Tommy revisits a conversation with Lisa Ould, executive director of Barnabas Center and decades-long counselor, on one of the most personal and underaddressed topics he has taken on across all of Space for Life. Whether you tend to suppress what you feel or find yourself regularly overwhelmed by it, this episode offers a clear framework for understanding where emotions come from, why they matter, and how to stay in what Lisa calls your window of tolerance. Tommy gets personal too, sharing a formative story from his high school lacrosse days that quietly shaped how he has related to his own emotions ever since.

What You'll Hear in This Episode:

• What the emotions wheel is and why most of us only have five or six words for what we actually feel.
• The critical distinction between experiencing an emotion, expressing it, and the choices you make from there.
• The counseling concept of the window of tolerance, and what it looks like to be in hyperarousal or hypoarousal.
• How your belief systems shape your habitual emotional patterns, and why naming those beliefs is the first step toward changing them.
• Practical guidance for the over-expressive person and the emotionally shut-down person, including how habits and movement can shift where you land.
• Tommy's high school lacrosse story, the moment he made a quiet vow to shut down his emotions, and the cost of that vow on both the hard feelings and the good ones.
• Why the goal is never to stop feeling but to grow your ability to stay present and functional while you do.
• How faith and scripture connect to emotional health by reshaping the belief systems that drive our habitual responses.

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(4:11) Emotions as part of how we're made

(6:20) The emotions wheel

(10:18) Feeling vs. expressing vs. choosing

(15:40) The window of tolerance

(21:44) Beliefs, emotions, and choices

(30:55) The person stuck in habitual negative emotion

(36:00) The emotionally shut-down person

(38:14) Tommy's lacrosse story and the vow he made

Resources / Next Steps:

Learn more about Lisa Ould and Barnabas Center at barnabascenterclt.com.

Visit TommyThompson.com for more helpful content and resources from Tommy.

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