I’m gonna sit down with my family calendar. I’m gonna sit down with my work calendar. I’m just gonna do all of this today. And I was in the right head space. I just thought, this is just gonna be fantastic before I even started the work. 

I had this wave of sadness and it took me by surprise, I started to get weepy so I put my air pods in and I continued to tidy up the house before I dove into my fun calendaring exercise. And I just listened to podcasts. And could tell I didn’t want to experience the feeling.

I was pushing it down. I was resisting it. I just thought, well, that was weird that it came out of nowhere and maybe it’ll just go away out of nowhere. So I could tell my brain thought there was a problem with having this feeling. And I could also tell, I don’t want to process this right now. I don’t want to deal with this. 

So I had this unexpected wave of sadness. Let’s just look at that as layer one experience. The first layer is that I started to experience this feeling of sadness. The second layer is that I was almost sad about experiencing sadness and I was resisting it. I was trying to stuff it down and push it down. In the past I would have eaten, but in this case I put my AirPods in and I just listened to a podcast.  I had this third layer that I just kept thinking there was something wrong. I’ve got to figure this out.

What’s wrong? I’m having this emotion. Why am I having this? I kept, I kept tidying up, cleaning all the while thinking  in the background of what’s wrong with me, I’ve got to figure this out. And then  there was the fourth layer and the fourth layer was, Oh no, my plans today.

It won’t come to fruition. I cleared my day to do this calendaring to schedule my family’s life, to get my mind space together, to get clear on what’s happening in my life. And it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to get my planning done. So then there was another layer of fear. 

But what’s so good about this whole scene. Which is probably familiar to you in many ways is that the Lord is so good. God is so good. I just heard my mentor’s voice and so many times that she’s talked about  the only way to process and allow feelings to slow down. And so as much as my brain did not want to do it, I took my journal  and I went to my bed, my favorite place. I work from home. I was at home anyway. It was the day that I was off work

I said, I don’t want to do this,  but I don’t want to stay in this ambiguous place. I was just having a lot of emotions and nothing happened. The only thing that happened and perhaps the Lord will reveal to me that this is actually what it was, is that yesterday we had a big snow here. 

And when I say big snow the roads were slick after I dropped my son off from school, my plan was to go to adoration and sit with the Lord. And I had a few things that I wanted to talk to him about. It was really slick and I just thought, you know what, Denise, it would just be better to go home, go to adoration another day, instead of potentially getting in an accident while you’re on your way to adoration.

Cause I was almost sliding through some intersections. And I could feel I was missing the Lord. And I think that’s maybe what the sadness was, is I was just missing not going to adoration. In fact, I’m a hundred percent sure that’s what it is now that I’m thinking about it. Isn’t that amazing?

I’m just so grateful not being able to be at adoration felt like something was missing from my life.  Which is just incredible to me as a woman 20 years ago when my husband wanted to get married in the church I was like, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. We should get married in my parents backyard. I just can’t believe that I’m in the place now that I long for the Lord. It reminds me of Psalm 42, as a deer pants for water, my soul longs for you, Lord. I’m so grateful to be here right now. 

That said,  I did have that thought yesterday and I thought, you know what, Lord, but you’re here with me now.  You’re here with me now.  I love going to adoration, but you are here with me now. That said, I still felt sad.  And so although I didn’t want to do the work to process the feeling, I didn’t want to not do it. And so I journaled and I just kept writing.  I’m having a wave of sadness. 

And so let me lead you through the steps that I took to process this so that hopefully when you are having. A strong reaction when you are having emotions, you know, how to allow the feeling to be there for it to be safe. And you can slowly show your brain that you are safe experiencing an emotion  and you don’t need to push it down with food, essentially meaning you don’t need to be scared to experience the feeling. 

So the first thing I did is I set a timer and I said to myself, Denise, how do you even know you’re sad? How, what does sad even feel like in your body? So, my friend set a timer because my brain wanted to sit with my journal and start writing. Where am I feeling sadness in my body? How do I even know that I’m sad? Setting a timer means don’t pick up your pen until the timer’s over. I kept doing a little body scan. 

I feel like I’m going to cry. I can feel something in my gut. I just feel it. It feels detectable. Like I’m noticing it. The word wasn’t heavy. I could just notice there was some feeling. The word wasn’t tight either. It was just a feeling. My chest felt heavy. In general, my whole body felt weak. 

So step number one is sit with yourself for three minutes asking, where do I feel this feeling in my body?  Where and what is the sensation that I’m feeling? 

The second question: if I allow myself to feel this, what is my brain afraid of? And I know that my brain was afraid of something because it kept trying to dismiss it. It kept trying to not feel it. It kept trying to push it down, to listen to a podcast.

And my answer for this was, well, I won’t get my calendaring done. I won’t get the things done that I want. Whatever your brain offers you that it’s afraid of, just ask yourself, well, what’s the problem with that? So Denise, let’s say that you won’t get your calendaring done. What is the problem with that? I said, well, I’ll be disappointed. I might not get another chance to do it. So during this process, there’s three questions that I ask to dig a little deeper, a little layer deeper is what does my brain think is the problem with that?  

The second question is, well, what am I making this mean? When I was sad, I’m making it mean there’s something wrong. I shouldn’t be this way.  Is that true? Is that true that there’s something wrong? 

And whatever answers you come up with, there isn’t a right answer. You’re just poking around your brain. You’re getting to know  what your brain believes is unsafe or dangerous.  So my journaling sounded like this. I won’t get things done. I said, what’s the problem with that?

Kept going deeper  and I said, I’ll be disappointed if I don’t get it done. I might not get another chance to do it. I said, is that true? I said, no, I can do it at any other time. There was a part of my body that was believing that you had taken the day off work.

Denise, you had created this time for Denise.  And that every other time you’re just going to have to be serving other people. Isn’t that crazy? Like I really thought, well, there’s not going to be any more time for me. So is that true? And I said, no, I can do it whenever I want. I know how to take care of me. 

And then I also was afraid, oh, if I don’t get this done, what are the women in my community going to think about calendaring and planning ahead? I’ll be a bad example. Isn’t that funny? My brain just went so far. Those brains are so dramatic. 

I just kept breathing. Is that true? Am I a bad example?  No, that’s not true. I think I’m  having a wave of emotion. I’m literally not being a bad example as I’m not eating and experiencing my emotions. Isn’t that so funny that I’m literally modeling what I want you to do, which took you guys under 10 minutes. 

So after I just poked around in my brain and I just calmed there, I just thought, Oh, what’s my next step? I just thought, do I believe that I’m safe to feel this feeling? And that’s all I wanted to show my brain. You’re doing nothing wrong. You’re safe to feel this feeling. You can feel this feeling. 

And still the calendar. You could feel this feeling and not the calendar. I had many choices. I had many options. But all I wanted to do was ask my brain, do I believe I am safe to feel this feeling?  That’s what I want you to ask you.  Do you believe that you are safe to feel that feeling? Why or why not? 

And when I asked my brain, do I believe that I’m safe to feel this feeling? I don’t have to stuff it down. I don’t have to run from it. It can be present. I said, yeah. And actually at that point, the sadness had pretty much lifted. And I said, well, why do I believe I’m safe to feel this feeling? And I just said, because I am safe because I am safe. 

That  is literally how simple it can be. 

Let me recap. 

When you are experiencing a strong emotion, know that it will go nowhere  by pushing it down,  intellectualizing it, trying not to feel it, buffering by listening to a podcast or eating or scrolling on your phone, or by judging that you’re feeling the feeling, there’s something wrong with me.

But what is helpful in teaching your body that you are safe to experience emotions is by slowing down and pausing,  creating space to allow this feeling in a non judgmental place where what you’re trying to do is simply to understand and know what’s happening to you, coming from a place of curiosity. 

Hi sadness. I see you. I’m feeling you. It’s uncomfortable. I fear. I  see you. I feel you. This is uncomfortable. Let’s chat. Let me get to know you a little bit. The first step is you’ll go  into your body. How do I even know I’m worried?  How do I know that I’m sad?  What am I feeling in my body? 

Setting a timer so that you’re not writing this down, you’re just having a conversation with your body. Going through the different parts of your body. Once you notice a sensation in a part of your body, you say, what does it feel like? What is the sensation I’m experiencing? 

You’re just trying to see what cues your body is telling you.

Is that your body is informing you that you’re having an emotion. No judgment, just curiosity. Then we’re going to go to your brain and to recognize that your brain feels there’s something wrong with this emotion. That is why you are running to food. 

Your brain believes that it’s unsafe. So we just get to talk to your brain and find out what feels unsafe about experiencing this feeling.

And then we get to check in with your brain. What feels so unsafe? Just know that you are trying to run from this feeling because it feels unsafe. So we can probe around your brain. What feels so unsafe? What are you afraid of? And whatever your brain likes to offer you, you can probe a little bit more. 

Is that even true? What are we making this mean? 

As you calm yourself down and get to know this feeling, allow yourself to be human and experience human emotions. You will be connected with your body and your brain. And that calmness allows the Lord to come in  and you can ask yourself, do I believe that I am safe to experience this emotion? 

Why are we not? You may not feel safe. I give you full permission to do a couple things here. The first one is, if you could redo this exercise and just continue to probe around in your brain. Probe around in your body. But guess what? There’s nothing to figure out. You don’t have to figure out anything.

There’s nothing wrong with you. The Lord may be revealing things to you, but it’s not because you had to figure it out. You can stay in this feeling as long as you want, continuing to show your brain that you’re safe. But sometimes you just can’t get there. And you get full permission to go use food if you need to.

If you need  to run from this feeling with food, that might just be what you need to do but what we’ll, but what we’re going to try to start doing is not making food the first line of defense. You can start to cultivate the skill of showing your brain and your body that you are safe to experience any emotion.

And it’s a skill. A skill is not something that you were born knowing, but it’s something that you have been taught that you won’t be good at at first, but you can practice it. And we’ll get better and better the more you practice it. The two weight loss takeaways are this: when you are willing to allow yourself to feel any feeling. You will not be turning to food for comfort, cultivating that skill to show your brain that you are safe when you experience emotions is a skill worth your time, especially if you want lasting weight loss. 

And the second thing is that as you come into the holidays, we are in full swing of Advent, Christmas is around the corner, more food, more feelings, more family. And I hope that this has given you a tool in your toolbox to handle those emotions, especially when they come out of the blue. 

The reason why your brain feels it’s unsafe to feel feelings or have negative emotions is because we are socialized and we grow up believing that negative emotions, we shouldn’t have them, offer it up, just stuff it down. 

And that just isn’t the way that the Lord created us as humans. 50 percent of our emotions are negative and 50 percent are positive. How is it that we can expect to go through life and not feel negative emotions?  We’re going to feel disappointed  if we had something fun planned and it got canceled.

We’re going to feel disappointed. If someone isn’t able to come to our holiday event, we’re going to feel disappointed if we’re not able to go to it. We’re going to feel sadness and grief if a loved one dies. I felt sadness when I couldn’t go to adoration. We’re going to feel righteous anger when we see injustices like abortion  or other crimes against innocent people. 

You don’t want to be that person who feels happy when a friend dies, who feels happy  when plans change, who feels happy with a loss, who feels happy when we see injustices. You want to live the full range of the human experience. 

That’s the way the Lord made us by continuing to work on showing your brain that a negative emotion,  an uncomfortable emotion  is safe, it’s just a feeling, feelings come, feelings go,  they can’t hurt you. Feelings only have as much power as we give them.  Feelings are feelings, they’re not actions. 

When you cease being human, you’ll stop having a feeling and at that point you’ll be in heaven. But until then, this is a process that you can use to have a human experience  safely and allow it to be there.

This is the way the Lord designed us. I hope this has been helpful. Have a blessed Advent and a Merry Christmas, friends.