Emotions - Don't Let Them Control Your Life

“Emotion is the complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical (internal) and environmental (external) influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience."

Emotion is associated with mood, temperament, personality and disposition, and motivation. Motivations direct and energize behavior, while emotions provide the affective component to motivation, positive or negative."   

  Wikipedia    

                                                                                                                                          

Emotion.  It can rule us – it can ruin us.  It can make the difference between a ho-hum day and an incredible, over-the-top experience.  Unfortunately, too many of us allow our emotions to control our actions, our motivation, and our communication.  We may wake up the next day wondering (and often regretting) why we said or did what we did.

 

Emotions (feelings) can change from day to day.  If we let how we feel guide us through decisions and conversations, unbridled words can change our course or God’s plan for us.  Our feelings and words can take us to a place we never wanted to be – through a divorce we never really desired.

Most women seem to be more affected by emotions than men.  It has been scientifically proven that men and women use different parts of their brain from each other.  Men are also more externally based (physical) while women, more internal (emotional).   A man’s brain works separately in each area (why they can compartmentalize so well) and a women’s brain has connectors joining everything together (why we analyze everything and can multi-task so well).

 

On top of that, women have hormones that wreak havoc on their bodies two - three weeks out of the month. (I personally seem to have only one good week – it may vary from one person to another.)  Men, of course, have hormone issues, but those are much easier to deal with in a simple release (S-E-X).

I often envy my husband’s even keeled temperament (as long as his hormones are kept at bay). While I’m on this continuous hormonal roller coaster ride, he takes everything in stride and his feathers are never ruffled.  I seem to be in a constant state of messy plumes (except for that one week- which I’m slowly losing to this peri-menopausal haze.)

I’ve had to work hard at NOT allowing these crazy emotions to rule what I want to do and what I want to say.  How do I do that?  I try not to react and I try not to say anything when I’m emotionally handicapped.  Do I always succeed?  Unfortunately, NO!  I have to cry out for Gods help a lot!  

The Bible is full of verses about controlling your tongue.  That is the most difficult task when we are in the throes of our emotions.  Try memorizing some of these so they will come to your mind when you need them most.

Proverbs 13:3 “He who guards his lips guards his life, but he who speaks rashly will come to ruin.”

Proverbs 21:23 “He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity.”

Proverbs 18:21 “The tongue has the power of life and death”

Does anyone have other ideas for how they deal with controlling emotions?