As it's World Mental Health Day 2022 we are excited to share a guest blog our colleague by Katie Gauden, a Transformational Coach.
Katie says "This is a blog highlighting biblical wisdom that I've found resonates with my learnings as a coach and that can help us improve our mental and emotional wellbeing."
Calm in the end
The Bible has a surprising amount to tell us about emotions and how to handle or calm them.
In Ephesians 4:26, Paul insightfully tells us “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger”. In other words, ignoring or burying your emotions is a bad idea. Much like a child holding their hands over their eyes in a game of “Hide & Seek”, convinced that nobody can see them, ignoring or burying uncomfortable emotions does not make them disappear. In fact, if left unresolved, their impact can become far more difficult.
Elsewhere in the Bible, we're told that "Fools give full vent to their rage but the wise bring calm in the end" (Proverbs 29:11). In essence, allowing our anger to drive our behaviour - giving it free rein rather than working through it to bring calm - is no better than ignoring it. So, how do we wisely manage our emotions, particularly the difficult ones? Here are my thoughts: We can’t necessarily control when and how our emotions appear but we can learn to navigate them in a healthier way. Just like being in choppy waters, if we pretend there are no waves and stride blindly into the sea, then we’ll only get knocked down when waves rise up enough to bowl us over. On the other hand, if we recognise when there are waves and pay attention to them, we can learn to jump at just the right time to avoid being floored by them. In time, like an expert surfer, we might even learn to glide over giant waves.
There’s a well-known saying that familiarity breeds contempt but, in my experience, quite the opposite is true of our emotions. Spending time getting to know ourselves and how emotions present themselves in our body, allows us to see them coming and to better handle them, even if they turn up unexpectedly. What’s more, examining our thoughts when a strong emotion has unexpectedly moved us can highlight the origin of our difficult feelings and give us a better opportunity to deal with the root problem. If we over-react to the words or actions of others, the chances are the emotion we’re feeling relates more to past buried anger or negative thought patterns in us than to the situation in front of us. For example, if somebody cuts us up on a roundabout and we react more strongly than the driver’s behaviour warrants, it may well be that an unresolved argument or a negative self-belief like “Nobody cares about me” are exaggerating the waves of our emotions. If you would like help in bringing “calm in the end” to your mind, emotions and circumstances, coaching may be just the support you need. I’d love to hear from you if so.
Katie offers coaching to all educational professionals to support their individual career development and personal goals.
Comments