Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and work and reading on the subject of emotional health. It’s a topic I’ve always tended toward but have really devoured since becoming a mother two years ago. Motherhood has ushered in this very complicated array of significant emotions, most of which I’m still trying to sort out. (If you’re feeling “complicated” about motherhood, you are not alone.)

A couple months ago, a friend gave me an article entitled, “I Suffered From ‘Emotional Bulimia’ Until I Learned to Accept Love.” I’ve read the thing like 14 times.

What I’m realizing is that, no matter what we use to dull the discomfort of life—alcohol or drugs or food or work or Twitter or approval or sex or shopping or piety or perfectionism or (fill in the blank for yourself, if you dare)—we pretty much all have that same gaping hole inside us, a soul longing, that is looking to be filled up.

How we choose to fill the hole (by virtue or by vice) directly reflects our emotional sobriety.

The emotional bulimia article got me thinking about how I nourish myself and if my nourishment comes from healthy places or if I rely on the binging and purging cycle of approval-seeking (shoving it down my throat as fast as I can take it in) and striving (working relentlessly to prove my worth).

Brene Brown (one of my new favorites) says emotional sobriety all comes down to one thing: “How much we know and understand ourselves is critically important, but there is something that is even more essential . . . loving ourselves.”

And, of course, I would add: there is something even more essential. Realizing that the power to love and accept ourselves in not something we can just drum up from somewhere inside us. We love because he first loved us. We need the transformational love of Christ in order to muster this kind of radical love for ourselves.

Ultimately, all this is about taking a step toward the present moment and all that it holds (namely, all my complicated emotions) instead of doing anything and everything possible to numb out.

The toxicity of shame invites me (just about every day) to believe that I am failing, that most people are doing better than I am, that I am destined to live a life of regret, that I am wasting these precious days (a sentiment that never fails to create this panicked urgency inside me). In fact, I spent the better part of yesterday walking around in this urgent haze, wishing away so much of the present, hog-tied by those crippling toxic voices.

Like an alcoholic with a bottle, I can do everything in my power to try to drown out those voices (though, in my experience, they just start yelling louder).

OR, I can sit down and be still and do the difficult task of accepting God’s love for me even as those voices would like to tell me otherwise. Sometimes, like yesterday, it’s the simple act of acknowledging and accepting the stress I’m feeling (because, after all, I’m human) and inviting God into the big mess of my internal world. Something like: God, I realize it’s OK to feel stressed given all of these circumstances. Help me to accept and love myself even though I don’t feel great right now. And, God, if it’s at all possible, please create some space for joy to sneak in.

We spent dusk (my favorite time of day) at Presidio Park with lattes in hand and kids running in the mud. Joy arrived somewhere in the middle of all that. I’m not sure how or when. And after the kids went to bed, we made chili in the kitchen . . . by candlelight. And, like a medication, the joy nourished that soul longing inside me. Virtuously.

Today, it all starts over again. The choice is mine: nourish the toxic voices or nourish myself. God, I need you.

I’d love to know . . . How do you battle the toxic voices?

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