I remember hearing a story some years ago about identical twin men who, during an interview, were asked about their family life. When asked how one of them could be an alcoholic and the other to have never had a drink, they both said it’s because their father was an alcoholic.
How Unhealed Emotions Shape Our Responses
In life, there is no such thing as a neutral position. Our support or dislike of something influences every decision we make. More important than our feelings about a thing is the influence behind those feelings.
Our emotions are highly fluid, and factors beyond our control, such as our physiology, contribute to their unreliability and inconsistency. But there’s a distinct difference between hormonally driven emotions, requiring their own level of awareness, and emotionally triggered responses.
Between my period, follicular, luteal, and ovulation phases, I probably have one predictably emotionally sound week every 28 to 30 days. However, there are times when my emotions take me on a journey, and the place I arrive at is a complete wasteland.
The latter usually happens when there are unresolved feelings like fear, grief, or shame that I’ve refused to process and subsequently release. Experiences that create these feelings don’t injure or mark us physically, not right away, but they do wound us emotionally.
When part of the foundation of our decision-making processes is our feelings, unhealed emotions will impact our daily lives.
They show up in the ways we hide ourselves or how we respond to things happening around us.
Fear of Criticism Can Stunt Your Growth
A sign that unhealed emotions are affecting your growth is that you don’t take criticism well. I’m already hating this post because I’m immediately speaking to and about myself. I have a difficult time separating what I do from who I am.
In my mind, if I do a good job, then I’m good. If I perform poorly at something, then I’m not good enough.
Growing up in a home where excellent grades and scholastic performance were emphasized in an almost unhealthy way, I saw the way my parents responded to an A vs. a C or D, despite my efforts. Let’s just say that gentle parenting was a foreign language.
The spillover into my teenage years led to needing to be liked and validated. I became the people pleaser.
As I matured a little more and realized how exhausting that was, I went to the other extreme, insulating myself against other people’s opinions of my work by isolating myself.
While the catalyst may be different, if either of these is your response, you won’t grow. Fear, shame, and self-protection often delay our obedience, too. I explored this further in Why We Delay What God Has Already Confirmed. When we can’t be told that we could do better, even God has a difficult time getting through to us.
It’s not because we’ve limited His power, but because we shut out the very people He’ll use to communicate this truth to us.
You may be thinking this is happening only in the quiet moments of our lives. I’m sorry to tell you that this has a tremendous impact on your daily living, too. How?
Isolation Feels Safe Until It Starts Limiting You
Firstly, creativity is stifled. Creativity requires embracing something new and sometimes challenging. Fear of criticism forces you into a routine that you’ve perfected but can never grow from.
Secondly, if you ever dare venture into something new, isolation becomes the preferred space. It’s in isolation that you try something new while keeping it hidden. Sometimes our tendency to hide isn't only emotional, but spiritual too. I wrote more about this in Recognizing Spiritual Avoidance in Your Life.
This seems like a good tactic, but it’s always a dangerous thing when your opinions are validated because they’re the only ones you hear.
Shame Tries To Make Your Mistakes Your Identity
Another sign that unhealed emotions are affecting your daily life is that you cannot let go of your past mistakes.
I’ve suffered my fair share of second-hand embarrassment watching some influencers, but we must realize the distinction between shame and tact.
Some revelations shared publicly on social media reveal a lack of tact and some decency.
Shame, on the other hand, doesn’t separate the mistake, bad decision, or poor judgment from who you are as a person. This is separate from performance or effort because shame says, ‘you did wrong because you are wrong’.
This is one of the enemy’s favorite tools against believers because no matter how much we’ve cleaned up and improved, he’s eager to remind us of what he knows about our past, particularly when we’re making progress.
Healing Changes How You Show Up Daily
The human psyche is powerfully predisposed to negativity. It’s for this reason that even when our missteps remain hidden from others, the enemy’s ability to remind us of them in the middle of the night is enough to spark a panic attack.
Again, this is not limited to the quiet moments of your life; your daily life is affected, too. When you’ve allowed shame to determine your identity, you hide the best parts of you. What are your best parts? All of you. Jesus died to redeem you, past, present, and future.
Emotional healing requires honesty about what still hurts us. This is important because it’s in everyday living that people encounter Jesus through us. When shame and fear of criticism force us into hiding, the expression of His love, which can only be shown through us, is hidden too.
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