Have you ever shut the door, drawn the curtains and sat on the floor with your head on your knees? That is where this one starts.

The world is going too fast and so is my mind. Let me finish this thought before you send another one. It is not the big things either. It is the school run, the tea, the phone calls, all stacking up until the dam goes over. I think of the emotions as voices, and every one of them believes it has the answer. Shame is certain. Guilt is certain. So is fear. They cannot all be right, and they are not there to be silenced.

One thing to try: Let each voice have its say, one at a time. Then thank all of them for turning up and go back to what is next.

In this episode

• (1:19) My mind is going too quick for me
• (3:02) It is not the big things, it is the school run
• (3:58) When the dam finally overflows
• (5:18) Your body will stop you if you will not stop
• (6:22) Every emotion thinks it has the answer
• (7:34) What is guilt actually telling me
• (13:00) You are not always angry. They come and go
• (15:26) Let them all speak, then thank them

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Thank you for listening.

Steven

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Have you ever been in that place when close

the door, draw the curtains, and you don't even want to sit on the sofa. You want to sit on

the floor.

And you bend your knees up and you

put your head on your knees. Maybe.

And you just take a deep breath and it's like, just. Can the world stop just for a moment?

I just need to take a breath. I just need some time out.

Just a few minutes. Please, time out.

The problem is with emotions. They overwhelm us, they creep up on us, and at

some point, they will drown us I'll I'll share my story in a moment, but I'm Steven Webb, and this

is Stillness in the Storms and Living Deeper Lives podcast. And I help people with busy lives and hectic

minds and busy overthinking people have a little inner peace in life so they can live the best possible version

of themselves. I

remember very often in my life, I just want time out. You know, the world's going too quick for me.

Not only the world's going too quick for me, but my mind is going too quick for me. It's like,

look, let me sort out that thought before I have another one, please. And there's another one. They're like trains

at a train station. You're sitting at the train station. You have a thought. Come along. It's like, okay, let

me deal with this one. Then another train pulls in alongside, and you're like, okay, I can deal with this.

Just two trains. And then more tracks appear and more trains appear, and then before you know it, it's followed

up with emotions as well. And you just sit in there and it's like, okay, just

give me a break. Just give me that bit of time out, please. And

I always reference the Jack Johnson song um breakdown or something, and he's singing about a song,

or in the song, he's singing about the trains broken down and he sat out and he sat in the

field and. Or this is the image I have. He sat in the field and he's enjoying the time out

because the trains broke down. No one can get hold of him. There's no mobile signal. There's no way that

anybody can harass him. And he's got nothing to do but wait for the train to be

fixed. And he's no part of that. So he has to take that time out. And he sees it as

a gift. And I

have to be honest, so many times in my life, I've wanted that.

And I'm not talking about the big times either. I'm talking about, you know, just the School run or you've

got to do tea, you've got to sort things out, you've got to get working or you've got to make

phone calls. All of these things seem to creep up on top of us without even without us realising it.

And it just sometimes gets just a little bit too much. And I always look at emotions like this. Have

you ever been on the beach and down one side of the beach, you've got like a little river. And

we go and play there as children and we try to build a little dam and we try to hold

the water back and we do it for so long and we're like, yes. And then we go and get

our sandwiches or something that we've got a sand in and everything. You know, you know the drill um And

then you go back afterwards and the water's taking away your dam you've got to rebuild it, rebuild it. And

you keep doing this. And then at some point the dam just overflows with you there.

And that's when you have what I would say, like many emotional breakdowns where I just please,

just a little time out would be lovely. We can actually create these timeouts. That's the thing. And if we

understand emotions and understand thoughts, we can only have one emotion and one thought at a time. We cannot have

more than one. You cannot literally be sitting there thinking about a positive thought and a negative thought at the

same time. You

know, we have about 30 to 40 thoughts every minute. The same for everybody. Even the people we think don't

think they have about the same. And

we sit down to meditation and we think those thoughts come thicker and faster, but really we just become aware

of them. And that's what time out is about. It's

emotions will they creep along and they're there their information And they'll keep

trying to tell you whatever you need to know. Hey, I'm here. And say fear or something's coming up and

the fear's like just, hey, you should be fighting to this And it gets louder and louder. Hey. Until at

some point it will literally paralyze your body and say, right, you need to stop and you need to take

notice of this now. It's the same with the many other voices inside of us. I was like, emotions as

voices. You know I've got my protector. I've got my fear person. I've got my loving person. I've got my

laid back, my chilled. I've got my, my shame and guilt. They're all different voices inside of me. I've even

got my ego one and my when I say ego. I mean, go chip on the shoulder one. You know,

the one that likes thousands of listeners to my podcast, the one that thinks I'm absolutely awesome. And I've got.

The one that thinks I'm terrible and thinks doing this podcast a waste of time. Nobody will listen. They're all

there, and they're all present, and they're all giving me information. They're all phoning me, texting me, giving me their

opinion.

My. My head's like one big rave party of people with opinions they're all sitting around the desk. And it's

interesting because every single one of them doesn't care about the other. They all think they've got the answer to

my problems. You know, the shame ones. Like, no, just be in shame. That's okay. You can deal with that.

Just be in guilt. Just be in fear. Just be enlightened. Just be desire. Just have lust for people. Just

go around lusting sex all day. That will sort all your problems out. It really is that

much. It really is as crazy as that in our heads, right um And then you couple that with all

the feelings that come up in our body. It really is one absolute crazy storm of committee opinions and feelings

and emotions.

And then at some point, it's just they

overflow. At some point, they just

it's like, just one at a time, please. I

suppose it's much like a school teacher in it It's like if the whole class is trying to give you

information, you cannot listen to them all at the same time. So you try to sit down and listen to

each one. Try to listen. Right, okay, what's fear telling me? What's guilt telling me? But

that's so hard to do, isn't it? Because we're used to just having a couple of emotions.

We're either trying to push away something we don't want, or we're trying to grab hold of someone we want.

So it's either we're trying to resist pain or go for pleasure. And that's it

it's Simple That's life. But it's way more complicated than that, isn't it? It's way more complicated because of all

these complex feelings. You know, if only Adam had not at the apple. Damn you, Adam. We

would still be walking around like animals, like our dogs and cats. You know, a dog can go and have

a fight and rip another leg. A leg off another dog and come back and go, yeah, so what are

we doing later go out for a walk? They don't have that complex feelings of timeline and emotions. I Know,

I'm going to get some listeners go, yes they do. My dog has feelings. Not in the same complex way

we do. They have feelings before. Adam at the apple. Adam at the apple. There you go. Shame, guilt,

fear,

anger, all those complex emotions arose in human life a few thousand years before the Bible was wrote. I'm

not saying the Bible is the word of God, I'm not going down that route. But I'm saying the Bible

at the time was a scientific document, we could say, based on their level of understanding

at the time. And they had to come up with a way of how come animals around us don't have

these feelings, but we do. Let's blame Adam, Adam and Eve. It's all their fault.

It's all their fault. I need to take time out now. Close the curtains, lock the door, sit on the

floor, turn the light off and go. Give me a break. So if you want someone to blame for your

breakdown, blame them. They are the reason. Counsellors and psychiatrists and all of that make an

absolute fortune nowadays because

we're just trying to sort out that committee in our minds, that committee, that ever-flowing river of emotions.

So how do we sort out, how do we help with these things? Well, first of all, realise that you're

not your thoughts.

You know, if you are your thoughts when you have a thought and then you think, I remember that it's

a brilliant, brilliant thought, I don't need to write it down. I'll never forget that amazingly incredible thought I've just

had

four minutes later. What was that damn thought? But if you were, you wouldn't forget.

Apparently every atom in our body changes every seven years. So I've now changed one two three four I don't

know my seven times table, about six times seven, eight times, maybe nine. But now I've changed like seven times.

It's like going for the Star Trek portal, isn't it? Every time you go there, you get killed in one

and you get born in another beam me up, kill me and then reborn me on the spaceship.

That's basically what's happening.

Is the new person you. No, it's a copy of the exact moment you left.

What if something went wrong and then there was two of you? Oh, that's weird. Even weirder,

what if something went wrong and there was two of you and

you're left behind, but the new one is where your wife is and then they go with your wife but

you're still on the planet. Is

your wife cheating?

Okay, mind blown. Whoa, that's just, that's Just crazy. But

yeah, we replace ourselves about every seven years. So we're not even our bodies. We're not even our bodies. I'm

starting to think replacing mine with somebody a little more, less Buddha centric with a belly might be a nice,

nice idea. Come on, Atoms, if you are listening to me, get a little firmer. Atoms, please. Without going to

the gym. But then we have emotions, right? And just as the thoughts come and go, we have emotions that

come and go.

We're not our emotions. Because if we are our emotions, how come they disappear and they come back and they

disappear. If you were to sit there now and take a deep breath and I ask you what are you

feeling? You

could do this with me now, what are you feeling?

Don't judge it, don't like do anything more than just label it. I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling

happy, I'm feeling joyful,

maybe neutral,

maybe you're feeling alert or focused.

But if I told you a joke and I asked you again how you're feeling, you'd feel differently. You're still

you. There's something underneath all those feelings that come and go that's still you. You know, you're not always

angry, you're not always in shame, guilt, fear, enlightenment. Enlightenment. Enlightened.

You're not always all of these things, are you? They come and go. So

how do we cope with that time when we just want to close the curtains and draw um Yeah close

the curtains and lock the door and turn off a light to sit there. Well, allow it to be, be

okay with that. Don't be shamed into it. Don't like people say, oh, you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't lock

yourself away. I don't lock yourself away forever. Like after nine months, that's a bit, that's strange.

But you know, do it for an hour, two hours, maybe even do it for 24 hours. But while

you're doing it, perhaps write a bit of a journal. While you're doing it, really look inside and instead of

growing these voices and having full-on conversations with them, just allow them to be

like

as if. Imagine you're the one in the middle of a table and this huge table all around you and

all these voices are around the table. And normally when we're in these situations, it's something big that's going on.

Perhaps we're split up with our partner, perhaps we're going for a new job or perhaps we've just been sacked

or something. There's normally something big going on at the time Perhaps we're going for an illness or something

and you could ask each one of them their opinion. Just bring fear to mind and go, what's your concern?

You

could bring your motivator online and go, what's your concern so you can go around the table and without putting

any weight onto any one person's opinion, because they're all they're all there to save your life. They're all there

to protect you. They all love you deeply and they're all there to help you in the only way they

know how. Hello? Where

are you?

Hello? That's my cat saying hello. I don't know whether you can hear her on that thing um Yeah

so they're all there to protect you. They're all there to help you out and see if you're okay and

to guide you in a certain way. So don't be annoyed by any of them. Just allow them to have

their say. But also the enlightened ones and the desired ones, the last one, let them have their say as

well.

And then after they've all had their say, say thank you to them all. Thank you for being there for

me. Thank you for protecting me most of my life. But I've got this now. I'm the one

in charge. I'm the one making the decisions.

And for the moment, I'm taking time out and tomorrow I will come back and

I'll be ready with all of your helps. Thank you.

What a wonderful way of dealing with overwhelm. It's

like a little mini meditation. Talking

about meditations, you could go over to stillnessinthestorms.com and download my meditations. That helps you through the most crazy and

busiest days sometimes.

I'm Steven Webb and subscribe or leave a review on this podcast. Reviews really, really help, especially on

iTunes or other places. If you can leave a review. That would really help me get more listeners and reach

more people that need to hear my message. That would really help. You know, these people that are over thinkers

just like you, that are busy in your life, that have all these same feelings and issues and anxieties and

overwhelm just like you have.

Maybe they could do in my help as well. So you'll be doing them help as well.

So thank you. If you want to treat me to a coffee,

stillnessinthestorms.com is the best place to do that. Take care. I love you and see you next week. Bye.