Untangling Emotions Paperback – Illustrated, March 31, 2019

LOVE this book! I did it as a Bible/book study with my aunt. Then in the middle of the read, I experienced a death in the family... and the grief section in the end of the book was so timely and appropriate. Godly wisdom in there! Deep Questions (the end of each chapter) we wouldn't necessarily thought of to ask each other.

This is definitely going on the list for high school reading in our home. I needed it as much as my kids do! So often we try to push through or ignore our emotions, often to the detriment of our own mental, physical, and emotional health, and often not even realizing it until our minds or bodies force us to slow down. This book has helped me consider how God designed us as emotional beings, and how our emotions can move us closer to him, or not. It addresses the whole person and it addresses specific topics like grief, anger, and shame. I read it with a friend and it really helped us understand what we were thinking/feeling, and how those things relate to God. My mental and emotional health are better for having read it.

A thoughtful discussion about the complexity of emotions and how they relate to our relationship with God. This is a helpful outline of the actions we can take to address the helpful role that emotions have in our lives.

Great book to read if you want to understand your emotions better. This books give you biblical, practical tips to live out your faith

Good book. My sister recommended it to me. Although it has a tear in the back cover.

The first big contribution of Untangling Emotions is their observations that emotions, and especially strong emotions like anger, fear and grief communicate our values. “Your emotions are always expressing the things you love, value and treasure, whether you understand them or not.” (35) When we are feeling any emotion, good or bad, that means that something we love is being affected in some way.-Secondly, our emotions don’t just come one at a time. If emotions arise in us as a result of what we treasure and value, and we value a lot of different things, it makes sense that we experience a variety of emotions all at the same time. This explains why we don’t always respond to good things (or bad things) as strongly as we think we should. This also can lead to some confusion about our emotions (why am I sad even though this great thing just happened?).-Finally, Groves & Smith give us a roadmap to engaging our emotions. Rather than bowing to our emotions or ignoring our emotions, they give really good instructions on how to engage emotions effectively. They advocate for investigating our emotions rather than judging them as good or bad right off the bat. Here are their three steps: First, identify what emotions you’re feeling. Second, examine your emotion by asking questions like, “Why am I feeling this?”, “What am I reacting to?” and so on. Finally, evaluate your emotion by asking questions like, “What parts of what I’m feeling are good and godly, and what parts are destructive or selfish?” There’s more guidance in the book, you’ll have to read it to find out!

Browsing through the shelves of my local Christian bookstore, I leafed through the few books they had about emotions, only to find that they seemed to fall into two categories: 1 being a collection of brief comments and bible verses about each kind of emotion, with nothing to bridge the chapters together, or 2 overall bible commentaries that only lightly touch on the concept of emotions. This book seemed to actually hit the spot though; having been written by two very experienced Christian counselors, it actively brings the bible into emotions and explains why God gave us these emotions, and how we can respond to them correctly. I'm not sure that there's another book like it. It definitely helped me!

An amazing take on how to think through and trust the Lord with our emotions.