Emotions Feel too Big and Overwhelming? 3 Steps to a Peace-Filled Mind

Walking through a hard time and need to know how to deal with big emotions? Keep reading!

What can you do when you’re walking through hard times and begin to feel stressed, overwhelmed, frustrated, and exhausted? Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were feeling so many emotions that you had absolutely no idea what to do about it? 

Maybe you’re like me and you stuffed and stuffed and then one day you blew up like a volcano all over your favorite people who didn’t deserve it. Well, I want you to know that no matter how big your emotions feel, it is possible to find peace no matter what is going on. 

Today, I will share with you the coaching framework I use when working with my clients to help them find peace, calm, and rest when things are out of control and have been hard for a long time. 

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The Peace-Filled Mind™ Framework will help you learn how to process your emotions and feelings, get control of your thoughts, calm your mind down, and change or find new beliefs when you need to.

In my personal life and working with clients, overwhelm seems to be the big thing we all have in common. We all feel overwhelmed by something. Usually, when we say overwhelm, overwhelm isn’t the thing that’s causing us to be overwhelmed. There’s something else underneath that.

So I started trying to figure out what was actually causing all of this stress. What I learned is that there are a lot of emotions that often get labeled as overwhelm. What I began to do in my own life was to dig in deep to figure out, label, and identify what emotions I was actually feeling.

Asking how those feelings were affecting me and if it was something I wanted to keep feeling. I started learning how to manage my emotions and change the way I reacted and responded to certain situations. 

This became my coaching framework that I use with my clients. Today I want to give you the three steps I go through with everyone I work with. It’s going to help you go from feeling so overwhelmed, thinking nothing’s ever going to get better to understanding that you don’t have to stay there and it doesn’t have to control your life. 

How to Deal with Big Emotions Step #1: Cast Your Cares

The very first step in this framework is learning to cast your cares. 2 Peter says that you are to cast your cares on Jesus because he cares for you. He is where you can take whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re dealing with because he loves you. 

He is going to be there for you to help you on this journey through life, through all the ups and downs, even when it seems hard and possible. The first thing that you have to do when you are struggling is to get out a piece of paper, or find a friend, and just let it all out. 

Let out everything that you’re feeling, everything that’s going on, everything that’s bothering you, and everything that’s on your heart. You’ve got to get it all out because if you keep it balled up and you’re walking around with it, that is when you begin to feel like you’re going to lose it. 

When you feel like you can’t take one more thing or you’ll snap or even give up. That comes from taking on and holding on to too much. You are not meant to carry your burdens all by yourself. God created mankind to be in fellowship and community with one another. 

He has created us to be in fellowship and community with him.  Many times this overwhelm comes from trying to do it yourself. When you can share that and be open, honest, and vulnerable about where you are, what you’re dealing with, and how it’s affecting you it’s going to help you take a step towards peace. 

I kid you not, when I work with clients, just this one step alone brings so much relief to them. They’re just able to finally get it all out. It’s almost like they can finally like exhale. You’ve been holding your breath this whole time and finally, you can just let it all out. You’re not holding it all in your heart, you’re not walking around with it all in your mind. 

How to Deal with Big Emotions Step #2: Take Your Thoughts Captive

You’ve finally gotten it out, and so the next step is to begin to take your thoughts captive. Scripture says to take all of your thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ. Here is why, a lot of times you have beliefs and thoughts that are causing you to be afraid, anxious, worried, and stressed. 

You can’t always control the events and the circumstances that you’re in. If you can learn to control or change your thoughts and what you’re believing, it’s going to trickle down and you’re going to begin to change your emotions. 

The easiest way that I know to do this is to get all your thoughts and your feelings out of your head and ask yourself what thoughts and emotions you are having. Then begin to find the connection between your thoughts and your emotions. 

You’ve got to identify what your thoughts are and then look at that thought and ask if it’s true. That’s always the first thing. Is this true? Is this thought true? If it is okay, cool. If it’s not, then you’ve got to take some time to find the truth so that you can begin to change that belief, 

How to Deal with Big Emotions Step #3: Renewing Your Mind

This leads to the third step, which is renewing your mind. The best way to do this is always by grounding yourself in the Word of God. Telling yourself the truth over and over again until you believe it. 

Until that belief or that truth takes the place of the lie or the thought that wasn’t serving you well. right, I do this in different ways with my clients. But we start with my coaching tool, the Peaceful Mind Map™ to go through all three of these steps. 

You’ll take the feelings that you uncover when you’re casting your cares and put them on the mind map. Then take a look at it and figure out what you’re thinking and doing with those feelings. Finally, ask yourself if you’re happy with that. 

If you’re not, then we go down and we begin to look at what you want to happen instead. Then, what thoughts and feelings do you need to have to get to that thing? 

For example, If I want to feel good about myself when I look in the mirror. To love my body. I’ve got to make some changes. If I’ve been telling myself that I’m unattractive, that I’m ugly, and that my body is ruined I probably feel insecure. 

I might also feel shame or guilt for not taking care of myself in the past. I’ve got to then figure out the flip side of that. If I want to look at myself and have good things to say so I feel secure, confident,  and beautiful I need to figure out the things that I need to do to get there. 

I’ve got to stop telling myself these ugly things. I’ve got to tell myself I’m beautiful and strong. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I’ve got to tell myself the truth until I look at myself and believe it. 

I’ve got to decide what needs to be done to get there. Maybe change my diet and eat more vegetables and protein? Do I need to go to the doctor to address any health concerns going on?
All of that stuff goes into the mind map and then that becomes what is used to do more mindset work. 

Once you identify those emotions and you have identified those thoughts you have to change those thoughts. You identify where you want to go. Then we can start digging in and taking a look at what’s getting in the way of being where you want to be. 

This is an ongoing thing. You’re always going to have thoughts, you’re always going to have emotions. Once you understand the basis of this and you have your tool, you can then use it over and over again in your life. 

I hope that when we’re done working together, you have all of the tools that you need to have a routine of journaling, prayer, scripture, and everything that you need to help you consistently process those emotions and form new beliefs when you need to.

Other Helpful Resources:

• Feel Like Nothing Will Ever Get Better? Don’t Throw in The Towel Just Yet
• 5 Ways to Cope as an Overwhelmed Christian Empath
• Not Sure What to Do? How to Seek God In Your Christian Walk

Learning how to deal with big emotions will help you find peace during hard times.