6 Steps To Processing Your Emotions With God

Want to learn how to feel your feelings in a way that honors the Lord? Follow these 6 steps to process your emotions with God.

I started learning how to process my emotions in a productive way after doing it all wrong for many years.

My emotions used to come over me like a wave in a storm, jerking me off of my feet and throwing me around without any solid footing.

In my anger, I would often say something I would regret (usually to the people I loved most).

In my loneliness and insecurity, I would often do something out of desperation (Facebook made this way too easy to do!).

In my overwhelm, I would often make drastic decisions that didn’t help the situation at all.

Food used to be my chosen response to the difficult feelings in my life – I was a big emotional eater.

• When my feelings were hurt, I ate.
• When I was lonely, I ate.
• When I was bored, I ate.

Just like I used to feel like I was controlled by my food cravings, I also felt like I was at the mercy of my emotions.

For a long time, I thought the answer was to just shut my emotions down.

I was too much, so I just needed to stop feeling those big things.

It turned out, that wasn’t the answer to guide me to a healthier place, either.

During my 100-pound weight loss journey, yes, I had to learn healthier physical habits like exercising and eating more vegetables, but I also had to learn how to navigate my emotions in a healthier way – a way that recognizes and validates them while still keeping Jesus in the driver’s seat.

Intentionally processing my emotions helped to:

• get me unstuck from repeating the same harmful cycles over and over again.
• move me forward, growing from my mistakes instead of spiraling into shame.
• give me peace, clarity, and wisdom for my next steps.
• understand my reactions and responses better, addressing the real roots and not just the symptoms.
• experience more of God’s goodness, faithfulness, Truth, and compassion.

The steps below are not hard and fast rules. They are not the “right” way to do it or the only way.

They are just the steps I have practiced for years now that have helped me understand my emotions better, recognize them more easily, respond more compassionately, and keep God at the center of it all.

They involve a combination of my training as a Christian life and health coach, as well as tools I’ve learned from counselors, authors, and friends over the years.

For me, journaling was an incredibly important tool to help me walk through the steps below, as well as talking through them with a couple of very close friends (that’s why I designed journal pages to walk through these steps even more in-depth, too).

It’s easy to skim over the words below and feel like you’ve checked it off your list (or at least it is for me!), but I highly recommend you take your time and really do each step thoroughly. The more you pour into it, the more you will get out of it.

Steps To Processing Your Emotions With God

1 – Put it into words.

It’s so important to put words to your feelings.

Without slowing down to actually describe them and pinpoint what exactly we are feeling, it’s easy to just get sucked into a black hole-type vortex of overwhelm, confusion, and hopelessness.

Feelings can get really tangled up (which makes sense…we rarely only feel one thing at a time!), but when we take the time to identify them, it creates a great starting place for you to process them more effectively so you can move on to the next steps and move forward instead of just spinning, stuck in the same mental cycle.

If you’re not sure where to even start in naming your feelings, a feelings wheel can be really helpful for this step!

2 – Look for patterns.

Now that you know what you are feeling, you can take a moment to try to identify why you are feeling that way.

So many of the biggest, most intense feelings in our lives are recurring.

Maybe they started way back in your childhood and have been reinforced with every similar situation since then (like if you were bullied as a kid about your weight and felt like your weight determined your worth through your teen years and into adulthood, feeling “less than” others with every pound).

Or maybe there are certain situations that often lead to the buildup of that same emotion (like if you are finding yourself feeling out of control after your work days because you never feel like you get enough done).

Chances are, you might have a typical, common response to these emotions when they surface that you may never have identified before.

Recognizing those hidden and obvious patterns can give you really helpful information to get you moving forward.

3 – Check in on your physical health

The pieces of ourselves all impact each other – our physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional health.

It’s important to pay attention to each aspect, recognizing the impact they are having on each other.

If you haven’t been sleeping well, that magnifies your negative feelings (I know sleep deprivation and insomnia well).

The term “hangry” (feeling so hungry you get angry) shows how common it is for the physical feeling of hunger to stir up emotions like anger and frustration.

Think of how much more difficult it is to be calm, patient, and joyful when you are in pain or discomfort.

Have you seen the meme floating around the internet describing Elijah telling God that he is so mad and wants to die and God offering him a nap and a snack in return?

There is a lot of power in recognizing and meeting our physical needs (when we can).

The same is true for our spiritual needs (spending time with the Lord, reading Scripture, stillness, etc) and mental needs (recognizing decision fatigue, managing your “mental load”, etc).

Recognizing those connections can give you important information to figure out a better way to prevent, respond, or navigate that emotion in the future.

4 – See what Scripture says about that feeling

Now that you have a general understanding of the practical pieces of the situation, it’s time to bring the Truth of Scripture into your processing.

Our emotions are meant to point us back to God, drawing us nearer to Him.

Scripture is full of examples of people feeling big, hard emotions and God responding to them with care.

Positive and negative emotions alike can be a signpost reminding us of the goodness of God, our need for a Savior, and a future filled with hope that this world cannot offer.

As a highly sensitive person who has always had big emotions, I especially appreciate David’s emotional processing in the Psalms.

He starts each Psalm by feeling his emotions and expressing them in big ways and big emotional words (which is what makes them so relatable to me!).

Then, about halfway through each Psalm, there is a shift.

David brings in one of God’s promises or a reference to a past Scripture and the entire tone of the Psalm shifts from despair, fear, and hopelessness to hope and confidence in God’s character.

I look to Scripture in processing my emotions to:

• find examples of people feeling similar emotions to remind myself that I’m not alone in them.
• uncover even deeper layers of God’s love and creative ways He cares for His people.
• see how people responded to this emotion in the Bible in helpful and harmful ways.
• look for God’s guidance in situations where these emotions were present.
• root and ground myself in the stability of the Truth of God’s Word.

There are many posts on this site with Bible verses on emotions (like 30 Bible Verses On Anxiety & Worries, 37 Bible Verses About Tears and Crying, and 25 Bible Verses When You Feel Overwhelmed) or you can also just search the internet for phrases like, “Scriptures on fear” to find great examples.

Remember the popular Bible stories, too – David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, Esther and the king, etc. Read those stories with new eyes, looking for how God responded to each person.

Side note – even though I love topical lists of Scriptures, please remember to always consider the context of the verses and the Truth of the Bible as a whole. “Cherry-picking” verses can be dangerous and pulling back to look at the context of the verse (like who it was written to originally and why) can drastically change the meaning of short verses.

5 – Recognize Your Thoughts

This is a very, very important step.

Sometimes our thoughts can be helpful, guiding us toward making a decision or giving us extra information about a situation in our lives.

It’s also important to recognize when your thoughts are harmful and destructive.

When we are struggling with big, difficult emotions, we often get swept away by our internal voices that are very good at whispering lies to us.

Have you ever made a mistake and ended up thinking something like, “You’re such an idiot. Why did you do that?”

That is just one example of how the enemy attacks – with shame (there is a difference between guilt and shame and it is so important to understand it).

The enemy loves to use our thoughts to harm us. When he can turn us against ourselves, we end up fighting his battle for him, beating ourselves up and distracting us from our God-given purposes.

God’s voice brings clarity, wisdom, conviction, growth, and peace.

The closer I’ve gotten to the Lord over the years, the more familiar His voice of compassion has become.

If your thoughts are filled with condemnation, shame, confusion, and hopelessness…that’s a good sign that some thoughts need to be taken captive and made obedient to Christ.

It’s easy to slip into thinking in “autopilot” mode. It takes intentionality to recognize those small lies as they sneak into your mind, but it is so worth the effort.

6 – Ask for the Lord’s help in navigating that emotion

Never underestimate the power of prayer.

Often, when I need God’s help the most is when I forget to ask for it.

So, this is your reminder.

As you process difficult emotions, ask God for His guidance, wisdom, and clarity in navigating this emotion.

Notice, I didn’t say to “get rid of that emotion”.

Often, our goal is to just stop feeling the uncomfortable thing, but so often that emotion is trying to give us information about something.

Try looking at that emotion like a signpost instead – what could it be telling you? What could God be telling you?

Ask Him!

He may be:

• drawing you away from a sin in your life that is separating you from Him
• uncovering a lie you have been believing
• showing you a way to respond to a physical need of your body
• …or so much more!

Your prayer here doesn’t have to be anything fancy.

Sometimes, my prayers have been as simple as, “Help me, Lord” and sometimes I’ve journaled pages and pages of prayers pleading for help with certain emotions.

The important thing is just to talk to Him about it.

…and don’t forget to listen for His answer!

Processing Your Emotions With God Printable Journal Pages

Click the button to download a PDF printable of the Processing Your Emotions With God journal pages with over 17 journal prompts I use to process my own emotions with the Lord.