Why do we have Emotions?

Why Emotions?

"What would it look like for you to invite sadness in as a friend?" I looked at my counselor with shock and disbelief. I immediately blurted out, "Why would I do that?!" I honestly don't remember the remainder of that session. My mind immediately descended into a frenzy. Who on earth would ever want sadness as a friend? I have worked most of my life to avoid, eliminate, squelch, and or ignore my sadness along with every other "bad" emotion.

Like the stereotypical man, I worked to rise above my emotions and make "rational" decisions. Feelings were supposed to get in line with my other, more “reasonable faculties”. And when those pesky little buggers raised their heads, I would smash them down to make sure they didn't influence things too significantly. Emotions, especially the negative ones, were a nuisance that needed to be kept in line.

What use are Emotions?

But what if there is more to our affective experience than that? If they serve a purpose, what purpose would emotions serve? Perhaps they tell me what I like to do and things I don't much like to do. Or maybe they help me figure out my temperament and what kinds of work I should be pursuing. Or possibly they are a result of human brokenness, and if we lived in a perfect world, there would be little more than pleasant serenity. If it were only that simple…

In subsequent sessions with my counselor, as well as in my time studying to be a counselor myself, I realized that the purpose emotions served was far more profound than I had initially considered. As far as I can tell emotions serve at least these three purposes:

Three Purposes of Emotions

1. Emotions allow me to know and respond to the state of my internal world. Like the indicators on a dashboard, or the instruments of an airplane cockpit, I can understand the running condition of my inner world through the information provided in and through my emotions.

2. Emotions allow me to connect with others in the context of their emotional experiences. I cannot attend well to my wife if I remain wholly oblivious or contemptuous of her emotional state; the same holds with my children, not to mention the clients that I serve within my clinical practice.

3. Fundamentally emotions give me data regarding the quality, nature, and impact of the relationships and conditions I am currently navigating.

Working Against Myself

So here is the ironic thing: In my effort to be logical and rational, I tried to eliminate emotional data from my evaluation, hobbling myself in the very goal (being rational) I intended to pursue. I will never be logical if I eradicate relevant data, even emotional data, from my calculus. It turns out that by diminishing, ignoring and downplaying my emotional experience, I was becoming less rational.

When we shun our emotional experience, we end up numb to our world. As with numbness in the dentist chair, we don't feel pain; we don’t feel anything. We can't taste our food; we can't report if our toothache is better or worse; we don’t have enough data. Likewise, if we live a life void of emotion, we can't live a life informed by the experience of either joy or sadness.

Welcome to the Human Race

So when my therapist asked me to, "invite sadness in as a friend," he was asking me to be more integrated. He was inviting me to be more rational and logical; more wholehearted; and fundamentally more fully human. We are not (nor were we ever intended to be) cold, calculating machines. In fact, when we integrate our emotions more fully into our lives, we don’t only live more rationally, but we also find a bedrock of meaning and purpose.

However, living a more fully integrated life is costly. Integrating our emotional lives into our story opens us to hurt and sadness, but it can also bring great joy. The invitation is to acknowledge your heart with all of its pain, sadness, grief, distress, anger, fear, gratitude and joy. It is an invitation to live a life fully integrated, and fully human.

Spiritual Abuse and Counseling

Counseling & Faith

Counseling and faith communities have, at times, had an uneasy relationship. Some counselors and thought leaders in the therapeutic community have felt that faith communities have undermined their efforts to bring healing and restoration in the lives of their clients. Alternatively, some churches have believed that the fields of counseling and psychology have worked to invalidate their sacred doctrines and articles of faith. Unfortunately, people from both environments, with the best of intentions, have done great harm to the people they aim to serve; this doesn't have to be the case.

Bridging the Gap: Faith & Mental Health

Deeper Stories Counseling aims to help bridge the divide between the mental health community and the faith community. Working together, we can invite people to a deeper engagement with their lives and stories at the feet of a God who is easily big enough to join them in the challenges of their story. As both communities learn from each other and grow together into a more profound and more holistic expression of the inbreathed Imago Dei, there is great potential for intrapersonal integration that moves beyond what each community could offer independently.

Spiritual Abuse & Recovery

Spiritual Abuse is likely one of the most subtle, profound, and widespread types of trauma in the world. One need look no further than their closest congregation, parish, or temple to find a history of victimization in the name of God. History is replete with such examples from every faith and from every part of the world. Movies, news stories, rumors, and memes all illustrate ways in which God's power is invoked in an attempt to coerce, manipulate, or otherwise harm the very people that have dedicated their lives to following him. 

The twisting of faith and scriptures is nothing new. Religious powers and authorities have a long tradition of manipulating sacred texts or divine revelation to say things that suit their agenda. There is a vast diversity of power allocations in different faith communities, and as such, neither the laity nor the clergy are immune from this form of abuse. To name a few examples, professional ministers are often forced to serve under unrealistic expectations, denied personal boundaries in the context of their ministry, and are frequently under-compensated for their work. Likewise, more hierarchical structures can often leave the parishioner vulnerable to religiously justified abuses of authority. In any case, when the power of God is invoked to silence, shame, or discredit, it brings great harm to the individual and community.

Victims of spiritual abuse often find their faith dying (or dead) and notice themselves avoiding, if not leaving, community indefinitely. Those harmed often realize they are questioning their basics assumptions about life, relationship, religion, and society. They struggle to reconcile the beliefs they once had (perhaps even the injustices perpetrated by their own hand), and subsequently divorce themselves from anything that would resemble the communities from which they fled. When the perpetration goes beyond psychological injury to include sexual and/or physical abuse, the impact to the soul of the survivor is even more extensive. The fallout of trauma stemming from spiritual abuse profoundly calls into question the very nature of God and one’s purpose for being.

Healing for Your Soul

All spiritual abuse has deep personal impact on the soul of the victim. To move forward in the context of your story, we will explore how your experience has influenced your faith journey, your sense of self, and your experience in the community. We will unpack the messages that you received and how those messages align with or undermine your values. Our journey may, or may not, end with you returning to an intimate or personal faith practice; that depends on your own goal. However, we can work together to discover what is holding you back, engage the questions that have shaken your faith, and identify a path forward for you when you’re ready to take it.

Healing in You and Your Community

Trauma perpetrated in the context of a community can find healing in community. In that vein, the Spiritual Abuse Process Group offers a framework for people to share with those who have experienced spiritual abuse as a part of their journey. The group process provides an opportunity to explore a healing path and experience compassionate curiosity with people in different stages of their pilgrimage.

Restoration in Your Story

We were not made to walk alone. However, the invisible wounds suffered in spiritual abuse too often result in isolation, shame, and the disintegration of faith and community. Here are some resources if you want to know more. Additionally, if you or someone you know has been impacted by spiritual abuse, reach out for information, or start your own journey of restoration.

Connection: Restoration in a World of Contempt

Connection: Restoration in a World of Contempt

You are fundamentally intended for deep and abiding human connection. Contempt starves connection through self-protection, withdrawal, and isolation. The starving relationship held in Contempt, will move anemically; eventually, decaying into relational dysfunction and perhaps even death. However, Compassion and Curiosity, pursued with Courage, revitalize those failing relationships and imbue them with strength and resiliency. Once buoyed and revived, Creativity effects the invitation for both individuals to authentically offer their true self as part a tapestry from which new meaning emerges. Compassion, Curiosity, Courage, and Creativity constitute the fertile soil where authentic intimacy fosters true Connection.

The Beauty of Connection

Connection unfolds through seasons of growth and dormancy. Like a tree gaining root and reaching for the sky, authentic intimacy moves both inward and outward. In the face of another, surfaces some of the most profound experience of ourselves. Our capacity for attunement and relationship grow as our roots dig deeper into each other's souls, and our branches reach out for connections with the world around us.

But this kind of connection does not happen through luck. Instead, those desiring more profound relationship need to pursue and cultivate connection with fierce intentionality and abiding determination. Nothing worth anything will come without cost.

1. Connection in Community

Pursuing connection in the context community does not mean finding someone who is just like you. Instead, it is the process of fostering fellowship with those that invite your most authentic self to blossom, offering an invitation to become more of who you were fundamentally made to be. Likewise, in a healthy and connected community, you will invite others into a fuller and more integrated expression of themselves. This form of healthy and connected community will function as a symphony; each person's soul is playing their unique melody in harmony others while bearing witness to the vitality of their collective song.

2. Connecting Shoulder-to-Shoulder

Another form of connection will happen shoulder-to-shoulder. These relationships form with those people who come alongside in a joint endeavor to meet a common goal. Shoulder-to-shoulder connection can often be short live; spanning the duration of a project or a season of working together. In spite of the frequently temporary nature of this connection, the commonality of purpose can forge deep ties that persist over many years, even decades of life, long after the original objective was achieved. Relationships like these can form through ministry, social work, political campaigns, serving in the military together, business ventures, or something as brief and straightforward as working together at a camp. The strength of shoulder-to-shoulder connection should never be underestimated. It provides shared experience and common language which give the individuals fertile soil for deeper and more meaningful relationship in the future.

3. Connecting Face-to-Face

Face-to-face connection provides the potential for even deeper intimacy. A shoulder-to-shoulder connection can often turn into a face-to-face connection, but this is a move that is not always successfully navigated. When we turn our faces toward one another, we are opening the windows to our souls and inviting another person to join with us in the pursuit of shared being, not just shared activity. Friendships that pursue this face-to-face intimacy in a non-erotic sense can be some of the most profound and most satisfying relationships we can experience in this life. While not always the case, a face-to-face connection is the stuff of romance and eros. Face-to-face intimacy comes as both partners bear the nakedness of their hearts, minds, and sometimes bodies to enact and invite the beauty of authentic, unabashed intimacy. Gazing into the eyes of your most trusted friend, undergirded by commitment, reveals the space where the soul is shaped and formed by the intermingling of each person's being with the other's.

4. Connection with Yourself

Connection with one's self may seem, at first glance, to be counterintuitive. But to offer ourselves in meaningful ways through community, purpose, or interpersonal intimacy, we must know the self that we are offering. Failing to do so will often result in the offering of a persona that feigns vulnerability, lacks depth, and leaves people feeling as though they are trying to become acquainted with a ghost. If we lack self-knowledge, we will only offer our true self haphazardly without an awareness of the profound value of our gift. It would be similar to a person trying to use coins of solid gold in a vending machine.

Connection & the Symphony of Life

Discovering our true identity is a journey that will include connection in community, purpose, and shared intimacy. And as we learn ourselves, we will begin to have a deeper capacity to offer ourselves to others in more meaningful and profound ways. Connection over the course of the lifespan requires a rich diversity of players including old and young, those who think like us and those who do not, those who share our heritage and those that expand it, and ultimately, those who call us out of hiding and encourage our song, our unique contribution to the symphony that is Life.

Creativity: Weaving Your Stories Together

Creativity: Weaving Your Stories Together

Contempt relentlessly erodes relationships. Compassion and curiosity provide a posture that undermines contempt. And courage is needed to maintain this posture, both toward ourselves, and others. 

And this is where things get exciting: With compassion, curiosity, and courage in place, a new horizon opens up before us!  No longer are we relegated to spaces of repair, trying to put out the relational fires. Instead, we get to come together to participate in and interweave our stories mutually and creatively. 

Creativity requires three fundamental things:

1. Knowledge - Of self and others
2. Flexibility - Letting go of expectations while honoring our desire
3. Wonder - Acknowledging the beautiful harmonies of your new story

Knowledge

Knowledge of self and others is a prerequisite to the interweaving that is possible in creative engagement. We must know our hopes, dreams, and desires and to bring them to bear in a significant way. The vulnerable offering of this self-knowledge is the vital first step in inviting someone into our story through the sincere offering of our most authentic self. Likewise, we must have some understanding of our partner's (or friend's) inner world, as they vulnerably offer themselves in an effort to integrate their life-story with ours.

Flexibility

Flexibility is a beautiful movement resulting from the creative interweaving of two stories. An open-handed posture is essential as we invite each other to be fully present in the co-authoring of our new narrative. There is indeed a beautiful freedom inherent in the tension of letting go of expectation while remaining true to desire. Can I be openhanded in finding avenues to meet my desires in ways that I have not yet considered? The dynamic of two stories coming together results in a synergistic combination, a new song singing forth in harmonies yet undiscovered.

Wonder

Wonder, or awe, is the response invited by creativity. It is not so much about what has been, or what is, but what could be. It is the humble acknowledgment of the holy ground that is intimate relationship. As knowledge of ourselves and others is cultivated and our hopes and dreams are interwoven, undiscovered pathways to new horizons emerge before us.

Deeper Life and Connection in the Deeper Story

As we creatively engage our fellow travelers with courage, compassion, and curiosity, an authentic connection marked by mutuality, reciprocity, respect, and dignity, will grow and develop. In this space, we will have the opportunity to cultivate a new story, one written with an eye to the needs and desires of both parties. We can pursue living with an orientation to developing meaning, pursuing the dreams of our shared wonder, cultivating purpose, and enjoying the abundance of the deeper life.

What is holding you back from the deeper life? What are the things in your story that are keeping you from engaging with yourself and others with compassion, curiosity, courage, and creativity? Unpack your story and engage in the deeper life today.

Courage: Fighting for Connection

Courage: Fighting for Connection

Contempt is a problem that impacts nearly every relationship, especially the ones we value most. Compassion and curiosity are the french-doors out of contempt, but orienting toward someone in this way requires a tremendous amount of courage. 

Discernment in Courage

The courage required to connect with compassion and curiosity is sadly not a black and white proposition. It requires discernment and an awareness of the situation that accounts for and appropriately regards the level of investment, intimacy, and connection inherent to that relationship. This type of vulnerability requires us to yield some level of comfort and expose ourselves to the possibility of being hurt. Therefore, courage is a must if we are to pursue and enjoy the depth and richness that we all desire in our most intimate relationships. 

Discernment means that we ought to measure our exposure carefully. A discerning posture does not mean that we shy away from engagements that could be difficult, nor does it say that we dive headlong into any issue we may stumble upon. Instead, it means that we choose well those engagements that would benefit both ourselves and the people with whom we are in relationship.

Whenever we step into the realm of the heart, we are engaging with the styles of relating and the patterns that we have all learned throughout our stories. Generally, our family-of-origin provided a template for our interpersonal experiences, a lens through which we make sense of the relational world. 

Courage toward self and others

Courage, however, is a two-way street. To operate in courage in our intimate relationships, we must also move with courage in the exploration and engagement of our own story. Just like our partners and friend, we are influenced, encouraged, and harmed in our stories. Understanding these unique contributions requires that we regularly reflect on where our story has and is continuing to impact interactions and relationships in the present. 

For example, a friend of mine has often commented that he appreciates how much I'm trying to grow and learn. Recently we were connecting over a delicious brewed beverage, and he observed that I had a lot of ideas and things to say. Encouraged, I felt free to share even more of the ideas and thoughts that I was trying to process through. He validated what I was sharing by suggesting I write some of these things in a blog or a book. However, he also gently observed that I was taking up an inordinate amount of space in the conversation. His kind observation was a courageous and compassionate confrontation inviting me to create more space for mutuality in our discussion. In this confrontation, he offered me an invaluable opportunity to be curious about my own story (what makes it so crucial for me to be heard?) and to cultivate connection more intentionally with his.

To sum up:

1. Courage is an action that is saturated with discernment
2. Courage is a necessary part of engaging with others in intimate relationship
3. Courage is an essential part of exploring your own story

Compassionate curiosity, when pursued with courage in the context of relationship results in space to creatively weave our story together with our partner or friend; it orients us toward the rich tapestry of human connection. So courage is pursued in our orientation toward ourselves, in our perspective of others, and in the unique blend that results from the interweaving of our individual story with the stories that are happening all around us. Courage is neither foolhardy nor complacent; rather it is engaging the heart while intentionally bringing life, restoration, and wholeness in the writing of today's stories.