Understanding Emotions

Why Bother With Emotions

Emotions control your thinking, behavior and actions. Emotions affect your physical bodies as much as your body affects your feelings and thinking. People who ignore, dismiss, repress or just ventilate their emotions, are setting themselves up for physical illness and unhappy life.

Emotions that are not felt and released but buried within the body or in the aura can cause serious illness, including cancer, arthritis, and many types of chronic illnesses. Negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, negativity, frustration and depression cause chemical reactions in your body that are very different from the chemicals released when you feel positive emotions such as happy, content, loved, accepted.

* Addresses the reality of emotions and the need to recognize it * Deals with some common misconceptions * Role of Emotions in Christian life * Godly (Healthy) emotions * Unhealthy emotions

• "Our emotions can be considered to arise from our beliefs and concerns.”

• “Emotions are the language of the soul. They are the cry that gives the heart a voice"

• “Emotions are responses to our perceptions, which may be right or wrong, real or imagined."

“Emotions operate on many levels. They have a physical aspect as well as a psychological aspect. Emotions bridge thought, feeling, and action – they operate in every part of a person, they affect many aspects of a person, and the person affects many aspects of the emotions.” John D. (Jack) Mayer "

  “Emotions are human beings’ warning systems as to what is really going on around them.  
   Emotions are our most reliable indicators of how things are going on in our lives.  
   Emotions help keep us on the right track by making sure that we are led by more than the mental/ intellectual 
   faculties of thought, perception, reason, memory.” Dr. Maurice Elias

Common Misconceptions about the Emotions

• Emotions are bad
• Emotions must be suppressed
• We must not express our Emotions

Purpose of Emotions

 Emotions reflect and express the inner man, the heart, the soul, the mind

 “God gives emotions for a specific purpose. They are necessary for us properly to know and relate to and glorify God.”11