Book Review: Managing Your Emotions

Title: Managing Your Emotions 

Author: Joyce Meyer

Date: 1997

Publisher: Harrison House

ISBN: 1-5779-026-1

Length: 280 pages

Quote: "Nobody will ever reach a point in life of not experiencing a wide variety of feelings."

The Christian life is a rational life, a practice of a discipline that does not leave room for us to follow wherever our emotions might lead. The civil law already gave us some regulations that interfere with our emotional impulses: we can't just take things because we want them or beat people up because they annoy us. Common sense added more rules to that: we can't accept every invitation that comes along,  or say everything we might think to everyone we know. Christianity can be seen as adding even more rules to that, although the Bible doesn't actually say as much about our little passing feelings as some people think it does, and at this point some people ask why anyone wants to burden ourselves even further by being Christians. 

Christianity itself is not the source of all the rules people have accepted about their emotions, because Christians do not always accept the same rules. Rules about which emotions we "should" express and how we "should" express them come from our social cultures, not from Christianity. 

As a result we have our current mess in which one self-appointed guide tells young students "You must protect yourselves and learn to say things like 'I don't want to talk about this'," and then another one says, "Oh, cold! You hurt Pushy Pat when you said 'I don't want to talk about this' in that horrible, scary, chilling to-o-one!" and nobody wants to talk about what is actually going on, which is that although they may be the same age and neither one is paying the other to be a teacher or counsellor, Pushy Pat has decided that s/he is supposed to play a dominant role in a social relationship with Defensive Del. Nobody wants to talk about whether it's acceptable for a Christian to make that kind of decision. Pushy, bossy individuals tend to think that anyone who is not pushing and bossing as doggedly as they are must want to be pushed and bossed. This is false. 

Church schools and youth groups can talk about concepts like dominant and submissive social displays, introversion and extroversion, and our tendency to perceive that people we perceive as inferior are doing something "wrong" if they have any personal boundaries at all while people we perceive as higher in status aren't doing anything "wrong" even if they violate others' boundaries. They can be places where everyone defends the rights and boundaries of younger people, people who have less, people who are quiet, people who are shy (a separate category), and people living with disabilities. More often, unfortunately, they are places that support the status quo and tell young people that it's ba-a-ad if they don't like being pushed and pawed and called by the wrong names. 

Can you imagine a church where people stood up and said, "Pushy Pat, can't you see that Del didn't want to talk to you? Sit down! Be quiet! Nobody has to talk to you, Pushy, and if you can't keep your hands in your pockets and your mouth shut, you can't come back here!" Neither can I but if there were a church like that I'd probably attend it. I'm not particularly shy; I do, however, believe that church is a place to worship God and if we're not going to keep our attention on God, if we're going to clutter our minds with mere everyday socializing, our own homes would be better places to worship God. Some Christians actually have noticed that the yappy members of the congregation are not God. Yes, fellowship is the reason why it ever occurred to people to worship God as a group, but fellow believers of mine build fellowship outside the sanctuary. Most churches sponsor secular activities for groups of Christians, like dinners and day trips, where "Don't you remember me? We met once fifteen years ago!" and "So then he said 'Let's go to McDonald's' and she said 'I'd rather go to Burger King' and he said..." are still tedious, but at least they're not interrupting prayers...

Fellow believers of mine also believe that personal boundaries are set by the person. We don't have rules that try to specify at what precise age A is allowed to pat B. We have a rule that if B doesn't want to be patted, even if B is an infant or a dog or both, then B is not to be patted. Period. End of discussion. Even people who are obviously senile need to be surrounded by others who steer them away from anyone who's not seeking their attention, so that they don't annoy people who are not responsible for them. 

Protecting individual boundaries is one very important way to keep Christian fellowship from becoming snarled up in emotions. Once when I was eighteen or nineteen years old I visited a church with someone who called herself a friend at school; she was a few years older. She introduced me to a grandmotherly type she knew, using my real given name, which is a common one most people can pronounce correctly. (Introductions among individuals, in church--should have been a red flag.) Then a few minutes later grandma-type introduced me to someone else, using some other person's given name that doesn't even sound much like mine. (This can be a sign of personal hostility; even when people are clearly confused, both their confusion and their insistence on calling people by some name whether it's theirs or someone else's can be caused by deep, generalized hostility for which the person should be seeking help.) If my real name were Priscilla, she might have said "This is Patricia." So I quietly said to this new acquaintance, "It's Priscilla, actually." So on the way home my self-appointed friend scolded me: "Miss Daffy heard you correct her! That's not nice! She's so much older!" And never mind the fact that if you failed to correct my elders on things like that, if you treated them as if they were too senile to be expected to get things right, now that would be an insult. I thought about a church like that, where, right at the very beginning of things, the people being called by the wrong names are constantly having their emotions rubbed the wrong way, and so are the people who think they have some sort of right to rechristen everyone who's younger than they are. Is there any point at which this emotional friction is ever going to get better? Does anyone in this crowd ever actually like anyone else? Does any of them ever even think about God, while their heads are full of all those feelings about one another?

This is one of several things that Joyce Meyer does not discuss in Managing Your Emotions, the book version of a series of seminars she led with church groups. Well, she's an extrovert, not to be expected to think about how much emotional friction is avoided when, as people enter a church, they join a choir singing "Let all mortal flesh keep silence...ponder nothing earthly-minded..." Extroverts tend to feel very uncomfortable with the discipline of silent, or even worse solitary, prayer and meditation. It would be interesting to read more about what Meyer has learned by, she tells us, practicing the discipline of solitary worship. She says she has made that a practice but she doesn't tell us whether she felt fear, rage, even flulike symptoms, when she began. 

For me, personally, this book had little to say. Meyer was summarizing a lot of basic psychology most adult Christians had already absorbed before 1997. Since she was doing this to help younger Christians, many of whom were presumably extroverts, this book did have something of value to say to them. Not all of them had heard before that one way to discern whether things that come to our minds as we pray are coming from God or from our reactions may be that "Emotions urge us toward haste...godly wisdom tells us to wait until we have a clear [understanding] of what it is we are to do and when we are to do it." Not all of them had heard that "People who have a great deal of fear of others are good candidates to come under a controlling spirit," that evil spirit that compels extroverts to chatter in church because watching others meditate triggers their fears. Not all of them had heard that, for people troubled by overwhelming depression, it may be helpful to distrust overwhelming manic happiness and high energy. 

(Meyer discusses this in the context of clinical psychiatrists working with certified bipolar patients, and could be more specific about its relevance to teenagers: If teenagers really ride those waves of crazy teenage energy, work and/or play and/or study and/or socialize for twenty-one hours without a break and get up after sleeping for three hours, they're likely to crash into overwhelming teenage fatigue after a day or two. This is normal and does not require medication, but it's worth bearing in mind when teenagers really want to get something done, pass an exam, etc.) 

Meyer tells us a bit about her early life when, though strong-willed, she also knew she had suffered emotional damage and sought out a calm "phlegmatic" husband who could serve as a sort of emergency backup counsellor in their home. "Dave kept telling me, '...Don't you understand that I love you and that the decisions I make are best for you? God has given me that job'." Probably most readers would not want our children making any commitments to that kind of relationship. Here Meyer stands to testify that it actually worked for her.

We as a society do need to confront the problem of anyone being allowed to assume that men generally are more rational than women. Not only do men tend to be, in some ways, more emotional than women; male-pattern emotionalism is involved in a majority of all violent crime. There have been tendencies, not throughout all of North American culture but in a majority of families, to indulge girls in crying, whining, expressing fear and anxiety, and professing shame and harsh self-judgment, while indulging boys in expressing anger, grabbing for control, and reframing their fears and insecurities as hostility and even "controlled violence" like breaking pencils and throwing glass bottles. We need to stop allowing men to judge women as "stupid" or "crazy" or anything of the kind. We need to start telling men, "When you don't have a rational refutation of what she's said, but pass harsh judgments on her as a person, we understand you to say that YOU ARE EMOTIONAL, probably because SHE SAID NO TO YOU." We need to be serious about this: Male scientist dismisses female scientist as "a kook," end of male scientist's career, right there. Maybe some university can hire him as a secretary to the more rational and competent women scientists. 

The dynamic that worked for Meyer and for many other extroverts is not "husband is wife's backup counsellor," but "calm philosophical LBS introvert is emotional extrovert's backup counsellor." I don't know that any other type of introvert would be a good choice of personal counsellor-for-life; I for one wouldn't take that job if someone were telling me God had given it to me, but there are too many cases where LBS introverts have succeeded in this role for anyone to deny that this type of relationship can work. Men have been known to choose a calm, rational wife to be "the rock I lean on," too, and those relationships can also work. The key to making them work is for the more emotional partner to accept the guidance she or he originally sought from the calmer one. It's a total reversal for the extrovert who has probably careened through her or his teen years bullying other people into doing things her or his way, to humble herself or himself and seek guidance from someone whom a part of the extrovert probably perceives as weak. It may be the only way some of these extroverts are ever able to recover from the emotionality that would otherwise disable them.

Meyer's discussion of "healing of damaged emotions," therefore, may seem irrelevant to some readers (and may be misdirected at some people by social bullies in the churches who want to score points), but it may also be very helpful to strong-willed people who have clashed, attracted abuse, been hurt and bullied, and done their share of hurting and bullying others, and would like to stop clashing all the time and have healthy social relationships. 

It should be mentioned that of course, if you've watched her on TV, Meyer still comes across as a very abrasive, bossy, and confused individual--to those who take the time to analyze why they just want to turn off the TV the minute her shows begin. The lead-in to the Glenn Beck show still puts me off even though Beck's books and online presence don't. Meyer's face and voice have similar effects on many people I've watched trying to watch the local Christian TV channel. Presumably her fellow extroverts are less alienated by her face, voice, and manner, which must work for some people or they'd never be broadcast at all. Possibly, if you like her show, that would be an indication that you'd get some benefit from reading her books.

Meyer wrote a whole book on the subject of forgiveness, which I read, reviewed, resold a few years ago, and in this book she makes what I consider the same mistake she made in that book. Two different things can be called "forgiveness." Secular psychologists were the first to apply that word to a relatively chilly process of releasing our feelings of anger and vengefulness at the end of the day, mentally placing those who offend us in God's hands, and hoping to enjoy the sight if God chooses to deal very harshly with these people. (Is anything more pleasant than seeing stacks of a book you despised, in Sam's Club or better yet Big Lots, not selling? Well, actually, yes; winning a lawsuit that requires someone who attacked you unfairly to pay you a lot of money is very nice. Seeing someone who was still spraying poison on a field catch a blast right in his own face, choke, claw at his eyes, and then collapse, paralyzed, would be even more fun.) Secular psychologists urge people to "forgive" people whose evil work still needs to be opposed and who certainly are not ready to be restored to fellowship with the family members they've abused, or even the neighbors they've robbed or cheated. 

When Christians talked about forgiveness, originally they were talking about the forgiving love of God toward sinners, a warmhearted experience that occurs when the offender has repented and made restitution and is ready to be welcomed back into full fellowship with people who no longer even feel hurt by this person. Not all offenses are as easy to forgive as a blind person's stepping on your foot in a crowd, but when we do forgive offenses, they feel to us more like a blind person's having stepped on our feet in a crowd. Forgiveness in this sense begins with repentance. A person who tries to feel the joy of forgiveness before that repentance is complete is foolish, delusional, certainly being controlled by inappropriate emotions.

Meyer talks at length about forgiveness when what she obviously means is releasing the emotion of anger. I see no benefit to the language in misusing words this way. In this book Meyer uses other words in ways that seem more likely to confuse than to help people. For most of us "deep thinking" means the kind of thorough analytical consideration of things that help people like Dave help people like the young Joyce Meyer, but Meyer uses it to mean "always asking '...How can I keep life under control so I don't get hurt any more?'"--a particular, "neurotic," kind of thinking that was unlikely to go very deep, though it was likely to take up as much of Meyer's time as if she'd been pondering deep questions! She says then that "a deep thinker never gets to enjoy life." Say what? We do, actually, not that the extrovert brain seems capable of even imagining...most of the things HSPs notice, and other people don't notice, are pleasant things. 

Meyer's insights into mood swings and depression are also invaluable for people who can relate to these "emotional problems," because Meyer's approach, which has eventually been successful, was to retrain herself to control her emotional reactions. For some of us this takes much longer than it does for others. For me, even as a teenager adjusting to the new reality of having hormone cycles, any awareness of the source of an emotional mood tends to shut it down. Some people need to talk themselves through these things over and over:

"Why am I even thinking old angry thoughts from the past when that trivial event is over. If I were really angry about something that needs to be changed, it would be something that is serious and still going on. I am having a mood swing. Since the mood is angry it's probably caused either by testosterone in my blood, or by poor digestion of something I ate, or possibly both." (It might also be caused by a reaction to chemical pollution and perhaps other things, but testosterone and indigestion are incredibly common causes of feeling angry.) 

"Oh yes, that person is certainly attractive. Nevertheless, why is my feeling of attraction so much stronger this week than it was last week? Of course I'm not 'falling in love'--I barely know this person, but what I know does not suggest that I'd want this person as a partner for life--even if I don't already have one. I'm feeling intensely attracted to this person, this week, because of hormones." 

You could even apply this process to an aversion to a specific food, if you felt one. "Turnips are not my favorite food. I only planted them in the garden because Tracy likes them. Nevertheless, I want to eat my garden produce rather than the probably contaminated food in the supermarket, so I've been eating these good healthy turnips. Why did I feel so sick the last time I looked at turnips on a plate? I'm not allergic to turnips; I'd been exposed to Norwalk Flu. I can eat turnips again today." 

Meyer talked herself out of feelings of self-hate and depression by repeating "God loves me," first, and then adding Bible verses. This is certainly safer than attempting to medicate those feelings with drugs. You might discover that anxiety and depression, especially, are physical reactions you have to physical conditions you may or may not be able to control. (A lot of middle-aged White Americans find themselves crying real tears from depressive feelings, or redirecting those feelings into angrily blaming others, after they've eaten dairy products. They could digest milk at thirty, but they can't digest milk any more at fifty.) Reasoning your way through the emotional feeling, then scientifically identifying its causes, is the way to a real cure for chronic "mood disorders"--if there is one. Some people develop "mood disorders" as symptoms of fatal diseases, but far more often people develop "mood disorders" just by failing to think rationally about their emotional moods.

Co-dependency and the needs of an "inner child" are considered last, as topics of less personal relevance to Meyer that she studied because a lot of people were talking about them. Some of her insights into the "inner healing" ministries that were going on in the 1990s are particularly valuable, and not necessarily familiar, to all churches that have such ministries. 

Every piece of psychological truth (as distinct from Meyer's personal recollections) in this book was familiar to me, if not in 1997, certainly long before 2021 when I read this book. Most of them are probably familiar to most readers of this web site. Some of them may, however, be fresh and relevant to younger readers. This is still a good book; it's just written for a lower grade level than I believe most of us have currently reached.