By Tabitha Westbrook – Guest Blogger
It’s another late night. The tears won’t stop. You go to bed spent from the pain and weeping. It seems like the grief is a never-ending process; it’s so strong. You long to stop crying. Just for a day or even just a moment. You’re desperate to learn how to stop the tears. You just want to feel differently.
Friend, I hear you. When grief rises in its tidal-wave form, you feel like it’s overtaken you, and repeatedly slams you into the ocean floor. Big emotions seem insurmountable and unchangeable. “This is just my life now,” you whisper to your soul.
And this can be so true of any strong emotion you feel – anger, sadness, guilt, shame, fear, disgust, envy, jealousy. When they rise up and overtake you it feels as if you must just submit. You feel as if you are powerless to do anything to change them.
You’re stuck – but you don’t have to be. You want to know how to stop crying.
I often see two ways of handling strong emotions. The first is what I call the “ghostbusters method” – the emotions get shoved into a containment unit in our souls, locked away. The second is the “waterfall method” where emotions are just spilled out everywhere onto everything and everyone, often with great force, and we’re drowning in them. Neither method is super helpful. When we ghostbuster eventually the containment unit cracks and all that was locked away spills out and everyone gets slimed. When we waterfall we’re drowning and unable to take action. Either can lead to chaos in our lives.
It’s important to understand emotions actually are wonderful, God-given experiences that are super useful. They’re a “check engine” indicator for our souls. Even Jesus felt them. One of my very favorite passages is John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” The context here is amazing. Jesus is headed to Lazarus’ tomb. He already knows He’s going to raise Lazarus, but He weeps. If Jesus can express deep emotion, and we’re made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27), then we most assuredly can do the same.
Does that mean we need to let the emotions we feel run us? Nope. Absolutely not. There are awesome skills that can help us calm those feels. The therapisty term is “emotion regulation.” I like to call it dealing with our feels. It’s where we fully feel emotions (no ghostbustering) without flooding everything (no waterfalling).
The How-to
First, you need to know what you’re feeling. I named eight of the ten primary emotions earlier (anger, sadness, guilt, shame, fear, disgust, envy, or jealousy) – the final two are happiness and love. A great way to determine what emotions you have going on is to check in with your body. Emotions are not just a mental exercise – there’s a strong physical manifestation as well. For example, when we’re fearful/anxious our heart rates and breathing increase, we may start to sweat, and we may even feel nauseated. If you’ve experienced hard things in life or have a trauma history and aren’t used to checking in with your body, this can feel a little freaky. Connecting with an awesome counselor can really help you learn how to listen to what your body is saying.
Once we name the emotions (and we can feel more than one at a time – I call it emotional spaghetti – lots of emotion noodles in our brain bowl), they instantly reduce in intensity. It’s like our bodies go, “Ahhhhhh. Yes. You’re hearing me.” Think of it like an emotional exhale. And from this space we can decide how we want to respond.
If it’s a crisis moment, we may want to try a skill like paced breathing. First, breathe in as you count to five, hold your breath as you count to five and then blow out slowly as you count to ten (it helps if you imagine blowing out through a straw so the exhale slows down). Do this for about two minutes – and yes, I totally have my clients set a timer. If you’ve never done a skill like this, two minutes will feel like three-and-a-half hours so a timer is super helpful!
Once the big intensity lowers you can decide what you need. Sometimes it’s calling a friend. Just saying to another person, “I’m feeling this way” can be so helpful in managing the emotion. I was out camping alone once and I got super anxious – close to panic attack levels. I did some paced breathing and then knew I needed someone outside my own head to help me out. Thankfully, I have an awesome friend I could reach out to. I texted her and told her how I was feeling and her immediate response was, “I’m calling you.” She talked to me and helped me down shift; we ended the call by her praying for me. I felt so much better afterward.
Sometimes we need to look at what we’re thinking about a situation. Emotions on their own last about 20 minutes – except anger which is sassy and lasts about three hours – if we don’t feed our emotions with our thoughts. When we let ourselves just ruminate – thinking all the thoughts to worst case scenario – we think ourselves right into a ditch. The best skill here is to notice the feeling and allow it to be felt. So, if you feel big grief, you allow yourself to be sad (and to cry), knowing the feeling will eventually subside as you process the loss over time.
These are just a couple skills you can use to help deal with the feels. If you find yourself in a place where you need more, my course can be a wonderful tool as can getting counseling. You don’t have to go it alone. It’s okay not to be okay, but you don’t have to stay there. Stop surviving and start truly living.
About Tabitha
Tabitha Westbrook is a trauma specialist, Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT), Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor (LCMHC), Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), and a passionate Christian woman who loves God. She’s an EMDR Certified Therapist, EDMR Consultant in Training, and an AAMFT Approved Supervisor.
Tabitha runs a group counseling practice in North Carolina that works with people every single day sifting through the nitty gritty of living out the Christian life in this world that includes everything from heartbreak to joy. She and her team get to see people learn how to live the abundant life they knew existed, but couldn’t quite find. One of their favorite things is helping people heal from past traumatic experiences.
Not only that, but Tabitha teaches ground-breaking therapeutic skills to clients that she uses in her own life, every day. Years ago she took a skills class, but the class was not faith based. Realizing how the concepts could be so much more powerful when Scripture was included, she got excited. Tabitha knows God is the one who brings true, complete healing and life, so she coupled the well-researched skills with God’s incredible truth. These are the skills she teaches all her therapy clients, watching as God uses them to bring miraculous healing. Tabitha is so passionate about this information she wanted to make it available to more than just her own clients – so she developed a whole course to get these skills to as many people as possible.
Taking Every Thought Captive Course
If you’ve ever heard a sermon about “taking every thought captive” and then wondered, “HOW do I do that exactly?” then this course is for you. These are the skills Tabitha teaches her clients that help them develop Mindful Connection, learn Stress & Crisis Management, engage in Emotional Fine Tuning, and have Healthy Relationships.
This is not “take two verses and call me in the morning”. This course is practical, how-to skills for living the abundant life God talks about in Scripture. This is how to take every thought captive and set your mind on things above. Not only that, it also helps you move closer to God and hear His voice better. This is what you have been looking for, even if you didn’t know it.
This is the Taking Every Thought Captive Course – Self-paced, fully online, with all the skills in one place with forever access.
For more information and to sign up – https://www.tabithawestbrook.com/
Connect with Tabitha
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/tabithathecounselor/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/TabithaTheCounselor
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