Why Bottling Up Emotions Kills Spiritual Growth

The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

Newlifefellowship, Religion & Spirituality, Leadership, Richvillodas, Petescazzero, Emotionallyhealthyspirituality, Christianity, Faith, Peterscazzero, Churchleaders, Spirituality, Emotionallyhealthy, Newyork, Pastor

4.8 • 673 Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For the first 17 years of my Christian life, my emotional life was completely divorced from my spiritual life. Or so I thought.

When sadness, anger, or disappointment surfaced from my soul, I did not see them as gifts. As a leader, I saw my emotions as interruptions to "my real work" – moving the church forward and reaching the lost!

As a result, I was not present with myself, with God, or with others. I saw my sadness as something to be overcome through prayer and Scripture. I would declare, "the joy of the Lord is my strength!" while ignoring the deep cries of my heart.

The truth is that emotions never die. They are only buried alive. They always resurface, leaking into other parts of our lives and relationships.

It took a work of God for this to change in my life and marriage. When my wife Geri and I discovered the permission to explore our emotional life, it was like opening up a dam. The world went from black and white to color almost overnight.

Emotionally healthy leaders see their emotions as invitations, not obstacles to the mission of God.

The fruit of this journey leads to less anxiety and more freedom in our lives, leadership, and relationships.

In today's podcast episode, my wife Geri and I share more about the skill of emotional discovery we call "Explore the Iceberg" in Emotionally Healthy Relationships.

Bottom line, your emotional life is a matter of life and death!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Emotionally Healthy Leader podcast. I'm Pete Scuzeiro.
0:11.0	I'm Jerry Skazaro.
0:12.0	And our title today is, Why Bottling Up Our Emotions Kills Spiritual Growth?
0:17.0	Yep.
0:18.0	And so, Jerry, I would just start with it. Why does bottling up our emotions kill spiritual growth or depth or development?
0:24.6	Well, actually, when you say the word bottling up, it almost sounds like a person knows
0:29.7	they're doing it.
0:31.2	But in reality, most of us aren't even aware of the fact that we're suppressing our emotions.
0:38.1	It's just the way we've always done life.
0:39.7	We don't pay attention to them.
0:42.0	But, so that's number one.
0:43.3	But bottling up our emotions, why it's dangerous to spiritual health and maturity is because, in a word, you're really limited in your ability to love others well if you are not aware of your feelings.
1:01.5	Let's hold on to that because this is a life and death issue, how we handle our emotions integrated with our spirituality.
1:06.9	And so why don't we just start, because this is such a vast topic. There's so much to it.
1:10.0	Let's just start with a bit of our own story, how I know we came to Christ at 19. Both of us,
1:15.0	we had 17 years in Christ, in discipleship, et cetera, before we actually began to integrate our emotions into our walk with Jesus.
1:24.5	And so why don't we talk how our families did it, how it began. Why don't we tell a bit of
1:27.7	our story as background, and then we'll dive into our skill, explore the iceberg today.
1:32.9	Okay. Yeah. Why don't you start? Yeah, sure. So I, you know, I, you know, came to Christ at 19.
1:39.3	So when I came to Jesus, I had already come out of a family where we did not do certain emotions. We did anger.
1:45.4	Again, as I shared a couple of weeks ago, there was a lot of abuse in my family.
1:48.3	And so as a child growing up, there was no way I could be vulnerable, sad, even angry, because there was no room for it.
	...

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