Aftershock - Can I Trust My Emotions?Sample

Managing Your Emotions

Maybe you weren’t blessed with good role models growing up and never learned to share your emotions openly or effectively. Instead, your role models taught you to overreact, to vent your feelings without regard for time, place, or choice of words. Or maybe you learned to underreact by burying your feelings or denying them.

Both extremes are easy to slip into when you have sustained a devastating shock, and your emotions are raging. But they disrupt meaningful communication. 

Imagine holding a beach ball underwater. That’s what it’s like when you attempt to conceal the pain you’ve endured as a result of your husband’s behavior. Burying your feelings requires a lot of attention and drains your energy. As the days go by, you’ll find yourself trying to hold two beach balls underwater at the same time, or even three or four if enough months or years go by. You’ll quickly discover you’re facing an impossible task.

To avoid the extremes of either burying your emotions or acting them out fully, it’s important to understand yourself at a deeper level, which takes time and a commitment to self-care.

If you haven’t started journaling your thoughts and feelings, give it a try. Don’t edit yourself. What you write in your journal is for your eyes only. God can use this exercise to help you dig down to the parts of your soul where the pain is the greatest.

Journaling will not only help you understand yourself and your emotions at a deeper level, but you’ll also gain greater insight into who you are. As a result – and with guidance from God’s Spirit and hopefully a trusted counselor – you’ll be able to think more clearly, respond wisely to your situation, and address your feelings in an appropriate way!

Next, we’ll look at how to identify and understand your emotions.