More Places Emotions Come From

This is the last post about where emotions come from. I hope it will be helpful. It certainly was to me.

Emotions come from other people

At the beginning of the LFA course we learned about the projector. Just as I project what I believe to others and they subconsciously pick up on it, so others, too, will project. Some of my emotions are connected to what feelings they project.

This requires a good sense of self. I am not sure I’m all that solid in this department. I am going to pay closer attention to this going forward. I need to be aware of how I am feeling before I get together with someone and observe if my mood suddenly changed. If it changed, and it is not how I typically feel, it could be that I am picking up on the other person’s feelings.

This is an area that requires a lot of care though. It would be rather easy to just blame whatever I feel at any given moment on the person that just walked into the room instead of looking at all the other reasons I could be having an emotion. This is why it is helpful to know about all the different possible origins of emotions, so I can rule out the other ones or realize, it could be something else. In any case, I am still responsible for myself, the emotions I am experiencing and what I do with them, even if they do come from someone else.

But it can be helpful, if I have the opportunity, to ask the other person if they are feeling what I am feeling, because it can help get them to talk, get the emotion off their chest, and God may give me ways to minister to them in their emotional state, which they might not have volunteered due to either feeling ashamed, or shy or embarrassed or any number of other reasons.

I had an interesting situation happen to me once, where I feel this may have been at play. It had to do with one particular person and I was without fail assaulted with all sorts of critical thoughts about her. No matter how many times I took these thoughts captive, there was always a recurring theme whenever I saw her. I could not figure out why this would be happening until I suddenly remembered this lesson. The interesting thing was, as soon as I began suspecting the critical thoughts were being projected, I suddenly felt more grace and compassion for her. It was very fascinating. I never got close enough to her to ask her how she feels about herself, so I can’t confirm it. However, I find it amazing how my attitude changed as I thought of this issue with this teaching in mind.

This can apply to an entire room of people. If I walk into a room, having previously felt happy and at peace and all of a sudden, I feel depressed, or sad as I enter a gathering of people, it could be interesting to ask the people around me what they are feeling. If they are feeling that thing I was just picking up on, then I was probably feeling them.

The key for this area is that the more I know who I am, the more I know who I am not. If I know that I am a calm and peaceful person as a rule, then I can begin to recognize that feelings of nervousness are not likely going to be coming from me. I can then take that emotion captive, knowing it is coming from elsewhere.

This applies not just to people but spiritual attack as well. There was an evening I experienced this. I am typically a person that sees the glass half full, I’m mostly positive, and I don’t make it a habit to think of the worst-case scenario and am hardly fearful. But that one night, I was literally assaulted with fear like I did not know was possible. So many worst-case scenarios ran through my head, and I knew this isn’t me. It was really helpful to recognize that this was something else and helped me go at this with spiritual weapons instead of wondering about what might have triggered it.

Emotions come from places

Places are similar to people. But I think that with places it is definitely moving into the spiritual realm, more so than cultural. I notice a definite difference when I am in Switzerland as opposed to in the States. That could be due both to culture and the spiritual atmosphere. In specific buildings I would guess it would be less cultural and more spiritual. But again, just as with people, whatever I am feeling, I cannot just blame it on the place, the building, the city or the country. I am still responsible for what I do with the emotion. However, an emotion like this, if I know it is not coming from my own thoughts or words or triggers, can be a good clue to know how to intercede in a place.

Emotions come from events

I have seen people get all hyped up at concerts or conferences, in a way they would not if they were alone. I think it is because they are picking up on the cooperate emotion and expectation of the group at the event. I can only refer to this as getting sucked in. The reason I say this is because I haven’t really gotten emotional at events, unless you call crying at weddings an emotion from events… which very well could be, now that I think about it. Ha!

Emotions come from your body

Hormones can cause all sorts of emotions, they may have no root in reality or they may magnify an issue that is already going on and just make it feel more intense.

Low blood sugar really affects some people. I can personally not relate to it because my blood sugar is very stable. But I have certainly seen members of my family under the influence of low blood sugar and food is simply the only answer to that emotion!

Something I can relate to, though, is the emotions when doing a detox. I don’t get these much anymore now, because I think I have been able to get rid of the worst of the toxic load of my body. But when I first started a detoxifying lifestyle, I would sometimes feel really irritable, and I have noticed that taking a little supportive action on behalf of the detoxifying organs takes care of that feeling just like that.

A nutrient deficiency can also affect your emotions. I remember a season in my life where I was just feeling apathetic, didn’t care about anything, wasn’t motivated, but didn’t think it could really be depression. After a vitamin D level check showed I was deficient, I began supplementing with more vitamin D, and those feelings went away.

Prolonged illness can cause feelings of depression, despair, hopelessness.

Injury can make me feel anxious, like I’m getting behind, or worry about the recovery.

Emotions come from crushing seasons

Crushing seasons are described as those rare times in your life when many pillars in your life just get torn down. It feels like the rug is getting pulled out from under you, and things that you believed to always be true or solid pillars come crashing down.

These differ from hard seasons because hard seasons happen fairly regularly, but crushing seasons are usually few and far between. I would add that maybe it doesn’t have to be all the pillars in your life, maybe just your perception can make it feel like a crushing season as well.

These seasons are extreme, they don’t happen all the time. However, when they do happen, everything is painful and intense, and you are at a level 7-10 consistently about everything. You have heightened emotions about anything. You will feel like making drastic changes to your whole life, but this is not the time to make drastic decisions because you often cannot tell what is true and what is not.

I propose that there is at least one more origin. Like some of the others, they may not be as obvious to everyone alike. What I am talking about is feeling God’s emotions over a person or a situation. I experienced this more than once. I’ll share one example. I was in the back of a church worship service and I just found myself crying. I wasn’t aware of anything that was going on that would have caused me to be sad. I got the sense that I was bearing some of the sadness of someone else in the sense of lightening their burden. I don’t know who this was or what it was about, I just sensed this was some kind of intercessory event and I just carried some of that sadness and interceded for whoever this was for. Have you ever had something like this happen?

What is the point of knowing all these different origins of emotions? I tried to apply this checklist to a recent emotion I was feeling and to be quite honest, I felt a little bit lost. I need more than a check list. I need discernment from God to know exactly where my emotion is coming from. I also need patience. I find myself wanting to know exactly what the issue is and fix it right away. I have to come to a place of acceptance that identifying the origin may not happen after one sweep-through of the list. What this list does help me to do, is create more self-awareness. Self-awareness is something that grows over time. I have to start somewhere. It looks pretty pathetic right now. But I’m getting there, because I keep practicing. The list will also help me rule out at least one or two things. Sometimes saying what it is not helps define what it is.

This post listed a lot of different places. Did you think of any examples in your own life as you read through them? 

I encourage you to take a few minutes to see what you can identify. It’s kind of fun finding examples from your own life because it gives you a sense of better understanding.

This post completes the places emotions come from. In the next post I will write about self-awareness. I hope to see  you there!