Tears rolled down my face. “I just wish you weren’t so sensitive all of the time.” I was reacting to a joke a classmate told when I started crying. I’ve been called “crybaby”, “too sensitive,” and more names like these plenty of times. I’ve always been highly emotionally attuned to my surroundings. I used to think the solution to being so sensitive was to toughen up. So, I tried to numb my feelings, but that never worked. As I’ve gotten older, I now understand there is nothing wrong with being a sensitive person. Witnessing hard things like injustices, unkindness, and abuse should move me. If you can relate to having a sensitive soul, I’m glad you’re here. As people with sensitive souls, we have a conflict: do we give in to the temptation of going through life numb, or do we do the hard work of learning how to move through life in this broken world as people who tend to feel everything deeply? How do we take care of our mental health as people who have sensitive souls when this world often rewards emotional numbing? By honoring the biblical truths about emotions. From scripture, we learn that emotions have always been meant to be brought to God.
Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes teaches us that emotions are a part of the human experience. Our emotions can help us learn about ourselves and others and help us create a personal relationship with God. Understanding that emotions are always part of the human experience doesn’t make them easy to cope with, but it does release shame around experiencing them. Most of us get into the habit of diminishing what we feel as though we shouldn’t experience emotions at all. As sensitive souls, we have to make the brave choice and decide to allow ourselves to feel again. This choice feels counterintuitive because for most of our lives, we’ve thought or have been told that being sensitive is a character flaw. Building an awareness of our emotions takes time and often leaves us wrestling with uncomfortable emotions that need to be processed.
The beauty of the process of learning to feel again is that God is in the midst of emotional wrestling. The truth is, God knows how we feel before we go to him in prayer, but delights in us coming to him transparently. There are many ways to express our emotions that are valid and helpful, but when we create a habit of including lamenting to take care of our mental health, we are not only expressing the emotions we experience and processing events, but also creating an intimate, authentic relationship with God. Lamenting isn’t complaining; it’s holy. When we lament, we acknowledge that we believe God is sovereign and hears our prayers. Lamenting isn’t a sign of having a lack of faith; it’s knowing that God is in control and cares. Throughout books such as Job, 1 Samuel, Lamentations, Psalms, and Matthew, we study powerful words and imagery used to express tough emotions like sorrow and grief. People like Job, Hannah, David, and Jesus lament during tough times. These human beings expressed their emotions to God, knowing that He heard their cries and cared about the emotions they were experiencing. Lamenting isn’t spiritually bypassing our emotions. It’s a sacred way for us to confide the truth of how we feel to God from a heart posture that acknowledges Him as our sovereign safe place. Lamenting shows us that taking care of our mental health was never supposed to be something we do apart from God. It is good for our sensitive souls to go to God and lament about the sorrows and grievances we experience in this broken world.
Taking care of our mental health during this distressing time is an act of resistance. Racism and unjust systems have never been holy. As followers of Jesus, we are empowered to restore peace and can do that when we take care of our mental health. Taking care of our mental health should not be a trend but a practice that we authentically embody with Our Creator. As God’s children, we don’t have to hide our emotions from him but have the privilege of expressing how we feel directly to him, knowing that when we do, He is listening. As sensitive souls, the reward for taking care of our mental health during these distressing times in America is having an authentic relationship with God that empowers us to have the endurance needed to make change.
When we bring our emotions to God, He can give us the wisdom on how to take care of our mental health emotions; whether it’s a combination of lamenting, therapy, learning to label emotions, seeking wise counsel, journaling, or talking to a trusted friend. When we create rhythms that help us take care of our mental health, we can start to learn how to move through life with the emotions we experience instead of numbing them. We start learning how to honor our need to process the feelings we experience, our capacity to receive the news, and to create boundaries around conversations about current events when our emotional capacity is low.
Make no mistake about it, having a sensitive soul is tough. We often feel drained by carrying the weight of injustices in the midst of trying to do everyday life. I know that numbing our emotions seems like the way through, but taking care of our mental health is how we can move forward and have the capacity to initiate change.
guest post by Denea Marable