It’s very tempting to hold in and suppress your emotions. It’s especially tempting when your race/ethnic group has been suppressing their emotions because of generational trauma. What actually happens when we suppress our emotions? What happens when we let it out? I mean let it all out? What would happen if we invite God and our own unique stress response cycle into the mix? Watch today’s episode to find out. Click here for last week’s episode on being stuck in our mess.

Podcast Outline:

• The Desire to Suppress
• What Happens when we Suppress
• What happens when we let go
• My Experience with Emotional Buildup
• Joseph’s Experience with Emotional Buildup

Podcast Transcription

Speaker 0    00:00:23    <inaudible>,   Valley of Grace.

Part 1

Speaker 1    00:01:12    This is the Healing Our Brokenness podcast, where we dissect problems and solutions that exist among broken people, living in a broken world. And where we also go from broken relationships to resilience and flourishing. This is podcast episode 102, and this one is entitled, “Let it all out”. Quite a title, right? In this particular episode, we’re dealing with our emotions.

And what happens is once we start being still long enough, we will be able to listen to our bodies and be in tune with our souls and our spirits and realize that something is off. We will be able to say, Oh, grief is built up. This needs to come out. This needs to be released. After learning how to navigate moments of stillness, I now know when grief is trapped in my eye sockets, stomach, chest, back, or throughout my body.  It sounds weird, but it’s true.  Our bodies communicate this to us in our stillness.

Speaker 1    00:02:30   And then there are times where the grief is just deep inside my soul. And I know when it comes out that it’s going to be really intense and really heavy and loud.  I can hear the loudness and intensity of the grief deep inside my soul.  During those times I have to give myself grace because sometimes if I focus on how it should be, rather than how it is, It can lead to me being disappointed.  And then disillusioned.  And then discouragement follows.

Part 2

Speaker 1    00:03:31    The best thing we can do when grief gets backed up is to get it out.  You have heard the old phrase, “Better out than in.”  This is also true when it comes to grief.  When we hold it in and suppress it, we are allowing it to transfer over to trauma.  In Genesis 45, we’re at the scene where Joseph is talking to his brothers, and then you got other officials that are underneath him in rank in the room, his servants, so to speak, and his emotions have built up and he’s realized that. And so it was just like, okay, so what do we do with these  emotions? We have to let it out.

I had a pretty emotional day about a month and a half ago,

Speaker 1    00:04:32    Things had not been going well leading up to that particular day.  It had been a crazy week. A two hour adventure turned into a five hour adventure. I didn’t get home until almost 10 o’clock. I was cold and hungry, and exhausted. While I was in the process of getting all those things done, I could hear the inner voice crying out in my soul.

Speaker 1    00:05:32    Okay. I finally finished up at least 80% of what I had to get done and I got in the car and I said, I’m just going to have to scream and let it out. And it probably was maybe four rounds of that. And maybe another couple when I got home, but I felt so much better. And when it comes to those types of emotions, we have got to be able to get this stuff out. 

Part 3

Sometimes getting it out doesn’t look pretty/ideal/or the way we think they should look.  Either we get it out and we are able to control how it comes out or it is going to control us and who knows what’s going to happen, but it’s got to come out.  And won’t be pretty.  Exploding on others is not ideal nor healthy, and could have been avoided.  We ended up getting sick like that. Usually when it comes on that heavy like that, you have a little bit of a space as a warning, as far as trying to go somewhere, to be able to deal with it in private, if need be. 

Speaker 1    00:06:28    And I just thank God that I was able to get it out. I listened to a particular podcast episode recently where the podcast host, who’s a therapist talked about how sometimes she has to go outside to be able to scream or yell, or whatever kind of way she needs to, to be able to get those emotions out of her.  

Part 4

And with blacks, we have to be careful anyway, because it’s part of our DNA from trauma, we are able to suppress the emotions, more naturally than usual because of that trauma.  The other side of that is that our bodies are keeping tract of everything that we are going through.  It is screaming out from arthritis and all kinds of chronic autoimmune diseaseas.

Speaker 1    00:07:27   We let it out and give ourselves compassion and grace and speak kind words to ourselves. Instead of going into self-blame, self-judgment and self-criticism mode. And we let it out. And what I want to do right now is talk about Joseph and what happened with him when he was in the room. As I mentioned before, he was surrounded by his servants and his brothers.  He wanted to be able to tell his brothers who he was.

Speaker 1    00:08:30    Okay. And it got built up in his system. And I’m going to read what the scripture says. It says Joseph could not control himself in front of his servants any longer. “When Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone leave my presence!” So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers. ² And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh’s household heard about it.

Part 5

³ Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still living?” But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they were terrified at his presence.”

Speaker 1    00:09:31    Don’t be worried, angry with yourselves because you sold me here. God sent me here ahead of you to say people’s lives. No food has grown the land for two years and there would be five more years without planning or harvest. So God sent me here ahead of you to make sure you have some descendants left on earth and to keep you alive in an amazing way.

So it was not you who sent me here, but God notice that he told them that twice to reassure them. God has made me the official, the highest officer of the King of Egypt. I am in charge of his house. And I am the master of all of the land of Egypt. So leave quickly and go to my father, tell him your son, Joseph, see us, God has made a master over all. Each have come down to me quickly. 

Part 6

Speaker 1    00:10:33   Joseph reminded me of myself, where he realized he couldn’t control himself any longer. He asked them to leave except for his brothers because he felt safe enough to be able to express himself and reveal himself in front of them. And sometimes we can let it out with others, with us. And sometimes we just have to do it by ourselves. The window of time is important, and discernment is important.

Speaker 1    00:11:24    Regulating our emotions is part of being resilient as well as being able to flourish in our relationships. Because if we are walking around in that much misery, we cannot have decent relationships with people.  Our focus and our pain are only on ourselves and how miserable we are.  We want to let it out, and Get back up again, within reasonable time so we can keep moving. So, I hope it was something that was said here today that will resonate with your hearts as you go from broken relationships to resilience and flourishing. I want to give a shout out to Timothy Horton for bringing the intro and outro music to us every week.

Part 7

Speaker 1 00:13:03 And that song is entitled Valley of Grace. And it can be found wherever music is sold. Healing Our Brokenness podcast is on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, and on Amazon music, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, etc. So, if this is blessing your life in any kind of shape, form or fashion, if you could please give a shout out to your friends, your neighbors, your family members, and ask them to follow us.

 Valley of Grace.

At Valley of Grace, we believe in thriving. In order to thrive, we have to begin grounding ourselves in our identity. The first step in making this happen, is dealing with the effects of our childhood wounds. Click here to get started in Online Therapy today.****This is an amazon affiliate link where a commission is paid to offsite the cost of providing this information to you.

Broken Pieces Course

Are you saying to yourself, “I’m sick and tired of being in this state of languishing!” , but you are confused about how to get out? You need someone to walk you through the process, step by step. That’s what the course Broken Pieces is all about. This course walks you through with personalized videos, getting you to the heart of the matter. ****This is an amazon affiliate link where a commission is paid to offsite the cost of providing this information to you.

The Sun And Its Effect on Trauma

Bless you,

Katina