By Shiloah Baker
Emotions are such powerful feelings and are a part of our being. We can’t just swallow them and think they will disappear. Recently, I finished a book called “Feelings Buried Alive Never Die”. After reading this book I began noticing how negative emotions affect everything in our lives if they are unreined and allowed to rule us. They affect our health, our appearance, our decisions (including our financial decisions), and our relationships with others.
My daughters and I watched the classic movie “Our Mutual Friend” the other night. It is a two-part movie based on the Charles Dicken’s novel. Lizzie was a poor, but beautiful girl who was orphaned as a young woman. She attracted a handsome, rich gentleman named Eugene who fell madly in love with her. She also caught the eye of her brother’s schoolmaster whose unstable emotions became his ruin. He was insanely jealous of Eugene and his familiarity with her. He could tell Lizzie favored Eugene. His negative emotions of anger, hate, and jealousy combined into rage. He was often pale, sweaty, and physically ill due to his emotional state. He tried to propose to Lizzie, but his discomposure frightened her. He eventually attempted to murder Eugene because he could not get himself under control. His hate consumed him and made him a miserable wretch.
I was engrossed in watching his emotional state unfold into fits of bloody coughing, paleness, and exhaustion. Before my very eyes I could see what I read about our negative emotions making us ill was right on. Even Charles Dickens knew this!
During the last few nights, I have been finishing up the novel “The Virginian” by Owen Wister. After learning more about our emotional health and how it affects us, I noticed even in this novel, he describes the human state when negative emotions take over.
The Virginian has to accompany a man in taking some horses back to his boss’s ranch, much to his disliking. This other man, Balaam was a well known horse abuser and a man no one in that part of the country liked much. Balaam was overworking his horse and then beating him because he wouldn’t move fast enough. The Virginian stayed out of it, except for a few comments here and there. In response, Balaam would verbally attack the animal and the Virginian. His anger, impatience and a host of other negative emotions were stewing. After hours of hard work and no rest, the horse tripped and fell. He reached his boiling point and got down off the horse and struck the horse until his stick broke.
The Virginian suggested he leave the horse alone at this point.
“Balaam turned to him, but wholly possessed by passion did not seem to hear, and the Southerner noticed how white and like that of a maniac his face was. The stick slid to the ground.
‘He played he was tired,’ said Balaam, looking at the Virginian with glazed eyes. The violence of his rage affected him physically, like some stroke of illness.” (Wister, 1902)
These are two examples of rage, jealousy and hatred. There are hundreds of other negative emotions we as humans experience and many times feed and hold onto without realizing it.
God helps those who help themselves. He has given us endless amounts of tools and resources. Many times our help is through life’s lessons or by helping us to understand our problems better so we can fix them.
“No one is more emotionally honest than a baby; but as that baby grows up, he learns that “big boys don’t cry” and she learns that “you aren’t pretty when you pout.” Parents must teach their children to control their emotions, but instead they all too frequently teach them to repress their emotions. The delicate balance is to learn how to acknowledge emotions and to express them appropriately.” (Chidester, 1979)
What are some ways we can rid ourselves of negative emotions?
1. Prayer. I put this one first because the first place we should go to is our Heavenly Father.
2. We can talk about them. This isn’t a license to hurt others by letting venom spill. If done with sincerity, expressing our emotions can help us to recognize all of the feelings we feel and try to get a better handle on them. It is always comforting to have a good shoulder to cry on.
3. You can do the script that is found in the book, “Feelings Buried Alive Never Die”. In the script you are speaking to your higher conscious and telling the feeling to leave and what to replace it with. In my experience this has been very effective.
4. Own it. Realize that we are the only one responsible for allowing an emotion to fester within us. Once we realize this, it will become easier to get rid of it.
“For us to feel emotion, we must first be aware of some stimulus—an event, a thought, a memory. Then we interpret that stimulus—and that’s when the emotional response comes. Our interpretation can be relatively positive, neutral, or negative. That our emotion rises out of the interpretation we give rather than from the stimulus itself (the experience, the thought) is clear when we recall those situations where people around us received the same stimulus we did and yet responded very differently.” (Kelly, 1980)
I have noticed this and am thankful for the fact that we as individuals do respond differently. My husband is the long suffering and patient one and I tend to be higher strung. When something triggers a negative emotion in me, my husband is still as calm as ever and helps me to realize the silliness in allowing myself to feed that emotion. I have to say it is the reverse as well.
Negative emotions allowed to stay with us can and will ruin our health. Everything from cancer to ingrown toenails stem from unresolved negative emotions. Our financial situation is also directly connected to our emotional health; remember the term “Shopping therapy”?
Eliminating negative emotions is not easy and certainly doesn’t happen overnight. If you are consistent and prayerful as you take the steps necessary to heal your emotions, you can achieve a more peaceful life, and more importantly, a life full of positive, loving emotions.
Works Cited
Chidester, C. R. (1979, July). Keeping in Touch with Feelings. Ensign , p. 15.
Kelly, B. C. (1980, February). The Case Against Anger. Ensign , p. 9.
Wister, O. (1902). The Virginian.
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Shiloah Baker is a homeschooling mother of seven. She and her family reside in North Carolina where she runs The Homemaking Cottage & Co. from home. Join us at The Homemaking Cottage Deluxe Edition for 897 ways to improve your home and family!
http://www.homemaking-cottage.com/ And don’t forget to join our ezine for free ideas.
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CS Lewis said, "The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. "
for school, goes to visit a relative, can start walking, leaves for college, etc. Their focus is not in the here and now. Now is life. Now we are creating memories for tomorrow. Now is the time to enjoy your family. All too soon we will be without them in our home as they each leave to begin families of their own. Let us make the loving, happy home environment today. Teaching our children today ensures a better future for them. When they are on their own they will be so thankful for the time you took to teach them, to love them, and to lead the way for them.
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