Healing your emotions is critical when you are estranged. And its hard work that will take time and commitment.
Take a moment to think about the emotions you’ve experienced in the last few days when you think about the person with whom you are estranged.
Do you feel disappointed? Sadness? Anger? Resentment? Bitterness? Do you feel the need to defend yourself? Do you wonder why it happened? Do you have imaginary conversations in your head with the other person?
My friend, all of that is commonplace when you are estranged from a loved one. Let’s unpack some of these emotions today and learn how to begin to heal you. Because it is essential before you can have a healthy relationship with that person.
Ready? Let’s go!
Estrangement and Emotions
When you are estranged from a loved one, you already know that a plethora of emotions exists. You may experience them all in one day. And it’s exhausting.
Negative emotions have a significant impact on your life including your health and other relationships. Studies have proven that emotions such as anger, chronic stress and depression weaken the immune system and can cause problems like cardiovascular issues and fatigue.
Conversely, positive emotions do the opposite. Happiness, gratitude, and positive thinking are linked to improved health and longevity.
I’ve had my share of negative emotions, and I’ll bet you have too. If I asked for a show of hands, I’m guessing most would say they want to flip the switch and boot the unhealthy emotions to the curb, right? But how?
It’s hard. But anything worthwhile usually takes effort. The first step we’ll discuss is awareness.
Awareness in Healing Your Emotions
Becoming aware of your emotions is a learned skill. Obviously, everyone is aware when you are angry. If you’re like me, doors slam a little harder, voice inflection rises, and a bit of a snarky attitude comes out. No one has to guess what the mood is.
The thing is you may be enjoying a fabulous day but all of a sudden something triggers you. A song, smell, social media post or whatever and it sends you into a set of emotions you didn’t expect or desire.
Sometimes you aren’t even sure why you are in a bad mood. You woke up grumpy and everything about the day seems to go wrong. You begin to feel sorry for yourself and wonder “why me?” Emotions spiral into what you did to deserve to be rejected. And then you are disappointed, angry, and full of resentment.
The first step to healing your emotions is to take stock of them preferably before they go full blown into attack mode. Initially, I struggled to even identify my emotions. A coach helped me process it like this. I feel (insert emotion) because (insert reason).
That took some thought and practice because I was feeling a myriad of emotions all at once and had a challenging time identifying them specifically.
As I worked through the awareness phase, I began to realize what some of the emotions were but sometimes I wasn’t sure why. Don’t get discouraged. As I said, it takes time and practice to contact your feelings.
Wheel of Emotions
Feelings or emotions can be broken into four categories. Joy, fear, sadness, and anger. If you start by making those your major categories, you can dig a bit deeper to analyze what you are feeling. For example, if anger is my primary emotion, subcategories might include furious, resentful, frustrated, disturbed or defensive.
If you google wheel of emotions chart, you can print one and get more into detail as you explore your own emotions. This exercise was immensely helpful to me. I will be adding this wheel to my website under resources so check there first www.beckykolb.com/resources
For example, I might write the following. I feel resentful because the estranged person refuses to acknowledge their part in the conflict.
As you become aware of your emotions, you can then begin to work through whatever it is in your journal.
In my example, could I do anything about the person who wouldn’t acknowledge their part? Of course not. I had no control. So, why would I allow myself to get angry and resentful over it?
I would ask myself how I wanted to feel. On the chart I chose calm on the chart. And then I would seek out ways that made me feel calm.
- Taking a walk.
- Talking with a good friend.
- Reading a book.
- Spending time with God.
- Listening to music.
Becoming aware of your emotions, writing them down, acknowledging them and then challenging those will help you take charge of healing your emotions and your health.
Focus on what Negative Emotions Are Doing to You
Spend a little time diving into what negative emotional energy is doing to your health. You may be young and healthy or like me you may be advancing in age a bit. Either way, the harm from negativity will take a toll on your body eventually.
How’s your blood pressure? Are you having digestive issues? Have you been diagnosed with autoimmune diseases or been told that inflammation is a factor impacting your health? Now, some of that could be genetic, but you’ll find if you research a bit that negative emotions such as anger, bitterness and resentment play a big part.
When I decided to give up the numbing effects of alcohol to cover my pain, I learned about all the ways drinking poisoned my body. I had no idea. Sherry Hoppen has authored a book called Sober Cycle. Annie Grace authored The Naked Mind. Both are excellent books about the scientific effects of alcohol on your body.
Look for articles and books that discuss the same effect on negative emotions. It is a stark reminder of why it is a great idea to heal our emotions.
Scripture and Emotions
One of the biggest struggles you face in estrangement is lack of self-love and feeling valued. Confidence flees. God values you, my friend. He loves you deeply. He is the one who created you, knows you better than anyone and chooses you.
When you are in a relationship with Him you can expect his presence. He promises the Holy Spirit to come and live in you. Scripture says he is your counselor, provider, sustainer, and he calls you friend. He knows all about you – the good and the bad and he wraps his arms around you and whispers his love for you. Embrace that.
Expect him to show up as you read your bible and pray. He hears and he sees your tears and sadness. He understands when others falsely accuse and reject you. He experienced it too.
Our mentor is Jesus. His life shows us the model for how he wants us to live. But, boy, do we fall short? I know I do. For example, scripture says to forgive as you have been forgiven. How hard is that? You might say, “But God, do you know what they did? How they hurt me? How angry and disappointed I feel?”
His response is yes. I saw it. And I see your heart. And that’s where I want to spend some time with you. I want to heal your heart and emotions. That’s the loving father that walks with you through this estranged relationship.
Jesus is Healing Your Emotions
Let me ask you a question. How many times have you tried to forgive? What about this? Have you told yourself “I’m over it and moved on.” And you meant it, until the triggers or something brought it all back and you are in the cycle once again fighting the emotions you thought you had overcome.
Left alone, we are unable to truly heal our emotions. Oh, we can try. How many of these have you done over time?
- Read books on estrangement and forgiveness
- Googled estranged relationships and read articles
- Poured your heart out to friends
- Engaged with a therapist
- Resolved to forgive and display a new attitude
I fall into the category of all of the above. You see I wanted to forgive and move on. But I couldn’t. Memories of past conversations and accusations played like a broken record. Social media posts reminded me that I was no longer part of someone’s life.
Disappointment in them. Anger and resentment came flooding back to deal with all over again. Until I surrendered it all to Jesus. Pouring out my deep-seated hurt, grief, disappointment, anger, bitterness – all of it.
He was my counselor who understood me better than anyone. He saw the condition of my heart and understood my feelings. And then, he was ready to collaborate with me to resolve the chaos within my soul.
Surrender
When you shift your focus to God and what he can do your perspective will change. Focused on what God wanted became my goal. He wanted me to forgive my offender as I had been forgiven and so I began to reflect on all that entailed. It was a little depressing actually recalling some of those awful things.
But it changed my perspective to what he had done for me. And then he began to show me areas of my offender’s life that play a part in the behavior toward me and others. That created some compassion in my heart.
I asked God to help me see this person as he did and that opened my eyes to see his love for them was every bit as strong as his love for me.
Rebellious as we are as humans, I still struggled to really let go of the hurt. The pain ran deep. A bit of me still wanted to see some retribution. God knew that and saw that it was an area we needed to continue to work on.
You see, this is all a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. Healing your emotions is a lengthy and rewarding process if you will allow God to help you. First, I had to surrender all the pain and hurt to him – the one who had experienced it all.
And then I had to trust him each day as I met him in scripture and prayer asking him to open my eyes and ears to what he had to say to me.
I’m still working on my emotional strength. It’s not healed completely but it is getting much better. Commitment to the process is a life-long decision.
One Day you will Be Whole
This side of heaven we will never be completely healed. Triggers will come and go. You will forgive and emotions will surface. More estrangement may enter your life. You’ll feel like you’ve failed at healing your emotions.
That’s part of life. The truth is you are forgiving. Remember it is a process. When triggers come, you simply remind them that you’ve dealt with this already, forgiven the person and laid it all before God. Your enemy is Satan, and he will attempt to discourage you.
Tell him to take it up with Jesus because you’re done and have nothing more to say. Don’t get caught up in the trap of letting those emotions in again. You are loved, chosen, accepted and dear to the Lord. Surrender your pain to him and let him work in your heart in healing your emotions.