Finding Language for Feelings: Atlas of The Heart

by Traci Hubbard

One day three men were walking along and came upon a raging, violent river.

They needed to get to the other side but had no way of crossing the river.

The first man prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength, courage, and ability to cross this river." Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs, and he was able to swim across the river in about two hours.

Seeing this, the second man prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength, courage, and ability to cross this river." Poof! God gave him a rowboat, and he was able to row across the river in about three hours.

The third man had seen how this worked out for the other two, so he also prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength, courage, and ability to cross this river." And poof! God turned him into a woman and he walked across the bridge.(source: http://www.jokebuddha.com/Courage#ixzz3kxrv9sX7)

Understanding personal power and the connections between the way we think, feel, and act is a work we are called to do every single day of our lives. This applies to every human being, whether you experienced childhood trauma around emotional abandonment, physical abandonment, emotional or physical abuse, were raised in a culture of purity or performance, lived with a parent who was an addict, drank every other day, or addicted to anger – in this type of family system, children walk on eggshells because they never know what is going to set off a parent. Any one of these scenarios communicate to the children that they are not enough because their limited cognitive development tells them that if they were better, enough, Mom or Dad would care about their feelings, love them no matter what, and home would be a safe place to be.

When a wounded child becomes a wounded adult child, the frenzy in their minds and bodies drives them to create coping mechanisms to get through their day. The child is the one who creates these mechanisms, and as they physically mature, those mechanisms cease to work, cease to protect them from the Tsunami inside of them. So, what do they do? They numb the edge off – some become perfectionists and workaholics, some bury themselves in reading or writing, some choose alcohol or another numbing substance, some go through relationships faster than a waterfall, expecting each person to be what they needed from their parent. Some hide away, play video games for hours on end, some workout incessantly, some starve themselves, or become bulimic, some give and give, volunteer, or become the person who always shows up when someone needs them and then takes care of the person and cleans up messes other people have created. At the heart of all these coping strategies is a need for control, for certainty, for power to feel safe, enough, and loved.

A few years ago, researcher Brené Brown did something fascinating while writing Atlas of the Heart. She discovered that most people can only name three emotions: happy, sad, and angry. That’s it.

Apparently, our emotional vocabulary is about the same size as a toddler’s snack menu.

“Are you feeling something?” “Yes.” “What are you feeling?” “Ummm… a strong flavor of… sad.”

Which explains a lot about human relationships.

We have all been with someone who says, “I’m fine.” and everyone in the room knows they are absolutely not fine. Brene’s research argues something simple but profound and that is if we want meaningful connection with ourselves, our Creator, others, and creation, we need better language for what’s happening inside us. And interestingly, Scripture has been doing that for thousands of years, especially in Psalm 139. Our loving divine parent knows our inner world.

David begins Psalm 139 saying, “O Lord, you have searched me and known me.” The psalmist isn’t talking about surface-level knowledge. The Spirit knows when we sit, when we rise, what we think, and why those thoughts are there, and the Spirit knows the words we haven’t even spoken yet. The consciousness of Holy Mystery is intimately acquainted with ALL our ways of being inside ourselves and outside with others.

This is both comforting and if we’re honest, scary, because most of us spend a lot of energy not knowing what we feel. And if we’re really being honest, sometimes we wish or hope that the Spirit might skip that part too. But there is something tenderly remarkable and that is God already sees the entire interior landscape of our hearts. Every valley of fear and heartbreak. Every storm we or others created. And every unspoken fear and anxiety that sends our cortisol through the roof.

Whether you had a shaky childhood or a wonderful one, every human being struggles with becoming emotionally Illiterate. In Atlas of the Heart, Brené mapped 87 different emotions and experiences. Eighty-seven! Meanwhile, most of us are walking around with emotional vocabulary like, “Thanks for asking, I’m good right now, or I’m struggling right now, or I’m hungry or the Wi-Fi is driving me crazy.”

Imagine going to a paint store and saying, “I’d like a color.”

“What kind?”

“Just…color.”

The salesperson’s eyes widen and they slowly say, “Okkaaayyyy.”

Whether we know it or not, the reality is our emotional lives are full of nuance like disappointment, grief, awe, envy (which is very different from jealousy), loneliness, relief, gratitude, shame, fear, and wonder. Without language, those feelings get stuck inside us, and when feelings get stuck, they usually come out sideways, through anger, withdrawal, sarcasm, or passive-aggressive emails that end with “Praying for you.”

I met Ashley when she joined a congregation where I served. Ashley was the kind of person who answered every emotional question with the same sentence.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

“How are you really doing?”

“Fine.”

“How’s your marriage?”

“Fine.”

“How’s work?”

“Fine.”

If emotional vocabulary were a grocery store, Ashley had exactly one item on the shelf. Then one year her mother died, and suddenly “fine” stopped working. Grief has a way of breaking open the language we avoid. One evening Ashley slowly said something she had never said before, “I don’t think I’m angry, I think I’m lonely.”

That one word changed everything, because once she could name it, she could talk about it. And once she talked about it, people could meet her where she really lived on the inside. Language opened the door to connection.

One thing I find intriguing is that the Psalms are basically the heart of the Holy’s emotional vocabulary book. The writers don’t just say, “I feel bad.” They say things like, “My soul is downcast. My bones waste away. My heart is glad, and I am poured out like water.” The Bible gives us words for our souls, helping us give meaning to our lives.

At the end of Psalm 139, David says something I find very courageous, very honest, and very intentional. He writes, “Search me, O God, and know my heart…Test me and know my anxious thoughts. And see if there is any hurtful way in me and then lead me in the life-giving way.” This is not a prayer for people who want to stay emotionally vague. This is a prayer for humans willing to say, “Lover of my soul, help me understand what’s really going on inside me.”

Church people have their own emotional vocabulary. We don’t say “I’m anxious.” We say, “I’m just trusting the Spirit.” We don’t say, “I’m exhausted. We say, “I’m just busy volunteering.” We don’t say, “I’m angry.” We say,“I have concerns.” And of course, the most mysterious phrase in Christian language is, “I’ll pray about it.” Which can mean, “I’m intentionally seeking the mind and heart of the Spirit.” Or, it can mean, “Absolutely not interested in pursuing this any further.”

The importance of language mattering in our spiritual lives should never be underestimated. Being able to name our feelings is not self-indulgent, it is spiritual honesty. Because we cannot offer the Spirit of Love, to others, and creation with a heart we refuse to acknowledge. If I don’t know that I’m grieving, I cannot bring my grief to the Lover of my soul. If I don’t know that I’m ashamed, I cannot ask for and receive grace. If you don’t know that you’re lonely, then no one can move towards you inviting connection. Naming a feeling is the first step toward healing it. Here is some good news folks, the Spirit doesn’t wait for us to figure ourselves out first. We read in this Psalm, “You hem me in behind and before.” Even when we don’t understand our own hearts, our loving eternal parent does.

In the Christian scriptures we see that in Jesus, the Divine enters humanity with a full emotional range of human feelings. Jesus experiences his family doesn’t understand him, grief at Lazarus’ tomb, anger in the temple, betrayal by his closest ministry partners, sorrow in Gethsemane, compassion for the crowds, and joy with friends.

Jesus didn’t live, love and serve with three emotions. He lived modeling the whole human heart and we see this in his willingness to be courageously vulnerable in his way of being with himself and others. Do you know what this means? This means none of our feelings are foreign to the One who holds and sustains us.

I want to share a spiritual practice that helps me live in self-awareness. Anyone can do this. At the end of each day, ask yourself two questions: What did I feel today? And, what might the Spirit want to say to me there in that feeling? You might begin with simple words, but I promise you, over time your emotional vocabulary will expand. And as it grows, your conversations with the Spirit, and with the Spirit in others, will grow and deepen too. And before you know it, you will understand that your conversations have evolved from polite sentences to honest conversation.

Let’s look again at the end of the Psalm, and courageously  join David in saying, “Search me, O God, and know my heart.” Not because Holy Love doesn’t already know, but because we are learning to know ourselves in Mystery’s loving presence. Our invitation is accompanied with the Spirit’s help to courageously find words for the landscape of our hearts, knowing and trusting that our sweet and good divine parent knows us and loves us completely. May we be brave enough to give away our camouflage jacket because we just can’t see ourselves wearing it. What I mean to say is, may we be willing to honestly meet our feelings beginning with taking our masks off to ourselves and begin to feel until we can name it, share it, find meaning in it, so we may  live whole heartedly. May it be so, amen.