Untangle Your Emotions: Naming What You Feel and Knowing What to Do About It

by Jennie Allen

My recommendation to you as you read these chapters is to let both your head and your heart come to play. Let all of you have a seat at the table so that all of you can learn how to live fully, wholly, abundantly again—or maybe for the very first time.

Emotions flood through our bodies and souls—our mind, will, and emotions—reminding us of this truth. They don’t stop at assigned places, and when we try to stem their flow, we fail. They course through us as they will, connecting the various parts of us to one another—connecting us to ourselves, connecting us to other people, connecting us to God.

Let me be clear, you will never be emotionally healthy outside the will of God. Just like your emotions were designed by God, the patterns and ways we are to live and thrive were also designed by God. You were built for obedience to a loving Father.

If you’re reading this and you have been through something difficult and feel easily irritated, maybe swinging into deep, unhealthy emotion or even checking out, I’m gonna say what I always say: Of course you are. You’re fragile. You’re not yourself. All our rivers at different points in our life shrink and get narrow. Each time is an opportunity to come back to Jesus, over and over again. If you’re in this season right now, ask the people around you for grace. And don’t be afraid to get help.

All emotions are good. Aren’t you just blown away by this? A God who feels all the feelings and does not sin, He appropriates all those feelings rightly. Just like with so many aspects of God, it’s impossible to get our heads fully around a God who feels all the emotions but does not sin.

Emotions are not the sin; it’s what we do with them that is the sin. Emotions have always been, and emotions always will be, though certainly in heaven our need for sadness and fear and anger will disappear, as Scripture promises.

Maybe life is so painful right now that numb actually sounds appealing to you. If so, I want you to know we have a God who issues descriptions of heaven as a place where He will personally, intimately wipe every tear from our eyes. A God who wants to pull you close today and hold you and be with you saying, “I have you. I love you.” A God who not only feels for Himself but also comes close to us when we’re feeling all our feelings too. God is waiting for us to come to Him with all of it. Even the ugly feelings you and I are tempted to judge—God is waiting to see if we’ll let them draw us back to Him.

But if all we do is control or manage our emotions, we lose touch with ourselves, our need for God, and our need for each other. Control shuts us down. Not just the difficult-to-face emotion we don’t want to feel, but also our enjoyment of our friendships, the depth of prayer, the tears that used to pop up when we sang “Amazing Grace” at church, the creativity that used to inspire words or art or fun in our lives. It all gets shut out if we try to shut out some of it.

Controlling our emotions is not the goal. Healing them and expressing them in a healthy way is.

We are making ourselves sick with our coping. We think that, in our checking out and numbing out, we are relaxing, but the truth is, we are missing the gifts of God that are meant to keep us in delightful relationship with Him. We are drifting from deep, meaningful relationships with other people in our coping.

Please hear me: You don’t have to tell everyone; you have to tell someone. I know the damage that can flow out of a reaction to our emotions; I know the beauty they can catalyze too. Emotions are tools. Which means that whenever we feel an emotion, we can use that feeling to spur us on toward God, or we can use it to sit there and sin. Here’s what we can’t do if we want to live healthy and free: We can’t stuff the thing and just move on.

The truth that sets us free begins with the truth that we are sad or hurting and desperately and urgently need help. There is no hope for health, joy, peace, and salvation apart from Jesus, the One who is all and has done all for us. He died on the cross for our sins. He was raised to new life again. He offers us grace and forgiveness and an eternity spent with Him.

The beauty of David and the Psalms is the permission to feel it all. David had full confidence that God could handle all his emotions, even the ones that caused him to doubt that God is good and that God still loves him. He sees injustice go unpunished and he’s ticked! He feels safe enough with God to wrestle it all out! Do you?

IF, AS YOU’RE reading these words, you’re feeling paralyzed by sadness, anger, grief, or disappointment, I want you to know something: Given everything we are presented with in this lovely world of ours, it’s amazing to me that you don’t feel more than what you’re feeling right now. That’s the first thing I would say, were we seated across from each other, face-to-face.

I’m here to remind you that you are not standing on that shore alone. The same God who accompanied the Israelites as they stared at the water in front of them, knowing the Egyptians were closing in from behind, and the same God who split the sea—He split the sea!—that God is near. He’s right there beside you. He can do a miracle here.

Our ultimate security rests wholly and completely on who God is. He is why we’re okay. He is also why we can be broken and doubt and fear and cry. We think God is waiting for us to pull ourselves together, but actually He is waiting for us to come to Him and fall apart.

Whatever situation has left you tangled up in your feelings, God is saying, “I am on the other side of this rope. Lay down the controlling, coping, and hiding and just come say it all. Come feel it all. I got you. I want to have you.”

God built us mind, body, and soul. He wrapped us in flesh and set us here at this time and in this space, and the mystery of what we feel and how we experience it all points to a God who not only built our emotions but feels every last one of them too.

We can’t be present with God and others when we’re refusing to be present with ourselves. Which is why I’m writing this book for us, to teach us how to do just that. We can’t be emotionally healthy if we refuse to be emotionally honest.

It’s our feelings that tell us something is broken. It’s our feelings that tell us something is hurt. It’s our feelings that tell us we need God’s assistance.

If our story feels similar to your own story, whether bouts or a constant fight with paralyzing anxiety or depression, I pray and believe you’ll make it through as you remember that God is there in the valley with you, just as He promises.

If you’re single, that might feel like a cruel statement. But I believe in community so close and deep that your people could do that for you—maybe even better than a spouse. So often, it is my closest friends doing this for me.

Bottom line: What we are about to do together will change you, stretch you, and bring you life, but you need your people. If your answer to that is, “I don’t have my people,” then mark your spot in this book, set it down, and go read my book Find Your People. You need people in the boat with you!

When we distract ourselves from how we’re feeling or stuff down the emotions that are begging for breath or demand that our circumstances and the people within them somehow change to conform to our whims, we’ve only kicked the problem up the path a few feet, where it will stay until we arrive.

Emotions are best healed in community. They are best healed there because they were given to us to connect us to others. Crying alone is cathartic; crying together heals us.

I imagine Jesus cradling her face in His hands, looking her in the eyes, and declaring His delight over her. “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”[4] See, it wasn’t enough for Jesus to heal her; He wanted a relationship with her. He stopped in the midst of a crowd and noticed a woman who had been ostracized all her life. He didn’t just want her to stop bleeding; He wanted to look her in the eyes and connect with her and begin a relationship with her. Using intimate language: “Daughter.”

Above all, I encourage you to invite God into this journey with you. If you are scared of feeling these feelings, ask Him for strength to face them. If you are confused about what you are feeling, ask Him for insight and clarity. If you are overwhelmed with feelings, ask Him to issue peace that surpasses understanding. If you are numb and don’t feel anything, ask Him to wake up your heart. He loves you. He made you. He made these emotions so that you would draw near to Him. This is how we do that. Talk to Him about it all.

But honestly naming what we are feeling is essential to untangling our insides. Jesus constantly asked people questions to get them to name what was true about the deepest parts of their souls.

Here is the thing about joy: You’ll never notice or appreciate it unless you learn to feel sadness and fear and anger too.

But Christ came so that we would have life abundant in Him.[6] He delighted over children, over meals with friends, over people coming to faith, over people being healed, over wine at a wedding. He said to His disciples, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”[7] Full of joy. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, and it is a gift from God. We reflect His image when we feel joy.

But He’s not scolding us like a disappointed father when we fear. Otherwise, we would be afraid of being afraid. No, He is comforting us with truth. Fear is our constant reminder we need God and that He is there. He is with us in the valleys.

If you find yourself still feeling anxious, still feeling dejected, still feeling melancholy, still feeling afraid, remember that progress takes time to run its course. But we’ll get there. Eventually, it will feel natural to feel what we feel and boldly move on.

When learning to express to another living human being how we’re feeling, we’re going to trip and fall. We’re going to mislabel our feelings from time to time. We’re going to step in it once in a while. It’s okay. You will get better at this as you go.

To be truly seen, soothed, safe, and not alone in the pain heals you in ways you can’t believe unless you have felt it.

When Jesus says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light,”[3] He’s not saying life is going to be easy. In other passages, He says there is trouble in this world and He calls us to pick up our crosses.

How many times have we been angry at God but scared to say so? Jesus did not shame Martha. He comforted her and issued a greater hope than an earthly healing:

Scripture says Jesus named that He was deeply troubled and moved by the weeping of Mary, and He wept with her.[7] This is the only human who has ever walked the face of the earth who actually had the power to solve the problem of death, both in the moment and for eternity. And yet Fix-It Jesus does not show up here. Feel-It Jesus shows up and weeps with His friend who is weeping. Why? He knew He would raise Lazarus from the dead. He knew He would fix the problem both temporarily and eternally for all of them. Yet, in Martha’s anger and Mary’s grief, Jesus does not correct them; He comforts them.

Feelings don’t heal when we ignore them; they heal when we are wrapped up by the people we love in the middle of them. Resilience, maturity, connection, character, and hope growing right before my eyes as we sat on a bathroom floor being sad…together.

You can feel the emotions, share them with the people you love, and let them draw you closer to the God who wants to carry your burdens. As the Bible tells us, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”[1] Choosing to engage this process leads to wholeheartedness. It leads to connection. It leads to the kind of life God built for us and wants for us.

Faith isn’t summoned; it grows. It grows because of a relationship, not your willpower. It grows because of the desperate nights when you can’t quit crying and you think nobody sees you, but He is with you and you feel it and you know it.

He untangles the knots through seasons of tears and raw honesty and running again and again back to Him…because He cares for us. He wants all of us. He wants to know it all. So we choose to notice and name and feel and share—and in every step along that path, we invite Jesus into it. We tell Him all of it.

Sometimes the “truth [that] will set you free”[4] is saying to God and others what is true about the state of your heart. God’s word sets free the parts of us that need it, and we have to be truthful about where we are struggling. Even if it feels impossible to say out loud…

“I have told you these things,” Jesus said, “so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”[7] God isn’t afraid of the brokenness, and we shouldn’t be either. He has a plan to set us free—in

God, what do You want me to know? God, what do You want me to do? We will never know the answers to these questions if we don’t ask. He is waiting to lead you beside still waters, to shepherd your soul! He’s waiting for you to decide you want to be healed.

Whether the thing you don’t want to deal with is feeling like you’ve let someone down, or feeling like you’re not measuring up, or feeling like you’ll never be able to change, or feeling like your life is destined to be disappointing, or feeling like you’ll always be misunderstood, or feeling like you’ll never find a friend group that will stay loyal to you, or feeling like you’ll never be worthy of love, or feeling any of a million different doom-forecasting feelings or things that are even more concrete and inescapable… What I want to say to you as someone who has been emotionally stuck in life more times than I care to count—as someone who still today occasionally gets twisted up in her emotions, as if she’s tangled in the leash of an especially rambunctious dog—there are times when simple awareness can help us straighten things out and extricate ourselves. And there are times when more help is needed.

If trauma and decades of hurt have accumulated, the situation is way more serious than a quick tire change. It needs a professional. And that is okay. You aren’t especially broken; you are especially wise and strong to ask for help.

Therapy isn’t magic; we just all have a lot of tangled-up ropes. Every one of us. What therapy does over long amounts of time, depending on how tangled your ropes have become, is it helps you pull on one little string and realize, dadgummit, everything is more tangled up than you thought. For about six to eight weeks, counseling just kind of ticks you off. You’re not sure you want to do it. But then, magically, a knot gets untangled.

I don’t know what your emotional healing will demand of you, but it will, in fact, make demands. Will you come boldly to that discussion?

Resilience and perseverance require hope. We would all stay in our beds permanently if it weren’t for hope. We believe, even if it’s just a small little sliver, that things could possibly be better than they are. The Enemy’s goal for you is hopelessness.

You know what makes me so sad? You might feel helpless. Hopeless. Yet if you know Jesus, you are filled with the Holy Spirit, the greatest supernatural helper of all time. Better than any superhero ever. He contains all knowledge and power. He is yours in Christ Jesus. You are never helpless. As I invite you to feel your feelings, remember that they don’t have authority over you; rather, you have authority over them because of Christ Jesus. In this world, we have trouble. Fact. And Jesus has overcome the world. Fact.