Managing Overwhelming Emotions Part 1

 

We believe every child of God can…learn to live a liberated life in Christ. We believe there is a peace of God that surpasses all understanding that will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. -Neil T. Anderson

Even Jesus wept, grew angry, and felt anguish. David, Elijah, and Peter all experienced deep sorrow, fear, and regret.

The key for us is learning how to manage our reactions instead of being ruled by our emotions.

Sometimes, emotions become overwhelming because we allowed the emotions to build up without expressing them in a healthy way. So, it's like we are a tea kettle on the stove, blowing out hot steam and screaming. Or we get stuck in our emotions because we see no way out. 

If we don't express our emotions in a healthy way, it affects our mental health, physical health, relationships, and quality of life.

What are some examples of healthy ways?

Pause and pray. Bring it to God and ask Him for His help by leading you in His will, instead of you leading by your desires to react in an ungodly way. 

Journaling our emotions. And we don't have to have a fancy journal or make sure our spelling and grammar is perfect. Write or type your emotions out, and think about what caused them. You can even do an audio journal with speech-to-text. The important part is to recognize what we're feeing and why. This helps us release some of the feelings. Know how sometimes when we talk about something, the more we feel like a small burden has lifted from us? This is it! Also, we can look back at our past journals and see how far we've come!

Change our mindset. This is easier to do with baby steps and practicing growth mindset activities. Growth mindset activities build resiliency and strength. Here's a 10 minute video about what the growth mindset is. You will most likely get a-ha moments from this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxa2r8kpWcg

Here's some growth mindset activities and I've tried a lot of them and they have helped me with breaking out of my fixed mindset. https://www.skillpacks.com/growth-mindset-activities/

I'll end this here and will post Part 2 soon! 👍