Emotions (3)

Dealing with painful feelings.

In order to deal with our feelings in a responsible way, we have to learn that feelings are only feelings. What do we mean? It means that feelings are not necessarily reality.
We are not saying that feelings are not real. Everyone struggling to keep emotions at bay, know that they indeed are real! But our feelings do not reflect how things really are. To deal with them in a way that is helpful to you and others and not to act on them insensibly, we must realise that what we feel do not always reflect reality. Therefore, we must recognize them for what they are and what they are not.

Yes, we need to acknowledge what we feel and that we do feel this way. Denial of our feelings will simply suppress them and not allow us to deal with them in a healthy way. Even if we try to suppress our emotions, they will eventually surface again and then they could return in destructive ways. .

To acknowledge your emotions does not mean we must tell everyone about them. It is most of the time unwise. When we need advice as to how to deal with what we feel, we need to only speak to someone we trust, who is equipped to guide and help us in dealing with them. Our minister is a good choice to share our emotions with, knowing it will be handled with complete confidentiality. He will not only listen, but he is able to guide us from the Word of God in dealing with them.

And we must always tell God about our emotions. God knows how we feel. God understands what we feel. God loves us even when we are angry or frustrated. We must not only acknowledge our emotions to ourselves, we can and should talk to God about what we feel.

In the Psalms we see how believers share their emotions with the Lord. We read words of praise for when we are rejoicing and we read sad, even despondent prayers, for when we are feeling abandoned, angry or in pain.
In Psalm 31:9-10 we read: "Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted away from grief, my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength has failed because of my iniquity, and my body has wasted away."

It is clear that the Psalms poet did not hesitate to tell God exactly how he really felt.
Our emotions are certainly real to us. But we cannot just blabber about them to everyone. But we can and should deal with them, verbalising them to someone equipped to help us deal with them.
More importantly, we need to speak to God about what we feel. We need to share all our emotions with our God. It is an essential step in healing and dealing with them well.