Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You Something
About this episode
Dr. Carol and guests discuss the importance of processing emotions and building emotional resilience.
What do you do when a wave of anger, sadness, or anxiety hits? Do you shove it down and push through, or do you let it take the wheel completely? In this episode, Dr. Carol sits down with Zion and Avery Montgomery to explore the "ditch" most of us fall into when it comes to processing emotions, and why neither extreme actually serves us well. They dig into how our emotional habits are often formed in childhood; Avery shares how he learned to suppress tears and "man up," while Zion describes becoming her mother's emotional caretaker and convincing herself she didn't have needs of her own. Together they unpack why emotions aren't good or bad, but simply information, and why anger so often becomes a socially acceptable mask for sadness or pain, especially for men. The conversation then turns practical and deeply personal, offering real tools for slowing down long enough to actually listen to what you're feeling. Dr. Carol introduces the idea of the "U-turn" — pausing to ask curious, non-judgmental questions internally, alongside grounding techniques that help calm an overwhelmed nervous system. They also explores what it looks like to bring raw, unfiltered emotion to God, following…
People in this episode
Host: Dr. Carol Peters-Tanksley
Guests: Zion Montgomery, Avery Montgomery
Topics covered
- emotional processing
- mental health
- childhood experiences
- emotional resilience
- spirituality
- self-awareness
Keywords
- emotions
- anger
- sadness
- anxiety
- emotional habits
- curiosity
- psychological safety
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Psalms
More episodes of Relationship Prescriptions with Dr. Carol
- Mother Wounds: How Your Relationship With Mom Shapes Your Relationship With God
- How Do You Know God Is Speaking?
- What If Your Sexual Struggle Is Really About Intimacy Instead?
- What We've Forgotten About Following Jesus: Lessons in discipleship from the early church to today
- When God Feels Far Away: Finding Hope in the Difficult Seasons
- From Reactive to Regulated: Rewiring the Brain for Healing
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