00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 147, "Hijacked by Your Emotions." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Well, hello there, my sweet friends. Welcome back to the podcast today. If you're brand new, welcome to the podcast. This is fun. I enjoy doing this so much. For those of you who are back for another round, thank you for continuing to show up. And I hope that the information here is really, really helping you to be more self-reflective, to start making small adjustments and changes in your life and in your relationships that are helping you to be in a better place. I know that the stuff that I learn as I create these, and as I continue to engage myself with this kind of information, I'm continually moving into better, stronger, healthier places and I love it so much. And that's just what I want to share with you. I want to share with you the same kind of growth that I'm experiencing as I move into a better version of myself and showing up more as the kind of person that I want to be. I love this space so much. 

01:19 

And this topic this week, hijacked by your emotions, is something that I encountered just two days ago where I was hijacked by my emotions, which doesn't happen to me really that often. And so when it happens, I'm always like, "what was that? Like, what is going on?" And I do feel emotions and I do cry sometimes, but I don't usually get to a point where I feel really strong emotions and I start behaving in ways that are not normal for me. And so I looked into this a little bit and I found some stuff and I wanted to share what I had learned with you. A lot of what I learned comes from a lady that I follow who's name is Allison Cook.-She has a PhD in psychology and she's a Christian based psychologist. She had some information about this that I really liked. So not all of this information is coming from her. A lot of it is my stuff that I've added, but the skeleton of it definitely comes from Allison Cook. And I just wanted to put that out there. 

02:21 

So let's see, let's go ahead and start talking about what it actually means to be "hijacked by your emotions." This would be a space where you are overwhelmed with emotions that don't make sense. Okay, so these emotions will take over your rational thinking. It could be intense emotions like fear or anger or frustration or annoyance, intense emotional reaction to a person or a situation that how we react is way out of proportion to what happened. Okay, and then afterwards we have this realization of our overreaction. And we can easily move into a space of shame or guilt or embarrassment about the drama that we kind of created. And I just want to put this out there, that this happens to all of us. We are humans, by the way. And we are meant to feel things and we're not meant to be robots who never have unmanaged thoughts and who never have feelings that come up that are overwhelming or that are inappropriate or whatever. We're just humans. We do this, but our job here with the work that we do is to learn to become more aware of what's going on and to take more personal responsibility for what's going on. 

03:45 

So as I mentioned, I had an experience I'll share a little bit more with you later with one of my daughters just two days ago. And as I did my work on this, and started trying to figure out what was going on that caused this kind, of an emotional reaction that was so strong, I realized that it was tapping into my feeling of parental inadequacy with this particular child. There have been some situations more frequently as she has moved into older teenagehood, and probably, you know, hitting that point where teenagers need to move out. Not that I don't love her desperately, and I do and I love having her live with me, but they hit a point where they need to do what's called "individualization." They need to move in to their own space, emotionally as well as probably physically. I mean, they need to grow into this and so they start giving a little bit of pushback, which is totally normal. And she should be giving me some pushback because of where she's at in her development. 

04:50 

So I'll tell you a little bit more about how that happened, but I want to give you some other some other ideas of when this can happen, when we might be hijacked by our emotions. So for example, if you are sharing something with a family  member or some close friend and they keep offering solutions or they keep getting distracted by something, you may find yourself all of a sudden getting really frustrated or getting really angry, right? And saying, "I just don't need you to tell me this. I just want you to listen," right? We sometimes get into that space. Another time, this is my particular flavor that I do a lot, is everything seems fine. Everything seems fine. Everything seems seems fine. And then you'll flip over something really small. Something will happen and it causes you to freak out. It's like there's this underlying building up of stuff. In my house, we started to use the phrase "putting it on the back burner." Like, imagine a pot on the back burner and you just keep putting stuff in it and putting stuff in it. Well, pretty soon that starts to stink and pretty soon it starts to boil over or overflow and it just becomes a horrible big mess that we don't need to have, but we just keep putting stuff off. Okay? Another time that this might happen is even in a good sense when somebody might do a small act of kindness for you and you will get overly emotional, like uncharacteristically emotional for what the situation called for. And that's not a bad thing, but it's also being hijacked by your emotions, emotions that are too big for what is warranted with the situation. 

06:31 

So these are instances that let us know that there is something going on below the surface in our subconscious that needs attention. And again, it doesn't have to be bad things that are going on. It can also be very good things, but things that would be very good for us to be paying attention to what's going on. So working through these situations can help us to become more aware. It can help us to grow and evolve and heal and become more emotionally intelligent. So it's going to have an increase of awareness around our emotions, the why we're feeling them and the when we're feeling them and start to really figure these out, like what's going on for me. 

07:17 

Okay. One point that I want to bring up right up front is that emotions are good. They are a good thing. And sometimes we think that emotions are bad or that there are negative emotions. And I just want to offer that all emotions are good. They are given to us by God. They are an important part of our human experience because they connect us to God. They connect us to ourselves. They connect us to others. I think they also connect us with when we talk about ourselves with our strengths and our weaknesses, as we become more curious about the emotions that we're feeling and try to work them out and try to see where they're coming from. I think it gives us a really, really great opportunity to understand ourselves more and to come to connect to ourselves even more. 

08:08 

Another thing that emotions do is they provide fuel for our actions. Every action is acted upon by a feeling. A feeling causes us to want to act. And so by really becoming clear on a more regular basis of what we are feeling, we can start to see how those feelings are impacting our actions. In the 1990s, there was a guy named Daniel Goldman who wrote a book on emotional intelligence. It was kind of the first time that this concept had been presented this way. But he talked about how emotional intelligence is the key to success in relationships and in business. This refers to our ability to understand our own emotions, and also to recognize emotions in others, and recognize and see how they guide our behaviors, that these emotions give people information about themselves. And so Daniel Goldman really kind of opened up this world for us in recognizing how vital and how important emotions are and what we want to do is not shy away from the strong emotions that we feel, good or bad, but we want to recognize that we're feeling them. We want to accept that we're feeling them and we want to seek to understand them. What do these emotions have to teach me? And as we go back from that emotion to the thought that is creating the emotion, we can really start to gain some awareness on our beliefs and on our ideas and on our thoughts and how they are creating everything in our lives. Our feelings our actions our results. Okay? And then we can start using these same emotions in our awareness about them to create a more engaging life, to deepen our relationships, and to create the results that we ultimately want. 

09:59 

So one of the interesting things is that very often we are not taught that much about emotions. I know that in my home growing up, though, it was a very pleasant place to grow up. The kids were mean to each other, but I think that's generally fairly normal. But my parents were not at all, but very kind of sterile. It was happy, but really void of all difficult emotions. In fact, when we would have difficult emotions a phrase that I heard very often when I was younger especially was "I'll give you something to cry about," right? And I think that was a very like 70, 80s kind of parental phrase to use. But I felt sometimes growing up that when I had those difficult emotions, there wasn't any patience for them. In fact, very often the emotions were would bring, from my siblings, eye rolling and name calling, from my parents, sometimes being sent to my room or disengagement. Like, "I don't want to deal with that. You go deal with that on your own." And I had wonderful, wonderful parents, but their emotional intelligence was not as developed as it could have been. What did that create in me? A person who did not have emotional intelligence as well. 

11:17 

And so when I started to have children, I would do the same thing with my children. I felt very uncomfortable when they had strong emotions that were negative. And I felt that it was a direct reflection on my bad parenting. And so I was always like, "listen, wait, if you're going to be ornery, I want you to go to your room and I don't want you coming out till you can, you know, get it together." And so the cycle continued for a while. And I have some of my kids who, at this stage, have engaged with this and who are on board with the kind of things that I'm learning and how I'm growing. And I have other kids who don't want anything to do with learning about this. And I see them continuing to struggle with those negative emotions. And so we're all just in different places. But I see what I did with my children. And, you know, some of my kids are moving out of that. So their children are going to be raised in a very different place, which I think is brilliant. They will break that cycle. But it's very important that we work to learn to recognize the difficult emotions. 

12:20 

This is something that I have been on my table for a couple of years now, really learning to pay attention to the more difficult emotions that I feel. From my training, and I think my natural tendency, is to not pay attention. So this is just a place where I've been working a lot on. And so when I actually feel strong emotions like I did earlier this week, it's actually a good thing for me. Even though I didn't love the results and I didn't love what brought it about, it's always a little bit refreshing for me to feel some strong emotions because I can sometimes struggle with that. 

12:58 

So emotional intelligence that we've talked about from Daniel Goldman, it can help to bring about a greater ability to work through the hijacking and to kind of figure out what happened, what was going on when I was hijacked by my emotions. So there's three reasons that we might get emotionally hijacked. So one is that something harmful is happening. Now "harmful," I'm going to put in quotes because it's not necessarily physically harmful and maybe not even emotionally harmful, but our brain perceives it as being attacked, as harmful. So maybe we're even being judged or being belittled. 

13:37 

Okay, now this is what happened to me this week with one of my daughters. I feel like I had been in a space for probably a couple of weeks where there's been a lot of me feeling, now this is all my own thoughts, but this is where I was going as I flesh all of this out, where I felt like I was being very judged by this child and even a little belittled. Experiences where I would try and reach out and rejection and reach out and rejection. So all of this had been going on and then when this particular child came in and said something to me about something that I had done wrong in her eyes, I kind of flipped out. And I had just been, like, backburnering this stuff, putting it on the back burner, putting it on the back burner just going "not a big deal. She's just doing whatever she's doing." But that only lasts for so long, right? I think probably most of you can can figure out what that feels like when it just builds and builds and builds and builds and then all of a sudden you kind of freak out. And that's what I did. And I really wasn't aware that I had been putting things on the back burner until after I had my little emotional hijack. And then I went, "whoa, whoa, whoa, let me take a look at where this came from and what happened." And then I realized that it had come from this space of putting things on the back burner. And I was pretending like these things weren't bothering me when they actually really were. 

15:05 

So one reason we may get emotionally hijacked is our brain can perceive that we're being attacked, that we are in danger. Alright. And I think that that's what was happening for me. Another reason we may get emotionally hijacked is that old trauma wounds can be exposed or can be opened. Okay? So here's another experience for my own life, probably about four years ago, it's been almost four years ago, actually, exactly, that I had an experience with one of my brothers. And he had called me asking for some information, some advice, so to speak. And when I told him what I thought and gave him my opinion, he wasn't asking for my advice, more, I'm going to rescind that. He was asking for my opinion about something. And so I gave him my opinion. And there was a lot of resistance to my opinion. And so the trauma that came for me that I realized after I started working through this was that I had spent a lot of years with my voice not being heard, and my voice not counting, and feeling like I was treated like this is all my own brain work. This is all my own stuff. But feeling like I wasn't being heard, like nobody cared what I had to say. And so when this brother kind of did that to me, and I created this space in my brain where I thought he's not respecting me, he's not hearing me, he's not paying attention to me, he doesn't care about my opinion, that trauma wound from my me having all of those thoughts earlier in my life, it was reopened and I flipped out on him. And it was very unjustified. It was way bigger than the experience warranted. Should something have  been said? Yeah, for sure. I think that I was well within my right to say, "hey, you know what? I don't appreciate this exchange and how it's going," but I didn't do that. What I did was I freaked out and I yelled at him, and I ended up hanging up the phone. And yeah, it was just, it was just not pretty. 

17:14 

But what that did for me was it gave me an opportunity to get really curious about why I responded in such a strong way. And that was when my curiosity, I worked into this and I figured out that, "oh, look at this. This is how it's connected to me having previous feelings of not being heard, of somebody not caring about my opinion, and not caring about how I think and how I feel." And so that's an example of an old trauma wound that was opened in a situation that did not warrant me getting angry and yelling, which is very rare for me. But that's where I went. That was my being hijacked by my emotions. 

18:03 

A third way, something good is happening. And we've created this safe space for us to feel this much goodness and the feelings can be so big and it might be finally safe to express them. And so we may have this this overwhelm of emotions. And I will tell you that after I got divorced, I would frequently have these times where I just would think "I'm so grateful I am where I am" and I would just sob and and be overcome with emotion of how grateful I was to be in a new space where I felt safe and a new space where I felt like I could grow and develop and become again. But those were kind of disproportionate as well, as far as so much like sobbing for like 20, 30 minutes of just feeling so much. So sometimes the good things can also create this hijacking of our emotions. 

19:07 

Okay, so what do we do when we're emotionally hijacked? This is the point that we want to get to. So we've talked about all the reasons why we might be hijacked. So now I just want to take a few minutes and talk about what do we do when this happens to us. Okay, first, I'm going to give you six little steps. The first step: recognize it as a hijack. Recognize it as something bigger than is called for in the particular situation. A lot of times we want to to normalize the overwhelm when we really need to realize that this was not a proportionate response to the situation. So recognize it as a hijack and it's nothing to be embarrassed about, it's nothing to be ashamed about, it's nothing to beat ourselves up over. It just is what it is. It's our body and our mind working in tandem to create an experience for us, an experience that can teach us things. So just recognize it as a hijack. Don't beat yourself up over it. Don't any of that. Just go, "oh my gosh, I was totally hijacked." 

20:16 

Second, be compassionate with yourself. It goes along with what we were just kind of talking about. You're human. Humans do this. You do this. Be compassionate with yourself and just and get curious rather than then down on yourself and just go "wow. That was fascinating. I wonder what's behind all of this," and figure it out, right? Being compassionate is huge for us. 

20:47 

Number three, be patient. Okay? Know that the feelings may last. Be willing to sit with them. Be willing to identify them. Don't resist them. Don't say, "I can't feel that way. I'm supposed to be more Christlike." Well, of course we want to be more Christlike, but we are humans. We are not Christ. We are humans and this is part of our experience. So be patient with knowing that it may take some time to work all of the drama out of our brain and out of our feelings, out of our emotions. Be patient with yourself. 

21:23 

Number four, I want to encourage you to do a thought download. Now, we've talked about these a lot on here, but if you're new, you're not going to know what a thought download is. This is where you just take a piece of paper. It can be something you're going to throw away and you just write down everything that comes to your brain, stream of consciousness. What comes to your brain about this experience? Get everything out of your head and onto paper. You will be amazed at what you find and what you experience and what you learn about yourself by doing that, especially when we kind of move into this "I'm writing it all. I'm not judging it. I'm not deciding whether that's a good thing or a bad thing to write down. I'm just writing it all down," because guess what? I can burn it after if I want. I don't even have to keep it. Okay? We don't have to worry about anybody else reading it. We can just write all the things and get it all out. So do a thought download. 

22:15 

Number five: go back to that thought download and work to separate out the facts, the thoughts, and the feelings. It's really important that we start seeing what's going on. What really are the facts? And then realize that our feelings are coming from our thoughts about the facts. So like in the experience with my brother, "he said..." and I could put in what he said and then  I could say "I felt angry." Right? Why did I feel angry? What thought was creating that anger? "The thought that he should not treat me this way. He should respect my opinion." Right? So I come into these ideas, these thoughts that created those enormous, that enormous feeling where I got hijacked. Right? Almost too big. Now that thought is generally going to be an unconscious thought. We're not even going to realize it at the time it's happening. That's why we do a thought download, because it helps us to go back and recreate. It helps us to start to see what was going on in our brain that created this hijack. Okay? 

23:28 

And then step number six: we want to seek for clarity and understanding of these thoughts and feelings. We want to really start to understand where these thoughts are coming from. So if I have the thought "he shouldn't treat me that way," or "he should respect my opinion," I need to follow that up and I need to say "well, why should he?" Like, what's going on with that, and really dig a little bit deeper into the thoughts that I'm having. Recognize how those thoughts as I move deeper will help to I can see how deep some of my thoughts are that are creating these overwhelms of feelings. A piece of this seeking clarity and understanding I would suggest as well: utilize prayer. Ask Heavenly Father to help you see it, to help you understand it, to help you learn what there is to learn from this experience for you. Also talk to trusted people, trusted family, friends, and maybe even a life coach. We are trained to help you clarify these things and understand these things and see them more clearly for what they are. So seeking this clarity and understanding, really trying to understand what was going on, is going to be a really really helpful thing. 

24:39 

Our goal here is not to get to a place where we're never hijacked by our emotions. That's not our goal here. Our goal here is just to take those experiences when they happen to us. And they will because we're humans. When they happen to us, what do I have to learn about myself from that experience? Okay, and then we can start learning things that are going to make us more self-aware. And awareness is the first step to any positive change in ourselves. It's the first step. It's just where we have to go unless we're aware of it. I mean, obviously we're not gonna make any choices at all. 

25:19 

And I just want to remind you as we finish up today that emotions are not the enemy. We were created by God to have emotions, and not just joy and love and peace. We were also created by God to feel anger and frustration and sadness. All of these things we were created to have because they all give us experience. They all give us understanding if we will take the time to explore them and figure out what's going on. These emotions help us to feel connected, connected to God, connected to others, connected to ourselves. They help us to experience a richer life and they teach us how to progress if we will use them in the way that we've talked about today, in understanding where they're coming from and why they're showing up. So pay attention to your feelings, nurture your feelings, feel gratitude for your feelings, even the tough and difficult ones. And when you have an emotional hijacking, it doesn't mean you're a horrible person; it means you're a person. It happens to all of us. We all get hijacked by our emotions occasionally. Some more than others, that's fine too. Right? We're all figuring it out. We're all people and it's okay to give ourselves some compassion. It's okay to respect the humanity that God has given to us. This is a place we want to get into. 

26:54 

So there we have it: hijacked by your emotions. When it happens, why it happens, what you can do when you have them to have your greatest benefit by increasing your awareness. Isn't growing up amazing? I love that we get to a place where this doesn't have to freak me out and scare me anymore. I love getting to a place where I can have an experience like I had two days ago with one of my daughters and I can not be freaked out and think I'm horrible and, you know, losing all potential for a great afterlife. Right? I can grow into this. This is a piece of growing up that I really love, is this self-acceptance of my humanity. Such a beautiful place to be. 

27:36 

Alright. If you want to talk about this, or any other situations that you're working through right now, this is what I am trained to do. I am trained to listen and help you understand your thoughts and help you see how your thoughts are creating your life, creating your reality, and even help you understand how you can manage those to create something different. If you would like, you can go to my website, tanyahale.com. You can book a free 30 minute consult where we can talk about how coaching can help you. We can come up with a plan for how this can work and we can get you started on moving into the space that you really want to start moving into, and living the kind of life that you really want to have. Okay? 

28:20 

And last of all, if you're loving this podcast, please share it with somebody. There is a share button. If you go into your podcast, you can share the link or you can just share it right with somebody share stuff that makes a difference for you. Think about other people who may benefit from this and share it with them, and also leave me a review. The more reviews I get, the more it pops up for other people to find even if they don't have a direct connection to me. It will show up as a "suggested for you" the more reviews that I get. And that's gonna do it for me today. I hope this is helpful. I hope it helps you move into a space of more compassion for yourself and a space of more growth for yourself. Okay, have an awesome day my friends and I will talk to you next week. Bye!