Self-Care Series:

Emotional Wreck? Practical Ways to Take Control

Emotions are funny. They’re affected by everything from the food you eat to the weather outside. They fluctuate when you exercise, when you hear a particular song or even when you simply change your perspective. They especially go nuts while you’re pregnant and postpartum because of all the hormones floating through your body. Emotions seem to be influenced by everything. So why do they, more often than not, determine how we experience life? Well, I’d venture to say it’s because few have mastered the art of controlling and renewing emotions and instead, we just let them control us.

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There’s a lot of judgement that comes with emotions – it’s good to feel this way, it’s bad to feel that way, it’s understandable to have this or that reaction and even the concept that someone has a RIGHT to feel a certain way is a judgement. These judgements come from a misrepresentation or misconception of what emotions actually are and what their purpose is.

Emotions Defined

 

 

By definition, an emotion is influenceable. In fact, without an influencing variable, emotions wouldn’t be hard to deal with at all. We’d decide them and that’d be that. They wouldn’t be “reactions,” so to speak. However, with this understanding – it also stands to reason that it is your decision whether or not your emotions control you. But WHY do emotions feel so controlling? Because people assume that since an emotion is “natural” according to the definition, it means it’s who we are.

“Natural” does not mean “by design.” Just because you may have developed a “natural” tendency to feel a certain way when something happens – that does not mean a. That’s who you are, b. You were designed to feel that way and c. you have to live by and make decisions according to said feelings. This goes for those good and bad.

If you think your emotions define who you are, there’s no overcoming them, there’s no controlling them, there’s no renewing them. There’s only acceptance. And what about those emotions you hate feeling because of the internal knowing you shouldn’t feel that way (i.e. the insecurities you want to get over, the fears you want to conquer and the irrational thoughts that have no logical place in your thought process)? If we simply accepted these feelings as “the way we are” we have no way to separate ourselves from them and have them benefit instead of take away from us.

Feelings are great servants, but terrible masters.

Understanding that we have the ability to renew our feelings is HUGE. It’s the game-changer. It’s very similar to the idea of renewing our minds that we discuss in our post on mental self-care. We stop being a victim of our thoughts and feelings and we start taking control of them. But the first step is realizing that we can. We are not what we feel. We are not defined by our emotions. This is the first step of emotional self-care – understanding what emotions are, and what they are not.

The Practical

A really great place to start in taking control of your emotions is simply repeating these affirmations aloud in the mirror every morning or even when you feel your emotions are starting to overcome you:

1. I am not what I feel. My emotions do not define who I am.
2. I control my emotions. My emotions do not control me.
3. My emotions were given to me by God to serve me, not to lead me.
4. I will not make important decisions based off of feelings, but off of truth.
5. God is an emotional God and He loves my emotions. Therefore, I love my emotions.
6. My emotions will fall in line with what I know to be true as I speak truth over myself.

Here are some further resources for achieving peace in your emotional world and renewing your emotions and feelings:

Victorious Emotions by Wendy Backlund

 

Victorious Emotions Journal: A 30-Day Journey to Rewire Your Brain

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

 

Related posts in this series: What is Self-Care Anyway?,  The #1 Tool You Need For Your Mental Self-Care

 

Right there with ya,

Niki from