Sabrina Reyes-Peters

Is It Christian to Experience Negative Emotions?

Emotions are an uncomfortable subject for me. It's a combination of nature and nurture, the nurturing coming both from the sub-culture in which I grew up, and the home in which I was raised. People were constantly commenting on my smile: the fact that I smiled so much, or too much, or how it looked. Some people attributed it to "the joy of the Lord". But life happens, and didn't smile as much as I did when I was young. As I got older, I heard things about depression being a sin, that women shouldn't be angry, and being sad for a while meant you weren't putting your trust and hope in Christ.

I'm still not entirely comfortable with emotion, and I'm still not entirely comfortable experiencing negative emotion without a bit of guilt or self-judgment, so I chose this topic of negative emotions because it's a reminder I needed, for myself, and recorded a very quick video for the diocesan young adult ministry. Let me know what you think!