“NEGATIVE” EMOTIONS
THE GODLY PURPOSE

Application Guide

DISCUSSION
(10-15 min)

  1. What do you think about the idea that emotions are generated and energized by belief?

  2. How does it make you feel to think about pressing into uncomfortable emotions rather than simply trying to avoid them?

LAB EXERCISE
(15 min)

FURTHER STUDY
(5 min)

*Read through the following as a group.

Imagine two scales.

THE PROVOCATION SCALE
Provocation is a measure of the magnitude of life’s circumstances, experiences, and interactions. These circumstance provoke an emotional response. One is no big deal and ten is catastrophic. Think of a range that goes from tripping without falling to having someone very close to you die.

THE REACTION SCALE
Reaction is the intensity of your emotional response. One is no response and ten is a nuclear reaction. You may be the only one who knows how you felt, so it is not a scale of how you behaved, or your actions, rather it is what you felt.

HEALTHY RESPONSE
A healthy response is when our reaction matches the provocation of the circumstance or experience.

HealthyResponse.jpg

UNHEALTHY RESPONSE
An unhealthy response is when our reaction does not match the provocation of the circumstance or experience.

Think of a time recently when you knew internally that your response for a given provocation was unhealthy. Anger is the emotion we would like to consider in this exercise. Think of how many times you’ve wondered, “Why did I get so mad?”, as you considered your thoughts in the aftermath of a particular experience.

Anger is a reactionary emotion. It’s not really possible to be angry without feeling another emotion first. Some common emotions that precede anger are shame, hurt, fear, weakness, and feelings related to value. It is often helpful to consider the message you received to get to the underlying emotion.

BREAKOUT
(10 min)

*Separate into same-gender groups of 2 or 3 and take 10 minutes to answer and process the following questions.

  1. When was a recent time you got frustrated, angry, or enraged and you knew it was unhealthy even if no one else knew how you felt?

  2. What was the emotion you felt first, before it turned into anger?

DISCUSSION
(10-15 min)

*Come back together as a large group and ask one or more people to volunteer the emotion that was underneath their anger. If the volunteer is comfortable, it might be helpful for them to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding the emotions.

  1. As a group, explore what beliefs or pain might provoke the named emotion(s).

  2. Explore how changing the belief or giving up the pain might affect the felt emotion(s).

  3. Do you think you can change your own heart level beliefs?

*For more extensive discussion and exploration regarding this topic, please contact Kevin Perry at kevin@newedenchurch.org.