Vocabulary to unplug buried emotions and receive God’s healing

One only needs to look at all the planets and all the vast variety of life on earth to know that God is limitless in His creative expressions. He is also the Creator of a vast variety of emotions, ranging from the most exhilarating emotions to the depressing. Growing up, very few of us experienced “emotional schooling”, where we were taught how to name and acknowledge how we truly felt inside, thereby stifling our spirits. It is helpful to have the vocabulary to name and unplug the buried emotions that choke our hearts and block us from receiving the fullness of God’s joy. 

(See Chinese versions: 简体中文 > 词汇解开埋藏的情绪并接受神的医治 | 繁體中文 > 詞彙解開埋藏的情緒並接受神的醫治)

Psalm 34:17-18 ESV  When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Ezekiel 36:26 ESV  And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

Stuffed emotional pain will often cause us to feel emotionless, empty, numb, stuck, unfulfilled or unfeeling. This isn’t how God created us to feel. Our good God desires to restore our hearts to spiritual richness and emotional health.

Sources of subconscious negative emotions from childhood

Our brains create longer-lasting memories of events that are emotionally charged than those we have no emotional attachment to. Moreover, research shows that we will recall unhappy emotional memories with greater ease and more detail than happy ones. Even if we haven’t thought about them for decades, our hidden archives of painful memories can continue to subconsciously stir up anxiety in our hearts.

Some of the deepest memories are formed in childhood, when our young brains were still developing and ill-equipped to deal with an onslaught of new emotions and events.

1. Emotional stress in the womb

Our consciousness began in the womb, where we were able to kick or push in response to external stimuli, such as singing, music or voices. Similarly, we were also fully conscious of our mothers’ emotional highs and lows. Where our mothers were constantly anxious, aggrieved or in pain, we would have picked up on her body’s stress hormones and chemical signals. Research has shown that prenatal emotional stress can even alter a baby’s gene expression and emotional regulation, causing greater sensitivity to stress and fear.

2. Emotional nurturing within the family

Starting from as little as one year old, we experienced many emotions before we even knew how to name them, let alone deal with them.

• 1-2 years old: We felt fear, frustration, embarrassment, empathy, and envy for the first time.
• 2-3 years old: We experienced guilt and shame for the first time.
• 3-4 years old: We started to develop an idea about our self-image and self-worth.

Every child needs to learn how to recognise and regulate his or her emotions without shame or fear. This is why emotional nurturing and reassurance from adult caregivers is so important. We not only learn from what they tell us; we also pick up as much, if not more, through their body language, choices, and values. Some cues little children quickly pick up include:

• What can I deduce from their spoken and unspoken language?
• What elicits anger, ridicule, rejection, and disgust?
• How do I gain acceptance, attention, and approval?
• Do my caregivers consider me worthy of their time and care?
• Am I worthy of love?

Young minds are not always able to comprehend grown-up issues. Even seemingly benign experiences with the most well-meaning caregivers can leave us feeling confused, alone, rejected, or abandoned and scar us emotionally, if the adults around us did not know how to help us address our feelings. What’s more, children may end up internalising fear, shame, and self-blame for adult-sized problems such as family conflicts, financial struggles, domestic violence, separation or divorce.

3. Emotional conditioning

Besides our families, we also quickly learnt what are socially acceptable emotional norms from our peer groups, schools, and society. Some emotional bumps along the road will quickly show us (rightfully or wrongfully) the feelings that are safe to express to others, and those that are not.

Picking up the vocabulary to express how we felt as children

As followers of Jesus, we have the wonderful privilege of asking our Heavenly Father to help us examine and cleanse our hearts of hidden emotional toxins.

Psalm 139:23-24 ESV  Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

Where we lacked the words to acknowledge, accept and confess our painful emotions as children, we can always benefit from a checklist of emotions to do so now. May this sample vocabulary list bless all those who wish to cast their anxieties to God and receive His emotional healing.

1 Peter 5:7 NIV  Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

1 Peter 5:10 ESV  And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

Testimony: Receiving the vocabulary to express oneself

“Growing up, I was that happy kid that everyone loves to be around. This is because I was told by my parents that we should always be grateful and happy all the time. But when I felt other stressful feelings and could not hold it in anymore, I would have outbursts of anger. So I only knew how to name and identify two main emotions, happiness and anger, and I thought this was normal. This was not a good start for me after I became a Christian, as it made forgiving others very difficult for me because I could not identify, fully feel, and express what I felt.

When I went for my inner healing and deliverance prayer, I was asked to describe how I felt about some unpleasant incidents. I could only talk about them as factual incidents but could not pinpoint exactly what was in my heart. Thankfully, my prayer counsellors gave me a chart called an emotion wheel to refer to. The emotion wheel starts with basic feelings such as love, fear, anger. sadness. surprise, and joy, and lists different expressions and intensities using different colours around the circumference. This opened a whole new world for me.

I could finally start to name my feelings and connect with what was in my heart. I found tears running down my cheeks as I talked about the feelings I felt when people hurt me and for the first time, named shame as the reason I got angry. I was ashamed when I could not feel happy and that is when I got angry with myself. The first person I needed to forgive was myself!”

May this sharing be a blessing to you as you seek to love God with all your heart and connect with your heart fully.