EMOTIONAL HEALTH

Discouragement and despair sometimes feel as if they are cloaked demons lurking in the shadows of our lives. In these dark times, our emotions are presenting themselves as symptoms and they threaten our overall emotional health.

As rational beings, we can see that cause and effect. Yet if dark emotions are overwhelming us and we try and rectify our mindset, we are not the rational beings we can sometimes be. Emotions are irrational. When we are emotionally overwhelmed, we are irrational. And in that irrational state we often look outside ourselves to blame the outward circumstance causing our pain.

But the cure for overwhelming dark emotions is an inside job.

Silence and solitude calls us inward to examine how external forces are controlling our inner spirit. It is time to go through the steps of discernment in the Serenity Prayer.

• We remind ourselves: “the only person I can change is me.”
• We reflect “which things that are affecting me can I change, and which must I accept.”
• We pray “give me the wisdom to know the difference between things I can change and those I must accept.”

And, like a miracle, we find the serenity we seek.

Of course it isn’t easy. But it is life-changing. It reestablishes our relationship with ourselves first, and then with those around us.

Self-pity and depression are twin spirit-slayers. They erode self-confidence, self-compassion, and self-esteem. Out-of-control emotions lead to out-of-control behavior. After a short period of time, we realize that this way of life is not a sustainable dynamic.

The cycles of life swing wildly between joy and sorrow. Our initial reaction is to name these times “good and bad.” That mindset, however, is a life sentence to a half-empty existence.

“You need to take responsibility for your own happiness. Nobody else can keep you happy, and nobody else can make you unhappy if you really don’t want to be unhappy.”

-Joyce Meyer

Well, I certainly don’t want to be unhappy, and I’m certain you don’t either. So what kind of a message is Joyce conveying? Her conclusion is that we must take personal responsibility for our lives and our reactions to them. Otherwise we are left devolving into self-hatred in our inability to conquer the forces drawing us into despair.

“When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.”

-Thomas Merton

Again, we see the value of solitude and silence. In the solitude we stop the downward spiral that has us spinning out of control. In the silence we listen... reconnecting spirit to Spirit. In an hour, or a day, or even a week or a month, the peace and serenity we seek comes into focus as a possibility. And whether it takes a day, a week or many months, we start to make the impossible possible.

It is not within our bodily strength to turn ourselves from irrational hot pots of emotion into calm and serene rational beings. It is within our spirit.

It’s worth the effort to change ourselves. It’s a difficult journey up a treacherous mountain, but the pinnacle is a place from which we can easily see the path ahead. With time and patience we arrive at the state in which we are meant to live, and from which we are destined to see the world, affect change, and live in serenity.