Learning to Work Through Your Emotions

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Hello everyone and welcome to this broadcast. Mark DeJesus here. Going to talk about emotions today, and I pray this is a practical resource for your life and for your journey. So, welcome to this.

I really see this as an important area that we need to address in our life and in our journey because we are beings that are relational. We are formed by how we do relationships. We're formed by our thinking, right? We talk a lot in Christianity about thoughts, but we don't really talk about the emotional aspect of it. And we have separated thoughts and emotions as though they are separate entities from each other, and they're not. They are a part together in this journey.

So, I pray that this will be an encouraging resource for your life, for where you're at, for where you're headed, for what you're going through. It will, um, I think, add some practicality to the process. So, let's get right into this, can we?

I want to dig right into what emotions can be for your world, for your existence. I want to keep this very grounded. I want to keep it healthy. I want to keep it where you can actually use this, share it with others, and let it be a valuable resource for your life and for your journey. It might be helpful to sit down with somebody that you trust, or maybe a group of people that you're trying to walk the journey with, that you could discuss this further. Let it be a resource for your life. Let it be a resource for your journey.

Okay, emotions. We kind of look at emotions. Let's first ask a series of questions. I'm going to, I'm going to use this as though we had done a lot of work together, and I'm going to, as though we were working one-on-one. I'm going to give you an exercise that's probably five to ten sessions worth of stuff that you can process out. And these are things you can discuss, things you can use with those that you're encouraging, right?

So, I, the, the thesis of this time together, the bottom line, is learning to work through your emotional world. Now, with that in mind, growing up, how were you taught to deal with your emotions? That's kind of the opening question. It's the opening thought that I encourage you to reflect on. And trust me, when I'm navigating through this, we talk about emotions, people go, they get all nervous. They go, "What's going to happen?" Trust me, we're going to navigate. We'll find some good things and some good territory in this.

We first have to ask, how were you taught to deal with your emotions? Some people would say, "Not at all." Some people would say, "Well, I was told I was too emotional growing up." How many of you out there were told, and you are currently told, "You're too emotional. You're just too emotional. You're too sensitive." You know, you hear that over and over again.

Were there only certain emotions that were allowed? Like, "Hey, it's great if you're happy. If you're encouraging. If you are bringing good news. If you are having a good day. If you're helpful. If you're achieving. If you're joyful." All that's great. But all these other emotions, "No, no." You know, was, were people telling you to just fix you real quick? "Stop acting that way. Don't be sad. Boys don't cry. Don't do that. Don't act that way."

What was the emotional world like? Was there no emotion? You know, some people say, "Well, you know what, Mark? There was no emotion. I was raised by wolves." Okay, well, what did the wolves, what did the wolves teach you about about emotions? What instructions did the wolves give you?

Um, so this goes into two avenues. It goes into home life. It goes into church life. Those are kind of two areas. So, family, parents, upbringing, home. Was the emotional life like, could you share what you were going through and in relationship find your way through the emotion? Or did you share an emotion, there was a harsh reaction, shut it down, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame? You know, was it like that? Where was I think that's a common one is that there wasn't much room to share it, so you developed this shutdown, hiding kind of response.

Now, I'm not going to bother. You may not have said that as a kid, or maybe you did, but you just over time stopped sharing because it wasn't a pleasant experience. You'd kind of hidden some of those emotions, some of his feelings. So now you're an adult, and so many adults I interact with, they have emotions, they have no idea what to do with. They're shoving them down. They get stuck in them. They're misinterpreting them. There's a lot of misinterpretation, and I'm going to get into that a little bit more.

So, the first thing is just to be honest with what was your emotional upbringing. I encourage you, have a journaling exercise. Have a sit-down with someone and and and talk through what was your emotional life like. If you have a small group, sit down and just share in in safety, what is it, what was your upbringing? No judgment, nobody correcting, just listen. Because that sets the template for how you're going to process your life with Christ, your life with people, with your life with the thoughts that you have, what floats along the thought pathway, right?

Again, I'm wanting to, as a goal, we're going to work through emotions. Now, many people said, "Well, I, Christianity has often said, 'Well, we don't follow our emotions, so we don't deal with emotions.'" That's, it's actually impossible possible to think without any emotion. Now, you may, you may think you are not operating out of emotion, but emotions drive so much of your thought life. Every thought has a corresponding emotion to it, and an emotion that's that's that's tied to it creates an interpretation. That interpretation then motivates what you think about, what you don't think about, what you pay attention to, what you don't pay attention to.

How much help have you gotten in being able to do that? And I think most people would say, "Little to none." Yet, it's the most important thing that you do on a regular basis. What thoughts you pay attention to, your emotional association with it, right? What I mean by that is, so if I was to say to some of you, um, "going to school." Well, for some, going to school has a pleasant emotional connection to it, so they have good memories. I think about this. Other people, you mention just going to school, and dread comes over them. For them, their emotional story attached to that experience was terrifying, or was awful, or filled with a lot of trauma.

So, we have associations with our thoughts. And so, for many of you that struggle with your thoughts, it's not the thought, it's not the, the data of the thought, it's the emotion that gets triggered in you, which then creates an association. So, from there, it either causes fight, flight, freeze, you know, all sorts of pathways. You either condemn yourself or be encouraged, right? So, when you work through your emotion, you learn to discover the empowering interpretation that helps you.

And I am a major, big, big believer in these three you see on the candles behind me: faith, hope, and love. And I'm glad the tallest candle there is love. Those are fake, by the way. That's just battery-powered lights. Not real, not real candles on fire. They're fake fire. They're real fire in here, in my heart.

So, I want to be able to help you to navigate, "What am I feeling?" But also, "What interpretations have surrounded my emotions that keep me stuck?" That's where the, the trick is. The trick is in the interpretation, the meaning. And the majority of us that get stuck in our emotional world is, we don't know how to interpret how we're feeling and what we're working through, so that it can lead us into healing, through things, really finding some deep, meaningful processing.

I talked about, are you in another video, "Are you ruminating, are you venting, or are you really processing?" I even did a video on "Emotions when you feel dead inside, how do you deal with that?" right? So, I'm going to, there's going to be some crossover in this.

Okay, so first question I'm asking you is, what were you taught regarding emotions growing up? Home life, church life, etc. So, today, what is your current relationship to your emotions? And I'm going to give you kind of two options, and I'm, and there's a spectrum in between.

One extreme is, you stuff them. You stuff them. You push them away. You avoid them. You don't deal with them for various reasons. You're afraid of them. You don't know how. Maybe you just stay busy, never deal with it, right? It's a chronic problem that people, they don't deal with their emotions. So then they don't know how to be still. So they have to keep themselves busy till they die because they don't know how to just deal with how they feel.

Then there's another side. The other side of the spectrum, which is, you get stuck in them. You can tend to sulk in them, ruminate in them, spin in them, obsess in them, go around the mountain a bunch of times, over and over and over and over again. Get stuck where there seems to be no fruitfulness, right? So, where do you see yourself on the spectrum? Do you find yourself maybe even a little bit of both, right? Where you find yourself shoving, shoving, then they come out and and they explode, right? And then you get stuck and you kind of fall maybe into some pity or victim thinking, or "What was me? Nothing is ever going to get better." What do you tend to lean towards when it comes to the difficult emotions in your life, the challenging ones?

I'll get to that in just a second. Okay, so question number one is, well, how are you taught growing up? And currently, where do you lean? Do you lean more towards the stuffing or the sulking? You know, which, which kind of pathway? And where on the spectrum would you find yourself in that? Okay.

So, let's go further. Furthermore, what we want to talk about is, what emotions do you find difficult to feel? I'll try to give some personal examples that I discovered. The most common emotions that are difficult for people to feel is, uh, sadness. Sadness regarding something in their own life, which then, if you're, if you have trouble processing sadness in your own life, it can also be challenging how to effectively process sadness when you're talking to someone else who's going through something and they're experiencing sadness. And if you've not had enough experience with it, you can be uncomfortable. And so then we do uncomfortable things, like we just try to fix people. We just give them quick advice. We just tell them, "Well, you know," we give them a good Christian cliché, "While I'm praying for you. Well, Jesus loves you. Just give it to God. Lay it at the cross." All this stuff that's really interpreting us saying, "We don't know what to say."

Embarrassment is another difficult emotion. Hopelessness, despair, emptiness. This is a, going to have to do some some talks on this subject. There's a lot of emptiness people are feeling. Some of it is because of brokenness in their life. Some of it is they seeing what's going on in the world. There's certain aches. The Bible even talks about that ache of groaning of a waiting for the manifestation of what God is going to do. You know, Romans, Romans 8 talks about that all nature and all creation aches with a groaning, right? That ache in your heart. How do you deal with that? How do you process that? How do you feel that? Do you just avoid it and go, "Well, you know, just do the next thing. Just do the next thing. Go to work. Go to work. Go to work. Stay busy, busy, busy." Right? Because "an idle mind is the devil's playground." It's like, that's actually not a scripture, but anyway.

Anger. Anger's a very common one. You don't want to let people see your anger, so you stuff it down. But then that, it's like a pressure valve that's ready to pop at any moment. Then the anger bursts out, and you feel terrible for expressing the anger. You were not given room on how to work through things that make you angry.

Sadness and anger and embarrassment were big ones, and are ones I'm still learning in my journey. I didn't know how to be sad. I started with that. I don't know how to be sad. So what would happen is, I would just get stuck, stuck, and I would, I'd find myself just in pity and just a self-hating internal anger, a self-blame. And that, that combustion, if it doesn't get processed properly, often leads to depression for many, many people. Depression is actually coming out of self-hate and unprocessed pain in their life that gets, you know, stuck inside of them. And so then it blocks emotional flow in their life.

Because you have an emotional flow, and the way that I try to describe emotions is like the waves of the sea. They, they kind of happen. They go back, and they go, they go forth. Sit down next time you're at the ocean, if you happen to live near one or go to one or go on vacation, and just notice the, the consistency of the waves, back forth, back forth. And that's kind of the emotional world of our life. Those emotions flow through. They, but the, the wave comes up, but it doesn't stay there. It moves back.

Then you have certain storms, and those represent the harder battles in life. And I've been living in time, we've had a number of like thunderstorms coming through, you know, our neighborhood and through our area where we live. And boy, just like, wow, you know, that's all just when you thought you've heard loud, um, thunder, it's like, boom, like explosions are going off, right? So the storms come in. They become the more intense seasons. Now, storms never stay forever. Do you notice that in real life? Storms never stay forever. Now, they create a lot of hit, and they create a lot of like damage, right? And just like that, you can go through emotional seasons that take a real hit on your heart, trials, pain, struggle that make it really, really difficult. But we're learning to settle ourselves and get back into what it means to live healed, live, live more grounded.

I talked about in my "What is Love" video, part one, about the goal, the biblical goal of experiencing love is that it roots us and then it grounds us. And so God wants to anchor you in the midst of your emotional world. But it takes practice. It takes practice in allowing God to mature us. So, I didn't know how to be sad. I had to learn how to be sad, to feel it, work through it, and discover. And I found it took time, it took patience, it took a different map, a different mindset.

Some other difficult emotions that I find Christians in general, I'm talking to, to believers in Christ. Guilt. When you're not loved properly in a healthy way, guilt becomes a driving force in your life. For example, many people that struggle with what's called scrupulosity or religious OCD, their life has not been rooted and established in love and in grace and in nurture. So they grab onto certain pressures driven out of guilt. Guilt becomes their compass.

If you notice in the life of Christ, he was moved with compassion. Never moved by guilt. In fact, he disrupted people's guilt patterns. A lot of people guilted them, guilted him left and right. "Jesus, you should have been here a few days ago." "Jesus, your mother's here." There, he responded to guilt in ways that really did not satisfy people's guilt trips. People want to send you on guilt trips. You don't have to take them. But it takes time to learn how much we've been driven by guilt.

What about anxiety? What's your approach to anxiety? Many people will email me or or or communicate to me, "Mark, I need help. I need session work. Why? What's going on? I'm having panic attacks. I'm having anxiety." And, um, they just want to get rid of it as quick as possible. Well, anxiety is a very disturbing emotion, for sure. Very, very much so. It's not something you want to live with for a long time. I get it. I've been through it. If you've been at a 10, I know what a 10 is like. If you've been at a 12, I know what a 12 is like. I know what that's like for long periods of time. And one of the things I learned is, I didn't know how to compassionately deal with anxiety.

So, what are some of the emotions you find difficult to feel? Like when they rise up, they become difficult. Um, is it difficult if you find some form of craving, some kind of lust that rises up, and you recognize, "Oh, uh, your moral conscience says, 'Okay, that's not a thought I would want to have.'" But you struggle with it. Have we been taught how to deal with that emotion, or just like, "Shut it down. Shut it out. Shut it out." And in some ways, just hiding it, suppressing it, made it worse, instead of bringing it into the light of love and letting God heal the deeper issue?

Because all these emotions I just shared, these emotional thoughts, these things that have emotions, they have underlying things that need attention. Usually, because for for years, we've been in Christianity trying to get rid of lust by just clipping the branches. We're just chasing symptoms. We really don't know what drives the lust. It's a massive unmet need for love. And a person that doesn't actually know how to receive true love. Any addiction is coming out of emptiness and pain. It's a desperate need for love.

So, if you have some form of lustful craving, where you, you're constantly craving for money, or sex, or inordinate affection of any kind, there is a deeper, deeper root issue, need of deep emptiness and brokenness that you're probably not aware of. And there's an inability to receive true love. So, when true love arrives to you, you don't know how to receive it. And then you become programmed to look for the rush to make you feel better.

That's why Christians were notorious at, um, to be, to be quite honest, we would leave church and go to the buffets and gorge ourselves. And it was like, "Well, we didn't do these kinds of bad things." But then we, we just pulverized our bodies with foods that were terrible for us, you know? And we weren't dealing with the issue of the need for love in our hearts. We're fighting the devil with a fork. And you can't fight the devil with a fork. You can't fight your brokenness with food. You get a temporary feeling of satiation. You get a temporary feeling of that, like nurture, comfort. But you're not getting your heart healed.

So, see, you see, I'm already on these tangents. This is why I encourage Christians, we can't be afraid of emotions. And even though initially an emotion may say something that that seems like it leads to something wrong, we need to be people that know how to process the emotional life with people in the power of confident love, grace, mercy. "God is here, Mark. This is what I'm feeling. It's okay. God is here. Let's work through it." Instead of, "Stop thinking that way. Don't ever say that again." And what we do is we drive people into shame. We drive them into hiding. And in the dark, sin grows.

I'm going to pause right there. In the dark, sin grows, right? And take a sip of some tea while you think about that for a second. The problem is, people don't want to come into the light. Why? Because the light is, is the way it's been presented is like a spotlight. If any of you have ever worked in theater, and theater programs, which I have, you get these spotlights on people. And the person, and if you've ever stood on a stage where a spotlight is on you, it is blinding. It is blinding.

And if you've ever worked in a church or theater or some type of stage production where I have stage lights, it's very hard to actually see your audience. A lot of people don't really realize this. It's very, it's, it's challenging. You have to sometimes go like this and shade your eyes to be able to even see the audience. You kind of look weird standing up on stage. Like, "Why?" Because the light is blinding. And that's what we do. We just kind of blind people with with light and go, "Well, this is the truth." And we haven't learned how to, how to lovingly. If, if love's not there, we have no business going into the deeper diagnostics. Love is not, love is not like salt and pepper you add to something. Love is the main ingredient. And if it's not there, that's what we got to work on.

And in your emotional world, that's why I keep redirecting people, it's got to be back to what it means to be loved in the midst of your troubling emotions. Emotions you can't seem to get a hold of. And now, emotions are meant to be worked through, not avoided or whisked away.

I also want to say this too. Emotions, what people struggle with who've not been emotionally trained in heart connection, is they feel an emotion and they assume, "This comes from me, and this is who I am." Emotions are not who you are. They're things you're going through. It doesn't mean that's who you are. Now, this is where many people get tripped up. Because they feel an emotion, they say, "This came from me. This is who I am." And that is terrifying. And it's like, "No, it's not. It's not you. And it's not who you are. And it's floating through you."

What you need to do is you need to see yourself as separate. "This is who I am, and who I'm becoming. This is something I'm just feeling and working through, versus a permanent thing, versus a, 'This is who I am.'" Um, and, and this is not going to be forever.

Okay, so now let me get to the practical. Let's get to the practical of this. Because where I've taken you so far in these 20, 25 minutes is just kind of giving some setup. Okay, let's go a little bit deeper. Working through your emotions effectively. This is where you, I want to, I hope you wrote the questions down. I want to take you a little bit deeper.

Now, the way that we work through our emotions effectively. Number one, and we cannot leave this. We cannot move on from this. We cannot skip past this. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Do not think that this is something you quickly learn and move on from. You have to learn, when it comes to emotions, how to be a compassionate witness in how you see yourself.

So, the first thing you need is the lens. You've got to put on the lens. So, use glasses. Actually, this need, my glasses need to be cleaned a little bit. Many of you, your emotional lens and how you see things is tinted. There's a tint to the lens. Now, I've got a pair of glasses here that I'm wearing now, and they've got these blue, I don't know what you call them, blue-blocking, super sonic, you know, whatever, whatever is happening on your computer screen, it's it's bad for sleep at night. And so because your eyes are taking in, there's certain things coming off your screen. So the lenses I have help to block that, so that when I close out the night after looking at screens all day and so forth, that they don't have that kind of negative effect. They filter it, right?

So, your lens that you put on, if it does not have compassion in it, you're not going to see what you need to see. So people go, "Yeah, well, I'm experiencing love. I'm being more loving to myself, but I'm still teed off and I can't stand where I'm at." As you're still wearing the other glasses. When we wear the glasses of compassion, it changes everything.

The best example is Jesus. I use it over and over again, and it's just, it's worth, it's worth learning for the rest of our lives. Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. And the, the people of law had on the lenses of judgment, condemnation, and and and law and punishment. And Jesus turned the tables on them by inserting compassionate grace. Didn't compromise sin, because his words were, "Go and sin no more." People who have not been taught the power of love think becoming more loving means compromising. Right? We're compromising sin. We're rewriting sin. It's certainly happening in our world today in rapid pace. But that's not what Jesus was bringing. He was bringing the atmosphere by which sin can actually be worked through.

So, without it, I sometimes say, "What's the point?" You're going to do like performance fixing. "Well, I better make sure I do my three this and four of that and make sure I do better. I'm just going to go do better." We become "do better" Christians. And Paul goes, "It's worthless." Why am I, why am I yelling? Yelling, yelling. I got to be careful because people write to me and say, "Mark, I, I go to sleep listening to your videos or your podcast." And so I don't want to, like, all of a sudden yell. And you've been drifting to sleep, and now I'm speaking to you in your sleepy time, and then, dude, I jolt and wake you up, right?

So, compassionate witness. What does that mean? The picture is beautiful because it's a witness is somebody who is seeing what's going on, but is compassionate about it. So, the way I, the way I started practicing this was actually, I discovered it in my work with people one-on-one. Then I started reading research and things, and people who are in the work of helping people, like, "Wow, they're applying this too." That's cool. So, sometimes it's kind of cool when you kind of feel prompting to try something.

Well, here's what I tell people. When I was teaching people how to love themselves the way that God loves them, I would, I would ask them, "Who's the person, the human on this planet they love the most?" Like, I just mean like somebody you just adore. And usually it was a spouse. A lot of times, if they had kids, their their child. Like, you just, you want to get, you want to get to the heart quickly, get to their how they feel about their kids and how they process the life of their kids. Usually, or maybe a really good friend. If they're not married, they're single and they have children, they're a really good friend, or someone who's they just care about a lot.

And I said, "Okay, I want you to get a vivid picture of them in your mind." And then what I'll do is I'll lay out the problem that we're talking about. I say, "Let's take everything you're struggling with and let's just put it in a bucket and pour it into this person that you love." Right? And they come to you, and they share this, and you are connected, fully connected to the love that you have for them. What would you say to that person? And what they never say is judgmental stuff, condemning stuff, "Hurry it up" stuff, "What's the matter with you" stuff. It's, "I understand. I'm sorry. I, um, I want to be here for you." They, they. And I said, "Okay, so what would it look like to give that to yourself?" And they go, "You know, it's like this." Like, almost like on the record. It goes, "You know, remember when the record used to like, you, you records?" If you're younger than me, you may not know what a record is. But when I was a kid, I listened to records. And if you bump the record player, it'd make this noise, right? And then people made art out of it in hip-hop music where they then they can they can flip the wax a bit, right? And all of a sudden they would do that. They would feel like, "No, I can't. I can't do that for me." Ah, okay.

That's where we're going to start developing. We often with an emotion, we are quick to judge it. And when you judge under condemnation, and you judge under judgmentalism, and you judge under shame, your assessment will be inaccurate. It will lack empowerment. So you go, "Man, I feel so sad today. So empty. It's because I have not been reading my Bible enough." Okay, there's the, the non-compassionate, you know, the lacking compassion. So you jump to judgment.

So, we've got to delay the judgment. Delay the judgment. I think it's interesting that Paul in Romans says, "Mercy triumphs over judgment." That's cool. So, I want to work with a higher precept. It's easy to judge. It's easy to judge someone. They're going through a financial time because of them. And just hit them with the hammer of judgment. You know, they're going through this because it's harder work to do grace and mercy, isn't it? Because you got to think about your own life. You got to think about how you process your own thoughts, right? Performance is a killer. But it's easy to just jump to that.

So, with your thoughts, you're feeling something, anger, anxiety, obsessiveness, guilt. It's your first response needs to be compassion. And for OCD people, you're going, "In order to even start this, you have to delay whatever your compulsion is." Your compulsion is what you do to try to relieve your discomfort or neutralize the obsession. And your compulsion may be something you do to try to edit, correct, fix back, or something that you do hula hoops in your head, or researching, or the arguments, or all that. Nope. The first step is compassion. I must shine the light of gracious compassion. You learn to connect to love and nurture in the midst of this thought being there.

In my book, "The Heart Healing Journey," I have three chapters that, in many ways, have saved my sanity in certain areas of my life. And I pray they do as well for you. Right, chalk in the middle of it are three chapters that I utilize to encourage people. I've been recommending this to a lot of people in their life and in their journey. Because if you go, "I need to learn how to engage compassionate grace," this is where I would recommend you go. In fact, let me get, let me get my hands here. It's in, sometimes people think I just know off the top of my head what chapters or what I, chapters 13, chapters 14, chapters 15. Of course, you can keep on going. And but those are very, very important. When it comes to, got one here, got one there, got some down over there. They're they're very crucial chapters in how to process your emotional life in a way that's that's effective. It's not first, "Fix it." It's not first, "Where did this come from?" It's not first, "Is this because of my? Is this, is this in my feeling? Is this generational? In, am I, am I being attacked by the enemy?" Is we, we go to diagnosis first. I, I say the word diagnosis a lot. We could use a lot of terms. We could say discernment. We go to discernment. I think it's this. And it's like, um, without love, your your tracker is going to get messed up.

So, what does love say? In in a moment, "It's okay that you're not okay because you're having this thought and emotion." Does not make love disappear. Ah, this is what we've subliminally trained people. And is that when you struggle, "Love's not here." I, I get a lot of people who struggle with, I mention OCD a lot because a lot of people find a lot of grace and and help in my resources in that. So, um, forgive me if that's nowhere near your your orbit of battle. But I think there's a lot we could learn from the OCD battle, whether you whether you have it or whether whether you don't. We all, I feel like we all have, you know, those kind of tendencies.

And so, what they will say is, they'll say, "Well, you know, I was doing good for a while. I was doing good for a while. And then now I'm struggling. Or I was doing good in this area. Now OCD's over here in this area." And what they're expressing to me, because I, I've learned this enough in interpretation, what they're expressing to me is, "I feel good and loved when I'm doing good." And that's how I feel loved. And I'm telling you, you will have to learn what it means to be loved when you're not doing good. Jesus even said, "It's easy to love people who do good to you." He says, "I look, I tell you, love those who you know who hate you." And that, and that he kicks it up a notch. Well, and how you see yourself. It's easy to love, to be loving towards yourself when everything's going great. But what about when there's struggles going on? That's when grace. "When sin abounds, grace even more about." That's where it's time to really understand what the loving grace of God really means, so that you can practice what I call Total Unconditional Loving Acceptance. T-U-L-A. Tula. You need some Tula in your life. Total unconditional loving acceptance. "I 100% totally and unconditionally lovingly accept myself right where I'm at right now." What I need is loving compassion.

Okay, so I spent a lot of time on that because it's no point moving forward without that. But in the atmosphere of that kindness and love, number two. Number one is compassionate witness. Number two, it's a very simple thing. What is it that you are actually feeling? And so, it's, it's, I'm not telling you to do this with every little wind and wave of thought that floats through. But when you see a pattern going on, you feel yourself, "Man, I've been anxious for a while." Okay, what's the anxiety about? What's it pointing to? What's the theme? "I'm just angry." Okay, what are you angry about? What's the anger saying? What's the anger saying about you? What's it saying about the world? What beliefs are coming out? Because when you, when you say it like, "Name the emotion. What's it saying? What's this emotion saying?" There's usually some themes. And then your beliefs start coming to the surface. The beliefs that you attach. Now, "God doesn't really help me. He's not interested in me. Or I just can't get it together." Ah, okay. So these are your interpretations.

Uh, where, where, where I'm helpful for people like in one-on-one is is firing their interpreter. Because the majority of people that are going, "I need help," they recognize their need for help. They recognize the problem is not the problem. The problem is how they interpret things. And the worse things are, it's the harsher the interpreter is. If you have a harsh interpreter that beats you up the whole way through, that's going to be probably one of the main reasons why the struggle is as bad as this. "Mark, I'm losing my mind. I have these thoughts. I have these battles. I'm losing it." Interpretation. That's how you interpret it. "How dare you even have that emotion? And it means this." And usually they put the pedal to the metal, and it's like all the way down to how terrible of a, just a disgusting, sinful person that you are. So they get lost.

Loving kindness and graciousness of God in his mercy and his compassion. You allow yourself to in love. Because what will happen is, at first, you feel like your emotions might be just whipping you every time, and you feel like you're just all over the place. It's okay. Because the healing process, God is developing a healing process in you where you're going to be a tree, a tree of righteousness, and strong trees know how to handle storms.

Well, we first moved down here in our backyard. We got a bunch of trees. And there was, in a couple storms, what was it like? Two trees that fell. And kind of made me a little like, "Whoa, wow." Thank God that tree didn't fall in my house. I would have been serious. A big tree that fell. But then I look. So then I looked around in certain different storms. I'd look at a tree, and it was like belly dancing, you know? And you're like, "Whoa, that thing's, I think, well, I, I think that that thing's going to come down." And it wasn't. It was, it was going through it. It was just flexing back and forth. But there ain't no way it was coming down, at least with this level of storm.

I remember there was trees that I, we had taken down. And I was like, "Wow, that tree looks really weak. It looks like it can't handle." But then we actually took the tree down and saw how thick and how deep the root system went. I was like, "Oh, wow. I was deceived." Because it was just, it was just swaying in a way that made me think, "Oh no, it's, it's roots are strong." So sometimes we think, "I'm losing my mind." And God's going, "Nah, your roots are getting deeper. You're getting stronger." But I'm all over the place. You know, interpretation, interpretation. Many people's, if you're saying, "I'm losing my mind," somewhere interpretation's really gone off track. "I am a hot mess, and I'm at a dead end, and I'm at my wit's end." We say things like that, right? What's that? It's just a cry. If we're hitting a limit, we, we need nurture, we need love. But love gives us interpretation. Faith, hope, and love. This is what remains.

So, if everything falls apart, what we need that will stay is faith, hope, and love. The greatest being love. So, if you have faith, but love isn't surrounding it, big deal, big deal. But no big deal if your hope is not rooted in the love of God, it'll go up and down, sway back and forth. You'll put your hope in little shallow circumstances, and things will disappoint you. And, and, and all these things. Hope is an anchor to the soul. And God wants our anchor to be built on the love that He has for us. He'll be faithful. That's why you've got to tune into the compassionate witness so that you learn to be that tree of righteousness. The storm comes, and maybe a branch falls off. Are you like, "You know what? That branch was hindering me anyways." Remember when Jesus said, you know, things get clipped? That's part of the journey. Things get clipped. They're unnecessary for the further growth of what's happening in your life, in your journey, right?

So, so, so the second thing is, identify what exactly is what you're feeling. Number three, don't react in panic. Don't panic. Don't react quickly and harshly. We have to slow down our reaction. Now, because people say, "I'm going through depression," and they panic for having depression, and then they're condemning themselves, beating themselves up. "Be still, know that He is God." Learn to be still. Learn to practice being still.

Folks, can't just say it this way, and I include myself in this. We're, we're generations of people that become very neurotic. And I say that with all kindness, love, and grace. It's, we have neurotic meaning we're highly sensitive to thoughts that come our way. We're highly sensitive to the negative interpretation of those thoughts. And we're very easily drawn towards the negative perspective of things. We overreact. We over-respond. We're hypersensitive. We're hyper-reactive to things. And God is the call over our generations in this day is learning to nurture us and stabilize us in the midst. We don't have to react. You might be feeling something. You don't overreact to it. Many times, you do this. You can just let the emotion pass on through.

And if you have OCD issues, you have to learn to become a professional at letting thoughts pass on through without your negative interpretation, your disempowering interpretation, over, or your, your overreaction to those thoughts. So you notice it. You notice the thought, "I'm angry." You notice it. And you become an observer. You just notice it. It's not hypervigilance. It's not chasing it down. It's not spinning for three hours in the closet. You just notice, "Hey, I've been more angry lately. I noticed that." That's something to be aware of. Now, that's maturity. Not immaturity. Is, "Oh my God, I gotta do this with this anger. I don't know what am I gonna do?" Right? We go into this hyperfix mode. "I gotta do me. I gotta repent. I gotta repent now. I gotta take it now. It's the day of salvation." Doesn't the Bible say that? I gotta do it. Don't panic. We gotta learn to not panic over the panic you're having. Because maybe it's panic you're feeling. And maybe you need to pause. Like, "Okay, I'm going through some stuff. I'm, I'm probably not aware of it." A lot of panic and anxieties, you're going through stuff you're not aware of, you're not connected to. And there's discovery. So the noticing. You want to be more of a noticer versus an obsessor. Delay that judgment. Compassionate witness. You notice it.

Okay, so I'm going to take a step further. Number four. You notice the emotion, but you don't feed it or add fuel to it. Don't make it worse than it is. So, you're depressed. You're feeling depressed. It doesn't mean you're going to be depressed for the rest of your life. And it's because of your sin. You got here. And it's because of all the. And you just start stacking the deck. And you start just dominoing it. Catastrophizing it, right? And usually, how we add to it. You're going through something. Don't make it worse than it is. Because if you make it worse than it is, you will not see what you're going through for what you need to see.

I'm going to recommend, if this helps you in any way, listen to this a bunch of times. Go through it. Take notes. Practice it. How many times do you have a thought that you struggle with, and then you add to it with a distorted meaning? Maybe it's an intrusive thought. Maybe it's, uh, one of those emotions. And you quickly diagnose it, whisk it away. And really, it's like, "I need a new interpretation." Maybe you're overreacting to the meaning. "Oh, this means I'm this." No, it may not mean that at all. I'm just going to be more compassionate about this. And over time, over and over again, uh, through somebody who might be a good sounding board, I could process and see, "You know what? Is this something I might need to deal with further?"

So, your disempowering responses will add what? Just add fuel to the flame of the disempowerment. You judge it. You spiral over it. You overreact. You shame it. You ruminate. You argue. You spin. So, so number four is, you notice the emotion. You don't feed or add fuel to it.

Number five is, you patiently allow yourself to discover what you're really dealing with. The phrase is, "The problem is not the problem." So many people with anxiety realize, "Wow, I have anxiety over a lot of issues. I have a general anxiousness in life." And they start to learn, "Wow, I don't know what it means to feel safe in my own skin." I have a problem. Not with, it's not just an anxiety problem. It's a love problem. I don't know how to connect to the safety if I'm okay in my own skin. So, therefore, anxiety takes over.

You start to see anger is just a symptom. The problem's not the problem. It's not anger management. You need deeper heart issues. Is there things you haven't grieved? Is there perfectionism in your life? Are you under constant pressure? Do you put weight on you? Do you have a self-battle where it's you against you all day long, and you're under this combustion of perfectionism and all this, this, this heavy, heavy yoke that you're under? Of course, you're going to be angry. Is, is the, is there a self-hate going on that's fueling this depression that you're feeling? Do you find addictions are rising to the surface where you just feel like your cravings, you have an inordinate affection towards certain things, or you have a certain addiction patterns that are manifesting in a lot of areas? That is a massive lack of love in your life. You're crying for love to heal emptiness or pain. And there's no unworthiness that's there. It doesn't allow you to receive love when it, and it does arrive, right? That's that deeper. Those are just some examples.

Married couples, in in most of your arguments, your argument is not about the real problem. The argument is a symptom of things that you need to discover about yourself, about your history together, and about unhealed past wounds that you're bringing to the surface. I say this all the time. Do you notice in marriage? Those of you are married, do you notice there's many things your spouse does that are annoying that don't bother you? But that those one, two, three areas get on your last nerve. And why is that? Often, there are things in your life, in your history, that these things bring out. And God goes, "I want the two of you to learn to heal." The problem is not the problem. The problem may be, do you spend having quality time together? Are there unresolved things in the past that haven't been forgiven? Are there things, are, are you both carrying a lot of stress and moving into roommate.

syndrome, and you're not, you're not being encouraging to one another. Have you left a first love kind of living where you're, you just have that relationship drift, right? So the point here is, patiently allow yourself to discover what is it you're really dealing with. The problem is not the problem. And so as you start to learn, you gotta feel it effectively. Many times when we're dealing with negative emotions, we're led to tears. And when the tears come, you've got to let them. Tears is one of God's given ways for us to process through painful emotions. And many people say, "Well, I haven't cried. I can't remember the last time I cried." That's a sign. At the time, some people say, "I'm crying too much. I'm crying all the time." Don't judge it. Let yourself do it. Express the emotion, but out of compassion towards yourself.

Right now, I want to say a word to perfectionists out there, because I relate to this, and it's helped me a lot. There are a couple notes for perfectionism and feeling your emotions effectively. For perfectionists, many times they're good at expressing and saying in words what they're feeling. "This is what I'm feeling." But they, they describe them, they don't actually feel them. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it, because many times perfectionist kind of people, they can describe or articulate an emotion, but they're emotionally detached from actually feeling it, actually feeling the pain of what they need to feel. Perfectionists, you have to give yourself permission to express emotions without it being perfect. That's that vulnerability. It's got so much shame. It doesn't allow you. You have to learn to have practice moments where you're just working out your emotional world, and you don't do it exactly right, and it's okay, because you're learning in the doing.

Now, when we're letting ourselves feel what we're feeling, maybe you need to just grieve that loss, you grieve that pain, or just feel the pain of it. And we, we come to a place where we go, "God, here it is." And we give it to Him, and He starts to show us deeper layers. Because we go, "God, I feel like, I feel like everyone leaves me hanging." And He shows you, "This has been following you your whole life. As a kid, you didn't feel like, like people were there for you." And it's like, "Okay, God, I want to give that to You and cry through that. I want to work through that." This is what I find. When I work through the difficult emotions, I can, I can now have some healthy reality checks with myself. Like, you're going through a hard time in a hard season. Maybe you lost your job, and you're just grieving it because you love that job, and you worked at it for 30 years. You let yourself feel the pain of it. When you, when you allow yourself to work through it, and, and, and not that it's going to take just one session in one moment and you're going to be fine. It takes a series of it. But then you have these reality checks. Like, "Okay, all right. I lost my job. It's okay. This is where I am now. Now what?" So now you are fully, you're more fully connected to reality. And I think, to be quite honest, we're just, we are voiding, we avoid reality. So it messes with our view. You need to go, "Okay, I'm going through depression. Okay, that's where I'm at right now. It's not permanent. Something I'm going through doesn't mean it has to be for us in my life. But whatever, that's what I'm going through." Or you see, "I got some OCD issues. Okay. Uh, I'm having trouble with my, my child. I'm having trouble with my marriage." Okay. Now you can accept reality, so you can face it. We're always like denying reality, avoiding reality. And we're so hard on ourselves, we can't face what we need to face because judgment is in the way. And it's just, it's clouding everything. So we can't see the simplicity. And what it leads you to.

And if you're a notetaker, number five: I said, patiently allow yourself to discover what you're dealing with. Number six: Feel it effectively. Number seven: You come to reality checks, but in an empowering way. That's where I'm at right now. Okay. And if you need to rewind, go back. You can follow that. Okay. These are just kind of talking points to walk you through this.

Which leads me to number eight. Now, I close with this. I get a reality check. This is where I'm at. And in love, it leads me to more of a, "Okay, now what? What's the step right in front of me? It's not where, how do I fix this whole thing? What's my life going to be like?" Ten, I got to have a 20-year plan. Nope. Compassionate love and grace. God's just saying, "Just take the next step." Maybe the next step is, "Okay, I've got to, I have, you know, I'm going to spend time with my kids." Or I'm, "You know what? I've got this one thing I need to do. I keep avoiding it. I just need to do it now." I gotta go, you know, I gotta do that doctor's visit. I gotta take that next step. I'm gonna go get some counseling. I'm gonna ask for help. I'm gonna read that book I keep putting off. I'm gonna take that next step. Now, the next step takes into consideration, through compassion, where you're at. So if you're in the hospital and you broke your feet, your femur, it's that big bone right here, right? You know, it would be ridiculous for you to be mad the next day that you can't, um, or or an expectation you should go out for a run. It's okay if you're feeling disappointed about that, because the reality of breaking your femur sets in. It's going to take a while for that to heal, right? Now, if you broke your finger, I wouldn't come in and go, "Hey man, come on, let's go for a run." No. So this is why number one is, is so important. And it always remains through each part of our emotions. Your expectations must be rooted in love. And love, love understands where you're at, but empowers you for one step. Love takes into consideration where you're at, but empowers you for that one step. Now, that frustrates a lot of people. It's like, "No!" And I've had to practice this over and over and over again in my life, whether it's mental, emotional battles, unexpected trials, um, going through seasons of physical illness, pain, family stuff. Compassion, compassion, compassion, compassion. Okay, this is where I'm at. God, You're with me. Now what? You start to get more clear on what you need. And they become very simple things. You know what? I just need to, right now, I need to take a nap. I need to, you know, I just need to get through this work day. Some people say to me, "I'm just, all I'm doing is just trying to get through the day." That's, that's quite all right. That's quite all right.

So where do you find is highlighting some things in your life and in your journey? It's more long-form discussion, but it's a resource I want to provide for you to encourage you. I want to encourage you on how to actually work through your emotions. So I pray this is a blessing to your life and your journey. So, and just, I'm going to take a minute and look over some of the comments in the, in the live here. I'm not sure my parents were well-equipped in order to equip me well in turn. Yeah, that's across the board. The, the generations before. I'm technically in what's called Generation X. Then there's Generation Y, which is called the Millennial Generation. Then there's my kids, which is the Generation Z. And there's before me, you have the Baby Boomers. The generations leading up to Generation X, they had a many, many series of severe, severe neglect. Severe neglect. So, um, emotional neglect, a lot of trauma. It went through the depression, went through wars, went through, you know, even famine stuff like that. So in that, it was like survival. And a lot of times, emotional neglect. I mean, a lot of emotional neglect. And that neglect left generations empty. And then there, they were just traumatized. I feel like a lot of times, looking at people in past generations, they're full of trauma. Parents that died suddenly, um, abandonment, loss, neglect, just on their own, you know, 15 years of age and trying to act like 25-year-olds, having to survive. So anyways, yeah. So it puts that into consideration.

Mark, when I feel depressed and try so hard to pick myself up, I feel like something is missing. The depression, self-pity, darkness, and it feels wrong to be happy or present. Why is that? Yeah, when you're, when you're not emotionally equipped, then feeling joyful, feeling happy, there's that guilt. Nope, it's too much, too much, too much. You know what? You, too much. Don't get, you're gonna get. We don't want to encourage you too much. You're gonna, your head's gonna get too big. You know, you're having too much fun. You're getting a little too out of control. So that shows how much guilt has had an effect on my life. I feel like I have to solve the emotion, so I get obsessed in it. Yep. It's one of the chronic things about OCD. Is OCD people have trouble actually, they actually don't work through any of their real emotions. They're getting lost in a, like virtual reality of something else they think. And they've been pulled into. They think they never actually get to what it is they're really feeling, like emotional pain, emptiness, heartache. It's like, "No, no, it's not that. It's this thought I've got to fix." And so, I, I think a lot of people can relate to that, though, in many areas of their life. Anger can also be tough to deal with. Yes. Embarrassment is still, for me, difficult. Yeah, it's that shame thing. Uh, this is so good. Struggling with OCD related to faith. Used to be OCD towards health, but since coming back to Jesus, that went away because I'm not scared to die anymore. So of course, it attacks my faith now. Yeah, it's, it's like whack-a-mole. You know, pops up, pops up, pops up. So it just means keep allowing yourself to get to the deeper issue of compassionate grace. Practicing compassionate grace over everything in your life. Plus, the more compassionate and grace you are towards yourself, it gets reflected in your relationships. It just does. It makes me a much more patient person, much more gracious person. Fear. Yeah. Hope you're all having a great time. Blessings to you. Hope you're enjoying Mark's content. Awesome. Prolonged anxiety causes depression because I get so exhausted. Just stop caring. Turn it off. Yeah. So if that, that prolonged anxiety, there's probably some new discovery in the anxiety. And that's where effective counseling can help because they'll just listen, ask some good questions, get you to, to discover what, what seems to be going on around my world of anxiety. But I gotta, gotta let compassion be there. I've dealt with OCD for 20 years. Have recently had two consecutive miscarriages. I'm sorry. The anxiety, OCD compulsions, and the emotions are out of control. Stress flares up OCD. Yeah. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And so, um, I, I, I, there's so many people going through miscarriage kind of stuff. It's very, very painful. Very, very painful. And it is, I've seen it many times where out of that painful, it's, it's traumatic in many ways. Can come out issues of anxiety, like, "Why am I depressed? I don't know. Why am I so OCD?" Well, hello. This is painful that you went through, you know? And often we don't know how to process it. Embarrassment is difficult. It challenges the idea that I need to be perfect or seem at least. Yeah. High five. I get you. Yep. I'll relate to that. Binge eating is a big problem. Yeah, that's, there's, there's an emotional need for love there, for sure. Nurture, comfort. That's, that's where a lot of the food issues are rooted in. Nurture your mouth. It's a place of nurture, right? As a baby, you got the bottle, suck your finger, thumb, you know, feeding that mouth. So whether it's cigarettes, food, drink, whatever it is, we're looking for nurture to, to fulfill us. What we lack it so much. Is there any biblical justification for having an atmosphere of shame-facedness? Shame, shame-facedness, shame-faced faces. I don't know what, I don't know what that word means. I'm a, I've been around peop, some people who seem to equate feeling shame with holiness. [Laughter] Run away, run away. Yeah, they love that shame, shame, shame. "Cause we're so holy." Shame, shame, shame. "Cause we don't have any sin." But you do. Shame, shame, shame. We're modern-day Pharisees. Shame, shame, shame. Jesus would be like, flipping the tables. [Laughter] Anxiety, paranoia, and depression is so draining. Tell me about it. Tell me about it. But I know that God will be there to guide me. Yeah. If you have anxiety battles, you got to be patient with yourself. You got to be patient more than you ever think you'll need to be. But it's the best way to approach it. What were the questions you have to have to go back? Go to the beginning. I set a foundation, which led into then some application. Great teaching. Share, share, share with everyone. I go to sleep listening to YouTube. See, as I'm saying, so I'm trying to work on the instant yelling so that I don't scare you all if you're, if you're resting. I should be more peaceful. Hello, welcome to this broadcast. I'm going to be talking to you about your emotions. Mark DeJesus here, doing a live broadcast. We don't have the same compassion for ourselves as others. Agreed. We've been trained to be nice, be kind, be patient, right? We've kind of been trained in like a performance and be good for others. Then when we're with ourselves, we're like, "Yeah, the thing it feels wrong to think well of myself." I get you. Let me pose it to you this way. Instead of framing it, "I'm thinking well of myself," let's put a new word here. I want to think kind towards myself. I want to think kindness towards myself. Try, just maybe switching the word, because maybe that can open up a new pathway. Yes, it's harder to give grace and mercy. That's why a lot of people default to automatic judgment instead of being compassionate. Why the person is suffering? That's why people are starving for love. So it's so true. I learned this in pastoring people in the church. Would judge other people, and they would come to me and say, "Hey, this person over here needs this. You should probably talk to them." Now, I knew that person, other person's story, what they've been through. And I took the compassionate journey with them. And my heart now carries knowing what they've been through. And now their goofy ways or mannerisms or stuff that this person over here is quick to judge, I understand. I go, "Man, if I had that history of my life too, I'd probably be in the same situation." Ah, compassion. Now we're starting to see each other through the lens of how God works with us and His patience. I know that when Jesus comes and gets us, it will be the happiest moment of our lives. But my brain likes to twist it and tell me how ashamed and scared I'll be because I didn't do enough here for Him. Yeah, that performance achievement, your basis of being loved is probably based on you doing enough and doing it right. And it's a never-ending hamster wheel. So that, of course, forms, that influences that. Is there a difference in feeling bad and telling yourself you just should get in the word more and assuming that I'm feeling that way because I'm not reading the Bible enough? Um, I don't think the problem is ever, "You don't read the Bible enough." It's, it's not about how much of it you're reading. It's like, how much of it is actually being ingested? Because I could read one verse and spend a year just reflecting on what that verse means and not read another verse in the Bible. And that throws a lot of people off. Because like, "No, you gotta." Now, revelation is hard stuff, and it takes time. It takes time. There are certain passages I'm just parked in. I'm like, "Yeah, I might read in other places and, but where that real deeper thing comes from." So I think here's what I recommend to you, is the one who said about reading the word enough. Why don't you just pause, delay that as an assessment, just for a little while? Maybe it's not that at all. Maybe it's not you need to read the word more. Maybe it's that you need to understand His love more, so you can take in the word in a better way. I can take in the word of God in such a more fruitful way in my life, whereas 20 years ago, I look back and go, "No wonder I struggled to read the word." It was like I just was, I was getting hit with bricks on my head all day long. I, I couldn't understand the heart of what God was saying. Hope this makes sense. You know, so it's, it's not so much like ever like, "Read the word enough." I, I would throw that kind of assessment out the window because that's just performance evaluation. It's not. I know people that read the word more than anyone else on the planet. They show zero fruit of the spirit. People that write to me that have all these like correct way of saying things, they show zero fruit of the spirit, zero love, zero graciousness, kindness. You know, it's like, that's a problem, right? So I look at that and I go, "I want more than anything else. I want to demonstrate the fruit of the spirit." That takes practice, acting and living it, letting it have its work in my life relationally. How am I approaching things? Letting God teach me. And so, um, I talk a lot about mental health and the Bible. You can check that stuff out for sure. Go look at those episodes. Does that make sense? I hope it makes sense. Serena, does that make sense what I'm saying? Is it okay if it doesn't? Okay, I'm trying to catch up. That's interesting. You said, "In your brain." To me, that means, you know, in your spirit. He loves you, but these thoughts are telling you fear. Yeah. Perfect love casts out fear. So that's, that's going to be really important. It's rare to find a channel that depicts the love of Christ, mental health, and stability, while also giving a balanced idea that we shouldn't sin either, right? Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. Yeah. Yep. I, I can understand you saying that, but it also makes me happy that you could feel, you can sense the groundedness of that. But shouldn't, but also shouldn't always make it a psycho OCD cycle that can cause us to stumble and blame ourselves even more. I feel worthless when I don't feel I measure up to absolute perfection. Right. So that would tell me that one statement right there, "I feel worthless when I don't feel I measure up to absolute absolute perfection." That one sentence contaminates everything. You have to recognize that that distortion contaminates everything. Um, Jesus talked about the leaven. The leavens. We have to work, watch out for the leaven of Herod, the leaven of the Pharisees. He's basically talking about the religious spirit and the political spirit. That's a whole talk in itself. But he talks about leaven. A little leaven will leaven the whole lump. So it's like, when you let in a little bit of that perfectionism, because perfectionism from a scriptural standpoint is law-based performance, performance and law-based living. That's infiltrated. And we'll say, "No, I'm following the law. I'm under grace." But look at your life. It's all performance. It's all how I measure up. It's just rebranded, repackaged, right? So a little bit of that perfectionism, it's not gonna, it's not gonna, it's not gonna allow just a little bit. It's gonna keep growing, keep growing, keep growing. So it'll make you never feel good enough or whatever. So I say, just drop the whole thing about being good enough and just be loved as you are right now. And God is gonna tie you into relationship and then lead you in in a journey that's a revelation to love ourselves the way God sees us. To love our neighbors like yourself means you have to live yourself. Love your. I'm assuming you mean love yourself even when you're not perfect, right? Right. Got gastro problems for five months. Anxiety, fear, panic attack. These videos help me. Thank you. Awesome, awesome. I pray that as you work through the anxiety, that healing will come to the gastro issues. Not that that's the only reason. There's a lot of reasons why we can have those kind of battles. I feel, I often feel like I can't move on because I doubt my salvation so much and feel like if I wasn't so afraid of the feelings from them, these thoughts, then I could do a lot more. So I'm gonna recommend my OCD stuff. So it's, um, yeah, it's that feeling of like, you know, you're on a soccer team, you're out on the field, but you're still checking to make sure your uniform says that you're on the team. "Am I really on the team?" Meanwhile, somebody's passing you the ball and you're like, "I don't know. I'm checking my, checking my uniform." Right? That's where, that's for the OCD, religious OCD. "Am I saved? Am I not saved?" Checking, checking, checking. And it's like, um, that's, that's, that's not how the freedom is found. Move forward. Move forward. Now, with that, with that feeling there, it's going to take time for that feeling to die out because you've given it so much attention. Emotions that like that have been around for a while, they've created, you know, roots, not roots or ruts that we, that we fall into. And it takes time for those to be renewed. And renewing is by decision. I decide today, I'm a believer, and I'm moving forward as though that is true. Because salvation is a decision. And feelings can, they're like the ocean. So that's why OCD people don't want to live in the ocean. So they try to create a controlled fishing tank in the middle of the ocean. And they get so frustrated because their fishing tank, it just keeps getting wrecked and messed up, right? Belly dancing. Oh, the trees, right? The, the trees. You know, we need a message board. Yeah, the branch that breaks could be things that don't give life but hinder you. Good idea. We should start a group. I'm not really on social. I'm not really on social media. I know groups that talk about my stuff, you know, feel free. Um, right now, I'm very focused on where I'm giving my resources and my help and avenues like this. Letting thoughts pass through. So hard, especially when it's deep sadness in yourself. Yeah. So if you feel that deep sadness, like look at it compassionately. There it is. It's like, you don't have to put a microscope to it. Just notice it. What's the sadness about? What are you sad about that you haven't let yourself be sad about? You know, what, what, what does sadness mean for you? Does it mean you're weak? A lot of people, they're sad, and they show the sadness means they're weak. Ah, doesn't mean you're weak. Means you're a human being. I wish I could take my anger, the energy, put it on a place and throw it in the ocean. Now, I don't hate on your anger. I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you a scripture, okay? "Be angry, but do not sin." You know, the Bible says. And we jump to them, but do not sin. I gotta make sure I don't sin. Wait, did you, did you be angry? No, I'm just not gonna sin. Make sure I don't sin. And you never actually felt the anger and worked through it. I learned from you that compassion is really important, no matter if it was my fault or not, right? That's one valuable life lesson. On good, I'm glad to hear that. A fault is not a good thing. It's not a good place for healing. Blaming, anyways. I lost my spot. I'm gonna have to go in a minute, but I'm gonna try to look through these. If I don't get your question or read through it, sometimes I just, I scroll through and I lose my place. Might have to go to like hyper speed here in a minute. Where did, where did I end up? Okay, there we go. I'm a mess emotionally with fear and confusion. I need compassion. More compassion. Yep. There's the anger person that's with it. That's it. Okay. I'm back fighting against myself. I tell I'm worthy, I deserve love, yet I end up feeling so arrogant. Ah, right. Because to you, love, it looks like it's arrogant. That is a lot of unworthiness was pushed on you. Proper thinking, slavery kind of thinking, orphan kind of thinking. Crying disgusts me. Okay, well, there you go. I hate to cry. I feel stupid, weak, and embarrassed. Sounds like you need to cry. It is also an unloving spirit. I have found ways to be mad at myself, but can give compassion to others. I've been tormented by this. I would recommend "God Loves Me and Love Myself" to, to a lot of the comments here that are going on. Me sitting here like, "I need to accept love." "I'll do it later at home when I'm in a better place and can do it properly." There's that perfectionism. Well done. High five. Good job. That's it. I know exactly what you feel like. Right. No, learn love when you're in the hot mess. Learn love when you're in that state that's troubling. That's just struggle. That's where His love is actually will be the most powerful. Taking the next step is so what I need to learn. I'm trying to connect to the fact that God has faith in me and a love I can accomplish. I have fear that I can't express all my emotions. Being on pills as they suppress, but reducing them makes me very ill. Yeah, understand. Medication does change. Um, they do have an effect on our emotions, for sure. Whether they're mental health medications or even just other pharmaceutical medications, they can. So take that into consideration. You might be sitting there going, "Oh, my mood is all over the place." Well, are you on a medication where that's a side effect? See, that's a compassionate witness because then it takes into consideration what you're going to. I hate crying too. Let's all cry together. There you go. I can't feel, kind of weird now though. Like I don't feel anything. Keep messing up. How do you let go when you did something as simple as a, a lady you had weirdness with, had a chance, and then all you can think is, "Find ways to make the moment happen again." That's the fixing. You're trying to fix it. You're trying to edit it. I did an OCD on the checking thing. That fixing kind of thing. That's an OCD kind of response. You interpreted it really harsh. And we have weird interact. We all have weird interactions. You go to somebody, say something stupid. I would do that. I replay the situation over and over again. Go back and try to fix it. Yep. Thank the Lord. I was enjoying songs that God led me to, and I kept feeling like emotions trying to pull me back into guilt and shame because you think you need to think God wants you to. I have OCD over relationships. I'm always scared to open up my feelings. I'm starting to develop feelings for a long-time friend. Don't seem to know how to handle it. Yeah, it sounds like maybe you just need a safe person to process with in a non-judgmental way. I realized my perfectionism was ramping up again. I'm trying to get back to love through your material. What do you recommend? I recommend "Heart Healing Journey." I'd also recommend "God Loves Me and Love Myself." For OCD intrusive thoughts, is it okay to just try to ignore them? Yeah, in a way of where you de-escalate the, the, the importance of it. That's part of, um, the word ignore. I don't know if is much use. That's, I'm not trying to like finagle with words, but it's more just, it's not that important. I don't have to. Nope. I don't have to focus on that. That shame song is a bop. iTunes hit. I think I'm really afraid to allow myself to feel the emotions because I'm scared I can't handle it and will spiral to depression again. Yeah, I get you. But don't let that stop you from feeling. Just take it. Just take one step. Don't take 100 steps. Just one step. One step at a time. Going through a very traumatic divorce. Spouse outed me all over social media. Yikes. Yeah, that's rough. All my friends and family. It's insane how people do things on social media. Have no sense of consequences. And bizarre. I get you. I do too. I'm fully expecting to see transformed you at the top of my most listened podcast of the year. I listen to it when sleeping. Excellent. I'm struggling with the addiction of checking every word, action, thought for every possible sin. How I feel like I lost the ability to know what is a sin. Is this normal? It's OCD. That's OCD. I would go to my OCD help page that, um, talks a lot about that. I know my issue is love, but struggling with how it can also, can I'm also struggling to connect to others. Makes me feel like a backslider or faithless. Um, yeah, just, just come back. Just, just enter into love. God, God is, is bigger than than you having to do everything perfect. My prefer, my parents are performance-driven Christians. I have to learn to accept that. Yep. That's part of what I'm saying there too, is you, you connect with reality in love. This is where I'm at. This is who I live with. This is what's going on. Okay, I see it for what it is. Not worse than what it is. Okay, now what? You know, I feel like men are suffering all over the world in silence. Yes, for sure. How do we invite men to deal with their issues in a godly, healthy way? Just great, great avenues where they're safe. Invitations. One step at a time. But you're, you're very right. I found that starving those obsessive fleshly desires is so helpful, but it takes purposeful work and wanting to heal. I've been struggling with pride in my OCD a lot, and I don't know how to get out of these ruts because I feel powerless. A lot of OCD stuff. Go, go, um, go through my OCD material. And when you went through it and said, "Yes, Mark, I went through it." Go through it again. And when you said, "Mark, I went through it a second time." I want you to go through it again. And when you say, "Mark, I already went through it again." I want you to go through it again. Because the material that I'm putting out is years and years of years of marination. They're not like, "Listen to it, pass through." You'll get a couple thoughts, that's it. Listen to it again, you'll get a couple other ones. Uh, you know, just, just helping you understand OCD, OCD, OCD. The ocean analogy is acura, is accurate. Accurate. Ask God to please send me some peace. And you came on live, so I thank you. Awesome. High five. Consider me a brother from another mother, but we got the same Father. Snap channel is so helpful. Good, good. I'm glad. Most of all, I want you to feel gracious compassion. I want you to, that's more than anything else. And the Bible says, "The truth sets us free." So the truth needs to be spoken in love. So my desire is to do my best to be compassionate and gracious. I also struggle with the cycle. I mess up in sin. Oh, that means I'm not saved. Because no one who belongs to God keeps on sinning. That's the distorted interpretation I'm talking about. And there's a lot of teachings. So you teach that if you're not saved, you never sin, never have sin. And that's just very, very distorted. So it's an easy equation, though. So if you have problems or you have sins going on, it means you're not really saved. It's a nice manipulative feedback loop. I'll tell you, it's a great way to manipulate people. You want to manipulate people in your church? Just develop that kind of mindset. Because it's like, "Oh, you're just not born again." And then I'll have to deal with you. Ah, it's so true. I don't have to deal with any of your problems because you just ain't born again. You guys go get born again. You're not really saved enough. And then we're like, "Okay, now I'm really saved. Now I'm really." Wait, stop. You know what? "Now I'm really saved." Nope. Salvation's a decision. You made the decision. Now move forward. And it's going to take time for the emotions to catch up. And it's going to take time for your distortions to heal. And you're going to relearn what love is. Oh, you deleted, you retracted your comments. Did you say something mean? All right, I'm gonna go down to the end and then work my way backwards. I'm struggling with the mindset achievements. I shouldn't share it to anyone because I feel that I'm being selfish or prideful. You need, your journey is learning to be okay with expressing imperfection, expressing stuff that's, you know, not perfect. Haven't revealed my struggles with anyone close yet. I wonder whether I will have to one day. Oh, it's not about "have to." It's about you were made to. We're made to share with one another. You've got to find some safe avenues to do that. And I've said this to people before, you may need to pay someone for a while. You're like, "I don't have anyone to share with." Well, go find someone. Pay them. That you know, a professional or whatever. That's fine. That's not a, that's not a tragedy. Many of you were locked up in your homes for the past year. You know, isolation has been very challenging, very difficult for many. It's got disappointed in me. I'm going to answer your question before I even get to the rest of it. No, it's God disappointed me that I'm the only believer in my family, and they continue to live by the flesh in sin, and they don't listen to me. So I need to step away from them. Well, you need to, I don't know what you mean by your family, but you need to let go of having to police them or holy spirit them. Let me, let, let it be. I don't know if you're talking about your husband, or you're talking about separating. Context. You do live with your parents, or so. Doesn't God want us to be focused on perfection? Who cares if we have hurt feelings? Just be holy and be worried about holiness. Really, what else is there? This is my background, sadly. Yeah, that's rough because all that does is put the weight on you to try to be holy. And the Holy Testament shreds that mindset. But yet we still fall into it nonetheless. God is faithful. I'm still praying and working through the distortion I've had on fasting, but it's a work in progress. Did you take the year off from fasting? I think it was you that I told, "Take a year off from fasting." Take a year. Are you sure? Yes. Take a year off from fasting. Mark, you and your videos are a blessing over and over. I'm learning to grow through my obsessive thoughts. Awesome. Little victories. Little, little. See that? A little tiny victory. Celebrate that. Gotta learn to acknowledge little steps. It's been months of putting your advice to the test. Awesome. That's great. And after years of reading the Bible out of condemnation, I can now say I'm reading from a love perspective. That my friends deserves a hand clap. So anyways, guys, I gave you the feedback. Best feedback I could to some of the comments here. Let love, let patience have its perfect work in your life. And, uh, I pray that this will be a valuable resource to your life and your journey. I try to take some time to work through it. Answer your questions. Please consider a one-time donation or join in partnership with us. Gives me, gives us the ability to do more. And thank you so much for that. And try to take time to be a blessing to your life, to your journey. Go to markdejesus.com. Take advantage of the books, the training course, the materials, and share with those who are ready to experience greater healing and freedom in their own lives. So I look forward to seeing you all in the next broadcast, Lord willing and the creek don't rise. Good stuff. See y'all. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you