You Are Not Your Feelings: Finding Emotional Maturity

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the role our feelings play in our lives.

Perhaps that’s not surprising. Everywhere we turn we’re encouraged to trust our feelings, express our feelings and, above all, be true to our feelings. If something feels right, then it must be right. If something makes us uncomfortable, perhaps the discomfort itself is the problem. More and more, our culture seems to assume that our emotions are the truest thing about us.

But what if they aren’t?

What if our feelings are real, important and worth paying attention to, yet aren’t actually telling us the whole truth?

Over the next few weeks we’re going to keep exploring questions like this by putting three voices into conversation with one another: our own experience, the Bible, and Arthur C. Brooks’ book Build the Life You Want. Brooks has gathered together an extraordinary amount of research into what helps people flourish. I don’t agree with everything he says—in fact, over the coming weeks I’ll point out a few places where I think he falls short—but I do appreciate the questions he asks. More often than not I find myself thinking that modern psychology is rediscovering truths the Bible has been teaching for thousands of years.

This week’s question is one of them.

What if our feelings aren’t telling us the whole truth?

The Bible certainly doesn’t tell us to ignore our feelings. Jesus didn’t. Nor does it encourage us to pretend everything is okay when it clearly isn’t. Instead, it invites us into something much richer. It teaches us to recognise our feelings, pay attention to them, learn from them—but not allow them to become the thing that rules us.

One of the things I’ve been discovering over the years is that feelings make wonderful servants but terrible masters.

They tell us something about what’s happening inside us. They don’t always tell us what’s true about the world around us.

There’s a difference.

And I suspect much of what the Bible calls maturity is learning that difference.

When life takes away your choices

I wonder whether you’ve ever had a season where it felt as though life took your choices away.

Perhaps it was illness. Perhaps it was grief. Perhaps it was a relationship that fell apart. Perhaps someone else’s decisions completely changed the direction of your life. Or perhaps you’ve simply discovered, as we all eventually do, that life doesn’t always turn out the way we expected.

One of the biggest surprises of adulthood is realising just how little we actually control.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve always been drawn to the story of Viktor Frankl.

Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who, because he was Jewish, was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War. His wife died. His parents died. His brother died. He alone survived.

It’s hard to imagine a human being having more taken from them than Frankl did.

Whenever I read his story I’m conscious of how easy it would be to misunderstand what he says next. It would be cruel to look someone in the middle of that kind of suffering and simply say, “It’s all about your attitude.” Frankl wasn’t saying suffering doesn’t matter. He knew more about suffering than most of us ever will.

Yet after living through one of the darkest chapters in human history he wrote these remarkable words:

“Everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

I’ve found myself coming back to those words again and again over the years.

Not because they make suffering smaller. They don’t. Not because they pretend circumstances don’t matter. They do. But because they remind me that circumstances don’t always get the final word.

It strikes me that this sits remarkably close to the heart of the Christian story. The gospel never promises that we’ll always be able to choose our circumstances. Sometimes life simply happens to us. Sometimes tragedy arrives without invitation. Sometimes prayers seem to go unanswered.

Yet the gospel quietly insists that our circumstances do not have to determine the kind of people we become.

That is a profoundly hopeful way to live.

We all have a thorn

One of the things I’ve noticed over the years—both in my own life and as I’ve walked alongside other people—is how easy it is to believe that somebody else’s circumstances would make us happy.

“If only I had their health.”

“If only I had their marriage.”

“If only I had their opportunities.”

“If only I had their personality.”

The longer I live, the more convinced I become that everybody has something they wish were different.

Everybody.

The people who seem to have it all together usually carry struggles nobody else sees.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve always appreciated the way Paul talks about his “thorn in the flesh.” He never actually tells us what it was. People have spent centuries trying to work it out, but I’ve often wondered whether that’s exactly the point. If Paul had named it, we’d all spend our time comparing our thorn with his.

Instead, we’re simply told that he pleaded with God to remove it.

God didn’t.

Instead He said something that I still find both deeply challenging and strangely comforting:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

If I’m honest, I’d much rather God changed my circumstances.

Again and again He seems far more interested in changing me.

That doesn’t mean our circumstances don’t matter. Paul wasn’t pretending the thorn wasn’t painful. Frankl wasn’t pretending the concentration camp wasn’t horrific. Jesus certainly wasn’t pretending the cross wasn’t terrifying.

The Bible never asks us to deny reality.

Instead, it keeps inviting us into a bigger reality.

Our circumstances are real. Our pain is real. Our disappointment is real. But they are never the whole story.

Feelings are a bit like the weather

As we were preparing this message, I found myself thinking about one particular day during the week when, for no obvious reason, I simply felt off.

Have you ever had days like that?

Nothing especially dramatic had happened. Nobody had upset me. No crisis had emerged overnight. Yet everything felt heavier than it had the day before. It was harder to think clearly. Harder to get motivated. Harder to see possibilities. It felt as though the whole world had become just a little darker.

Then I had a good night’s sleep, spent some time with God, and gradually things seemed to reintegrate.

What changed?

Not my circumstances.

My emotional weather.

That image has become incredibly helpful for me because I think feelings are a bit like the weather for a builder.

Imagine a builder standing outside on a cold, wet morning complaining about the rain. They can spend all day wishing the weather were different, but that won’t change the forecast. At some point they have to organise themselves around reality rather than spending their energy wishing reality was different.

A wise builder doesn’t get angry that weather exists. They expect it. They prepare for it. They know some days are simply harder than others. The weather changes how they build, but it doesn’t change what they’re building.

I wonder whether emotional maturity works in much the same way.

Some days the emotional weather is bright and clear. Other days it feels dark and stormy. The weather matters. It changes how difficult the work will be. But wise builders don’t confuse today’s weather with the building they’re trying to construct.

Neither should we.

Our feelings matter. They tell us something important about what’s happening inside us. Ignoring them isn’t maturity.

But neither is allowing them to determine every decision we make.

Perhaps emotional maturity is learning to acknowledge the weather without believing the weather is the whole climate of our lives.

Arthur Brooks uses the word metacognition to describe this. It’s not exactly a word that comes up in everyday conversation, but the idea behind it is surprisingly simple. It means learning to think about your thinking. Becoming aware of what’s happening inside you instead of simply reacting to it.

When I first read that, I couldn’t help smiling.

It sounded remarkably familiar.

Long before psychologists coined the word metacognition, Paul was writing:

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Perhaps the Bible has been inviting us into this kind of emotional maturity all along.

Jesus shows us what emotional maturity looks like

For me, though, the clearest picture of emotional maturity isn’t found in a psychology textbook. It’s found in a garden.

I’m so grateful the Gospel writers recorded what happened in Gethsemane because, without it, we might imagine that Jesus somehow floated above ordinary human emotions. Instead, we meet a Saviour who is completely honest about what is happening inside Him. He doesn’t minimise His pain. He doesn’t pretend everything is fine. He doesn’t put on a brave face for the disciples.

He says, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”

Those are extraordinary words. They remind me that feeling overwhelmed isn’t failure. Jesus experienced fear, grief and deep anguish. He knew exactly what was happening inside Him, and He wasn’t afraid to name it.

In fact, I think that’s one of the places many of us struggle. Some of us are very good at feeling our feelings but not so good at choosing what we do with them. Others—particularly many of us blokes—have spent years learning not to feel very much at all. I know that’s been part of my own journey. Looking back, I became remarkably good at distancing myself from my emotions. It took me a long time to realise that ignoring your feelings isn’t maturity any more than being ruled by them is.

Jesus models a better way.

He tells His friends what is happening inside Him. He asks them to stay with Him. He takes His fears to His Father in prayer. There is something profoundly healthy about that. Rather than pretending He was okay, He brought His emotions into the light.

Yet He didn’t stop there.

After honestly expressing His desire for another way, He prayed:

“Yet not my will, but yours be done.”

I’ve often thought that sentence captures what Christian maturity looks like.

It isn’t the absence of emotion. It isn’t pretending we don’t feel disappointed, frightened or overwhelmed. It is learning, by God’s grace, to acknowledge those feelings honestly without allowing them to become the thing that determines our behaviour.

I wonder whether one of the marks of spiritual maturity is simply finding ourselves praying that prayer more often:

“Lord, I really don’t want to do this… but not my will. Yours.”

Science is beginning to explain what Proverbs has always taught

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about reading Brooks’ work is that he doesn’t just draw on psychology. He also points to what neuroscience is discovering about the way our minds work.

Neuroscientists now tell us that our brains react to situations before our conscious thinking catches up. In those moments, our emotional brain can temporarily override our capacity to think clearly and make wise decisions.

When I first came across that idea I found myself smiling, because I couldn’t help thinking that Proverbs has been describing exactly the same reality for centuries.

Proverbs speaks about being “hot-headed.” It contrasts the fool, who simply reacts, with the wise person who gives careful thought to their steps. The language is different, but the insight is remarkably similar.

One of the things I find fascinating is how often neuroscience ends up describing realities the Bible has been inviting us to live for centuries.

The question has never been whether we have emotional reactions.

Of course we do.

The question is whether those reactions become our master.

That’s where Brooks’ word metacognition becomes useful. It means thinking about your thinking. Becoming aware of what’s happening inside you rather than simply being swept along by it.

Or to put it in biblical language, metacognition is another way of describing Spirit-led self-control.

Perhaps emotional maturity begins by recognising that there is a space between what we feel and what we choose.

We don’t see the world as it is

One of the most fascinating observations Brooks makes is that our memories are far less objective than we like to imagine.

We don’t simply replay the past like watching a video recording. We reconstruct it. The stories we believe today shape the memories we notice from yesterday.

Have you ever noticed that when you’re discouraged, your mind suddenly becomes an expert at remembering every disappointment you’ve ever experienced? It can feel as though life has always been difficult and always will be.

Then, after a few better days, the opposite happens. You begin remembering answered prayers, moments of joy, acts of kindness and God’s faithfulness. Nothing has changed about the past.

What has changed is the story through which you’re viewing it.

I’ve become increasingly convinced that we rarely see reality objectively. We see it through the stories we’re telling ourselves, through our emotional weather, and through the lens of our past experiences. That doesn’t mean reality changes. It means our perception of it does.

That struck me because I don’t think the Bible is simply telling us to think more positively. It’s inviting us to live from a different story altogether.

Paul says we’re transformed by the renewing of our minds. Hebrews tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus. Again and again Scripture keeps pulling us back into the larger story of what God has done, what He is doing, and what He has promised to do.

Every symbol is quietly preaching a sermon

It strikes me that God seems to think we’re far more forgetful than we realise.

That’s why throughout the Bible He gives His people reminders.

In Deuteronomy, Israel is told to talk about God’s Word when they sit at home, when they walk along the road, when they lie down and when they get up. They’re told to bind it to their hands and foreheads and place it around their homes. Why?

Because stories shape lives.

Jesus understood this too. He took a child and said, “Remember this.” He washed His disciples’ feet and said, “Do this.” He gave us bread and wine and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

He knew we would forget.

I’ve been thinking about that in our own home. Leeanne has little reminders of Scripture and wise sayings in all sorts of places. Sometimes I joke that if you spend long enough in our house you’ll eventually read a Bible verse somewhere—even on the back of the toilet door.

Our television quietly scrolls through family photos from years gone by. We’re on the Apple side of the religious divide, so this sort of thing just happens. Every now and then one photo catches my attention, and I’m reminded that today’s difficult season isn’t the whole story. We’ve seen God’s faithfulness before. We’ve laughed before. We’ve walked through hard seasons before.

Those reminders matter.

The branding experts understand this. The advertising industry understands it. The things we surround ourselves with shape our identity far more than we realise.

Every symbol is quietly preaching a sermon.

The question isn’t whether we’re being shaped by a story.

The question is, which story is shaping us?

Learning to respond instead of react

One of the things I appreciate about Brooks is that he doesn’t leave these ideas in the abstract. He asks what they actually look like in everyday life.

The Bible, I think, takes us even further.

It begins by encouraging us to notice our feelings rather than ignore them. Some of us have become experts at pushing our emotions aside until we hardly know what’s happening inside us. Others know exactly what they’re feeling but have never learnt to pause before acting on those feelings.

Growth begins by bringing what’s happening inside us into the light.

For me that often happens with a Bible, a journal and a cup of coffee.

For someone else it might happen in conversation with a trusted friend.

Or in prayer.

Jesus didn’t keep His feelings hidden.

Neither should we.

But after naming them comes the more important question:

“What story am I living from?”

Am I responding out of today’s emotional weather?

Or am I responding out of the larger story God is telling?

That question has become increasingly important to me because one of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that tragedy happens to everybody.

We’re all going to experience misunderstanding, loss, disappointment and grief. The difference isn’t whether those things happen. The difference is what they produce in us.

I’ve watched some people become permanently defined by the darkest chapter of their lives. I’ve watched others allow God to meet them there and slowly transform even their deepest pain into compassion, wisdom and hope.

The circumstances may look remarkably similar.

The stories they’re living from are completely different.

The church is at its best when it suffers differently

As I think about the early church, it strikes me that one of the reasons people were drawn to Christianity wasn’t because Christians had easier lives.

They didn’t.

If anything, they suffered more.

Many lost their jobs, their homes, their families and even their lives because of their faith.

What captured people’s attention was something else.

They suffered differently.

They grieved. They wept. They experienced fear. But they also carried a hope that couldn’t be explained by their circumstances.

I wonder if that’s still one of the church’s greatest opportunities today.

Not to pretend life isn’t hard. Not to offer shallow answers to deep pain. Certainly not to tell someone in the middle of tragedy that “everything happens for a reason.”

The Bible never treats suffering that lightly.

Instead, it quietly points us towards a God whose grace is sufficient, whose strength is made perfect in weakness, and who somehow works even the darkest chapters of our lives into a bigger story of redemption.

That’s not something we explain to someone else in the middle of their pain.

It’s something we slowly discover for ourselves as we continue walking with Jesus.

Fix your eyes on Jesus

The writer to the Hebrews brings all of this together in just a few sentences.

“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus.”

Notice he doesn’t promise an easy race.

Sometimes the race leads through grief. Sometimes disappointment. Sometimes confusion. Sometimes the valley of the shadow of death.

Tomorrow the emotional weather may be bright and sunny.

Or it may be dark and stormy.

Either way, Jesus is still Lord.

The builder doesn’t stop building because the weather changes.

Followers of Jesus don’t stop following because their feelings change.

We keep fixing our eyes on Christ.

Our world keeps telling us that we’ll find peace by arranging our circumstances so we finally feel better. The gospel tells a very different story. Peace isn’t found by making sure life always goes the way we want. It’s found by anchoring our lives in the One who remains faithful even when everything else feels uncertain.

Your feelings are real. Listen to them. Learn from them. Bring them honestly before God.

But don’t build your life on them.

Build your life on Christ.

Because you are not your feelings.

You belong to Him.