How to Process Your Emotions

You can learn to process your emotions like you can declutter your house.

Decluttering your stuff and simplifying your life is a pretty popular topic right now. 

What if you could sort and declutter your emotions and simplify your life, too?

When you are working on decluttering your house, there are some basic tools and some basic strategies that we can use to make the process simpler. 

There are some basic tools you can use for emotions too.  

First of all, there are the emotions I like to think of like the mail and the school papers and the groceries, the stuff that just comes in on a daily basis. The kinds of emotions that are just happening throughout the day. Their current, probably not a big deal for the most part. You’re going to process those in one way. 

Then the junk drawer or the hot spots where stuff just piles up. You tell yourself, “I’ll get to that later. I’m not sure where to put it.” It piles up until it gets to be kind of overwhelming or you shove it in the drunk drawer or the infamous hall closet. 

You can do the same thing with your emotions. You can try to set them aside.  You think, “I’m not sure what to do with that right now. I don’t really have time.” maybe even, “I don’t want to deal with that ever.”

Maybe you’ve stuck it down in the basement or in a storage unit somewhere. Maybe you’re hoping it’ll be forgotten about over time. That it really doesn’t work so well. 

When you recognize an emotion, then what are you going to do with it? 

When you declutter you may hold up an item and ask yourself some key questions. Do the same with your emotions.

You’re recognizing the emotion, pretend to pick it up and focus on it. 

Recognize you’re feeling something. Can you name what you’re feeling? 

The next question might surprise you. But the question is, “is the emotion yours?” Many women are very empathic and very attuned to, especially their family and friends and some even more so to just the environment around them and the atmosphere and the atmosphere is full of spirits and other people’s emotions and stuff. You can pick up stuff and be feeling things, and it’s not actually yours. 

That’s the first question to answer. Is it yours? Because if it’s not yours, then we’re going to do one thing with it. If it is yours, we’ve got another process. So if it’s not yours, the question is, God, do I need to do anything with this? If He says, “No”, obviously just let it go. If He says, “Yes”, then ask what it is that He wants you to do with it.

Can you do it now? Go ahead and do it. And if not, then, make a note or a reminder or whatever you need to do so you will do what He said to do with that emotion. 

Here’s an example

One day I was driving to town and recognize that I was feeling really heavy grief. It didn’t really make sense. I didn’t have anything in my life to be feeling this grief about. So I asked, “Lord, what is this, why am I feeling this?” He reminded me of a woman that I had been praying for through Facebook who had been contending for the life for her unborn baby. They had lost the baby the day before. God showed me I was feeling her grief.

I know what it’s like to lose an unborn baby. And I hadn’t even been contending and all of that. I asked, “Lord, what do you want me to do for them with this?” He said to pray for them. And so I did. I prayed for God to comfort them and surround them with people that would hold them with truth and comfort. 

Then it lifted. The grief was gone. 

That’s an example of when an emotion isn’t yours and how to process that. 

What if the emotion is yours? 

Then the next question I ask is, is this an old emotion? And this would be typical if you just overreacted to something and recognize the emotion, it’s probably an old emotion. It’s one of those things that has been shifted in the hall closet or in the storage unit rather than just like a piece of mail that just came in and isn’t a big deal.

If it is an old emotion, then you ask where it first came from so you can deal with it all the way back at the root instead of just starting in the present. You want to go all the way back to where it came from so that you know why it’s there and deal with it. 

If it’s a brand new emotion about a new situation then ask what message it has. Emotions carry messages for us. And so we want to be sure to get those messages. And the reason that those old emotions don’t go away is because God’s word never returns to Him void.

God has a word for you in those emotions. There’s a message that you need. Until you pay attention to it, it’s not going away because His word doesn’t come without accomplishing what He sent it to accomplish. That’s why they don’t just go away. They just keep resurfacing because they’re like, “Hey, I have a message for you. Are you ready to listen now?” What message does it have? 

What do you need to do with that message?

That might mean forgiving somebody. It might mean grieving something, but there’s action to take based on that message that the emotion had for you. 

If you know you’ve got a bunch of stuff stuffed in the junk drawer, or maybe stashed up in the attic, I would love to help you with that. Maybe you’ve seen these decluttering videos or shows where the expert comes in and helps you declutter your space and helps you get it organized. I would love to do for you. I create a safe space where it’s okay to look at the stuffed emotions and start getting them taken care of and getting them cleared out.

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