The Positive Power of Emotions

Why Your Feelings Matter

Photo by David Travis on Unsplash

Many of you know that I’m in therapy again, but this time, it’s trauma-specific therapy for my PTSD. And although a wise friend told me not to share about my journey until after I’m on the other side of things, I have this urge to write about what I’ve learned about emotions.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in therapy this year is that my emotions aren’t bad. You see, I was always told that I was moody or had terrible mood swings, difficult to deal with, etc., and so I always thought being emotional or having mood swings was bad. And it got to the point where I thought I would be alone forever because I kept hearing, “No one is going to put up with her emotions and mood swings.” Again, I internalized everything, feeding into lies and not realizing that my emotions were trying to tell me something.

My therapist has helped me refrain from thinking emotions are bad or negative and instead help me see that they are trying to tell me something. She gave me a wheel of emotions and a mood log and said that when I felt an emotion intensely, I should pause, locate the emotion on the wheel, and write it down. Also, where I felt the emotion in my body, on the mood log, there was a space to write what caused the emotion, and I would write that down, too.

This mood log helped me identify any patterns and get to the real root cause of my emotion, whether it was a thought that came up, a memory, or maybe I had seen something online, and it helped me pick up on cues before I got emotional.

I had to ask myself these questions:

• What are my emotions telling me?
• Do I have emotional safety?
• What are my needs that are not being met?
• What are my desires?

Back in May, during my morning walk, I was listening to The Happy Hour Podcast. This particular episode was with Jennie Allen, and she was talking about her new book, Untangle Your Emotions, which was actually released on my birthday, February 13th. She was talking about the process she went through to understand her emotions better, reading books about emotions, and being able to write this book.

She and Jamie spoke about how, growing up, they were taught not to listen to their emotions because they can deceive you and always lean into God’s truth. And I love what Jennie said about that in the episode — she said,

“There is truth that is God’s truth, our emotions are not our God, we have a God, and he trumps it all, but our God is emotional, and He built us to be emotional. And denying that isn’t truth and denying those facts isn’t helpful.”

When I first heard this episode, Jennie shared about how she experienced a situation that would typically trigger her, and it didn’t — this gave me hope for the work I’m doing with trauma therapy. This happened after she processed her emotions, of course. Because trauma therapy, and specifically EMDR, is hard.

You feel the emotions all over again; you sit in them, bringing back old, painful memories. But I haven’t felt what Jennie felt when I first heard the episode so it gave me a lot of hope of getting to the other side.

Since listening to the episode the first time until now, I heard it again to write this post; I have seen the healing firsthand. This means I’ve been triggered before. I processed it, and it happened again, but I wasn’t triggered that second time. I was fine, and it felt like (excuse my words), this shit works! Jennie said it better: it felt like magic, but it’s not magic; it’s healing, it’s rewiring your brain, it’s processing your feelings and doing the work!

“The gift of emotions is that they connect us deeper with God and deeper with each other.” -Jennie Allen.

That is so true; I’ve never felt closer to God than I do now because I feel like I understand myself better, and I understand how complex He created us to be! But He created us with a purpose, and as we learn, grow, and share our experiences, it’s easy to see that God is all of this!

Friend, I hope this encourages anyone who has to do the internal work to do it. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s worth it. And you’ll grow closer to God.

With Love, Heidy

Originally published at https://intomythoughts.substack.com.

Heidy De La Cruz writes the weekly personal development Substack newsletter — “Into My Thoughts.” She is the podcast host of The American Dream in The Eyes of Immigrants and a podcast coach.

You can find Heidy De La Cruz on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Check out my podcasting and SEO resources at https://stan.store/heidydelacruz