Candace Cameron Bure and Trauma Therapist Talk Jesus, Emotions and Mental Health
By Movieguide® Contributor
Actress Candace Cameron Bure and NYT Best Selling author and trauma therapist Dr. Anita Phillips recently got together on Bure’s podcast to talk about how Jesus expressed emotions and why it’s so important.
“Jesus was an extremely emotionally expressive man. He expressed his emotional pain in ways that we would never do, in the way that our culture has trained us,” Phillips said.
“Jesus is crying outside the tomb of Lazarus in public, a man,” she continued. “Let’s think about how our culture would respond to that. We see Jesus in the temple, angry and showing it.”
Jesus’ emotions are shown throughout his life, including his rage, joy and sorrow.
“We see Jesus in Gethsemane absolutely overwhelmed. He literally says, ‘I am sorrowful unto death’ meaning ‘my emotional pain is so deep right now I feel like I’m going to die right here.’ We see him going to the three closest disciples saying, basically, please don’t leave me alone,” the therapist told Bure.
“Paul writes…that Jesus cried out to the one who could save him from death with loud crying and tears,” she continued. “Jesus is begging his father for a break. That is the emotion of fear.”
She points out that Jesus freely expressed his emotional anguish without consideration or care for who might see.
“We see sadness, we hear anger, we see fear, emotional fear, and we never see Jesus repent. And many of us would consider a prayer like that to be us breaking down, to be us not having faith if we went to God begging for a break,” she said.
She previously expressed her thoughts about this on Twitter in October 2021: “Despite the fact that Jesus got lonely, ugly cried when He was scared, had table-flipping anger and asked “why?” when He felt abandoned by His Father, you believe expressing emotional pain means weak faith. ??????????”
She told Bure, “And so I really want people to lean into: When is the last time you allowed yourself to fully experience and express your emotional pain the way that we saw Jesus do? Because we consider that bad in our everyday lives, but if we want to be conformed [in]to the image of his son, we would not be avoiding our emotional pain in that way.”
Dr. Phillips wants everyone to understand that when someone experiences emotional pain, it’s because they have a need.
“We need to look at… understanding our emotional pain because we don’t mind our emotional pleasure, right? But emotional pain is a hunger pang for a need. We have emotional pain when we need something that is fundamental to our survival,” she shared.
“So when we are sad, it is because we need connection. We experience sadness when we’ve been disconnected from someone or something valuable to us, and sadness says I’m hungry for connection,” she said. “Anger says I am hungry for value and boundaries.”
When people ignore their “pangs,” the feelings can overwhelm them and leave them with unmet needs.
Dr. Phillips recently shared support for trauma victims on her Instagram:
Trauma can be like an earthquake. There are aftershocks. Though the abuse is in the past, where the effects remain present, where the ground of your heart continues to shake, and where the water may continue to rage inside of us, we can say, “Peace, be still.” We can speak it in our spirits, live it in relationships, strengthen it in therapy, and nurture it in our bodies. The ground in us may have been shaken and we may be used to living in the aftermath of its quake, but our God is a rebuilder of ancient ruins and restorer of age-old foundations—even within you.
You have been known to God from the womb, and you are still the divinely designed creation you have always been. Nothing can change that. Trauma may have shaped you, but it didn’t make you. God made you and you are still exactly who God created you to be.
Bure formerly had a more negative view of emotions, but after she heard Phillips’s wisdom on the subject, she shared that she completely understood what Phillips said.
Movieguide® recently reported why Bure thinks prayer is a crucial element of a relationship with God:
“Praying should never be a last resort ever. It should be the start,” Bure told her brother Kirk Cameron on TAKEAWAYS. “Get on your knees, get on your face, pray wherever you’re standing or seated all the time.”
“God doesn’t always answer prayers the way we want Him to, but [prayer] is so important because it not only connects us to Him but it’s also just saying, ‘Lord, I am dependent upon you no matter what happens,’” she continued. “But you reach out to Him and you pray and you ask.”
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