Becoming Well With Liz Tafadzwa

Hello, my BW Community

For a person who grew up suppressing her emotions and bottling them up till I started becoming explosive mid-high school, I will be honest to say this one will be raw and transparent. I hope it will be the start of unpacking for many of us. As human beings, we are so complex.  Psalm 139:14 even starts off with King David saying, “Thank you for making me wonderfully complex.” When we quote this verse we often just think of our physical features, but our complexities go beyond that. We are all dynamic in the sense that we are a collection of unique and distinct life experiences, upbringing, gifts, passions, traumas, personalities, callings, etc all of which shape our worldview, perception of ourselves, and relationship with others. I don’t care how much a person loves you and desires to fully master you, no one will ever fully understand you the way you crave to be understood besides God. The same is true for me, yet we put an unrealistic demand on people to fully get us. They don’t even fully know themselves. We secretly expect them to understand us when we ourselves don’t even fully know ourselves. We carry disappointment and even bitterness towards people for not understanding us fully and putting no expectation on God, the ONLY one who actually has the ability and purview to know us and understand us individually and intimately. He made you, saw everything that you went through, are going through, and will go through, and was with you. Naturally as human beings, it is incredibly difficult for us to fully understand someone who had an experience we never had. Given enough time our compassion dissipates if we didn’t experience it and it doesn’t make you a bad person.

Now before I get into the meat of today’s post, I wanted to bring to light something I learnt from one of the greatest teachers in my view, who brought a lot of clarity on the concept of purpose to me: Rick Warren. He said there are 4 types of people and every one of us falls into one of these categories. We have talkers, feelers, doers, and thinkers. Talkers are heart people who are good with words, talking to people, and putting their words together. Feelers feel deeply and are more in touch with their feelings. Thinkers are more mental and extremely analytical and Doers are more practical and hands-on. They want to get things done. There is no inherently good or bad group, it’s just the way God wired you and all of them have pros and cons. You may find that you may be more than one of these, but you will identify more strongly with one. For instance, I’m naturally a talker, but also have subtle elements of a thinker. I will leave you to ponder which one you may be. The point is to not to get stuck on which mold you must fit into, what society wants you to fit into, or even what trauma conditioned you to be.

Remember I said we are all complex and I will also warn you that as you start to heal, your answer now may change later and it’s okay. You may have thought you are a doer, but you realize you are in fact a feeler. You thought doing things made you valuable. Vice versa you may think you are a feeler but are in fact a talker, but because you were never allowed to use your voice, you became a feeler to the point of internalizing everyone’s emotions around you. What I simply want to drive home here is that identifying how you were authentically wired is the first step to becoming in touch with your emotions.

“The goal is not to try to fit into a mold, but to embrace your complexity as a human being”

Feelers are the most vulnerable to threats that attack their emotions yet they are valuable assets to our world because without them we would have families, communities, societies, countries, continents, and a world that lacked compassion, empathy, and sensitivity; characteristics of God’s nature. However, this does not mean if you are not a feeler you don’t feel your emotions. We are actually spiritual beings, largely governed by our logic and emotions having a physical experience. To be healthy, you have to be in touch with your emotions. The challenge with talkers is that they are inclined to articulate the emotions of others so well that they forget their own. Thinkers overanalyze everything to the point of being trapped by anxiety, doers discount their emotions due to their instinctive nature to get things done and feelers can easily become slaves to their emotions. It may even be normal for you to live this way and that’s okay because for many of us, we didn’t know how else to deal with our real emotions.

“To be healthy, you have to be in touch with your emotions”

No matter what your relationship with emotions has been like I want to invite you to an emotions autopsy. In simple terms, I would want you to grab a piece of paper, or a journal, or open your notepad on your phone and spend 15-30 minutes minimum writing down how you have regulated your emotions ever since you were a little boy or girl. I know you are a grown man or grown woman or you seem to have it all together on the outside, but the emotional chaos internally has kept you stuck. I know you look like you are living your best life externally, but internally you are bleeding. I know you tell yourself that you are a strong woman or “I’m a man” but truthfully your soul is on life support. Be as honest as possible and for many of us, you may want to do this in a quiet and secluded place.

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Whatever you turn to to regulate or cope with those painful, often uncomfortable, and raw feelings is what we call vices. We all have vices. I have mine and you have yours even if you don’t know them yet or even refuse to admit you have them. They are also the source of dysfunction in our lives, so if you don’t identify your vices, you will also not locate your dysfunction. Food, shopping, men, women, rage, sexual experiences(all the different kinds), work, control, church, entertainment, alcohol, drugs, social media, makeup, fashion, silent treatment/internalizing, hair, video games, manipulation, are a few of many many examples of vices that all of us and I’m talking humanity deals with. The bad news is every single person has at least one vice because we live in a broken world, and because it’s broken nothing works perfectly. There are no perfect people making pain a universal experience for every human being. Away with the notion that  says “As a child of God i will not experience any pain or problems here on earth.” It is a good declaration, but it is not consistent with the reality of the earth. These feel-good statements that get many saints to say amens have actually ushered many believers into deep dysfunction. They can’t believe what happened to them because they are taught knowing Christ incubates them from life happening to them and that shock keeps them living in delusion and hoping for Jesus to come and rescue them from seasonal pain, suffering, or loss. Now, i want to be very clear here and say i am not being ignorant of people’s real experiences. I thought like this for almost a decade of my life, until the religious bubble was popped by the Holy Spirit. It’s actually prolonged pain in my life that made me realize that God is more interested in how he can use it for my good than remove it immediately all the time. It breaks his heart to see any of us in pain, but sometimes he knows that is the only way we can come to him and realize our need for me, change, and for many people, discover their purpose.

You are not a bad person for wanting Jesus to save you from every pain and in some cases he may save you, but it won’t look like he saved you because you expected that you wouldn’t be required to put some skin in the game.  Even Jesus himself in John 16:33 said “In this life you will have many trials and sorrows.“ This is not heaven, that’s the only place we will no longer experience pain and live in complete perfection because there won’t be sin. But Jesus didn’t stop there and leave us hanging and hopeless as you may already be feeling, he continued and said, “But take heart because i have overcome the world.” What does that even mean? It means if you have given your life to Christ, you have Christ living and alive inside of you who conquered sin and the same power that resurrected him from death to life, you also have the same power to resurrect anything that’s dead in your life back to life. You have the power to awaken joy, peace, authentic self-love, confidence, security, hope, rooted identity, etc. In addition, the good news about vices is that they can be broken, but it takes work and the help of the Holy Spirit to truly and permanently experience freedom from them. I too am actively working to find full freedom from some of my vices and some I truthfully am not fully ready to deal with them. You do the same too and there is nothing to be ashamed of. The important thing is that you are fully aware of what those vices are and if you have no capacity to work through all of them all at once(which is likely not possible), working slowly on at least one of them is a step towards the right direction in your journey to healing, wholeness, and freedom.

After your “emotions autopsy,” and for some of us this is going to be the first time we ever do something like this, you are going to realize there are some emotions that you have suppressed for such a long time and may cause you to shed a tear or two. That is 100% normal, yes even if you are a man or the “ tough woman.” It is a sign that you are slowly getting in touch with your emotions and that’s good. Resist the temptation to label your emotions as good or bad. Admitting that you have suppressed anger for a long time or using food to comfort yourself when you feel that wound of rejection triggered is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength. Well done for taking that first step to real honesty. If you are struggling to be fully honest, i want you to suggest to you another thought. How honest are you with God? In my walk with him, i noticed that when i started to become gut-wrenching honest with him about how i truly felt, it made it easier to be honest with myself. Over time you will notice it will become easier to do the same with others. You can be honest and say God I’m mad about the conditions you allowed me to work in at my last job, I’m resentful for the complexion or body shape you gave me, I’m disappointed about how you let that business deal, career path, relationship or plan fall through, I’m angry at how you took my mother when i wasn’t prepared for it. He can handle your honesty and in fact, prefers that because when you wrestle with him like that you are at least in contact with him rather than being so distant from him. It perhaps has also made you distant from you and your emotions. He longs to talk to you, listen to you, and hear you speak to you. He doesn’t expect you to come to him with what you think he wants to hear but wants you to talk to him about what you want him to know before he says anything back to you. Can you also see that the further away you go from God, the further away you become from your authentic self and often your emotions too? The opposite is true.

“When you are honest with God about your emotions, it becomes easier to be honest with yourself and others”

Sit with yourself and exhale all those emotions, both good and bad ones. Write them down, if you have the capacity to reflect on how suppressing them has affected your relationship with yourself, others, and also with God, go ahead. There is no shame if you realize that they have actually been a source of deep destruction in your life. Again, that’s the beginning of meeting the real you. The version of you that accepts his/her complexity and does not shame yourself or allow another person or culture to shame you. The version of you that is starting to become self-aware of both the good and ugly parts of you and unpack emotions that you thought had to be kept down in the bottom pocket of the suitcase of your heart for the rest of your life. There is a better and healthier way to live.

 If you come from a collectivistic culture, which is most if not all of Africa, some South American and Asian cultures this may feel very strange and it makes sense. There is beauty in our cultures too, but we were and are largely conditioned to always have the “we” not “I” mindset, that it has robbed many of us of our unique individuality and build our own sense of self that is needed to become who we were created by God to be even as we live and work in community. Remember, for a family, community, country, and continent to be healthy, you first must be healthy. Just like with yeast, a little goes a long way yet when mixed with other ingredients and placed under heat it expands the entire dough. You are a small part of the bread(your culture), and when you are sick, it is far easier to spread that sickness to the next person the moment you are put under heat. Most of life’s crucial moments will happen under heat, so know that when you begin finding yourself, become in touch with your true emotions, and get healthy, you are simultaneously helping the larger group. For those from individualistic cultures, which is most of the Western world, this may feel very natural because the “I” is emphasized more than the “we.”

As i come to a close, i want you to think about this. Autopsies are often carried out when the cause of death or outbreak of disease is unknown. It helps locate the cause of the problem or death. Could it be that your emotions autopsy will be the first step to locating what’s been causing death or sickness in certain areas of your life? Could it possibly and maybe, just maybe help you understand what’s killed your peace, and joy or caused relational or financial dysfunction in your life? Remember, the first step to health and freedom is also admitting. That’s your only assignment for this week. There is no one judging you or looking over your confessions, so be honest. Your freedom starts with admitting your real emotions. Lean into those raw emotions.

You are loved deeply and i will see you next week!