4 Tips to Deal with Strong Emotions
I’ve been dealing with some major burnout and strong emotions lately, so I thought I’d share a quote from a book I read recently which really resonated about how to deal with and process strong emotions.
Awesome Quote
“Acknowledge your emotions. All of them. Even the ugly and scary ones. Resisting them only lets them build up and makes them harder to deal with. Don’t be ashamed of your strong emotions. Give them a voice. If it’s not safe to express to people, write them out. Vent them on the page. If you don’t have time to express them, take a minute to admit them to yourself. And when you have the time, give them that voice and that time. You owe it to yourself to have every emotion you feel.”
—Full Rigged, by Rebecca Connolly, Sophia Summers, and Heather B. Moore
Tips to Deal with Strong Emotions
Baseline Hack: Acknowledge ALL Emotions—don’t bottle them up inside (it only makes it worse).
Talk it Out to Someone You Trust
friend, family member, accountability group
Vent Them Through Writing
write or journal about the feelings or emotions
Admit Them to Yourself & God
Personal story about me being angry and having to talk to God to get the emotion out.
Jeremiah 33:3 - Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.
Take Time to Process All Emotions
Not always fine
Be patient with yourself as you process all your emotions.
#tamarakanderson #storiesofhopeinhardtimes #podcast #hope #God #hardtimes #strongemotions #anger #frustration #exhaustion #processemotions #talkitout #write #journal #talktoGod #forgiveness #mercy #patience
Transcription
You can find the transcription of today's episode here:
Tamara Anderson 0:03
Have you ever dealt with strong emotions like anger, frustration, hatred, exhaustion, worry, concern, joy, happiness. Those positive emotions are so much easier to to deal with than the harder ones. And today we're going to talk a little bit about how I've been doing lately, and also how we can deal with these strong emotions. Stay tuned.
Tamara Anderson 0:35
Welcome to Stories of Hope and Hard times, the show that explores how people endure and even thrive in difficult times, all with God's help.
Tamara Anderson 0:44
I'm your host Tamara Kay Anderson. Join me on a journey to find inspiring stories of hope and wisdom learned in life's hardest moments.
Tamara Anderson 1:01
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Tamara's takeaways on the Stories of Hope in Hard Times podcast. I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson. And today we're talking about some real and raw things. I've tried to be very open and honest with you guys. And I'm kind of hitting a point where I'm tired.
Tamara Anderson 1:22
I can't even remember the last time I had a real good break. And if you're anything like me, maybe you're feeling that same way. It was like I got my daughter off to college in the fall and took my son Nathan on a quick trip. And then I came home and I crashed and burned.
Tamara Anderson 1:44
And I've kept the podcast going. But that is really about it. I've just felt exhausted and like I didn't want to do anything. And so what I filled my time with besides, you know, my daily connection with God has been reading.
Tamara Anderson 2:02
I've always been an avid reader. It was always my escape when I was a young child. I would escape into books. And I found that as an adult, this is still one of my prime escapes.
Tamara Anderson 2:16
And so one of the things I wanted to share with you today is one of the stories that I've been reading on my Kindle: a couple of things that I highlighted. I don't know about you guys, but I love the highlight books. And it's pretty cool that you can do that on a Kindle now.
Tamara Anderson 2:31
And then you can like send yourself all the highlights from the book that you really liked. And so I've started doing that, because it reminds me of my kind of takeaways from the story.
Tamara Anderson 2:44
And I'd love to share with you this story in particular that I finished recently. It's from the book Fully Rigged, which is a story about some rodeo cowboys, and it's a clean romance book. But one of the ladies in there is a therapist, and she is talking to a woman who's struggling with some anger issues.
Tamara Anderson 3:11
And she said this, and this is what I'd really like to share with you today. Acknowledge your emotions, all of them, even the ugly and scary ones. Resisting them only lets them build and makes them harder to deal with. Don't be ashamed of your strong emotions. Give them a voice.
Tamara Anderson 3:30
If it's not safe to express to people, write them out, vent them on the page. If you don't have time to express them, take a minute to admit them to yourself. And when you have the time, give them voice. You owe it to yourself to have every emotion you feel.
Tamara Anderson 3:53
And I highlighted that I read it several times. And I thought you know what? It took me about two or three weeks to be able to voice: "Okay, I'm having burnout. I'm exhausted, I'm tired. I think I might have had one of the more recent versions of COVID in there as well." So that may have played into the feeling completely exhausted.
Tamara Anderson 4:14
But there's a couple things I wanted to draw out of this quote. The first thing is acknowledge all your emotions. We're human we're going to have highs; we're going to have lows. They are part of who we are.
Tamara Anderson 4:33
And we can talk about happy emotions but we can talk about the sad and scary ones as well because they are part of what makes us human. And I like what she said here that resisting any of these emotions are trying to bottle them up and and save them inside only makes it worse. That it's important that you find a way to talk about your emotions, whether it's happiness or whether it's grief, or anger, or exhaustion, in my case, burnout. It's okay to talk about them, and give them a voice.
Tamara Anderson 5:11
And then she talks about here a couple of ways that you can do that. First is to talk them out with people. And we talk about that all the time on this podcast, about how sometimes people have had to go to counselors to get help and healing.
Tamara Anderson 5:28
And that is awesome. Sometimes you have a really close friend that you feel you can be completely transparent with. And those friends are worth their weight in gold. I know that I've had several friends who have filled that role for me over the years.
Tamara Anderson 5:41
I've also been blessed with a really good author accountability group than I do on a phone call every Monday morning. And I love that we've gotten to the point we've been doing this for probably, I don't know, three years together now.
Tamara Anderson 5:56
And we've gotten to the point where we're pretty open and honest with each other both about our struggles of writing, or podcasting; sometimes with me. And I've been really able to be open and honest with them about where I'm at.
Tamara Anderson 6:10
And they're so sweet. They take time to love me, even as I am broken, and tired and worn out. And so it helps to have accountability groups, or our friends, or family members that can fill that role.
Tamara Anderson 6:27
The second thing that was mentioned is to write them out. Sometimes you feel comfortable talking about things; sometimes people vent through writing. And that's another thing we talk about a lot on this podcast.
Tamara Anderson 6:39
But I've had some pretty raw journal entries the last couple of weeks, and there's days that I'm super excited and comfortable writing them out. And there's some days where it's kind of an ugly, you know.
Tamara Anderson 6:50
I'm writing out that I'm tired, tired of writing, I'm tired of podcasting. And that it's good for me to feel those emotions and write them out and validate how I'm feeling because then they don't feel like they're blocking my path as much, as I can name them and write them out.
Tamara Anderson 7:09
The third suggestion that was given in this quote was, sometimes when we're feeling strong emotions, we don't have time to talk them out with somebody that we know, or write them in a book or write them in a journal.
Tamara Anderson 7:23
But we can take a minute to admit them to ourselves. Maybe you're going through the day, and all of a sudden, you have something that triggers a strong emotion in you. Maybe it's anger, for example. And you can talk yourself through that emotion, I am feeling angry right now. And talk it out.
Tamara Anderson 7:43
I know that I had a situation happen probably about a month and a half ago where someone was quite confrontational with me. And I usually choose to stay away from confrontation, I don't look for that. And I don't like that kind of situation.
Tamara Anderson 7:59
But I was feeling quite angry after this person confronted me. I remember leaving that situation. And I was kind of all tied up in knots. And I wasn't in a place where I could talk it out with somebody or write it down.
Tamara Anderson 8:16
I was traveling. And so I had a pretty good conversation with God, at that point, talking it through with him about how he was feeling about that particular situation. And I was able to vent all that anger to him and invite him to help me both forgive that person, and to take that anger out of my heart and fill me with peace and love because that's generally the space I love to live in. And I prefer to live in.
Tamara Anderson 8:47
And so sometimes it's just you and God.
Tamara Anderson 8:52
Yeah. And I'm thankful for the reminder that if I don't have time to talk to somebody, or write it down, that I can always talk to God. He's only a prayer away. And he can help me work through those emotions.
Tamara Anderson 9:10
I want to share with you a Bible verse that kind of goes along with that. In Jeremiah Chapter 33, verse three, he says, Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show you the great and mighty things which thou knowest not.
Tamara Anderson 9:25
And I love that because I know that as I called on God in that particular situation when I was feeling super angry, that he heard me and he answered me, and he showed me things about myself that maybe I wasn't so happy about, but he helped me kind of work through that.
Tamara Anderson 9:42
And it wasn't over immediately. It took me almost a couple of days to really kind of put that to rest and to heal from it. And so, it's good to know that God loves us and is willing to work through any strong emotion with us, no matter what.
Tamara Anderson 10:00
We're gonna take a quick break. But when we get back, we'll have more lessons, tips and things you can apply to your life. Stay tuned.
Tamara Anderson 10:07
How many of you out there feel like your life is chaotic, crazy, and completely awful compared to the norm? What if I were to tell you, you are normal for you. I'm so excited to tell you about my book Normal for Me: learning to love and accept life's detours with God's help.
Tamara Anderson 10:31
This book took me 10 years to write. And I shared 20 years worth of lessons learned in my life detours, including being in a car accident and having two of my children diagnosed on the autism spectrum.
Tamara Anderson 10:45
In this book, I share the secrets of how I made it from despair to peace with God's help. I talk about being a zombie mom, living in survival mode, learning true faith, and how I debunked the myth that God doesn't give you more than you can handle.
Tamara Anderson 11:03
Normal for Me also includes a bonus diagnosis survival guide at the very end of the book in which I shared 12 tips to survive and thrive in tough times. So what are you waiting for?
Tamara Anderson 11:19
Grab your copy of Normal for Me today on Amazon, or on my website? tamarakanderson.com.
Tamara Anderson 11:28
The fourth thing that I'd really like to draw out of this quote is the one where it says; and when you have the time, give them that voice. In that time you owe it to yourself to have every emotion you feel.
Tamara Anderson 11:42
And what I'd like to comment on that is that every emotion we have needs time. And sometimes we're super excited. And you know what, when we're excited, it is so easy to share that we're excited. When we're sad, it is harder to be transparent and honest, when we're sad.
Tamara Anderson 12:04
Or when we're broken, or exhausted or struggling. People tend to put up a facade, you know. People will ask you, how are you doing? You'll say I'm fine. What kind of answer is that? And how honest is it right? So take time, to be real, to be authentic.
Tamara Anderson 12:28
Take time to process your emotions, whether they're big or small, because they're all a part of us and our experience. So don't forget, if you're experiencing strong emotions, like I have been lately, that it's okay to first of all, express them to people. Second of all, write them out.
Tamara Anderson 12:48
Third, if you don't have time for either of those, you can always talk them out with God. And give them the time that you need to process it and often heal from strong emotions because they do make an effect on all of us.
Tamara Anderson 13:04
And so I invite you today to take one of those steps to talk to someone about how you're feeling to write it out, or perhaps to talk to God about it. But give yourself the time and grace to heal, because you can hope my friends.
Tamara Anderson 13:21
Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's show. If you like what you heard, subscribe so you can get your weekly dose of powerful stories of hope. I know there are many of you out there who are going through a hard time, and I hope you found useful things that you can apply to your own life in today's podcast.
Tamara Anderson 13:40
If you'd like to access the show notes of today's show, please visit my website stories of hope podcast.com. There you will find a summary of today's show, the transcript and one of my favorite takeaways. You know, if someone kept coming to mind during today's episode, perhaps that means that you should share this episode with them.
Tamara Anderson 14:03
Maybe there was a story shared or quote or a scripture verse that they really really need to hear. So go ahead and share this podcast. May God bless you, especially if you are struggling with hope to carry on and have the strength to keep going. When things get tough. Remember to walk with Christ and He will help you bear the burden. And above all else, Remember God loves you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai