The wild animal inside of all of us
- Kyle Snyder: Live on Purpose
- October 5, 2023
- 456
“Don’t be ashamed to weep; ‘tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.” —Brian Jacques
I downloaded a seminary on my phone. No, I am not going to be a pastor. I was reading a book in Christian counseling, and no, I am not going to become a counselor either. I look at my writing as being close to counseling; in fact, if I knew in high school what I know now, I would have gone to medical school and become a psychiatrist. I used to believe we don’t need psychology, that all we need is God and the Bible, but as I got to studying behavior, I learned psychology is just a tool God uses to glorify himself.
In the book I was reading, the author talked about knowing what we believe. That hit me like a ton of bricks. Here I am, a high school graduate who took one 6-week college course, who is writing to help people and reading books just trying to understand how to get better at helping people. The question was: Did I know enough about God to effectively help people? Now by this time I have written somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 columns, but I knew I could keep working on myself. So I began to listen to the seminary app to help me understand Christianity better and to use the principles of my faith to try and help others more.
One day as I was listening to introduction to counseling, the professor who worked in churches and mental hospitals told the class the reason why people don’t like emotions is because it’s a wild animal. What do you do with wild animals? You shoot them! I personally know people who have killed themselves emotionally, who told me some horrific things that happened to them with no emotion in their eyes or voice. You talk about getting an eerie feeling from someone. My friend, that will do it right there.
People who go in and commit mass shootings, we always hear about how quiet they were, until the day they blew their top. Most of them kept their emotions on the inside until the volcano exploded. On the other hand, people get so ruled by their emotions they can hardly function in reality. I think in the middle should be our goal. Emotions get a bad rap; I hear people tell us emotions can’t be trusted. While that is true to a point, that doesn’t mean we should discredit them altogether.
We need to feel our feelings. Now there is a big difference between feeling them and taking action based on what we feel. As an example, if someone really hurt you, write them a letter. Get everything out on the table. Don’t hold anything back. Just let them have it. Then rip it up! If you can burn it safely, that can be an option. Just don’t let them see it. It is a good outlet to get our emotions out without anybody getting in the line of fire.
Talk to a good friend about your feelings, someone who can remain neutral so their emotions don’t feed our emotions. Maybe we have been looking at it all wrong, and they can get us to consider other possibilities. Missed communication is a huge problem, and maybe we misheard something and a friend can shed light on it.
Sometimes feeling our emotions can make us feel like we are 3 years old, and that is OK. Sometimes we need to just cry. Getting it out is just what we need to help us move on. Crying is a way to release our emotions in a good way. Sometimes after a good cry, we just feel drained, and that is good. Our emotions flow out of us in a way that is healing, and nobody got hurt.
Yes, I will be the first one to tell you emotions are messy, but they always come out one way or another. Let’s just make sure they come out with no one getting hurt in the process.