The Emotion You Keep Trying to Fix May Be Trying to Tell You Something

What if the emotion you’ve been trying hardest to get rid of is carrying information you desperately need?

Imagine Susan receives a difficult email from someone she loves.

She feels angry.

Within seconds, another thought appears: “I shouldn’t be angry.”

So she pushes the feeling away.

Later she feels exhausted, then guilty about being exhausted. She tells herself to be grateful. She tries to think positively. She prays for patience.

The original anger hasn’t disappeared.

It has simply gone underground.

Many of us were taught to treat emotions as unruly children. Happiness is welcome. Gratitude is admirable. But anger, grief, fear and disappointment need to be controlled quickly.

Religious language can sometimes intensify that instinct.

Trust instead of fear.

Joy instead of grief.

Forgiveness instead of anger.

Those qualities can be valuable. But what happens when they become shortcuts that prevent us from discovering what the uncomfortable emotion is actually saying?

Anger might be telling Susan that a boundary has been crossed.

Grief might be telling her that something mattered deeply.

Fear might be warning her that she doesn’t feel safe.

That doesn’t mean every emotion is correct, and it certainly doesn’t mean every emotion should dictate our behaviour. An emotion is information, not an instruction.

That’s the important distinction.

You can listen to anger without attacking someone.

You can acknowledge grief without allowing it to define your entire life.

You can notice fear without handing it the steering wheel.

Diane Cooper’s Faith for the Middle of Life argues that emotional honesty is not the enemy of spiritual maturity. Its chapter on emotions describes feelings as carrying information about what matters, while distinguishing honest attention from simply acting on every feeling. fileciteturn1file0L963-L1004

There is something surprisingly practical about that idea.

The next time a difficult emotion appears, instead of immediately asking, “How do I get rid of this?”, try asking a different question:

“What is this feeling telling me that I haven’t yet understood?”

You may still decide that the feeling is misleading.

But at least you’ll have listened before judging it.

Faith for the Middle of Life by Diane Cooper:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GN2954Y6

Which emotion do you think people are most likely to mistake for a spiritual problem when it may actually be telling them something important?

#EmotionalHealth, #Faith, #Christianity, #Emotions, #Grief, #SelfAwareness, #Spirituality, #ChristianLiving, #MiddleLife, #DianeCooper