Becoming Whole
Relationships and sexuality are areas of life that can be beautiful or confusing, life-giving, or painful. Becoming Whole is a conversational podcast for men, women, and families seeking to draw nearer to Jesus as they navigate topics like sexual integrity, relational healing, spiritual health, and so much more.
Becoming Whole
Learn to Listen to your Emotions so they don’t Control You
On this episode of the Becoming Whole Podcast, we welcome Sue Moore, the founder and CEO of Giving Much Ministries. Sue walks us through a basic emotions reflection exercise to help us process negative emotions and overcome unwanted sexual behaviors. Learn about her personal journey and how emotional health is crucial for dealing with betrayal, parenting challenges, and personal addictions. Discover practical steps to cultivate emotional resilience by pausing to reflect on your feelings, understanding their origins, and seeking healthier ways to meet your emotional needs. Don't miss this episode filled with hope and actionable advice.
For more information or to join click one of the links below.
Manna - Men seeking freedom from unwanted sexual behavior, temptation, and shame.
Oasis - Women seeking freedom from unwanted sexual behavior, temptation, and shame.
Compass - Wives seeking healing from betrayal and broken trust.
Awaken Men's Retreat 2025 - Register Today!
Sacred By Design Women's Retreat 2025 - Register Today!
Free Resources to help you on your journey to Becoming Whole
👉Men's Overcoming Lust & Temptation Devotional
👉Women 21-Day Prayer Journal & Devotional - (Women overcoming unwanted sexual Behavior)
👉Compass 21-Day Prayer Journal & Devotional - (Wives who are or have been impacted by partner betrayal)
At the core of unwanted behavior is the inability to process negative emotions. That's a direct quote from Sue Moore, the founder and CEO of Forgiven Much Ministries and our guest on Becoming Whole podcast this week and next week. Welcome, sue.
Speaker 2:Hey.
Speaker 1:We're going to need to unpack that a lot, and what we're going to try to do this week is Sue and I are going to walk Sue's going to walk us through this week a basic emotions reflection exercise, because we need help in our emotional world to overcome sexual sin, and if you're a betrayed partner or a parent, growing and processing negative emotions is such a key skill.
Speaker 1:If you're a betrayed partner and you're in the thick of it, you are dealing with a lot of negative emotions. If you're a parent trying to walk with young kids or teenagers who maybe are in a prodigal phase, there's a lot of negative emotions to process, and so I want to go back to that quote as we get into this At the core of unwanted behaviors, including unwanted sexual behaviors, is the inability to process negative emotion, and so, if this is true, then becoming more emotionally healthy is a crucial foundation for overcoming unwanted sexual behaviors, processing through betrayal and parenting well. So, sue, what led you in the first place to recognize this? Was it something from your own journey or something completely different?
Speaker 2:No, it started many years ago actually. Yes, from my own journey, probably at the beginning of ministry and knowing that I was still a work in progress and seeking the Lord for more understanding as to what was keeping me from walking in the fullness that the Lord's Word promised. And at the beginning it was a pulling together of the tools that I had had at that moment. I taught boundaries for many years, so boundaries was pulled into this, and then Dr Lacer's work on the seven desires of every heart was also pulled into it. But that was just at the beginning for me to be able to construct, actually following the Lord's lead established on Proverbs 4.23,.
Speaker 2:Above all else, guard your heart, for out of it flow the issues of life, and I would imagine your listeners as well as myself with that time. You know we kind of that's a good verse, we kind of gloss over it. You know blah, blah, blah. Let's guard your heart, but that's a command to guard and protect your heart, your mind, will and emotions, for out of it flow the issues of life and the course of my life in my addiction phases and whatnot was all over the map because I was not guarding my heart, I was not taking responsibility for my heart, and so that's where it began.
Speaker 1:So, sue, you kind of alluded I know some of your story. We had met a couple of years ago at a SILS conference and you've trained our team in this exercise. Would you be willing to just share a little bit of a glimpse into your story and some of how your story coalesces around growing in emotional maturity?
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. Recovering recovered female sex and love addict. Drug addict. Married a sex addict drug addict before we ever knew any of those real terms about sex addiction, whatever or not. I was promiscuous and all that. And then we married. I knew he had a pornography addiction but I thought that I can't beat him, join him. And then I was going to be every woman beat them, join them. And then I was going to be every woman and hang on a second. I have to pause this for a second because I've got some Spotify music that's coming up in the background.
Speaker 1:I thought you were just trying to introduce some cool background music for your test. It's not for me.
Speaker 2:So let me start that all over again. So I arranged the loss of my virginity. So let me start that all over again. So I arranged the loss of my virginity had drug addiction issues was introduced to my soon-to-be husband. After three months he had a pornography addiction. I pretty much had the can't beat him. Join him, I'll be every woman. You won't need that. We wrestled with his addiction for 10 years, every three to six months like clockwork. I always felt like I never measured up. It was always my problem. Every man does it. What's wrong with you? And so if you, I'm sure you've got betrayed spouses that are listening and oh yeah understand that, and so I wrestled deeply with what was wrong with me.
Speaker 2:Why was I not enough? So I had that element of it. But we were married, um, and I actually kind of went into a workaholism kind of performance issues along the same line, and then he ended up, um, the marriage imploded. He offended someone and about after almost 20 years the marriage imploded and I was a single mom and I unfortunately went right back to my acting out behaviors after the marriage imploded but, praise be to God, rededicated my life to Christ, and that would have been in 1999. And then just became a lover of the word and just dug in with everything I had.
Speaker 2:And then, 2007, I went into full-time ministry and, yeah, a lot of meat on that bone to talk about it, but I don't know if that gives you the introduction of it enough. Your question was how did I get into this emotional processing part? Well, I didn't really know about it, quite frankly, until I was wanting to get well and was wrestling a lot with maintaining sobriety and switching addictions and all of that. And so journaling and processing helped, seeking the Lord helped, but, as I had mentioned earlier, I wanted more tools, and that's when I had gone into full-time ministry and I'd come up under Dr Lacer with Life Recovery and we developed training and this, that and the other, and I was just pulling together the exercise for myself and was using it in the group that I was leading and it had become polished and practiced over years and years and years and is what it is today because of all of that use and I use it every day in some manner or form.
Speaker 1:And I use it every day in some manner or form. So, sue, is a walking testimony of so many of the different challenges that our listeners have gone through. And, sue, I think that your story part of why I wanted our listeners to hear a bit is that we heard the word hope as we were coming into this today and I think it brings a lot of hope to know that you could be through all the crazy things you've been through and be following Jesus, a lover of him, his word, and be serving others in this area. It's an incredible thing. So I want to actually get into the tool in just a moment, the basic navigating emotions reflections tool in just a moment.
Speaker 1:But you mentioned how you fell in love with the Bible. Emotions reflections tool in just a moment. But you mentioned how you fell in love with the Bible. There still was some of a gap between that and then growing in emotional maturity. What's interesting to me, sue, is I read scripture more and more as I get older. I'm like man. There's so much emotion stuff in here, but sometimes we can kind of miss that or like it can feel like there's a disintegration between who the Bible tells us to be and kind of our emotional world. So as we head into talking about the actual tool, did you see a thread through scripture Like was scripture actually a part of you getting in touch with your emotions, or did you have to start to realize that later that scripture is full of, you know, very emotional, raw prayers or whatever else?
Speaker 2:You know, that's a very good question and I don't know, as if I, looking back, I would have to say no, it was just simply the drawing of God's word, and I would go back to say, yes, the Bible is emotional and that's because God is relational and God is first and foremost relational, this Yadah knowing and becoming known. We are created in his image and he is a relational God Father, son, holy Spirit and we are drawn to and long for that relationship and we see that in Scripture, in scripture and so, without really knowing and being able to put that to words, the scriptures itself and the relational knowing that happens when you read the word of god and it reads you and connect with the lord. That knowing is what goes. I don't know what that was, but I want more of that. It was that kind of a draw that began this relationship with him.
Speaker 1:That's a beautiful thing. And so, listeners, if you come from a tradition that maybe has underemphasized the relational or even the emotional nature of God and man interacting together, because relationships are often connected through emotions, right? So if you've missed that, this is an invitation today to recognize that especially. You see it all throughout the Psalms. But we're in relationship. We're made in the image of a God who is emotional in ways that are not broken whatsoever. He's perfectly emotional, you might say, but he is emotional. There are emotions that are meant to connect us to him and him to us, and so there's an invitation here, as you're reading scripture, look out for ways that god desires to connect, loves and has passion and things like that if I could interject something here that is really helpful for some individuals who may be more um in the logic side of things about this emotions and not really.
Speaker 2:On the ministry's website, when you get on the reflective listening landing page, there's a plethora of videos short videos, some long but these ones are short in regards to emotions and what they are. Emotions is e motion. You are attuning to the things that are going on around you. You are subjectively assessing and perceiving and interpreting what's going on around you. So there is a, a label, if you will, an understanding of that, what you are seeing, perceiving and interpreting. So these emotions, the they are feelings and feelings that rise to the awareness. That's what we're grabbing a hold of. That's a feeling that I have. It has a label and a name. Ah, now, once I can label it, I can name it and I can do something with it, I acknowledge it.
Speaker 2:Now it's come to the light and so it's helpful because, depending on your upbringing and most individuals in fact, I don't know if I've ever seen someone come through the ministry that has had a family that has taught emotional resilience from the get-go they really wouldn't be in the need for the ministry because they would be unable to process all of this negative emotions that you talked about, those core unwanted sexual behaviors coming out arising out of the inability to process those negative emotions. So that's why we are actually growing the emotional vocabulary of people who come into the ministry, into this work, because we usually come in with a very small set of emotions and if we've been shut down and if we've had wounding, we really got down to a couple I'm fine, I'm good or this sucks. You know we're just a few and we don't understand the benefit of really expanding that vocabulary.
Speaker 1:So let's get into it, sue. Sue, if you haven't already gleaned this listener, sue is an incredible resource creator tons of knowledge. Her website has a ton of tools for you. We're going to dive in first and foremost into this reflective listening exercise. There is a larger workshop, I think. Sue told me that it takes about two hours to go through. Sue, would that be the live version or just watching the videos?
Speaker 1:No, that's live, and actually do that on the second Tuesday of every month, february through November this tool presents in connecting emotions and not taking our negative emotions right to sexual sin or or even if you're a betrayed spouse or a parent, right toward, you know, spiraling in, in, in. Yeah, just spiraling, just struggling to navigate emotion. So feel free to start wherever you want.
Speaker 2:Sue with introducing this tool all right, um, the basic and the advanced have the same foundation in common and it's the sentence I feel blank about. Blank because blank, that's the foundational sentence and that is a significant start and I encourage individuals to depending on. And I encourage individuals to depending on. They may have a model of emotions they may have. We often hear from individuals that they're overwhelmed, and to me that is categorized as an emotion by itself. But I don't necessarily like to leave overwhelmed as it is, because I believe overwhelmed is like a knotted ball that has to be teased out, with a multitude of different emotions that are going on there. So we need to identify all the feelings and if again, you need help, we've got a chart that has emotions and intensifiers and they're all over the internet, but we have our own as well and just start to run down the feelings that you have about a particular subject.
Speaker 2:Now you may come into this a little in the middle and go. I know my subject, I know there's something about this situation that's bothering me, but I don't know all my emotions. So you can come in it from that angle as well, and so you can. Here's my subject. What am I feeling about that? And then we're pausing time, we're slowing down time to sit with this and acknowledge that there's something about me is feeling uneasy. I'm feeling something. What am I feeling? So you're pausing and reflecting it's inner reflection on what you are feeling, and I do want to pause this for a moment.
Speaker 2:If you've got any clinical people that are listening, if you Googled reflective listening, you will find that there is a quote unquote tool that is to listen to other people and then reflect back what they have said. This is not what we're doing. We are doing inner reflection and there's actually neuroscience to show how this inner reflection and sharing it in relationship brings resilience and new neural pathways and maybe we'll get into that in the next one. But this is how you renew the mind. But we have to pause. No-transcript why my body's having a reaction. Well, the reality is is that your body has been having a reaction to that emotion and many others for a long time in order for you to get to a state of actually physically feeling it, so we can back it up, you know.
Speaker 1:So one of the clues you mentioned sometimes we don't know the emotions, sometimes we don't know the subject, but if we don't know the emotions, one of the clues can be what's going on in my body. And that's an incredible clue. If something is going on, that likely means it's been going on more than we realize.
Speaker 2:Right, we become conditioned to ignore, to minimize, to deny and to put it aside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's that. I want to press into that in one more way. If you're listening and you're dealing with unwanted sexual behaviors, try to think about and perhaps you were dealing with it today or this week. Try to think about was anything going on in my body about? And perhaps you were dealing with it today or this week. Try to think about was anything going on in my body? Were any emotions, whether just kind of cognitively, or I actually felt them in my body? My shoulders were tight, my neck felt tense, my stomach was knotted up, like these can be really helpful signals that something more is going on, but soon, if let's just say I do figure out, okay. I often hold tension near my neck and my shoulders. Well, how do I kind of I don't know unpack that or figure out what that really means?
Speaker 2:That's great. Absolutely. That is a symptom, if you will. As well as clenching your hands, holding the elbow up, I mean just interesting body postures. As I've been learning this, I've been paying attention more to my posture and my body because it teaches a lot. So once you recognize I've got something going on, what is this? So that's your sentence.
Speaker 2:I feel blank about blank, because you're starting to freeze frame time and I'm thinking of and this had happened to me many years ago and I use this example a lot is, I was standing in a grocery store and in the checkout or near the checkout, and I felt just a complete anxiety in my body. It was like my head, I had electricity, you know, just run and I'm going, what is go, what is this? And I, okay, I feel anxious about and I started teasing. I don't remember the situation at this point. I could put in a multitude of them, but about a scenario, because and I start assessing and then we can start unpacking and the more you learn the exercise, you can go into your basic needs I need to be heard and understood, I need to be affirmed, I need to be blessed, I need to be safe, touched, chosen, included, and those are all within the basic exercise. And then the last step of that is to what are my next steps to get that meat met in healthy ways?
Speaker 2:Now, you're not going to be able to rattle that off in the grocery store just by listening to the podcast. I would love for you to, maybe, and by the Spirit of the Living God you can, but you will also need to learn to press, pause and tolerate the anxiety of the moment and write this stuff down. Stuff down, because that's where the inner healing comes, is that's when you invite the Holy Spirit in and that's when he can start helping you to understand what this is about. I would say this too is that we also have, usually this. This is about me being late for work. I have these feelings I'm rushing through traffic because I am late for work and yep, that fits. But there's also most likely, something that's underneath that.
Speaker 1:Is that where the because comes in? Because blank.
Speaker 2:It can be.
Speaker 1:It can be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel anxious about being late for work because I stayed up too late last night. And you can fill in a multitude of reasons and then you just begin in the processing of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you're going to an unwanted sexual behavior, part of what's happening is automatically you might feel anxious or sad or ashamed or a whole variety of negative emotions. And without pausing long enough to realize what's going on and tolerating the negative emotion, what we're often doing is we're taking it right to our sexual behaviors and so what Sue's inviting us to is so, so, so practical Pause, notice, grow in toleration. Like I can handle this. I will not die from this feeling of anxiety or I know sometimes that can feel like death, especially if there's a panic attack but recognizing growing intolerance and growing in vocab, growing in awareness.
Speaker 1:One of the other things that I often use with clients, sue and I got this straight from you is you just referenced it really briefly, well, twice today seven desires of every heart. So you said this is from Mark and Deborah Laser, who were kind of pioneers in the Christian addiction recovery, sexual addiction recovery world, as far as I know, and they have these seven core needs or desires that every heart has. I love using this with clients because so many of them are like, especially if you're the type who's like hey, I've had a pretty good childhood, I don't have any massive trauma. I love pulling this out not to say, hey, look, you've got trauma, you just didn't notice it, but just to say, look, none of our parents were perfect and these seven needs were not perfectly met by any of our parents. So, sue, can we unpack that briefly, the seven desires of every heart, and then also explain more of where that fits into the basic exercise, the basic sentence. I feel blank about blank because blank the basic exercise, the basic sentence.
Speaker 2:I feel blank about blank because blank, yeah, and actually for the basic exercise, understanding for the participant is going to be, for the lack of a better term, more surfacy understanding, more of colloquially, what you would understand, for you heard and understood.
Speaker 1:I need to be affirmed Basic definitely Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because if what ends up happening? If you go deeper than that into what LACER is doing, you're going to send a person into the advanced, which is good which we're going to get to next week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, looking forward to that.
Speaker 2:But these unmet needs, even if let's just say we're talking with someone who's got these unwanted sexual behaviors and they're acknowledging okay, I do, I've got this, I'm feeling a physiological, I'm carrying something, I'm carrying anxiety, I'm carrying fear, I'm carrying something and can I fit an about in here and can I put in a because and do I? Can I fit an about in here and can I put in a because and and then doing that real? Basically, then, looking at just by the surface level of the understanding, do I need to be heard and understood about feelings and needs and what.
Speaker 2:I need to be affirmed, then I'm okay that I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm all right.
Speaker 1:That's kind of where the next step can come in. You mentioned that you often.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you're going to want in the next step. So in here, james, is a conversation that needs to be said, because it's kind of unspoken and it fleshes itself out without too much time is why am I doing this? Yeah, why am I doing this? Yeah, why? Why am I not wanting to continue in this addictive behavior or these unhealthy coping methods, or whatever it is that I'm doing? Why do I want to pause and tolerate this stupid anxiety? You know, seems like a dumb idea. I don't want it. I don't want you know I want relief.
Speaker 1:I don't want to sit, sit in this.
Speaker 2:I had this discussion with the Lord many times, a long time ago. But the reality is is a person will stay in a wrestling with that addictive behavior, that coping method, whatever that is, the tolerating of anxiety, just keeping that going until and unless they have a vision of where they're going. It is necessary for us and this is where the hope comes in, this is where it has to come in is that confident expectation of goodness that God doesn't waste anything. No matter how many stupid decisions that I have made and I've made plenty of them he's using and has used every one of them to glorify his name.
Speaker 2:And so, for your people who are listening for this, why do I want to press pause and figure this out in the first place? It's because there has to be a desire and a belief that there's something else. There's something more for me to experience out of life than what I'm experiencing now. I've got this part down. I can go down here blindfolded, I can go into my acting out, I can do all this Medicaid. I don't even need instruction. I've got that one covered. And I'm not even truly I don't know convinced if there's another option out here.
Speaker 2:So, in tandem with this, emotional resilience, learning, is this desire to discover all that is available to me as a body imager of the most high God of all of those things. And when we do that, we understand that there are a lot of taunting voices inside our heads that are saying a lot of different things, from family, of origin on up, about why that would not be true. And so those are surfaced, those tauntings. They can be from flesh and blood, but we also know the tauntings of the adversary. That's just a constant.
Speaker 1:But those things are surfaced as we do this reflective listening, even the basic, uh, even more so and more intentionally with the advanced, because then they're targeted with scripture or spiritual maturity so let me just try to imagine an example, sue, just to make this super concrete for those who are trying to get their heads around it, especially if you're listening. We actually, if you're watching on YouTube, we have not shown any visuals, so the listeners are not missing a visual right now, but it'd be a good idea to look this up so you can see it if you're more of a visual learner. But I can just imagine, sue. Let me just think of an example from my past. I'm at school, I'm procrastinating on a paper, and this could be for someone in work as well. So if I go the automatic path of, okay, I'm going to just procrastinate, I'm overwhelmed, I'm just going to go to sexual sin. That's going to keep me stuck. That's seeking relief.
Speaker 1:As we say it in Awaken 360, literally this week we're recording our lesson topic. This is our men's recovery group. Our lesson topic was restoration over relief, and so if I go the relief route, it's the same path I've always been down, but God, like you're highlighting in his mercy, actually wants to restore me because he actually wants us. This is a funny thing to say. He wants, wants to restore me because he actually wants us. This is a funny thing to say. He wants us to be happy in him. For some of us that might not be a funny thing to hear, but he wants us to actually be holy, so that we're happy in him, so that we're delighted in him, we're satisfied by him. He wants something more for us. So the invitation then is okay, pause for a second.
Speaker 1:I feel anxious about this paper because I'm afraid I'm not actually going to be able to do it right. And it's going to be. It's going to show me how much of a failure I am. That would actually be a real life example from my past of like I'm going to procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate, and by God's grace, somehow I made it through and I did end up writing decent enough papers or whatever. But it was almost like I wanted to give myself an excuse to say well, I wrote this thing at four in the morning, so how good could it possibly be? So there's something going on. And even if I can't get much further than that and I can't figure out okay, is there a wound here, or is there a maturity issue or what it still gives me incredible data that there's more going on than simply I don't feel good. I'm going to go act out? Yeah, anything, you'd fill in with that example.
Speaker 2:And I would say, I would say it's not wasted in the fact that you have brought to an awareness that you've taken it that pause to the point of this inner conversation. If you put it on paper, however it might be, you now have this awareness of the why, the because, and so that is not just going to sit there. The Lord will continue, you will circle that mountain until it's addressed properly, but it's never unknown.
Speaker 2:After that, wow, well, I need to be heard and understood. So even if you didn't get it out to a friend or anybody else, but you brought it out into the light, that is significant, and so that would be encouraging to any of our participants, listeners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, super important first step. So I'm really excited for next week to get into more of the advanced concepts. We might get more into those seven desires of every heart first step. So I'm really excited for next week to get into more of the advanced concepts. We might get more into those seven desires of every heart and perhaps even some of the boundaries content that you've incorporated into this and how we're using this for spiritual growth, because spiritual growth with a relational God is relational. Relational growth has a lot to do with emotions and so we're going to keep climbing this ladder. So I want to give you the last word in just a moment, but I do want to just highlight for our listeners.
Speaker 1:Uh, coming up in the next months are our retreats, and we're super excited to have our second annual awaken retreat for men and becoming whole uh sorry in our um sacred by design retreat for women. So our awaken retreat, october 3rd through 5th you're going to get to press into your story and healing prayer and processing at this kind of level that Sue and I are talking about. Our retreat theme is known and named. We are known by God and named by him and Sacred by Design in November is going to be an awesome place to slow down, connect deeply with God. By the way, slowing down is one of the precursors, like you said, to having this emotional awareness what's actually going on. It'll be a retreat experiencing beauty, moving beyond shame and striving. So space is limited. Both these retreats we want to invite you out. Hope to see you in person at these awesome opportunities. With that, sue, I'd love to give you the last word for today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, well, it's been a pleasure being here. I love this conversation. I to give you the last word for today. Thank you, well, it's been a pleasure being here. I love this conversation. I can't wait to continue it. But I'd love for your listeners to obviously check out the Reflective Listening workshop that we have, but also we will be starting here soon for the fall Gospel-Centered Sexuality course that we have for the church. Now, this is for anyone. This could be parents, caregivers, leaders in the church, those in recovery. We will cover a lot of content and it's on the foundation of this reflective listening exercise, because we need continual cleansing conversations in order to implement gospel-centered sexuality. So I welcome your listeners to join us on that course, and all those courses and resources are free.
Speaker 1:What an opportunity for our churches to grow in these ways. So thank you so much, sue, and I'm looking forward to speaking with you next week.
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