And that's why I'm arguing for you know us understanding our emotions and understanding how they operate and understanding how they show up in our bodies because it's not a bad thing either that they show up in our bodies in that way. Our bodies and our and our souls they work together to help us pay attention to what is happening around us. Welcome back to Renovating the Soul. I am your host, Alexandria Robinson, and I'm so glad that you're joining me today. This podcast is all about introspection, growth, and creating healthier lives from the inside out. I am a firm believer that if we do the work of looking within, we can create a more well-rounded, healthier, whole, and even happier experience in life. Last episode, we talked about roots. We talked about um what it meant to dig deep into who we are and looking at the very core of us. We correlated nature with humanity and this and the things that make us up, and we really took a lot from nature and allowed nature to show us how we can nurture and love ourselves by making sure that we tend to the parts of us that need it the most. If you haven't checked out the episode, I definitely encourage you. Today we're moving on to a different topic. So I want to make sure that you get a chance to really use what's from that episode as we continue on throughout this season of the podcast. In today's episode, we're switching topics. You've probably already seen that the title is how broken souls lead to broken bodies, um, the connection between emotions and physical health, or something of that nature, right? But essentially what we're talking about is the mind-body connection. And I always like to start with sharing with you all what made me choose these topics because I promise you these come from me just thinking about life's experiences and the things that I've always wanted to like tell people. It's like thinking about the people I've been around the most or the people that I'm closest to within proximity or relation, not necessarily close to in relationship. And taking from the experiences, my own experiences, things that I would have wanted somebody to share with me. And then also looking at, I think, what could be helpful to the people around me. And so these are personal topics that I write down, and then when I do my research, they turn into something even more because I find out that there's so much information out there, and that's how this started. So, really, what I wanted to get at was when I was little, I would get sick all the time. And when we're talking about little um elementary school, so I would get sick all the time in elementary school with stomach aches, and I knew that I was making myself sick, but I didn't know how. I would get super scared or worried, and then I would end up sick with like a stomach bug or a stomach ache. Now, there are probably fewer times that I actually really did have something wrong with me and had a genuine stomach bug like from sickness. And I think those times were like if me and my brother both got sick, or someone else in the house got sick too, then I knew it wasn't just me, but I distinctively remember this one night that we had rabbits as pets, and um we heard all this commotion. I think my uncle was at the house too, and they were trying to fight off these dogs that had eaten our rabbits, and I got so scared that night that I ended up sick. Now, what's funny? What I I guess is okay, how can I say this? It's kind of funny, it's kind of not, but um well, I would get sick so much that if I ate somewhere or I drank something or something was around me when I got sick, I would never do it again. So I had a friend from school over that night, and I thought that she was the cause of my sickness. So I actually never invited her over back to my house, and we were in school together from elementary, middle school, and high school. I never invited her over for a sleepover ever again. I feel so bad, and I'm not gonna say who that was. Um just in case she's listening, no. Um, but in my mind, I would rationalize and try to figure out what made me sick when I did have a hint that it was me, but again, I didn't really know like how was I really causing myself to get sick? I don't understand, like I'm throwing up, I have all of these things, I really don't feel good. How am I causing myself to be sick? But I knew somehow I was doing it. My grandma would come and pick me up from school anytime I called her and told her I wasn't feeling good. And most of those times, again, I was never genuinely sick. My dad was the one that was like, I'm not picking you up or you're not getting out of school until there are actual signs that you're truly, truly sick. And I think that's because he understands too that like children, right? We often fib about being sick because we just don't want to go to school. But in my case, it was both of those things. But majority and and more so pertaining to what we're talking about today, it really was a lot in my mind, right? That was happening. Um, I grew up in a way that I don't think that I really saw healthy emotions on display. I saw a lot of extremes, and honestly, I'm st I'm still like that. I'm like either way up here or I'm way down here, and now I'm trying to find a really healthy balance. Um, but back to what I was saying, I I grew up with a lot of extremes, a lot of extreme emotions, and not really seeing people process them well, seeing people jump from like one thing to the next, to the next, to the next. And as I talked about in the first episode, Predators in the Pulpit, I grew up in church, and a lot of those environments do not encourage you to be in tune with your emotions. So I didn't really grow up having a good relationship with um emotions and understanding how they operate and work. I probably didn't pay attention well in biology um and about our makeup and stuff, but I don't really remember that being the main focal point either. Um, psychology for sure, right? They definitely want you to understand yourself and be in tune with your emotions. But again, you can learn things in certain environments, but if you're not in an environment that is proactively doing those things, you're probably not gonna have them ingrained into who you are. And so one of the things that I felt like I well, I would say I had this silent frustration that I didn't know how to put into words, but I was really frustrated with the fact that no one was handling their emotions. Um, and I not like no one like referring to everybody in the world, but like I said, the environments that I grew up in, even going to college and seeing the behavior of people, right? Even my own emotions were out of whack, okay? And so I had a problem with like how are we supposed to do this? But I didn't know where that starts. I it wasn't really actively and consciously on my mind. Like I said, it's more like a silent, unconscious kind of thing. I mean, it's hard to call it unconscious, but I was aware of it, but it just wasn't on the forefront of my mind. Hopefully that makes sense. And so in 2014, I was at home in my apartment in Smyrna, Georgia, and I was watching the church I had attended kind of off and on. They had, I was watching virtually, and they had a a gentleman come named Peter Scazaro. And hopefully I'm not butchering the last name. I've always struggled uh with his last name, but I believe it's Peter Scizaro. And I'd never seen a like TED Talk interview-esque thing on a Sunday morning, Pastor E. Dewey Smith. It was my first time witnessing a untraditional Sunday service where Peter Scizaro talked about his his book, and it was titled Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. And he goes on, he starts and he goes on about how as Christians we should be in tune with our emotions, that emotions should not be neglected when it comes to our spirituality. And y'all, I could go on and on, but y'all, let me tell you something. That sermon that was 10 years ago. Was it 10 years ago? 2014. Yeah, that was 10 years ago. I still remember the day that I heard the things that he was saying. I don't remember everything he was saying verbatim, but I remember my world. It was like those movies where everything just stops. I remember just everything just shifting and changing for my mindset, for the way that I perceived. It was like a light bulb went off, and I was like, Finally, like this, this is exactly it's like what my soul had been longing for to know to have that comfort of like, you're not crazy, right? You should be, you should use your emotions. Your emotions are not bad, they're things that you need to be paying attention to, and that emotions do play a factor into spirituality. Now, even though I wasn't directly told you cannot be emotional as a Christian, um, it was definitely implied. It was definitely implied in the way that you're not supposed to be sad about certain things or or you can't be too happy or you can't have it, it was just like again, not deliberately. No one sat me down and was like, as a Christian, we don't stay in tune with our emotions, but from the environment, from watching people, from seeing, from even when I would have my own experiences, right? And either people not discouraging or people encouraging the you know the right or wrong behaviors, like I just there I was really struggling because I didn't understand how I was supposed to really regulate and balance that aspect of me. And so when I heard Peter Scazaro talk about this, I immediately bought that book. I to this day, that book is like stamped in my mind. It is one of the books that absolutely changed my life and got me on this path of wanting to like wake people up and be like, you need to be in tune with in tune with your emotions, you need to know what is happening, and you cannot separate them from your spirituality, you cannot separate them for your education, you cannot separate them from your emotions, they are a part of us, a part of all of us. And so today, that's what we're gonna be talking about. The theme of this broken souls lead to broken bodies is essentially about how um our unresolved emotional wounds, stress, and inner turmoil can show up in our physical health. And so, if we neglect our emotional well-being or refuse to address the deep-seated pain, um, our bodies start to bear the weight of it. The connection between our emotional state and our physical health is simply undeniable. And I want to read this statistic, y'all, y'all already know me or should know me by now. If it's your first time here, then you'll learn. Uh, I I always have my little resources. So um I didn't use emotionally healthy spirituality for this um for for this episode, but it is still a book that I definitely recommend. I will have all the links for you all, of course. But I wanted to read this quote from the article that I read, how emotional processes affect physical health and well-being. And I wish I had it, I wish I had the the original right in front of me. I don't, but it is from, I believe, like a a hospital. Um, so again, I don't have that right in front of me, but I but it is, it seemed like a very credible source. And so that's why I used it and I used um some of the information in it. So here's what the quote says Studies have found that over 80% of all doctors' visits involved a social emotional problem, while only 16% could be considered solely organic in nature. One study found that 84% of 567 common complaints, such as chest pain and dizziness, yielded no medical diagnosis. So, before I get into that, I want to say this is not saying that people who go to the doctor and you know, if you have physical pain, that it ends up not being nothing. That's not what this is saying. What this is saying is that often people are going to, and the article talks about this, they're going to the doctor. They have these real bodily things, physical things happening, but there's no specific diagnostic or diagnosis or a solution for what is happening within them. I'm sure you and I probably know those people, those people who are always something's always wrong with them, or they're always at the doctor, they're always getting tests ran, and they get the tests ran. And if you come from a background like me, where you're a Christian, uh, you know, they're always like, oh, it's a miracle. They didn't find anything. But that in this case, the one we're talking about today, that is likely because there was nothing to find in the first place, because the problem was not really from starting from the physical, but it's starting from the soul, it's starting from what's happening within that person, it's starting from the emotions that are plaguing them, the chronic emotions that they have kept themselves in. And so that is what we are talking about. So I'm gonna be breaking down how emotions are not just these fleeting things, right? They're not just these fleeting feelings, as many of us have been taught, right? To either ignore them, suppress them, repress them, which there's a difference between the two of those. They're not just these things that, oh my gosh, they're so manic and I can't control them, and I just gotta let them happen to me. And I have to just live into each emotion as it comes. Like they're not those things either, right? They are signals from our bodies that help us understand what's going on inside. Our emotions guide us, y'all. Like, I'm so excited for today's episode because this is literally what I wish I would have found years ago. Um, and I and I and I've been on this journey, right? Since that eye-opening moment in 2014. But even in coming to do research for this episode, I learned so much more than I knew before. And it actually has helped me so much now at 32, right? Not just with myself, but even with how I parent my children to be careful, and I'm getting ahead of myself because I'm so excited, so I'll I'll reel it back in, but to be careful not to um cause them to suppress their emotions, but to lean into them in a healthy way. So we're gonna unpack that. We're gonna be talking about how our emotions they guide us. Um, however, when they get overwhelming or out of balance, that's when they can show up in our bodies in ways that we don't always expect. We're gonna look at what emotions really are, how specific emotions affect our body, and the natural ways that our bodies work when we experience these emotions. And then I always love to share practical advice. So I'm gonna share practical advice on how to balance emotion and reason and a lot of these suggested collective advice from the various resources that I pulled from. It was honestly essentially the same, which I also found pretty fascinating. And so I'll I'll yeah, I'll I'll end the episode with that practical advice. I wanna take a moment here to say I'm not an expert, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not uh an emotions expert by any means. Again, I am just a girl, a woman who really believes that we can live well-rounded lives. I I say about myself that I am a real, regular, well-rounded woman, right? Like I want to be healthy in a holistic way and not just in one main area of my life. And so that means physically, mentally, emotionally. And we're gonna talk about some of the advice and the things that I need to work on in myself, right? So I'm not an expert at this, but I'm so excited to share this because in these past 10 years, as I've been trying to really do this, and again, not perfect, right? Because now I'm learning how to do it in a marriage. I'm learning how to do it with my children, I'm learning how to do it as situations come up, right? Because I am a person who like leans so heavy into my emotions and not into reason. And it's probably one of the things that you know gets me into trouble the most when it comes to people, when it comes to my marriage, is that I'm so emotion-focused and I allow my emotions to control me um often. And so that is it's a journey, right? It's a journey, and that's what I want to encourage you all that like doing this work, even what we're about to unpack and having to face certain emotions, having to, you know, dig deep, it's not easy, it's very hard. But this is a marathon, it's nothing that you're gonna get by the time this episode is over. Uh, you need to you need to be gracious with yourself and love on yourself and don't beat yourself up, right? That's the opposite of what we want. This is really here so that you all can start thinking, asking yourselves questions, and obviously, right, starting to do that work of introspection. And so that's what this is all about. That's what this is here for. We're on this journey together, as I often say. So before we dive in, I do want to say some of my resources that I use. So I used a book called Emotions. A very short, it's it's a very short introduction on emotion. So, very short introductions is this, it's a book series that you can find, and they have tons of topics. And then I also used another book titled Why Emotions Matter, and then there's another book that I didn't use on the philosophy of emotion that I that I do recommend. I just didn't have enough time to really get through all of that for this episode, but that is a good book, and then there's also an article on emotion um from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and so that's another good resource, and what you do right with these uh books is as you're reading them, you're gonna notice that there are differences and there are similarities, and you have to choose from what you know, from what you research, from the facts that you find, right, from the sources that are credible, you need to compile what the foundational aspects are, and then there are nuances, right, that you can branch off to. So that's what we're gonna, that's what I'm gonna focus on. Is like I'll tell you all some of the differences between the two sides, but the main meat that we're gonna focus on is what collectively these people and all these different branches and um different um disciplines, what they have come to agree upon. Okay, so let's dive in. First, we're gonna talk about what are emotions. Okay, so before we got too deep into what emotions are exactly, I wanted to just share really fast from um the this is kind of fascinating fact that I found that makes a lot of sense for why there's so much but also not enough on emotion, like the word emotion. And that's because I learned that it the word emotion is fairly recent. So before the 19th century, so looking at philosophers, which if you listen to my philosophy episodes, you hear me refer to these things, right? Um, they would talk about passions, sentiments, and affections, and they would um they would write about things like anger, pity, and fear. They have been writing about those things for thousands of years, but they were not lumped together. They actually would um make distinctions between them, right? And almost define them against each other, right? What is this one, what it is, what it's not. Um, and then when, and I don't remember the exact person's name, but there was a point where they needed to describe emotions in a way that was not influenced by the Greek philosophers, and that was not also influenced by the Christian church. They wanted something more neutral and out of kind of um, I don't remember the exact history, but they around that time kind of was where psychology was born. And psychology was supposed to be morally neutral, so free from the ethical framework of the Greek philosophers and also free of the religious connotation, so it had to be secular, right? And they needed a new word besides the ones that had been coming up, right? Because certain words were associated with Christianity, certain things from the Greek philosophers, as we've already said, and so the word emotion fit, but nobody really knew what it meant. In fact, there was a professor, um, an Edinburgh professor, he was a professor of moral philosophy, and he told his students that the exact meaning of the term emotion is difficult to state in any form of words. And when I was doing my research essentially, like it's still kind of confusing on when you're trying to say what is emotion, what is the word emotion, what does that mean? And so there's a lot of research already there, but there's a lot of research still being done, right? I almost like the fact that they were separated at one point, and instead of now just kind of being lumped together in this kind of vague, hard to explain word, but for the sake of our time, we will, you know, refer to emotions being that us to say this. We'll refer to the word emotions with the understanding that emotion does not define things perfectly, and it doesn't put things into perfect categories because as we're gonna learn, there are basic emotions, things that you know are automatic, but then there are our higher cognitive emotions that may um you know require a more consciousness, more thought to them. And then you have emotions, but then you also have moods, right? So that's why I'm saying that that the word emotion. That's why I wanted to bring that up. It's not perfect. And when you hear emotion and when I hear emotion, we may hear different things. Some of y'all might hear Destiny's child. You know what I'm saying? Like, we might hear different things. So I want to be clear that you know that is for a reason, right? Like it's not perfectly defined. Let's dive in this time for real to what are emotions. So, like I said, we often think of them as these fleeting things that you know are reactions to the things in our life. But emotions are more than something that we feel, they are biologically rooted responses to the world around us. And when I say um by you know biologically rooted responses, it means that all mammals experience some level of emotion. Humans, we all humans experience emotions, all of us, every single one of us. There is not one human that can escape basic emotion. Okay. And oftentimes, emotions are how our bodies tell us that something matters, or that something is happening, or that we need to be paying attention. Emotions are short-term and intense responses to specific events, and these events could be internal, like remembering a past event or having a dream, or it could be external, like hearing surprising news, or hearing a balloon pop, right? That might startle you or scare you. Um, emotions trigger physiological changes. So things like you might get an increased heart rate, or you might get a flushed face, or your stomach might get knots or butterflies, as we might call them. Um, in fact, our emotions are closely tied to what is called the automatic nervous system, and this controls our bodily functions that we don't consciously think about. So, you know, when you like perfect example, here we go. I was at the dentist and I was in a dentist chair, I was pregnant, I was so nervous. I had been thinking about all the things that could go wrong. And as I'm in this dentist chair, the doctor's hand, he's an older gentleman. I've never been to this dentist. I just had a dental emergency, needed to get a touja move, and the dentist's hand was shaking. He's like shaking as he's going in my mouth. My heart rate, without me being able to control it, like I didn't even know why. My heart was danger beating out of my chest that I thought I was almost about to make that man called 911 until I realized, and and you guys, I'm not even kidding. This is how I've been trying, I've been trying to regulate my body for years because I know how I am. I know that I can freak myself out from my emotional responses. Um, and so I had to, I had to calm myself down and tell myself that there was nothing truly wrong with me, that I was freaking myself out, and I had to bring my own heart rate back down from like really thinking about it. But when I say my heart rate shot up, that's what we're talking about, right? Is that our emotions are closely tied to these functions and it's that we don't have to think about for them to happen. So our heart rate, our our um digestion, our blood flow, and so we might feel the emotion because our body is reacting. So before we start talking about how some of the specific or basic emotions affect our body, I want us to remember that our feelings and our emotions are not the cause of our health problems, it is the chronic reliance on defenses against the experience of our true feelings that end up um causing this tension and disease. What does that mean? That means that the more that we suppress unconsciously or repress sub subconsciously our feelings. So the more we either are thinking about it and we and we put our feelings down, or the more we're not thinking about it and we're trying to run from what we truly feel, that's what ends up causing a lot of these physical things to happen. And again, we're talking about chronic. So we're talking about over time, over time, you have learned to push your true feelings away, which then causes you to have digestion problems and gastrointestinal issues and a fast heart rate. And then what happens is over time your body starts to respond faster to certain situations. Almost you really can't control it because you've almost, and these are my words, you've almost like trained your body to do that, right? Um, my body knows that when I get scared, like I will freak myself out over a made-up story. And I and I have to tell myself all the time, like, girl, that didn't even happen. Like, I will go down a rabbit hole of like, oh my gosh, what's gonna happen if this happens, if that happens, then that's gonna happen because this happens. And then there I am, my heart's racing, I'm not feeling good. And then I'm like, oh girl, bring yourself back, bring yourself back. So um, again, it's not just that we're you know pushing feelings off to the side because that's very different, right? Sometimes if you're angry, you don't need to act in the moment, you need to wait until you calm down. That's very different than constantly trying to cover up anger with something else or trying to say you're not angry when you really are, right? Again, over a long period of time. So, and and I and like again, y'all, I really encourage you guys to dig into these resources because they are so amazing. Um, and why emotions matter, and in the emotions book. So I think in the emotions book, actually, the the little one, they talk about three different types of emotions. So basic emotions, cognitive emotions, and then cultural emotions. And the two we're mainly gonna focus on our basic emotions, cognitive emotions, and then we're gonna talk about moods, which is supposed to be different than emotions. So, some basic emotions are sadness, fear, anger, shame, and we're gonna talk about those specifically. Um, disgust is another one, right? And these higher cognitive emotions are love, guilt, embarrassment, pride, envy, jealousy. Now, as I've already shared, there's a lot of different research on these. So some people think that some are basic, some people think that you know certain things are an emotion. Like I've been told, love is not an emotion. Some people say it is, but it's a higher cognitive emotion, not a basic emotion. Um, the main difference between basic emotions and higher cognitive is that basic emotions are universal and innate, so they are rapid, onset, and they last a few seconds at a time. Higher cognitive emotions are not so automatic and so fast as basic emotions, nor are they uh like universally associated with a single facial expression. So, what does that mean? It means like with the basic emotion, you can tell if someone's scared, you can tell if someone's happy, you know, at least from looking at their face, you can tell even if they're trying to mask what they're truly feeling, you can see some type of emotion expressed on their face. You can go to another country and you can essentially understand how someone feels by looking at them or guess, right, how they're feeling by the way that they look. Those are basic emotions. Your higher cognitive emotions like love, guilt, embarrassment, pride, envy, jealousy, you don't always see those and they take longer to actually set in. It's also said that with our basic emotions, we're not really conscious and aware that they're happening sometimes. Sometimes we might hear something and automatically we're afraid, right? That's your basic emotions. Whereas with your higher cognitive, there's a usually more thought involved. I usually love someone because X, Y, and Z. Whereas I can experience fear and not really know why I what I'm afraid of or why I'm afraid, right? And so the higher cognitive emotions, they they're still universal, but there's more cultural variation with those, and they take longer to build up, but also they take longer to die away than basic emotions. So when we talk about those cultural variations, love is one of those things where in America, you know, love is flowers and Valentine's Day and car, you know, given your and maybe I'm just looking at too many celebrities, but you know, that you know, love is like wrapped up in a lot of material things, but then you have true love and all of these different things, right? We see the love and the princesses and the fairy tales, whereas you might go to another culture. For example, when Disney went to Paris and they opened up their um Disneyland Paris, they had all these Disney princess princesses and all these ideas, and the Paris, you know, the the people, the Parisians were like, Absolutely not, we don't know what you're talking about. Like, this is not what we subscribe to. We don't know these fairy tale creatures. So when I say cultural variation, I'm mainly referring to the fact that um love, things like love or jealousy, envy, right, can be expressed differently depending upon the culture. We're not always um doing love or thinking of it in the same way, and we know that, right? From different proverbs and things of that nature that come from different places. The other thing I wanted to note about higher cognitive emotions that I found very interesting is that those emotions are more social in a way that basic emotions are not. So you can love yourself, but usually, you know, love in the way that we're talking about involves another person. Um, guilt usually happens because of something you've done to someone or something you've done that you don't want someone to find out. Um, embarrassment usually happens again when you're socially interacting with people. Envy, it's usually you're envious of a person, not of a thing, right? You're envious of something that they have, but it's that person, you're envious that that thing belonged to that person. So if you have you let's say there's a bins you really want, right? You're not envious of the bins, but when Susie gets the bins, you're not you're still not envious of the bins, like oh that bins, I'm mad at that bins for going to Susie. No, you're mad at Susie for having the bins that you want, you see. And so, and I I did this whole thing on envy, maybe we'll talk about it one day. But um, and so that's that that I felt like was really interesting was the fact that these higher cognitive emotions uh really have a us have that social aspect to them. Before we get into the way that these emotions affect our body, I also want to make it very, very clear that emotions are not inherently good or bad. I know that we as a culture, especially in America, have put our stamps on which emotions are good and bad. So sadness is typically seen as bad, even like in the movie Inside Out, right? We were all mad at sadness. Um, but sadness was seen as bad, right? Or sadness is seen as bad. Anger is usually accepted in a way, but that's a that's a negative emotion. But emotions in and of themselves are really not good or bad, they they just are. They're just they they just are, and again, these have been around since the beginning of time to help us in our evolution, right? To help us in the different, um, as we were becoming more aware and cognitive beings, right? They are here to help us for some type of security, protection, something. And so I don't want us to continue on with this mindset that, oh, if I have this emotion, it's bad, or oh, if I have this emotion, it's good. Emotions are just what they are. What I think what makes them bad or good, or us put those labels on them, is what happens from them, like how we react, how we use them, you know, when you see somebody that's angry, they might punch someone, somebody that's sad, they're crying all day, right? And so it feels very negative, it feels very bad. It doesn't always feel good, right? But sometimes having joy, you could have joy at the wrong thing. I mean, we can maybe question is it really joy, but some people get joyous at the downfall of others, right? Does that make joy a negative emotion? No, though. So again, emotions in and of themselves are not negative and they're not harmful, they're actually they're actually what we need. They are here for us, again, for us to use them as guides throughout our life. There's signals for us to be able to, uh, there's signals for us where we need to be paying attention to something happening around us. You know, there throughout the times, right, and the studies of emotions, there definitely have been scholars to say that that emotions are bad. And that has been passed down where people think that emotions are bad and we shouldn't have any emotions. You should only rely on reason because your emotions are gonna just throw everything off. And since then, what we've really come to find is that it's not about having too much having using all your emotions, as some might say, or it's not about using all reason, it's actually about striking a balance between both. So you need both emotion and reason, and you need the healthy balance, and that is hard to do. That is something that you have to learn over time. Me personally, I really love that like we're born and we evolve and we grow and we're not just experts at a thing. And so I love the fact that we really have to go through our life finding the balance between our emotions and reason, right? It doesn't just come naturally to us. Some of us are like all reason and no emotion, and then others are all emotion, no reason, like me. And so you really life is what what most scholars have come to agree on, almost all scholars, most of them have come to agree on, is the fact that uh this the balance, the true what we need to be working on is not mastering one or the other, but balancing between the two. Sometimes we need to listen to our emotions over reason, sometimes we need to listen to reason over emotions, but you have to find the balance. Neither one should be in control over the other or too much, right? We're gonna walk through several different emotions really quickly, just so I can point at you know what that emotion is and how it shows up in our body. Shame. Let's talk about shame first. So, shame is you know, we have disgust, right? And shame seems to be like this sort of disgust within ourselves. There's something that we are not liking about ourselves, and so it causes us to look at our identity. So there's the book Why Your Emotions Matters. That's where I'm gonna pull from where they talked about shame. I liked how they how they put it. Of course, this isn't the end all be all on it, um, but this is kind of how they put shame, and I really liked their explanation, and so they feel they said in their book that shame is uh a signal that something's happening to your identity, and it's not a pleasant process to have to deal with shame because it requires you to really look under the hood, so to speak, and deal with what is happening within you. And a lot of us want to hide our shame, we want to hide our shame from others and we want to hide it from ourselves because we just don't want to deal with it. But that's as we're as we're talking about today, it's risky to really suppress and repress these things because you will spend more time trying to fix yourself over time if you don't address the issue right now. It's the same thing that we talked about in roots. The more time that you spend digging deeper to get to the to the deeper roots, the less time and less energy and resources you'll have to use over the course of time because you've built a really good system to get down into those roots. And so you know, trying to ignore these emotions is the same thing. So shame often manifests in our body where it increases our blood pressure, our heart rate. Some of us show shame through our body posture. We might slump or we might avoid eye contact. Um, over time, people who struggle with ongoing shame they can develop chronic pain or body weakness, and they can have these high levels of cortisol, which can lead to insomnia, diabetes, depression, and other stress-induced conditions. Our bodies were not meant to handle high levels of any of these emotions, and that's why we see them manifest in this way so often. Shame, right? Like shame is there to signal that something is happening to our identity, something about us is being threatened, and that's what we need to pay attention to when we feel shame. But there is a difference between telling yourself that you're a loser versus having lost something, right? So let's say you lost a game. There's a difference between I lost a game and I am a loser. Those are two different statements. And so when we take on that I am a loser mentality or I am uh this, whatever it is, and we start to shame ourselves, right? And we don't deal with it, then that is what leads to that manifestation, right, over time. It's important that with shame, we look, as the analogy says from the book, we look under the hood at who we really are, um, what is really happening to us. They also said that shame is a good, like looking at our identity and seeing shame is a good way to address our values because sometimes what we think are our values are truly not our values until we experience shame. And then we realize, oh, I thought I valued this, or I thought these are my values, but really when we start to look at our true identity, we realize that those are actually not our values. And again, this is like the whole theme of this, right? Is that so many things are the whole theme of this podcast is what I mean. There's so many things that are passed down to us from other people, and so a lot of these emotions, right, or and especially this one with shame, will lead us down a path of being able to better understand who we are and what it is that we feel threatened by. How beautiful of a thing is it that in a moment something's happening and that these emotions come to help show us something is wrong, right? Again, they're signals, they're guides. So let's talk about fear. So fear is a necessary emotion, even when we don't want to feel it. It is one of those things that tells us that there is something out there that is dangerous, there is something that we need to pay attention to, and without this sense of danger, we will find ourselves in situations. Honestly, they were saying collectively that they were saying if you do not have fear, you probably won't live very long, and you also probably wouldn't be a very nice person. Because fear does is to help you that to see that there is some sense of danger. And when we have fear, um, it will also lead to the things I'm sure we've all heard flight, fight, fight, flight, or freeze. So you fight, you know, you either gotta, you know, fight, whatever that looks like, flight, you run, or you freeze. You don't, you know, you just don't go anywhere, right? And so the negative side of fear, right? Having too much of it or having that fear chronically all the time over and over, is that it can become a problem if we do never if we never figure out what we're afraid of. Because just because we're afraid of something doesn't actually mean that it's scary. So just because there's fear and something's signaling to us that we're in danger, it doesn't always mean that the thing that we're fearful of is bad. So one of the examples was the fear of a committed relationship. Just because you're afraid of being in a committed relationship or you're afraid to lose this person because of your past doesn't mean that it's a bad thing that you need and that you should just break up with this person and give up on love altogether, right? Like that's what that's what we mean by just because you're experiencing fear doesn't mean that there's a valid threat. And that again is why when you are experiencing fear, you have to address and figure out what is it and ask yourself, what is it that I'm afraid of? And fear um can make us desperate, it can make us desperate because we all want to feel secure, and when we don't feel that security, we become desperate and we start looking for things to make us secure. And sometimes when you're in fear of a relationship, in order to make yourself feel secure, you may just, you know, be with a different person one after the other, kind of no matter what, because you're afraid of that you're you know, you're fearful of like not having that security and that protection or that validation, right? Of like, I'm a good person. And so all of these emotions can work together as well and show you and point to bigger issues. Um, high levels of fear, right? And high can cause these high levels of stress. And again, it can cause our heart rate to increase, it can cause nausea, shaking, you can have um over time, right? If we're not able to manage fear, then it can lead to chronic anxiety, and then we'll notice long-term effects like insomnia, stomach issues, or chronic headaches. What I thought was also very interesting is that when fear takes over our body, so we're talking about intense fear, like when someone shoots off a gun and intense fear takes over our body, our body actually shuts down from when we experience high levels of fear. It shuts down non-essential operations and then it only focuses on the things that's gonna keep us alive. So then that can sometimes lead to like diarrhea and like our digestive systems shutting down. It's only gonna focus on the things that are keeping us alive, which I thought was so crazy. Because could you imagine living in a constant cycle of fear, just living with intense fear all the time, afraid of everything? Your body is there working with these emotions, right? And when those emotions take over too much, it'll cause again all non-essential functions of your body to shut down, which of course sounds very, very and is very, very unpleasant. Um, sometimes people who experience fear in this way, they have or you know, have an issue and have not really addressed their fear, they try to control things because they think that if they could control things, they could prevent bad things from happening. And that's how I am with my kids. I'm so afraid of certain things happening to them that I think if I just control and manipulate every situation, that then it will keep them, it will keep bad things from happening to them. And that's something that I'm working through and having to remind myself like, you know, even if we go to this park, right? Or if we don't go to this park, things can still happen, even if you have them here or have them there, you know what I mean? Like, and so it's something that I'm still working through too, because fear is one of those things. That definitely plagues me a lot. As I said, I make up stories and then I'm scared and my heart is racing. Um, I also have like this strange fear when I go on the plane, and so I get afraid that I'm gonna get sick on the plane, and that's like the worst place I feel like you could be sick. And so my body at my digestive system actually is always trash when I get ready to fly because I'm so fearful and anxious about you know something happening, and mainly it's like being sick, so I don't eat. I I seriously like I don't eat, I stay away from you know, like drink drinking, and it's just I'm I've gotten better. My last couple of flights were actually a lot better because I'm working my way out of and letting myself know if something were to happen, it's okay. There are things that can be fixed and that can be resolved. What's funny is I'm not afraid of the plane coming down. That's like that is a fear, right? But I'm more afraid that I'm gonna get sick on that plane and have to keep using the bathroom and I'll have to be getting up and and there's not gonna be a bathroom or whatever, right? Like that is what I'm most afraid of with getting on the plane, which is kind of silly coming out of my mouth, right? And listening to it. Um, anger. Anger was one of those emotions that just kind of blew my mind. So I want to talk about this really quickly. Um, anger is this surge of energy and aggression that we feel when our expectations are not met. There is something that's not going right, something that we expect it to happen, and those expectations are not being met. Anger is another, it is an emotion, right, that can point us in the in the right direction if we pay attention to the signals and address it. Again, if we have chronic anger and we never address the anger, then it will lead to things like as we've already talked about, blood high blood pressure, muscle tension, um, heart issues, heart disease, muscle strain. I'm sure that we know people who are angry all the time, and your body, your body tenses up when you have too much anger within it. Now, they were talking about in like beginning early times, right? That anger was one of those things that were to help us um because you needed to fight, you needed to physically fight to protect your family, to protect your belongings, right? We don't have to get in those physical fights today. Some, but but but you know, then sometimes things were only resolved by physical fights, right? We've seen wars, things like that, right? And that requires that good amount and and requires us to be angry, but our bodies again are not meant to experience this anger over time. What I found so interesting about anger was that we often use other emotions, we often use anger, excuse me, to suppress or mask other emotions because anger is a more loud and makes you feel more powerful, makes you feel strong, and it's a little more accepted than other emotions. They want you to be angry at the justice system, they want you to be angry at the stores, they want you to boycott these companies. Like, like anger is not really a bad thing, even if it causes you to do things that are bad or break the law. We I we don't, I don't think I need to go into any examples. We've seen them, especially in our modern times. And so, but what happens is that most of us find it easier to be angry than to be sad or afraid. So we use anger to mask more vulnerable feelings. And in the book, it was saying that this is more common among men because it's not acceptable, it's not as acceptable for men to be sad or anxious. But if they were angry, we don't really say anything. And so we've taught them that, you know, sadness and and crying and fear, like these emotions are more vulnerable and less accepted, and you can't do that, so then be angry. And when they're angry, then they're most likely accepted. And we see that a lot in boys and young men. Now, the issue with anger is that anger can lead us to blaming other people. And when we have this habit of blaming other people, we miss out on the opportunity to reflect on what's happening within ourselves. We miss out on the opportunity for introspection, we miss out on the opportunity for self-improvement or even for productive conversations because we get into this place of always blaming someone else when we're angry. It's never our fault. When oftentimes we're just as at fault as that other person. And so anger needs to be addressed because, as many of us know, anger gets dark, it can lead us to seek revenge. It turns into that higher cognitive, longer emotion of envy. Um, it can go into jealousy, right? And envy is that deeper emotion that when acted upon, there's almost like no turning back. And anger doesn't have to be these big things. I love these examples that sometimes anger shows up by using sarcasm sarcasm to hurt your brother's feelings or withholding affection from your spouse to punish him for something. So it's not always you punching someone in the face, it's not always you, you know, crashing out as the kids are saying now. It's not always these big grandiose gestures. It can be, you know, hearing your coworker needing something and you not give your coworker that thing, even though you know you have it, you rather see them struggle. With anger, it's really important that we express it, but that we do it in a way that's productive and problem-solving and not blaming or punishing. And it's learning about calming ourselves even when we when we want, even when our body wants to react. And this happened to me not too long ago where I was going back and forth with my brother. I have three younger brothers, so they're all annoying, right? Um, but I was going back and forth with my brother, and him and I would argue, you know, real bad or whatever. And I know I can feel in my body, I felt in my body as we were like going back and forth about something that I felt was like a real, like it was definitely a real issue. But as we were going back and forth about it, I could feel how my body starts to feel when I'm about to go in, like when I'm about to tell you off. And I had to tell, I had to calm myself down and I had to just stop talking and tell myself to let it go because I could feel myself going there and I did not want to go there. Number one, and number two, I it just it honestly just wasn't worth it. So I know that I was angry and I feel like I had every right to be angry. I feel like my anger was justified, but I didn't need to act upon that anger, and I needed to signal to my body that hey, this is not the time nor the place. We gotta chill. We gotta chill. And from that, I was able to step away, walk away, and I listened to myself, and I walked through why did that make you so upset? And I walked through it with myself, and it made sense. No, it is upsetting, right? To hear someone say certain things. It is that that was upsetting, and I think you should be angry because again, anger points us where the threat is, and anger can lead us to healthy justice, right? And to fairness and to things that are really important. And again, all of these emotions need to be used because they're our signals, our guides, but they have to be used in a healthy amount. Um, obviously, you have other emotions like sadness, which you know, when you're sad or when you're grieving, you experience fatigue, your sleep is disturbed, you have digestive issues, you don't have an appetite, sometimes you just can't eat. Um, and then you have things like joy, which there's a there's a there's differences on joy being an emotion and happiness being a mood, or joy being the joy and happiness being emotion, but happiness also being a higher cognitive emotion. So there's differences, right? But I like using the word joy. We're being joyful, right? Helps us to boost our moon system, increase endorphins, and promote relaxation. Um, obviously, feeling joy is better than our health than constantly being in the other ones, but I still argue that you need a healthy balance of all of these, of all of these basic emotions, higher cognitive emotions. They not help that they help us to understand each other, they help us with our relationships and they signal something that needs to be fixed or done in a lot of these, in a lot of our relationships or in a lot of areas of our lives. Now, really fast, I want to talk about the difference between moods versus emotions. So emotions are intense and they're short-lived, uh, mainly basic emotions, but what about moods? So moods are generally long-lasting, less intense, and they can color our perception of the world without any clear cause. So, for example, you might wake up feeling very irritable, but there's no specific event that triggered that. Um, moods are more about general emotional states than um that can persist throughout the day, the week, or even longer. And so anxiety and depression are an example of moods. And so chronic anxiety or depression often stems from long-lasting moods that color how we view ourselves and the world. And these moods um they can lead to like mental fatigue, physical illness, and poor decision making. Um, I think what what they're trying to understand, right, is that you know, anxiety and depression, they're builds, they're build up, they're they're built up from our basic or higher cognitive emotions, and they're and these, in particular, anxiety and depression are built up from things like sadness and fear being constantly suppressed, being constantly pushed down. So oftentimes our sadness, and that's another thing that's a big danger, is that when we are chronically sad, when we just wake up sad and we're constantly sad, it then leads into the more serious mood for you know the this case of depression. And then that depression is long-lasting and they're harder to fight. And then you may have started off being sad because your mom died, but then you end up depressed and you don't necessarily know why. Everything kind of depresses you at that point because there's no thing, there's no one thing that's really tied to it. There's no really one reason. You need you can't even, that's why a lot of us when we're depressed, like, I don't even know why I'm depressed, but it starts with something back a while. And that's why I'm arguing for you know, us understanding our emotions and understanding how they operate and understanding how they show up in our bodies because it's not a bad thing either that they show up in our bodies in that way. Our bodies and our and our souls they work together to help us pay attention to what is happening around us in our relationships, in our lives, in our environments, in our neighborhoods, in our families, like in our homes, right? Like, that's why we have our senses. That's everything is about uh security and protection and relationship for us. It is how we are literally wired. And if you, like me, have been taught to push those emotions down, or if you've been taught that certain things are bad, like I never like to cry. I always thought crying was a bad thing. Never let them see you down, never let them see you weak, never let them see you. And it's like, why? Because then what happens is I go my life, not just in that one moment, saying, never let them see me weep, but for the rest of my life, I'm like, never let them see me weak. And when that happens, then even when I'm at home, as I don't deal with it, because it's still a sign of weakness, even when I'm at home. So many times I I apologize to myself for crying. And in the past year or so, I've been trying to break that habit of saying, oh, sorry, oh, sorry. Or and I've been trying not to um, I never liked saying that I was an emotional person. Why? We're all emotional beings. There's nothing wrong with that. Yes, I'm emotional. Now, the issue for me was that I was more emotional than I was reasonable. I let my emotions lead the show. And as one of the the books stated, fear is a good guide, but it's a terrible master. And I would argue that about all of our emotions, all of our emotions, higher cognitive, basic ones, they are good signals and good guides, but they are terrible masters. They should not rule over us in a way that they influence everything that we do. We should be angry and reasonable, fearful and reasonable, sad and reasonable, joyful and reasonable, right? We should love with reason. Love and being in a relationship or being with someone and taking abuse at the same time is such a contradiction. Now I know it gets complicated or not, I'm not saying that it's not complicated, but what I am saying is that when we say, Oh, I love this person, right? But they're showing you right then and there that they cannot commit to you or they're telling you that they won't be with you, but you're just it's like you have to have all of these emotions with reason. We cannot leave out reason, we cannot leave out good judgment and logic and wisdom. We can't. We have to be able to use our emotions wisely, we have to be able to assess the situation properly in order that we respond healthily, in order that we take care of the inside of us, and ultimately we take care of our bodies. I know so many people who go to the doctor who are constantly sick and nothing's wrong with them. As I've said earlier, not I mean, I could give you a list. I can't even tell you a story about one particular person because there's so many people, and then what happens is that with our bodies uh and with that chronic emotion uh uh taking over, leading to these illnesses, digestive problems, insomnia, all of these things turn into real bodily issues. They turn into real, no, excuse me, health issues. So then there are procedures that need to be done. There is medicine that needs to be taken. There is, I mean, it leads to it leads to very real things, and that's why I am advocating, that's why I am encouraging, that's why I am pushing you to please get in tune with your emotions, stop suppressing them, stop trying to push them to the side, stop trying to act like you are not feeling what you're feeling, stop trying to cover it up with social media, stop trying to cover it up with a relationship, stop trying to cover it up with laughs and jokes. Me and my family talking about me and my kids talk about this all the time. When something bad happens, we're just joking about it, and it's really not healthy. We should be able to say, you know what, that is so disappointing and that hurts me. We should be able to say, I am sad. But we, as a I would say, mainly in the United States, like our culture has just warped us with this view, and a lot of our families and churches and the way that we grew up, they have warped us with this view that we cannot really show how we truly feel. We can't say how we truly feel because then you show your most vulnerable self. It's like it doesn't matter. You are emotional, I am emotional. We we we were it is that's why I wanted to stress in the beginning the by that it's biology. We are made up, we are all every single human emotional, every single one of us, not one of us can escape it. We can try to mask it, and in different cultures, they're taught to mask certain emotions over others. We can try to hide them, we can do all we can, but it does not mean that we do not experience them, it does not mean that we do not have them, and it is so important that we stop wasting all this money on these medical bills with things that we can actually sit and think about. It is hard to dig deep and have to go back and figure out why you're sad or angry. And it's not an easy thing, right? But over time you get better, just like you grow in your athletic skills, or just like you grow in your your mental capacities, and and just like you you learn to read over time, you start out not knowing how to read, only being able to you know to sound out certain words, then you get to this, then you're able to read chapter books, and that's the same way it is with learning how to balance our emotion and reason. We practice it over time and we get better over time. And if we look at it as a beautiful thing and not as a stressor, then we learn to embrace those things about us. We learn to lean into the emotion, not in a way where it's excessive, but in a way where we allow it to show us what is what is happening, what is it that I need to pay attention to? What is it that I need to learn from this in this moment right here and right now? Now, as I mentioned, sometimes wherever that place is, just as I said it in the you know, what I was saying about what when I was having the conversation with my brother, in that moment, it doesn't need I don't I didn't need to like sit there and pill apart my anger. I really had to put it to the side. Now, putting it to the side in that moment is different than suppressing it to never come back to it. I put it aside so that I didn't react in a way that I didn't want to, so that I didn't have a full blown-out argument because I know how we are and I know our past, so that I didn't get overly emotional, wasn't able to calm myself down because I know how my body is, right? I put it to the side not long after that, and even the following day, I made sure to think about it. Not only did I think about it and address it within myself, I came to my reasons and then I talked with my husband about it. And I said, This is what I think, this is what I says. Like, am I wrong? No. Okay, or you know, whatever the conversation is, right? Of like, yeah, you were wrong, no, you weren't wrong, whatever it is, because you're not always in the right. I'm not always in the right, right? And so we it's not just, you know, something again that you have to go at it alone. In fact, the advice, so we'll get into like how to manage these emotions and moods for your better health. One piece of advice is that you get into healthy relationships. You you surround yourself with people that you can be your most vulnerable self around. We didn't talk a lot about sadness, but what I found so interesting about sadness is they said sometimes you get into the presence of someone and they're sad and you don't know what to say. So you say a cliche like, oh, it's gonna be okay, or everything's gonna be all right, or um, you say things like everything's gonna happen for a reason, or at least they're in a better place now. And you try to pull people away from their sadness, you try to minimize their sadness because being around someone who's sad is it is uncomfortable. Um, and so we taught that we're taught that we need to be someone's cheerleader. We have to make them happy, we have to cheer them up. But what I loved that that this book, um, why emotions matter specifically, they were they said is that, and I'm gonna read it verbatim, but more often than not, this isn't helpful because it minimizes their experience and reinforces the idea that they should cover up their own sadness instead of fully processing it. One of the best things we can do is offer our presence and bear witness to their pain. We don't have to encourage people to cover up their things. We should be encouraging them to feel it, to be in it, because it's a real thing, showing them something, right? And in those relationships, we walk alongside them to help them process, to help them, you know, get it out to be their shoulder to cry on, literally. Not to just come over and bring them flowers and food and take them out and say, come on, let's let's let's do this. Good funny, funny uh example is that I had this job in 2015, and I I thought it was my dream job. I got hired, and then a couple weeks later they fired me, and my friend called, and I'm like so sad. And my friend calls me, and I don't she I don't think she meant any harm by this, but she's like, We're going out, I'm paying for you. Let's go out, we're gonna go out. And I went out and I danced my butt off. Like I had the time of my life, like y'all, I was out on that dance for the whole night, okay? But to this day, I have problems with that company. I quite um despise them because I never really got a chance to really live into the sadness of the way I lost my job. I never really sat down to think about um how losing that job affected what I thought was going to be the trajectory of my life. I thought that that marketing job was gonna open up doors for me to then get into the field of marketing, which is what I got my degree in. And because I went out and I masked it has again has nothing to do with my friend. She does, she I feel like she did what she knew how. She did what we were taught. So I don't fault her at all. But I never went back to really sit in that and to say, you know what? You know, you're sad. And this is why. I was just like, you know what? I gotta bounce back, I gotta keep going, I'm gonna have my party, I'm gonna do my this, I'm gonna do my that, because we're not taught to just sit, we're not taught to just look within, we're not taught to like really look at that emotion, not as a negative thing, but as something to really signal to us and then to process it, deal with it, and use reason now to. I was so pissed at them that I was gonna I wanted to call somebody to like break a window or do something to the place. That's when I needed to use reason think, which I did obviously, because I'm not in jail. I needed to use reason and I did to say, okay, if you do that, you're you might you risk getting that person in trouble, you risk getting yourself in trouble. Do you really want to go to jail for something so just everybody loses a job? Sure, they did you dirty, sure they did you dirty, sure they did it the wrong way, but like, is this really what you want? Is this really what you're going for? And obviously it was not. So, okay. Couple of practical tips um that again are are common, right? Mindfulness and breathing exercises. Um, my grandpa said years ago when we in a sermon that when you get angry, you need to count to 10. Or was it my grandpa? I don't know. Someone years ago told me that when you get angry, count to 10. Count to 10 first, and then try to deal with it. And I I would say that I'm a I'm a kid that definitely had anger issues. Um, I have dealt with those obviously, yes, I have definitely dealt with those. Um, but I I can I know myself very well. I can get pretty hot headed. And so I try to not let myself get there because not only do I get hot headed, I don't I don't black out, but I like blackout in the sense that I just flash, right? And I don't like the way that I feel, I don't like how long it takes my body to calm down. So I often keep myself from situations or I keep myself from even like revving up to get there. Um, so I would use this method of like counting to 10 in that situation to calm down and then think about why am I angry, like what's going on, right? Um, and try to work from there. There is this other technique, four, seven, eight technique, where you inhale for four seconds, hold for seven, and then exhale for eight, and it immediately calms the nervous system. I have not used that, but that is something that was offered, right? Um, one of the things that I thought was so interesting is the common consensus is that regular exercise, physically moving your body releases endorphins and it reduces the cortisol, which we talked about earlier, and that will help to boost your mood and reduce your stress. Even just walking for 10 minutes will help you to process difficult emotions. So regular exercise was a big one. Um, obviously, healthy emotional expression, do not bottle up your feelings. Expressing your emotions through talking, journaling, or even creative activities helps you release emotional tension. And we've seen this in like the axe throwing or the glass breaking, right? All of these things that are supposed to help you take that, you know, the edge off or whatever's happening. I also loved that there was this advice that you can grab your voice notes and or or voice recorder and record what it is. If you have no one to talk to, record whatever is happening to you just so you can get it out of you. Um, I love me, I say this all the time. I love me some good old-fashioned pen and paper. Write it down because it really does help to see it somewhere or to say it somewhere to get it out of you, right? And to just put it out there. Um, and then self-compassion, be kind to yourself, acknowledge that you're doing the best that you can because practicing self-compassion can reduce feelings of guilt and shame, um, which, like as we've already talked about, can negatively affect both your moods and um sorry, both your emotions and your physical health. I've already said that. Be gracious with yourself. This is a marathon, it's not something that you're gonna get overnight. When I came into this realization of a lot of this stuff that I've been doing it wrong, it's easy to first fall into like, dang, how did I know? And start beating yourself up. But instead, I embraced the fact that though I have done a lot of this wrong, though I felt like I was kind of leading my boys especially into that idea that they can't be sad and and they can't cry. Now I'm able to correct those things. Now that I have the information, I'm able to do something about it. Now it'd be definitely I'd be remiss to just ignore it all and try to keep doing the same thing. But now that I know better, I can do better. Now that I know better, I don't have to go through my entire past and rip apart every single time I got it wrong, but I can make better choices again, not just for me, but for my marriage, for my friendships and for my children and our relationship in their future. Um, and then you know, sleep is very critical. You need to make sure that you're eating right, that you're resting, that you're getting the again, having the proper diet. Certain things affect us, certain types of food affect us more than others. That is just a plain old fact. And so you got to make sure that you're getting enough sleep, whatever that looks like for you, because I believe that we all used to go off of that eight-hour rule, but then I think there's been other studies that have come out to say, you know, everybody's every all of our bodies are different, though we have the same kind of functions and need the same basic things. But some of us may need more sleep than others, some of us may need less sleep than others. Um, and so eating right also affects your emotions. When you eat um constantly are eating heavy foods, it leaves you feeling heavy, right? And that can leave you into leading into more of the heavier types of emotions. Whereas when you eat light, um, you're able to think a little better, just be a little clear. You're not as fatigued and sleepy, and you know when you're sleepy, right? Um, and just I mean, it's the same thing with they say about kids when kids come to school and they're tired and they can't sleep, they act out, they act a complete nut, right? Because their bodies need that sleep. So to wrap this up, emotions are not our enemy. They are our guides, they are signals, they have literally been ingrained in our biology to help us survive, to help us grow, to help us protect ourselves. And when we suppress the very things that were here to help guide us, we lose sight of the path. We lose sight of who we are, we lose sight of reality, even, and it causes us to act in ways that we may later regret. Emotions in and of themselves are not perfect and they're not easy to understand. It's a journey. We have to be gracious with ourselves, but we have to make sure that we have a good balance of our emotion and our reason. Not our reason for life, but reason in and of itself, logic, thinking. I think we talk about balance often, but we talk about balance in a way of like work-life balance, or I need to make sure that I'm not too busy over here, but that I give myself time for self-care. I don't hear in main culture the idea that we need to have good balance within ourselves, that we need to have a good balance between our emotions and our reasons, so how we think, how we process, how we judge and our emotion, because too much of one, right, can lead us again into these onto these paths of destruction. But a well-balanced and a valuable and a virtuous life is said to be in the balance of those two things. It's also important that what we're talking about today, right? Of that if we lean too heavily into our fear, if we experience anger all the time, unresolved anger, um, this unresolved shame, it can lead to these physical things. Now, emotions in the moment have bodily signals. So your heart rate might increase, your face might get flushed, your anger, your fists might clinch because you're angry. But when those things again go unresolved, suppressed, and undealt with, it can lead to chronic issues. I made this episode for the people that I know, for the people that I know who also know, people who have dealt with the over um usage of their emotions, for the people who have constantly relied and let their emotions lead them, and having to find out now that your emotions have led you wrong. They have led you into an unhealthy place physically within your body because you've put so much emphasis on the um emotion, even when you've not really, you know, took taken the time to really unpack what it is that is happening. We've allowed our emotions to take front seat and we've taken a back seat. And so now when those things spring into action, we almost don't even recognize that they're taking over. We almost don't even recognize what is happening. It's it's something that we've been living with for so long. But I'd also want to encourage to let you know that it's not too late. It's never too late. If you're listening to this, you have breath in your body, you're still here, you're able to work on um not allowing those emotions to control you anymore. You're able to work on calming yourself and being able to self-soothe, something that is hard to do if you've if you've suffered and lived with constantly allowing anger, fear, shame, sadness to just plague your body and your mind and your soul. That's why I titled this broken souls lead to broken bodies, because emotions are another aspect that is within us. Though they have bodily repercussions, and though we can see physical things happen from them, emotions are those intangible parts of us that are within us, that are within our souls. And when our souls are broken, when we have this um unbalance of the emotions within us, then it does lead to these seemingly broken bodies to where our bodies are out of whack and out of function and not working as they should. Now, again, as I mentioned, that doesn't always mean that um I if you're diagnosed with something, it doesn't always mean that that's because of the emotions. You may have a true diagnosis diagnosis, you may have literally gotten something that has no reasonable explanation. But as I read earlier from that document from the uh from the article, more more times than not, doctors are seeing people that don't have any true problems with their physical body, but it's really from their soul. Recently I watched this Christmas movie called Christmas on Call on Hallmark, and there was a woman that kept coming into the clinic, and this is before I even worked on this episode, it's really kind of crazy to think about now. There was a woman that was coming into the clinic and she was being seen, or not the clinic, the hospital, excuse me, to be seen by the doctor. And she came and she was really sad. I don't really remember what she thought was wrong with her, but the doctor was like, I don't find anything wrong with you. And she went and the doctor went to the head doctor of the hospital, and she went and she said something to the effects of um, how do you tell your patient that the problem isn't physical, but something else? And he was like, Well, what do you mean? And he said, I don't think that my patient has anything wrong with her. I think she's just sad. And that is probably the experience more often than not with a lot of doctors, which is why I think when you go in, now you see they kind of ask you different types of questions, maybe more personal questions, less about what's happening physically, but maybe more about what's happening emotionally or socially, right? In your life, because they're seeing this and they have been seeing these patterns of people who come in, and there's nothing that they can find. You can run every CAT scan, you can do brain scans, you can do all the things, and yet you find nothing because truly the problem is within themselves. And that's exactly what this doctor was trying to point to. And I think she ended up pointing her to like a therapy session or uh like a group, some type of group or whatever for grief and and sad, sad people adopting a dog, something it was. And when the lady went to that, she came back and her mood was completely different. Her uh, her depression and that grief that she was just living in were just completely different because she finally obviously it's a movie, so you know, and it's a Hallmark movie like that, but she got help in that area to really realize that I am feeling the chest pains, I am hurting. It I do feel something, but the causes coming from something within, which comes from something that may have happened, a life event, an experience, something that I've been pushing off and not dealing with that I must now face. And as I always say, this is hard, it's not easy, but it is so worth it. It's so worth it to see you as a healthy and whole person who is living into a good balance of life instead of constantly being stressed, or instead of constantly living in fear and trying to control every little thing, or being angry and blaming everybody, or being angry and just flying off into these rages. It allows us to and it kind of forces forces us to take the blame off of others and look within ourselves. So I want to remind you that emotions again are not good or bad, but the way that we deal with these emotions can either be healthy and constructive or destructive. I want to read this final quote. Okay it says, The more one can laugh when happy, cry when sad, use anger to set firm limits, make love passionately, and give and receive tenderness fully and openly, the further one is from suffering. All he's saying there is that you have to know how to use your emotions properly, as they were intended, as they were created, as they have been put inside of you. They are here to show you something. And even when they there's a response in your body, they are here to show and signal you something, but they are not meant to be your master, they are not meant to control you, they are not meant to run your life. You get to make a decision in that. You get to use these guides and these signals to make healthy, proper, and correct choices. You get to use these guides along with reason to fix your relationships or to set boundaries or to get that raise or to raise your children or to communicate better with your spouse or to deal with trauma or to deal with past pains, to deal with needing to grieve a relationship, or to have to face that you've been under spiritual abuse. You get to use these things and balance to deal with life, its events, and all of his experiences. And that, my friends, is such a beautiful and wonderful thing. You're not powerless, you're not at the whim of your emotions. You get to choose. I hope that you all enjoyed this episode. I know it's a probably a little more um, you know, stuff, right? But there's so much research and information out there that I wouldn't even do good trying to come and act like I came up with all this stuff. No, I needed to really rely on my resources and um use all the things that I read to kind of paint a good picture for you. It's definitely a topic that we may come back to because, again, there's so much richness out there. I would love to hear from you. I would love for you to reflect on maybe one of the emotions that you've heard, whether a basic emotion or a higher cognitive, but I would encourage you to look at something more basic and look at sadness or anger. When is the last time you felt one of those and why do you think that was? What was it? And feel free to share it with me. You can follow me on Instagram at renovating the soul. You can email me, renovating the soul at gmail.com, or you can comment right on Spotify or wherever you decide to listen to your podcast and let me know what you think. Let me know what that reflection was like for you. Let me know what you think about this episode or what you would like me to talk about next or you know later in the season. But thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope that you all feel empowered to continue doing the work of looking within. Until next time, let's keep doing the work to renovate our soul.