The Search for Significance

142 The Search For Significance
can cause us to become callous and insensitive to
ourselves and others around us. Unfortunately,
this is just what happened to Mike. Over the years,
Mike had deadened himself to his emotions, apparently
not allowing anything to bother him. He
had experienced a difficult childhood, first being
abandoned by his parents, and then being shuffled
from one relative to another. In an effort to stop
the pain, Mike learned to block out his emotions
and to ignore his circumstances.
But Mike's success at suppressing his emotions
had long-lasting consequences. First, by severing
painful emotions, he missed out
himself from the
on many pleasant emotions as well. Secondly, the
longer Mike avoided dealing with his emotions,
the more fearful he became of them. To combat
this fear, he simply became more calloused and
withdrawn. Third, and perhaps most important,
Mike could not use his emotions to detect the false
beliefs that were at the root of his problem because
he denied that he even had those emotions.
He was helpless, unable to acknowledge his hurt
needs.
The second way that many people deal with
emotions is by becoming enslaved to their emotions,
unable or unwilling to make decisions that
are contrary to them. Wearing her emotions on her
sleeve, Melinda was not difficult to figure out.
Her flaring temper, her torrent of tears, and her
jovial laughter were all indications of her rollercoaster
emotions. Never knowing what to expect,
Melinda's husband, Ken, became weary of trying
to deal with his volatile wife.
Melinda's erratic emotions affected her so much
that they became, in effect, her lord. Her feelings
seemed to be more real than anything else in her
life and clouded her perception of God and His
purposes.