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

by Jennie Allen

The skilled concealers love the word fine.

The goal of that enemy is to create chaos and division.

I am planning things you couldn’t imagine for your future.

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.

“People who bottled up their emotions even increased their chance of premature death from all causes by more than 30%, with their risk of being diagnosed with cancer increasing by 70%.”[2]

“If you want to tame it, name it,”

My point: To tame something is to remind that thing that it is not in control.

Emotional wholeness begins by noticing and naming what we feel and then deciding what to do with it, allowing these emotions to draw us to God and one another.

Fear is our constant reminder we need God and that He is there.

Feelings experts have shown that there is a direct proportional connection between a person’s emotional granularity and their mental health, physical health, and relational health.

“The more specifically you are able to describe what is going on inside you, the more flexible you will become in the face of that emotion.

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”[1]

“the healthy expression of emotion is itself stress-reducing.”

if we would just express our authentic emotions instead of looking for a way out of that expression, we could potentially bypass the stress response altogether and just get on with our lives.

Ironically, it may be helpful to not try to control our emotions. If we just accept our emotional experiences and let them run their natural course, they can end more quickly.

As I’ve studied the emotional life of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I’ve become pretty angry that most of my life I’ve been taught that feeling difficult feelings indicated a lack of faith.

Despite what you may have been taught, our emotions aren’t symptoms of sin or a lack of faith.

Something about mourning with those who mourn helps when nothing else can and nothing else will.

Sharing our story in safe, connected relationships can heal the brain.

The problem is that we feel unsafe and unloved and unseen. We won’t move toward healing until those wounds are addressed.

Sharing puts us on a path toward healing.

We also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.[9]

Because despite our best efforts to keep them in a box on the shelf, our emotions inevitably affect the rest of our life.

The Enemy’s goal for you is hopelessness.