“Emotional acceptance can be a particularly powerful strategy of emotional regulation — it can help you feel better, partly because you don’t perpetuate your negative emotions. The goal shouldn’t be to get rid of or stifle all emotions. It’s to try to have them to the right degree and in the right context and to […]
“Whatever the reason, there will be times when doing the earnest work of feeling just isn’t the right step for you to take. We all have seasons like these, and my advice whenever you encounter one is to simply let the feeling drift by. . . . If you find yourself in survival mode for […]
“Emotional granularity is the ability to describe your emotional state using nuanced words and phrases instead of general ones. . . . The more specifically you are able to describe what is going on inside you, the more flexible you will become in the face of that emotion.”- Jennifer Allen Jennifer Allen concludes Chapter 9 […]
“Emotional maturity is the ability to feel what we feel without judgment and without being controlled by our emotions. Emotional wholeness begins by noticing and naming what we feel and then deciding what to do with it, allowing those emotions to draw us to God and one another.”- Jennifer Allen As Jennifer Allen moves on […]
“We want to work with our emotions, not against them. . . . Honestly naming what we are feeling is essential to untangling our insides. Jesus constantly asked people questions to get them to name what was true about the deepest parts of their souls.”- Jennifer Allen (bolding author’s) “If you want to tame it, […]
“If you’re having trouble determining whether you’re Okay or Not Okay, tune into your body for a minute and see if you find any clues. Our bodies are constantly feeding us information about how we’re doing, but we have to pay attention to learn.“- Jennifer Allen (bolding author’s) And [Jesus] said to her, “Daughter, your […]
“When we distract ourselves from how we’re feeling or stuff down the emotions that are begging for breath or demand that our circumstances and the people within them somehow change to conform to our whims, we’ve only kicked the problem up the path a few feet, where it will stay until we arrive.”- Jennifer Allen […]
“I don’t anticipate a future for any of us where all our emotions are perfectly tucked into the right spaces in our bodies and minds, perfectly in control, perfectly expressed, and perfectly understood. I think it’s important to start with some honesty about that. “- Jennifer Allen In Chapter 7 (“A Vision for Something Better”) […]
“To live in the way of love requires that I pay attention to the fact that my mind, through the process of emotion, longs to be connected to others.”- Dr. Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul (2010) “The point of life is connection — with God, with our own hearts, and with the people God […]
“Our ultimate security rests wholly and completely on who God is. He is why we’re okay. He is also why we can be broken and doubt and fear and cry. We think God is waiting for us to pull ourselves together, but actually He is waiting for us to come to Him and fall apart. […]
“The beauty of David and the Psalms is the permission to feel it all. David had full confidence that God could handle all his emotions, even the ones that caused him to doubt that God is good and that God still loves him. . . . [David] feels safe enough with God to wrestle it […]
“We are making ourselves sick with our coping. We think that in our checking out and numbing out, we are relaxing, but the truth is, we are missing the gifts of God that are meant to keep us in delightful relationship with Him.”- Jennifer Allen Jennifer Allen concludes Chapter 5 of Untangle Your Emotions with […]