222: How to Manage Emotional Overwhelm with Christian Meditation
Is managing emotions hard for you too? Today let’s talk about a very practical emotional management tool–Christian meditation. Even when emotions feel out of control and chaotic, Christian meditation can help with emotional overwhelm to bring peace and stress relief.
Let’s discover how the body responds to different emotions and how Christian meditation helps us to focus on the reality of who we are in God. I also share a few testimonials from women that have been using my brand-new resource, Christian Meditations for Daily Calm so you can hear how meditating for just 5 minutes a day can have a dramatic impact on managing emotions and overall stress relief.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
[01:50] The body’s reaction during emotional overwhelm
[04:55] What are our natural responses to emotions?
[06:28] 4 ways that Christian meditation can bring calm in a stressful situation
[13:50] How to meditate on God’s word
[16:08] Powerful testimonials from women using Christian Meditations for Daily Calm
[01:50] The body’s reaction during emotional overwhelm
Christian meditation is a practical tool that we can use during the emotional freakouts that we all have. During emotional overwhelm, our body is having a reasonable response to whatever we are going through whether that is a stressful situation, our hormones, or a trigger that comes up. Emotions are the “check engine lights” inside of our bodies and they need to be listened to, honored, and acknowledged.
Instead of shutting them down by saying “be quiet”, we need to say “it makes sense that I am feeling like this.” Before we get to that place and are able to use the process I teach called ADD (acknowledge, discern, and decide), we need to calm down. That is where Christian meditation comes in because it is difficult to let go when emotions are boiling over.
There was an interesting study done in 2013 by Finnish researchers that mapped out how different emotions showed up in our bodies. They found that emotions such as love, pride, anger, and happiness, showed activations in areas like the head, arms, and chest. While emotions like sadness and depression signaled a decrease in certain areas like the head, arms, and legs. When we are sad, we feel paralyzed by the emotion and when we are angry we can feel our body become activated into fight or flight. We can use Christian meditation for both of these states because meditation can bring calm to anger but it can also inspire us to move forward when we're feeling sad.
[04:55] What are our natural responses to emotions?
When we are in moments of stress, we often have a natural response that is not always helpful. Our bodies move into the fight, flight, freeze or fawn response:
Fight: Expressing the emotions and letting them take over
Flight: Running away from the emotion and not wanting to deal with it (something I tend to do)
Freeze: Sit and overthink
Fawn: Telling ourselves “It is okay, I am not going to feel this because I want to please somebody else with my response”
However, instead of allowing our natural responses to reign unchecked, we can use a tool like God's Word to rise above our own human response. We are called to live not as fleshly creatures, we are called to live as followers of Christ, so we need to be able to make those decisions. Meditation is a great way to either calm our soul down or meditate on God's word as inspiration to lift us up.
[06:28] 4 ways that Christian meditation can bring calm in a stressful situation
The first way that Christian meditation can bring calm in a stressful situation is that it turns on the parasympathetic nervous system. Our body's central nervous system operates in two ways: the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) and the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight). Our body’s natural state is the parasympathetic nervous system but if we are constantly in stressful situations or we are allowing our minds to take over with racing thoughts, we can stay stuck in the sympathetic system.
Meditation has been proven in many different studies to easily kick on the parasympathetic system. We talked more about this in Episode 220: How Can Christian Meditation Help You Better Manage Stress?
Another way that Christian meditation helps with calming overwhelming emotions is that it gives space for emotional processing. We need to acknowledge the feelings that we are having and we cannot just shove the truth down even if the truth is what we really need to hear at that moment. We need space to say, “Wow, this is really hard” because our brain will not allow that truth to resonate and soak into our minds if our bodies feel something different.
In the first few chapters of the book of Job, we hear about how Job loses his livestock, his property, and his children. All of these horrible things happened to him in a very short period of time so his friends try to help him through what he is feeling by saying, “Well, God is trying to help you through this by disciplining you for something you did. And all of this discipline that he's giving you is good.” However, Job needed his emotions to be heard and listened to before he was able to accept any truth. A vital part of processing emotion is through acknowledgment and Christian meditation slows us down enough to have that acknowledgment.
Christian meditation also helps with emotional regulation and stress resilience. For example, we can still feel angry but we are letting that anger be something that God allows us to deal with, release, and move through. There are multiple tools that we can use to either increase or decrease that heightened emotion and meditation is a great way to be able to dissipate it. This does not mean that the feelings are going to go away but it helps us in being resilient. When we add meditation into our daily lives, it becomes that much easier to step into calm during stressful times.
The last way that Christian meditation can help calm our overwhelming emotions is that it cultivates mindfulness. Mindfulness is the feeling of living in the moment versus living in fear of what is happening, living in shame, condemnation, or regret of the past. When we are living in the moment, this allows us to focus on the reality of who we are in God, not just the reality of our situation (good or bad).
It is a fact that we have a God who takes care of all of our needs, provides for us, and has redeemed us from every sin that we have ever committed. Meditation allows us to step into a different mindset that sees the full reality of who we are in Christ and that brings calm and resolution in a way that just positive thinking will not. Meditation very specifically connects us with God and gives us a pathway to see the reality of who we are.
[13:50] How to meditate on God’s word
You might be thinking, “this is great… but what does Christian meditation look like and how am I supposed to know how to meditate on God's word to have this powerful impact on my mind and body?”
That’s exactly why I created Christian Meditations for Daily Calm because I know that it can seem overwhelming to start something like Christian meditation. Christian meditation is beneficial ehether done for an extended period of time or for around 5 minutes a day! Christian meditation can be practiced in the height of the emotions, where we can be reminded to stop, breathe and get some space; or it can be practiced on a regular basis as a preventative tool for emotional management.
It is important to have structure when you are starting a new habit which is why the Christian Meditations for Daily Calm are structured in the way they are. They focus on bringing physical calm with a breathing exercise and then you are led through a bible verse, affirmation, and visualization to bring it to life by imagining Christ with us in a certain setting. Then they close with gratitude or praising Him and ways that you can keep this idea in your mind. It is a very specific outline in terms of how we connect with God through meditation and each one of them is unique!
[16:08] Powerful testimonials from women using Christian Meditations for Daily Calm
I wanted to share a few stories from women who have been using these meditations to help them manage their emotions and stress. You can hear in their own words what it has been like for them to use this different kind of tool.
Melissa says, “The day one meditation helps me walk taller when I encounter stress. Because even if everything is not in my control, I remember that I can trust God because I am His daughter. Focusing on this truth daily is such a gift when life is hard.” This is something that encourages Melissa, as somebody who is walking through a very hard season with a lot of medical appointments right now, knowing that she is the daughter of God and she can step into that mindset using meditation. This has made a huge impact on her life.
Kelly says “These meditations are short, easy to fit into a busy schedule, and definitely pertain to issues that I have been dealing with, I am able to calm down much faster since I began regularly listening to these meditations, I feel my heart rate decrease and a feeling of peace come over me, everything becomes not quite so overwhelming.” Kelly reminds us that it does not necessarily mean that we are going to do a meditation and everything is going to be solved, but it is going to calm us down so that we can begin the process of processing the emotion. Then we can begin discerning the truth and decide on how we want to handle it.
It is an essential part of the ADD process (to acknowledge, discern and decide), in a physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual way. It is calming us down so we can be in a more grounded state. So as you can see, meditation is a simple and effective way for us to find that calm in the moment before we lose it with our emotions. Make sure to check out the sample meditation on the Christian Meditations for Daily Calm page to try out today!
I would also love to hear how you use meditations to bring calm in your life, whether that is in the middle of emotional overwhelm or if it is part of your overall stress relief strategy. We would love to hear what you are doing with these meditations and how they are making a difference for you. Reach out to me anytime at hello@vibrantchristianliving.com.
Also, please leave a 5-star podcast rating and review. When you do, I would like to thank you by giving you a gift: ‘50 I Am Statements’ that reflect who you are as a child of God, presented in an audio declaration. If you aren’t an Apple user and can’t leave an Apple review, send us a screenshot of you sharing the podcast on social media to hello@vibrantchristianliving.com and we’ll get the free resource to you as well!
RESOURCES:
Christian Meditations for Daily Calm
OTHER RELATED EPISODES:
221: Super Busy? 15 Ways Christian Meditation Can Fit Into Your Daily Schedule
220: How Can Christian Meditation Help You Better Manage Stress?
219: Is Christian Meditation Biblical? How Is Christian Meditation Different from Eastern Meditation?218: New Christian Meditations for Calm! 3.5 Minutes to Refresh Your Mind with God’s Peace
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