The Garden Within Quotes

“Your spiritual life cannot be isolated from your emotional reality.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Maybe you haven’t been formally diagnosed with depression, anxiety, or another mental health problem, but that doesn’t mean what you are struggling with isn’t real.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“the diagnosis doesn’t create reality; it just points it out.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“ask yourself, How is my inner garden looking? Don’t feel bad if the soil needs attention. Don’t be surprised or upset if you notice that some areas are bare, some are growing well, and others are dying. You’re not alone. In fact, a lot of people are not okay right now.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Goals should not be gathered, they should be grown.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“I am worthy of being loved, valued, treasured, and respected. My voice matters. I will treat myself with kindness, even when I let myself down. I am both imperfect and capable of growth. I don’t mind if other people see my imperfections.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Disconnecting from your feelings is not an act of faith; it’s an act of avoidance.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Pain denied is pain multiplied. It will only continue to undermine our well-being, and if we refuse to engage long enough, our spiritual health will decline.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Your heart is the soil where spiritual seeds are planted. Your heart anchors the roots of your mind. Your heart nourishes the fruit you produce. Your heart is the soil of your life.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Joy doesn’t negate pain and pain doesn’t negate joy. Real life happens in the both-and zone.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“You don’t need to overthrow your emotions to experience a revolution in your life. You just need to overthrow the lies you have believed about your emotions. The Creator designed your heart to be a garden, not a war zone. A truly powerful life isn’t won. It’s cultivated.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“If having and expressing those feelings wasn’t a sin for Jesus, then it’s not a sin for you. No emotion is a sin.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Not only that, but Jesus also expressed those feelings with His words and through His body—which means feeling isn’t failing because Jesus never failed.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Being emotionally well isn’t about earning something from God. Your emotional well-being won’t affect how God shows up for you, but it might affect how you show up for God. When we are emotionally healthy, we position ourselves to be more powerful spiritually. That is why, for me, being a therapist is a divine calling. Your heart is a sacred seedbed. Emotional healing is sacred work.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“We may try to divide our emotional and physical experiences into separate realms, but our body doesn’t do that. When we hold in our emotional pain, our bodies will cry out in other ways. Chronic pain and illness may eventually voice our fear. Fear can manifest as “headaches turning into migraines, muscle aches turning into fibromyalgia, body aches turning into chronic pain, and difficulty breathing turning into asthma.”4 It can disrupt our sleep/wake cycles and contribute to immune and endocrine system dysfunction. Studies have even connected the prevalence of anxiety and depression to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).5”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Have you ever desperately wanted an explanation from God but thought you might be struck by lightning for crying out, “Why?”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Jesus literally knows what our hearts feel in our weakest moments because He felt it too. How do I know? Because the Bible tells me so. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. (Heb. 4:15)”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Emotions are consistently cast as the opposition in a war that never seems to end. The scorched earth of your heart bears the scars, but your heart was never meant to be a battlefield. Your heart is a garden.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Faith says, “It’s possible.” Hope says, “It’s possible for me.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“move”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Prayer and reading Scripture are essential spiritual tools. Praise, worship, and fasting also empower us. Our spiritual practices are a supernatural arsenal, and with them we can accomplish what we could never do on our own. However, taking rogue thoughts captive can feel like the antithesis of supernatural work, and by the time many Christians show up in pastoral care or professional counseling, they are devastated that none of it seems to be working because they haven’t changed or the change never seems to be “once and for all.” Whether trying to stop doing something or start doing, they are usually focused on failing to renew their minds. Things can get even harder when we try to change the way we feel.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“Your heart is the soil of your life.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“A garden’s condition depends on its soil; the condition of the garden within you—spiritually, mentally, and physically—depends on the soil of your heart. That means embracing your feelings. All of them. And that means it’s time to end the war.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins

“What if you responded to painful thoughts as evidence that something within you needed to be nurtured or cared for? That’s how metaphors change feelings.”
― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within: Where the War with Your Emotions Ends and Your Most Powerful Life Begins