You’re going to see your crazy person today. Maybe she’s coming to a family gathering. Maybe you’ll see her in a small group you meet with each week, or you’ll be talking to her on a phone call you can’t avoid. It could just be that you’re going to work and she’ll be in the next cubicle when you arrive.
As each minute passes, a low-grade sense of dread rises within you. Sure, the conversation could be benign. But you have history with this person, and she usually seems to know exactly how to push all the wrong buttons with you.
“Today will be different,” you say. “I won’t let her get to me.” You set your resolve and mentally rehearse how you’ll greet her. You picture yourself remaining in control of yourself, no matter what her attitude is like. She’s not going to win.
But she wins. Thirty seconds into your conversation, she makes a casual, sarcastic comment that feels like a dagger in your spirit. Your anger rises, quickly approaching a boiling point. You refrain from saying anything, but you’re hoping a piano accidently drops through the ceiling and lands on her. You feel defeated because she broke your resolve and she’s in control again. Your emotions got the best of you, and your crazy person has you dangling in her grip like a bungee jump gone bad.
How Can I Stop Feeling?
Encounters like that often leave us feeling hopeless. We’ve tried so many times, but it feels like we’ll never be able to conquer our emotions. We wonder why our crazy person is able to manipulate our feelings so easily, and we’re an emotional wreck.
“I wish I could just shut off my emotions,” we think. “If I wasn’t so emotional, this wouldn’t bother me so much.”
At a basic level, that’s true. But the reason we have strong emotions is because we care. If we didn’t care, our emotions wouldn’t be a problem.
The closer we are to someone, the more our emotions will be involved. When the president of the country makes a crazy decision, it shouldn’t bug me the way it does when a family member makes one. The closer they are, the more we’ll feel. It’s inappropriate to have debilitating anger over events we can’t control. But in a personal relationship, emotions will always be part of the connection.
Emotions are a gift from God that make our lives multicolor masterpieces. Without feelings, life becomes beige.
Doctors often prescribe antidepressants to help people cope with the “lows” in life. While these can be effective in helping a person regulate their ups and downs, one of the common side effects is that the person no longer has “highs” in their emotions, either. They feel a neutralizing effect that keeps them from feeling strongly in either direction.
Emotions are the fuel of relationships. Just as our bodies burn calories to provide energy for living, emotions provide the energy we need to work on our relationships. Emotions motivate us to take action, moving relationships from where they are to where we’d like them to be. It’s kind of like pain. The stronger the pain, the more motivated we are to find out what’s causing it and deal with the problem.
It’s what we do with our emotions that makes the difference. Pressure comes into every relationship, pushing us away from our set point. In unhealthy relationships, people see each other as the problem and let that pressure come between them, driving them further apart.
In healthy relationships, people put the pressure on the outside, pushing them together. They see the pressure as the problem, not the other person. So they join forces to face the problem together.
There’s nothing wrong with fuel. It all has to do with where that fuel is burned. When wood is burned in a fireplace, it provides warmth. When wood is burned in a forest, it produces devastation.
Reaction vs. Response
When something happens that pushes us away from our set point, we’re going to feel emotion. That feeling isn’t good or bad; it just “is.” Reactions happen naturally and automatically and are not a problem in themselves. The problem is in how we respond.
A reaction is how we feel; a response is what we do. Reactions are automatic, but we choose our responses.
When we receive an email that touches a nerve, we’ll probably feel anger. Our first thought is to reply immediately with what we’re feeling. But have you ever done that and accidentally hit “send,” then regretted your choice? You’re trying to figure out how to break into the person’s office and find his password to delete the message before he sees it.
The anger might be automatic, but what we do with that anger is the key. Instead of sending a quick reply, we might choose to process our feelings for a day or two before sending a thoughtful, appropriate response.
When someone starts yelling at us and accusing us of something, a natural reaction is to yell back and defend ourselves. That makes the other person more upset, and the conversation spirals downward.
“A gentle answer turns away wrath” (Prov. 15:1). Even though we feel like lashing out because we’ve been hurt, we could choose a different, more gentle response. It’s hard to keep the fire going when someone removes some of the fuel.
Imagine two people standing and facing each other. Both have their hands up in front of them and are pushing against the other person’s hands. Since they’re both pushing, they remain standing. But if one person pulls back and removes the pressure, the other person will have to stop pushing or they’ll fall on their face.
The Character of Emotions
Have you ever tried to use logic in a conversation with an angry person? We can’t talk someone out of feeling, including ourselves. Holding our feelings inside is like holding a bunch of balloons underwater. Just when it looks like we have them under control, one of them pops up to the surface.
It happens when people make a major purchase, like a new car. We want to think we’re making decisions based on logic: safety, gas mileage, practicality. But research has shown that we make our buying decisions based on our emotions: how we feel driving the car, how impressed others will be, how much we like the color. Once we make the decision to buy, then we need the logical features to justify that decision. We buy the car because it’s red, but we convince ourselves it was a good choice because it’s safe.
Feelings happen. When they do, it’s dangerous to try to ignore them or pretend they don’t exist. When we stuff the emotion inside, it stays there and grows and has no chance for being dealt with in a healthy way. Anger turned inward, for instance, can lead to depression, headaches, and other physical symptoms.
We all know people who yell when they get upset, and then they’re fine a few minutes later. The good news is that they got the emotion out. The bad news is that everyone around them is ducking for cover or curling up in a fetal position on the floor.
There are healthier ways to handle our strong emotions. In any honest relationship, those emotions need to come out instead of staying inside. Flying off the handle with anger isn’t the only way to get the emotions out. The same result comes from taking time to think before speaking and expressing clearly what we’re feeling.
I violated this last weekend when I was doing jigsaw puzzles with my two granddaughters. I was working on the edges, Elena (age 4) was working on Curious George, and Averie (age 6) was assembling the man with the yellow hat. I had just collected all the straight edge pieces so I could put them together, when Averie grabbed all of my pieces that contained yellow. Several times she made choices that made it easier for her but harder for her sister and me.
Now, I adore my granddaughters. But I was starting to feel irritated at Averie’s behavior. Instead of saying something, I simply got quiet and quit playing. (I’ve always been good at withdrawing.) When she said, “Papa, why aren’t you playing?” I said, “I’m just going to watch.” She said, “But I don’t want to do this all by myself.” I hinted at my feelings: “Well, it’s just hard to do when you take my pieces, so I’ll just watch you.” (How’s that for an adult response?)
Soon I was back in the game, helping assemble the pieces. But it bothered me for several hours because I hadn’t been honest in my communication. I hadn’t yelled at her, but I had stuffed down the emotion. That didn’t help either of us.
Finally, we sat on the patio swing and talked about it. “Averie,” I said, “I need to apologize for what happened when we were doing the puzzle. When you took the pieces I had set aside for the edges, I felt frustrated and kind of angry. But instead of telling you that, I just quit playing and you didn’t know why. That was wrong, and I’m sorry. It’s really, really good to tell each other what we’re thinking so we know what’s going on. That’s what people do who love each other.”
She said, “OK. Can we do another puzzle now?”
I guess being an adult doesn’t guarantee we handle things properly.
Manage Your Thoughts, Manage Your Emotions
The key to controlling our emotions is to manage our thoughts. That’s where our emotions come from. If I think you’re upset with me, I’m going to have all the feelings associated with those thoughts. You might not be mad at all, so my emotions come from what I’m thinking, not from what is true.
A pastor told me of receiving a call from a woman who was devastated because he was so angry with her. It was a surprise to him, because he couldn’t remember even having a conversation with her the previous Sunday. Evidently, he had passed by her in a crowd of people after the service and hadn’t greeted her the way he normally did. In reality, he hadn’t even seen her. But she felt like he had purposely ignored her and began thinking about the reasons why he might have done so. Over the next few days, her thinking escalated until she was convinced that their relationship was beyond repair.
How could she have changed her thoughts? By telling herself the truth. “The pastor didn’t greet me today.” (That was true.) “That’s unusual, because he’s always so friendly and encouraging. There must have been something going on that I don’t know about. Maybe he was upset, but maybe he was just distracted. It’s out of character for him, but I really don’t know what’s happening. Maybe I should send him a note to encourage him, and find out if everything is OK.”
It’s always dangerous to assume that our perceptions are accurate when we don’t have all the facts. When someone yanks our chain and we feel strong emotion, we can use that as a trigger to stop and analyze our thoughts to see if they’re based on truth or assumptions. Messed-up thinking mixed with strong emotion leads us to focus on the problem rather than the solution. When our thoughts are accurate, our emotions become appropriate.
Shakespeare said, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”[6] Other historical writers have echoed those thoughts over the years. Even the Bible contains more than three hundred references to “thinking,” for example, “As he thinks within himself, so he is.” (Proverbs 23:7 NASB).
Here’s the process:
The problem is in step 2. It’s like a fork in the emotional road. Whatever thoughts we choose determine where we end up emotionally.
A Thoughtful Solution
So, how do we solve our thinking problems? Four steps:
What type of thoughts can we replace the bad thoughts with? Things that are true, honorable, life-giving, trustworthy, encouraging, comforting, exciting, refreshing, promising, and hopeful. When those types of thoughts flood our minds and replace the negative thoughts, we have the chance to experience peace.