I have been suppressing my emotions for as long as I can remember. I never felt quite safe enough to feel them, and my lizard brain still wants to tell me that I am a burden when I do try to express them. I get told that I am too much, that I am overreacting, that I am being ridiculous. Am I? Or do we just live in a society that constantly tells you not to feel them?
Men are reduced to anger being the only acceptable way to emote. Women, we can be sad, I guess, although I am only recently getting comfortable expressing that emotion. This is what happens when you grow up in a completely co-dependent household, when you are held responsible for everyone else’s feelings. Managing the moods of everyone around me felt safer to me than dealing with the issues that were going on in my life. Those neural pathways have been so well worn that I still get caught in that trap.
We all hold within us a well of emotional capacity, along with mental and physical capacity. It was almost as if I kept pulling buckets of water out and giving them to everyone else without leaving anything for myself. My well dried up, and that was about the time I hit the metaphorical rock bottom. I became depressed, hopeless as to whether I even mattered in this world. What was the point exactly?
When you begin to question your existence on this planet, a lot of grief comes up. I was handling that pretty well thanks to therapy that provided me a safe place to let some of these repressed feelings come out. What I wasn’t prepared for was the flood of anger that was tangled up on all that sadness. There is some rage in there that needs to be processed. People kept trying to fix my hostile energy, to solve all of my problems, to tell me that it was in the past so I should just “get over it.”
This isn’t how emotions actually work, and all that does is show me that you are uncomfortable with my feelings, not the other way around. I have every right to be angry about my childhood, angry at things that happened to me. The problem is that I don’t know how to be angry in a productive, AKA not harmful to others, fashion. All I’ve ever done is Karen all over the place, and that is not that type of person that I am or want to be.
I am, But I don't know How to be. An emotion That seems so Distant for me. Hijacked, It takes over My voice. Tunneled, Becomes My vision. Guilt Is the Aftermath.
Running was always my go-to for dealing with my emotions, but I haven’t really been interested in doing that recently. I don’t know if it’s the depression, the fact that it’s getting colder, or that my body is simply tired and wants to enter hibernation mode for the upcoming winter. It was starting to feel as though I was running away, trying to escape my emotions, instead of going through them like DBT teaches.
Learning how to honor those emotions that have been demonized your whole life is a fucking process, to say the least. I have messed up too may times to count at this point, and I have unearthed some valuable lessons while falling on my ass. Why are they always on the ground? The way I see it: I’ve been fucking things up since 1984. Cheers to fucking it up a few more times.
Mad love, Jenna
