What It Means to Own Your Feelings

Transcript

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Welcome to another episode of Jubilee Life Coaches blog. This week I am teaching a class for a small group of teachers who teach at a Christian school in Korea. And I'm teaching them about Christian life coaching, the very fundamentals of it. And what I'm about to share with you is actually their homework. I've given them a reading assignment based on some interesting and good teachings that I found on the internet on YouTube. And I thought, why don't I share this with my listening audience, that is you. So the focus of today's episode is what it means to own your feelings. What does it mean to own your feelings? Pak Jaeyun teaches communication and helps people untangle relational conflict. It was not always so. Around 2006, she realized her own relationships were nodded. When life was hard, she had no one to open her heart to and she was blaming others for it. Then one day, after scolding her son for a mistake on an arithmetic problem, she found a note in her room. In her child's eyes, she was a mother who wanted to give love, but at the same time was very frightening at the same time. And that was a moment, she says, she resolved to change. She said to herself, if I do not change my life now, every relationship may stay tangled. So Park says one sentence stopped her. Between stimulus and response there is a space. In this space is our power to choose, and our choice shapes the quality of our life. And yeah, it's probably him or may not be him actually. My research shows that it was more likely said by Stephen Covey. But I wouldn't be surprised that Victor Frankl has said this as well. But going back to the blog, what startled her was the word that she had a choice. Because she she at the time did not think that she had any choice. Things she had to do as a mother, as a daughter, and as an employee, she didn't have a choice. That there might be freedom in the space between stimulus and response was something she had never tasted. So what's happening here? Now Pak runs a simple experiment with her audience. A friend, let's suppose that a friend cancels a Saturday visit at the last minute. Now, if you had prepared with care, then what? Anger and deflation might rise. If you had woken up unwell, on the other hand, longing only to rest, this very same message might bring relief instead. So the stimulus is identical. The situation is that your friend cancels the Saturday visit at the last minute. But how you respond is not. Why? Because between the two, our need had changed. A feeling is a signal telling us something about our situation. So Park cites Marshall Rosenberg, who developed nonviolent communication. Now, Rosenberg held that our feelings are related to the trigger but not caused by it. Our feelings are related to the trigger but not caused by it. Their source is our own met or unmet needs. So when we connect a feeling to its need, we take responsibility for the feeling and free one another from blame. Rosenberg's book, 2015, Nonviolent Communication. So uh the thing that I wanted to share with the Christian teachers was this to move toward the future is to take responsibility for your own feelings, to connect with the need hidden beneath the feeling, and to express that need to the other person. Um what Park teaches is true and valuable. Stop assigning your feelings to someone else's account and look honestly at the need beneath them. Why do you have those feelings? Most likely that something, a part of you, is trying to protect something about your life, and that's causing, you are causing their feelings to rise when a certain situation comes at you. Now, realizing this, owning our own feelings, this releases us from the treadmill of blame. In the language of coaching, every person is creative and resourceful and can become the steward of their own emotions. Yet something quiet must be asked here, in that space between stimulus and response, situation and our reaction, what enables us to choose well? You see, um simply finding the space uh is not good enough. Um finding the space and actually choosing to love within it are quite distinct and in fact different things. We all have a morning when we saw that the right thing that we should do, but still did not end up doing it. So the scripture does not treat the human will as something neutral or even self-sufficient. Our capacity toward the good does not well up on its own. It has to be given, it has to be trained, it has to be encouraged, and so forth. Philippians two verse thirteen says, For it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. So Park locates freedom in the space between stimulus and response. The gospel does not deny that space, no yet rather it points beneath it. In that space it is God who places the desire and works the good. Owning your feelings is a genuinely good and necessary first step. But the power to respond in love is not something that we can manufacture on our own. It is something that we receive. Now this does not lighten our responsibility, it reveals the source of the strength to carry it. Now I face my emotions in honestly while knowing that even the strength for that honesty is not my own entirely. And that's actually freeing of us. It's a freedom that does not run dry. Um Park tells of s uh of counseling a sixth grader who was being abused by his father, sixth grader, being abused. Now, because of her own childhood had been hard, she assumed anger lived in the boy and asked, You're angry at your dad, aren't you? But what was surprising was that he said no. And in his eyes there was pain and sorrow, clearly, but no anger. And the sixth grade, a sixth grader, said, I don't hate my dad, but I am sad. I want to live with him and I need help. So Park calls that child her real teacher because he showed her there is no feeling one cannot take responsibility for. So we do not know this child's faith. But the texture of his honesty is something scripture knows. The laments of the Bible neither deny pain nor cover it with hatred. They bring it just as it is before God. So to call sorrow by its name is not weakness that we we are sorrowful, that we are in pain. To express our weakness to express our weakness is not weakness. Honesty is not weakness. Honesty is actually strength. So dear friends, this day look inward and you will find many parts of you a part that wants to blame others, a part that wants to protect yourself, and maybe even others, a part that simply wants the situation to end. Now these parts are not bad. Most often they are young, immature, frightened parts trying to guard a wounded heart, wounded uh memory. And like the child that Park met, they too are in need of love, support, and care. Um as you know that I'm somewhat trained in internal family systems therapy as a Christian life coach. Um the wisdom that I've gained through the IFS therapy um is very valuable in my opinion. But I'm at the same time a Calvinist, conservative Christian uh pastor. And so what I share uh with you is not just IFS therapy as is, but um somewhat filtered through my Christian um theology and also biblical counseling. So I hope you take what I suggest uh with a grain of salt. So um yeah, let me conclude. Uh thanks for being with uh with me uh thus far. You will find some interesting questions that I have uh for you uh on my blog on jubileecoach.com under the life blog section. And uh as you and I continue to walk in the Lord, uh may this day be the day that we choose to own our own feelings when we are finding ourselves caught between a stimulus, uh a uh a situation that is not something that we wanted, something that we looked for, but at the same time. May we rely on the grace of the Lord to respond to every situation with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Godspeed