June 4, 2025 • 24 mins
Do you ever feel stuck in a cycle of self-doubt, stress, or negativity that’s stealing your peace and joy?
In this empowering episode of Building a Life You Love, Kristin Fitch unpacks how our thought life can become a barrier to happiness—and what we can do to change that. Drawing from mindset psychology and faith-based principles, Kristin explores how negative thinking patterns not only affect our emotional well-being but can also take a toll on our physical health.
You’ll learn why it’s essential to acknowledge your emotions rather than suppress them, and how embracing your feelings can lead to greater joy, peace, and purpose. Plus, Kristin shares practical strategies to renew your mind, shift your perspective, and let go of the mental habits holding you back.
If you’re ready to trade inner criticism for clarity, and overwhelm for lasting peace, this episode is for you. And if you'd like to jump start shifting your thoughts and experiencing more joy go grab my free Rewire Your Mind Guide to help you get started. Rewire Your Mind Guide
Download My Free Joyful Living Devotional: https://kristinfitch.com/devotional
Ready to take your first step towards a more joyful, faith-filled life? Download our Reignite Your Passion Workbook and start living with purpose today!
What to feel more energized in midlife? Grab my 5 Day Energy Reset Jump Start Guide here.
Ready to work with Kristin to make a shift in your life? Click here to get started.
✅ Key Takeaways for the Listener:
- Negative thinking isn’t just a mindset issue—it impacts your body, joy, and peace.
- Suppressing emotions stifles our capacity for happiness; healing begins with honesty.
- Acknowledging and processing negative thoughts opens the door to mental clarity and joy.
- You don’t need to stay stuck—small shifts in perspective can lead to powerful breakthroughs.
- Faith and mindset work together to help us renew our minds and walk in peace.
- Joy grows when we allow ourselves to feel fully and release what no longer serves us.
building a life you love, joy and happiness, overcoming negative thoughts, emotional health, mental wellness, personal growth, practical tips for happiness, faith led entrepreneur, positive habits, somatic release techniques, addressing childhood trauma, self-care strategies, coping with negative emotions, building meaningful relationships, mindset shift, emotional freedom techniques, finding purpose in life, stress management, living authentically, healing from emotional pain
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey friends, and welcome backto Building a life you love.
This is your host, Kristen.
Today we are going to talkabout what might be standing in our
way from experiencing more joyand happiness.
Have you ever imaginedbuilding a life you love but got
stuck in between the what ifs,expectations and obligations in your
life?
Welcome to Building a life youlove, the podcast dedicated to helping
(00:20):
you step into a life whereyour passion blossoms from within,
your faith deepens, andsimplicity becomes your favorite
synonym for everyday life.
Hi, I'm your host, Kristen, anencourager, a faith led entrepreneur,
a mom and a wife.
Join me each week as we diveinto creating positive habits, stepping
out of your comfort zone,making space for meaningful work
and relationships.
(00:41):
I'm going to bring youpractical tips, uplifting conversations
and expert guidance that youcan use.
So why wait?
Step off the path ofexpectations and into a space that
feels genuinely yours.
Subscribe now to building alife you love and let's begin this
transformative journeytogether towards joy, peace and purpose.
Hey there.
Today we're going to talkabout what might be keeping us from
(01:01):
experiencing more joy orhappiness in our lives and what can
we do about it?
And the surprising answer isactually the thoughts between our
ears.
And I did want to come on realquick and let you know that I want
to apologize because thisepisode was apparently not recorded
with my professionalmicrophone, so the audio isn't great.
(01:22):
So I want to apologize inadvance of the rest of this episode,
but there's really just not aneasy, quick way for me to fix it
to make it the same quality ashow I'm talking right now.
But I still think you're goingto get a lot out of it and I hope
you can bear with me throughthe episode.
And so we're going to diveinto why that's the case and are
(01:42):
there things we can do toincrease the amount of joy and happiness
we have in our lives?
And so the first thing that Iwant to say is that we're going to
have negative feelings orthoughts, right?
So we're not saying we'realways going to be positive or we're
not angry or feel frustrated.
Sometimes fear feel afraid or fearful.
(02:06):
But what we want is we wantthere to be a balance and we want
more of the positive,purposeful thoughts than we do of
the negative thoughts becauseit impacts our overall health.
Negative thoughts impact notonly our mental health, how much
joy or happiness we experience.
(02:26):
It also impacts our physicalhealth because our mental landscape
determines our gene expression.
And so today we're not goingto get into that piece so much because
I've actually talked aboutthat before for on a past episode,
we're going to talk about thenegative thoughts and how they're
(02:46):
tied to how much joy we experience.
But I do want to just pointout how important it is that we learn
how to feel our feelings, howto go through them, how to release
those feelings, and thenthings we can do to shift feelings
that way.
All right, so the main reasonthough that negative feelings can
impact us, feeling joy orhappy is because it's the same part
(03:11):
of the brain that allows us tofeel both.
Okay, so and then what arenegative feelings?
It's our feelings, ourthoughts, our emotions and reactions
that don't serve us, right?
So it's feeling anger, feelingunmotivated, feeling jealous, feeling
triggered, feeling upset orhurt, worried, afraid, scared, guilty.
(03:38):
So and what we're taught, andhere's the thing, so feelings like
that are actually trying toprotect us, right?
Because we've probably beenhurt or we're afraid of something
happening to us, right?
Are we, are we going to be safe?
Are we going to be loved?
Are we going to be accepted?
Right?
So there are all these things.
So there's a reason that wefeel these things.
(04:00):
But we don't want to suppressor ignore those feelings or avoid
them because that's what a lotof us do.
We try to suppress them orjust disregard our feelings, right?
Or explain them why.
No, no, no, no, it's fine,it's fine.
(04:21):
But suppressing our emotionscan do two things.
It can reduce our ability tofeel positive emotions, which I'm
going to get into in a minute,but suppressing our emotions and
our needs actually also like Italked about hearts, our bodies,
physical health.
And I've shared beforerecently, just trying to pull it
(04:45):
up here, a book called whenthe Body says no, exploring the Stress
Disease Connection by the Boar Mate.
And he explains that 80% ofwomen are the ones that are diagnosed
with autoimmune diseasesbecause we tend to care about everyone
else's feelings and needs andwe put ours last or we just disregard
(05:10):
ours.
Also, people that tend to getautoimmune diseases in general, long
term chronic illnesses andcancer tend to, to have certain personality
characteristics.
Now that doesn't mean becauseyou have those, you're going to get
one of those diseases.
What it means is that's onemore factor in pattern that people
(05:32):
that get diagnosed, of courseit can be their environment, what's
going on, or what they'reexposed to.
But there's another piecewhich is they have un.
Resolved trauma or they havesuppressed emotions and feelings.
And so most often from veryyoung in our lives, right?
(05:54):
Childhood trauma or how weprocess things or didn't process
them, how we perceived thingsand we brought it into adulthood.
Okay, back to negativefeelings and why it can impact us
feeling more joy in our lives.
So here's the deal.
All our emotions areinterconnected and processed in the
(06:15):
same part of the brain.
So our brain's center is alsoits pleasure center, right?
It's also the place.
It's the place, in otherwords, that all sensory information
is brought through.
And there's quite a few partsof the brain that are that deal with
our emotions, right, and our feelings.
(06:37):
But the one that we're talkingabout today is the somatosensory
cortex because it doesn't justprocess pain, it processes physical
sensation.
But it also is where, when weexperience pleasure and joy gives
sensory signals to that samepart of the brain.
So when we try to avoid orsuppress negative emotions, we're
(07:00):
shutting down part ofemotional experience.
We're numbing out, right?
And so we feel less overall emotion.
I guess the best way I candescribe that is if we don't allow
ourselves to feel thefeelings, even negative or ones we've
been holding on to, we're notallowing that part of us, right?
(07:21):
The somatosensory cortex doits job.
So it'd be kind of like if youhad a cast on your arm, right?
Because we're protecting, ifyou will, that part of the brain
or we're kind of closing it off.
Then if I tried to scratch ortouch my arm where that cast is,
I'm not going to feel it, right?
I would feel the cast, but Iwouldn't feel my arm and my arm wouldn't
(07:43):
feel the sensation the same way.
So we have to feel the feelings.
And so first I want to sharewith you a quote about it's going
to give us growth, right?
We're going to have the goodwith the bad, the light with the
dark.
We're going to have negativeor things we feel that we don't want
to feel.
And we're going to have goodfeelings, right?
Positive things, and that's okay.
(08:05):
But we have to learn to dealwith the pent up feelings and not
suppress our emotions, ourneeds and these things that are coming
up for us.
So I'm going to share with youthree things we can do to try to
shift that in a minute.
But I just want to share thisquote with you from Frederick Buchner
says, listen to your life.
(08:27):
See it for the fathomlessmystery that it is in the boredom
and pain of it, no less thanin the excitement and gladness.
Touch, taste, smell your wayto the holy and hidden heart of it.
Because in the last analysisof all moments are key moments in
life itself is grace.
But friends, that's the thingwe have to experience.
(08:51):
Like, we don't get the joywithout also playing opposite, right?
And I don't mean that, thatmeans we want more of it.
We have to be able to feelboth and also, right?
It's through our senses, it'sthrough processing things that we
able to experience thatexcitement, excitement, that gladness,
that joy, that happiness.
(09:12):
And so it's just reallyimportant that we actually address
this.
Okay, so Dr.
Clint Steele, he's a brain andnervous system specialist, shares
that our negative thoughtswill stress out our brain.
And really.
And it also, it can increasehaving a lot of negative thoughts
(09:32):
continuously.
Right where we're staying inthis stressed out state, our brain
sanctions out.
It also leads to an increasein, or I should say, sorry.
By addressing this, we arelowering one more thing we can do
to lower our chances ofgetting Alzheimer's and dementia,
which is how he helps people.
(09:53):
He helps people with common,everyday ways that we can lower our
chances of having dementia or Alzheimer's.
He explains three ways that wecan get ourselves out of these negative
thoughts.
And so I would say two things.
One, this is for just likewhen we have a negative thought,
how we capture it and shift it.
But then I'm going to comeback and talk about like the same
(10:16):
negative thoughts that keepcoming up.
Okay, so here's what he says.
We want to notice a negativethought, right?
We're worried about something,we feel shame, we're afraid.
So we want to notice it.
Because if we don't notice itand we just let ourselves keep having
these thoughts when they're,they kind of take over, right?
So we don't want that.
So if we notice the negativethoughts, then we can try to shift
(10:40):
it.
And what he explains, one wayto do that is that we are going to
use like the pivot method.
And what that means is whenyou have a negative thought, you
want to replace it withsomething else.
And so I'm sorry, first youwant to stop your brain from having
the thought.
It's an interruption.
And so the way you do that isyou either you look at a photo, something
(11:04):
that makes you happy or liftsyou up, maybe that you look at scripture,
you could turn on yourfavorite song.
That just kind of pulls youinto a better state of good mood
makes you think.
Or you could just have like aquote, right, that you have on your
phone saved as an image andyou look at that, you read that thought
(11:26):
because it pulls you out ofwhere you were.
So that's what we want to do.
That's the second part.
The third then is we do wantto return to the original thought
or scenario we were thinkingof and replace it.
We want to change our perspective.
So let me think of an example here.
So let's say that I'm.
(11:49):
I'm worried, right?
My kids, my kids isn't homeyet and they're driving.
It's getting later.
And of course, my what if mindgoes on and I'm like, oh, it's not
great weather.
Oh, what if something happens?
So once I notice the thoughtand then I redirect myself, if you
will, right?
I like stop the thought bylooking at maybe pictures of my family
(12:11):
and just having these goodemotions flow into me.
Then I want to come back tothat thought and I want to really
say to myself, like, is meworrying going to do any good?
And it's not.
First of all, my past does notshow me or the data in general that
that's realistic.
(12:31):
Of course, it doesn't mean itcould never happen to anyone, but
the chances are very small.
So then I need to shift myselfto, you know what, I'm just going
to say a little prayer for hissafety and, and I'm going to release
it because.
And then envision him cominghome in 10 minutes or 30 minutes
or whatever it might be.
But I'm going to shift it to arealistic thought, not a spinning
(12:56):
what if worry, because it'snot doing me any good to have that
worry because it's not basedon any past thing that's happened.
It's.
It's just that thing in lifeand we never know what's going to
happen, but the chances arelow of something bad happening in
that instance.
Okay, so that's kind of whathe says we want to do with negative
(13:18):
thoughts.
But I would say there's twotypes of negative thoughts.
One is what I just explainedwhere it's more specific just to
what's going on in your liferight now.
In other words, they're kindof leading negative thoughts, if
you will.
Now, maybe you have the sameones over and over.
Like maybe you don't feel goodwith the way you look on some part
(13:41):
of your body.
So you just have thiscontinuous negative thought.
Well, this three steps wouldstill help with that.
Then I think there's Also adifferent part is we have to address
what we're feeling.
And so, you know, one way,there's many ways to address past
trauma or patterns that we'restuck in.
(14:04):
And I am not a specialist orpsychiatrist or psychologist, but
is having a somatic release.
And what does that mean?
It means we allow ourselves toactually feel the feeling.
So when we feel like we're ina space, we have a little bit of
time.
If we feel sad, in otherwords, don't just say, I feel sad
(14:25):
all the time, right?
Like, get in a safe spot, aquiet spot, and let yourself actually
feel the emotion.
Like, where are you sat?
Do you feel it in your body?
Where do you feel it in your body?
Right?
Like, in other words, becomeaware of the feeling and allow the
feeling to come forward,right, to come out.
(14:47):
And when you do that, and you.
And you welcome that feeling,like, look, feeling like, what do
you want to tell me?
In other words, when we startgetting in a little attention, we
likely are going to have a release.
We're going to have a somatic release.
But that means is we mightstart crying, we might have a, you
(15:08):
know, a feeling go through ourbody, right?
Like an energy or something.
But then as we release thatemotion, as we're thinking about
whatever we're holding on to,we start to feel lighter, okay?
Because we don't want to holdand bottle up these emotions.
We want to release them.
Of course, in cases whereyou're holding on to stuff and maybe
(15:31):
you just don't know even whatit's about, you absolutely should
go find a professional to help you.
There are so many people.
There's counselors,therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists.
There are different types ofcoaches depending on the work you
need to do.
There's also a techniquecalled emotional freedom tapping
(15:52):
and that also can help youhave those sort of releases.
And so a lot of ways to dealwith suppressed emotions or suppressed
trauma or patterns that wemight have.
But the most important thingis we want to bring them to the surface.
We want to start understandingthem better and then we want to process
(16:15):
them.
Because when we do this, wewill start to increase our joy and
our happiness, but we willalso improve the state of our mental
health and our physical healthwhen we start releasing some of this
stuff we've been holding onto,we haven't been allowing to surface.
And so I just wanted to comeon, share that today how we can pull
(16:38):
ourselves out of negative thinking.
Ways that you might want toexplore trying to surface your suppressed
or avoided emotions and feelings.
And then Also, how this canactually help you have more joy and
actually improve your health overall.
So before we wrap up today'sepisode, I want to share a quote
(17:00):
or two with you, and then Ialso am going to share a piece of
scripture.
So there is a book called thegift 12 lessons to save your life
by Dr.
Edith Hooker, who is.
She is a psychologist and aHolocaust survivor.
And her book, the Gift isreally one that I highly recommend
(17:22):
that you get.
It's just full of truly 12life lessons that I think all of
us can take so much away from.
But as she's wrapping up thebook, she.
She says we can't take away suffering.
We can't change what happened.
We can choose to find the giftin our lives.
We can even learn to cherishthe wound.
And then she says, life, evenwith its inevitable trauma, pain,
(17:44):
grief, misery and death, is a gift.
The gift we sabotage when weimprison ourselves in our fears of
punishment, failure andabandonment, in our need for approval,
superiority and inferiority,in our need for power and control.
To celebrate the gift of lifeis to find the gift in everything
that happens, even the partsthat are difficult.
(18:06):
We're not sure we can surviveto celebrate life, period, to live
with joy, love and passion.
Sometimes we think that if wemove on from loss or trauma, if we
have fun and enjoy ourselves,if we continue to grow and evolve,
that we're somehow dishonoringthe dead or dishonoring the past.
Past.
But it's okay to laugh.
It's okay to have joy.
And she ends the book saying,honey, you may also choose to give
(18:31):
up the prison and do the work,to be free, to find in your suffering
your own life lessons.
To choose which legacy theworld inherits.
To hand down the pain or topass on the gift.
Okay, just reading thatliterally bring me to tears.
Just the emotion of it.
Okay, I also want to sharewith you two scriptures.
One of them is Proverbs 4:23,which says, above all else, guard
(18:54):
your heart from everything youdo flows from it.
And I think related to today'sconversation, I think it's so important
because if we find that we'restuck in patterns, we're stuck in
the repeat stories in our head.
We're stuck in patterns likepeople pleasing or not speaking up
to what we really want to be doing.
(19:15):
Maybe we're living a life orour life because we think we have
to, right?
Our parents had expectationsof us or what career we went into.
Maybe our spouse did.
Maybe we just feel like if wetake a different path, people will
judge us or think that we seemodd or unlikable.
(19:36):
But we have got to startguarding our own hearts.
We have to start speaking upfor how we were designed and step
into more of that.
And we need to do the work toheal ourselves.
We need to do the work to be whole.
And so whether we can do thaton our own or whether we need to
work with somebody to do thatright, There are people, there's
(19:58):
programs, there's books.
There's so many ways to makeshifts here.
And then the other structurethat I want to read to you is Philippians
4:8.
It says, finally, brothers andsisters, whatever is true, whatever
is noble, whatever is right,whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is admirable,anything is excellent or praiseworthy,
(20:21):
think about such things.
And like I talked about, it'snot that we're not going to have
negative thoughts or hardthings happen, but what we can do
is we can curate what we'relooking at.
We can curate our thoughtsover time.
We can try to focus on howwe're showing up in the world, how
(20:41):
we're being of service.
We can look at content that'slife giving and uplifting, right?
We can start filling ourselveswith things that help us shift to
a mindset that makes us whole.
We can let go of the past,hurt the past, trauma, past patterns.
(21:02):
And you know, I love that inScripture that it basically tells
us that if we focus on right,if we think about those things, what's
right, what's noble, what'spure, what's lovely, it changes us,
right?
Because if we think goodthings, if we look at all the beauty
(21:22):
in the world, all the amazingthings people are doing to help each
other, yes, there's bad thingsin the world, but look at all the
good, which doesn't usuallyget covered.
And if we look at that morethan we're looking at all the things
that make us fearful andworried, our life will change because
we're going to see more ofwhat we look for.
So if we're looking for thegood, if we're looking for the kindness,
(21:45):
if we're looking for theexamples of love and miracles, we're
going to see more of it.
And we're going to know thatwe have a place in that world and
that it's not just all gloomand doom.
So as we wrap up today, I justwant to tell you that I hope there's
something you can take awayfrom this episode and apply it to
your own life or dig into thequote or the scripture, maybe the
(22:07):
book I mentioned or way thatyou can do the brain rewiring three
steps right to notice yourthoughts or patterns, to interrupt
them and then to shift thosethoughts or patterns.
So until next time, I hope youhave a great day.
And as I've said before, thisis not medical advice.
(22:28):
This is just educational,informative and you should always
seek medical help of aprofessional practitioner if you're
looking to find ways toactually work on this yourself.
So until next time, have a great.
One and thanks again forlistening in.
And if you enjoyed the show,we'd love it if you'd subscribe and
leave us a review and ratingon Apple Podcast or wherever you
(22:52):
listen to podcasts.
And you can check out freebiesand resources we have for you@kristenfitch.com
and if you have ideas for theshow or guests that you'd like to
recommend, I'd love to hearfrom you.
So DM me on Instagram atkristenfitch or you can email me
from the website site.
Thanks so much.
Until next time, have a great week.
Hey friends, and welcome backto Building a life you love.
This is your host, Kristen.
Today we are going to talkabout what might be standing in our
way from experiencing more joyand happiness.
Have you ever imaginedbuilding a life you love but got
stuck in between the what ifs,expectations and obligations in your
life?
Welcome to Building a life youlove, the podcast dedicated to helping
(00:20):
you step into a life whereyour passion blossoms from within,
your faith deepens, andsimplicity becomes your favorite
synonym for everyday life.
Hi, I'm your host, Kristen, anencourager, a faith led entrepreneur,
a mom and a wife.
Join me each week as we diveinto creating positive habits, stepping
out of your comfort zone,making space for meaningful work
and relationships.
(00:41):
I'm going to bring youpractical tips, uplifting conversations
and expert guidance that youcan use.
So why wait?
Step off the path ofexpectations and into a space that
feels genuinely yours.
Subscribe now to building alife you love and let's begin this
transformative journeytogether towards joy, peace and purpose.
Hey there.
Today we're going to talkabout what might be keeping us from
(01:01):
experiencing more joy orhappiness in our lives and what can
we do about it?
And the surprising answer isactually the thoughts between our
ears.
And I did want to come on realquick and let you know that I want
to apologize because thisepisode was apparently not recorded
with my professionalmicrophone, so the audio isn't great.
(01:22):
So I want to apologize inadvance of the rest of this episode,
but there's really just not aneasy, quick way for me to fix it
to make it the same quality ashow I'm talking right now.
But I still think you're goingto get a lot out of it and I hope
you can bear with me throughthe episode.
And so we're going to diveinto why that's the case and are
(01:42):
there things we can do toincrease the amount of joy and happiness
we have in our lives?
And so the first thing that Iwant to say is that we're going to
have negative feelings orthoughts, right?
So we're not saying we'realways going to be positive or we're
not angry or feel frustrated.
Sometimes fear feel afraid or fearful.
(02:06):
But what we want is we wantthere to be a balance and we want
more of the positive,purposeful thoughts than we do of
the negative thoughts becauseit impacts our overall health.
Negative thoughts impact notonly our mental health, how much
joy or happiness we experience.
(02:26):
It also impacts our physicalhealth because our mental landscape
determines our gene expression.
And so today we're not goingto get into that piece so much because
I've actually talked aboutthat before for on a past episode,
we're going to talk about thenegative thoughts and how they're
(02:46):
tied to how much joy we experience.
But I do want to just pointout how important it is that we learn
how to feel our feelings, howto go through them, how to release
those feelings, and thenthings we can do to shift feelings
that way.
All right, so the main reasonthough that negative feelings can
impact us, feeling joy orhappy is because it's the same part
(03:11):
of the brain that allows us tofeel both.
Okay, so and then what arenegative feelings?
It's our feelings, ourthoughts, our emotions and reactions
that don't serve us, right?
So it's feeling anger, feelingunmotivated, feeling jealous, feeling
triggered, feeling upset orhurt, worried, afraid, scared, guilty.
(03:38):
So and what we're taught, andhere's the thing, so feelings like
that are actually trying toprotect us, right?
Because we've probably beenhurt or we're afraid of something
happening to us, right?
Are we, are we going to be safe?
Are we going to be loved?
Are we going to be accepted?
Right?
So there are all these things.
So there's a reason that wefeel these things.
(04:00):
But we don't want to suppressor ignore those feelings or avoid
them because that's what a lotof us do.
We try to suppress them orjust disregard our feelings, right?
Or explain them why.
No, no, no, no, it's fine,it's fine.
(04:21):
But suppressing our emotionscan do two things.
It can reduce our ability tofeel positive emotions, which I'm
going to get into in a minute,but suppressing our emotions and
our needs actually also like Italked about hearts, our bodies,
physical health.
And I've shared beforerecently, just trying to pull it
(04:45):
up here, a book called whenthe Body says no, exploring the Stress
Disease Connection by the Boar Mate.
And he explains that 80% ofwomen are the ones that are diagnosed
with autoimmune diseasesbecause we tend to care about everyone
else's feelings and needs andwe put ours last or we just disregard
(05:10):
ours.
Also, people that tend to getautoimmune diseases in general, long
term chronic illnesses andcancer tend to, to have certain personality
characteristics.
Now that doesn't mean becauseyou have those, you're going to get
one of those diseases.
What it means is that's onemore factor in pattern that people
(05:32):
that get diagnosed, of courseit can be their environment, what's
going on, or what they'reexposed to.
But there's another piecewhich is they have un.
Resolved trauma or they havesuppressed emotions and feelings.
And so most often from veryyoung in our lives, right?
(05:54):
Childhood trauma or how weprocess things or didn't process
them, how we perceived thingsand we brought it into adulthood.
Okay, back to negativefeelings and why it can impact us
feeling more joy in our lives.
So here's the deal.
All our emotions areinterconnected and processed in the
(06:15):
same part of the brain.
So our brain's center is alsoits pleasure center, right?
It's also the place.
It's the place, in otherwords, that all sensory information
is brought through.
And there's quite a few partsof the brain that are that deal with
our emotions, right, and our feelings.
(06:37):
But the one that we're talkingabout today is the somatosensory
cortex because it doesn't justprocess pain, it processes physical
sensation.
But it also is where, when weexperience pleasure and joy gives
sensory signals to that samepart of the brain.
So when we try to avoid orsuppress negative emotions, we're
(07:00):
shutting down part ofemotional experience.
We're numbing out, right?
And so we feel less overall emotion.
I guess the best way I candescribe that is if we don't allow
ourselves to feel thefeelings, even negative or ones we've
been holding on to, we're notallowing that part of us, right?
(07:21):
The somatosensory cortex doits job.
So it'd be kind of like if youhad a cast on your arm, right?
Because we're protecting, ifyou will, that part of the brain
or we're kind of closing it off.
Then if I tried to scratch ortouch my arm where that cast is,
I'm not going to feel it, right?
I would feel the cast, but Iwouldn't feel my arm and my arm wouldn't
(07:43):
feel the sensation the same way.
So we have to feel the feelings.
And so first I want to sharewith you a quote about it's going
to give us growth, right?
We're going to have the goodwith the bad, the light with the
dark.
We're going to have negativeor things we feel that we don't want
to feel.
And we're going to have goodfeelings, right?
Positive things, and that's okay.
(08:05):
But we have to learn to dealwith the pent up feelings and not
suppress our emotions, ourneeds and these things that are coming
up for us.
So I'm going to share with youthree things we can do to try to
shift that in a minute.
But I just want to share thisquote with you from Frederick Buchner
says, listen to your life.
(08:27):
See it for the fathomlessmystery that it is in the boredom
and pain of it, no less thanin the excitement and gladness.
Touch, taste, smell your wayto the holy and hidden heart of it.
Because in the last analysisof all moments are key moments in
life itself is grace.
But friends, that's the thingwe have to experience.
(08:51):
Like, we don't get the joywithout also playing opposite, right?
And I don't mean that, thatmeans we want more of it.
We have to be able to feelboth and also, right?
It's through our senses, it'sthrough processing things that we
able to experience thatexcitement, excitement, that gladness,
that joy, that happiness.
(09:12):
And so it's just reallyimportant that we actually address
this.
Okay, so Dr.
Clint Steele, he's a brain andnervous system specialist, shares
that our negative thoughtswill stress out our brain.
And really.
And it also, it can increasehaving a lot of negative thoughts
(09:32):
continuously.
Right where we're staying inthis stressed out state, our brain
sanctions out.
It also leads to an increasein, or I should say, sorry.
By addressing this, we arelowering one more thing we can do
to lower our chances ofgetting Alzheimer's and dementia,
which is how he helps people.
(09:53):
He helps people with common,everyday ways that we can lower our
chances of having dementia or Alzheimer's.
He explains three ways that wecan get ourselves out of these negative
thoughts.
And so I would say two things.
One, this is for just likewhen we have a negative thought,
how we capture it and shift it.
But then I'm going to comeback and talk about like the same
(10:16):
negative thoughts that keepcoming up.
Okay, so here's what he says.
We want to notice a negativethought, right?
We're worried about something,we feel shame, we're afraid.
So we want to notice it.
Because if we don't notice itand we just let ourselves keep having
these thoughts when they're,they kind of take over, right?
So we don't want that.
So if we notice the negativethoughts, then we can try to shift
(10:40):
it.
And what he explains, one wayto do that is that we are going to
use like the pivot method.
And what that means is whenyou have a negative thought, you
want to replace it withsomething else.
And so I'm sorry, first youwant to stop your brain from having
the thought.
It's an interruption.
And so the way you do that isyou either you look at a photo, something
(11:04):
that makes you happy or liftsyou up, maybe that you look at scripture,
you could turn on yourfavorite song.
That just kind of pulls youinto a better state of good mood
makes you think.
Or you could just have like aquote, right, that you have on your
phone saved as an image andyou look at that, you read that thought
(11:26):
because it pulls you out ofwhere you were.
So that's what we want to do.
That's the second part.
The third then is we do wantto return to the original thought
or scenario we were thinkingof and replace it.
We want to change our perspective.
So let me think of an example here.
So let's say that I'm.
(11:49):
I'm worried, right?
My kids, my kids isn't homeyet and they're driving.
It's getting later.
And of course, my what if mindgoes on and I'm like, oh, it's not
great weather.
Oh, what if something happens?
So once I notice the thoughtand then I redirect myself, if you
will, right?
I like stop the thought bylooking at maybe pictures of my family
(12:11):
and just having these goodemotions flow into me.
Then I want to come back tothat thought and I want to really
say to myself, like, is meworrying going to do any good?
And it's not.
First of all, my past does notshow me or the data in general that
that's realistic.
(12:31):
Of course, it doesn't mean itcould never happen to anyone, but
the chances are very small.
So then I need to shift myselfto, you know what, I'm just going
to say a little prayer for hissafety and, and I'm going to release
it because.
And then envision him cominghome in 10 minutes or 30 minutes
or whatever it might be.
But I'm going to shift it to arealistic thought, not a spinning
(12:56):
what if worry, because it'snot doing me any good to have that
worry because it's not basedon any past thing that's happened.
It's.
It's just that thing in lifeand we never know what's going to
happen, but the chances arelow of something bad happening in
that instance.
Okay, so that's kind of whathe says we want to do with negative
(13:18):
thoughts.
But I would say there's twotypes of negative thoughts.
One is what I just explainedwhere it's more specific just to
what's going on in your liferight now.
In other words, they're kindof leading negative thoughts, if
you will.
Now, maybe you have the sameones over and over.
Like maybe you don't feel goodwith the way you look on some part
(13:41):
of your body.
So you just have thiscontinuous negative thought.
Well, this three steps wouldstill help with that.
Then I think there's Also adifferent part is we have to address
what we're feeling.
And so, you know, one way,there's many ways to address past
trauma or patterns that we'restuck in.
(14:04):
And I am not a specialist orpsychiatrist or psychologist, but
is having a somatic release.
And what does that mean?
It means we allow ourselves toactually feel the feeling.
So when we feel like we're ina space, we have a little bit of
time.
If we feel sad, in otherwords, don't just say, I feel sad
(14:25):
all the time, right?
Like, get in a safe spot, aquiet spot, and let yourself actually
feel the emotion.
Like, where are you sat?
Do you feel it in your body?
Where do you feel it in your body?
Right?
Like, in other words, becomeaware of the feeling and allow the
feeling to come forward,right, to come out.
(14:47):
And when you do that, and you.
And you welcome that feeling,like, look, feeling like, what do
you want to tell me?
In other words, when we startgetting in a little attention, we
likely are going to have a release.
We're going to have a somatic release.
But that means is we mightstart crying, we might have a, you
(15:08):
know, a feeling go through ourbody, right?
Like an energy or something.
But then as we release thatemotion, as we're thinking about
whatever we're holding on to,we start to feel lighter, okay?
Because we don't want to holdand bottle up these emotions.
We want to release them.
Of course, in cases whereyou're holding on to stuff and maybe
(15:31):
you just don't know even whatit's about, you absolutely should
go find a professional to help you.
There are so many people.
There's counselors,therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists.
There are different types ofcoaches depending on the work you
need to do.
There's also a techniquecalled emotional freedom tapping
(15:52):
and that also can help youhave those sort of releases.
And so a lot of ways to dealwith suppressed emotions or suppressed
trauma or patterns that wemight have.
But the most important thingis we want to bring them to the surface.
We want to start understandingthem better and then we want to process
(16:15):
them.
Because when we do this, wewill start to increase our joy and
our happiness, but we willalso improve the state of our mental
health and our physical healthwhen we start releasing some of this
stuff we've been holding onto,we haven't been allowing to surface.
And so I just wanted to comeon, share that today how we can pull
(16:38):
ourselves out of negative thinking.
Ways that you might want toexplore trying to surface your suppressed
or avoided emotions and feelings.
And then Also, how this canactually help you have more joy and
actually improve your health overall.
So before we wrap up today'sepisode, I want to share a quote
(17:00):
or two with you, and then Ialso am going to share a piece of
scripture.
So there is a book called thegift 12 lessons to save your life
by Dr.
Edith Hooker, who is.
She is a psychologist and aHolocaust survivor.
And her book, the Gift isreally one that I highly recommend
(17:22):
that you get.
It's just full of truly 12life lessons that I think all of
us can take so much away from.
But as she's wrapping up thebook, she.
She says we can't take away suffering.
We can't change what happened.
We can choose to find the giftin our lives.
We can even learn to cherishthe wound.
And then she says, life, evenwith its inevitable trauma, pain,
(17:44):
grief, misery and death, is a gift.
The gift we sabotage when weimprison ourselves in our fears of
punishment, failure andabandonment, in our need for approval,
superiority and inferiority,in our need for power and control.
To celebrate the gift of lifeis to find the gift in everything
that happens, even the partsthat are difficult.
(18:06):
We're not sure we can surviveto celebrate life, period, to live
with joy, love and passion.
Sometimes we think that if wemove on from loss or trauma, if we
have fun and enjoy ourselves,if we continue to grow and evolve,
that we're somehow dishonoringthe dead or dishonoring the past.
Past.
But it's okay to laugh.
It's okay to have joy.
And she ends the book saying,honey, you may also choose to give
(18:31):
up the prison and do the work,to be free, to find in your suffering
your own life lessons.
To choose which legacy theworld inherits.
To hand down the pain or topass on the gift.
Okay, just reading thatliterally bring me to tears.
Just the emotion of it.
Okay, I also want to sharewith you two scriptures.
One of them is Proverbs 4:23,which says, above all else, guard
(18:54):
your heart from everything youdo flows from it.
And I think related to today'sconversation, I think it's so important
because if we find that we'restuck in patterns, we're stuck in
the repeat stories in our head.
We're stuck in patterns likepeople pleasing or not speaking up
to what we really want to be doing.
(19:15):
Maybe we're living a life orour life because we think we have
to, right?
Our parents had expectationsof us or what career we went into.
Maybe our spouse did.
Maybe we just feel like if wetake a different path, people will
judge us or think that we seemodd or unlikable.
(19:36):
But we have got to startguarding our own hearts.
We have to start speaking upfor how we were designed and step
into more of that.
And we need to do the work toheal ourselves.
We need to do the work to be whole.
And so whether we can do thaton our own or whether we need to
work with somebody to do thatright, There are people, there's
(19:58):
programs, there's books.
There's so many ways to makeshifts here.
And then the other structurethat I want to read to you is Philippians
4:8.
It says, finally, brothers andsisters, whatever is true, whatever
is noble, whatever is right,whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is admirable,anything is excellent or praiseworthy,
(20:21):
think about such things.
And like I talked about, it'snot that we're not going to have
negative thoughts or hardthings happen, but what we can do
is we can curate what we'relooking at.
We can curate our thoughtsover time.
We can try to focus on howwe're showing up in the world, how
(20:41):
we're being of service.
We can look at content that'slife giving and uplifting, right?
We can start filling ourselveswith things that help us shift to
a mindset that makes us whole.
We can let go of the past,hurt the past, trauma, past patterns.
(21:02):
And you know, I love that inScripture that it basically tells
us that if we focus on right,if we think about those things, what's
right, what's noble, what'spure, what's lovely, it changes us,
right?
Because if we think goodthings, if we look at all the beauty
(21:22):
in the world, all the amazingthings people are doing to help each
other, yes, there's bad thingsin the world, but look at all the
good, which doesn't usuallyget covered.
And if we look at that morethan we're looking at all the things
that make us fearful andworried, our life will change because
we're going to see more ofwhat we look for.
So if we're looking for thegood, if we're looking for the kindness,
(21:45):
if we're looking for theexamples of love and miracles, we're
going to see more of it.
And we're going to know thatwe have a place in that world and
that it's not just all gloomand doom.
So as we wrap up today, I justwant to tell you that I hope there's
something you can take awayfrom this episode and apply it to
your own life or dig into thequote or the scripture, maybe the
(22:07):
book I mentioned or way thatyou can do the brain rewiring three
steps right to notice yourthoughts or patterns, to interrupt
them and then to shift thosethoughts or patterns.
So until next time, I hope youhave a great day.
And as I've said before, thisis not medical advice.
(22:28):
This is just educational,informative and you should always
seek medical help of aprofessional practitioner if you're
looking to find ways toactually work on this yourself.
So until next time, have a great.
One and thanks again forlistening in.
And if you enjoyed the show,we'd love it if you'd subscribe and
leave us a review and ratingon Apple Podcast or wherever you
(22:52):
listen to podcasts.
And you can check out freebiesand resources we have for you@kristenfitch.com
and if you have ideas for theshow or guests that you'd like to
recommend, I'd love to hearfrom you.
So DM me on Instagram atkristenfitch or you can email me
from the website site.
Thanks so much.
Until next time, have a great week.
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