It Is Written Script: 1360 Controlling Your Emotions (Nedley) Page 1 Controlling Your Emotions Program No. 1360 SPEAKER: Dr. Neil Nedley It Is Written 1360 JB: Today a subject that touches the life of every breathing person on the planet. We ve been made a certain way by a creative God who s given us a mind with which to think, and he s made us to be emotional beings. And you know that there are some people who just don t seem to be able to control their emotions. Or perhaps, perhaps I m talking about you and me. There are times when our emotions just seem to get the better of us. So how can we be emotionally intelligent? There s somebody who s going to guide our thinking on this subject; that s Dr. Neil Nedley. He s the president of Nedley Health Solutions. Dr. Nedley, thanks for joining me today. NN: Thank you. Great being here, John. JB: How do we analyze our thoughts? NN: Well, we have to actually put them into our frontal lobe to analyze them. In other words, when we feel emotional some way, we have to be aware that that s happening. Then we need to look at the belief or the thought that is causing us to have the emotional consequence, which then has a behavioral consequence. NN: We call it the ABCs of emotional intelligence. The A is the activating event, or being aware. The B is the belief. And the C is the consequence. And a lot of people think it just goes from A to C. Now, we have a role to play in regard to our emotions, and that s our belief about the A that brings about the emotional consequence. JB: So when things happen, it s wise that we become or that we choose to be the type of person that says, wait a minute, what s really going on here, and how should I be thinking? NN: Exactly. JB: Right, we don t do that when suddenly we just react in a rage. NN: That s right. JB: Lose our temper, fly off the handle.
It Is Written Script: 1360 Controlling Your Emotions (Nedley) Page 2 NN: Exactly. JB: When people aren t thinking straight, their thoughts are distorted. What are common distorted thoughts? NN: Well, one of them is magnification and minimization. We have a tendency to major in minors and minor in majors. And an example would be Saul. When Samuel came to him and told him about the problems of why he hadn t done all of the instructions, he minimized it, acted like it wasn t a big deal at all, explained it away. JB: This is when Samuel said, look I asked you to wipe out everybody. Why didn t you do it? Oh, it s not such a big problem. We brought those animals to sacrifice to God, so we re okay. NN: Yeah, exactly. JB: It wasn t okay. NN: And then he only became concerned when the consequences came down for that action, and we know God is the righteous judge, so it was appropriate consequences, and he began to dwell on the unfairness of that punishment. Really, it all started as a result of magnification of self. NN: There s a book that you might want to pick up. We mentioned this in our book The Lost Art of Thinking, but there s another psychology to pick up, called What Your Counselor Never Told You: The Seven Sins That Lead to Mental Illness. And the first sin that he mentions that leads to mental illness is the sin of pride. That s when we magnify ourselves. NN: Then he gives you a little test to see whether you might have it: trying to be noticed, craving attention, itching for compliments, needing to be important, detesting the idea of being submissive, flaunting your individual rights, thinking you have excellences you don t have. Those are all indicators of pride, and when an inflated sense of self comes about, you will then eventually have wounded pride, and then you re going to end up with feelings of worthlessness, which is also the other side of the equation. So it always starts out with too much pride, before we get to the very poor self-esteem, poor selfworth, feelings of worthlessness, which then, of course, results in severe depression, suicidal thoughts. JB: We see how fundamental this is just by thinking about that common expression, What was he thinking? NN: Exactly. Yes, exactly. JB: And if only the individual had stopped to think--people in a rage grab a gun, or so on--and at the same time tyrants and despots.
It Is Written Script: 1360 Controlling Your Emotions (Nedley) Page 3 JB: They get to where they get because of this very distorted thinking, not looking at things really rationally or accurately. NN: Right. And they tend to be very egotistical individuals. In contrast, we have the life of Christ. One of the best biographies states him this way: He was never elated by applause, nor dejected by censure or disappointment. Among the greatest opposition and the most cruel treatment he was still of good courage. Why was that the case? Because he was never elated by applause; he never allowed himself to have this egotistical self as being the rule. And that s a key element of having emotional intelligence--to know what our weaknesses are, to be humble, to give deference to others. That s one of the things that is important in emotional intelligence, and certainly not magnifying self. JB: Now, you look at another person in the Bible, Solomon. Now, it seems almost that Solomon might have suffered from depression. NN: He did. JB: Well, talking about distortions, what was his big distortion in his thinking? NN: Emotional reasoning. It was different from Saul s. Emotional reasoning leads people to seek things that cause others pleasure. And so they want to be happy, and actually more pleasure leads to less pressure. JB: How s that? NN: Solomon tells his story in Ecclesiastes. He says how he used alcohol, I think opium was involved, so there was alcohol, there were drugs, and then he said, I didn t allow myself to not view anything. In fact, anything that caused me pleasure I would go for. NN: So there was pornography, and then there was live pornography. Those are all false ways of altering the way you feel. The way of altering the way you feel is to actually change your thoughts. NN: But when you go for substances or events to try to alter your feelings, first you get a high from that, but then as you do it more, you actually get less of a high, and in between times you have severe distressing sense of deprivation, even though there s nothing going wrong in your system. Solomon had everything going right for him; he was the wealthiest man on the planet, he had a lot of things going right, but he ended up severely depressed from actually going through frontal lobe suppressing activities to try to get happiness.
It Is Written Script: 1360 Controlling Your Emotions (Nedley) Page 4 JB: So many examples of people who seem to have it all, but their lives are miserable because in their own minds they don t have what s most important. NN: Well, emotional reasoning goes something like this as well, it will progress to this. First you seek pleasure in any way that you can find it, and then you get to the point where you re saying, I feel like a dud; therefore I am a dud. I feel overwhelmed and helpless; thus, my problems are impossible to solve. And so just because you feel that way, you conclude that it has to be true. And you know, feelings come and feelings go, and feelings can be quite deceiving. JB: We ll talk more about this in just a moment. Thinking straight, thinking healthfully, so very, very important when it comes to a person s relationship with God. We ll have more in just a moment. EVERY WORD JB: Life often throws up circumstances that provoke a person to lose their temper. Now, I ve often heard it said, well, you can t blame him, or her, given the circumstances. But look at this; it s Proverbs 16:32. The wise man wrote, He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. It s virtuous to control your temper, not to lose it. The Bible never recommends blowing up, giving people a piece of your mind, letting it rip. God s grace is given to us so that we can be Christ-like. And Jesus was a model of evenness every day of his life. The Pharisees plagued his steps, he had Judas and Peter to deal with, demon-possessed people, and yet he never lost it. Challenging, isn t it? But it s what Jesus can do in your life, and he wants to do it today. I m John Bradshaw for It Is Written. Let s live today by every word. RETURN TO PROGRAM JB: We are discussing emotional intelligence and how to think straight, thinking healthfully. It s true, isn t it, that when we learn to think right, and even when we learn to think right about our thoughts, we re going to do a whole lot better emotionally and spiritually as well. NN: Correct. JB: We see people in the Bible who fought their way into difficult situations. I m thinking about Elijah. JB: You don t think about these great Bible heroes as being emotionally weak, or at least momentarily messing up their thinking processes, but it seems he did. NN: Elijah was different from Saul and Solomon, which gives us an example that people who have depression, there s always a different set of causes that are there. It s not always the same causes. With Saul it was magnification of self. With Solomon it was
It Is Written Script: 1360 Controlling Your Emotions (Nedley) Page 5 emotional reasoning. And Elijah was not a prideful individual like Saul. He didn t do things for the sake of pleasure only like Solomon did. He was a very godly man, but he ended up with severe depression. NN: If you remember the story, God was trying to prepare him for something great, for transforming the nation. And first there was no rain, and then Elijah went to the brook and was being fed by the ravens. He wouldn t believe until the brook dried up, and even then he didn t believe until the Lord told him to go to Jezreel, Jezebel s home town. NN: Then he was put on a plant-based, vegetarian diet, trying to get him even better ready. But even then he wasn t ready for Ahab until he proved that he could live with an argumentative woman successfully, who d lashed out at him when things went wrong. NN: And when the Lord saw how calmly he dealt with that woman, he said, okay, you re ready for Ahab. And this tremendous event occurred, the beginning of the transformation of the nation, and then Jezebel within 24 hours threatens his life, and Elijah takes off running to save his life. JB: And suddenly this man, who d seen God work incredibly powerfully, fire from heaven, he s threatened by this harridan, and off he goes with his tail between his legs. NN: Yeah. Of course, he had reason to fear, because she had killed other prophets, you know, there, so he had reason to fear. But he didn t wait on God. He went and started running, and then 30 days later he asked for the Lord to take his life. He says, it s over with, I m depressed, just take my life. And really, it was about as close to suicide as a godly man would have. NN: And the Lord had to put him through a program. He had to, you know, come and feed him food. I think there was some flaxseed there. He had to put him on an exercise program. He actually had to get him out into the light, out of the cave. But what really helped Elijah was the still small voice. That was what we call cognitive behavioral therapy, where the Lord was coming to see what thoughts were there, and to help Elijah analyze his thoughts. Elijah began to tell what was on his mind. He said, I m the only one that has not bowed the knee to Baal. That s called overgeneralization. JB: That certainly was not true. NN: He should have said, I m the only one I know of, maybe. JB: Right. NN: But instead, he just knew he was the only one. And the Lord let him get by with that the first time, but the second time he had to stop him, and he said, Elijah, you re wrong; you re not only wrong, you re wrong by a factor of seven thousand.
It Is Written Script: 1360 Controlling Your Emotions (Nedley) Page 6 JB: Yeah, now let me ask you this question, because we re talking about a prophet of God, a man who was taken to heaven JB:...without seeing death. And he suffered from depression. It tells you the sympathy that the Lord has for people in depression. JB: It s okay to be depressed, isn t it? You understand what I mean. NN: Oh, absolutely. It s okay to be depressed. But it s not okay to stay depressed. JB: No, no. NN: And if you just ignore it, and try to protect it, without getting the actual help you need, it can be a problem. JB: I want to clarify this. It is acceptable for a believer in God to, to be suffering from depression. I don t mean wallow in it, but hey, it s okay. NN: That s right, Elijah had it. JB: Yeah, there you go. So there s the proof right there. NN: Yeah. JB: So we want to learn to think straight and to be emotionally intelligent. I have a feeling that emotional intelligence has more to do with just thoughts, more to do with-- there s more to it than just thinking straight. Perhaps in a moment we ll explore that. JB: Emotional intelligence. Learning to think in such a way that you thrive emotionally, and that you can have a strong relationship with God. So often people who get into this nobody loves me, I have no value, they come to the place where not even God can love me and help me. And you don t want to be there. JB: The great Elijah was taken by God to heaven in a chariot of fire, and yet emotionally he was a wreck there for a while. JB: But God put Elijah on a program that brought him back to emotional health.
It Is Written Script: 1360 Controlling Your Emotions (Nedley) Page 7 JB: So we want to be the kind of person who s emotionally healthy. What was that program that God put Elijah on? NN: It was good nutrition, it was exercise, it was light therapy, and it was helping him to analyze his thoughts and correct his distorted thoughts. After that was done, it still wasn t complete until Elijah actually carried out the instructions of God in areas that he did not want to do. JB: Hmm, that s interesting. Hey, first I want to ask you, light therapy. What s that? NN: We actually need bright light for our brains to function good every day. And, you know, when we re depressed, we have a tendency to get into a cave and, you know, just enclose ourselves in. And that s why God sent the earthquake and the storm, to try to get Elijah out of that cave. He sent a fire. He kept trying to get him out into the light. Finally, after he got him out into the light for a while, that s when the still small voice came, which was helping him to get rid of his distorted thought. JB: Hey, isn t that interesting, that it was key for Elijah to start doing the things that God asked him to do? Yes. JB: Why is that important? NN: Because God always wants us to do things that are best for us and best for others. JB: I wonder, too, if when a person knows they re not doing God s will they re wracked by guilt and can t be healthy emotionally. Is that part of it? NN: Oh, it can very well be part of it. I mean, that s why Jonah ended up, you know, very depressed in the situation that he was in, and others as well. If we are convicted that the Lord wants us to go this way, and the evidence is in his Word to go that way, but we go another way, that s self-sabotage. JB: Okay, now, what s the path to emotional wellness, the path to controlling one s emotions? Perhaps what we might say is, what are the characteristics of somebody who s got it figured out? Because we want to be those people. NN: Sure. Yeah, characteristics of people who do have it figured out is they re actually going to be curious about people they don t know. They re actually going to be well liked by most people--not by everybody, we re not asking anyone to be liked by everybody. You can t be liked by everybody a hundred percent of the time. JB: Curious about people you don t know? Why is that important?
It Is Written Script: 1360 Controlling Your Emotions (Nedley) Page 8 NN: Well, remember, part of emotional intelligence is managing relationships with others. If you re not curious about people you don t know and want to see what makes them tick and to help get to know them, that s an issue. That s why you need to have your thoughts corrected. We are social beings. And actually, when we get into the social isolation mode, that s going to hurt us, as well as hurt others. So that s an important element. NN: If you re on an airplane, are you going to talk to the person next to you and see why they re there, and try to get to know them some? Emotionally intelligent people do that. Then they also are very aware of their strengths and weaknesses. They have a sense of humility about them. They also know when to say no, but at the same time they will slow down to help others. They will have an empathy for others, so they ll even disrupt their schedule to help others, but not in everything. NN: Someone else might need help and they realize they re not the best person for it, and they re going to say no, I m not going to do that. When they do have a fall, due to a distorted thought or due to something else, they actually take responsibility for it, and they get back up, instead of minimizing the importance of that fall. And they are committed to improving. If you have all of those things, with intelligence you have the ability to be a great leader. So often emotionally intelligent people become very transformative in their environment, and they can be a great leader for God. JB: Help me to understand how we bring this into our relationship with God, how possessing these characteristics can help me to thrive as a believer and be a successful Christian. NN: Well, it gets down to the sentence of the Apostle Paul, who was also very emotionally intelligent. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. If we re not willing to have our minds renewed, we re not going to be able to be transformed into comprehensive emotionally intelligent people. JB: I think it s important for us to understand, and this is where the Word of God becomes so very powerful. Anybody can achieve this, with God s help. NN: That s right. JB: Okay. Now, somehow an individual s got to learn to go to God with their issues and their problems and say, God, help me through this. JB: Not everybody s able to come back from where they are and say, God can help me. It s remarkable that even believers get to that place. I spoke with an individual very recently, and it was over for this individual, because a mistake had been made, and God can t help me now. Which is contrary to everything you read in the Bible.
It Is Written Script: 1360 Controlling Your Emotions (Nedley) Page 9 NN: That s right. JB: God even said to Israel, if you mess up, the consequences are going to be so terrible for you. However, if you repent, I ll take you back. NN: Exactly. JB: And I d like your thoughts on this. Perhaps it s really important in terms of emotional intelligence to have a clear understanding of what God is like. NN: Absolutely. JB: Have you seen in individuals who have a distorted picture of God that it negatively affects them emotionally, and if you have, how? NN: Oh, absolutely. I mean, almost to a person, those that come for our treatmentresistant depression and anxiety program have significant issues with God. They think God has abandoned them, or they maybe think, you know, He doesn t exist anymore, because if He did, why isn t He helping them? And they have significant issues with God. And it s often due to misunderstanding God. And that s why part of our program that we utilize for mental health is a spiritual congruence therapist, you know, someone who helps them to think along a logical pathway. NN: We don t necessarily change their world view there, but we want them to be able to think in a practical way where God can influence them in a positive way, and that requires some consistency and belief in thought. And the transformation that takes place- -these people in ten days become great advocates of obeying as well as serving the Lord, because they see Him from a whole different perspective now. And now he s able to influence them. The reason why He wasn t able to influence them wasn t because of God; it was because of them. JB: They weren t thinking right about God. NN: That s right, yes. JB: So if you were to list two, three, four, five points, here s how a person ought to view God in an emotionally healthy way, you would want them to know that God is, or God does, or God is about, what? NN: Well, God is about love, self-sacrificing love. The Bible says God is agape, and so having that empathy, self-sacrificing love for all of us. Secondly, God is a God of truth, accuracy in thought. And thirdly, God is a God of freedom. When we have emotional intelligence, we are actually free to have complete self-control. The Lord wants us to be in control of ourselves and to have a balanced mind. And that means we re not a slave to any habit. That means we re also not coercive to others. We want to influence others,
It Is Written Script: 1360 Controlling Your Emotions (Nedley) Page 10 but not control others. And we become empathetic individuals who can help others think truthfully as well. JB: So for the person who continues to lose his or her temper, the person who is governed by very sensual, over-sensual way of thinking, somebody who s exceedingly jealous, someone who s very, very greedy, that person can learn to, with God s help, control his or her emotions, be a far more happy and productive person, and a Christian thriving under the love of God. Absolutely they can be transformed. Nebuchadnezzar himself was transformed, but it required a process and, you know, a change in his diet, and a change in, you know, his activity. And then a change in his thoughts. So if we are willing to, as individuals, with all of those problems, submit ourselves to God s process, we can be completely transformed. JB: This is part of what Jesus said. They asked and they tried to trick him, what s the great commandment and the law? Jesus said, first one, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. It seems that if we want God to really transform us and make us what we can be, we ve got to be prepared to be all in with God and let him have everything that we are. NN: Exactly. JB: And when we re all in with God, that s when we enjoy not only the blessing of God, but the peace that passes all understanding, the peace that comes from allowing God to work in us to control our emotions. OFFER JB: If you could just go back in time and do things differently. Perhaps you ve struggled with regret, the added weight of guilt. While there s no way to undo the past, God offers us a forgiveness so complete that it comes with the process of a life that will never end. Sound too good to be true? Well, see what the Bible says. Our booklet Hope for a Planet in Crisis will walk you through the Bible s teachings about sin and forgiveness and show you how a new start can be yours. Just call 800-253-3000 and request your free copy of Hope for a Planet in Crisis. If the line s busy, please do keep on trying. Or write to It Is Written, P O Box 6, Chattanooga, Tennessee 37401. We ll mail a free copy to your address in North America. It Is Written is a faith-based ministry, and your support makes it possible for us to share God s Good News with the world. Your taxdeductible gift can be sent to the address on your screen, or through our website at ItIsWritten.com. Thank you for your continued prayerful support. Again, our toll-free number is 800-253-3000, and our web address is ItIsWritten.com. RETURN TO PROGRAM JB: Dr. Nedley, again thank you so very much for joining us today. This has been a wonderful discussion.
It Is Written Script: 1360 Controlling Your Emotions (Nedley) Page 11 NN: Thank you. JB: I ve been blessed. We ve all been blessed. Thanks so much. NN: Thank you. JB: We ll go to God and pray now. Would you join me in praying? We ll thank him for his goodness and pray, and pray expecting God to control our emotions. PRAYER Our Father in Heaven, we thank you so very much that God is love, you are love, that God is good and ready to forgive, that God is able to transform us by the renewing of our mind. You are good. We thank you for Jesus, who died for us, and your Holy Spirit; it brings to us your very presence. Lord, with your presence we don t have to be controlled by our emotions, but we know that, yielded to you, you can bring our emotions to where they need to be, liberate us from the thralldom of self-centeredness, and enable us to live under the shadow of your wings. We look forward to the day when we ll be with you forever in your very presence. Let that day come soon. And until then, keep us, in Jesus name we pray, Amen. It Is Written PO Box 6, Chattanooga, TN 37401 USA Tel: 423-362-5800 Fax: 1-877-507-3239 www.itiswritten.com