How to Stop Emotional Spiraling in our Winter Seasons → A More Beautiful Life Collective

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Today, we’re going to talk about emotional spiraling, recognizing triggers that start the spiral, and determining the glimmers that can get us out of those situations. Emotional Spiraling happens when we start to put idols above God – and we go down the sin/shame spiral that leads us away from him. Without God, we will go through a winter season in our faith. It’s important to recognize triggers – or first steps in that spiral. And, glimmers or things that stop the emotional spiral and get us back on track.

S2E7 – Is it biblical to want to create a life you love? What does the Bible say about pleasure? – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast

In this episode, we are focusing on part 1 of our series, which is about creating a life we love and cultivating our hearts for God. Before we think about how to create a life we love, we have to figure out if we even should. Is it biblical to create a life we love? What does the Bible say about pleasure? We are going to be looking at some history and then turning our focus to the theology of pleasure in the Bible. Spoiler: Pleasure isn't evil. In this show, I'll explain why. https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/is-it-biblical-to-want-to-create-a-life-you-love-what-does-the-bible-say-about-pleasure/ Get a copy of our FREE guide to creating a life you love here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.ck.page/0398c49016 – Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode: I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can learn a little bit more about me here. While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast, A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies. I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources at A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop. Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.

This is Episode 26 of Season 1 of A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast. I’m so glad you are joining me today. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast, and leave a rating and review wherever you listen to podcast. If you subscribe to the blog at the link below, you can get a copy of our Winter Season Survival Guide. This is part of our series on Winter Seasons.

I walked through the chill of late autumn on campus, the brilliant golds, reds, and oranges already having faded to a dusty, dirty brown. The leaves crunched underfoot as I walked quickly – headphones on, music blasting – on my way to class.

I was worried and was glad to be walking because I felt anxious and upset. Exams were coming up, I needed to pack up my things for the winter break, and on top of it all, my roommates and I just couldn’t find a solution to an issue. Every day was a battle. I felt myself spiraling between worry, shame, and feelings of guilt.

A gusty wind picked up the leaves and twirled them along with my hair – the swirling matching my thoughts and emotions. Turmoil.

“Cayce! Wait up!”

I turned and looked back, and I saw a very welcome face. One of my friends smiled and asked me how my day was going. I broke down and told her how I was feeling. She said something that made me think: “I knew something was going on. You just looked so angry and upset!”

We need friends to do this for us. To stop us in the midst of our anxious thoughts and make us think. To stop our emotional spiraling. To bring a smile to our faces.

Once we made it to the building where my classes were, I stopped and said goodbye. I felt lighter and more carefree. Just a few moments with a friend was all it took to change my attitude about my whole day. I was spiraling down, triggered by stress and deadlines, but the glimmer of friendships stopped the spiral in its tracks. It lifted me out of the depression I was headed toward.

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This is part 2 of our series on winter seasons. In the last episode, we talked about some of the causes of winter seasons and how to weather those seasons well. The most crucial thing we can do is to store up and cling to the truth during those seasons. Truth sustains us. It is the nutrient that gives us life.

The Winter Seasons of Our Own Creation

We all will face the winter seasons. It’s just a part of life. We know that winter seasons aren’t something that we can control. They aren’t even really things we should try to avoid.

However, winter seasons can sometimes be things we cause. I recognize that this is a hard truth because we don’t like feeling responsible for our own sadness. It’s easier to blame our circumstances rather than ourselves. And, all of our lives and seasons are unique. Sometimes, it truly is outside of our control – sickness, terrible accidents, acts of God. These are things we can’t control but may still cause great suffering in our lives. However, sometimes we can cause our own winter seasons.

Some winter seasons that are in our control could be:

Seasons of sin
Seasons of doubt
Seasons of busyness

These three different seasons are created by our own actions and choices. When are living in these seasons, we prioritize the sin, the doubt, and the busyness. This can lead to an eroding of our relationship with God. Whenever we choose to make something else more important than God, we are choosing an idol over him.

Then, after we have continued to prioritize other things than God, we begin to experience emotional spiraling, as things begin to fall apart without God. The peace we could feel with him is absent. We begin headed down a path we don’t want to go towards.

I believe a winter season in our lives is directly related to our relationship with God. If we are far from God, we will go through a winter season in our lives. We won’t see much growth. Ultimately, our faith and our happiness will be affected. When we are far from God, we will not have the joy of the Lord.

So, if we choose an idol over God, we will eventually go through a winter season. It may not happen immediately but it will happen all the same. Just like a rip tide, you won’t even realize how far you’ve veered off the path till you open your eyes and see your belongings on the shore off in the distance. And, just like a rip tide, getting out of these Winter seasons that we create can be all the more difficult. We experience emotional spiraling, spinning out of control.

When we go through a season of sickness or loss, we feel the pain of the brokenness of the world, but we are not far from God. Yes, experiencing sickness or loss can cause you to become bitter and reject God (during the winter season itself), but oftentimes, we actually grow closer to God during these seasons. We recognize our deep need and dependence on him through the seasons.

When we go through a winter season because of sin, doubt, or busyness, we are starting at a different point. The winter season is caused mostly because we have placed something before God. To overcome the issue, we have to start at the root problem, which means we have to deal with our own pride. We have to say we were wrong. We have to get rid of sin, doubt, or busyness. It can make these seasons seem more difficult to weather well – even though seasons of sickness and loss can be more painful, more sad.

We don’t have the stability of God in our emotional spiraling because part of the issue is that we are attempting to reject God.

Emotional Spiraling

In these seasons, we often go through the same pattern. We are at a good place in our walk with God. We are doing well, maintaining our habits, and working towards our goals. But, something happens. Maybe we go through a difficult time. Or we start surrounding ourselves with influences that are not good. Maybe we read a book or listen to a podcast with dubious motives. Maybe we give in to temptations or addictions. Whatever it is, we start going down the wrong path. We are triggered by something and begin to experience emotional spiraling down into depression, negative thoughts, and anxiety.

Just like a drain creates a vortex as the water swirls down, when we are on a downward path we often follow the same trajectory. At first, it is gradual and not as noticeable. But, as we get closer and closer to rock bottom, the speed gets faster, and the slope gets more steep. By the end, we feel like are barely holding on as our world crashes down.

The term emotional spiraling refers to periods of catastrophic thinking “where a series of negative thoughts, emotions, and actions continuously feed back into themselves, causing the situation to become progressively worse. Downward spirals are often provoked by jumping to the worst-case conclusion. You make a beeline from a boss’s critical e-mail right to “I’m going to be fired.” Or a friend’s failure to take your call as a sure sign she doesn’t like you anymore.”

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Breaking the emotional spiraling cycle: Getting out of our head

We need to do something to break the emotional spiraling. Just like you can stop a marble as it races down a track by putting your hand down, we can break the emotional spiraling down. It is not inevitable that you have to circle the drain. You have to develop mechanisms that break the emotional spiraling.

Jennie Allen, in her book Get Out of Your Head, talks about this concept. In this book, she describes different patterns our minds can get into, including different lies we tell ourselves.

When we are in the midst of a winter season, we have to stop the emotional spiraling by giving our brains a way out. We need to predetermine how we will respond to winter seasons so we can tackle them confidently.

Triggers vs. Glimmers

Triggers are pain points in our lives that jumpstart our emotional spiraling. This is a common term that is thrown around in modern culture and in some circles has become a point of contention. I don’t believe that triggers should be the impetus for safe spaces to the detriment of the pursuit of knowledge or common ground amongst disparate people. This being said I do think that triggers can be helpful for our own personal knowledge and growth.

We need to know what triggers us so that we can stop our emotional spiraling in their tracks. When we recognize what begins our emotional spiraling, we can put ourselves back on the good paths.

In my example before, I was triggered by the arguments with my roommates and my anxiety over my exams. These triggers repeated the lie that ‘I was unloved’ and ‘I was incompetent.’ These statements were not the reality, but my mind was headed in that direction because I was spiraling down. I needed something to get me out of my head and focused on the actual reality of the world around me. I needed a glimmer.

Glimmers are those positive moments, those beautiful things. Glimmers are moments you are grateful for, that cause you to praise God. Glimmers are life-giving experiences, big or small that draw you closer to God. Glimmers are the thing that can best stop your emotional spiraling.

In this case, I needed conversation with a friend, laughing and dreaming about winter break plans got me out of my funk. It ‘woke me up’ and broke the spiral. Glimmers don’t have to be a week-long cruise or a new fancy outfit. A cup of coffee on the back porch as the morning sun breaks over the horizon can fill up your soul just as much.

It can be helpful to create a list of things that are triggers for you and things that are glimmers for you. These become items in your toolkit that help you to be more emotionally healthy. They help you to get out of the funk of winter seasons and turn your heart towards God.

Take a moment now to consider:

What causes you to feel anxious? Worried? Angry? Upset? Make a list registering how you feel emotionally about a situation as well as how your body is reacting. This will help you to recognize what might be causing some emotional instability in your life.
What causes you to feel calm? Peaceful? Rejuvenated? Hopeful? Make a list, and consider how you could work to incorporate a few of these into your daily life. Again, smaller actions are better because they are more doable.

Breaking Out of Emotional Spiraling

When you find that you are in a winter season of your own creation, you should follow these steps:

Stop living in denial. Assess your situation honestly and make a commitment to get back on track.
Determine where you at in your season, and assess your relationship with God.
Start working on finding glimmers in your winter season. Begin to start incorporating some of the habits we talk about in the next section, like accountability groups and daily quiet times.
Safeguard against future winter seasons by identifying your triggers. Ask yourself: How do I know that I am headed down the spiral again? What do I feel like when I am in the winter season? What outside circumstances compounded my descent in my winter season?
Pray and journal throughout the whole experience focusing on gratitude, faith, and trust.

Now you try:

We all face winter seasons, but it’s important to not stay in prolonged winter seasons that we have caused ourselves. We want to identify triggers and glimmers in this season so that we can recognize when we are off track and work to get back on the right path. We need to stop the emotional spiraling so that we can begin to use our lives in a way that glorifies God. A fruitful and good way.

Recap:

We talked about winter seasons that we caused ourselves.
We looked at the difference between triggers and glimmers.
Then, we thought about steps to take if we are currently in a winter season of our own making.

What did you think? Are you in a winter season right now? What are some triggers and glimmers in your winter seasons? Let me know what you think by leaving a short review or comment wherever you listen to Podcasts. You can subscribe to the blog for a Survive the Winter guide. The link is in the show notes.

We have lots of great resources that you can check out at our shop at amorebeautifullifecollective.com/amblshop/. You can find our wilderness wanderings bible study at the link in the show notes.

Until next time, keep creating a life you love and cultivating your heart for God.

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