How to Avoid Being Controlled By Your emotions

Be careful not to allow the agreements you have made with the enemy in your brokenness, run your life, influence your actions, and control your identity.

These are agreements that happen in your mind and body, that occur when you begin to allow the bodily sensations you experience that follow certain emotions to become your truth and identity, rather than Who God says you are.

Let me give you a personal example.

Last month, I broke an agreement I made about my identity with the enemy.

Here is the context: Up until that month, my husband Luke and I had not been physically apart for over 7 years. We are just always together and it is something I am so thankful for. We are living in Albania, I am 23 weeks pregnant and and he had to go back to America for a few things and so I have been alone in Albania for the past two weeks. I told him I would be fine. I told myself I would be fine.

But on the day he left, I was wrecked. I was in tears, I was overwhelmed, I felt alone and a familiar feeling of emptiness emerged in my body.

I let myself cry for awhile, and when I calmed back down, I tuned in and I realized, I knew this feeling well, it was the felt sense of abandonment.

In that moment, I realized I felt really young. I didn’t feel like thirty five year old, pregnant me.

I felt like little me. We carry parts of ourselves throughout life, they do not just go away and they need to be integrated and seen or they will continue to influence our behavior.

And because I noticed this, I began reflecting on past experiences where I had felt this sensation before.

Many memories began to surface, but there was a specific event that happened in my life where I had felt it most deeply. And in that moment of time, I did not realize it but I made an agreement with the enemy that I do not just “feel abandoned” I AM abandoned. “I am the type of person people leave behind. I am the type of person people use and then discard, or only come to when they need something and then leave again.”

These beliefs became part of my identity and I can reflect back as to how that identity influenced and shaped my life, my decisions, my faith, and relationships.

Then, I paused, and took time to notice what that sense of ”abandonment” felt like in my body because I know, as a trauma trained practitioner, this is the part that many people skip.

We convince ourselves that we can just “think better thoughts,” or stay busy and distract ourselves from pain we experience, but we forget, our body follows our thoughts and become imprinted with memories. and sometimes our thoughts follow our bodily sensations.

And this process will fuel certain agreements that can keep us stuck because we begin to identify the sensations of the emotions we experience as our identity and walk and live accordingly.

I took time to tune in and I felt heaviness in my chest, a sense of a collapsed posture, as if I wanted to crawl into the fetal position, like I couldn’t catch my breath, my heart beat racing, my face felt flushed and hot, I felt a pending sense of doom, my chin tucked, and my bottom lip puckered in sadness, and wetness (tears) in my eyes followed.

These bodily sensations are those that I have equated with the felt sense and identity of “I am abandoned” over the years.

Then I paused and asked myself a question, “though I feel abandoned, and I actually was during the time my body is currently patterning from the past, am I actually abandoned now?”

The answer was no. Yes, I was alone and pregnant in a foreign country, but I have friends here. Friends who have shown up in really great ways to remind me I am not alone.

I was also reminded of the gift of solitude.

There is a difference between isolation and solitude. And my soul needed some solitude and time with the Lord alone as He helped me unravel areas of my life that needed to be formed and sanctified in regard to this deep wound.

So as I engaged in the process, I realized my body needed to be reminded that the felt sense of being alone does not equal being abandoned.

This was a response my body was having due to a past core event with the theme of abandonment and loneliness, where I felt familiar bodily sensations.

In that moment I reminded myself that though I feel and sense being abandoned, that is not my identity or the truth in this moment.

“I am not abandoned. I am a child of God.”

Abandonment is not my identity, it was an agreement I made in my pain about my identity with the enemy long ago.

Somewhere along the years I had adopted an identity as an abandoned orphan.

And that false identity fogged up the lens I viewed life through and how I saw God and others, and my relational patterns followed.

I was fearful of getting close with people, and often kept them at arms length. I kept walls around myself.

And up until July 2025, I thought I had worked through all of those things over the years, because I no longer treated my relationships that way, however, I had never taken time to actually break the agreement I had made with the enemy, that my body was clinging to.

And as a result, when I had a familiar experience, I spiraled back into old thought patterns and an old identify emerged and needed tended to.

My body was still clinging to that old identity and agreement I had made.

Often times as Christian’s, we try to bypass our physical bodies, and this keeps us stuck. We tell ourselves to just pray more or some will even tell you to just drown yourself in positive thoughts and affirmations.

While prayer is incredible powerful, we must also remember we are embodied creations. Meaning, we do not just consist of a “mind” we also consist of a body with sensations and memory.

This is a biological truth written in our God designed physiology. We do not just “think” thoughts, we sense and remember them, implicitly or explicitly, depending on the age of which an experience occurs.

In light of this truth, part of walking as new creatures in Christ, also often needs to involve shedding old skins we began to wear when we made past agreements, conforming to the lies and ways of the world, and in order to do so, we need to tend to our mind, Spirit, AND body.

So I took time to actually break this agreement, and the two weeks I spent alone turned out to be a gift and an invitation to shed another layer.

I prayed for the Lord to help me break that agreement and to help me through the process, because I know I could not do it on my own, I needed the aide and indwelling of the Holy Spirit to help me rewire my neurons, my neuropeptides, and bodily sensations that had aligned with old patterns, and then I reclaimed the authority I have in Christ as a child of God by reminding myself of His words in scripture: “I am with you always (Matt 28:20)” “You have been bought with a price (1 Cor 6:20).” “You are my child (Gal 3:26).” “You are part of my household (Eph 2:19).” “Nothing can separate me from you (Rom 8:35-38*.”

Then I took time to savor the sensations my body experiences when I walk in the authority I have as a Child of God. A felt sense of peace and being anchored that shows up in my belly. My chest rises rather than collapses, my posture changes when I walk as my feet feel firmly planted, my breathing pattern slows and deepens and I can fully exhale, I feel warm and held, and I the embodiment and felt sense of peace and love, not just an intellectual concept of it.

I taught my body new experiences, like going on glimmer & prayer walks by myself in a nature. Spending time in solitude, practicing breath prayers, & biblical somatic movement, reminding my whole self to stay rooted in this new identity.

I share this as a reminder, that you have a mind, AND body, and Spirit that needs tended to. It is how we do not become formed to the patterned of the world, but are transformed. And it helps us walk in the truth that just because we feel a certain way, does not mean that is our identity.

I also share this to offer an exhortation: Be careful not to make agreements about your identity based on your emotions and felt senses. There is not “your truth,” there is only God’s truth. We fog up that lens when we try to define “truth” with feelings.

Doing so will attempt to bypass the authority we have been given in Christ and cause us to adopt false beliefs about ourselves, the world, and others.

It is such a clever tactic of satan, because if it happens at a young age, it can become a life long pattern that can shape your actions and wreak a lot of havoc until it is named, tended to, and

re-patterned with the authority of Jesus.

What agreements have you made with the enemy?

How do they show up in your body, your words, and your actions?

How have they influenced the life you currently lead and the decisions you make daily?

The first step is to notice and name them... The next?

Break them with the authority you have in Christ, and remember to bring your body along the process.

Our body & emotional triggers are a reminder that sanctification is not a “one and done” event, it is an ongoing process

“ I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:1-2