More Thoughts on Feelings
A Musing About How I Process the "What The Fuck" Moments
If you missed my first installment about what I do with my feelings, I Don’t Shove My Feelings Down Anymore, Now What? click on over to check it out.
I'm having a hard day. I’m writing this on the Wednesday before the Sunday it hits your email inbox. I’m having a hard day because I found out some unfortunate news this morning that also happens to be extremely inconvenient. But as the common phrase goes, when is unfortunate news ever actually convenient?
This news gets piled atop the ever growing pile that seems to continually morph in my life - something will get pulled out of the pile eventually and it all feels more manageable until three more things take its place - and said pile already had a few unfortunate things of this nature barely surviving (rotting their slow painful deaths?) while I figure out how to deal with them. In the meantime, my emotional state ebbs and flows through the feelings of stress, discouragement, exhaustion and questioning life choices that somehow may have - or directly did - lead me here. Which all usually culminates with a big fat What The Fuck along with some tears and ugly face scrunching that I’ll spare the world.
Compartmentalization was a skill I picked up early on, way back when I was a wee little one. It’s one of the coping skills that most likely quite literally kept me as sane as possible and alive during my childhood, adolescence and young adult life. It allowed my brain to put away all the awful experiences and painful emotions so I could put on a smile, get straight As and pretend I had any semblance of firm ground beneath my feet.
I do my best now not to let compartmentalization take over fully because I know now that while it served me then, it’s not the most healthy way to navigate life now that I have other tools to pull out of my very large metaphoric tool shed. That being said, it does help when I need to get through a work day or finish my grocery shopping or walk my dogs, because while I need to feel all of the things to move through them, I don’t need to feel all of the things in their entirety, simultaneously, right now. Because that’s way too fucking overwhelming and I’ve got stuff to do.
Deep down it was really just my need to prove myself to myself and everyone else around me exactly how tough I was.
It’s taken years of self-reflection, inner work, therapy and time to find more balance both in my inner world and how I interact with the external. My M.O. was living in the extremes and I was proud of that. I made it my identity. Deep down it was really just my need to prove myself to myself and everyone else around me exactly how tough I was. See, I’m this tough.
Partly to keep people at arm’s length, partly to feel good about myself.
Growing up neglected, abused and abandoned didn’t set me up for much success emotionally or relationally. What it did do, was embed a message inside me that I’m only good enough if I prove myself worthy, and even then I will fall short. Every time. In it’s most basic form, the message is really: I’m not good enough and never will be. The ever present lose-lose.
But over time, due to my tenacity, courage, ambition, determination and resilience I somehow turned all of that into a healthier form of motivation and equilibrium. I don’t have to be the toughest person, or woman, in the room anymore. I don’t have to be perfect (nor is that even possible). I don’t have to be extreme to be worthy. For some things, maybe more things than we Americans care to accept, good enough is actually good enough. Which is not an excuse to be completely laissez faire about everything all the time, but more so an invitation to let the color come back to my knuckles. And to let myself rest when my body asks. And to welcome perspectives different than my own. And to flow with the current sometimes rather than always trudging forward against it, waste deep pulling my precious cargo for miles.
Don’t get me wrong, challenging our status quo and advocating for justice and chasing our dreams are valid and empowering and important work. But I don’t have to lose myself because of them.
So, balance. I think that’s what this is all really about. Balance in our emotions and how and when we move through them. Balance in relationships and investing in them while nourishing ourselves. Balance in what we choose to invite into our lives and what our boundaries help us protect. Balance in facing the What The Fuck moments, taking a beat and a few deep breaths to help center us. Which by the way, is one of the best first things we can do when we need to face our shit. Because how am I supposed to navigate this real shitty thing from an internal place of chaos?
Like we have an internal muscle that is the center of our being and when we can isolate it and flex it, we become stronger, more stable.
In the last few years I have started to actually grasp the notion of being able to find my inner grounding, regardless of my external circumstances or the slew of emotions I might be feeling. It’s difficult and sometimes I do it poorly, but each time I do it I get better at it. Like we have an internal muscle that is the center of our being and when we can isolate it and flex it, we become stronger, more stable.
Once flexed, it’s like the doors of my tool shed of coping skills swing open and the ones I need in that moment shine brilliantly, gently imploring, Take me, take me!
Today, two of those things included words. Driving home from the unfortunate-news-event, a bookstore on the corner drew me in. Instead of rushing home to dive back into work, I let myself meander the shelves, surrounded by a thing I love: books. They felt comforting for some reason, even though I can’t afford to buy any. Being in their presence was soothing.
Once home, now slightly more calm, after indulging in a very sweet baked good and homemade matcha tea latte, I let my own words come to the surface, and you’re reading my cathartic expression.
Now I’m off to therapy to process my experiences, and their sometimes hazardous emotions, with a professional.
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The messy truth of being human!