A Better Way Than the Strong, Silent Type

A person without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. (Proverbs 25:28)

When I was growing up in the sixties and seventies, Americans often valued male movie icons as “the strong, silent type.” In other words, men were not to show emotion, and the best way to not show emotion was to deny having any. Decades later, we realize the dysfunction this false understanding wrought.

James Horton, Ph.D., challenges our postmodern society to learn to develop the capacity to face our emotions with mature understanding and control. In his article “Your Emotions Are Not Irrational,” Horton helps us understand that “emotions are reactions to the content of a single moment in time.” By learning to feel emotion as temporary, it does not need to feel overwhelming or fearful. Likewise, the emotion others impose on us is not forever and can be faced and not ignored.

Horton encapsulates our emotions into two descriptive spaces. “The first is ‘lived space.’ Where emotions are natural, reasonable responses to the content of each moment.” “The second is ‘concept space,’ which we operate from when predicting our emotions.” We are often bad at predicting our future events and how they will make us feel. Yet, based on inaccurate predictions, we create much of our emotional response on what we believe we should feel.

Today, pray for the courage to experience your emotions in the moment. If they start to feel uncomfortable, remind yourself that the feeling is temporary. Then, ask God to give you the wisdom and strength not to create future scenarios that fuel the emotion, making it even more intense. Practice naming the emotion because it will help distance you from the feeling and give you a fair perspective of the feeling’s true impact. Practicing emotional evaluation is not just for your edification but will also make you more equipped to use your emotions properly around others. Instead of the strong, silent type, we can become the emotionally strong, expressive type, which is a divine process worth fulfilling.