I had a few other introductory ideas, but I decided to put out a meat and potatoes topic to give you an idea of the things I’ve learned along the way. In my opinion, one of the vertebras in the backbone of counseling/therapy is to understand that emotions ARE. Emotions are not good or bad. They are not right or wrong. Emotions don’t predict anything or decide anything about you, such as how much God loves you. Emotions just ARE. When emotions are viewed as information our mind and body give us about how we feel in a specific situation, we can then choose how we’d like to respond.  When emotions are viewed as good or bad, right or wrong, then shame and struggle come into play.

In the Bible, God is shown to have emotions (Gen 6:5-6, I Kings 11:9, Zeph 3:17), and Jesus displayed emotions while here on earth (Luke 10:21, 19:41, Matt 26:38, John 11:35). We are made in His image, so it stands to reason then, that having emotions is normal. It’s normal to be sad when there is loss. It’s normal to be disappointed when expectations aren’t met. It’s normal to be excited when a baby is born. Emotions inform us how we feel in different situations because they are based on thoughts and body sensations we’ve learned.

We all have mirror neurons designed to help us learn from others. Children mirror facial expressions and actions of their care givers. If a child is crying and they hear “You must be so sad!” they will associate the thoughts and sensations they’re experiencing with the word sad.  Same for happy, angry, disappointed, etc. This happens over and over as children begin to understand how different emotions feel and can start to label those for themselves.

Emotions are 70-80% physical sensations and 20-30% thoughts. One of the exercises we did was to reverse the process in naming an emotion. We had a chart to fill out – first the situation that took place, then the thoughts in response, and the body sensations that went along with it. These sensations and thoughts produce urges to react. In stepping back to examine the pieces and parts, it’s easier to name how we feel.  Sometimes people would say “I feel bad.” But emotions aren’t bad. Bad is not a feeling. It’s useful to then list out the thoughts, sensations, and urges to name the true emotion. This might look like…

• I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow
• My whole body is tense and my heart is racing
• I want to stay home
  →My emotion is anxiety

• I’m worried what someone else will think
• My stomach is churning and I feel small
• I want to hide from them
  →My emotion is guilt

These are just two examples, but you get the idea. Some might mistake state of being as their emotion, using words like bad, good, elevated, depressed, spun up, calm, intense, and mellow – these words do describe the intensity of an emotion. If in group we did say “I feel bad,” some instructors would say “bad is not a feeling” and ask us to come up with a different word that described how we felt.  If I say I feel calm, I’m describing my state of being, not my emotion. It’s more accurate to say I am calm instead of I feel calm. I’ve noticed that I’ll say, “I’m good” when asked how I’m doing, and I realized I use this as a shield so I don’t have to use feeling words. It’s not accurate for a couple reasons – 1. Good is not a feeling and 2. I’m not good of myself! If I use that expression, God should get the glory because he’s the only one that can make us good.

For a great visual tool that gives names to the range of emotions, check out this PDF –
https://med.emory.edu/excel/documents/Feeling%20Wheel.pdf

I started here by saying that emotions aren’t good or bad. It’s our reaction due to the emotion we have that can be good or bad. One instructor talked about the ways our reactions trip us up:

• If our emotion is not normal for the situation
• If our emotion is too intense for the situation
• If our emotion lasts too long for the situation

Science says that emotions last 60-90 seconds. If we continue to have the thoughts and sensations that go along with that emotion, it’s because we continue to think about the situation that came immediately before the emotion showed up. If something good happened and we continue to think about it, we’ll sustain the emotion of happiness or joy. If we’re angry about something that happened and we continue to go over it in our mind, we’ll keep having the same thoughts and sensations, and stay angry.

In an ideal world, not this broken one we live in, we’d be able to acknowledge our emotions and choose to respond in ways that aren’t sinful and don’t cause unpleasant consequences. Sounds like heaven to me! For now, it’s our job to take stock of our emotions and make choices by God’s grace to respond in healthy ways and not react in ways that damage relationships. It sure isn’t easy in our humanness, though!

So many of these topics are intertwined, it’s difficult to know where to stop writing!
More to come on:

• Slowing down the process to help us make better choices
• Separating identity from emotion to diffuse the emotion’s power
• How thoughts and emotions affect each other
• Our circle of influence