just loosen it. Let’s just untie it. We don’t have to move forward yet, but let’s just take that hook off. Okay? Are you really a terrible person? Is that totally true? Can you be 100% sure that’s true? Is it possible you’re not a terrible person?
So sometimes the first place we’d go with something like that is instead of going to I’m an amazing person, the first thought is, maybe I’m a terrible person, maybe not. Sometimes I do terrible things. Sometimes I do great things. We just start loosening it up and we start getting you on your way and then incrementally. I mean, by the time you get to the end of twelve weeks of coaching, it’s kind of like, what? I don’t have to think that way. I can actually work on the spot. I feel freer. Well, you know, so you’ve done coaching like me, you’ve done counseling. Um, and coaching. Anything else you want to say about the difference with life coaching?
Rianon: I really like what you said about counseling. How? Because I felt too, like I got so much out of coaching and it seemed so much faster because I’d been through years of counseling. But I mean, when you’re in that place, you kind of need that. Some of those emotions are a lot to process through, and that’s okay. It’s slow, but once you have that, once you get to that place where you’re maybe not feeling great but you’re functioning, it really does feel well. And not in the beginning, necessarily. With my experience, it took a while for me to feel better. Like, probably half of it is like, I still don’t feel better, but I.
DIANA: Know, and I think even after a couple of weeks in, I’m like, you just need to feel whatever. I don’t remember what the emotion was. Just like, you just need to feel frustrated for a week. Just go do that.
Rianon: Right? Yeah. Um, terrible. I did, but it was like then all of a sudden, it kind of clicked and then I felt like I was moving forward. But I love how I feel like you come alongside people and it’s not this mysterious process where I don’t know what you’re doing. You give people the worksheets. You walk them through everything. And I almost felt like you’re training me how to do it for myself. Obviously, you always need other people in your life. Sometimes you’re still going to get stuck. There’s always going to be times that you have something to learn from someone else. But I just love that you kind of equip your clients to have the tools they need to help themselves yeah.
DIANA: And keep moving forward. Mhm. Yeah. Great. Now that you asked me that question, I don’t have to do a podcast episode on that. I was thinking I might do that, but maybe later. Now that we’ve answered it, we’re good for now. All right, what else you got for me?
Rianon: Okay, so the first question I have from someone in the Renew Your Mind Facebook group is, how do you stay strong in faith when someone you love deeply is suffering terrible pain with a disease that isn’t their fault and they are a good Christian person, yet have to suffer endlessly even after multiple surgeries?
DIANA: Yeah, well, this sounds familiar to me, so I never remember what I say on the podcast. You all forgive me, so if it’s overlap, it’s fine. My sister died of leukemia when she was 33 and I was 30, and I had the same I mean, I wrestled with my faith, so I can’t say I had the same questions, but I mean, this question is, how do you stay strong in your faith? Because when I think back at that, I’m like, I didn’t stay strong in my faith. I questioned my faith. I was like, God, are you real? Would you do this? Now I understand. Because when also, um, my sister that’s a couple of years older than me, when she was like two months old, she had spinal meningitis. And I remember growing up, my father said to me, because it was severe, they weren’t sure if she was going to live. She’s had some challenges. She’s survived, but she has some challenges. Uh, physically and some minor cognitive challenges and stuff. And he used to say to me, if the God that’s out there is the kind of God that would let this happen to a little baby, I don’t want any part of him. And I always thought, that doesn’t make sense.
I don’t know why would you think that the bad things happen and God’s good, whatever, until I experienced it because I wasn’t born yet when that happened to my sister, my other sister, but when my different sister passed away from leukemia, I was like, uh oh, this is what dad was talking about. What kind of God allows this to happen? Why am I believing in someone who’s allowing this much suffering? So I don’t know that we’re supposed to stay strong in our faith. I think it’s okay that we don’t stay strong in our faith. I think it’s okay that we question it all. I think we, um, can still have hope even while we’re questioning, like, God. I’m not sure what your plan is, and none of this makes sense, and I really hate the way this looks right now, but I’m going to hang on to a little bit of hope that maybe you are good and you’re going to work this all out. You always say you’re going to work things out for good, and maybe you really will. But my stepdad and I were having a conversation this weekend, and I didn’t look up the verse. I think it’s in well, I’m pretty sure it’s in one of the gospels, Matthew or Mark, where somebody, a man wants his son healed, and Jesus says, do you believe? And then he says, yes, I believe. Help me with my unbelief mhm in the same breath.
Isn’t that how we go through difficult situations like this? So sometimes staying in our faith isn’t staying strong in our faith. It’s hanging on by a thread. But let’s keep that thread. Let’s keep that hope. Let’s not abandon it until when you’re in the thick of it, don’t abandon it. Let it just be a thin thread, but keep it there and do what you need to do to work through the situation and feel all the things you need to feel. You might want to feel angry at God, you might want to feel angry at disease, you might want to feel angry at doctors. You might want to feel angry just because this shouldn’t be happening. And then other days, because that small tether of hope, because you haven’t abandoned your faith is still there.
Other days, you’re able to grab onto that and feel a little more hope and have a little more understanding or compassion for yourself or trust or whatever it is you need. But I don’t know that you stay strong in faith through this. I think it’s a crazy journey, and God can handle that if we doubt. I mean, I told God I hated him. I’m so angry at you. I’m like, I’m going to believe you’re an all powerful God, but that’s it. Don’t you come here and pretend that you love me and you care about my life. I don’t want that right now. And that’s what I did for um, I kept that tether. So I’m not going to get to heaven and I’m going to be okay. But right now, I’m not. And God let me have that. I needed to go through that. Maybe we need to doubt and not be strong on our face sometimes.
There’s an example of how life coaching isn’t like, let’s just think positive. Life coaching, I think done well, is let’s think realistic. Yeah, realistic, um, is when somebody you care about is in terrible pain. I wrote down a couple of the words, but terrible pain. You’re not going to feel positive when you witness that. How do you want to feel when you see someone in terrible pain? You might want to feel compassion for them and love for them, but you might also want to feel a little resentful that it’s happening. I think that’s okay. Jesus felt resentful sometimes, or anger when he overturned the tables. That’s the one story in, um, the Temple Square, when people set up their wares and we’re using it as a market. That’s the one big example we get to see that Jesus was angry, but we have very little info about the first several years, three decades of his life. I bet he was angry other times, too, when he saw an injustice. And this is part of our fallen world that we have disease and pain, and that is not justice. Justice is coming later when he redeems it all.
So we get to give ourselves freedom to feel what we need to feel, to question what we need to question, to have trust and hope when it feels doable. And then give ourselves space to feel some, um, anger or frustration or despair or whatever else we need to feel for a time. And sometimes counseling helps us through these things, too. This is a situation where somebody might need someone who can help navigate some of the darker corners a little bit. I needed it after my I didn’t do it right away after my sister died. I wish I wouldn’t have been in pain for so many years, because ultimately, it was a seven year process for me to get out from under some mismanaged, um, pain and terrible reef. Uh, but I did it with help.
Rianon: I love that you shared that verse. I hope that helps the listener. I know. Thinking of going through difficult times in my life. You’re right. Sometimes we believe, but we don’t believe at the same time. We’re not completely letting go of our faith, but we are, uh, questioning why this is happening. And one of the things that I really like about coaching is that you allow all of these feelings, whether they’re positive or negative. I think sometimes we have this idea that certain emotions are bad or we shouldn’t feel a certain way. And so if we are, we deny it or we judge ourselves, and then we create even more suffering, unnecessary suffering and pain. I mean, we are going to have suffering and pain on this earth, but unnecessary suffering and pain because we’re not even acknowledging we’re not even allowing ourselves to acknowledge some of those emotions. So I know I’ve appreciated that about coaching is just that reminder or maybe even just for me, really learning. I mean, maybe knew it somewhere cognitively, but really learning it’s okay to feel all of these emotions. And it’s not bad or good. They’re just feelings.
DIANA: Yeah. We were made in God’s image. And while he made us in his image, he gave us the capacity to feel and process all of the emotions. All of them. It’s not like he gave us joy and peace and hope. And then he’s like, all right, Satan, now you go and plant in them some negative emotions. Satan was not a part of our creation. We were not recreated in the image of evil. We were created in the image of good. And in that goodness came all of those emotions. So I think it’s not a stretch to say all emotions are good as long as we respect them and don’t use them for evil. Mhm, I hope that helps the person listening. Um, I suggest that you have people that can walk this path with you and that can bear you sharing your emotions so that you don’t go through this alone. You need to have some people on your side because it can get heavy. All right, you have one more question.
Rianon: Um, the last one is I have had issues with being a roller coaster of emotions and regulating my responses in the moment. I don’t like being like that. Do you have any advice, tips or techniques? Thank you.
DIANA: Yes. Roller coaster of emotions. I jot down words sometimes just to make sure I stay on track. I used to use that word to describe my life all the time, like, it’s a roller coaster and I want to get off. But what happens with emotions? And we seem to be talking about them, this whole podcast, so I guess we’ll call this the emotions episode. Emotions are a, uh, physical manifestation in our body that is triggered by things going on in our brain. Usually our thoughts, conscious and subconscious. Sometimes it could be fight or flight response, which happens in a different area of our brain than our thoughts.
But what happens then is if we either allow our bodies to process them or we try to resist them. I don’t want to feel anxiety, so no, I’m going to ignore, oh, my heart’s racing. Oh, forget it. I don’t want my heart to be racing that’s bad. Or, oh, I’m feeling kind of sad today. It feels a little like depression. I don’t want to feel depressed. Let me go outside and play with the kids and just try to be happy. I’ll call my friend. I’ll go on a walk. Let’s not feel this. And when we repress emotions or anger or whatever else it is, they’re not gone. We’ve just shoved them to the back corner. But they really want to be expressed, their energy. That’s why when I say they’re a physical manifestation in our bodies, their energy.
If you Google Heat Map for emotions, you can see that there’s energy in the form of heat in different areas of our body. It moves around depending on the emotion that we’re feeling. If we don’t let ourselves feel it, that energy is in there still waiting to be processed or expressed. So if we resist emotions, they’re going to pop out at all sorts of times when we have our guard down. You forgot to be resisting right now. When your kids filled the milk because you were distracted, scooping out the macaroni, they spilled their milk and boom. All of a sudden, you explode with emotion because you didn’t have your guard up to try to resist and repress. And all that’s been in there bubbling up comes spraying out everywhere. So it seems like mismanaged emotions, and I guess in a way it is, because we’re not allowing them in a time that’s healthy for us to process them.
So I recommend finding a time where you get to explore what emotions you might be feeling. And that’s just a great place to start. It’s hard to get a lot deeper here on this podcast, M, unless I’m working with somebody a little bit deeper. So let me give a place to start with this. I think the best place to start is to write things down sometimes, even if it’s once a week. Man, I remember, and I kind of wonder i, uh, had a picture in my mind I’m just making this up, but the person who asked the question has kids at home. Because that’s one of the most stressful times of life. You have all these people interjecting themselves constantly, and it’s really hard. Or it could be busy work, or it could be whatever. If we don’t have white space in our life, where we get to sit down on the porch and stare at the birds or go for a walk by the river or sit and read a quiet book or whatever else it is, take a yoga class where we empty our minds a little bit, then we’re never giving ourselves time to process.
So, uh, find a time in the week, even if it’s once a week, where you can sit down with a pen and paper. Doesn’t have to be a journal. I love journaling, but who cares how you do it? You just need to get stuff out. When my sister called me and told me that. My pie tasted terrible. That made me mad. That one child just never leaves me alone. Why does there have to be so much dirt getting trapped in the kitchen every day? I tell people, just get it all out, any of the thoughts that are happening, and see what emotion comes up for you when you get your thoughts out. I call it a, uh, thought dump. If you just do a thought dump and see what’s in there, the emotions are going to come with it, and then give yourself time to feel it. Either way, either name the emotion and recognize it and let yourself have a moment to have it, or if you don’t know what the emotion is, see where you feel it in your body.
You know this Rianon and anyone who went to the Renew Your Mind boot camp, uh, we went through an emotions worksheet. Well, we might not have gone through it at boot camp, but I gave it to everybody. In the beginning of the level one of my coaching program. We talk about emotions, but then we spend time feeling it in our body. We just pick an emotion, and then we start asking ourselves questions about it. Where do I feel it? Or if you don’t know what the emotion is, you just do the thought dump. I’m feeling something in my body. What am I feeling? And it can be very subtle, so I have to tell you, it can be nuanced. When you do this, at first, you need to be still, and you need to have a little bit of space. But even if you can do this for a few minutes, once a week, you will be processing your emotions.
So you ask things like, where am I feeling it in my body? I’ll just do, like, frustration right now. This is what it might sound like for me. Where am I feeling at my body? My shoulders feel tense. My jaw feels tense. I’m clenching my teeth. It feels tight. Like, all my muscles in my shoulders, neck, and jaw are squishing together. If I gave it a color, I would say it’s a deep red. It feels a little warm. It’s not super hot, but if I could touch it, it’s definitely warm. If I could touch it and push on it with my fingers, it would be kind of like rubbery and slightly squishy, but not much like a really tight, pumped up ball because there’s so much pressure in there. I feel that frustration and just keep noticing it until it starts to dissipate.
That’s actually the processing of that energy of that emotion, and it releases. Now, I’m no longer stuffing that down into the corners, ready to bounce out whenever, but I’ve allowed it to have space to exist and then dissipate. So I kind of think of, like, if it could come out of my body in, like, a puff of smoke, and then you see it but then it just vanishes. We’ve let it out. Mhm. And there’s a lot of other ways to get off the roller coasters of emotions. I’d need to talk to whoever this person is. If you haven’t done a free coaching call, you can definitely do that. I would love to talk with you more about your specific experience with this roller coaster of emotions, and I can help you more specifically, but that’s a great place to start if you’re just working on this on your own. So tell me now, I talked a lot. What do you think of that?
Rianon: In this area? The most helpful thing was the feelings wheel that you gave me, uh, when you asked, what do you feel? And even still now, I’m like, I don’t know. I needed to actually look at the list of emotions. I don’t know where she’s at, but I know for me, because I feel like I’ve struggled with that also. It was like I just didn’t even know what I felt, so I had to go through. And if anyone’s not familiar with the feelings wheel, it’s like in the middle. It’s just the ones you think of. You would tell your kids, angry, sad, happy. Yeah, you can start there and then kind of go out.
And so what I have found to be helpful, like you said, make time for it. It’s so important. And I’ve decided I’m going to have a throwaway journal because I’m like, I want to be honest. I don’t want anyone reading this. Someday when I die, I don’t want anyone to go through and see what’s in there. This is purely for me to just write it all out. So all I do is if I’m feeling something, I don’t even know what I’m feeling, I go somewhere where I can be alone. It could be five minutes. And I go through this entire feelings wheel, and I will look at every single emotion and I’ll write down any that I think I might be feeling. And then I will go back and I’ll write why, which is really the thought. And I will go through and I will write all those down. And most of the time when I get to the end of that exercise, I feel better.
Like you said, just getting it out, it’s like sometimes that’s all it takes, which is really pretty easy. But a lot of us, instead of doing that, we hold it in, like you said. And I loved what you said about if you’re not working on repressing those emotions or holding it in, that it’s just going to come out. And that’s so true. And like you said, especially for moms and with little kids, I think was the hardest for me when my kids were really small because it was just so physically demanding. So allowing those emotions to just be out on paper, um, has been really helpful. And sometimes even too, I can go back and if I think, okay, I’m feeling anxious, why am m I feeling anxious? Because whatever it is, I can go back and think, is that true? Or is this I can work with that thought now because of the work that I’ve done with you. So I would totally agree with what you’re saying is just the emotions, but depending on where this person is at, I know for me, I just had to start real simple.
DIANA: Yes.
Rianon: Just figure out what it is and write it down.
DIANA: I think we’ve given a variety of feedback here, so she’s going to be able to pick one of these things that we’ve said between writing down all your thoughts, writing down what the emotions could be, giving yourself a moment to physically process it and see what it feels like in your body. One of those is going to help.
Rianon: Yeah, absolutely.
DIANA: So what I’m also going to do is I’m going to put a link in the show description to the Feelings Wheel so that everybody here can take a look at it and start exploring emotions. Because I totally agree with what you’re saying. In fact, it’s one of the stories that I tell when I go out and speak. I’ve probably said it on the podcast before, but one of the moments that was an impetus to me starting down this road of really figuring out how emotions relate to everything and why even being able to name an emotion is so important was this moment on my bed where I was just feeling zero energy and I felt like I hated my life. I didn’t really care what was going on with the kids. They were doing whatever, and I just went in the bedroom in the middle of the day, shut the door, laid on my bed.
Anyway, I’ve said this story before, so I’m making it really short this time. I called my church mentor in the morning. Uh, she was director of Women’s Ministries, and now she’s a pastor at her church. And amazing. And I called her for help because she had been mentoring me. She called me back right when I was laying there on the bed, and I had very little to say, but at one moment she said, diana, I think you’re discouraged. And I just felt like this heavy weight go right off me just from knowing that I was feeling discouraged. So I think there’s huge power in naming the emotions that we’re experiencing instead of ignoring them or simplifying them into that mad, sad glad, but going deeper, like, am I feeling discouraged? Am I feeling, uh, irritated? Am I feeling relieved? Am I feeling eager? Am I feeling powerless, lonely, dread? There’s so many nuances to these emotions that we’re feeling, and when we can really dial it in, that, um, can be huge in giving us relief. Mhm so I’ll make sure that Emotions Wheel is in the notes so people can access that. It’s an amazing tool. All right. There we go. That was fun.
All right, well, if you guys found this to be helpful, if you’re like oh, I know what I want to ask. Remember to go to the Renew Your Mind community on Facebook. If you want a quick link for that, go to Rympodcast.com. And then halfway down the page is a small I know, I have to make it bigger. There’s a small Facebook button that you can click on and join the group. Or just go to Facebook and search the Renew Your Mind Community, and you should find us. So I guess that’s it for today, Rhiannon. We’ll see you or talk to you, not see you, talk to you in another month or so. But I will be back next week, so until then, take care of you.
As an advanced, certified life coach, I help Christian women trying to live their best lives, but they still feel unsatisfied and stuck. I teach thought management skills that work so you can enjoy life again and step into who God has created you to be. Don’t forget to head on over to Rympodcast.com to get my free resources or a free coaching call.
