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This week on Live in the Bream, we have one of my very favorite authors. I adore her book. She's got a new one out. We're going to talk about that, but she does so many other things. I'm going to read her Instagram bio because I think it encapsulates her. It says this, author, founder, and visionary of If Gathering and Gather 25, made for this podcast and her new book, Untangle Your Emotions, naming what you feel and knowing what to do about it. Jenny Allen, welcome to Live in the Bream.
Thank you for having me, Shannon. I always love visiting with you. Well, we love having you. I love your books. I find that they are just so practical and helpful. They not only...
Talk about ideas and concepts, but you give real daily nuts and bolts things on how to tackle these issues, what to do with them. And I love this book, which does talk about the fact that, listen, we're created with emotions. They're not a bad thing. They point us in a direction and we can harness them and we can use them. They're valuable information.
And I thought as I was reading this, there was a time when I first hooked up with a Christian counselor because I was dealing so much with anxiety and feeling not only anxious, but then guilty about feeling anxious. Like if I was spiritually mature, I wouldn't be so anxious. So this is a sin, too. And gosh, that's just a starting point for everything you unpack in this book. It's called Untangle Your Emotions. Tell us about it.
Oh, well, what an opener, because that is exactly Shannon. I think everyone that just heard you say that relates to it, that it isn't enough that we're already struggling with fear or anger or sadness. But we also feel guilty that we're feeling these things. I would go so far as to say some of us even feel guilty for being happy when we feel happy. So that's true, too.
There's a part of us that really is very hard on our emotions. And if there's one thing I hope that this book does, it is to set that part of you free, that there would be a sense of, you know what? I feel these things because I am in a very broken world and I'm experiencing broken things.
And God gifted us emotions to help us navigate that broken world and also to help us connect with him and connect with each other. So if you think about the best conversations you've ever had, the safest relationships that you have, those are places that emotions can be explored and understood and worked through. The least safe...
relationships that we have. And the most hurtful ones are usually the ones that will condemn or judge our emotions. And so it really is a starting block for our deepest relationships, which all of us need and want. But we're afraid of feeling these things. And we're sure afraid of saying to other people. And so I hope that that shifts in this conversation and with this book.
Yeah. And how much I mean, because I think about the times that I've been struggling with something and then you're expending for me, I was expending a lot of energy to cover that or to or to tamp it down or to pretend like I was fine and everything was great. And that energy on top of dealing whatever the underlying emotion was like, it's exhausting. People do it every day. It is exhausting. And so, yeah, how do we shift that? And we have to realize that a lot of that judgment has come from theory back.
places in our life. And it's really hard to turn off. In fact, probably already some people are going, okay, you're going to have to biblically prove to me why emotions are good because I only see them as destructive in my own life and destructive in other people's lives. So I get it. Like I was that girl. I was the girl who would have, I didn't like my emotions several years ago. I mean, we're talking three, four years ago. I was the girl that showed up to a small group and crossed my
my arms because we were supposed to talk about our feelings. And I was like, what's the point? So I get it. And I had demonized my own emotions as well. And I, I think we get it from the church. We get it from the world. We see enough people go off the rails because of their emotions and following their emotions, which is not what I'm suggesting that we follow our emotions or that they take the lead in our lives.
But you said it so well, they are information that we are ignoring if we completely dismiss them. So, you know, we all grew up with parents and caretakers that told us how to deal with our emotions. That's the first place we learn from a baby, from an infant, from a toddler. You know, I remember getting pinched in the car when I would be acting out in Target, right? Like all of
of us have those stories. And again, my mom's not wrong. Like I was throwing a little bratty fit, but I would say that it was incomplete. So there is a sense of, um, we are, parents are trying their best. We're all trying our best to control our kids. And, and there's another layer. So there's the obedience and the respect piece, but then there's also the gosh, as a, as a two and a half year old that didn't get what she wanted in that moment. Of course I acted out like I didn't have another, uh,
But to express my world fell apart in that moment. You know, I had no perspective. I don't have the perspective I have now. I was two and a half and I wanted something. I didn't get it. And so processing our emotions actually and not being so afraid of them actually spreads into our lives.
all of our relationships and gives other people permission to be disappointed, to be angry, to be sad. And as we give space for that for ourselves and other people, it's amazing. We actually are not overcome by the emotions. We actually move through them and begin to heal. It's that's the part I can promise that people don't believe. And I didn't believe, but I experienced it and it changed everything.
Yeah, because I think all of us, when we have an emotion that comes that we don't like, it doesn't feel good, whether it's the sadness or the fear or the threat feeling or whatever it is, or even anger. I think so often we think like, what do I do with this? I don't want to punch a hole in the wall. Am I going to eat a hot fudge sundae? Am I going to go, you know, online shop? Am I going to do something more destructive? It's hard for us to sit in whatever unpleasant thing is...
is has arrived? I mean, how do we do that in a way that's productive? Oh, that's such a good question. So first of all, you're right. And I think what we do instead of what God is going to call us to, I'm going to share in a minute, is we cope with it.
in ways that you mentioned, we conceal it, we pretend it's not there, or we try to control it. We try not to feel it anymore. And we, you know, that's part of our judgment self that we're trying to not feel it. We're just, we're telling ourselves, this is bad. This is wrong. If I trusted God more, if I was a more grateful person, whatever your line is to yourself, then I wouldn't feel it. And it's a way of controlling it to try to not feel it.
And so when, you know, the first step is just to realize like, gosh, these are gifts. And if we can really embrace that, that when I feel sad about something that's sad, that that is not necessarily something to shoo away, that that actually is a right response to something that is hard and painful. And so when we first start just by going, okay, maybe these feelings are not the enemy. Maybe these feelings are actually gifts and they're trying to tell me something.
And then so we put the little judgment self to rest a little bit. And then I in the book, I get your question, because I think it's the question I was asking was if I go and put my toes on this abyss and I look down, I'm terrified to jump in. I don't want to feel sadness because I might be overcome by it. And I don't want to feel angry because I might push away people that love me and that I love if I actually feel the hurt that they've caused me. And I get it. So I
I realize to some degree, like this whole conversation is asking all of us to like go over to the abyss and eventually crawl in or jump in. And I'll just tell you, it looks dark and it looks like, gosh, what could be in there? That's good. But I'll tell you more of God is in there. Blessed are those who mourn because they will know God in ways that others don't. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit. Like there is something in the abyss that,
that is beckoning us where they get, you get more of God. And then there are people down there that want to connect with you that are so appreciative that you are being honest about that struggle. In fact, they feel honored that you're being honest about that. And I also wanted to put little steps and handles because I thought I can't just jump into a black hole. So I'm someone who's pretty thoughtful. Like I've got to,
You got to tell me like, I'm going to be okay. And so the way I wrote the book was actually with steps. And that's so funny. And I'm sure every counselor might judge it because that's not really how you deal with your emotions, but I needed it. I just needed some handles. And so the simple steps that I encourage everybody when they're feeling a strong emotion,
is just one to not be afraid of it but to notice it to just acknowledge like gosh I'm not doing well and it might be as you're driving in the car today you might already feel that pain in your in your chest or in your shoulders or your jaw like where your body actually is kind of signaling hey I'm not doing well and then two to name it to give it a name and the more specific the name the better because you could feel sad because they have feel sad well that could be grief over a lot
loved one two years ago that's resurfacing or it could be disappointment that you didn't get invited to something. You know, sadness has a big range. So you want to use as specific a word as you can and then to feel it, to feel it with the Lord, to feel it, to feel it, not to be afraid of it, to cry if you need to cry, to hit
the pillows if you need to hit something, to feel what you feel, and then to share it with someone. Because as you share it with someone, your brain begins to heal. One of the things I love to do in my work is to do the biblical research, but also to do the scientific research. And when you do the scientific research, it's so cool. It backs up verses like, mourn with those who mourn, because there is healing when someone grieves with you. Pain is
and trauma is largely caused by pain in isolation. So when you're no longer in isolation, even if you're going backwards to a moment in your childhood or something in your past, and you're sharing it with someone and they're empathizing with you and mourning with you over that loss,
your brain actually begins to form new pathways and heal broken neuropathways. It's a miracle. It really is a God-given miracle that when we actually feel it with other people, we begin to heal. And then the last thing is just to choose. We are not going to be victims to our emotions. We're not going to be capped.
of our emotions. We're going to actually decide. We have a lot of agency with what we do about them. We don't always have agency about our feelings. Certainly mental health can come upon us. My husband, I write about it. It came upon him two different times in a big way.
But there is still a lot of agency of what are we going to do? He chose to get help. He chose to share it with the community. He chose to get on medicine. There's still agency, even surrounding the things with our emotions we can't control. We'll have more Live in the Bream in a moment.
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We are talking to New York Times bestselling author Jenny Allen. The current book, although I recommend every single one of them, the newest one is Untangle Your Emotions, Naming What You Feel and Knowing What to Do About It. I thought you made, well, so many good points. But, you know, when you think about especially the idea of an emotion that comes up, what you first think you're feeling isn't necessarily...
what's really at the core. I think about when I was early in my marriage, like when we would have a fight and I would be so angry, it wasn't so much that I was angry. There was something underneath, like I felt rejected or I felt upset or not respected about something. And it became really helpful for me to separate that from anger. So getting to, as you say, noticing and naming what's
what you're feeling, I mean, that's such an important part in this process too, figuring out what it really is, being willing to sit with it enough for a minute at least or however long it takes to say, "I want to punch this person in the face right now. I'm really angry, but what really is down here is I feel rejected or hurt or embarrassed or something else."
Right. So let me take that example. That's such a great example, Shannon. So let's take that example. Someone you love comes at you and you feel completely rejected and hurt or they let you down in someone you feel so much rejection. You're just furious with them. And you kind of ask yourself the question like, okay, when have I felt this feeling before? I felt this feeling before. When have I felt it before?
And all of a sudden you're taken back to when you felt stuck in a situation with your family and you could not resolve it. Your dad walks out the door, he packs his suitcase and he walks out the door and you're stuck and you can't fix it and you're completely abandoned. And all of a sudden you're remembering that moment maybe that,
that somebody left you. So we all have moments where we felt abandoned or something. So now you take that into your marriage and you go, okay, listen, right now, you know what this is reminding me of? This is reminding me of when my dad left. And all of a sudden you're saying in a very tender way, something that's true for you. And maybe your spouse even knew that, that that happened, but they're not attaching their words to your dad. And you're not either, by the way, like call
Subconsciously, you're doing this, not consciously. And so the power of moving it to your conscience where you're actually thinking, you know, I remember feeling this way and it was back then. It helps bring about where you still feel rejected by a spouse, but now you get to have a different conversation about it. You get to go, this is a deep fear for me. Like, I'm really scared that...
when you talk to me that way, that it reminds me of blank. And all of a sudden, they're not as defensive. And there's this more beautiful conversation. That is the power of being aware and emotionally healthy and mature is you actually can have more beautiful, connected conversations and it not derail. Because so many people think, oh, gosh, this is a book about
feeling your emotions, I am not going to be that person because I've watched emotions damage people. I've watched them be out of control and I don't want to be that girl or that guy.
And I would just say, no, this is actually moving toward emotional health. If you are someone who acts out emotionally a lot, or you are someone who suppresses all your emotions and would say, I'm not an emotional person, which is not factual, unless you have a diagnosis of that, which is very rare. It's not factual because God made you, he made you in his image and he is emotional. So you are an emotional person. You're just not expressing it. Both of those sides of the
spectrum are actually coming from the same place, which is I don't have the ability to share in a healthy way what's emotionally going on for me.
Yeah. So either way, it's like, we've got to, we've got to get, we've got to get healthier. Right. And this whole idea of sharing it, I think that sometimes when people are really struggling, that's the last thing they want to do. And it's maybe the closest people to your family. If you have family or somebody else who lives in her home with you, they may see it, but it's really hard to think, oh my gosh, I want to share this with a broader group of people, whether it's at my place of worship, maybe it's a counselor, maybe it's friends. Um,
Talk about why that is so important, because that's a key part of the book, too, is that, you know, you unload this burden or you spread it around or you share it. And sometimes you're going to be the one who's unloading the burden. Sometimes you're going to be the one helping to carry it. But what a difference that actually makes. Well, I want to I want to come back to this one fact and just say it's got to be safe people. And that is a really big part of the story. But let me tell you a story first. So I'm a part of a small group that was.
It is a great gift to my life. In fact, we met this morning on Zoom. We share everything together. That's the point of the group. And the first time we ever met, I showed up and I knew we were supposed to share our emotions and I did not want to do it, but I did it. And I shared something vulnerable and I shared that I felt like God had abandoned me. I was out on the ocean and where feet may fail is a song. And I felt like my feet were failing and I felt like God had left me.
And I share that. Well, there's a lot of theologians in the room, including myself. And so everyone starts to theologize and tell me the truth. Well, God doesn't leave you. And all the things that are true that I know are true, right? Like I know that. But in that moment, it felt like betrayal by them. It felt like I was, oh, I was so hurt. I felt like it wasn't safe and I wished I hadn't shared it. I thought they looked down on me because I was feeling these things.
And so my somebody in the room, the leader of the group noticed and said, hey, how are you doing over there? What are you feeling? And I said, and I said all of it. I said, I feel betrayed. It felt brave to even say that to you. Like, I feel like you all are judging me. And I was looking for compassion. And I know, you know, I know all the right answers. But this just it was it was vulnerable for me to share that.
And it was so cool. So he said, listen, I want us only to say I feel instead of I think. I want you just to say I feel sad. Whatever you feel toward Jenny right now, I just want you to say it.
Well, they went around the room and mind you at that point, I want to leave. Like, I don't want to be in this group anymore. I'm incredibly wounded by them, but they start going around the room. One of them says, I feel proud that you haven't left, that you still love God and you're staying. I feel sad that we just hurt you. I feel sad that you felt misunderstood. And then they said, I feel just disappointed that this season has been so hard for you. And I didn't know, cause I'm your friend and I didn't know. So they say all this, my heart hurts.
literally heals. And what I'll read and find out later is my brain was actually healing. That they moved me from a pragmatic part of my brain into a empathetic feeling part of my brain. And when they did that, things began to move and heal around the pain that I had felt alone in isolation prior.
And so I wouldn't write this book and I wouldn't have believed this was actually helpful unless I went through that moment because I was the fixer. I was the theology expert. I was the one that would try to fix the problem. I didn't believe that feeling pain actually heals pain with people that you love.
And it was crazy because after that, I didn't feel so mad at God anymore. I didn't feel so lonely. I didn't feel so upset. My relationship with God even began to heal in that moment. So there is really a transformation that happens. I literally call it magic sometimes, even though it is very biblical. Jesus did this. You know, Jesus did it over and over again. He shows up for Mary after Lazarus dies, and he knows he's going to raise Lazarus from the dead. A few verses up, he promises it. He says, I'm going to do this.
And yet he doesn't just raise him from the dead. He cries with Mary first. He meets Mary in her pain so that she's not alone in her pain. And this is something that we're not all very good at. There are a few people out there that are great at it. Yay, you. This is something I'm having to grow in for sure. Yeah. And I mean, there's so many places where we see that God has moved and Christ has moved for people. I think of the widow of Nain and other places where
He walked as we did on this earth. We're told we don't have a high priest who doesn't understand where we're coming from. I mean, he knows emotions. And like you said, God himself has emotions, but we got to see Christ experience those on earth and how he did have compassion. He had anger. He had all of these things and there is a righteous way to walk through those. Okay. Before you go, I want to ask about this because the if gathering, and you can tell people who don't know what that is a little bit more about that, but it's a huge thing. Um,
That was a dream of yours that has been built upon. And now I hear there's something even more expansive called Gather 25. Tell us what's going on. Yes, we just announced it, Shannon. It was so fun to put it out into the world. But you can go to gather25.com and read about it. It is amazing.
gathering of the entire global church and for the first time in history this is possible technology has not existed where the entire global church can gather at one time and we're going to go live on March 1st 2025 around the
the world live. We're going to tell the stories of every continent. The global church is going to lead the global church. And because of artificial intelligence, if you can believe this, we're going to be able to live stream language translation in every major language around the world. Wow.
And so it will be live. And our hope is that people will gather in their churches, that you'll tell your pastors, that your church will host, that you can host friends and neighbors in your home, and that everyone will get to see what God is doing on earth in 2025. Because the stories I'm already hearing are just incredible. And we're going to pray together and we're going to worship in every language. We're going to show the kids and minister to kids. It's every man,
Every woman and every child that considers themselves a believer in Jesus Christ are coming together for 25 hours. And our hope is that it would commission the church to love the lost, to reach those that don't know Jesus yet. That's our dream. That's our passion.
Well, you've had big dreams and they have come true before. So we're excited about this new one you have. Again, Jenny Allen's latest book, Untangle Your Emotions, naming what you feel and knowing what to do about it. If you think you have too many emotions that you don't know how to deal with or you feel like you don't have any or that you're not connecting with people or the way that God created you or connecting with him, it's a fantastic book that, like I said at the beginning, is always so full of so much practical information, scientific information.
data and all kinds of things to help walk you through these things and end up very encouraged as well. So Jenny, thank you once again. Congratulations. And we'll be watching as you head towards Gather 25. Thank you, friend. Listen ad-free with the Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts and Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.
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