The Beauty of Acknowledging Emotion
I recently made a life-altering purchase. These very small, very comfortable ear plugs specifically made to block out the snoring sounds of my husband. I had a few super great nights of sleep until once again, I was awakened from my deep slumber. I was instantly angry.
I had researched and purchased these amazing little noise blockers and his alternating snorts and gasps were STILL keeping me from my precious sleep. I ripped off my blinders, looked over in my husband’s direction in order to give his peacefully sleeping face my fiercest angry eyes. Only to find my husband was not in my bed. I was the snorer who disrupted my slumber.
Like me, we all tend to respond hastily when negatively affected by life’s disruptions. Every day, we all have the responsibility to understand what we feel and why. If we don’t take the time to properly associate our emotion to the proper source, it can lead to sinful responses.
We will direct our anger or sense of shame onto those we love the most. Or we automatically incorrectly label our felt emotions as sin. Either way, we are disgusted by our inability to live perfectly. We recycle our sensed shame and judge ourselves and others harshly.
Understanding why we feel things is vital to Christian living. Intellectual conviction is not the primary driver of our behavior. Emotion drives our behavior. And our primary emotional reactions are driven by good God-given desires.
It is when those desires are met with relational ruptures, mistreatment from trusted caretakers, or damaged by abuse, our neurological connections are left mangled. The way our brains are supposed to fire and function is broken and left underdeveloped. Our sense of safety is jeopardized without proper care. Decades pass and we move on. Then in our present day, someone we trust hurts us in a familiar way and we are instantly flooded with intense emotional reactions left by deep wounds left untended.
This reality affects each of us and it hands the enemy a megaphone inside our heads. If we simply name sin, and disregard the emotion driving our sinful behavior we are sacrificing the God-given gift of neuroplasticity. Or to put it another way, our bodies and our brains influence our emotional responses to situations. If we ignore this reality, we end up simply trying to modify our behavior without exploring how our current behavior is connected to deeper issues in our lives.
We were created to long for peaceful internal integration. When we feel overwhelmed by our emotions we experience dysregulation causing anxiety or stress. In these moments we need containment. Our brain is telling us we are in danger and the only way toward comfort is through clarity. Adam Young teaches that all dysfunctional ways of being in the world— all addictions and compulsions—-are, at their core, attempts to self-soothe or seek emotional comfort. We crave necessary peace within ourselves and need others to help us re-regulate or return to a state of emotional comfort. God gives us emotion and our need for relational help so we can make sense of how we have been harmed and can therefore determine when we are safe.
For example, we feel angry and immediately experience shame. So we repent and attempt to deny any validity in our anger. In reality, sin is not organically in the emotion of our anger. The primary emotion of anger is the result of unmet longing, a sense that an injustice has taken place.
The catalyst to our longing could be a godly and good desire. The desire to be known, understood, to belong and be loved. If we name the desire, we can better pray to a loving God who sees our need, knows our hearts and created us with good desires. This demands an attitude of kindness toward ourselves. This aspect of neurobiology is affirmed in Scripture when Paul affirms how kindness is what leads to a heart of repentance (Romans 2:4).
This sanctifying process is the very mind renewal spoken of in Paul’s epistles to the early church. If we are going to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit, then we must acknowledge the shadows in our hearts. We are foolish to disregard how we are created to feel emotion, acknowledge what it means to us so we can respond to what we feel without sin.
This integration between our hearts, minds and physical bodies is an incredible part of our created being. Denying this reality is the equivalent of sitting on the sandy beach with a beautiful sunset while wearing a blindfold. We can open our eyes and have the courage to do this work knowing what we find does not define us.
