“Emotions are like a spoiled child, indulge them and they’ll control you” – Bob Gass

We all have emotions the key is learning how to manage emotions and not allow them to manage us. Emotions are fickle, my firsthand advice; don’t over indulge your emotions or they will mess up your day!

In particular with depression, as you first begin to ‘opt in’ to doing life again the mood swings can be overwhelming, one moment feeling that depression has lifted and your emotions are high,  ie. you catch yourself laughing or simply smiling, the following moment feeling completely defeated and easily snap at the slightest upset. This unstable behaviour would leave me feeling terrible about myself, it was hard on me as well as everyone around me. Often when I would have a good moment or even a good day, my mind would be consumed with the thought ‘this is too good to be true, it probably won’t last’ on the heels of such thinking was an emotion attached… a deep wave of depression would overwhelm me once again.

A very valuable lesson I have learned, having suffered depression, it is easy to mistake a bad day/flat feeling as being a relapse back into a depressed state.  Looking back on my rollercoaster of emotions, I see clearly now that every moment of my day was based on how I was feeling as opposed to living by faith… I was being controlled by my emotions.

Considering we are body, soul and spirit, if we are to be ‘led by the spirit’ it is most important to make emotional maturity our goal and walk in the spirit as opposed to being led by emotions. Joyce Meyer explains; “We must learn to trust that God knows what He is doing in us. If we feel something in our emotions, that is fine. If we do not feel anything, that is fine too. We must remember that we are in this for the long haul – not just for those times when we feel good, but also for those times when we feel bad or do not feel anything at all…” Yup in this for the long haul, now hush those emotions and keep on the lookout for pinching Angels 😉 x