Summer Replay: Module 1 - Negative Emotions

Anxiety, anger, shame, and depression can cause significant disruptions in our lives. In this episode, Pastor Eric Cepin and his wife Susan Cepin introduce a transformative writing method they have developed to assist individuals in navigating through their anxieties and fears. This approach draws heavily on the concept that our neurobiology undergoes changes when we engage in expressive writing about our anxieties. The expressive writing exercise showcased in this episode incorporates the trinitarian prayer process, which is one of the listening practices utilized by the Village community. To access the expressive writing guide, learn more about the trinitarian prayer process, and explore additional recommended resources, please follow the link provided below.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Healing City Podcast. My name is Eric Sein , and I am one of the pastors at the Village Church. And the Healing the City Podcast is a Ministry of the Village Church in Tucson, Arizona. The following podcasts are replays of our training modules. Susan, my wife and I , have put together about six to seven training modules over the last two and a half years for our community. These modules have been designed to help people lead, help people work on things in their own life, and to think deeper about , uh, what healing looks like. I thought it would be a good idea to replay these while I'm on sabbatical. Get them in your head and also just say season number three is going to start in August, and we've got a few exciting things lined up for that. And so listen to the modules and enjoy them. Maybe you'll learn a few new things and look forward to Healing the City Podcast. New episodes in August. The Healing the City Podcast is a Ministry of the Village Church in Tucson, Arizona. If you enjoy the Healing the City podcast and wish to support it financially, you can go to villagers online.com, click the we give tab and follow the instructions. Thank you for listening, and enjoy the podcast . All right , welcome to The Healing City Podcast. My name is Eric Sein , and across from me is my beautiful wife, Susan Sein . And we are going to talk about a module that I developed along with the help of you and your research and such into anxiety and how the brain works and all that kind of stuff. And it is called healing from your Negative Emotions. So we're talking about negative emotions, and we're talking about ones that are, that trouble us a lot, like anxiety or being afraid or being angry in particular, those three. Is there any that we would add to that? Are those kind of the three core? I think they're the three core ones that we want to deal with.

Speaker 2: 2:21

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I think, I mean, anxiety and fear are kind of the same thing.

Speaker 1: 2:25

They are so anxiety and anger or fear and anger. Shame is another one. Um, but shame tends to be a , a kind of a secondary emotion. Uh , but anyway, let's just, let's just talk fear, anxiety, anger. So one of the reasons I developed this is a, I struggle with my own anxiety mm-hmm. <affirmative> , but also what I've noticed, noticed what I hear from people a lot is I have anxiety, I feel anxious. Um, I'm gonna go to a therapist to deal with this. I am on this medication. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And usually what I hear when they go on , people go on medication is, it helped me for a while and then it stopped helping. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , and I'm shifting to another medication. Not always, and it depends on the therapy. Um , but a lot of times when people go to therapists, they feel a bump. Someone's listening to them, but then they hit a plateau and they still feel anxious and they don't know what to do with it. And some ways they become very dependent on their therapist. I mean, it doesn't seem to have, get rid of the anxiety. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, would you say depression also fits in this? I would also say depression fits in this, because that's , um, but I think maybe in the anxiety, if we don't deal with our anxiety and our anger, and we could say our shame, it does lead to depression. And, and so then it gets more complicated. Okay. Um, so I have developed this process, this writing process that I've been doing for a long time. And it's just been changing more and more as I read. And as you research, you know, neurobiology and as you've been on your journey to, to deal with some things in your life, this way of doing what we call expressive writing would be a good way of saying it, to help people walk through this. And I'm actually pretty confident that it will help. It will not necessarily overnight cure you of your anxiety. It might have an extremely drastic effect in a few journaling exercises. You may move quicker than you ever have in any other process that you've been doing, or it might take a while to root out things. But this is how the process works. It first starts with this idea called mind mapping. And what you do is you take a piece of paper and in the middle of the piece of paper, you write down the feeling that you have anxiety or fear , uh, or anger. And you could even write down shame. But then underneath that, just in a kind of a bullet point, you need to note, when I , when I feel this, I tend to feel it in my body this way. So my shoulders get really tight when I'm angry or I notice that I clench my fists, or when I'm anxious, I fiddle with my hair or I click my teeth, or I, you know, push my tongue against my teeth. Like they're just different things that your body does. Um, reflexively, when you have that experience, write that down in the middle . Mm-hmm. <affirmative> . Then after that, you're gonna draw a line off of it and you're going to say, this is the thing that I perceive to make me, that's making me anxious. It could be a person, it could be an event that you experienced. Um, and you're usually reflecting back on these things. Um, and you can do this, you know, with events that have happened in the past week, especially if you're dealing with anxiety that you're feeling right in that moment or of , of feeling of anxiety that you just haven't been able to get rid of, or it feels paralyzing. This is a good place to begin. And you just begin to write everything that you know about that's making you feel anxious. And it doesn't have to be a true statement in the sense that it's truly making you anxious. It's just you think it's making you anxious.

Speaker 2: 6:42

It seems related in

Speaker 1: 6:43

Some way . It's , yeah, it seems. And so you're writing those events or those people down, and then after that you're writing information off of that. So let's say if you wrote down in a , just a silly way, oh , my dog makes me anxious. Okay, well what then? What, what's the dog doing? Well, the dog digs holes and my neighbor doesn't like that. So dog and neighbor. Oh. And you can just keep going off of those things until you're done. Like, there's nothing left of feelings or events or ideas that are coming off of that. And then you go to the next one until you've basically written about all of them. And that could take you three minutes. That could take you 15 minutes. If it takes you more than 15 minutes, you probably should stop , um, and, and begin to move to the next place. But this mind mapping of your negative emotions is really powerful because what's happening is that those mind maps are in your subconscious. They're going and they're kind of having a conversation without you. And though way to think about it is you breathe without thinking, but then you can stop your breath. You can take control of something that your body just does normally, there are parts of your brain that control it without you thinking about it. It's the same with your anger and your anxiety and fear. Your body is having the conversation, your mind's having the conversation, but you in your conscious mind is not paying attention to it. But when you mind map, what you're doing is saying, oh, I am recognizing a conversation that's already happening that is influencing the way I am experiencing future events or events that will happen to me in the future.

Speaker 2: 8:25

So can you talk about how , uh, the belief statements and narratives fit into the mind map process?

Speaker 1: 8:34

Um, well, one of the things you , you know, let's , let's take a more serious thing than your dog. And you could say, I'm really angry and I feel angry in my shoulders. So I'm like , now my shoulders are stiff and it's my wife. It's making me angry. And I , and then so that's, you've got anger and your exp explanation, and then you get your line off that and it says wife. And then you belief statements and narratives come in there in the sense that you can put, like, I believe my wife's out to get me. I believe my wife doesn't care about me. You know, or my wife, you know, threw a plate against the floor. Like she just tossed it and smashed it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that, that , so there's, there's your narrative. There's a narrative or a belief. My wife doesn't care about the kids, or she's my wife's lazy. You know , you just, it's, it's not you . You can't have any kind of , um, what do you call it? I always forget this word, but you can't have a sensor

Speaker 2: 9:29

Filter

Speaker 1: 9:30

Yeah . Sensor or filter on these things, cuz you're not one, I wouldn't keep it in your book , in your notebook, I'd throw it away. <laugh>. But it , cause it's just being honest about what the subconscious thing is going on there. So yeah. That would be things you would put on there. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> the more serious kind of thing. Um, yeah. So just right there before we get into the other processes, if you were to do that three times a week to just process your anxiety, you're like, I'm gonna sit down for 15 minutes three times a week and mind map my anger or mind map my anxiety, or right when I feel it, as soon as I have space to do it, I'll go sit down for 15 minutes and mind map it. You're gonna find, you're gonna find some relief, I guarantee that. But you're also gonna have your eyes opened to a conversation that's going on in your subconscious that you just don't pay attention to. And that will also give you at least places to talk to people and also maybe some more relief from your anxiety mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, so that's, that would be step one in stepping into your, to dealing with this and this negative emotion, healing from your negative emotions mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Now the , the second part is an expressive writing process. And I think in this podcast, you and I have talked about expressive writing in different forms. Right? I think we talked about the 20 minute jog, right? Or whatever is it , what's it called?

Speaker 2: 10:57

It goes by different names. I think it started out as the, the 25 minute jog initially.

Speaker 1: 11:03

No , it's like the one minute run

Speaker 2: 11:05

ER's first

Speaker 1: 11:05

Book, Dr . Ner . Yeah. And , and ,

Speaker 2: 11:07

And it includes the mind map and some of these different pieces.

Speaker 1: 11:10

Yes. And, and we have to say we are super indebted to Dr. Ner and others who are thinking this through and are so much smarter than us. And we're just trying to bring it down to the , the common man who may not have the time to mine through this stuff. Right. And we don't really have the time, but we feel it's necessary for our,

Speaker 2: 11:30

Our, we're desperate, we're desperate enough to do it.

Speaker 1: 11:33

Yeah . To help others and to help ourselves that we're mining this stuff and, and using what you and I know from the past and what we've done in our own life and study.

Speaker 2: 11:42

So the other , uh, at least one of the other expressive writing kind of practices that we've talked about before is Trinitarian Yes. Prayer writing. And I think that this exercise is kind of a combination of that and the 25 minute jog.

Speaker 1: 11:59

Yes, it is. Um, and so what you do with this mind map and a is a least in this process, is that you're going to take a method that I developed called Trinitarian Prayer. What I will do in this podcast is the notes that I've worked up will be on this podcast for the module, but also I will put a link to my sermon on Trinitarian prayer that takes the biblically, kind of explains how it works out of Romans. And I will also put some links to different , um, things within the , uh, healing City podcast so that they will fill out some of this for you if you wanna follow it.

Speaker 2: 12:43

And we'll have a link to the , the PDF of the module Right.

Speaker 1: 12:46

As well a link to the PDF of the module so you can print it out and, and use it. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna look at this mind map and especially if you decide , do you have a couple things that are creating anxiety in your life or, or producing anger in your life, you're gonna pick the one that resonates with you most, or you're gonna look at the theme that's kind of played out in each one of these things. And you're gonna decide to journal on one of those in this expressive writing process. So

Speaker 2: 13:14

You basically wanna take what is resonating as the most Yes. Applicable piece.

Speaker 1: 13:19

Yeah. And you're gonna , what you're gonna do is you're gonna , uh, begin, because in the tr process, you're praying it's a right , it's a prayer journal, and you are going to pray to God the Father, and then you are going to pray or have a conversation with God the Son, and then you are going to listen to God, the Holy Spirit. And so the first part is to dress to the Father. And it's very important that as you journal, you start out with, I sometimes even say dear , but <laugh> as if I'm writing a letter. But , uh, you're gonna start with Father or Abba or Daddy, whatever's easiest for you. But you need to address the Father as in his position as the Father. And in that what you're gonna do is you have to choose to have a freedom without filter to lay out before him all the raw emotion that you have. And so if it's, for example, that conversation we had about a wife, you're going to , you're gonna say, God, you're gonna say, father, I am angry at my wife. She does not care about me. She's inconsiderate. When she gets angry, she throws things, she scares me. I'm not even sure I want to be married to her. Like, and you're gonna lay it all out before him. Because one of the things we know about God is that he has the capacity to handle us mm-hmm. <affirmative> there in a way that no one else has the capacity to handle us. And a good thing to think about in this is as you're writing , for instance, if I were sharing things with my wife about my inner life, there may be some parts where I'm like, you know what? I don't need to tell her all these details. She doesn't have the capacity to hold it, nor should she have to. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I can indicate that these are places of my life that I'm working through, but the father needs all the details. He doesn't need you to protect him. He doesn't need you to care for his sensitivities or his humanness. He is God the father. He created you, he can handle it. Also, we know from, from just the science that something changes. When you begin to write out the way you feel on a piece of paper and you just let it come out. You're not writing correct sentences, you're not even writing full thoughts. I would suggest you don't write bullet points, but you can type it. You just have to let it flow out of you. This can, I've done this and it's been a paragraph, and other times it's three, four or five pages of me just pouring it out and pouring it out. And, and it's my confusion, it's why is he doing this? Why is it this way? Why is this person this way? How, how I can't handle this anymore. Like, I'm, I'm upset . This is what I wanna do to that person. I wish they'd leave. I wish they'd disappear . I wish they'd die . Like all this, like, just, there you go. You just put it out there.

Speaker 2: 16:27

So what you're , the examples you're giving are sometimes irrational. Yes. And sometimes not even true. Yeah .

Speaker 1: 16:34

Certainly not true.

Speaker 2: 16:35

Right? Like, I , I wish that person would die. Might be true to part of you , but not all of you.

Speaker 1: 16:41

It's not true the irrational

Speaker 2: 16:43

Brain. Right. So, so you're actually talking about just expressing something really raw here.

Speaker 1: 16:51

Yeah . Just

Speaker 2: 16:51

Lay it out and not worrying about if it's, if you're doing it the right way, or if it's the even the right thing to feel or say or think. Yes .

Speaker 1: 17:00

Yeah .

Speaker 2: 17:01

Okay.

Speaker 1: 17:02

It's really important to do that. Now, my suggestion is that you read back over it before you move to the next section , just to kind of get a sense of what you said. Because you're making a transition from praying, kinda laying it out to the father, to praying to God the son who in all of his glory is God who made himself lower than man and died for you, but not just died for all that you are on that piece of paper. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> and everything else. He rose from the dead. And is the reason that you can have this conversation with the father. He's also the one who cares deeply about the people you were talking about and cares deeply for you. And I mean, the father does too, but he, his actions in the world are what are bringing the kingdom of God about. And so you have to choose at that point in your writing to make a transition to being in a confession stance. I may take a little bit mm-hmm. <affirmative> of saying, okay, Jesus. Like, I'm really angry and I know that's not right. I feel so unjustly treated, but I , I know I can't exact justice. I can't judge, I can't, you know, I , I I said things that were horrible. I need, I need your forgiveness, but I also just need your healing. So there's this , this confession and this humility that you have to step into. And it's, it's a hard shift, but you have, but it's just beginning to write that out. And so you write out confession, but then the , then you, as you've confessed things, you have to shift into what I would call curiosity. And that curiosity is to begin to ask Jesus, okay, well what is it that you're doing in my wife's life? What , what's happening in her when she throws that that plate, when she threw that plate? What's going on there? Like, well , where were you when, when she was saying that I'm a terrible husband and don't really love her ? Like, what, what were you thinking? What was going on there ? Um, so really just asking honest questions in detail about what's happening in your life and in the people's lives or events that are creating this anxiety or anger or fear or depression in your life. And then really just being curious about that. And then the third part is, is, is really just writing out your desire, your longing, your hope for what, what Jesus might do if he were to heal things like, and so think , this is what I, this is the kind of relationship I want with my wife. This is the relationship I want my kids to see. This is how I wanna react when she does this. This is, I , I long for these things and I feel that they can't happen unless you change me. Um, so that's part one and part two , From there, again, I would say read over everything again, or at least read over what you said to Jesus. And then I would, and this is in the module, I would purposely write down a prayer and you can begin to write your own. I wrote one in the module, but the basic prayer is acknowledging who God is, who the spirit is, and that he's spoken through history and through scripture mm-hmm . <affirmative> , and through those around you, it's acknowledging that the spirit's voice is present, and that the spirit has been sent to you by Jesus, from the Father to comfort you and to remind you of the words of Christ. And then you have to write this word, your name, you have to write Eric or Sue, and then you have to write comma. And then you take a deep breath and you do something that's really uncomfortable for people. And that is to begin to write the words of God to you. What's amazing to me is, and this, I've been doing it for a while , so it's, I suspect it's uncomfortable for people who haven't been doing it for a while , but what comes out of the handwriting is so often, like I never would've written these words. And usually they're just affirmations in language that I would understand that are so present already in scripture. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , they tend to affirm Christ's love for me, his faithfulness to me. They invite me into a dependency on him. They help create boundaries. And sometimes talking about taking responsibility, God taking responsibility for the people who I am upset and angry at or hurt by or frustrated with. And him talking about them like just writing down, like I'm writing to the , when I was writing to the Father, I'm writing these terrible things about this person, and then all of a sudden what's coming outta my hand is this beautiful language about the person that I was so mad at. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so you, you go through that process and you write until you feel like you're done. And I , you take a deep breath again and you do something called what I call just a kingdom proclamation. And that is that you proclaim what you feel like you've been invited to through the listening of the spirit and the confessing to the son and the proclaiming of, or in the , the wrestling with the father and you write out. So it could be, you know, I, Eric Sein will stand in my identity as a priest, as I love my wife when she's angry at me. And I, Eric Sein will understand that I do not have to take responsibility for X, Y, and Z. That's God's and not mine. And it's just things like that. Um, now I will preface a couple things. The , that's important in doing this process. When you are done with the mind mapping, there are two things I think you need to do. One is if you really enjoy music, Christian music or music where scripture is being sung or principles by who God is, and you can write while you have that going, create a , a song list of four or five songs that you're gonna have repeating that really are emphasizing spiritual truths as you write, particularly when you're listening to the Holy Spirit. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> . If that's not something you can do, then I would suggest before you even start writing, you , you find in the Bible places where you , what I call like comfort spots, scripture that God has given you and that he returned you to, and that I would recommend that you read those, a couple of those, or one of them slowly, three, four times just taking deep breath before you step into kind of the mud of things. Um , because you're saying, because what you're doing is you're taking a lot of rawness and a lot of your brokenness and you're putting it on the paper, and this is a place the enemy can attack you. So what you're saying is, one , I'm gonna bring it to the Trinitarian God who can cover it. And two, I'm gonna bathe myself a little in scripture and truth as I do that, so that I don't go astray. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Now, the Holy Spirit part, I, I would recommend that you be very careful if you haven't walked along with God and you don't know a lot of scripture mm-hmm. <affirmative> or you don't have somebody you can go to who you trust, who has walked a long time with God to look at what you've heard and say, Hmm , that's not God. Or Yeah . No, those things fit very clearly in the script in scripture. Um, because, you know, John 14 tells us that Jesus tells us, he's sending us the spirit to remind us of the words of Jesus. Now, that doesn't necessarily just mean the words that are spoken in the Bible that are written because Jesus has lots of words. Um, but Jesus never contradicts himself. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and Jesus isn't a soothsayer. So he is the spirit of God is not going to go. And now I want you to go, you know, next door, knock on the door and condemn them for, you're not gonna get instructions like that. The , it is gonna be clearly truth being spoken to the, a agony and pain and frustration that you are wrestling with in those places. And so I think that's key. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So that's, that's the module. And I know people, so there's a couple things. People don't like journaling. And by the way, I didn't use to journal at all. I hated journaling. I thought journaling was a fad. I thought it was dumb. I thought it was for women. I mean, I , I have kind of like a contemptuous like, you know, in sexist view of journaling <laugh> , to be honest with you. And, and what God , God has broken that in me. I feel journal after journal. I don't want anybody reading those journals. They're raw and beautiful, but they're transforming. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so I know writing is difficult and for some, I have a severe learning disability. Like most of what I write is misspelled and not real clear . <laugh> , I'll edit it sometimes like just so I can read it. But , uh, there is something that happens in you when you write in your , in your like pathways. You are rewired and new things happen in you. And so when you go and experience things that used to create anxiety and fear and anger in you, if you go through this process, you will find that it didn't happen like you or it happened at a reduced um, rate because you were , this is a beautiful way to regulate yourself and deal with the anxiety you have. So that's all I have to say on this. Do you have more to add to this?

Speaker 2: 26:52

I don't. Thank you for sharing all your thoughts on it.

Speaker 1: 26:56

Module one, healing from your Negative Emotions, <laugh> .

Speaker 2: 27:01

Yay. It only works if you do it.

Speaker 1: 27:03

It only works if you do it

Speaker 2: 27:05

<laugh> .

Speaker 1: 27:07

And we know this because we've done it a lot. Well, I think that's it . Thank you .

Speaker 3: 27:14

Thank ,

Speaker 1: 27:16

You've been listening to Healing the City podcast with Susan Seaman and Eric Seman . You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. You've been listening to Healing the City Podcast Summer edition. I hope you enjoyed it. One of the ways that you can support Healing the City podcast is by subscribing. If you go down past a description on each podcast, you will see a section that says Support the show. If you click on that, you'll have the opportunity to support us monthly, $3, $5, or $10 a month. And that will help pay for the hosting costs in particular. So thank you for listening.