The Anatomy of Anxiety

Part 39: Emotional Intelligence

Note: For previous posts in this blog series, visit: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26,  27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, and 38.

Big Idea: Does worry, doubt, or fear get the best of you sometimes? Do you wonder where anxiety comes from and how to defeat it in your life and the lives of those you love? Then we need a biblical anatomy of anxiety. We need God’s prescription for victory over anxiety.

Note: Today’s blog post is excerpted from my book Soul Physicians. You can visit here to learn more about Soul Physicians and to read a free sample chapter.

Take an Emotional Intelligence (EI) Test to Test Your EQ—Emotional Quotient

If we’re going to defeat anxiety, then we need to manage our moods. To manage our moods, we need emotional intelligence. Take an Emotional Intelligence (EI) Test. What’s your EQ—Emotional Quotient? Evaluate yourself using 10 as “Emotionally Mature” and 1 as “Emotionally Immature.”

1. I’m aware of my feelings and moods as they occur.

2. I’m able to recognize and name my feelings and moods.

3. I’m able to understand the causes of my feelings and moods.

4. I maintain a sense of ongoing attention to my internal mood states.

5. I’m aware both of my mood and my thoughts about my mood.

6. I actively monitor my moods as the first step in gaining control of them.

7. I soothe my soul in God.

8. I have a sense of self-mastery—frustration tolerance and anger management.

9. I self-regulate my emotions—self-control.

10. I can harness my emotions in the service of a goal.

11. I can stifle my impulses (“passions of the flesh”) and delay gratification.

12. I’m a hopeful person.

13. I turn setbacks into comebacks.

14. I’m resilient and longsuffering. I demonstrate perseverance.

15. I practice optimistic self-efficacy—“I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.” “I can meet challenges as they arise.” “I’m competent in Christ.”

16. I’m learning contentment in whatever state I’m in (external situation or internal mood).

17. I’m attuned to others, not emotionally tone-deaf. I have the ability to sense another’s mood.

18. I have empathy built on self-awareness. I’m open to my own emotions and, therefore, skilled in reading the feelings of others.

19. I practice the creative ability of perceiving the subjective experiences of others.

20. I make another person’s pain my own.

21. I can take on the perspective of another person.

22. I forgive.

23. I’m emotionally nourishing toward others.

24. I leave others in a good mood.

25. I’m effective in interpersonal relationships.

26. I help others to soothe their souls in God.

27. I can initiate and coordinate the efforts of a group of people—helping them to move with synchrony and harmony.

28. I can negotiate solutions—mediation, preventing or resolving conflicts.

29. I can make personal connection—ease of entry into an encounter along with the ability to recognize and respond fittingly to people’s feelings/concerns.

30. I’m a good team player.

31. I’m skilled at social analysis—being able to detect and have insights into people’s feelings, motives, and concerns. Ease of intimacy and rapport.

Keeping It Real

How well did you do? What areas do you need to work on? How will you go about that?

The Rest of the Story

Our series on The Anatomy of Anxiety is nearing its end. In our next post, we’ll take a look at the role our physical body plays in anxiety and what we can do about it.

Join the Conversation

Why do we hear so few sermons, messages, and lessons on emotions?

The Anatomy of Anxiety

Part 38: Emotions 911

Note: For previous posts in this blog series, visit: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26,  27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, and 37.

Big Idea: Does worry, doubt, or fear get the best of you sometimes? Do you wonder where anxiety comes from and how to defeat it in your life and the lives of those you love? Then we need a biblical anatomy of anxiety. We need God’s prescription for victory over anxiety.

Note: Today’s blog post is excerpted from my book Soul Physicians. You can visit here to learn more about Soul Physicians and to read a free sample chapter.

Mood Disorder: Emotions 911

Emotions and “moods” are not innately bad at all. Our struggle with negative emotions and “bad moods” is yet another result of our fall into sin. Emotionally, we’ve moved from “mood order” to “mood disorder.”

All disorder ultimately arises from a state of disconnection. Separated from the life of God, we demand that one another become like gods. When our fellow finite beings fail us, then we face personal dis-integration. We’re shamefully exposed as false trusters. The emotional result is disordered moods:

• My inability to accurately sense and experience my own inner and outer world and my failure to maintain a healthy self-awareness of my prevailing emotional mood state(s).

• My inability to accurately read my emotional thermostat so that I inaccurately gauge the relational temperature outside and my personal temperature inside.

• My inability to respond to my inner and outer world courageously, lovingly, and wisely.

In mood order, we perceive unpleasant or distressful moods as messages sent from the soul to the body (from the mind to the brain). The message is communicating: “Necessary changes requested. Please reply ASAP! Thank you.” The symptom (the distressed mood) is thus seen as a potential gift. It is like the warning light in our cars reminding us to “check under the hood.”

In mood disorder, we misperceive our distressed mood and respond in non-God ways. We attempt to manage our misperceived moods self-sufficiently.

Mood Reorder: Emotions 411

Satan wants our moods to overwhelm us, control us, direct us away from God. Or, at least he wants us to respond to them by entering survival mode. Overwhelming moods lead to survival mode.

Jesus came to give us life, and that abundantly. “Abundant” means beyond what is necessary, surplus, left over, greatly enlarged. It is used of the abundance left over after the feeding of the 5,000. Spoiling! Jesus came to spoil us. Resurrection power allows us to do more than survive. We can thrive (2 Corinthians 1:3-11; Philippians 3:7-15). We can move from anger to love, from despair to hope, and from fear to faith. Resurrection power offers fresh, creative energy, and a reawakening of courage—of mood. As Paul Tournier insightfully describes it:

The person matures, develops, becomes more creative, not because of the deprivation in itself, but through his own active response to misfortune, through the struggle to come to terms with it and morally to overcome it—even if in spite of everything there is not cure . . . Events give us pain or joy, but our growth is determined by our personal response to both, by our inner attitude (Tournier, Creative Suffering, pp. 28-29).

In reordered, redeemed moods, intense moods lead to a thriving mode.

We must recognize how marvelous moods can be when managed in Christ and recognize how pernicious they can be when mismanaged under Satan. Appreciate your moods as God-given sources of instant insight into your inner and outer world. Enjoy the usefulness of reordered moods in a disjointed world, which include:

• My God-given ability to become aware of my moods, whether pleasant or unpleasant, and to accept that I am experiencing that mood.

• My God-given ability to face and feel whatever mood I am experiencing, allowing it to grant me insight into my inner self and my external situation.

• My God-given ability to bring rationality to my emotionality by coming to understand the sources of my moods and my resources to manage my moods (responding to my inner and outer world wisely).

• My God-given ability to bring volitionality to my emotionality by choosing how I will manage my moods instead of allowing them to manage me (responding to my inner and outer world courageously).

• My God-given ability to bring relationality to my emotionality by allowing my moods to motivate me toward deeper connection or reconnection with God, others, and myself (responding to my inner and outer world lovingly).

Keeping It Real

On a scale of 1-to-10, how well do you manage your moods?

The Rest of the Story

In our next post, we’ll take an emotional intelligence test to measure our EQ: emotional quotient.

Join the Conversation

Do you agree or disagree that emotions and moods are gifts of God?

The Anatomy of Anxiety

Part 37: Emotions 411–Emotional Intelligence

Note: For previous posts in this blog series, visit: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26,  27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, and 36.

Big Idea: Does worry, doubt, or fear get the best of you sometimes? Do you wonder where anxiety comes from and how to defeat it in your life and the lives of those you love? Then we need a biblical anatomy of anxiety. We need God’s prescription for victory over anxiety.

Note: Today’s blog post is excerpted from my book Soul Physicians. You can visit here to learn more about Soul Physicians and to read a free sample chapter.

How We Relate, Think, Act, and Feel

Obviously, our emotions are useful, beneficial, and very good. Just as obvious, our emotions often are hurtful, harmful, very bad. We are to be angry, but not sinfully so. Anger can be good, it can be evil. So it is with all emotions and moods. Designed for mood order, we experience mood disorders, and can experience reordered moods.

We tend to develop rather patterned approaches to life. Relationally, we cling to our Creator or to created realities—pure or impure affections, lovers of the soul or idols of the heart. We worship God our Spring of Living Water or we dig broken cisterns that can hold no water. We enjoy intimacy with Christ or we weary ourselves pursuing false lovers.

Rationally, we develop mindsets that persist over time. Either we direct our lives according to the mindset of the Spirit or we pilot our lives off course according to the mindset of the flesh. Either we guide our lives along the narrow path of wisdom or along the broad road of foolishness.

Volitionally, we develop purposeful pathways of intentional interacting. We trod a path toward what we perceive will satisfy the hunger of our heart. We habituate ourselves either toward willing God’s will or willing our own will. “Your will be done,” or “My will be done.”

Emotions are no exception. We not only experience instantaneous emotional responses, we also encounter ongoing mood states.

Emotions and Moods

A mood is a background feeling or emotional state that persists over time. It is less intense and longer lasting than emotions. My mood is my prevailing tone or coloring, my state of mind, frame of mind. In a sense, it is my emotional outlook that occurs both at a particular time and settles deep inside me over time.

Moods are the intersection of our emotional/feeling responses and our rational attitude/perceptions. My mood reacts both to the external events of my life and to the internal longings, images, ideas, goals, and actions of my soul.

Created by God, moods, like emotions, were a very good thing. God intricately fashioned us to experience a variety of positive emotional states, the most optimal moods. Our moods and emotions contain vital signals of readiness not simply for action, but for interaction, and rest from interaction. They signal when we need to interact and when we need to come apart (before we fall apart). Jesus identified within himself moods that led him to seek solitude (Mark 1:45; Luke 5:16) and that led him to engage in intimate interaction (Luke 5:15; Mark 3:1-6).

Our moods guide us to mobilize our resources for wise relating. They work with our self-awareness so that we can become attentive to our emotional states as our inner person interacts with our outer world. Moods motivate, or better, moods jolt us into awareness, promote pondering, and motivate us toward appropriate interaction.

Taken together, we can define mood order as:

• My God-given ability to feel my own feelings, to sense my own life experiences, and to become self-aware of my prevailing emotional mood state(s).

• My God-given thermostat that quickly gauges the relational temperature outside and my personal temperature inside.

• My God-given capacity to courageously, lovingly, and wisely respond to my inner and outer world. I perceive what I feel and I choose how I respond.

In the Beginning…Moods

What was the mood process like for Adam and Eve? All order ultimately arises from connection. So when Adam felt happiness and joy in the presence of Eve, his entire being became focused on connecting, attaching. “I like being with her. I want to be with her. When we are together, I am outrageously happy.”

Sinless Adam and Eve also could have experienced legitimate sadness—a sadness due to absence that impelled them to reconnect. Adam is working in one part of the Garden. Eve in another. Happy in her work, but aware of a growing sense of sadness, a developing mood of aloneness, Eve stops. She ponders. She recognizes the source—she misses her hubby. She runs to him, throws her arms around him, kisses him impetuously. “Just wanted you to know how much I missed you!” Separation, whether physical or psychological, is a basic cause of human sadness. Sadness provides a driving force to restore attachment, in the same way that hunger impels us to eat.

Keeping It Real

What “mood” are you in right now? How could you apply today’s biblical principles of “mood order” to better understand and manage your mood?

The Rest of the Story

It would be nice if we could stop at “mood order.” However, the Bible tells us and we all experience “mood disorder.” Why? What can we do about our disordered moods and emotions? And how can we “reorder our moods”? How can we manage our moods? Our next post begins addresses these vital personal issues.

Join the Conversation

Why did God create us with emotions? 

Soul Physicians

The Anatomy of Anxiety

Part 36: Emotions 101

Note: For previous posts in this blog series, visit: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26,  27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, and 35.

Big Idea: Does worry, doubt, or fear get the best of you sometimes? Do you wonder where anxiety comes from and how to defeat it in your life and the lives of those you love? Then we need a biblical anatomy of anxiety. We need God’s prescription for victory over anxiety.

Note: Today’s blog post is excerpted from my book Soul Physicians. You can visit here to learn more about Soul Physicians and to read a free sample chapter.

Emotion by God

Before we can explore how to renew our emotions as we defeat anxiety, we must gain a biblical perspective on our emotions. What does the Bible say about emotions and how does that contrast with the world’s way?

It’s so typical that it has become trite, “How do you feel about that?” We even mock it, “I feel your pain.”

We’re awash in an emotionally shallow society. Do we throw the baby out with the bath water? Or do we realize the world’s counterfeit and choose God’s real deal, the genuine article?

The real deal is biblical emotionality. Like our Creator, we experience life deeply and all of our feelings are in-relationship-to-God feelings.

Our emotions reveal our deepest questions about God. They vocalize the inner working of our souls. Listen to and ponder your emotions in order to discern what your heart is doing with God and others. Emotions are a voice that can tell us how we are dealing with a fallen, hurtful world. Emotions force open the stuck window of our soul, compelling us to face how we are facing life.

Emotions are God-given. They are not satanic. Adam had them before the Fall. God has them. Christ has them. In and of themselves, they are not sinful. They are beneficial, and yes, even beautiful.

The Psalmist understood this. In the classic passage describing God’s utmost care in creating us, Psalm 139, emotionality is the one aspect of our inner personality specifically referenced. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). “Inmost being” is kidneys. In Psalm 73:21 and Proverbs 23:16 the kidneys are the place of sorrow and rejoicing, respectively.

In the Ancient Near East, the kidneys were seen as prompting or urging people to action by aroused emotions. The Semitic languages used terms for kidneys, reins, stomach, bowels, and womb to describe the feeling states. As we literally experience and feel an emotion in our physical being, so we feel an emotion in our psychological being. That’s why we say things like, “I have butterflies in my stomach.” God created your inmost being, your kidneys, your emotions.

Emotional Experiencing: Emotional Reaction

What are emotions? Emotions are our God-given capacity to experience our world and to subjectively respond to those experiences.

This capacity includes the ability to internally react and experience a full-range of both positive (pleasant) and negative (painful) inner feelings.

The very root of the word emotion is motere, the Latin verb “to move,” plus the prefix “e” meaning “to move away.” This suggests that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion. All emotions are, in essence, impulses to react, the instant plans for handling life that God has instilled in us. God designed our emotions to put us in motion. They represent a quick response that motivates action—emotions signal the mind to go into high gear.

Emotions play a crucial editorial role that force us to do a double-check, to look outward and inward. They are our “psychological sentinel” that connect us to our inner and outer world.

Once connected, then we react to our external and internal world. What we desire, think, and choose (our inner world) determines our emotional reaction to our external situation (our outer world). What we believe (rational direction) about what satisfies our longing for relationship (relational motivation) provides the direction we choose to pursue (volitional interaction) and determines our experiential response (emotional reaction) to our world.

Understanding Your Emotions

Consider a basic formula for understanding emotions: E.S. + I.P. = E.R.

Our External Situation plus our Internal Perception leads to our Emotional Response. Picture it like this.

Understanding Our Emotional Responses

   External Situation + Internal Perception  = Emotional Response

• Negative Action            +  Biblical Belief            = Legitimate Painful Emotion (Sorrow, Sadness, etc.)

• Negative Action            + Unbiblical Belief        = Illegitimate Painful Emotion (Hatred, Despair, etc.)

• Positive Action              + Biblical Belief            = Legitimate Positive Emotion (Joy, Peace, etc.)

• Positive Action              + Unbiblical Belief        = Illegitimate Positive Emotion (Pride, Self- Sufficiency, etc.) 

Your boss says to you, “You blew it.” Your emotions react to this external event and to your internal images and ideas. What if you believe, “I must have my boss’s approval”? Then you will respond with illegitimate negative emotions such as anger, depression, hopelessness, or hatred.

If, on the other hand, you believe that “I would like my boss’s approval, but I know that I am accepted by God,” then you will respond with legitimate painful emotions such as sorrow, disappointment, or remorse (if you were truly in the wrong).

The key to our emotional reaction is our belief or perception about the meaning behind the event. Thus, events determine whether our emotions are pleasant or painful, while longings, beliefs, and goals determine whether our emotional reaction is holy or sinful.

Keeping It Real

Ponder a recent emotionally intense situation. Use the ES + IP + ER “formula” to trace the tracks of your emotional response.

The Rest of the Story

Why did God even create us with emotions if they seem to cause such a mess! How does God intend for us to manage our moods? In our upcoming blog posts we’ll address these relevant questions.

Join the Conversation

Why do you think many Christians, churches, and biblical counselors throw the emotional baby out with the bathwater and make emotions “the black sheep” of the image bearing family?