The Deep End of Emotions

My husband says I could stay in the deep end for hours.

He says I’m like an Olympic swimmer. But he’s definitely not talking about the pool; he’s talking about my tolerance of emotional interactions and expression. Because emotions are deep, and your emotions are a really deep and meaningful part of who you are.

I often explain this idea by talking about the three levels of conversation. Facts are the first and most superficial level because they’re easier to talk about (that’s like the shallow end where the water comes up to your waist). Opinions and ideas take you a little deeper in conversation and offer a little more of who you are (now we’re in a little deeper, but if you stand on your tiptoes, you’re still touching the bottom of the pool). And feelings are the very deepest and most vulnerable part of you (we’re in the deep end now, where you’ve got to know how to swim to make it).

Again, I’m pretty comfortable swimming in the deep end. My husband, John, on the other hand, says when it comes to emotional exchanges, he feels like a three-year-old wrapped in his ducky floaty, comfortable and content hanging out in the shallow end all day.

There are reasons we both have different comfort levels when it comes to emotional interaction and expression. He comes from a background where deep, emotional conversations weren’t part of his regular day-to-day life. Even though spiritual conversations were routine (theology, Bible, apologetics), emotional conversations weren’t. Sometimes we confuse spiritual and emotional conversations and think they’re one and the same. But they’re not. John was more than comfortable talking about God; he just wasn’t comfortable talking about himself—his own feelings, emotions, and needs. He never learned how to swim in the deep parts of who he was and how he felt. So he stuffed down his feelings and stuck to facts, theology, apologetics, and even opinions and debates. The logical exchanges just felt more comfortable.

I think I was forced into the deep end just by the sheer nature of my life and circumstances. I was always that friend with whom every- one shared the hard stuff. Even adults in my life came to me with their emotional needs. I learned to get comfortable with the deep end pretty quickly. Not only that, but my work as a therapist has given me the practice I needed to dive into those deep waters for myself. That’s the thing we all need to understand: being comfortable with the deepest part of our hearts has nothing to do with our personality or gender but everything to do with our experiences.

Just like swimming in a pool, we’ve got to practice going deep with our emotions to get better at feeling, understanding, and expressing them. It’s not something you’re born knowing how to do; it’s something you have to learn along the way.

Going deep and checking in with how you’re really feeling is harder for some than for others. Maybe you grew up in a family where conversations tended to stay superficial, and so that became your comfort level. Or maybe you came from a background where showing emotions actually made you look weak, where phrases like “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about,” or “There’s no need to get emotional about this,” were the norm. Maybe you felt the need to stuff your emotions in order to be accepted, loved, or respected. Or maybe you come from a background of really hard things like trauma, abuse, or family dysfunction or violence. Sometimes, in those really hard situations, our bodies learn to mute their ability to feel deep emotions for a while so we can survive those experiences.

I recently had a conversation with a ministry leader who told me he doesn’t really have many emotions. Maybe it’s a “man thing,” he wondered. But as we discussed further, he opened up about the rough childhood he had. Abandoned by his father, abused by his mother, his body learned to block out emotions because they were just so hard. And now, 40 years later, even in an environment of safety and security, his body has stayed in that default mode. He doesn’t feel as easily as the next person, not because it’s a “man thing,” but because that’s how he survived so many hard years.

Maybe you can relate. For one reason or another, you’ve learned to block out your emotions—or at least quiet them down a bit. They’re there, but the volume has been turned down really low. You try not to visit the deep end of emotions; you’d rather stay in the comfort and contentment of the shallow end. But here’s the thing: If you don’t check in, you’ll eventually check out. If you don’t take the time to go deep and see how you’re really doing from the inside out, eventually all those feelings you’ve been stuffing will come to the surface in an unexpected way. If you don’t take the time to deal with your emotions, they will deal with you. And many times, those undealt-with emotions, brewing just under the surface of your life, are the very thing keeping you from healing and freedom and victory in your life.

Scripture says, “The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out” (Proverbs 20:5). In other words, the reasons we do what we do are rooted deep inside us. You’ve got to draw them out. You’ve got to go in and do the work of bringing up what’s going on inside you so you can face it, deal with it, and heal it. That’s what it means to be a person of “in-sight.” You have the sight to see what’s going on inside you. You take the time to look in, to check in, and to draw it out.

It’s time to say goodbye to the floaties in the shallow end. Because we’re about to learn how to swim. We’re jumping in the deep end.

Excerpted with permission from Reset by Debra Fileta published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, 97408. Copyright 2023, Debra Fileta.