Jennie Allen truly has a knack for writing the books that I need when I need them. A long season of dealing with emotion, mental health, and being lost on how to actually deal with it all preceded my reading of this book. I was feeling lost. Then I got an email about Jennie's new book and the launch team. I applied and was so happy to receive an ARC from Netgalley! Every part of this book has been incredible. It's truly written from Jennie's heart to ours. I will re-read "Untangle Your Emotions" repeatedly in the future. There is always something new to gain from re-reading it!

FEEL FREE TO FEEL
Would you rather fix than feel? Is your life too hectic to spend time feeling? Do you eat your emotions with a bowl of ice cream? Or do your emotions run away with you and drag you off into a ditch? Whatever relationship you have with your emotions, you need this book!
In Untangle Your Emotions, Jennie Allen makes a complex topic accessible, understandable and full of hope. She shares that this book came out of the work she did in Get Out of Your Head. In that earlier manuscript, Allen provided practical tools to short-circuit negative thought loops. We don’t have to be victims of run-away, toxic thoughts. We can CHOOSE what occupies our minds. But even as Allen was writing that book, she realized there is another tool in our God-given toolbelt – emotions.
In Untangle Your Emotions, Allen helps us see that ALL of our emotions are created by God to inform us and connect us to Him and one another. Unfortunately, most of us possess a limited emotional vocabulary.
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
When members of my small group say they are fine, I frequently ask it if is a real ‘fine’ or a Sunday morning ‘fine.’ Nothing to see here, folks. I am fine.
Our emotions can be a foreign language. We don’t grasp what they’re telling us because we scarcely know the words. So, the first steps are notice and name our feelings. But then she encourages us to FEEL those emotions.
I confess I am a fix-it kind of person. I don’t want people to be sad or discouraged or suffering, so I work to fix the problem. This is my default setting. I don’t like sitting with uncomfortable emotions, either so again I rush to resolve. I am so busy researching I don’t spend any time feeling. I am learning to feel the feelings and then choose. Ah! Choose returns. We can choose to do this all with God. We can choose the unvarnished truth about what we feel.
Allen gives us simple but thoughtful steps to sort through the tangle of emotions. This can include making sure we are physically well. That we are drinking enough water, that our thyroid isn’t out of whack, that we are getting exercise and sleep. This is a terrific list, but I also appreciated Allen’s openness about her family’s own experiences with emotional health struggles. Sometimes we need counseling or even medication to find our way through the thick ropes of emotions that can truly bind us.
Much of our society is stuck in a mire of anxiety, depression, hopelessness. According to a recent CDC report, 3 in 5 teen-age girls felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021. Teenage boys scored an even higher percentage. And it isn’t just teen-agers feeling this way. I facilitate a support group for women who are struggling with many of those same emotions.
So why do YOU need this book? Do you have emotions?
The good news is that God intended us to feel all the feels. Just as He created the array of colors we enjoy, He created a whole range of emotions to enrich our lives with texture and meaning.
So feel free to feel. But maybe read Jennie Allen’s new book at the same time.

Untangle Your Emotions is a very interesting and informative book about...emotions. I was engaged with this book from page one, learning that you need to dig deep to figure out the real reason for your feelings, especially when your know in your head the feelings you are feeling are not rational. But I especially enjoyed the section on how to deal with emotions, good practical advice is always helpful when you are trying to control those irrational feelings.

Jennie gave some really great learning lessons as well. The examples she used were so relatable and fun to read.

Overall a fantastic book on emotion and how to handle them.

I have always been one to suppress my feelings for many reasons. Not wanting to cause a scene, not wanting attention, not wanting to be seen as a failure, etc. This book has helped me accept the emotions that I used to think I was plagued with but now see as such a gift of connection.

I’ve been reading Jenny’s books for the past two years and have read 4 of them. They are so authentic, challenging, and PRACTICAL for everyday life.

This book was the personal development book I didn’t know I needed. Thank you, NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this early release book.

I don’t have the words to say how great this book on emotions was but, I HIGHLY recommend to everyone. I’ve been really trying to work on my mental health and emotions lately which is why I turned to this book.

I felt like the author wrote this book specifically for me. It was so real, raw, and relatable.

I’ve been a long time Jennie Allen fan - she always speaks on topics that are exactly what I need! I loved Find Your People, and I was really excited to read this one too. Jennie’s writing is a conversational style, and she details how to feel your emotions instead of avoiding them. This would be a good book for someone who is just starting to dive into this, but for myself it felt a little too beginner compared to her other books. I would still recommend this one but in the future would like to see books from her that are a little deeper!

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I have loved Jennie Allen’s books in the past. I’ve learned a lot about my relationship with God through her books. This book though felt surface level, fake and overall a repeat of other books. I know she is trying to reach the Gen Z population but it’s possible to reach multiple generations in the same book, but Jennie didn’t do that here

I have mixed feelings about this book. Overall I enjoyed the book. There were things that I found extremely helpful and then there were things that I felt were more a matter of opinion and I didn't feel like I could agree but rather I just agreed to disagree. I feel that's probably pretty standard for religious self-help books. I think it's a matter of personal opinion I suppose. I do feel that this book can be helpful to anyone open to the topic and willing to brave the journey of looking closer to their own personal feelings and emotions. I enjoyed the authors writing style. I felt the book moved at a good pace and was relatable. I think the book gives some decent general advice. I'd be open to reading some of her other books in the future. Thank you netgalley for sharing this book with me in exchange for my personal opinion.

Thank you to @PRHaudio for an advanced listening copy and #NetGalley for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What to expect in this book:

-Practical, digestible advice
-Real life stories and experiences
-Scripture and biblical evidence
-Easy to read/not clinical
-Emotional tools and skills

Thoughts

I love everything that Jennie Allen writes and this is no exception. I have read all but one of her previous books and I love the heart that she puts into her writing. It is evident that much of her own life and personal story is involved in this book and that she had to wade through a slew of emotions herself to be able to articulate emotional health and understanding in this book. In her previous book, Get Out of Your Head, she talks about the impact of our thoughts on our mental and emotional health, what God and the Bible have to say about this, and how to manage and greater control our thoughts. In Untangle Your Emotions, she similarly looks at how our emotional health is not just a part of our overall health, but how greater understanding and compassion towards our emotions is not something to shy aware from, but something we are called to do.

As a mental health therapist, I love talking about and learning about emotions. They can be a difficult subject for people, but they are some of our greatest indicators of personal, professional, relational, and spiritual health. Jennie does an amazing job of demonstrating the purpose and gift that emotions bring to us as human beings. She also reminds us that emotions connect us to God. There are practical exercises and statements throughout the book that are helpful for any reader to greater connect to their emotions and learn more about themselves.

This will definitely be a book that I will recommend to my Christian clients and all those looking to learn more about how to sit with their emotions and have greater compassion on themselves and others. This book published on 2/13.

Jennie Allen truly hit the mark on this one. Such a needed book in this time and a topic that is not talked about enough. Everyone should read this book.

Jennie Allen has once again written a book that is well researched, scripturally based, and deeply honest. Untangle Your Emotions is both challenging and informative. I will read it over and over just like Get Out of Your Head. Thank you Jennie for this guidepost to embracing a healthy relationship with my emotions.

I’m grateful to NetGalley and Water Brook Multnomah publishing for an advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

“Feelings don’t heal when we ignore them; they heal when we are wrapped up by the people we love in the middle of them.”

Loved this book. Sometimes we need to be reminded that we have permission to feel our feelings.

Jennie always writes in a relatable way without sounding like she’s trying too hard to.

Jeannie bring great insight and perspective in this novel, proposing that we view our emotions as gifts. She gives tips and tools to utilize your emotions for your benefit from a biblical perspective.

Of course I thinking I'm fine I don't really need this but it's Jennie, so I'm gonna read it anyway. Boy was I surprised first few pages right off the bat. Kinda got me thinking and feeling and maybe even some crying Sometimes there's a little things that make a snap yell or just wanna pull the covers up over ahead at night. Those are feelings, feelings, that we deny feelings we pushed aside feelings we just stuff down, pretend they're not there, and we move along to the next thing until we can't!

This is just what I need to break down and learn how to process things and deal with them instead of just brushing them under the covers and pretending they don't exist.

God definitely put this book on my hands at the right time!

Untangle Your Emotions by Jennie Allen
Jennie Allen writes a new book on becoming a healthier version of you by feeling your feelings rather than fixing them.

After reading Allen’s book, “Find Your People,” with a bible study last year, I was so excited to receive this ARC! It did have a few good one-liners about emotions and how we should be using them as a way to connect to ourselves, people, and God. But overall, this book was not what I thought it was going to be. When I am reading a Christian author, I hope that the information that I am reading is based on Biblical teaching. Much of what I read was Allen’s own thoughts and experiences, most of which I could not relate to. It almost felt as though she was speaking to people who picked up the book not realizing she was trying to spread the Gospel through it. I have no problem with this, but I just didn’t see it going much deeper. She put a lot of emphasis on what her therapist said rather than what the Bible says. I was almost a quarter into the book before a verse was quoted. When there was scripture it seemed to be used out of context. What was said was very repetitive and throughout the book she kept making promises for later in the book. I don’t feel like I ever got to those promises. All in all, this is not a book I would recommend. It just fell flat for me, but I really did enjoy her previous work and ongoing efforts towards a gospel-centered community.

I loved this book, how honest she was about her and husband's stories. As in her previous books she gave a workable plan and tips, backed with Scripture . She points back to Jesus and helps people to see how The Bible is basis for all emotions

This book was phenomenal! I didn't realize I had been concealing and controlling my emotions, instead of feeling them. This book is helping me notice what I feel, name those feelings, and to FEEL those feelings. I am starting to feel present again, instead of just trying to get by every day and focus on what's coming next. I highly recommend this book.

If you are struggling to allow yourself experience your emotions and learn from this then this is the book for you. Jennie shares her story and embraces vulnerability to teach us how to honor God and the emotions He created.

I devoured this book in less than a week! Jennie writes from a place of experience and humility about a topic often misunderstood in the Christian community— feelings! I appreciated her practical, biblical take on the God-given purpose of emotions and what to do when we have them. I have been putting the wisdom of this book into practice for the last month and it has already brought me closer to God and others. This is a book I will revisit for years to come!

I love the way Jennie write and connects with her audience. She invites you in. You feel as if you’re in her own living room sharing a cup of coffee. If you’re feeling like you need a refresh from the ordinary things in life, this book will give you the tools to work through your emotions and know what you feel, is normal.