God is at work and He's calling His people to rise in truth. Truth Rising is a powerful new documentary from Focus on the Family and the Coulson Center. See how ordinary Christians choose courage in a culture that needs. truth. Watch Truth Rising today and find out how you can become an agent of restoration and hope.
Visit TruthRising.com today. That's TruthRising.com. I often say that. It's our trauma that we're living out of rather than God's truth. And I think part of the journey of emotional health for us as adults is to learn to replace what we're believing from trauma and swap it out for God's truth.
Deborah Falleda is a licensed counselor and mom, and she's our guest today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. We'll be talking about the foundations of an emotionally healthy life. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller. It's funny.
I thought you were going to say a licensed mother and counselor, but that's great. I think that's either one. But Deborah is such a fan favorite. Every time she's on the broadcast and podcast, you all love her. Big response.
And it's good. She connects and she knows her stuff. You know, talk about emotional health and well-being. Every marriage and family starts with mom and dad, husband and wife as individuals. Then you come together and you're bringing it all into the marriage.
Gene and I have certainly experienced that. You and Dina have experienced that. And then you got to start working things out. Yeah, and then you have kids to just intensify all of that.
So we're going to be talking about general well-being in the whole family. Certainly it starts with mom and dad, but it extends to the kids. And Deborah has been here a number of times, as Jim said. She's written a number of books. And the one we're going to be talking about today, actually two, but the first is Are You Really Okay?
The second is a delightful little children's book that Deborah has written called Any Day in. Emotions. And we've got both of those available and details about Deborah and her work, her ministry, on our website, and the links are in the show notes. Deborah, welcome back. It's always good to have you.
So good to be back with the two of you. Oh, it's fun. And John, your husband's out in the audience. Eric and John, good to see you. I know you can't respond, but you're going to make sure everything she says is true, correct?
I'll just be looking for the head nod from the gallery. But Deborah, it is good to have you back, and people do connect with you. You've done a wonderful job in your profession of counselor, being able to capture, you know, capture those things that God created to finish that sentence. But, you know, one of the things, so many Christians, we tend to not want to lean into the design, and we are suspect of psychology. And there's egregious things in psychology.
But when you blend it with God's nature and how God has formed the human body, the human mind, emotions come from him. These are his things, right? It makes it so much easier to understand, I think, as a layperson that reads literature on psychology, et cetera. Is that what you have found as well? I mean, It must be good to be a believer and go through the dynamics of studying what God has created.
Yeah, it's amazing because God designed emotions. And I think sometimes in Christian culture in particular, we say faith over feelings or faith versus feelings. But really, feelings are the SOS system that God gave us and wants to use feelings to tell us, pay attention, pay attention. There's something here that I want you to pay attention to.
So when we take feelings, And when we combine them with God's truth. It takes us to a new level of health. You have a story that we've touched on before, and we'll kick it off here in the book, about your college car.
Now, it's kind of funny. I hadn't thought about Jesus driving a car that acted like yours. He could probably wave his hand and take care of this, but this car sounded like it was freakishly had a mind of its own. What happened with that? I had this wild lemon of a car in college, and it was constantly breaking down.
It was constantly like doing the craziest things. The alarm would go off. The windshield wipers would just start to wipe out of nowhere. The locks wouldn't work. One time I went in to try to unlock the car, put the key in the car, because this was back in the day where you had to use a key.
And the whole lock cylinder came out on my key.
So it was one of those things, and I could have dealt with those symptoms in a superficial way. I could have taken off the windshield wipers. I could have muffled the alarm. I could have taped up the windows that kept rolling down. Auto windows going up and down.
They're going up and down, up and down. And sometimes while I was driving, this would happen. I could have dealt with those things superficially, but it wasn't getting to the root of the problem until I took it to the mechanic and he said, hey, there's some wires crossed here. A friend of mine had tried to help me install a stereo system, cross the wires, and it was a whole mess. And I think oftentimes.
In our lives, we've got these things going on above the surface. We've got relationship issues, we've got anger issues, we've got addictions, we've got struggles. And we try to deal with it superficially instead of getting to the root. We try to tape it. We try to muffle it.
We try to do things externally, but we're not getting to the root of what's really going on underneath the surface, where the wires have been crossed to say. And when we begin to do that, to me, that is the whole concept of emotional health is getting underneath the surface and inviting God to reveal what he wants to heal. You know, I'm so impressed with the way scripture gives us metaphors. And like that, the car metaphor, same kind of modern day scripture analysis, I think. You have a great formula for understanding emotional health.
You say that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are all connected. I think we. Understand that or implicitly get that. But what's the distinction between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors? How do they all interact and work together?
Yeah, if you want to go on a journey of becoming healthy, Keep that formula in your mind. I find that it's easiest to focus on the feeling first because oftentimes that's what we notice first. I'm feeling anxious. I'm feeling worried. I'm feeling overwhelmed.
I'm feeling insecure. When a feeling starts to come up and it's exaggerated or overwhelming, that's a great time to stop and think: what might be The underlying belief system here. Because when you look at that formula, thoughts lead to feelings, which lead to behaviors. Behind those feelings, there's a thought process that's so automatic. You don't even realize you're thinking those thoughts.
Sometimes there are thoughts you've been thinking. From childhood, their thought patterns. I'm not good enough. I'll never do anything right. If those are some of your underlying thoughts, you are going to feel insecure.
And when you feel insecure, it's going to affect what you do.
So, thoughts lead to feelings, which lead to behaviors. And oftentimes, the easiest place for us as human beings to begin looking is when you see a big feeling come up. And that's why these conversations are so important because when we talk about emotional health in the family. You cannot Teach your kids emotional health until you've started grasping it for yourself. Research shows us that the number one way that we teach our children anything.
Is through modeling, not through our words, our lessons. Our lessons are great. But what really matters is modeling that behavior.
So when we're able to grasp some of these things. It makes such a difference in how we show our kids how to be emotionally healthy. You know, the scripture says take your thoughts captive.
So it doesn't say you're not going to have these thoughts. It's what you do with them to take them captive. And then hopefully that restrains. Bad behavior, poor behavior, bad feelings, etc. You know, Deborah, I don't think you cover this in the book, so this is extra credit in terms of the question.
But when you look at social media, if you do, I mean, just to be acquainted and to be knowledgeable, I'm scrolling through YouTube and I kind of got rid of TikTok because that was not happening for me. But scrolling through there, you see the most bizarre behavior. I mean, it's exactly the negative of what you're talking about. It's like unfiltered thought leading to expressions of behavior that you're going, oh my gosh, this woman's like 35. I would not let my 12-year-old act like this.
What about that modeling that we're seeing through social media and its impact on 13, 14, 15-year-olds? Honestly, that's why it's all the more important. That we take the role of modeling seriously. Because when we're silent, when we're unintentional, when we're not deliberate to model what we need to model to our families, someone else is modeling it on our behalf.
Someone would fill that void for ourselves.
Someone is into the silence. You know, I see it as not just a responsibility, but but a privilege to be able to learn it myself. Practice it myself. Not perfect it, because we're not perfect, but to practice it in order to show my children: this is what emotional health looks like. This is what it looks like when you're struggling with your feelings.
This is what it looks like to unpack some of those negative thoughts and align them with God's truth. Going back to that verse in Romans, another verse where it says, you know, do not conform to the patterns of this world. Don't just do what everyone is telling you to do on social media. Do not conform to the patterns of this world. How?
By the renewing of your mind, transform your mind. It begins with your mind because your thoughts lead to your feelings and your feelings lead to your behaviors. Yeah, that's really, really good. There are, you know, some occasional good examples that you'll see out there, you know, people handling stress or confrontation in a good way. I tend to pass those on to my boys and say, check out how this guy handled his Road Rager.
And it's a good example, you know, far too much of the bad example, but there are even good clips of people being smart. You know, being right, being diligent, maybe even being Christ-like in how they respond to confrontation, which is always good too. You know, I, Gene, and I, you may not know this, John. We watch a lot of Jeopardy. Do you?
So I'm going to put this in the form of all these issues in your mind. I think I would sit there and we even tape it.
So we'll watch three or four episodes in a row. There you go.
So canoe. But in that context, I'll frame this in the form of a question. What is the shortest scripture in the Bible? And you would say, What is Jesus wept? That's my son's favorite verse because we have our kids memorize scripture on a regular basis.
And how does that show that emotional stability? That's the best verse ever. It's only two words long. And how does that show the emotional stability of Jesus that he could show that kind of emotion? I love that verse.
And Jesus wept twice in scripture: once when he looked on the city of Jerusalem and he wept on their behalf, and then also at the death of his friend Lazarus, he grieved, even though he. knew what he was about to do. He was about to raise him from the dead. But he still allowed himself to feel the feelings of grief because feelings are God's gift to connect us to God. And to others.
If we don't have feelings, we don't have a motivation to connect to people, to connect to God. Feelings, when done right in God's way, draw us to God and they draw us to others. And you know the verse after Jesus swept, he looked up to heaven. And he gave thanks to the Father. He took the feeling of grief.
And instead of running to social media, running to alcohol, running to a numbing device. He allowed himself to feel grief and then he ran to the father. And that's what emotions are meant to do. They're meant to draw us to God and to others.
Well, that's beautiful. What a great place to remind people. If you're struggling in some area of your life, we have great Christian counselors here at Focus on the Family that will arrange a phone call with you and even refer you on to other counselors in your area. We keep a robust database of counselors all around the country. They go through a pretty strenuous vetting process that we apply to them as well to make sure that we feel good about those folks.
And that's all free.
So just call us if you need help. Yeah, we're a phone call away. It's 800, the letter A and the word family. And we'll also have further details about this Focus on Family network of Christian counselors on our website. We'll link to that in the show notes.
You know, Deborah, I so appreciate that observation of Jesus. Obviously, somebody saw that. They wrote it down in scripture for us, right? Right.
So he was also vulnerable that way. He didn't just go into a remote location. He allowed someone to observe him weeping and then praying to the Lord. In that context, Stereotypically, men struggle with that kind of expression. We don't want to be seen with tears rolling down our eyes.
I know it's ridiculous. You're the counselor. And there are probably some women that feel that way as well, like showing it is weakness. And you're saying, no, it's actually connecting you to something deep inside. What are some of those warning signs that there is emotional imbalance, struggle?
Again, being a man, I can think only of my experience that we struggle with that to be able to recognize something's dysfunctional. Yeah. You're right, a lot of people do struggle with this and I think People assume it's a personality thing.
Well, I'm just this way, I don't feel big emotions. But when you go back into your history, especially if you go back into your history with a counselor, there's a good chance there have been things that you have been taught, things that you have believed about emotions, experiences that you've been through that have taught you to mute your emotions, to turn them down a little bit.
Sometimes trauma will do that to us. When you go through traumatic things, in order to survive them, It's almost like your body naturally turns down that heightened emotion because it's too much. The problem is, if we don't ever go back and face some of those things, our emotions stay on mute. And some might say, well, what's wrong with your emotions staying on mute? It feels pretty good.
But if your sorrow is on mute, so is your joy. And so if you can't feel the negative feelings deeply, There's a good chance you're also struggling to feel the positive ones deeply as well. And, like I said a few minutes ago, God wants us to use those feelings to help us connect. To others? To help us connect to him.
Sometimes when our feelings are muted, we struggle in relationships because people don't feel as connected to us and they don't understand why. But oftentimes, it's that deficit. In our ability to feel our emotions. Yeah. You know, again, another common stereotype.
So I get it, don't be triggered if this is touching a nerve for you. But a lot of husbands and wives in the marital counseling that we do here, you know, wives will feel like husbands are detached from their emotions. I'm trying to get to you and you're just not present. And this can become one of the great problems in the relationship: the wife doesn't feel intimate connection. And the husband's going, I don't even speak that language.
What are you talking about? I do a good job providing. I show up. I don't have affairs. I'm a good guy.
And she's saying, Yeah, but I want more of you. Speak to both sides of that. How do you deliver as the husband? And how do you. Back off a little for the wife.
I love that you used the phrase, I don't speak that language, because I think what people need to understand is that. Part of this is a skill set. It's a language that you learn. And maybe it's a language that you've never learned before. But it's a language that's going to help your relationships.
It's a language that God Himself spoke. Jesus himself speaks. And wants us to learn.
So when we see it that way, I think it's even more motivating. It's not just, oh, my wife just wants me to be more emotionally aware. God designed me to be more emotionally aware. And You know, we live in a culture that sort of dumbs it down for men, unfortunately. They make men believe that they're not very emotional.
They even celebrate their lack of emotion because it's perceived as strength rather than insight and awareness. And so I think I'm grateful that the narrative has started to change. I'm grateful, you know, I have three boys and a girl. And let me tell you from experience, they are just as emotional as her. It's just.
How we parent them either draws that out and teaches them how to use those emotions in a healthy way, or it suppresses some of those things.
So to the husband, There is a skill to be learned, and this is an exciting journey because God wants to take you deeper.
Well, and in part, you know, we're comfortable there in that emotional hole. You're right. You know, we get really comfortable. And, you know, I'm speaking somewhat out of my own experience here. And, you know, it.
This is what it means to work at your marriage for good things. You know, that you need to connect, and we got to get out of our comfort zone, and we got to stretch ourselves a little bit.
So, again, it could be the wife that's in that spot, but the point being is set your mind to doing better and learning that language. That's what you're saying. And I totally agree. And for the wife, I want to say this. Oftentimes it's not a deficit of love.
It's a deficit of skill. But that's interpreted that way as a deficit of love.
So to remind yourself, this isn't a deficit of love. He loves me. He just doesn't have this skill set. And we're going to work together to grow and get there.
So I think just even telling yourself that can be really helpful. Yeah, no, it's really good. And here's the other thing that I've learned: some of that. difficulty in the marriage then is her attempt to pull him out.
So some of the antagonism is to communicate. Is that fair? Do you know what I'm saying? In other words, in order for me to get to you a little deeper emotionally, I'm going to enter into a battle with you so I can hear what you're feeling. Yeah.
And that's unhealthy, but I get it. Exactly. You don't want it to turn into a battle, even with our spouses, with our children, like, tell me what you're feeling. But we want to be deliberate in creating safe spaces that invite people in, not force them in. Speaking of that, we're really touching on triggers.
I mentioned that word a minute ago, and that could be kind of a buzzword for all of us. But what are triggers and what does an emotional trigger look like? It's my favorite subject. We all have them, right? We all have them.
Triggers are my favorite subject, and I think it's because I see so many of them in the counseling setting. Are they predictable? No, do you see that? You don't necessarily know what's going to trigger someone because different people have different sore spots.
So, let me kind of explain how that works with this analogy. I was leaving the house with the kids and I wasn't really paying attention. I was rushing. You know how it is. It's like an Olympic event trying to get the kids out of the house in time.
And I hit my shoulder on the coat rack that was protruding out and it hurt. I was like, oh, that's going to leave a bruise. And sure enough, there was a black and blue spot. There was a sore spot there later in the day. My husband comes home to give me a hug.
Hi, honey, how's your day? And he touches the sore spot without realizing that it was there. And I reacted out. That hurts. And kind of pushed him away.
He didn't call. Cause the sore spot, but he pushed on it. And to me, that's exactly what triggers our emotional triggers, are these wounds that we carry. From the past. And people push on them in intimate, close relationships.
If there's no intimacy in your life, and by intimacy, I mean close relationships with your children, with your spouse, with friends, with family, if there's nobody intimate and nearby, they're not gonna push on your sore spots. You're gonna feel great. But when people start to come close in proximity, They push on those sore spots without even realizing it. Those wounds that we carry of rejection, of insecurity, of pain. And when people push on them, that's when you see a big emotional reaction.
I call it an exaggerated emotional response. And remember, we talked a little while ago about thoughts lead to feelings, which lead to behaviors. The trigger. is the feeling. The big feeling.
And so that's where God wants us to stop and do a little work. I'm smiling because I think husbands call it the what? You know, you just say something. Where did that come from? Pretty benign, but she may react.
In this over-aggressive response, and you're trying to figure out what did I just say.
Now, husbands do it too. Oh, I know, I know, I know. But I'm only a husband, I can only feel it from that perspective. But it's interesting. I definitely see it in husbands and wives.
For example, I was just working with this couple, and every time the wife asked him a question, like, well, are you going to do that differently? Or are we going to go there? He almost felt like she was questioning, attacking him, saying, You're not good enough. You don't know enough. That's not what she was saying.
She was just asking a question. And he would react in anger. And so it was like, What is the trigger underneath the surface here? What is the wounding? Yeah.
And oftentimes, it's God revealing to us what He wants to heal.
So when you see a trigger in your life, when you see an over-exaggerated response, you should stop. Our tendency is to say, Well, she triggered me. He triggered me. My husband triggered me. My wife triggered me.
My boss triggered me. But the question is: why was I triggered? What is God wanting to reveal? that he wants to heal? What is the emotional sore spot here?
That's where God can do some really good work.
Well, it's a magnificent blind spot. You're right. Because it's hard for us. with those triggers, with those wounds, to know in the moment The question, what's happening more deeply in me that causes me to react that way? And that's why it's important to review the film.
Yeah, to look for patterns. When you see these reactions, every time my wife asks me a question, I start to feel tense and anxious and upset.
Well, okay, let's review the film here. Just like, you know, in sports, they always review the film. Like, what could we have done differently? It's important for us to review the film in our own life as well, not just to move on blindly. Yeah.
Would you say this is generally true, that a wife, a mom who has gone through childhood trauma of some sort, whatever it might be, emotional abuse, physical abuse, something, they tend to. Have more excessive worry for obvious reasons. Absolutely. And not only that, sometimes we think of big T trauma like abuse, neglect.
Sometimes it's small traumas over a long period of time. For example, I think of the woman who I worked with who took care of her ailing mother. Her mom was always sick. Her mom was struggling. There was always a diagnosis.
There was cancer. There were so many different things. Over a period of time, you don't think of that as a big T trauma. There was no abuse. It was a healthy Christian family.
But the fact that there was always something, there was always something that could go wrong. Imagine what that does to your nervous system. Absolutely. You're always waiting for the shoe to drop, and then you carry that with you through the rest of life. I often say that.
It's our trauma that we're living out of rather than God's truth. And I think part of the journey of emotional health for us as adults. It is to learn to replace what we're believing from trauma and swap it out. Wow. Like the Lord, go to the Father.
And give thanks. Yeah. What does the Bible say? What does God want me to believe? I think it was UCLA that you noted in the book came out with a study that showed that couples spend about 35 minutes a week in meaningful conversation.
So what are some of those things as a knowledgeable professional That you've done in your own family for you and John, for example, to do the best you can do with that kind of intimate communication. Yeah, so number one, it starts with us checking in with ourselves before God. Like you have to have insight, you have to make space to check in on your emotional world. Number two, Is John and I connecting on that level?
So every Sunday night, we have our check-in night. 9 p.m., where we sit and talk. We check in. How are you doing personally with your personal life, your sins, your struggles? What have you been feeling?
What is God teaching you? How are we doing in our marriage? We go deeper and we make it an intentional practice. It has transformed our marriage every single week without fail. And it's, you know, we started it about seven years into our marriage, and we've been married for almost 18 years.
Now it has made such a difference. And out of that, out of the overflow of that, number three, we can connect with our kids around the dinner table. How are you guys feeling? What were your highs and lows? We make emotional conversation a part of our everyday life.
It's not just when something horrible happens, it's a part of our everyday routine because we want our kids, boys and girls, to know. That this is how God created you. God gave you emotions. Let's use them to connect with Him and to connect with others. Yeah, which is the point.
And what a great first day. We're going to come back next time and talk about a book you've written for children. But this is great. I think everybody's feeling that sense of why so many people love to hear from you. You just hit it and you apply the scriptural truth to it.
And I so appreciate you being with us. Thanks for listening. Thanks for it. What an honor to come back again. It's so good to be with you.
So good. I think every rational person should want to get a copy of Are You Really Okay? Getting Real About Who You Are, How You're Doing, and Why It Matters. And we make it so easy. You know, we're doing ministry here.
We're listener supported, viewers supported. And so if you can, just make a gift of any amount. We'll send you a copy of the book along with the children's book we're going to do. We'll do a bundle for you, both for you as an adult and then a children's book version of the same theme. And that's our way of saying thank you.
Thank you for being part of the ministry, and together we can then help more people. Yeah, get your bundle of books, Any Day Emotion, and Are You Really Okay from Us here when you make a generous donation? You can do that through the link below or call 1-800, the letter A and the word family. 800-232-6459. And thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
I'm John Fuller, inviting you back next time as we continue the conversation with Deborah and once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. God is at work, and He's calling His people to rise in truth. Truth Rising is a powerful new documentary from Focus on the Family and the Coulson Center. see how ordinary Christians choose courage in a culture that needs Truth. Watch Truth Rising today and find out how you can become an agent of restoration and hope.
Visit TruthRising.com today. That's TruthRising.com. Yeah.
