When our emotions become our enemies, then every element and environment, big or small, that can stir, touch or rattle these ‘emotions’ (these new foes within) has the very real potential to cause harm/grief to the dishevelled soul.
It is here that our perception of vulnerability exponentially increases, and like all threats your fight-flight response is engaged. However, this ‘conflict’ response doesn’t bring respite, rather an escalation of emotional duress, leading to a further depleting of already taxed emotional reserves – In turn only amplifying the need for resolution and respite, if not control.
When we cannot govern/control within, and externals incite these ‘foes’ within then the need to seek some sense of containment and/or control wherever you can, grows. So we work hard to ‘handle’, manage or manipulate all encounters, circumstances and environments in an attempt to manufacture some sense of quiet, if not order in our struggling psyche.
This snowballing scenario is often a key contributor to existential collapse, and without external resources that refocus, remind, remediate, relieve and restore, we spiral down.
In the postmodern relativist culture it is often reinforced through egocentric and selfist mantras that
You are the final authority!
You have the power within!
What You ‘feel’ is ‘right’, is so, and;
Do not let anyone else tell You what to do, or how to live! (The irony of this posture is that we have never before in human history seen so much ‘consultation, therapy, coaching, counselling’ – all in endless attempts manage us DOING IT OUR WAY!!!)
In this space our perception, mood, urge or taste then dictate choice, decision, answers and response. This is now when things can become unpredictable, but also dangerously volatile and vulnerable!
If your emotions and their attending urges, tastes, moods, perceptions become your ‘enemy’ to where do you now turn for help, assistance or change? What in this state, then happens in your decision making and choice?
At the very least your field of play (as it were) shrinks considerably to the point where one can feel a hemming in. To be cornered by demanding and uncontrollable emotions and moods can produce incredible pressure, hopelessness, dysfunction and even despair!
It is this predicament that our need of the transcendent becomes most apparent, even though it has always been crucial - that which is not only beyond the self, but bigger and better than the self. It is to an existentially solid, fixed point, a rock if you like, that a soul anchor must be attached to stop the drifting toward the ever present dangerous reefs of dysfunction, despair and destruction that often manifest in suicide.
Jesus Christ unabashedly referred to an aspect of His Divine nature as being that Rock like foundation. (Luke 6:46-49) He never in this context questioned our capacity to build or achieve, as these are God given capacities. However, He did make crystal clear that on what you build is imperative if one was to avoid collapse – it’s on what and how your build that will determine endurance and durability. This ‘Foundation’ never negates the reality that storms are both inevitable and unpredictable - however, He will ensure that what you build will not collapse in them!
Shane W. Varcoe