Apostolic Voice, Episode 54
I recently had the opportunity to speak with pastor (Solid Rock Church of Irving, TX), podcaster (True North Podcast), and author Ed Snyder about his recent book publication called Control the Beast (A Guide to Managing Your Emotions) on the Apostolic Voice Podcast. It was a memorable episode, and I hope you’ll have the opportunity to listen to it (the episode is linked below). Control the Beast (A Guide to Managing Your Emotions) is linked below as well. It’s worth a lot more than $10, and I highly recommend adding it to your reading list. Below is a summary of my conversation with Pastor Snyder and the book.
A Guide to Managing Your Emotions
The book’s premise is that we all have an emotional beast lurking in the dark recesses of our hearts. It manifests itself as anger, but it builds to rage if left unchecked. In worst-case scenarios, that anger can become blind rage wreaking destruction on everything in its wake. We all have different fuse lengths before anger explodes outwardly. Or we might say that we all have different tolerance levels before simmering emotions manifest as anger. Regardless, whether you have a short fuse or a long fuse, anger in all its ugly appearances is a beast that needs managing. I happen to have a very long fuse, but it’s not a pretty sight when the beast ignites.
Where Does the Beast Come From?
There’s a long-standing debate about whether we’re products of our surroundings or genetics. What shapes our personality the most, our environment or engrained DNA? We’ll never settle that debate here. However, the most plausible answer seems to be that each individual is uniquely shaped by a blend of the two. The key for each of us is to identify what shaped our emotional beast. We don’t have control over the atmosphere of our childhood or our ongoing extended family conditions. At least, we have minimal control, especially when we’re young and dependent.
So many things happen to us in life that shape personalities. And we’re born with certain propensities and proclivities too. So, before we can confront and control the beast in our basement, we’ll need to take some time figuring out where and why it started growing in the first place. That process is painful because it requires revisiting dark, hurtful places that we’ve tucked away deep in our subconscious minds. So, we’ve got to figure out when the beast was born? Did we feed it, or did our environment feed it or both? How big is that beast in the basement? Just because it rarely comes out doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem. Sadly, we usually keep our beast tightly leashed in public and only loose it on the people we love the most. Maybe you’re one of those people whose beast follows you everywhere and attacks everyone around you, including strangers. Regardless, its origins must be identified to get that beast under control.
Anger is a Secondary Emotion
Anger is often called a secondary emotion because we tend to resort to anger in order to protect ourselves from or cover up other vulnerable feelings. A primary feeling is what is felt immediately before we feel anger. We almost always feel something else first before we get angry. We might first feel afraid, attacked, offended, disrespected, forced, trapped, or pressured. If any of these feelings are intense enough, we think of the emotion as anger. So much like an iceberg, all the primary emotions leading to anger sit just out of view in the water. Anger is just the tip of that iceberg. It gets the most attention because that’s what everyone can see, but the real problems are hidden beneath the surface. Therefore, it becomes our responsibility to identify those hidden trigger emotions. The same is true for sadness, anxiety, and fear. They are often secondary emotions with hidden emotions piled underneath them.
The 10/90 Rule
Charles Swindoll asserts that life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to what happens to us. We can’t control the 10%, but we can take responsibility for the 90%. However, significant problems arise when we obsess over the 10% and ignore the 90%. In Control the Beast, Snyder gives an excellent illustration of how healthy emotions work using a car battery. A car battery needs a negative and a positive connection to work correctly. Fascinatingly, we need negative and positive emotions to function healthily. Too many positive emotions and a person might become conceited or prideful. Too many negative emotions and a person might become angry or depressed. Emotional wellbeing doesn’t require eliminating negative feelings altogether. That’s not possible. Maintaining a balanced connection between the two is the goal.
Too Much Negativity
When we are angry, frustrated, sad, or depressed, it means something is wrong with our positive connection. The negative charge is dominating the positive charge disrupting our ability to function. It takes a conscious effort to reconnect ourselves to the positive. Overwhelming negative emotions blind us to the good around us. I’m reminded of when David and his army returned home only to find their families had been taken captive by the Amalekites (1 Samuel 30:1-18). David and his men had no idea if their families were alive or dead. They didn’t know where they were or where they were going. David’s men were even thinking about stoning their leader in their grief. It didn’t look hopeful at all. David wept and stressed and all the rest. It was just a pure negative connection with no positives in view. But then David instinctively did something we all must learn to do. He encouraged himself in the Lord his God (1 Samuel 30:6).
What does that mean exactly? It sounds mystically spiritual, but actually, it’s pretty simple. David forced his mind, specifically in prayer, to remember good things that God had done in the past. He was reconnecting to the positive charge so he could be in the right frame of mind to make decisions and move forward. Often, the key to gaining control of the emotional beast is to stop, pray, refresh, think, remember good things, and then react. If David had responded without encouraging himself in the Lord, things probably would have turned out differently. Instead, David recaptured everything the enemy took from him and more. Things may not always turn out for us as perfectly as they did in that example, but the proper emotional response always mitigates the damages.
Starving the Beast
In chapter two of Control the Beast, Snyder highlights the importance of cleaning up our environment. We starve the beast by keeping all the things that feed it out of our personal space. As already mentioned, we can’t control our childhood environment. Also, we can’t control the setting the world creates when we walk outside our homes. But we can keep our house beast food free. Snyder lists common triggers that we should keep out of our immediate surroundings: Pornography, violent visual media, bad reading choices, foul language, and negative music. We could add tons of things to this list. We could also add lists of things we should bring into our daily environment to stay connected to positive emotions like prayer, fasting, Bible reading, worshipful music, preaching, good books, uplifting language, and godly media. Starve the bad and feed the good (I’ve written extensively about this in an article called 15 Ways to Win the Battle Within).
Accountability Breeds Responsibility
Once we’ve identified the beast and begun the process of starving it to death, it’s time to make ourselves accountable and responsible for our actions. Several times in Control the Beast, Snyder emphasizes the importance of remaining accountable to others. We’re often blinded to the severity of our emotional reactions, and it takes a willingness to listen to others before we can resolve beastly appearances. We should all be accountable to a pastor, ministry team, elders, and fellow believers on the spiritual side. We’ve got to be accountable to spouses, co-workers, non-toxic family members, children, and friends in our daily lives. As we receive constructive criticism and learn to recognize problems on our own, it’s vital to take responsibility for our emotional failings.
That’s incredibly hard for most of us because it’s natural to shift blame onto other people or circumstances. After all, we’re basically prewired with that tendency. But we can reprogram ourselves out of that bad habit over time if we work hard at it. Refuse to internalize the mindset that says, “This is just how I am, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Not true. We can be made new, transformed, revitalized, and reprogrammed with the help of the Lord and others. But only if we take ownership of our outward reactions, outbursts, displays, and blowups.
Be Encouraged
I’ve barely scratched the surface of the content covered in the Podcast conversation, and that conversation is only a fraction of the contents of Control the Beast. The highlights are here, but many more valuable bits of help and resources are found in the Podcast and the book itself. If you’ve read this far into the article, you’re probably someone who needs to click on the links below to listen and buy. Don’t allow guilt, shame, or pride to keep you from pursuing the help you need. Seasons of life stir up emotions previously hidden carefully in the basement. For example, those moments you feel like you’re losing your mind or feel like you’ve suddenly become a different person than you used to be. You’re not crazy or changing; something unlocked the beast. Be encouraged. You’ll learn skills in those challenging seasons that will make the next season much easier to endure. You’re in the right place. Things are better than they seem right now. Mix some work with faith and God will come through for you.
Relevant Links
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