James Merritt - How to Deal with How You Feel: Managing the Emotions That Make Life Unmanageable

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HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

EUGENE, OREGON

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How to Deal with How You Feel

Copyright 2022 by James Merritt

Published by Harvest House Publishers

Eugene, Oregon 97408

www.harvesthousepublishers.com

ISBN 978-0-7369-8534-5 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-7369-8535-2 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021949963

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I recently began seeing a therapist, which I must admit made me feel a little awkward. You see, Ive been a pastor for more than 45 years, so Im usually the one performing the counseling, not the one receiving it. People often come to me for help when theyre feeling sad or mad or guilty. They seek me out when theyre overwhelmed by disappointment or disagreement or disease or death and they cant seem to control all the emotions these experiences have dredged up. As a pastor, my job is to help them process what theyre feeling in a biblical way.

But now Ive ended up on the other side of the desk. Im the one seeking advice, not doling it out, and this is a new experience for me. My counselor, like all good counselors, has helped me deal with my feelingshonestly confront the emotions churning inside of me. Conversations with him have uncovered hidden insecurities, catalogued anxieties, and revealed unspoken jealousies I didnt even know I was harboring. Weve worked to process my angersomething Ive had to deal with all of my lifeand to confront the guilt I sometimes feel.

Maybe you can relate. An early 2021 report by the American Psychological Association revealed that 84 percent of American adults had recently felt anxious (47 percent), sad (44 percent), angry (39 percent), or some other powerful emotion associated with prolonged stress such as experienced in a pandemic.

But you dont need a study to know an emotion commotion is going on in America. The pandemic and Americas other challenges certainly contributed to the results in that report, but for all kinds of reasons, everywhere you look youll witness the burning fires of anger, the sneak attacks of anxiety, the furrowed wrinkles of worry, and the sweat of stress running down foreheads.

And lets not pretend these emotions are only out there and not inside us as well. Perhaps youre a single mom angry with your ex-husbandthe one who left you for another woman and is trying to dodge paying child support. Maybe youre depressed because you lost your dream job when your company downsized and its shredded your sense of self-worth. You might feel anxious because youre awaiting the results of a biopsy, and the worry is compounded by fear youll receive bad news. Or perhaps you feel bitter toward someone you once trusted as a friend who betrayed you and couldnt care less about your hurt.

Feelings are not the most important thing about us, but they are one of the more powerful drivers in our lives. So how should we deal with our emotions? Well, first let me tell you how not to deal with them and then what to do instead.

Whatever their cause, when it comes to the feelings well address in this bookstress, worry, anxiety, depression, fear, loneliness, jealousy, anger, bitterness, and guiltwhat we might call life takersmany people tend to gravitate toward one of two extremes. In an article adapted from his book Untangled Emotions , Alasdair Groves writes about emotional obsession and how some people adopt an emotions are nothing stance. I express this idea by saying people tend to either ignore their emotions or idolize them. Both paths are extreme and problematic.

Some people strive to, as Groves says, keep a stiff upper lip, a saying derived from the physiological fact that a trembling of the upper lip is often the first visible sign of emotion. So, the thinking goes, one should stiffen their upper lip to hide emotion. These people resist feeling what they consider to be unfeel-able feelings churning inside of them. When an acquaintance, coworker, or neighbor asks, How have you been? many people reflexively respond with Fine or some benign equivalent. But if they told the truth, theyd say, Im mad as a hornet or Im down in the dumps or Im worried to death.

Maybe were afraid of admitting our vulnerabilities, but heres the truth: These emotions are not bad; theyre not a sign of weakness or unhealth. Emotions are good, and some of them are even godly. God created us with a mind to think, yes, but also with a heart to feel. As the late British pastor and author John Stott wrote, We are to be neither such emotional Christians that we never think, nor such intellectual Christians that we never feel. No, God made us human beings, and human beings are by creation both rational and emotional.