Faith & Feelings – Details, episodes & analysis

Have you ever longed to be seen and known as the person you truly are? To share anything with someone and know that you’ll be understood, accepted, and validated?

Emotional responsiveness is the single most essential ingredient of human relationships. Our relationships are built and sustained through emotional intimacy, and the feeling that someone is interested in taking time to listen and truly understand our experiences. But what happens if your parents were distant or emotionally unavailable? How did this impact you as a child? And how do these experiences continue to impact you as an adult?

To start off our new series “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents,” I talk about what emotionally maturity is (before talking about what it isn’t). This episodes highlights 15 characteristics of an emotionally mature person. I also talk about one possible reason why so many parents today are emotionally immature, and why emotional and spiritual maturity cannot be separated.

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Although we’re used to thinking of adults as more mature than their children, what if some children come into the world, and within a few years, are more emotionally mature than their parents? 

In this next Faith & Feeling’s podcast series called “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents,” we’re going to talk about the ways that emotionally immature parents impact their children’s lives. Through these episodes, you’ll discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion that come from having a parent who refuses emotional intimacy. You’ll also gain some insight into possible reasons why your parent’s emotional development stopped early.

My hope is that these episodes will bring clarity and relief as you see that what you’ve been though has caused you to have these feelings. That you’re not the only one. And that it makes sense.

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• Grab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm Fine
• Connect with me on my website 
• Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__ 

Few things impact your minute-to-minute—life more than emotional dysregulation. 

Another way to describe this term is the inability to control your insides. It’s that unexpected spiral into anger, anxiety, or insecurity. It’s what happening inside of you during that unsettling relational interaction.  It’s what’s going on when you burst into tears over losing your keys, or emotionally shut down when you feel like an outsider at a social gathering.

A huge misconception about emotional dysregulation is that these overblown or shut-down reactions happen out of nowhere. When we mistake them for isolated events, we may feel embarrassed or perhaps a little perplexed, so we just keep going. We rush past them without a second thought, or we try to move on as fast as possible. 

However, when big and seemingly illogical emotions, reactions, or behaviors come up in response to something, I’m learning that wisdom looks like slowing down and getting really curious about why we responded that way. There is always a reason why. In this episode, I highlight two key reasons why processing our own moments of dysregulation, and understanding the deeper story, is essential for our spiritual growth and emotional health.

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• Grab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm Fine
• Connect with me on my website 
• Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__ 

Have you ever walked away from a conversation or situation, feeling bewildered or embarrassed, and thought to yourself, “Why on earth did I do (or say) that?”

We all have those disproportionate emotional responses to situations that typically wouldn’t affect us in such dramatic ways. You know in your head that your reaction was not rational, but your body was living out a different story. The counseling world has a term for these responses: emotional dysregulation. Many of us don’t realize that these revved-up reactions tell a story—a story about something we’ve lived. They point to a deep-seated something that has gone unaddressed in our hearts. 

In our next podcast series called “Why On Earth Did I Do (Or Say) That?”, I’ll be inviting several guests to share a recent story of dysregulation…and together, we trace the deeper story. My hope is that these conversations will create a greater awareness, compassion, and curiosity about your own moments of dysregulation, and what might be underneath. 

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•  Watch this episode on YouTube
• Grab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm Fine
• Connect with me on my website 
• Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__ 

Sometimes suffering lasts…and where is God in this? How do we find joy, hope, and love when life becomes undone? 

When life doesn’t make sense, we need a theology of suffering that helps us expand to hold the brokenness & beauty of our world together. Over the last few months, we’ve been hearing from 8 wise, kind, and deeply authentic people about their stories of pain & sorrow, and what they’ve been learning about hope, lament, joy, and courage when life get really hard. In this episode, I wrap up our  “When Life Doesn’t Make Sense” series by sharing some of my reflections on the ways hardship shapes us, why the story we tell about our suffering matters, and how lament invites us back to a place of belonging in the bigger story that God is telling with our lives.

*Some of the concepts of this episode were taken and adapted from The Theology and Psychology of Suffering by Tyler Staton.

• Last week's episode: The Things My Eating Disorder Taught Me
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• Grab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm Fine
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• Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__ 

Over the last 6 years of recovering from an eating disorder, I’ve known one thing to be true: mental health struggles are difficult to describe, and they can be exhausting to live with. It’s a daily waking up to an inner battle that can be overwhelmingly unnoticed by others, and there is a certain strength that is required to endure pain that lingers, especially when it’s unseen.

As we wrap up our second podcast series “When Life Doesn’t Make Sense,” I share one of my stories when life hasn’t made sense: receiving an eating disorder diagnosis. Whether your story holds a similar diagnosis or a different kind of addiction/mental health struggle, or if you’re listening on behalf of a loved one, this episode is for you. I put some words to what mental health struggles can feel like, what my recovery journey has looked liked, and what my eating disorder has taught me along the way. I hope you’ll listen in.

*In this episode, I mention suicide/suicidal ideation. If you’re thinking about suicide and need to talk to someone, call or text 988. If you are worried about someone, you too can call or text 988 to get resources. Remember: you matter. Please listen with care.

• Get Faith & Feeling's weekly resource email
•  Watch this episode on YouTube
• Grab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm Fine
• Connect with me on my website 
• Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__ 

I recently heard loneliness described as “an agonizing hunger.”

It is possible to be in a room full of people and to feel more lonely than if the room was empty. It is to be unseen. And being unseen by those close to you is, in some ways, worse than having no one see you. This form of loneliness has a name: emotional loneliness, and can be experienced by anyone, regardless of your marital status.

In this episode, my friend Carley joins me to share about her experience of emotional loneliness, woven throughout her story of singleness. By inviting us into the ache of this story, Carley beautifully extends an invitation to all of us: that the very place where we feel most deeply alone is where we can most fully receive the welcome of God. I hope you’ll listen in.

• Get a copy of Lindsey Gibson's book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
• Learn more about Richard Schwartz's books No Bad Parts & You Are the One You've Been Waiting For
• Get Faith & Feeling's weekly resource email
•  Watch this episode on YouTube
• Grab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm Fine
• Connect with me on my website 
• Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__  

Have you ever poured out your feelings to God, before editing your words? 

So many of us have internalized a narrative that stuffing down our emotions is strength. As children, we may have witnessed how “being fine” was praised and celebrated…and in some Christian contexts, even called spiritual maturity. So, we grew into adulthood having learned to disconnect from our own inner cries. 

In this episode, my friend Lauren joins me share about a recent miscarriage. By inviting us into her own grief and pain, she beautifully models why we have to let ourselves notice, name, and feel our emotions. It is the cost of being emotionally alive. It’s the cost, even, of holiness. Pouring out our big feelings to God is how we experience his presence in our pain. This takes tremendous courage. But, as Lauren helps us understand, unless we make space for our emotions, we cannot know the depths of God’s love. I hope you’ll listen in.

• Check out Lauren's books Unstacking Your Grief Tower and What Made That Feel So Hard?
• Learn more about the organization that Lauren founded TCK Training
• Get Faith & Feeling's weekly resource email
•  Watch this episode on YouTube
• Grab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm Fine
• Connect with me on my website 
• Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__ 

The image of the family is so deeply imprinted onto us: pressed into our minds, hearts, and sense of who we are in the world. What do we do when our families are sources of pain or confusion… or worse, harm, neglect or abuse? In this episode, my friend Ashley joins me to share about a painful relationship with a parent. She puts words to the long-lasting impact that absent or abusive parenting can have on our relationships with ourselves, others, and God.

Ashley sifts through these experiences with such wisdom, care, and surprising gentleness, inviting us into her own internal process of making sense of her childhood, naming how she’s been wronged, and offering compassion to the younger versions of herself who ached to be safe, held, and loved. She bears witness to the costly pursuit of learning and unlearning ways operating in the world that are no longer necessary, and of trying to live between the love you understood and the love that every child deserves. I hope you’ll listen in.

• Get Faith & Feeling's weekly resource email
•  Watch this episode on YouTube
• Grab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm Fine
• Connect with me on my website 
• Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__ 

What do you do when it feels like God broke His promise to you?

Grief and pain come to us all, and sometimes they come through shattered dreams: when life crumbles, and with it, the God you thought you knew. In the disorientation and confusion of what grief can be, we can experience a death without a funeral. Those unseen, unclear deaths of ideals, expectations, hopes, and even versions of ourselves. 

In this episode, my friend Melissa joins me to share her about her family’s move to Togo, West Africa as missionaries…in which they staked everything they had…to the excruciating decision to return to the US just a few years later. She puts words to the visceral feelings of failure, shame, and not-enoughness that can surface when your whole world “dies.” By guiding us through her own messy, interior journey, Melissa beautifully models how staying awake to these deaths can be the crucible in which new life and spiritual wholeness is birthed. I hope you’ll listen in.

• Get Faith & Feeling's weekly resource email
•  Watch this episode on YouTube
• Grab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm Fine
• Connect with me on my website 
• Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__