What’s Happening In Me? Grace, Curiosity, and Inner Healing (Ep 04)
Have you ever completely lost it with your people, and then immediately started with the shame spiral thinking, “What is wrong with me?”
In this episode, we talk about why that question is the wrong one — and what to ask instead. Drawing from neuroscience, Romans 8, and one of the most tender moments in all of Scripture, this conversation is an invitation to approach your inner life with grace and curiosity, not criticism and condemnation.
In This Episode, You’ll Discover:
Why "What's wrong with me?" is the wrong question, and the better one that changes everything.
What misalignment actually is, how it's different from disagreement, and why your body responds to it long before your brain catches up.
How chronic stress activates fight, flight, freeze, and fawn — and why many things we call personality traits are actually patterns of self-protection.
Why God's response to Elijah in 1 Kings 19 is one of the most grace-filled, tender pictures of care in all of Scripture.
How grace and truth work together to create space for real transformation, and why you can't have one without the other.
A simple three-part framework for approaching your inner life: Notice. Get Curious. Respond with Wisdom and Grace.
What self-compassion actually looks like for Christian women, and why we need to practice it.
Resources Mentioned
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. — Grab it on Amazon HERE.
Hazel + Hunt — You guessed it. The t-shirt from the opening story from one of my fave local shops. Shop Hazel & Hunt.
Note: Some links above may be affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend things I genuinely use and love.
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Episode 04 | What’s Happing In Me? Grace, Curiosity, and Inner Healing
Welcome to The Purpose Project Podcast
Hey, friend. Welcome to The Purpose Project Podcast, where we talk about what it really looks like to live, love, and lead with purpose and authenticity in the messy middle — that space between where you are and where you want to be. I'm Valerie Jones, a Christian life and leadership coach, and around here we don't do hustle culture, perfectionism, people-pleasing, or self-help band-aids. Instead, we're all about biblical truth, brain-based tools, and emotional health — so you can walk out your calling with courage without burning out or sacrificing what matters most. Each episode we'll dive into real life stories, engaging conversations, and relatable teaching moments to help you get out of your head and into the life God's calling you to live. Whether you're navigating change, feeling overwhelmed, craving clarity, or just trying to feel like yourself again — take a breath and lean in. You're in the right place. Let's dive in.
A Saturday Morning That Unraveled
Well, hey friend, welcome back to the podcast. I'm really glad you're here.
One morning not too long ago, the alarm went off, and somehow before my feet even hit the floor, I was already falling behind. Have you ever had a morning like that? It was the kind of morning where you're not out of bed yet, but you know that as soon as you get up, there are a million and one things demanding your attention — and what you really want to do is hit the snooze button, pull the cover back over your head, and just try again tomorrow. But you know that's not an option.
Well, that was me on this particular Saturday morning. So with all the courage I could muster, I rolled out of bed. I put on my leggings with the same favorite T-shirt I'd been wearing for six days in a row. I washed my face, I brushed my teeth, and I used the last little bit of my dry shampoo. I looked in the mirror, gave myself a half-hearted pep talk, and headed downstairs to get some coffee.
When I got downstairs, it felt like immediate chaos. Everybody was already up. There were kids who hadn't eaten, a husband who wanted to know all the plans for the day, a cat jumping up on the table where he was not supposed to be, a goldendoodle who had decided this was the day she absolutely could not leave my side, and then some random fellow ringing the doorbell trying to sell us a security system we didn't need.
I made a beeline for the kitchen and the coffee, because this was just way too much for a Saturday morning. I was picking up messes left over from the day before on my way to the kitchen, answering questions I felt like I'd already answered twenty times, and having a conversation with one kiddo who decided that last-minute plans were the best kind of plans.
And then out of nowhere — coffee finally in hand — my eyes filled with tears. It was really nothing. But it was also everything. I tripped over the dog for a third time. I shooed the cat off the table for the fifth time. And everything just seemed to unravel from there. I started snapping at my people.
I threatened to ground my youngest for life if she asked me one more time about this thing she wanted to do. I reminded my oldest, not so gently, that the dishwasher is a great place to put dirty dishes. And I grumbled to my sweet husband that it'd be really nice to have some help around the house. I turned to storm out of the room — but not before reminding everyone who could hear me, including the cat and the dog, that this was supposed to be a perfectly delightful, easy Saturday morning at home, and I just wanted to drink my coffee.
It was not my best moment.
Maybe you've had a morning exactly like that. Or maybe your version looks a little different. Maybe it's not a chaotic Saturday morning — maybe it's a chaotic Monday morning, and you're trying to get everyone off to school or to work, and you're dreading showing up at the office or opening your laptop. Or maybe it's a Sunday morning, and you're trying to get everyone dressed and out the door for church, wondering if you have it in you to show up and serve with a smile after the week you've had. Or maybe it's a Thursday night, trying to get everything buttoned up from the day and get everyone fed and settled into bed so you can just have a minute to breathe.
And it could be that it's more than just a moment here and there. Maybe these kinds of days or evenings are happening more often than you want to admit, and it's turned into somewhat of a season where everything feels like it's fraying at the edges, and you can't quite put your finger on why.
The Wrong Question — and a Better One
Situations like this, seasons like this, moments like this leave us asking ourselves: What is wrong with me?
When I stormed out of the kitchen that morning, I did not go upstairs and enjoy my coffee. I went upstairs in tears, beating myself up and asking that question: What is wrong with me? I can't believe I just did that. And while I reacted poorly to what was happening around me that morning, that was the wrong question to be asking — because I was simultaneously overwhelmed with shame.
I learned along the way that there's a much better question in situations like this, and I eventually came around to it on this particular day. That question is: What is happening in me? Where is this coming from?
There's a clear difference between those questions. One — what's wrong with me — carries judgment and shame. The other makes space for curiosity, for grace, and for awareness.
I am not saying it's okay to ignore unhealthy patterns or hurtful behavior. I had to go back and apologize. I'm not saying it's okay to make excuses for our outbursts or our overreactions. I'm saying that we need to be able to recognize and process those things with an honest awareness — without the shame. And I think for women, that's particularly difficult. That's why it's so important to learn to ask better questions, and to understand what's happening in our bodies and in our brains in these kinds of moments.
So here's the truth we're talking about today: what we see and experience on the surface is often coming from something underneath the surface. Underneath that outburst could be exhaustion, overwhelm, anxiety, or confusion. There's often something else going on, and those things are signals trying to alert us that something in our life needs attention. It's our body and our brain responding the way that God designed them to respond.
I think we so often miscalculate and underestimate the mind-body-brain-spirit connection. We are whole beings. And I want to remind you today that what's happening in your inner life matters deeply to God — and what's happening in your inner life affects everything else.
God cares first and foremost about who you are, but He also cares about every other part of you and every part of your life. He cares about your body, your physical health. He cares about your mind, your mental health, your emotional health. He cares about your spirit and your soul. And again, what affects one part of you often ripples through every part of you. Nothing happens in isolation, and we're not meant to live compartmentalized lives — even though we've gotten really good at trying.
What Was Really Happening That Morning
That Saturday morning in my kitchen was a symptom of something bigger. It was a really difficult season of life and leadership. I was working as a nonprofit executive leader, and I knew for quite some time that something was wrong — long before I really had language for what was happening. My outburst and my overreaction to my family that morning had nothing to do with the kids, or the dog, or the cat, or my husband, or the dishes. It had everything to do with what I was carrying underneath the surface.
The signs were there. I just didn't recognize them for what they were. I wasn't sleeping well. I was exhausted all the time. I was overthinking and second-guessing everything, highly anxious. Normally I'm a decisive and confident person — but I couldn't get my thoughts together. I could not make a decision. I felt tense, stressed, and confused. My mind was full of noise, and my spirit was burdened. There was such a heaviness, spiritually speaking, and I didn't understand at the time that it was all related until it caught up with me that Saturday morning in the kitchen.
I knew I wasn't feeling this way because I'd stopped loving Jesus or trusting God. This wasn't a faith issue. I wasn't lacking faith. It was a job issue. But it eventually affected every part of me and every part of my life. Every day, I was bumping up against things in my job that were directly competing with my values and with what mattered most to me as a believer, as a woman, as a wife and mom, as a human. It was creating constant friction and tension, and that was taking its toll. It was an alignment issue.
Friend, misalignment can be a big deal. And misalignment is not the same as disagreement. You can disagree with people around you and still be in alignment with them. Misalignment is more like suddenly recognizing that the people you've surrounded yourself with have an entirely different playbook. It means constantly wrestling because what you're doing and what people are asking of you or expecting of you — the place where you're spending the most time and investing the most energy, which are limited resources — is working against or contradicting the very thing that God has called you to do. It works against your purpose, your convictions, your values. And when there's that kind of constant strain or pressure, your body takes note, even if your mind hasn't fully caught up.
Now, I have to say here that it's unrealistic to think we can eliminate every bit of stress from our lives. That's not what this is about. Some stress in our lives is actually normal and even healthy. We need it. It sharpens us, it motivates us, it helps us rise to the challenge, it fosters resilience. But there is a difference between healthy stress and chronic stress. Your body needs time and space to recover from stress — and when that's missing, all kinds of things can start to go wrong. That's what was happening to me in this season. It was chronic. The pressure and the stress — my body didn't have the time or the space to recover in the way that it needed to.
I was physically ill. I gained a lot of weight. My hair was actually falling out. I could go on, but the point I'm making is this: your body knows.
Your Body Knows
There's a book I love and highly recommend called The Body Keeps Score. It talks about how we carry these things in our bodies — unresolved pain, disappointment, grief, and trauma — and how it will show up in your life. Anxiety and overwhelm in these kinds of situations can't be explained away by saying, "Well, that's just how it is," or, "That's just the cost of doing something that matters." In reality, it's a nervous system telling you that something needs to change. Sometimes the nervous system comes online long before we're ready to acknowledge that something's wrong.
It's a little like a fever. A fever gets your attention. It lets you know your body is trying to fight something off, that there's an underlying issue. You can take some Tylenol, but that doesn't mean you're well. The fever isn't causing the illness — it's a symptom of the illness. Our inner life works the same way.
What is your body actually doing and why? It's doing what God designed it to do. He designed your nervous system to protect you. When your brain perceives a threat — physical or emotional, it's all the same to your brain — your nervous system immediately goes to work to help you survive and keep you safe.
Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn — and God's Design
When there's chronic stress, your brain is constantly perceiving a threat, and your stress response is constantly activated without room for recovery. This is what we call the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response.
You could get defensive, irritable, short-tempered, controlling, or frustrated. You might avoid, stay busy, overwork, overthink, get restless, withdraw, or isolate. You might shut down. Or you might people-please, over-accommodate, try to manage everyone else's emotions, or carry an overdeveloped sense of responsibility for other people. You might have a hard time saying no, and you may work really hard to keep peace with everyone around you — all the while making compromises you shouldn't make and losing sight of what matters in the process.
Friend, listen carefully. Some of us are quick to say, "Well, that's just how I am. This is just how it has to be." But a lot of these things we're calling personality traits are actually coping strategies. They're patterns of protection or self-preservation we've developed over time to survive. Your body isn't meant to exist with your stress response constantly activated. Prolonged stress impacts you cognitively, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It affects how you show up in the world, how you feel in your own skin, and how you engage the people around you.
Understanding all of this helps us respond to ourselves with self-compassion — with grace and curiosity instead of criticism and judgment. Self-compassion is not weakness, and it's not selfish. For a lot of us, especially women, we feel like we have to hold it all together — and on top of that, hold everything together for everyone else. So self-compassion doesn't come naturally. But it is something we can learn, and something we need to learn. It's a necessary part of thriving in our lives and in our leadership.
A lot of times we busy ourselves managing all of these symptoms — the anxiety, the overthinking, the overworking, the tension and stress, the exhaustion — without asking what those symptoms might be trying to tell us. We avoid taking a deeper look because it's hard, because it takes courage, because it feels vulnerable and risky. It requires a level of surrender and honesty and trust in the Holy Spirit to help us discern what's happening and to know what to do about it.
This Isn't Self-Help — It's Spiritual Formation
Friend, I want to make sure you understand something important. You have to invite the Holy Spirit into this process. You have to ask Him to search your heart, to lead and guide you, to show you what needs attention. Self-reflection and honest inner work without the Holy Spirit's active participation is just self-help — and self-help is not what we're after. Self-help doesn't create lasting transformation. But when the Holy Spirit gets involved, when He's actively working, it's spiritual formation. It's formation rooted in relationship with Jesus. It's actually because of our relationship with Jesus that we have access to this kind of transformation, healing, and grace in the first place.
Grace is not an optional part of the process. It's not just nice to have. It's necessary. When you understand what your body is actually doing under chronic stress, you realize that shame and self-criticism and judgment are the last things that will help you. Grace is where healing can begin.
Without grace, awareness has a way of turning into accusation — and that's where shame comes in, faster than we realize. We desperately need grace. We also need truth. Truth without grace leads to condemnation, striving, hiding, perfectionism, sometimes hopelessness. Grace without truth leads to staying stuck in unhealthy patterns, unchanged, because we're not addressing what really needs healing. But grace and truth together — that is where transformation begins.
No Condemnation
Scripture gives us a foundation for exactly this in Romans 8: "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
Condemnation says hide, run, avoid. Grace says come to the Father, talk to your trusted people, confess, bring this into the light. Condemnation says try harder, do better, figure it out. Grace says surrender — it's not up to you to figure it all out on your own. Condemnation says you're failing, give up, quit. Grace says there's something here that needs tending. You're growing. You're a work in progress, and this is a process. Keep going.
The posture is entirely different. And that grace-filled posture means you can speak to yourself with kindness — not excusing what needs to be addressed, not pretending everything is fine, but extending yourself the same grace you would offer to someone you love. The same compassion. It's the only posture that creates room for true, deep healing and change.
Elijah and the God Who Tends to You First
Scripture gives us one of the most beautiful pictures of exactly this — a man with a dysregulated nervous system and a God who knew exactly what he needed.
We find the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 19. He's just come off one of the greatest spiritual victories of his life. And afterward, he runs away and crashes — hard. He's exhausted, overwhelmed, emotionally depleted. He feels isolated and misunderstood. He's afraid for his life. He's in a classic spiral, telling God he's had it up to his eyeballs and he's done with all of it. He wants to give up — completely and permanently.
Here's what I want you to notice in 1 Kings 19. God doesn't rebuke Elijah. He doesn't hand him a checklist. He doesn't say, "Pull yourself together, man, and get back at it." He doesn't say, "What in the world is the matter with you?" God doesn't say any of those things.
Instead — God lets him sleep. He lets him rest. And He sends an angel to feed him. Not once, but twice. Elijah was a man who was completely depleted, with a nervous system on high alert — and God tends to his physical needs first. It was only after Elijah had rested and eaten and been cared for that God addressed the deeper things and sent him on his way.
That is not an accident. God doesn't do anything accidentally. He's very intentional in everything He does.
What that shows us is that you cannot do this deep inner work — you can't address things that need healing — from a dysregulated nervous system. It's very difficult to think straight or hear clearly when your body is running on empty and your nervous system is out of whack. That is not the time to try and figure it all out and fix what needs fixing. God knew that because He created Elijah just like He created you. He knows that about you too.
So sometimes the first invitation isn't to fix the thing that needs fixing. Sometimes God's first invitation is to rest. To receive. To let Him tend to you — emotionally, physically, spiritually — before you go any further. That is what it looks like when God meets you right where you are with grace and kindness, and tends to you as a whole person.
Notice. Get Curious. Respond with Wisdom and Grace.
So what does this mean for us in our everyday? There are three things we have to learn to do. They're simple things, but they're not always easy things. And we always do them prayerfully.
First: Notice. We have to notice what's happening — and the key here is noticing without judgment. That is crucial. We're paying attention. We're doing our best not to go through life on autopilot. We're asking questions like: What am I feeling right now? Is it fear? Grief? Exhaustion? Frustration? Where do I feel it in my body? What's happening in me? What's the story I'm telling myself?
Second: Get Curious. As we notice what's happening, we lean in with curiosity. Curiosity is an important part of the process — it replaces judgment and guards against shame. We're asking questions like: What might be underneath all of this? Where might this be coming from? Is this an alignment issue? Is this unprocessed disappointment or grief or pain or an unmet expectation? Is this physical? Spiritual? Relational? What needs tending to?
Third: Respond with Wisdom and Grace. You ask: Is there something I need to be doing more of right now? Less of? Are there things that need reordering in my life? What truth do I need to be reminded of right now? And then you take the next step — even if it's a small one.
Because here's what I want you to remember: awareness that doesn't lead anywhere isn't enough. Awareness alone isn't the goal. Healthy awareness always leads to action. Too much awareness without any action is just another version of overthinking. But wise action leads to change and to growth — and that is actually the goal. Formation. That means responding to what the Holy Spirit may be showing us and telling us. And that is very difficult to do when you feel overwhelmed with shame and condemnation. But wise action is possible when you're making space for truth and grace — when you're practicing self-compassion.
The Invitation
That is the invitation today: to receive God's grace, and to give yourself grace.
Maybe this was the morning you found yourself in your kitchen, in your car, or at your desk asking, "What is wrong with me?" I want you to remember there's a better question: What is happening in me?
Because here's the thing: when your inner world is well-tended, things start changing around you. You show up differently. You lead differently. You live differently. You love differently. You make decisions differently.
And friend, God is not standing far off waiting for you to figure it all out. He's in it with you. There is something uniquely yours to do in this world — something God wants to do in and through your life so that people can know Jesus. But it's important that we show up well and whole.
No matter where you find yourself today, know that there is a way forward, free of shame and condemnation. Be honest with yourself. Pay attention. Be curious. And be full of grace. And eyes on Jesus.
Hey friend, thanks for tuning in to The Purpose Project Podcast. I hope today's conversation helped you feel seen and a little less alone in the messy middle of life.
If this episode encouraged you, would you take a second to share it with a friend or leave a quick review? That will help other women who need hope and encouragement find this space, and it truly means the world to me.
You can always find free resources, upcoming events, or join the email list by visiting my website, thepurposeproject.us. Remember, friend — you were created on purpose and for a purpose. Until next time, be brave. And eyes on Jesus.
Meet Your Host
I’m Valerie Jones, a Christian Life & Leadership Coach and the host of The Purpose Project Podcast. I created this space for Christian women who are navigating the messy middle: those in-between seasons where faith is real but stretched, and life doesn’t look the way you expected.
My approach is rooted in biblical truth, emotional health, and brain-based methods because I believe God designed us as whole people, and transformation and personal growth should consider our whole selves.
“When your inner world is well-tended, things start changing around you. You show up differently. You lead differently. You live differently. You love differently. You make decisions differently.”
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