Emotions

I want to share something that has been a huge awakening in my life in the last few months. It is something that I have briefly touched on previously regarding emotions, and comes from a few books I have read, one referenced before by John Powell.

Emotions are neither good nor bad. They indicate the satisfaction of wants and needs.

Dwell on that statement for a minute. Let it sink in.

Emotions are similar to a stop light. The color of the stop light is neither good nor bad. The "legality" of your action is what you do in response to the stop light's color. Driving through a red light is not a good idea! The stop light is a sign that indicates the flow of traffic and what is needed in order to conform with the flow. You can chose to pay attention to the color, or ignore it, in which case you are a danger to other drivers, and can cause an accident.

My action based on my emotion is what is positive or negative.

I am reading a book called Becoming Real which is similar in concept to some of the ideas Eldrege shares in his Wild at Heart book. The idea is that we create stories that rationalize the events that happen in our childhood in order to make sense of those events without villainizing the perpetrators of those events because we need those people. What I mean is that a child will rarely have the mental competence to think, "The action my parent just took right now was a bad choice on the part of my parent." Usually, the child will think there is something wrong with him/herself.

How does this relate to me? My dad was very vocal in his anger growing up. I can say now as an adult that his anger was completely inappropriate and wrong. But as a child, I created a story or an idea that anger was wrong! I should not feel or be angry! This is completely unrealistic, and yet I have been operating from this belief or story for quite some time, much to my own frustration. So let's take the above concept and apply it to anger, a commonly misinterpreted "wrong" emotion.

Anger is neither good nor bad. It is an indicator that my wants and needs are either satisfied or not. What want or need is being frustrated or blocked? Am I afraid (many times anger's root is fear)? What am I afraid of? Why am I afraid? What need or want is my fear covering? In this example, my dad's anger (I think) was because of fear, and the fear underneath was due to an (irrational) want/need to predict and control the future. The control concept is one of my "learned behaviors" I have been and am working on "unlearning". But that is a post for another day.

What I want to emphasize here is that instead of dismissing an emotion as silly - "I should not feel this way" - I begin a process of investigating the source of the emotion and turn it into a positive expression for my life. This may be very obvious to you, but I missed this part of training as a child. :) Do they teach this in school?

One final thought. The Bible describes God has feeling a wide range of emotions. Anger is a common emotion that He feels ("the anger of the Lord"...). Jealousy, hatred, love, tenderness, and many others are all over His Word.

To sum up what I have been saying:

1. Accurately identify the emotion
2. Identify the want or need the emotion is "speaking" from.
3. Identify if the want or need is realistic and practical (if not, is there a want or need underneath this one? See my earlier post on The Inner Desire).
4. Determine positive action steps to meet the want or need in a way that does not infringe on others wants and needs (future post on this one!).
5. Wash, rinse, repeat.