One of the things that happens in therapy is that we often go back to the basics, and focus on essential but basic skills such as communication skills, stress management strategies, and how to navigate our emotions. It’s not rocket science, but to be honest, no one teaches us this stuff! Therapy can be an opportunity to learn or relearn some of these skills and apply them to your current life situations.

Learning to navigate your emotions is a skill that can make a huge difference in your life. We feel things all day every day. Contrary to René Descartes famous statement, “I think, therefore I am,” we are not primarily thinkers, but feelers! It’s often believed that we have a thought in reaction to a situation and then feel the emotion. But we actually feel the emotion, and then have the thought. That is one of the reasons why strategies of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which addresses changing our thought patterns, while incredibly helpful, are often incomplete if they do not address the underlying emotion as well.

Emotions are hard

But let’s be honest. Emotions are hard; hard to feel, hard to navigate. And, we get mixed messages about emotions: follow your heart, don’t trust your emotions, you shouldn’t feel that way, you feel too much. My goal is to help you have both a right understanding of emotions and learn tools to navigate them well. We’ll explore how emotions are signals, and that how we process them well is through connection.

One disclaimer I want to provide: in this article, in discussing emotions, I am not talking directly about mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. I want to show you that emotions are good, but please don’t hear me say mental illness is good; it is not. I you are struggling with a mental health condition, learning to navigate your emotions is helpful. If you’re not currently in that, learning to navigate your emotions well is incredibly helpful to proactively care for your mental health.

Emotions as Signals

There are two contrary and extreme messages that we get about emotions.

1. Emotions are bad; don’t trust your emotions; ignore, deny, or avoid them at all costs.
2. Listen to your emotions, do whatever you feel.

My question is, do either of those work for us? If we ignore, deny, or judge our emotions, they are still there, waiting to be dealt with. But if we totally submit to our emotions, that doesn’t seem to lead to good results either. Instead of the extremes, there is a middle way that makes sense where we can not deny our emotions, but not just act out of them either. In the middle way, the goal is to be curious about our emotions because they are trying to tell us something about what is going inside of us. They are like dashboard signals, giving us cues about our internal experience. If we approach them with curiosity, they lead us to connection with ourselves. They also allow us to connect with others, which we’ll address more later.

Let’s look at Inside Out

One of the best examples to show how emotions are signals to our internal experiences are the Inside Out movies. In the movie, we meet various emotions and learn their personalities and jobs as emotions. When the main character Riley feels an emotion in response to an event, that emotion takes over the control panel. Joy comes out when Riley feels happy, when there is something to enjoy or celebrate. Anger takes the reins when something is not fair or he doesn’t like something. Fear emerges to keep us safe when there is danger or a perceived threat. Disgust tries to keep us from being poisoned physically or socially. Sadness takes over when there is something to grieve or mourn.

Our emotions are the same. One of the main lessons from the first movie is to pay and give attention to our emotions. Spoiler Alert: Joy doesn’t want Sadness to take over when Riley moves, which leads to an internal struggle all movie, until she finally lets Sadness take over so Riley can finally grieve all that she has lost in the move.

Too often, we treat our emotions as enemies. I get it, emotions are not always fun to feel, especially ones like anger, sadness, and fear. But if we treat them more as friends, and recognize they are trying to tell us something, I promise you will move through them more smoothly because you let them do their job- tell you what is going on inside. The more we try to deny or fight our emotions, the more they fight for their existence.

Christianity and Emotions

In the Christian church, the first message that emotions are bad and we shouldn’t trust them is common. However, we see that the trinity of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit have emotions all throughout the Bible. God delights in his creation and his people in Genesis. All throughout the Old Testament, God is disappointed and angry when his people do not follow his commandments, and compassionate in giving them chances over and over. He loves us in sending his only son Jesus to die for our sins. Similarly, we see Jesus feeling angry when he sees people selling goods in the Temple and flips the tables. He is called a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3) because of the suffering he felt on the cross. In the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22), he is anxious and afraid anticipating his death and taking on the sin of the world. The Holy Spirit is given all kinds of emotional language: the Spirit is jealous of us when we choose the world (James 4:4-5); the Spirit desires what is contrary to the flesh (Galatians 5:17). Since we are created in God’s image and we see God has emotions, having emotions is part of our design created in God’s image. That doesn’t mean we are ruled by them, but they have purpose. Life is not static and we are not robots. It seems right that there is an internal response to the variety of experiences of life. Life is not grey and neither is our experience of it. Emotions are a beautiful and complex part of being human.

Stay tuned

I told you that we were aiming for a middle way – not denying our emotions, but not fully submitting to them either. So far, we’ve explored how emotions are signals to our internal experience, and we can be curious about what they are trying to tell us. Next, we will talk about how we can best navigate and process our emotions through connection, building on the connection to ourselves in our curiosity, and as we share that experience with others.

If you’d like some extra support navigating your emotions, don’t hesitate to reach out and get started with a therapist here at Optimum Joy.