Let me ask you a question: Have you ever had a disproportionate emotional response to a situation that should not have affected you in such a dramatic way?

Let me ask you one more: Have you ever stopped to think about what the reason for that response could be?

There are always things beneath the things. We are not simple creatures. Even those of us determined to live steady, unemotionally charged lives are shaped by a million small moments that stay with us. Those moments shape who we are and how we think and how we react—and, yes, how we feel—in a given moment to a given circumstance.

Among the many things I’ve been learning and want to share with you in the pages to come is that those revved-up reactions tell a story—a story about something we’ve lived. They point to a deep-seated something that has gone unaddressed in our heart.

We experience something impactful. We react to that thing by stuffing our feelings or minimizing our feelings or ignoring how we feel altogether. Then something else comes our way, something that’s not even that big of a deal, and we lose it. We unload on a loved one. We catastrophize. We ugly cry, heaving until we can barely breathe.

And then we regret what we’ve done.

Why did we freak out?

Why did we demean our spouse?

Why did we shame our kid or yell at our roommate?

Why did we make that insane assumption and blame and threaten and walk right out the door, slamming it behind us as we left?

What was that all about? What was underneath it all?

Short answer: a lot, as the science and the Bible will show us.

Somewhere along the way, maybe from things I heard at church or just from growing up, I learned I wasn’t supposed to be sad or angry or scared. I was supposed to be okay, so I needed you to be okay too. Or maybe it’s just because I hate the feeling of being out of control and I believed these feelings were too scary and sitting in the hard felt . . . too hard.

Every time I experience sadness, fear, anger—emotions I’ve been conditioned to not want to feel—my brain immediately moves to fight off the feeling like it’s a virus. My brain attacks the feeling, judges it, condemns it, and tells me why I shouldn’t feel it at all. It tells me
that it is all going to be okay. It barks out all these orders about what I need to do so that I can finally stop feeling the feeling.

Worse still, sometimes when you share with me your sadness, fear, or anger, I do the same stupid thing to you.

I’m sorry.

It’s wrong and I’m sorry. Your feelings, my feelings, are not evil things that need to be beat back.

Feelings can’t be beat back, by the way. Even if you’re the most effective stuffer ever to live, the very best at stuffing feelings way down deep, so far down you believe they can never be found, I’m here to tell you those feelings don’t go quietly. The people who know you know that they’re there. If you are honest, you know they’re there too.

That hint of rage you felt toward your dad, the fear of rejection you felt with your family, the striving that has exhausted you at school or work, the jealousy that creeps in whenever you are at that one friend’s house, the bitterness that flickers when you talk about why you don’t yet have kids, the despair you feel in your gut every time you think of the person you love buried underground— I know you think you packed all those things safely away in a box so that you won’t have to see them again.

But inevitably they pop out at unexpected times, like over a lovely dinner when your daughter is just dreaming beautiful dreams.

Whatever the triggering situation, at some point the next day or the next week or sometime even later than that, you look back on the catalyst—and on your response—thinking, Why on earth did I say (or do) that?

You wonder, How on earth did those feelings sneak up on me? You wonder why they didn’t play fair. The truth of the matter? They were playing fair.

Or playing predictably, anyway.

Because those feelings are tangled up with something very real in your past or present, something that absolutely is a big deal to you, whether or not you’re ready to admit it.

Feelings can’t be beat back.

They can’t be ignored or dismissed.

They are trying to tell us something.

To read the full chapter, click HERE 🙂

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jennie Allen is the founder and visionary of IF:Gathering as well as the New York Times bestselling author of Untangle Your Emotions, Find Your People, Get Out of Your Head, Made for This, Anything, and Nothing to Prove. A frequent speaker at national events and conferences, Jennie is a passionate leader, following God’s call on her life to catalyze a generation to live what they believe. Jennie earned a master of biblical studies from Dallas Theological Seminary. She and her husband, Zac, have four children. Excerpted from Untangle Your Emotions: Naming What You Feel and Knowing What to Do About It. Copyright © 2024 by Jennie Allen. To be published by WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, on February 13, 2024.