Healing the City

Spiritual Formation: Your Emotions

August 20, 2020 Susan Cepin and Eric Cepin Season 1 Episode 68
Healing the City
Spiritual Formation: Your Emotions
Healing the City +
Help us continue making great content for listeners everywhere.
Starting at $3/month
Support
Show Notes Transcript

Eric and Susan discuss the importance of understanding how our emotions are connected to our bodies. 

Support the show

"Healing the City" is a profound and dynamic weekly podcast that dives into the complexities of creating healthier communities. Featuring the voices and perspectives of the esteemed members of the Village Church, each episode is thoughtfully crafted to address the challenges and opportunities for meaningful change in our cities.

With a holistic approach to healing, the podcast explores a wide range of topics, from soul care and spiritual direction to mental health and community involvement. It provides listeners with insightful and thought-provoking perspectives on the issues facing our cities, as well as practical steps they can take to make a difference.

Join hosts Adrienne Crawford, Eric Cepin, Ashley Cousineau, Jessica Dennes, Michael Cousineau, Mark Crawford, and Susan Cepin as they navigate the complexities of our communities with wisdom, grace, and a deep commitment to positive change. Through their engaging discussions, listeners will be inspired to become active participants in healing the city and creating a brighter, healthier future for all.


The Village Church
villagersonline@gmail.com
The Village Church meets at 10a and 5p on Sundays
1926 N Cloverland Ave, Tucson AZ 85712
Mail: PO Box 30790, Tucson AZ 85751

Speaker 1:

Welcome to healing the city podcast. You're listening to our spiritual formation section of the Hills podcast with Eric and CC. That happened.

Speaker 2:

Yes. Welcome to healing the city podcast with Susan Sipan and Eric Sipan. Good morning. Good morning. It's good to see you. Uh, we're in the, still in the COVID podcasting world, we do have a new podcast coming out from Jessica it's in the finishing editing state. It's a little longer than the normal human city podcast. So I'm really looking forward to it. It's our first interview outside of our community. So that's really cool. That's exciting. Yes. But our goal today is just to continue our conversation on what we call the table of decision or the hot seat model it's in our spiritual directions section. Um, it's where we spend time looking at how to really offer each other soul care, be the best way to describe spiritual care for one another. So, um, we started out last episode talking about how you would, I think the last episode, what was the title of the last episode? Do you remember?

Speaker 3:

It had to do with, it was how are you doing,

Speaker 2:

How are you doing? And it was a diagnostic that's right. A diagnostic tool. And so, and the house. And so you can kind of go from there, I guess. Right. I'm going to turn it over to you. You had some ideas of how to structure this.

Speaker 3:

Yes. So the idea, um, of how are you doing had was a way of just kind of looking at our lives and seeing what the different parts of life are and how they're going. The goal isn't necessarily for them all to be going well, it's just to look at it and say, right now, this is how I'm feeling about this for these reasons. And it could be work. It could be a larger category like that, or it could be individual relationships

Speaker 2:

Or environment or your physical body, things like that.

Speaker 3:

Yes. And then from there, we look for events, um, as in order for the hot seat model to really work, it's helpful to have a specific event,

Speaker 2:

Right. And we kind of philosophically believe that your life is just one event after another. Right. My wife is smiling because I'm adding commentary, I'm having fun.

Speaker 3:

I like the commentary. It also reminded me of a mentor that I had in college. He said, uh, who often said life is a series of choices. And it was such a frustrating thing to hear.

Speaker 2:

Life is a series of choices. I just a series of events.

Speaker 3:

Yes. But true. Yes. So many choices and events. So, um, so picking one of life that is having where there's some hardship and choosing any event that really characterizes that hardship is an important first step in this process. Yeah. And so from there we go to the emotional experience and from emotional experience, we go to false beliefs that are related. And so, um, the we're going to be talking about emotional experiences, false beliefs, and the way they interact with each other this morning. And so I, um, I think there are a couple of different ways that we look at emotion and, um, I guess that's probably a good place to start.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I mean, we look at emotion, I think in this model that we have called the table of decision, or as it's more offhandedly called the hot seat model, uh, we talk about negative emotions. We're not talking about happy events that characterize how happy you are as a part of your life, but basically events that aren't good and the negative emotion that you have in response to the event itself. Um, and we're looking, I guess we're looking for two tiers of those emotions. One sort is your physiological experience at those things. Um, and those are real primal things. So we're looking for like things like, were you angry? Were you, uh, disgusted? Were you sad? Were you afraid? Were you surprised these are kind of, uh, and then what did those feel like? So, um, maybe that's two different, you're looking frowning at me. So maybe you're looking at a little differently than I

Speaker 3:

Am. I'm just confused

Speaker 2:

Because I said two things you're right. So, so we have a physiological response to them and that's in your body. Uh, and so we're asking people to, what did the negative emotion feel like in your body? Um, when I talk to people about it, it's still kind of intertwined with the words that they're using, I'm angry or I was discussable. What does disgust feel like? What does it feel like for you to be afraid or anxious? Um, so those are, so, you know, a lot of times I'll even do an exercise where I ask, okay, everybody has at least one time felt some kind of anxiety in their life. Where do you feel it in your body? Put your hand on that spot or explain it to me. And that exercise in itself is pretty remarkable for people. Just not because you don't usually think about how your body feels, but you know, like I tend to feel my anxiety in my chest and my heart starts racing.

Speaker 3:

I think that's really interesting too, because we tend to assume that other people experience things the same way, or at least some things the same way. And anxiety is one that is a good example of, Oh, like there could be six different ways to experience this in a group of six people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. No, the one that was surprising to me, it was like immediate headaches like that. Like you have that negative emotion hit you and you just get a massive headache, like right away. I was like, wow, that's interesting. I've never heard of that one, but there's lots of them like that. But they're also like, you know, they're connected to, to those words of disgusting emotional words, feelings, experiences. Yes. Um, so yeah, I don't know. So those are those what we're looking for is part of the problem is that we aren't connected to our emotions. And so sometimes we say words that aren't actual emotion words.

Speaker 3:

And I think sometimes we're not connected to our bodies, right? Like we're not aware of what's happening in our bodies that is related to our emotions.

Speaker 2:

Right. And so a lot of times I did say anger, but a lot of times people will say, well, I was angry and I'm like, well, what does anger feel like? Well, I wanted to beat them up. I'm like, well, you know, that's not, that's a thought, that's not a feeling, right. It's really hard for people to talk about how anger feels, you know, because it, it, maybe I was shaking or I was clenching my fists or my face gets really hard. Like I could feel, I squint my eyes. I'm like, all right, across my arms. And like, I feel tight. Like you're giving people in touch with their bodies is important because it's the most tangible warning sign that something's happening. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And I think what's also really helpful about it is what we're trying to do as we go through this process with each other is to start recognizing how we feel what's happening in our body when we are entering into this interaction between our choices and the truths and lies that we have competing for our affiliation for our loyalty. So when that happens and we can really contemplate it with other people and see what the gospel would look like in that moment, it gives us an opportunity in the future when that physiological experience happens to say, Oh, I'm here again. I'm at the table of decision. And it is, these are the things that are before me. These are the, the lies that I'm tempted to believe. These are the truths I'm being invited to by Jesus, right?

Speaker 2:

And we're not, we never put this model forward as a therapeutic model that where you're going to work through your entire life. What we think this is, I think this is a spiritual model that relies on some therapeutic, um, information because we think, and I believe that that our emotions both the way they play themselves out in our thoughts, and then the way they play themselves out in our physiology are the place where we enter into spiritual warfare of their, the signal that we are at some ways, having the veil thinned between the spiritual world and our world. And that's our moment where we, we know we have, we're gonna have to go into conflict because a dialogue with the enemy who is someone who accuses and pours contempt on us. So, and this is very biblical. I mean, we can, we can back that up, but well, and Peter first, Peter five eight tells us that he is Satan is going to and fro looking for whom he can devour. Um, and then, you know, there's plenty of other places to explain that he's the accuser of the brethren and things like that. That's his whole role. And so we know that that spiritual forces are coming against us. And so that's why I think just even knowing how you experienced your emotion is an important part, um, of being preparing to go to battle and knowing there's just more than just you in this.

Speaker 3:

And I think one of the practical, the practical entry into that, um, that part of the model is really basic questions. Like when this event happened, how did you feel? Or what, what was happening in your body when you had this experience? How did you respond? Physiologically are good places to start and then, uh, explore what, what was happening in the emotional physiological realm. Yeah. But it's a really basic entry point is just a straightforward question. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

How did you feel, when did you feel it in your body? Yeah. Um, and like you, I think as you're working that out, it's, you're able to, as people work that out with you, you know, I, I can think of many Hotsy miles I've been in where it was me on the hot seat or, or it was someone else and somebody in the, in the community says to the person, Oh, well, it actually sounds like you felt really powerless. And then you can see like the they're struggling to connect anything to their body or anything to their, like a Mo any kind of emotional experience. And then that word powerless just, you could see they like, Oh yeah, that's exactly how I felt. And I felt like a little kid, or I felt like, uh, like there, there, the anxiety in that powerlessness, you can see them kind of combined in it. It opens their eyes to what they're actually experiencing in that moment.

Speaker 3:

And I think it's important that sometimes that this is not a totally linear process. Right. So sometimes that will emerge as you talk about different, uh, you know, different beliefs or different relief. Uh, somebody may say, Oh, it sounds like you were maybe feeling ashamed or then, you know, something might come together later in the conversation and it's not a linear process. It's something that, that can shake out and different. You know, we're always filling out different parts of this thing as we go through it. Right.

Speaker 2:

I suspect people who are listening to us have never seen this model are like, what the heck is going on here. So you have to listen to all of our podcasts, Andy, after I think maybe see some of the diagrams, because I think I've put links to our, um, yeah. That would be held podcasts. So, yeah. And you can explore the village website for a lot of this. I think the other thing we've experienced is that with men tend to be more linear with this process and women tend to be a little bit more, less linear in the sense that they will come back to things and, and, um, work guys can kind of linear, linear, literary. Yeah. Well,

Speaker 3:

Whatever linearize it. Yes.

Speaker 2:

I don't know anyway, me and my words. So I think, you know, I think it's probably good. This is like 12 minutes of people hearing about emotions. Um, and I think probably the, the takeaway, if you didn't take it away, is that negative events lead to negative emotions. And it's really important for you to figure out what you are actually experiencing in your body. When you experience a negative emotion, when you are anxious or afraid, what does it feel like? Cause that's a warning sign that you're in conflict with the enemy and there's going to be a whole series of things you'll begin to believe in. Think that aren't good. And we need to kind of grab hold of what those are.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Next time we get together for this. We'll talk about[inaudible].

Podcasts we love