Embracing Emotions for Spiritual Growth: A Practical Guide by Dr. Conrad Baars

Key Insights:

- Emotions, being gifts from God, contribute to self-understanding and understanding others.

- A healthy emotional life is paramount for a thriving spiritual life.

- Many individuals suffer from emotional deprivation, stemming from lack of unconditional love during childhood, leading to low self-esteem, insecurity, anxiety, and depression.

- Emotional deprivation can be remedied through affirmation from God, self and others, and honest, appropriate expression of emotions.

- Maintaining emotional health requires a balance between reason and emotion, coupled with respect for free will and conscience.

Healing Emotions and Fostering Closeness to God

Feeling and Healing Your Emotions by Dr. Conrad Baars offers invaluable insights into understanding the nature and purpose of emotions, how they intersect with spiritual life, and the steps to recover from emotional wounds while nurturing emotional maturity.

The book's user-friendly question-and-answer format tackles issues like guilt, repression, and will-training. It's a crucial tool not just for individuals seeking to understand their emotions, but also mental health professionals, pastoral counselors, and teachers.

Key lessons from this book include:

- Recognizing and addressing emotional deprivation and its effects on self-perception, behavior, and relationships

- Learning how to receive and give affirmation, the essence of unconditional love and acceptance

- Adopting healthy emotional expression techniques that respect oneself and others

- Balancing reason and emotion in decision-making

- Utilizing emotions to enrich prayer life and connection with God

Practical Advice from the Book

Guilt

Guilt arises from perceived wrongdoings or failures. Healthy guilt facilitates mistake recognition and prompts amends. Unhealthy guilt induces feelings of unworthiness or hopelessness even without wrongdoing or after forgiveness. Dr. Baars recommends:

- Differentiating between guilt based on moral standards and guilt based on feelings.

- Sincerely confessing sins and receiving God's mercy.

- Accepting ourselves as fallible but loved individuals.

- Balancing concern for sin with avoidance of excessive fear.

- Practicing virtue and shunning vice.

Sin

Sin, a disobedience act against God's will, damages relationships with Him, self, and others. Dealing with sin healthily involves recognizing sin's reality and consequences, repenting and turning back to God, and fostering a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Scrupulosity

Scrupulosity refers to excessive fear of sin or falsely identifying non-sinful actions as sins. It could interfere with mental health, spiritual life, and social relationships. Dr. Baars advises professional help if necessary, following trusted spiritual guidance, understanding true Church teachings and moral principles, and fostering a joyful and positive attitude.

Repression

Repression is an avoidance mechanism for unpleasant emotions. Chronic or excessive repression inhibits emotional healing. To deal with repression healthily, Dr. Baars suggests becoming aware of repressed emotions, safely expressing them, seeking supportive individuals, and resolving triggering conflicts.

Will-training

Dr. Baars' method, will-training, enables emotional healing by training the will to affirm self and others. Key steps include understanding, accepting, and loving oneself, followed by generous service to others. Practicing will-training involves cultivating a positive self-image, receiving and giving affirmation, and living according to God's will.