“So what brings you here today?” the therapist asked me.

I was seventeen and in full emotional burnout. Multiple therapy sessions helped me uncover an unhealthy cocktail of my sensitive nature, a self-inflicted pressure not to disappoint my parents, a deep misunderstanding of what God was asking of me, and an honest desire to help people. Combined, those elements led me to a dark place.

That experience was the beginning of a lifelong struggle with emotional management. How do I embrace my sensitivity and serve others while letting go of faulty expectations and setting appropriate boundaries? That’s a balance I’ve wrestled with for thirty-six years, but now I have tools that make managing my emotional health much easier. I’ve written about some of them previously, including benevolent detachment, sabbath, and Rule of Life.

Recently, I learned of a concept I’m now trying to implement—choosing your emotions. Many of us think of emotions as uncontrolled responses to external stimulus or circumstance. But as the old adage reminds us, while we can’t control much of what happens to us in life, we can control how we respond to it. I’m coming to understand that not only refers to our actions but also our emotions. 

Cynthia Bourgeault, an episcopal priest and teacher emerita at the Center for Action and Contemplation, puts it this way:

In the psychological climate of our own times, our emotions are almost always considered to be virtually identical with our personal authenticity, and the more freely they flow, the more we are seen to be honest and “in touch.” A person who gravitates to a mental mode of operation is criticized for being “in his head”; when feeling dominates, we proclaim with approval that such a person is “in his heart.”

In the Wisdom tradition, this would be a serious misuse of the term heart. Far from revealing the heart, Wisdom teaches that the emotions are in fact the primary culprits that obscure and confuse it. The real mark of personal authenticity is not how intensely we can express our feelings but how honestly we can look at where they’re coming from and spot the elements of clinging, manipulation, and personal agendas that make up so much of what we experience as our emotional life today. . . . (CAC Daily Meditation June 22, 2022)

Cynthia Bourgeault

In the podcast Achieve Your Goals, Hal Elrod shares a technique he learned in a high pressure sales job. When an important sale would fall through, he’d allow himself to feel the disappointment, anger, and frustration for five minutes, then let it go and choose to be happy and hopeful. He then expanded that practice to choosing the emotion that best served him in every situation, be that joy, peace, confidence, anger, hopefulness, courage, or energy. My early attempts with this technique have been mixed, but I’ve seen enough success to believe in its potential.

Effective emotional management helps me avoid drifting along in passive response mode, allowing me to be aware of my emotional reactions to external stimuli, and actively choose my response. I look at my emotions as objectively as I can, determining where they came from and if they are serving me. I try to “feel the feels,” but not be controlled by them. Learning to embrace the full range of my emotions without letting them define me, then choosing a healthy emotional response, is an ongoing journey.

How’s your emotional health these days? Are you buffeted by uncontrolled responses to whatever life throws at you? Acknowledge and experience your emotions. Examine them. Identify what’s driving your feelings. Then try to choose the emotions that serve you well. If you do, you’ll find a more peaceful life and take another step toward Becoming Yourself.