Hey Tabi!

The Hidden Damage of Emotional Suppression and How to Heal

• Tabitha

Share episode

What happens when emotions are ignored, suppressed, or labeled as “wrong”?
For many trauma survivors—especially those raised in Christian spaces—emotional suppression doesn’t lead to peace or holiness. It leads to anxiety, shame, disconnection, and relational breakdown.

In this episode of Hey Tabi, trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook sits down with licensed marriage and family therapist Emma Ward to talk honestly about the hidden damage of emotional suppression—and how real healing begins.

Together, they explore:

  • Why emotional suppression is so common in Christian culture
  • How unprocessed emotions show up as anxiety, anger, shame, or numbness
  • The difference between having emotions and being ruled by them
  • How trauma impacts emotional awareness and the body
  • What Scripture actually shows us about emotions (including Jesus’ own emotional life)

Emma also shares the heart behind her E-motion Monsters emotional literacy cards and why learning the language of emotion is essential for healing, healthy relationships, and embodied faith.

Find Emma:

E-motion Monster Cards - https://e-motionmonsters.com/

The Ahava Way (therapy & intensives) - https://theahavaway.com/

Wanna say hi? Send a text!

At The Journey and The Process we strive to help you heal. Our therapists are trauma specialists who use evidence-based tools like EMDR, Brainspotting, Somatic Experiencing, and Internal Family Systems to help you heal - mind, soul, and body. Reach out today to start your healing journey. https://thejourneyandtheprocess.com/

 This book is for every Christian woman who has been harmed sexually, whether that happened in childhood, adulthood, or even within your coercive controlling marriage, and you're longing to feel safe in your body again. We talk about the hard stuff, shame, desire, faith, and even questions like, is this sin or is this trauma?

You don't have to untangle it alone. Body & Soul, Healed & Whole is for you. Get a copy here today - https://a.co/d/8Jo3Z4V

🎧 Subscribe to Hey Tabi for more expert conversations on trauma, faith, and healing.

Order Body & Soul, Healed & Whole: An Invitational Guide to Healthy Sexuality After Trauma, Abuse, and Coercive Control

Wanna support Hey Tabi? Buy me a coffee here - https://buymeacoffee.com/heytabi

📩 Connect with Tabitha:
💻 Tabitha's Website - www.tabithawestbrook.com
📲 Tabitha's Instagram - www.instagram.com/tabithathecounselor
🎙️ Podcast Homepage - https://heytabi.buzzsprout.com

💻 The Journey & The Process Website - www.thejourneyandtheprocess.com
📲 The Journey & The Process Instagram - www.instagram.com/_tjatp

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel & watch podcast episodes there

👍 If this episode resonated with you, please like, subscribe, and share to help others who need this information!

🚨 Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy and is intended for educational purposes only. If you're in crisis or need therapy, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional.

Need to know...

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Hey Tabby, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here, and we are not take two verses and call me in the morning. I'm Tabitha Westbrook and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, but I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control and how complex trauma impacts our health and well-being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope. Now, let's get going. Welcome to this week's episode of Hey Tabby, and I have a very precious friend here with me today, and I'm going to tell you about her. Her name is Emma Ward, and she is a licensed marathon family therapist. She's an author and she's the creator of one of my favorite things on the planet, the emotion monsters, emotional literacy cards, and we're going to talk about those. She's an Irish immigrant living in the U.S., and Emma specializes in trauma relationships and the integration of therapy and theology. Through her work and her framework, The Ahava Way, she helps Christians move from emotional suppression and shame-based spirituality into emotional honesty, healing, and wholeness rooted in God's unconditional love. Emma combines evidence-based trauma therapies with deep theological insight, offering practical tools and compassionate truth for individuals, couples, and families seeking embodied emotionally healthy faith. Emma, I am so glad that you are here. Welcome. I met you through the Christian Trauma Healing Network. Like, gosh, it's been a couple of years ago now. And I just think you are one of the most precious humans on the planet. And then when you were telling me about the emotion monster cards, gosh, I feel like it was probably a year before they came out. I remember being so excited. And then we were at a conference in Pennsylvania, the CCEF conference, and I saw them on the bookstore table and almost lost my mind because it was the first time I had seen them in person. And I remember getting giddy in the line because I was standing in line at the time and I could see them. And I went, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, that's my friend Emma. That's my friend Emma. And telling everybody in the bookstore to buy them. I was probably more Pentecostal than CCEF was ready for if I'm being real. But I was so excited. So tell us about them, tell us how they came to be.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And so thank you so much. And it's been such a fun product to create. And I actually co-created it with my husband. So we laugh in our house. I will come home to him and say, I've had an idea. And he says, Oh no, because he knows that now means work for him. And he's an incredible designer. And so I don't know anyone who'll be watching versus listening, but this is at the box of the emotion monsters. And we created 60 emotions along with their own individual character. They have a biblical reference on every single one showing where this emotion actually is evident in scripture. And I think that was the driving force for me to want to create this product. People don't have a language for emotion. And I think, especially in the Christian world, there is either a complete suppression of it or it's seen as something that's sinful. So if we're not joyful, then we're we're in some way we're wrong and we have to just bury it. And so with that in mind, I really wanted to create a way for people to have permission to acknowledge and name what they're feeling, to have a language to talk about it, to ultimately bring it to God and pray about it and through it, but also to increase communication with one another. And it's just been such an incredible product to use in my own practice. And like you say, so many people are just absolutely loving it.

SPEAKER_01:

It has been such a delight. We use it in our practice and it's so helpful. And I think it brings a touch of whimsy to a really deep topic. And what the other thing that I think is super cool is not only do you have like the name of the emotion and description, but also where it is in the body often. And and then along with scripture, and I think that helps everybody tie together, you know, the fullest range of understanding an emotion.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, absolutely. And actually that was an addition because of some neurodivergent open-minded family who were having the physical sensation, but they didn't know what to call it. And so being able to start with paying attention to where it is in the body and then name it as an emotion is so so powerful. And uh, but again, the other way around, because so many people can say what the emotion is, but they're not connected in with the body. So it's losing then the the way to truly work through that. So, as you know, our emotions should be like tunnels. We should be able to work through, but if we're not sure what the tunnel is or even how to access it, then we're not ever going to be able to work through that emotion.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And I think it's so powerful. They I refer to our emotions as check engine light. So this light comes on on your dashboard and you're like, I don't know what to do with that. So you stick the thingy in the the part of the car that runs the diagnostic codes, and you get a code of, oh, this might be what's going on. And emotions that are like that to me. And I love that you have both the name and the sensation because you're right. Some people can go, I feel something's off in my body, but I don't know what to say about it. I don't know how to name it. And then some people can name it like it's new sports and weather and have no connection to it at all. And you're like, you just told me the worst thing ever that's happened to you, like it is nothing. And so to really be able to connect our whole selves together in this is so vital.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And you know, language creates meaning. And you know, you think right back to the creation story and God creation into existence. The first task for Adam was to name the animal. So language is so vital to our world, to our understanding. And if we can't name an emotion, more importantly, if we can't name it accurately, then we really can't understand ourselves or be understood. And connection is being seen, heard, and understood. So it's so vital that we get that right. And I I see it so often where people say they're angry, and actually often they're not there, they're just so defeated, they're maybe hopeless. Actually, maybe it's grief, often fear, but they say they're angry and specially in marriage work. So often the anger is what comes out, and yet underneath it's just such a deep hurt and a longing for connection.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. And I will never forget, I was doing a couples therapy session and I had the husband and wife in there with me, and the wife kept saying, I just know you're angry. And so I had an emotion wheel, and I said, Let's actually look at this. And it had the body sensations as well on it. And the husband looked at it and he goes, I'm not angry. And he sounded quite angry, so I could see how she might be getting that. And he said, What I feel is shame. And the minute he named it, I watched him just crumble and he started to cry. And she was like, I've never seen this before because it was finally named for what it was. And then from that space, he could talk about these are the things that I feel ashamed of and that I feel like I haven't done well. And she was able to then enter in with compassion and care and say, I've just been reading this as anger for decades. And what it is is you're holding on to like, I just think I'm a terrible human. And when we had that moment, like it changed everything in the counseling room.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Oh my goodness, yes. And that is so, so vital in in conversations, especially with couples, but with their children as well. And shame is such an important emotion to be able to name and one that we often don't have the language for. And yet that is shame and fear were the first emotions to enter after the fall. So I always want to look for shame and where that narrative might be. Something we did with the emotion cards actually was create anger plus cards. So we have instead of just shame, we have anger, shame. And this helps then to validate for that spouse, for example, you're talking about, she was seeing anger. And so it actually validates that yes, the behavior coming out is angry, but it's not the core emotion. The core emotion is being driven by the shame narrative that needs to be talked about and healed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And anger actually for most people is a secondary emotion in some ways, because it's not usually the first thing that we feel. We express anger because it feels safer, more powerful, all of those things. Unless you're a woman who has been habituated in the church to not be allowed to be angry, which also I remind women that the Bible does, in fact, say be angry and do not sin, right? So anger isn't the problem. It's what we do with it often that can be problematic or less adaptive. But to be able to say, like, yeah, this is coming out as anger. And what I really feel is sadness, grief. I feel shame. I feel whatever, disappointed. All of the things that we can feel that are, you know, underneath of that. And we can get beneath, I call it below the waterline, right? Because the top of the iceberg is what we can see, right? And then what's really below the waterline, and it's honestly far more vast than what we can see above the waterline.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh my goodness, absolutely. And, you know, they have the more vulnerable emotions. So I don't ever want to call them positive or negative. I think it's about hard emotions, the more vulnerable emotions. Some of them are easier, they feel more energizing, they feel good. Some of them don't feel so good when your stomach's in knots and your heart's racing, but they're not bad. Um, they're just difficult. And often what I'll say is it's difficult, but it's not dangerous. Um, right. And so, but often we're we're kind of just running it through that emotion, feeling it as a danger. And so then everything around us feels like a threat, including the people that we love. So being able to regulate ourselves with that emotion is so important. But I want to go back to the point you made about women in church. And this is something, again, I see so often, especially here in the Midwest, that there is not permission for women to be angry. I spoke with a woman recently who was saying she was so anxious. She says I've just been so anxious. And when we actually dug down into what was going on in her situation, she was angry, and her anger was so valid, but she didn't have permission. And I think the other thing we wanted to do with these emotion cards was just to give permission to have the emotion. And as you said, the having the emotion is not the same as the behavior. So be angry and don't sin. The sinning can come out, not that sin is always a behavior, of course, to want to get too theological, but the sin behavior is not where we want to first focus. We want to first focus on what is going on for this person, what is going on for me right now. And when we can start to name that, it actually helps us to change and decide which behaviors we then want to engage in. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

And I think I love that you talk about no emotions being negative, because I believe that so fully. I think it's such a misnomer. They are uncomfortable at times, they are vulnerable at times, they are also not fun at times, especially when they happen a lot all at the same time. And it's still so vital, though, to know that this is part of how we are made in the image and likeness of the living God. And he gave us these emotions. And we see Jesus throughout scripture in the New Testament showing these types of emotions, even in the Old Testament, talking about, you know, God's sadness toward different things and such, that when we are told, well, your anxiety is sinful, which is a lot of times what people hear, like that's usually the one that's like, you're just not trusting God. Don't you know all the do not fear verses and all that jazz, except for the fact that Jesus was so anxious in the garden that he was sweating drops of blood. Was Jesus sinful? Well, we know he wasn't, right? And so, like, that is a piece of going, wait a second, let's reevaluate maybe what we've been taught about emotion and emotional expression and reevaluate it in a more adaptive way.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, absolutely. I think that is so important. And, you know, the a lot of my work around emotions, plus what my book is about as well, really was born out of noticing how much emotional dialogue there actually is in scripture, and especially Jesus himself. And one of my favorite stories is fig tree when he curses the fig tree and recognizing anger with restraint, because of course, as you read through the story, knowing that his true anger was actually about the Pharisees, and it was also the false advertising. So this fig tree with leaves should have had figs, and and it didn't, and so it was called advertising, as then the Pharisees were called advertising that they were righteous and you know uh following God's will and how he and loving people, and so he had called them out. So knowing then that his anger actually, even with the Pharisees, the first thing he does after calling them out is he weeps. He weeps, he doesn't go away smug, and how many of us would actually go away feeling maybe good about ourselves that we'd called someone out, and knowing that even when we do call out, we're to do it with the grief of knowing that it's not how it's going to be in a relationship. And as so as he then curses this tree, my favorite part actually is the next day, they're walking by, and one of the disciples says to him, Hey Jesus, there's that tree that you cursed, and this is my own version of this in my mind. So there's that tree that you cursed, and he just goes on teaching his next lesson, where I would probably be saying, Well, yeah, could you believe them? And can you believe that tree? And what is so I just think it there's so many not just evidence moments of experiencing emotion, but how to experience it and to handle it well. Yes. So that's where we get our lesson of how to be angry, be sad, whatever the emotion is, and not sin.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And from the clinical perspective, we would call that emotion regulation. Or as I like to say to my clients, this is how we deal with our feels. And that is a piece of it, right? I think in the big C church, we can be afraid of, well, if people are just all emoting all over each other, then we are not in control and God is not a God of chaos and all of these things. And to that, I would say, well, yes, but also right, the middle path is feeling all of your emotions, being able to appropriately express them, not becoming destructive in them and you know, to yourself or to anybody else, and being able to feel them. So it's not get rid of them, which is not possible anyway, uh, you know, unless you're a sociopath and I don't hang out with them, but it's to feel them, feel them all the way through, as you were talking about, see them as tunnels to get through them. And then also, you know, processing them in community healthfully without becoming destructive.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And you know, there's a great pendulum swing between stoicism and emotionalism, and they have nothing to do with the experience of emotion and everything to do with the expression or non-expression of emotion. And actually, when we suppress an emotion, it comes out sideways. So this is where we see people who actually might be grieving, but instead they just sit angry and grumpy all the time. You know, they're having a problem with work and they're worried about finances and they yell at their kids. So if we don't name and actually work through our emotion, it will come out in other ways. And I I think, yeah, understanding that the the internal signal of the emotion is how we we subdue that and how we order it. It's when we don't name it, it becomes a chaos. And so we should not be afraid of our emotions.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. One of the adages in DBT dialectical behavioral therapy is name it to tame it, because when we name it, there is a physiological response of it reducing its impact by a significant amount. Also, I refer to stuffing our emotions as the Ghostbusters method. And I mean Ghostbusters from like the 1980s, none of the other ones count. You can come for me in the comments if you like. But when we shove it in and shove it in and shove it in, it's like the containment unit in the first Ghostbusters. And then at some point, the power grid goes down and everything explodes, and everybody, including you, gets slimed. And it seems like in the moment it's more comfortable to just shove it in, shove it in, shove it in. It feels safer until it's not, because we cannot sustain that forever. And then we're looking at the aftermath of an emotional explosion because we weren't dealing with them in a timely manner, if you will.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh my goodness, yes. And I I might have to steal that. I love it. Although often I find that my movie references fall short because not everyone is of the same generation. I've been caught out in that a few times, but I I think the maybe part of the issue I see is individualism versus the community-based living. And when we feel like we have to live on our own, even in our emotional world, so we might be with people in proximity, but we're not doing life and being open and vulnerable and honest. And I think the individual culture says that I can do it all by myself, and God says no, you can't. And actually, I created you to rely on me and to lean on me, but also on your fellow humans. And if we don't get honest about our emotions, we don't know one another. It's really so sad that I see so many lonely, lonely people, and especially men. A lot of the men that come to see me in my practice are so lonely and don't even have a language for it. And so even if they're married, their wives just think that they're angry and that they don't care about you.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Clarification, we are not talking about destructive, abusive individuals or that are coercively controlling. We are talking about regular folks who are not in that space. And I just want to clarify because we do see a lot of anger in destructive individuals. And so I want to just separate that out for people because we have a lot of listeners that have been through destructive marriages and that sort of thing. So I just want to say we are creating a clear delineation here. But yes, like loneliness is an epidemic. There is a ton of research out there currently that the experience of loneliness will actually literally take years off your life and cause disease. And that says to me, what are we doing? Especially in the church where we are meant to be in healthy community.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. I I just want to go back on what you said with the listeners that you have that have been in abusive course of relationships. I would just not okay. And you don't have to pretend that's okay. You don't have to stay there. Your emotions that you're feeling about that, your fear, your confusion, all of the different things are so valid. And you get to talk about those. And I hope you find someone safe to do so.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely, for sure. And I think, you know, just getting into the loneliness piece of it. Loneliness is different than solitude. Solitude is where we take that time away. Perhaps we go on a silent retreat or a walk in the woods, or whatever you do to have some solitude and space and reflection time. But isolation and loneliness are I could be in a room full of a million people and I still feel completely by myself.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's because we're not known. Absolutely. And you know, Jesus constantly was taking himself away. And going, you know, to pray to be by himself and actually isolation in that sense of time away can be so good for us and to quiet the noise of our world. But you're right, the the loneliness of being near people and not being known is devastating. And it it's not a weakness to need someone. And I think that's maybe what drives some of that loneliness and not being able to be vulnerable. I think all that there's a Midwest saying here that people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. And every time I hear it, it makes me chuckle because it's impossible. And yet I hear people say it like it, like their goal, it's what they're working towards. Because these sort of sayings over time get shaped and changed, of course. But it means that we're trying to do the impossible by ourselves. And we need people to help us, we need helping the community, and we need people to learn how it's not our own body, and that's emotionally um available now. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

And I think we want to make other people live our life for us, right? So there are extremes on every side of things, right? I'm gonna do it all by myself. I don't need any help from anyone, or I need you to live my life for me because I don't want to live my life for me. That's also not healthy. What we're talking about here is the middle ground of I absolutely need community. And I think about all of the recovery spaces that I have been privileged to walk with people in, and healing happens in community. And you don't have to be recovering from something like substance abuse or mental illness or whatever to need community to heal because we're all becoming, right? We're all being changed from glory to glory to be like Jesus, which is sanctification, and that happens in community best, right? I think my pastor says it this way deep work over time in community. And I love the way that that is stated because it is so true.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm just playing that back over my head. I like that, and yeah, because we're we're created for attachment to our fellow humans. It's that's the reason why our great command is to love one another. Yes. And so that love is in action as well as in feeling, and so we show love in our action and our moving towards people. I often tell families that with their children that kids need to know that they are loved, that they have value, and that they belong. And really, it's not any different for us as adult. We too need to know those things, and that's where we feel connected and where we feel safe.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, absolutely. And our bodies and souls thrive. And I think we don't talk often enough about that physical connection of how community helps us heal. You know, if you have ever been in just a super hard space and someone that you trust that is a safe person for you wraps you up in their arms and gives you a long, you know, powerful hug, right? Not the kind that like gives you a chiropractic adjustment unless that's your thing. And they are a chiropractor, but the kind that you know you feel safe in that space. And for those who are neurodiverse, it might look a little bit different because maybe big hugs are not your jam, but it might be another kind of physical connection that helps your body settle. We call it co-regulation in the therapy room. And that's really all of those pieces and parts that God created in us, helping all of the pieces and parts that God created in you to settle. So if I am calm and I am loving you and I am in proximity with you, you are gonna pick up on my body's calm and your body's gonna go, oh, and take this big deep breath and settle as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think that's really important. So many good things in that, Sabi, and especially the the co-regulation piece. But what I really want to talk about, because I felt myself get quite energized as you were talking about hugging, was uh the side hug.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I this this is something that gets me a little hot from the colour. And I've started telling people that I'm going to be 45 this year and I'm no longer side hugging. I refuse. So either hug me or don't. But don't try to come sideways at me anymore. I come from a culture, of course, where everyone hugs and we kiss each other on the cheek, and you know, there's a genuine embrace, and it's male and female, young and old, and it's that there really is that collective unity and togetherness that comes out of that. And you know, I think about a lot of Paul's letters end with greet one another with a holy kiss, and we can't even get a hearty handshake out of a lot of people. So the side hug is something moving to this country, I've always been very curious about. And in a way, I think it was meant to create safety, but actually, I think it sexualized the hug when it didn't need to. Yes. I think now the destructive side of something that was meant to be for good is that people are either starved of emotion or hug is seen as something the sexual arousing that people might get the wrong idea. So I think we we as Christians, as believers, should be embracing one another in safe ways. And that is a big conversation, I understand, but I want to at least highlight it and start it.

SPEAKER_01:

Love that so much. And I remember years ago, author John A. Cuff telling stories. He used to have a blog called Stuff Christians like a million years ago, and he would talk about the side hug, and he was like, one day I'm just gonna like wrap my leg around somebody while I side hug them. And I thought that was hysterical. But you are so right. And especially for our single uh Christians, both men and women, the church might be the only place that anyone touches them over the course of a week. And I just want to let that sink in for people. We are creatures that need physical touch, appropriate physical touch to don't go getting weird. But also those hugs at church, when you relegate it to a side hug, yes, you are sexually something that should not be sexualized. And you are depriving someone of healthy physical touch inadvertently in those moments. And I think about my good brothers and sisters that give me big hugs and how energizing it is, how healing it is, how comforting it is in those moments. I was on my way home after a trip last week and I texted a friend, hey, are you gonna be at our worship and prayer service? And she said, Yes. And I said, Awesome, I need a big hug. Because I hadn't had anybody hug me all week. I was camping by myself in the woods, which was awesome. But also I needed a hug. And so the first thing she did when she saw me was give me a big bear hug. And that was what my body, my soul, everything needed. And if we deprive each other of that goodness, we are again setting enmity between men and women very often. And we are depriving each other of some good gifts of the Lord. And that's not okay. And I realize that there are going to be some people listening to this who are like, that is a hot take. Holy cow. But it's truth. The research is there to back up that we need human touch.

SPEAKER_00:

Most certainly. I think it's not just even with you know, our fellow brothers and sisters, but even within the family home, there are so many, and I guess generational, of course, but there are so many fathers who don't hug their children. Or once sons get to a certain age, they they stop getting hugs, and you know, there's all sorts of physical touch, you know, even like touching their back and giving it a rub or ruffling their hair, or you know, all these different touches that just create connection for us. And of course, this is done in safe families, and there are so many safe families that don't know how to touch one another, and it's something I I truly think needs to be addressed, and we've got to move towards one another.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And we're desperate for it again. If we look at the loneliness epidemic, we are more connected than ever before. So there are all kinds of ways to connect with people, and yet we are still lonely, right? Because, you know, sputing your whatever on Facebook doesn't give you connection, right? It may give you a dopamine hit if people like your comment or what have you, but it doesn't really breed relationship, like true deep relationship. Now we can have good relationships with people online when we are known, when we are, you know, really in actual relationship, not just Facebook comments on their post kind of deal, or Instagram or Snapchat. It depends on your age as to where you're commenting on things. I'm just going to throw that out there because I realized I used Facebook and everybody under the age of 30 was like, what, ma'am? Fine. That's totally fine. But, you know, we have to be willing to have some 3D community to the best of our ability or at least a closer online community. Because I know for some people who are in abusive situations, they have been marginalized. Like finding a good group might, the only way you might do it is online. And you can still be known and have real relationships in those places, but you do need to be known. But I still say the most important relationships are in proximity because you can't have the same depth through a screen that you can one-on-one with an actual human being in 3D.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And actually, something that can help with regulating our own emotional ups and downs and dysregulation at times is our own personal touch as well. And that we have a better relationship with our body. I talk about body as a vessel, it's not an ornament. And as we are going through this life, we want to look after it because we want it to take us wherever the Lord wants us to go. But actually being kind to it as well, and you know, making sure to moisturize our skin and to take time, not just kind of slathering it on as we're running out the door, but to actually take time to even experience the octosin that can come with that self-touch as well. I'm a havenine trained practitioner, so not everyone will know about hypenine, but this is actually something that people can use as a self-regulating tool, especially if they are having big emotion. And it uses a few different touch points, which is, you know, even just rubbing your hands together, stroking downwards on your own forearms or on the cheeks and the face. And I think even learning to know that that touch helps get us back into our body and can help to soothe when we feel upset. And so even in the absence of someone else in our space, as you say in 3D, there is, of course, options for us to help ourselves in that way as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And havening is something I'm a big fan of, which you know, Emma, because we have talked about it. But it's something I talked about in my book, Body and Soul, Healed and Whole, because for people who have been harmed physically, physical touch has become a terrifying thing in so many ways. And so reorienting yourself to safe touch when you start with self-touch is so incredibly important. So havening is a practice that I teach people quite a bit and that I do quite a bit myself. And so I'm so glad that you brought that up. And of course, we'll have in the description all the ways for people to find you and learn more about that as well as the other things that you do. But that is such an important piece. And I think that we've gotten away in so many ways from the embodied experience of our faith. And I'm grateful to see more Christians leaning back into that space a bit because we are embodied souls. Like we are going to have a resurrected body at the end of days, and it will look something like us in some way because we'll be recognizable. So I don't understand how it all works. I don't claim to, but I do know that we are embodied souls and our bodies deeply matter. And I feel like as the big sea church in the West, we've gotten into what essentially is the Gnostic heresy, which is bodies don't matter. And that's not a true statement. Our bodies deeply matter, especially when there's been harm. Our body was harmed along with our soul, not just our soul, our mind. So I love that you brought out that safe havening touch for people to not only release oxytocin, but to help ground us back into our bodies when it's all hit in the fan. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And because really we need to feel safe. So a lot of times people don't feel safe either in their own body because of different experiences. They don't feel safe in relationships. They don't feel safe out in the world. And so we want to start to really create emotional safety. And for people who are married, that is, of course, number one meant to be with one another in a safe, loving relationship, as God's first creative for us. And that is not with one person being lesser than the other. It's I talk about in marriage, it should look like a three-legged race. And yes, we're going along together. And that means that if if part of the body is not doing well, so if our partner is not doing well physically, emotionally, then we have to help and tend to that part. And even then with our friends, with our family members, again, really looking for emotional safety to be able to explore one another's worlds.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I want to transition us to your work with Ahava. So tell us about them. I know you're super passionate about it.

SPEAKER_00:

So the so the Ahava way, Ahava is the transliteration of the Hebrew word for love, specifically God's love for his people. And we even see this in the book of Ezra, where Ezra goes to the Ahava River to pause and to pray. And for me, there's the imagery of water in there, but also really aligning and turning back to God's love for us, for his people. And so I have really been looking then at emotions through this alliance of have a love. And actually, if you look at the box, the little guy on the front here, this is Havi. And he he is there to remind us that God's love for us is invitational, it's expectant, and that we get to move towards him as he moves towards us. And so have it itself, it's about acknowledging and hearing from our emotions, um, aligning with God in what he wants for us, how he wants us to move through the emotions and move towards him and other people. So, my book that I've written is really about understanding our emotions. There's 60 in the card deck. I'm not going through 60 little emotions in the book of course, but really focusing in on the core emotions and really then allowing space to curiosity and deepening on that, and knowing that without love we have nothing. We were created in love for love and all things should return to love beauty, and that sounds to some people idealistic, it sounds maybe a little romantic, but it is what scripture tells us. It is the whole narrative arc of scripture, love, and that is what I'm really passionate about teaching uh and helping people to reclaim their dignity as image bearers and their calling to love as Christ love.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Those are the two commandments, right? When Jesus was asked, what are the two greatest commandments? It was love, God, love others, essentially. And that is the truth. And that again, love doesn't mean not setting boundaries, it doesn't mean not calling out sin. We are called to do all of those things, but in the right way, right? Paul says, I can have all of the right theology, all of the right things. But at the end of the day, if I don't have love, I'm literally just a bunch of noise. And so that is the underpinning of our Christian walk at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And I think that's why it's so vital that we subdue our emotions. So, you know, Adam and Eid's original calling was to grow, to multiply, and to subdue, to create order in the world. And there's participation in the creation story. And our participation then is in ordering our world. And part of that is ordering our emotional system. We are emotional beings who think. And I think most people, if they haven't examined this already, will be surprised by that and actually have been taught, whether overtly or implied, that we're thinking beings. And our job is to suppress the emotions because the only one truly we should feel is joy. And we are emotional beings. We think they are signals, they let us know that how we're experiencing any particular situation. And sometimes the emotion is just Tom, and that's okay. Sometimes it is gratitude and joy. And sometimes it's something else. But only by truly working through them, naming them and knowing them. So if Adam knew the animals by naming them, we have to know our emotions by naming them. And then we can have a different relationship with them and actually be able to have emotions be useful for us. Instead of them being a burden, they're helpful. They can be a signal that something is not right. They can be a signal that there's something missing either for me or for someone else. And I think that is the way that we're meant to work.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Well, I have loved this conversation with you so very much. And there's so much more that can be said about emotion, emotional expression, and really walking not only in love for God, but love for others. And others, by the way, includes ourselves. You know, we are to love others as we love ourselves. And I think that gets distorted in the church as well, where we are supposed to think of ourselves not at all. No, we shouldn't think of ourselves more highly than we ought, right? There's balance. And you hear the balance, the middle path in scripture all the way through. And I just want to highlight that for people. But I think that there is so much there and just learning to trust how God created us and to lean into how we're fearfully and wonderfully made. So if people want to find you, Emma, and they really will want to find you because you're amazing. How do they do that? And we'll of course have everything linked in the description.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I have a few ways to find me. The emotion monsters, there's a website for them if anyone's interested. It's e-motionmonsters.com. My own website for my business, theahavay.com, is another way where you can connect with me and Instagram at MAward Therapy. So I would love to connect with anyone who might be interested in learning or hearing more. My practice, I actually do intensive therapy, either marriage or trauma work. It's my preferred way is to really deep dive rather than just kind of coming in and out every week. And there's some just really incredible work that can be done that way. So if anyone ever wants to hear more about those things, I would be delighted to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01:

That is amazing. And we do intensives as well, and we love them because it's there's nothing worse, right, than getting to that 50-minute mark and you have just gotten into something and then you're like, all right, client, great to see you. We'll do this again next week. And the client's like, but, but, but, you know, so I encourage clients if you are able to do an intensive, that is some good, beautiful work, especially marriage intensives. Oh my gracious, I have seen just life-changing things. I've seen them in individual intensives, but also in marriage and family intensives. So definitely check out Emma for that as well. Check out us for that. And we will have all of your links in the description because people really do need to know you. And I am so grateful that you were here with us this week on Hey Tabby. Thank you so, so much for being here. Thank you, Tabby. It's been a delight. And thank you to all the listeners of Hey Tabby. Be sure to go and like and subscribe and review this podcast on your favorite platform because that really does help people find us. And we will see you here again next week. Thanks for joining me for today's episode of Hey Tabby. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to tabithawestbrook.com forward slash hey tabby. That's H-E-Y-T-A-C-I, and you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.

Head Shot

Tabitha Westbrook, LMFT-S, LCMCH-QS, LPC-S, CSAT, CCTP, CCTCP

Host