You are amazing.

Emotions are information, not illnesses.

We’ve almost lost our ability to sit with emotional pain. But pain, especially emotional pain, is actually part of being human. Even as Christians, we are not exempt from pain…or joy or awe or grief. All of the emotions move us to God.

Too often though our emotions are being made into illnesses. Think about a teen girl who gets rejected by someone she likes, who wants to belong, who keeps trying to find that close circle of friends and can’t seem to break in. That kind of hurt is normal. There are lots of emotions felt. It’s not a sign that something’s wrong with this teen girl. This is normal adolescent angst. And it really does hurt!!!

The emotions (all of them) around the anxiety, the loneliness, the failure, etc. do hurt and are uncomfortable. They also serve a purpose. They push us toward growth. For example, the fear of being alone motivates us to reach out, to listen better, to show up for others, to become the kind of friend we want to have.

Instead of labeling every difficult emotion as a problem to fix, maybe we can start seeing these moments as invitations to some brave decisions.

Emotional pain doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re human—and it’s often through that ache that God shapes our compassion and connection.

When emotions are illnesses, the pharmaceutical industry is medicalizing every aspect of human experience…to make money. This is a problem.

Amazingly emotions are information and you are full of supra-emotions. Super you is able to handle supra-emotions. Supra-emotions are not ordinary emotions. They are deeper, more integrative emotional states that can hold multiple emotions at once. (Look at complicated you!)

Think of supra-emotions as emotional frameworks—containers large enough to hold the full complexity of what we feel. Supra-emotions don’t replace our other emotions; they give them shape and direction. They allow joy and sorrow, peace and anxiety, love and anger to exist side by side without tearing us apart.

The key patterns of supra-emotions are:

• They are meta-emotional: they hold, integrate, or transform other emotions rather than reacting to them.
• They are sustaining: they persist through trials and seasons of tension.
• They are orientation-shaping: they guide behavior, thought, and spiritual posture.

This may sound abstract at first until you realize how true and amazing it is. You are amazingly created.

Joy, for example, can coexist with sorrow, grief, or fear. You’ve probably experienced this in moments when tears and laughter somehow meet.

Peace isn’t the absence of conflict or stress. It’s an overarching steadiness that remains even when everything around you feels uncertain. You can even feel this peace when deep in overwhelmed land. When you’ve known peace like this, you know it’s more than “peace.” It is a presence.

Compassion holds sorrow, empathy, and even righteous anger together.

Gratitude can be felt beside disappointment or loss.

Awe can contain fear, wonder, joy, and humility.

And then there is love-—the compass emotion that orients every other emotion.

Love transcends fear, anger, and resentment. It transforms, directs, and absorbs other emotions instead of being overtaken by them. A person may feel fear, sadness, or frustration, yet love empowers them to respond with patience, kindness, or forgiveness.

Love also integrates emotions that seem to oppose each other. It can coexist with grief, disappointment, or anger without losing its strength. (That is an amazing thought.) Love holds tension. It allows us to mourn while still expressing deep affection for God or others.

Love doesn’t just accompany other emotions, it guides them. Fear can paralyze. Anger can destroy. Sadness can isolate. But love redirects these emotions toward care, reconciliation, and action. When 1 Corinthians 13:13 says, “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love,” it points to this very truth. Scripture understood long before this science that love has the power to integrate and sustain the human soul.

Love is enduring and transcendent. Unlike fleeting emotions that rise and fall, love persists through time, trial, and complexity. It shapes who we are and how we live.

Supra-emotions move us toward transcendent emotions—those that lift us beyond self-interest and connect us to something larger, whether that’s other people, humanity, nature, or God. Transcendence is something outside of you validates you as worthy. You and I both know that this is Jesus. All emotions do lead us to God. All of them, especially because we have these supra-emotions.

The following is the list of the core transcendent emotions that are scientifically categorized as such:

• Awe
• Gratitude
• Compassion
• Love
• Humility
• Reverence

Where do all of these emotions lead to?

• Decenters the self.
• Connects to something larger–others, creation, or God.
• Motivates prosocial behavior–kindness, generosity, forgiveness.

Where do all of these emotions lead to? Making the world a better place. They lead right through the teachings of Jesus. All of them.

So emotional you… You who are amazingly created… You are made to be able to make these brave decisions despite feeling like you are an emotional mess. You can do this.

p.s. Another list of transcendent emotions included in broader definitions (not core):

• Admiration – Being inspired by another’s virtue or excellence, leading you to grow rather than compete.
• Elevation – The warm, lifted feeling you get when witnessing moral beauty or goodness (closely linked to Jesus’ Beatitudes-type moments).
• Hope – Hope involves me and my vulnerability (so many emotions). I can’t offload this to God.
• Forgiveness – To practice forgiveness takes something outside of ourselves—transcendence—to help us do this hard thing.
• Joy – Delight that arises not from possession, but from connection and meaning. Joy involves faces.
• Peace- Inner and relational harmony rooted in something larger than you.
• Empathic joy – Rejoicing in others’ happiness or success (opposite of envy).
• Moral inspiration/moral beauty – Feeling called toward moral excellence or virtue.