Imagine a little space in the mind where you can just go and sit with a friend when you need to have a big feeling.

I saw a tiktok the other day where a guy (@therichxp) was talking about naming your emotion out loud. “I am feeling angry.” “I am feeling heavy anxiety.” He called it “name it to tame it”. He talked about how when you’re overwhelmed by anger, sadness, or anxiety your amygdala (the alarm system of the brain) goes into high gear. By naming the emotion it passes out of the paniced amygdala and towards the logical frontal lobe. Naming it creates a pocket of space between feeling and reacting. In this he also mentioned having grace in that space. That’s the part that stood out to me.

See I know it’s important to feel your feelings, but because of what he said, I began imaging opening a grace space inside my own brain to hold an emotion in a safe way. This has really stayed with me since seeing the video. I’m very visual so I can just picture that little pocket of space where I can sit with the feeling(s), residing in grace for myself, no judgment, no figuring it out, just holding and sitting with the truth of that emotion. It’s a space where I don’t have to:

Just get over it

Repent for it

Do something about it

Lash out

Instead I just get to feel it with grace and permission.  See I’ve spent a lifetime separating emotions into 2 categories:

Good/Positive = joy, contentment, happyness, gratitude

Bad/Negative = sadness, anger, anxiety, fear

Everything that was good was acceptable. Everything that was bad was to be crucified. Since I have Major Depressive Disorder, you can imagine how often my sadness would have been considered sin. I am also by nature a very sensitive person (lol my big 3 astrological signs are all 3 water signs). Regardless of that I am just very emotionally driven. So the guilt of having half my emotional life be considered wrong was often unbearable. The funny part is no one in the church really wanted to talk about God or Jesus having “negative” emotions or the fact that if we were created in God’s image, we’d have everything he has. One might argue he experienced far more anger in the old testament than any other emotion.

This was a major reason that led to my deconstruction and subsequent leaving of the faith because any faith that doesn’t believe in me and who I was created to be does not deserve to have my faith. 

Anyway, my point is make yourself a grace space in your mind that let’s you sit with an emotion like a friend trying to help you to really find out why it’s come to help. Because let’s be honest, emotions are protective and expressive in nature. They aren’t just good or bad. They are ultimately there to help. All of them? Yes all of them. Listening to them and responding properly could save your life or grow a relationship or warn you off potential danger or open a door to opportunity.

Our emotions are worth the time to name them, sit with them, and finally understand them in a healthy grace filled way. Take a deep breath and be brave enough to say out loud exactly what it is you’re feeling.