The Emotional Pendulum: Cultivating Healthy Emotions in a World of Extremes

In 2015, Disney Pixar had its next best movie idea: Inside Out. This movie would be about a middle school girl named Riley. There isn’t anything particularly special about Riley’s life until one day her parents tell her the dreaded news that their family will be moving from Minnesota to San Francisco. The storyline follows the emotions that live in Riley’s head as they process her new experiences. These emotions go through a journey of growth as they learn more about the world and also more about each other. Simultaneously, this movie also teaches its audience more about their own emotions and how they can interact with this dimension of their life and provides children and adults with a window to emotions and feelings. It opens an important discussion that until then had not been talked about very openly. Emotions are something that every single person experiences and deals with in his day-to-day life. Yet, this simple movie brought new awareness and started an important discussion on how people should be taught to view this very real area of life. Every person in the world experiences emotions in his own different way. Since this is true, it’s important to understand emotions to understand ourselves and others in a more honorable way.

The Oxford Dictionary defines emotion as “a strong feeling such as love, fear, or anger; the part of a person’s character that consists of feelings” (Oxford University Press, n.d.). This definition helps the reader to better understand what is happening when he experiences emotions. Say that a young boy named Timmy is sitting in the car on a long road trip. This seems like a normal situation, but ever since his dad was in a car accident, Timmy has been gripped by fear when he enters a car. The definition of emotion also includes the word feelings, a very similar phenomenon that is also very different. The Oxford Dictionary defines a feeling as “the condition of being emotionally affected or committed; emotion, sentiment; an instance of this, an emotion (of hope, joy, sorrow, etc)” (Oxford University Press, n.d.). This comes into play when we revisit our friend Timmy. Two months ago, Timmy was in the car with his dad when all of a sudden the car in front of them slammed on the brakes. Timmy’s dad slammed on his brakes as well, but he was unable to bring the car to a full stop before the two cars collided. Timmy felt terror flood his body. The feeling was short-lived; however, when Timmy realized that everyone was okay and the feeling of terror lightened, what remained was fear. Terror is a feeling that is a small part of the lingering emotion: fear. While definitions can sometimes be helpful, oftentimes, without an example, they only confuse the reader. Thinking about an instance like Timmy’s and reflecting back on one’s own experiences can be the most helpful resource to truly diving deep and understanding how these two psychological responses are different.

Over the course of history, emotions have had a large hold over culture and society. Whether emotions were being diminished or praised, people have always been able to use and feel their emotions. In the past hundred years, there has been a large change in views on emotions and their role in society. In the early 1900’s, women were expected to show their emotions, and men were expected to just be tough and do what they were told. As the world experienced the first and second world war, emotions were put on a back burner, and people began to believe that emotions should be private and apart from others. The US Department of Veteran Affairs discusses this in their article on the history of PTSD, saying, “At that time, some symptoms of present-day PTSD were known as ‘shell shock’ because they were seen as a reaction to the explosion of artillery shells. Symptoms included panic and sleep problems, among others. Shell shock was first thought to be the result of hidden damage to the brain caused by the impact of the big guns” (Friedman, 2025). With this, emotions gained a tie to sickness, and because emotions and matters of the brain were now being classified as “illness,” people wanted to remain stable and strong. This mentality stuck around for a while until the 2000’s when celebrities and influencers began to tell people that they should go ahead and feel their feelings. This is where the culture sits now in 2026, an obsession with feeling. Neither of these sides are healthy, and it is incredibly important to understand why they are unhealthy so that the culture can be changed.

Emotions and feelings have a great impact on the individual person and his life experience. If people ignore their emotions or if they become too obsessed with them, both can become equally unhealthy and bad for the person. This is a slippery slope, and many have fallen to their feelings. Emotions are a part of life; they cannot and should not be avoided, but they also should not be praised and glorified. Since they cannot be avoided and should not be praised, it is essential that we find a way to navigate them. How does God call Christians to interact with their emotions, and how should others handle their emotions? God calls Christians to bring all their worries and emotions to Him because he created emotions and can help.

Before a person can understand how to control and handle his emotions, he must first understand how his brain creates emotions. It is a commonly believed myth that a person cannot control his own emotions; however, there are multiple ways for one to direct his own emotions. In a TED talk, Lisa Feldman Barrett discusses how one can take control of his emotions and not let them control him. She asserts that emotions are not built in, but instead, they are built. She explains that, “Emotions are constructed in the moment” (Barrett, 2017). With this knowledge, one should understand that he can and must build his emotions, choosing how he reacts to a situation. This defeats the common claim that people can simply not control their own emotions because it reminds the person watching that out-of-control emotional experience that this is not a one-time occurrence. Instead, there is a pattern of reactions, whether it is an overreaction or it is a sullen response. Barrett explains that these reactions are generally used to manipulate the other person and that these emotions are created by the brain, and they don’t just spontaneously happen to a person. These findings have important implications. Namely, individuals need to slow down, take time to reflect on experiences, build emotional resilience, and begin to rewire the way that stimuli impact their responses. This is, of course, a complicated reality. A person cannot simply command himself to stop feeling and have a magic moment of relief. Similarly, he cannot just pretend that emotion doesn’t exist. Emotions are not a weed that should be ripped from a garden. Instead, they are an important part of the garden. They are plants that need to be tended and cultivated so that they are strong and healthy. In other words, emotions must be built.

Barrett’s conclusions bear a striking similarity to the actual psychology of the brain and how it constructs emotions. While many sources discuss this, the University of West Alabama has a pivotal study in which they explain how emotions come about as they explore the basics of emotional psychology. The first thing they discuss is what they call a subjective experience. That is the reality that all feelings and emotions come from a stimulus in the brain. This stimulus is called a subjective experience, and it can be anything that a person experiences, from a small thing like spilling coffee in the morning to a large thing like losing a job. The focus here is that two people will react in different ways, and no two people will react exactly the same. These two examples should provoke different levels of emotion because spilling coffee should be a smaller subjective moment. After all, it is not hard to clean a spilled coffee and get a new one. However, losing a job is a huge experience that can change the whole course of a person's life, so a person should feel stronger emotions about it.

The researchers’ conclusions also discuss the behavioral response to emotions. It is expected that when someone is happy, he will often smile, but if he didn’t show that visible reaction externally, people would not know he was happy. The University references a study where participants suppressed their emotions, and it actually became unhealthy for them. The study concludes,  “The effects included elevated heart rates. This suggests that expressing behavioral responses to stimuli, both positive and negative, is better for your overall health than holding those responses inside” (The Science of Emotion, 2019). Pretending something is not happening doesn’t work, and suppressing emotions can become increasingly unhealthy for a person. The body was created to show emotions and not deny and repress them. It is important not to diminish emotions to just a mental state. They are much more than that and are intricate parts of reactions, thoughts, motivations, and life. When one does diminish emotions, this is where mental illness comes into the picture and can lead to many more problems.

Another source that is helpful when trying to understand the psychology of emotions is an article called “Understanding Emotions: Origins and Roles of the Amygdala”. Written by multiple different authors, it discusses the role of the amygdala in the brain and how it creates emotions. The article focuses on emotions and their separation from reflexes. It is a dangerous edge to walk when trying to explain that emotions are not just reflexes because often we see something and automatically appear to feel a certain way. This, however, is not true, so one must understand how to not just default to his own emotions, and, instead, he should think about how he is actually feeling before making a face or making a statement. These authors go on to discuss facial expressions, both how they affect one’s emotions and how they are interpreted differently by distinct cultures. Facial expressions are closely tied to the emotional process. When a person feels happy, he often smiles, and when he feels sad, he often frowns. When one individual sees another person smile, that can trigger a new set of emotions within the observer as he tries to decipher how he feels about the other person's smile. Emotions go back and forth like this between people as they go through life. However, according to this article, often the emotion experienced in this manner is not very strong. He explains, “As already mentioned, even when individuals are only asked to make a certain facial expression or speak the word for an emotion, they usually experience a fraction of the emotion associated with it” (Šimić, G., et al., 2021). This makes facial expressions seem like a universal communication system, but it is crucial to understand that they are not universal. For this reason, a person can't get too ambitious when trying to use his emotions to communicate. Each person comes from a different place and people can very quickly become confused or offended by the way that a person shares his emotions.

This article also discusses how the development of emotions led to many other processes from an evolutionary perspective. Although emotions may not seem to be linked to evolution at all, surprisingly, there is a significant link between the two. Charles Darwin studied how emotions fit into evolution while he was creating his theory, and his results are very interesting. The researchers state this, explaining, “Darwin was probably the first to study the evolution of emotional reactions and facial expressions systematically and to recognize the importance of emotions for the adaptation of the organism to various stimuli and environmental situations” (Šimić, G., et al., 2021). When Darwin talks about emotional stimulus, he is attempting to relay the result of fear on a person’s mind and how they physically respond. Darwin also believed in a compartmentalization of the brain and the idea that there was a conscious brain and a non-conscious brain. The conscious brain brought forth the very obvious emotions, and the non-conscious brain brought forth the deep feelings that aren’t fully understood.

Once someone understands what emotions are and how complicated their construction is, he can then begin to understand emotions' role in a person’s life. The theory that there are only eight basic emotions is a helpful part of this understanding. In his book, The Voice of the Heart, Chip Dood discusses this at length. The emotions are hurt, loneliness, sadness, anger, fear, shame, guilt, and gladness. Many readers notice that there seem to be emotions missing, but, in reality, many times those missed ones are is just a mixing of the emotions. He explains this by saying, “Blue, pleased, upset, happy, nervous - all of these are descriptions of feelings, but they are not the feelings themselves” (Dodd, 2001, p. 38). Those missing pieces are rooted in the eight emotions, and Dodd discusses how these mix with each other to create every other feeling that a person will experience. In his book, Dood also discusses the spiritual root system. This system is meant to be an aid for people to guide, live, and lead well. Here, he explains that there are five roots in a person’s life: feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope. These five roots help control the decisions a person makes, and it is important to note that feelings are a root, but they are just one of many. While feelings shouldn’t be a main focus of our lives or become an idol, without them, a person will lose one of his anchors, making life much harder.

Dodd’s book talks through each emotion and asks questions to help the reader to see where each is found in his own life. Seven of the eight emotions are seemingly negative, and only one of them is what culture would say is a positive emotion. This poses an interesting question to the reader. Is it bad to feel these emotions? What lies has culture fed us about feelings? Dodd also notes that love is not one of the eight emotions, saying, “Love is more than a feeling” (Dodd, 2001, p. 38). This theory of eight emotions becomes incredibly helpful to identifying feelings within oneself.

Furthermore, the way that culture interacts with and views emotions can also be a large part of the way that an individual thinks about his feelings. Modern culture tends to be quite a confusing space where people seem to be led by their fleeting whims and hopes for whatever they want to do.

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s book The Coddling of the American Mind explores this topic further. They share three basic untruths that he structures his book after: Fragility, Emotional Reasoning, and Us vs. Them. One of the things that they discuss is the trusting of feelings in society. The current culture is one of influencing and following. If someone who is a celebrity says that someone should trust what they feel, there will soon be a whole following of people marching along, also saying that feelings are always true and should always be trusted. This is not true, though, and it is incredibly dangerous for a person to blindly trust how they feel.

Additionally, J. Alasdair Groves and Smith Winston also share their findings on this topic in their book Untangling Emotions. They attempt to help people unravel and sort out an understanding of how they actually feel. Groves and Winston assert, “The goal of emotions is not to be managed. The goal of emotions is to be felt” (Groves & Winston, 2019, p. 22). The whole point of feelings and emotions is to experience them. If they are constantly being pushed down, it will have negative effects on mental and physical health. They also discuss the previous generation’s response to their emotions. This generation was very against expressing their emotions. They were very shut off and private. A young boy would often be told to man up and not cry because men do not cry. Just recently, the Western American culture has completely swung back and switched to a new goal of being one’s truest self. Modern culture has become a battleground of finger-pointing and hurting one another’s feelings. It seems that the world may never recover from this, and people will never understand what it means to be a normal person.

It is also crucial that a person does not underestimate the power of their own emotions over their own well-being. In her TED Talk, Tiffany Watt Smith indicates that feelings have power over the body as a whole. She shares a story of a man who had gone to study in a different country. While he was there, he became quite ill, and the doctors began to give up hope. They decided to send the man home to die with his family by his side. However, once he returned home, he experienced a miraculous recovery. Upon analysis, the doctors told him that he had become so homesick that his body could no longer fight the illness. This is not the only time a person has become ill from their emotions, though. There are reports of many of these sicknesses. In the same way, the feeling of nostalgia has also been reported to have killed many people. This ties back into Untangling Emotions and the discussion of suppression of emotions. If a person is not sharing how they feel, it can lead to this effect, which was partially why the extreme was flipped. “These historical changes influence our emotions partly because they affect how we feel about how we feel” (Smith, 2017). With this, Watt Smith was sharing that the way that emotions were handled historically influences how we feel about their feelings.

A video by Caltech provides a helpful analogy to help better understand the brain and emotions. This video, titled Emotions and the Brain, gives the analogy that emotions are like an iceberg, a theory similar to that of Darwin. An iceberg has three parts: the tip, the section above the water, and the section underwater. The tip is our feelings, the section above the water is conscious, and the section underwater is non-conscious. The most visible section of a person's emotions is his feelings; this is what he shares to the people around him, whether smiling, crying, or showing emotion in the way that he presents himself. The next most visible is the base of the iceberg. It is visible, but you have to get closer to be able to see it over all the other icebergs. This part of emotions is that which a person feels but does not show or only reveals with trusted friends and family. The final part of the iceberg is the section underneath the water that cannot be seen. This part of emotions is the non-conscious emotions that are usually not even realized by other people who are in a person's life and sometimes aren’t even recognized by the person himself. This iceberg reveals the complicated nature of emotions.

That said, when discussing feelings and emotions, it is important for Christians to understand how God calls them to live out his design for their emotions. The Bible discusses emotions at great length, and it is a great resource for Christians to better understand how to regulate themselves. There are Christians who have studied scripture and also bring a scientific standpoint together with a Christian perspective. One such resource is, Desiring God. In their article, “Emotions Make Terrible Gods”, they discuss this issue at length, trying to convey that a person needs to analyze his own emotions before losing himself to his feelings. They encourage the reader to think through and wrestle with his emotions and to consider what he is feeling that might possibly be out of line. This step is crucial in understanding and not losing control of emotions. If a person takes the time to meditate and slow down with his emotions, he can better understand why they feel a certain way. One of the resources they gave was their “four helps to love, hate, and feel in line with Godliness”, which are “His son, his spirit, his people, his world.” (Morse, 2019). These four things can help a person to remember who God is and that he is in control. Another helpful piece is their reminder from Isaiah 26:3 that a person’s mind was in perfect peace when his mind stayed on God and not on his own emotions. Often, people get sucked in by their emotions and get trapped in an endless cycle of dwelling on how he feels, which often makes an individual feel even worse than he would have before.

Alasdair Groves discusses this in his article “Engaging Our Emotions, Engaging with God.” In this piece, Groves discusses the process of understanding one’s emotions and bringing them to God. Often, people want to be independent and not rely on God, but this is the opposite of how emotions should be handled. Groves discusses that it is better to draw close to God in the midst of emotions rather than to pull away from God. God wants to be there for Christians all the time, but if a person does not come to Him, then He is unable to help.

In this article, Groves also discusses the two pitfalls of emotions. One pit is caring far too much about emotions and dwelling on every feeling. The other pit is not caring about emotions at all and just becoming numb to oneself. Both of these pitfalls are dangerous and fail to find a healthy balance. To feel every feeling and be constantly manipulated by the endless rabbit trail of emotions creates a path of slavery to those constant whims and fluctuations. This is the bent of modern culture, a hyper-sensitive, feelings-focused realm where emotions lead the way instead of reflection, contemplation, and critical thinking. The flipside of this emotionally charged way of living is a numb existence where emotions become a liability to be pushed away. Avoiding emotions leads to an equally destructive and disordered path and way of thinking.

There is, however, a way to avoid both extremes and live with a healthy balance. Scripture has much to say about the inner thought life of a man and the process of taking control of one’s emotional life and reactions. In Philippians 4:6-8, Paul calls people to take ownership of their thoughts. Instead of letting anxiety rule, he instructs the reader towards prayer and thanksgiving. Then, in verse eight, he gives important guidance on the kind of thinking that will bring about balance and right emotions. Instead of a mind that is spiraling in lies, fears, and worst-case scenarios, he calls the reader to be rooted in what is “true,” what is “honorable,” what is “worthy of praise,” and this kind of thought life roots a person and counterbalances the spiral. Interestingly, this is also counter to emotionless living. Paul does not tell the reader to avoid emotions or thoughts. Rather, he wants them to meet those thoughts with truth and engage. A person cannot pray about an anxiety that he will not admit is there and try to reconcile it before God. Similarly, a person cannot think about what is true about a situation or what is just if he is unwilling to come face to face with what is untrue or unjust.

Paul further explores this idea in Ephesians, again counseling readers to engage with their emotional life by thinking and taking action. His encouragement to “no longer walk as the Gentiles do” could be translated as a call to not blindly follow the ways of modern culture. He cites that the Gentiles “[had] become callous and [had] given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” (English Standard Version, 2001, Ephesians 4:17-19). This sounds much like the modern, cultural tendency to become unfeeling or to become over-feeling and chase the never-ending trail of emotional impulses. Paul reminds believers that they are supposed to be different, saying, “That is not the way you learned Christ!” (English Standard Version, 2001, Ephesians 4:20). Then he calls them to be changed, to stop doing one thing and start doing another. However, this kind of action cannot be taken without thought, which Paul acknowledges when he tells the reader to “be renewed in the spirit of your minds” (English Standard Version, 2001, Ephesians 4:23). To experience transformation from emotional living to holy, healthy living, a person must think and ask the Spirit to help with that thinking. Yet, thinking is not enough. Paul goes on to explain that putting away an emotion must be followed by putting on an action step in the other direction. The emotional person needs to put off following a string of emotional impulses and put on acting on what is true and right and honorable. In this rich segment of Scripture, Paul is walking believers through the very process Alasdair Groves was referring to. In order to understand emotions, one must engage with them before God. This allows God to work in those very emotions and use them for good instead of chaos.

However, the realm of emotions is further complicated by the fact that humans do not exist only as individual beings. Instead, we are part of communities, designed to be in relationship with other people on a daily basis. In his book You Were Never Meant to Do it All, Dr. Kelly Kapic highlights the importance of social connection and context, writing, “We are more a product of that which is outside us than inside us…” He explains that “by their innermost nature, human beings are social beings,” made for community (Kapic, 2025, p. 105). This provides important context, as it is not enough to know how to deal with one’s own inner life; instead, humans must perceive and interact with all of the emotions and feelings of the people surrounding them. This is troublesome for even the most emotionally stable and healthy person because no one can control someone else’s emotions.

What makes emotions so complicated is that a person is not just working with his own emotions but instead is working to help and understand others as they experience emotions. This issue is something that often creates more difficulty and adds an additional layer of complication. In her TED Talk, “You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them”, Lisa Feldman Barrett discusses this issue. She acknowledges to the listener that no matter how hard he tries, he will be unable to control others' emotions. Understanding that emotions are not the same for everyone is crucial. One person will experience happiness completely differently from another person. This is what usually causes conflict and problems. Let's say that two friends are talking to each other about their week. One person says that he is really happy because he had a good weekend. The other person also says that he is happy and had a good weekend. People will often jump to the conclusion that they have the same feeling, but it is not the same. Person one had a really hard week with a big, stressful project due, so once he turned it in, the weekend felt much lighter, and he was finally able to enjoy himself. The second person had a great week and didn’t have anything to do, so when the weekend rolled around, he just continued to experience the same emotions and feelings, just in another time frame. One of these two people was much happier on the weekend based on their previous circumstances.

This idea is also built into the history of mankind as Tiffany Watt Smith discusses in her TED Talk, The History of Human Emotions. A person’s culture and background greatly affect the way that they interact with and experience their emotions. This can be on a very large scale. Emotions are different now from the beginning of time in the garden with Adam and Eve, but even in the last one hundred years, emotions have come to be seen and experienced in a completely different way. Currently, the culture is very pro-emotions. People are allowed to do basically whatever they want if they feel like it is the right thing to do, or if it makes them feel good. They dislike people who make them feel uncomfortable or do something that doesn’t feel like the right decision in the emotional brain. However, the culture used to be very taboo about emotions. A man was supposed to be brave, stoic, and emotionless. Women were seen as weak because of their emotions, but the social expectation was that they would be the more emotional gender. Therefore, people of all genders are navigating a new landscape when it comes to emotional engagement.

Further complicating this topic, we do not simply deal with our own emotions but also those of the people surrounding us. One important thing to take into account when encountering someone else’s emotions is that it is very important not to diminish them. This can be incredibly hurtful, so it is crucial to be sensitive and understanding when others feel or experience certain emotions. Diminishing another's emotions often causes that person to feel like he is crazy or not justified. In reality, the person who is diminishing their emotions does not have a full perspective on the effect of that emotion on the other person, but instead, they only understand their own experience of that emotion. Therefore, responses and advice fall short and can quickly become offensive.

Yet, despite these limits, it is essential to learn how one can encourage others when they are feeling strong emotions. Many people are afraid to interact with others in this realm, or they simply have no clue how they should go about handling and helping others with their feelings. Thankfully, there are many ways to engage, and it doesn't have to be as stressful as some might make it out to be.

One of the easiest ways for a Christian to encourage others who are experiencing emotions is to use Bible verses to encourage them. This can be uplifting to a person, and it is a great resource to remind people of the gospel. One of the most helpful verses to encourage individuals who are struggling is Philippians 4:6-7, which says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (English Standard Version, 2001, Philippians 4:6-7). This verse provides the emotional person with an outlet and tangible steps, such as prayer, thankfulness, and petition. Other verses that can be encouraging include Isaiah 41:10 and 1 Peter 5:7. These Scriptures remind those gripped by emotion that a Father who cares, who is a strong refuge, and who can help them.

However, it is also quite important not to just tell someone that he needs to trust God. There are some situations where people need further help to understand their emotions with a medical professional. It can also help to acknowledge and sympathize with the person feeling emotions. Coming to them without judgment and being a steady presence for them to talk to is life-giving and affirms the person’s value and experience. It can sometimes seem like a person caught in emotion is overreacting, but each individual person has a unique way that he experiences emotions, and it is important to be patient with that. Overall, when trying to help others who are being consumed by their emotions, it is important to remember to be patient and kind, leaving space for that person to process, but being ready to come alongside.

In conclusion, emotions are a complex part of life that have a major impact on a person’s experience. Emotions are God-given, and they are not going anywhere. Every person, whether he sees emotions as a gift or as a burden, will experience them. Therefore, gaining a better understanding matters. It matters for the individual himself and for those in his life. Our interaction with emotions can tend to be rooted in a cultural moment or based on gender roles or even our family of origin. However, rooting our perspective in those soils doesn’t work. Instead, Christians must root themselves and their view of emotions in Jesus and in Biblical truth. These are roots that last, and this is a ground that can be cultivated and transformed. Eleven years ago, Pixar and the creators of Inside Out landed on a relevant topic, and this captured the audience’s attention, intriguing them and opening an important discussion. Riley and her emotions undergo an entertaining journey, but it is still an incomplete journey. To fully engage in a healthy and productive conversation about emotions, we must add a Savior to the story. Ultimately, Christians are the best-equipped people to lead this conversation.

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