Posts Tagged ‘emotions’

My understanding of emotions are that they cannot be controlled per-se. They happen and they are more or less spontaneous. What do can control is our response to them. We are responsible for our behavioral responses to our emotional reactions.

Two key words here: reactions (emotions) and responses (choices we make as a result of those emotions).

1. It is okay for me to have emotions, even bad ones. They are, in fact, a gift from God. However, they are very powerful and can lead to very poor choices if I am not careful. Emotions can only be dealt with through validation. I need to know that it is okay for me to feel this way. The best way for that to happen is by talking about my feelings with another “safe” person. (The Purity Report Partner Guidelines are a great way to create those safe relationships.)

2. I am responsible for the choices I make, even bad ones. Our will is also a gift from God. But, when fueled by negative emotions, we can make some really stupid choices. Sometimes, we get those responses (read choices) so ingrained that they are practically automatic. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Drawing this distinction has opened up a lot for me. It is okay for me to feel crappy about things. I also have the power to choose how I am going to respond. If I have automatic responses in play (addictions) then I need to find a way to slow down the cycle of stimulus (emotion) and response (choice) so I can choose differently!

I wrote a blog post a while back that adds more to this called “Stimulus and Response.”

I was reading through 1 Thessalonians this morning and came across a well-worn verse.

pray continually;
1 Thes. 5:17

I have often read or heard this verse and come to one simple conclusion: I am not praying enough. That may be true, but is too simplistic and I don’t believe it really gets at the heart of this exhortation. Yes, we should pray without ceasing. However, it does not set right with my heart when my first-glance reading of scripture brings feelings of inadequacy because of a New Testament standard I feel I could never live up to.

After being in recovery for a while, you realize that addiction of any sort, porn/sexual addiction included, is an attempt to meet legitimate needs through illegitimate means. The way we define sexual addiction on the Higher-Calling.com FAQ further explains this perspective.

With that in mind, I have come to believe that temptation to engage in acting out behavior is like the check engine light on the dashboard of my car. The pull toward pornography is an indicator that I need to check under the hood.

In recovery terms, this is known as identifying your triggers. The acronym HALT is a well-known list of common triggers (Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired). This article further explains HALT.

It is very helpful to identify triggers in two categories: visual/physical or emotional. HALT identifies two physical triggers (hungry or tired) and two emotional triggers (angry or lonely). Seeing a person or picture with certain physical attributes or wearing specific clothing can visually trigger arousal.

Emotional triggers are much more difficult to identify. In part this is because addicts are generally not connected to their emotional selves and therefore have a hard time identifying and expressing their emotions. Shame is probably the most powerful triggering emotion for addicts. Often confused with guilt, which is the negative feeling tied to wrong behavior, shame is a much deeper sense that we are fundamentally worthless and unacceptable. Anything that triggers our shame is sure to kick off a strong pull to act out.

Being aroused by certain physical/visual or even emotional stimulus is not abnormal. However, addicts take it a step further and engage in acting out behavior. Acting out repeatedly over time hard-wires our brains to associate arousal of any sort with our acting out behaviors. All arousal, regardless of the trigger, leads us to the same place.

Coming back to our metaphor, these triggers are glaring check engine lights on the dashboard of our consciousness. They indicate places where we may need to grow, establish accountability, forgive ourselves or others, or simply confess past sins in a safe place. The point is to not let the “service required” indicator go unnoticed.

Take a few minutes to reflect on what is going on under the hood the next time you are triggered to act out. It is an essential element of keeping the engine of our sobriety running smoothly.

I attended the Healing for the Soul retreat this past weekend. I have several takeaways to blog about, but wanted to start with this.

On the last morning of the retreat, we had a time where attendees had the opportunity to share their experiences. One man in particular touched my heart. He shared how he went to the gift shop at the retreat center and asked God to lead him to something. He found a small plaque with a poem entitled, “To My Son” or something like that. As the guy read the poem, he struggled many times through heaving tears to continue reading. One time, he reassured himself as he choked back tears, “Get it together!” I couldn’t help but think, “That is together!” When I had the chance to share, I was sure to tell that man he did have it together and it touched my heart.

I understand what he meant when he said, “Get it together!” He had a goal of sharing the poem with us and his deep emotion was hindering him. However, it was his display of emotion, much more than the words of the poem, that impacted those of us listening. I was blessed.

This experience highlighted to me how we stifle ourselves emotionally. The discovery of our brokenness during the process of recovery can be intense. It can at times render you a quivering mess of emotions. But keep this in mind: that is together! The brokenness we discover can really only be put back together when we allow ourselves to grieve it appropriately. Only then can we move on with integrity, knowing we have given our souls the needed ventilation. Getting it together may in truth look like falling apart!

C. S. Lewis finishes his book, “The Four Loves” with an amazing treatise of divine love, agape in Greek. Until now, we have looked at the natural loves: storge, philia and eros. These are all to some extent expressed in the natural human experience. Agape, on the other hand, is completely foreign to nature. It is transcendent. So much so that scripture uses this word to describe the very essence of God (see 1 John 4:8, 16).

Old English translations of agape used the word, “charity.” This may be a more correct rendering than the word “love” that has become so ambiguous in contemporary language. But even charity falls short. Charity conveys the idea that agape is a free gift. It does not, however carry the full weight of love that loves the unlovable; unconditional, incorruptible and divine.

Agape is the only love that is inherently holy. All other loves carry with them a danger of corruption, as we have previously discussed. Not so with agape. Lewis characterizes the natural loves as pure only when they have been made an altar for agape to light upon. This brings me to the most terrifying aspect of divine love: the idea of holiness.

According to Lewis, and I suspect he is correct, only agape and that which has been subjected to it will enter heaven in eternity. Any love that I enjoy in this life, toward my wife, children, family and friends as examples, must be converted, in a sense, to agape if it is to endure. Only that which is holy can stand in God’s presence and only divine love can pass muster. The love I feel in this life must be yielded to the love of Christ. As he expresses his divine love through my natural love, it becomes something more than natural. It becomes supernatural; charged with his essence, which is agape.

In a wonderful way, divine love can only be given to another if it is first received. We can only give agape to the extent we have received it from God himself. Because God characterizes himself as love, receiving divine love is nothing less than receiving him. The deeper I invite Jesus Christ into my heart and life, the deeper the reservoir of divine love from which I may draw upon to nourish the hearts of others.

As this blog is primarily about sexual purity, I will close by briefly pointing out that divine love is the only power strong enough to counter the primary element of human depravity: shame. My counselor, among others, believes shame is the most powerful of negative human emotions. It is the root of enormous human sorrow and suffering. Furthermore, it is the ultimate root of addiction. For no other reason would anyone subject themselves to dangerous, compulsive behavior than shame, evidenced by the self-loathing all honest addicts will attest to.

Free, unconditional, divine love renders shame powerless. It reminds me of TILT on a pinball machine. God’s love shakes the foundation of man’s depravity to its core and leaves him with the same choice posed to Israel in ancient times. Before us is set life (love) and death (shame) for the choosing (see Deut. 30:11-20).

Today I choose life…I choose love!

As I studied philia I realized how little of it I have had in my life. My wife and I are definitely close friends and I would say our love has an element of philia as well as storge and eros. We have the common interest of marriage, household and our children. It is other guy friends that seem to be in short supply. They seem to come and go; ebb and flow.

Surveying my past, relationships that I would describe as friendship have centered around many different interests…

• School friends: These are friends I played with and had sleep-overs with as a boy. In the normal fashion, our interests were toys and play. We were young, innocent and rightfully did not share deep matters of the heart.
• Drug friends: In my teens and early twenties I had friends who shared my interest at the time in getting high. After coming to Christ and leaving drugs behind, I discovered that friends of this sort were not really friends at all. These were self-serving relationships; using each other when we had drugs. After I moved on, nearly all of these relationships fell by the wayside.
• Work friends: I have had coworkers that I have considered friends. However, outside of work we didn’t share our lives. Our common interests center upon our common jobs and no further.
• Church friends: Fellow Christians have a deeper common interest: the Lord. I have shared deeply of myself with other Christians; deeper than with my parents or sister growing up to be sure. Unfortunately at times, these relationships seem to not extend to the true heart and center around spiritual matters. While sharing spiritual interests is wonderful, there are other facets of our lives that sometimes seem unimportant to church friends.
• Recovery friends: Other men in recovery from porn/sex addiction have shared bared their souls to me over the years and mine with them. These have been in many ways the deepest relationships I have experienced. Recovery requires that I invite others into the dark places that I would rather keep secret. This kind of vunlerability creates a bond, particularly when the sharing is mutual.

In nearly all of the frienships in these different categories there is a phenomenon I have never been able to figure out. Many, if not most of these friendships do not seem to be reciprocal. It becomes wearying when I perceive if I were to stop initiating contact with a friend I would never hear from them again.

Regardless of how deep the fellowship has been, lack of reciprocation brings doubt regarding the depth of the friendship. Even worse, this occurrence can trigger feelings of shame; that something is wrong with me and that is why my phone never rings.

Lewis likens losing a friend characterized by philia as losing a limb; it is something that always leaves an obvious void. This description more than anything brings the depth of many of my friendships into question. How many of them would I describe in this way? What practical ways can I develop my frienships and experience the uncommon love that is philia?

This kind of love bothers me because I know it exists and I experience very little of it…

The second type of love that C.S. Lewis discusses in his book, The Four Loves, is philia, commonly defined as friendship. Those of us in the U.S. probably recognize phiia as the root of the city name Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.

Lewis believes that philia is the least common and least natural of all the four loves. He goes on to say that there are many who go through life and never experience philia in its true form. Eros is common; otherwise none of us would be born. Storge is also common; otherwise none of us would be reared. Philia, on the other hand, is not an automatic experience that is common to human experience.

The rarity and general misunderstanding of deep friendship philia describes is evidenced by the fact that in the observation of it many would mistake it as homosexual. The portrayal of David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel has been interpreted by some as homosexual in nature. The sadness of this judgment cannot be overstated. It contributes to the lack of deep relationships between same-gender friends by adding element of fear. As we are taught in scripture, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because
fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect
in love.” (1 John 4:18)

Philia is characterized by shared interests that bring two or more together. It is deeper than mere camaraderie, or good fellowship, which is almost coincidental. Rather, it is two or more who gather with common interests, but share them on a visceral level. They miss each other in true ways and look forward to spending time together. It is difficult to even describe this kind of love without it coming off as tawdry in nature.

Deep friendship differs from sexual, eros, love in this way: eros is characterized by a man and a woman face-to-face; eyes on each other. Philia is characterized primarily by a man and a man, or woman and a woman, standing shoulder-to-shoulder; eyes on their common interests. Eros is naked bodies. Philia is naked personalities.

One surprising factor about this kind of love is that it is not necessarily for good. Lewis believes that the cause around which deep friends form may be for good or for evil. They embolden each other in moving toward their common goals. Those goals may be commendable, or despicable. The phenomenon of philia is that the judgments of those outside the circle of friends are generally ignored within the circle. For this reason, Lewis described philia friendship is a resistance movement. Lewis went so far as to call philia the most spiritual of the loves, the corruption of which is also the most spiritual corruption.

It is quite easy to see that the lack of understanding and moreso experience of philia may contribute to all sorts of deficiencies of the heart, for which we may strive to fill illegitimately. The general audience of this blog have turned to sex to fill those voids.

Having defined storge love as familial affection in the previous post, I have been thinking about how this kind of love, or the lack of it, has played out in my own experience.

I did not grow up in an affectionate family. Storge was not commonplace as expressed in parental hugs, kisses and the like. Like any boy, I craved the attention, but it was ever absent.

When I was very young, about eight years old, I was exposed to pornography; not as an accidental discovery, but rather intentionally by my father who decided a Playboy centerfold was a great way to teach me about the birds and the bees. I was immediately captivated. He always had porn magazines on the bookshelf easily accessible.

What I was looking at appeared to be love. Two people, be it a man and a woman or in many of these mens’ magazines a woman and a woman, were showing what to me seemed to be affection and love. Without any guidance on these matters, it was cemented in my young heart that sex and love were synonymous. Furthermore, affection of any sort from a woman became sexually charged.

Since getting married my wife has many times expressed her feelings of pressure; that any expressions of affection must lead to sex. I have to confess the arousal that I often feel. I am growing in this area. Through this study of love I am learning that there are different kinds of love.

Only agape, which is for another writing, is love of a type that cannot be corrupted by the flesh. For me, storge love, defined as affection, has been hijacked by the loss of innocence in my formative years. Now I as a man am standing up to reclaim it and show affection in the way God intended it to be: a display of my love with no ulterior motives, only to communicate my familiar affection to my wife, family and friends!

The first of the four loves that C.S. Lewis discusses in his book is from the Greek word “Storge”. It is best described as affection, particularly in reference to parents and their children. Moving outward from that purest expression you would find non-sexual affection between spouses, other family members, friends and even strangers to whom we have affinity. Storge often has the unique quality of being expressed indiscriminately.

One phenomenon regarding each kind of love that Lewis explains is the tendency to both good and depraved expression. Storge love is what most in our society would consider to be deep feelings of affection that are marked by both commitment and familiarity. It is often difficult to determine where and when the feeling originated. To discover it is essentially to acknowledge that it has been there long before and grew as the relationship became more familiar.

However, this familiarity is the kind that can breed contempt. Storge in family relationships is often taken for granted and expected without merit. Out of familiarity, family members may treat one another in ways they would never dream of treating a stranger. If they treated others the way they sometimes treated each other it would be grounds for terminating the relationship. In its worst forms, this can play into members staying in abusive situations far longer than they ought.

Also, the familiarity of storge love can be resistant to change. Jealousy may erupt when the object of affection moves on to another stage of life. Rather than showing approval for one’s achievement which may change the familiar circumstances of the relationship, contempt for that achievement arises.

As the most commonly expressed form of love, storge is an easy companion to the other kinds:.

• Storge and Eros (love between the sexes): lovers may kiss and show affection, but it is not always sexual in nature. There are often varying degrees between storge and eros in marital relationships; a friendly kiss goodbye or a deeply intimate kiss and various degrees in between. Eros is typically fleeting. Storge, on the other hand, is more of a constant affection within the relationship. As Lewis puts it, “Storge makes a nest for Eros.”
• Storge and Philia (the bond of friendship): the bond between friends lends itself to shows of affection. A hug, handshake, pat on the back or high-five are all expressions of storge love between friends. These expressions deepen the friendship and bring more familiarity to it.
• Storge and Agape (unconditional love of God): Unconditional love may easily express itself in shows of affection. The most striking of these expressions are toward those that others may deem to be unlovable. Picture Mother Theresa cradling a leper as an extreme example.

Today I purchased “The Four Loves” by C.S.  Lewis on audiobook from Audible.com.

This is the publisher’s summary of the book:

In this remarkable recording, C.S. Lewis shows why millions of readers have acclaimed him the greatest spokesman for Christianity in the twentieth century. In a resonant, baritone voice, Lewis explores the nature of the four Greek words that are translated love in English: “storge” (affection), “philia” (friendship), “eros” (sexual or romantic love) and “agape” (selfless love).

But instead of giving us a dry, theological treatise, Lewis makes the subject extremely personal and practical by showing us how easily natural loves can go wrong and pollute our relationships. He shows that what we often tend to excuse as natural behavior is really selfish and destructive.

Lewis exposes these pitfalls in our loves in order to lead us to the solution, Godlike agape love that God has for men and women and the kind we must develop and nurture in our relationships.

As in his writing, Lewis doesnÂ’t merely tell, he shows these loves in action with vivid and often humorous illustrations. The images are so realistically drawn and so alive you are sure to recognize someone you know or live with, or maybe even yourself.

This is a very relevant topic for those of us who struggle with lust, which is a counterfeit for the deep love we crave. Understanding real love should help me recognize the counterfeit more readily!

I look forward to listening to it and plan on writing a blog for each of the four types of love, so be sure to check back over the next week or so.