C's Journal - Emotions: From overwhelming states to regulated moments

[C.]

01/21/2015

Emotions: from overwhelming states to regulated moments.

Feelings.

I've been starting with my body.  Trying to "feel" the emotion and I'm amazed at how physical emotions can be.  I learned this from an early childhood therapist who was bad therapeutically with adults, but what she taught us about kids stuck with me for me then and for me right now.

When I feel sadness in my throat it's because I've had to suppress that emotion being told that it wasn't significant or real.  But it was, so it sits like a lump in my throat asking to be let out and when I write, speak or cry I feel the sweet release of my truth.

Fears settles in my wrists and makes them tremble so the fear of making a mistake grows because it's hard to do much when your hands quiver.  That fear subsides when I tell myself that it's ok.  I lovingly nurture me and validate the fear.

Then there's the tummy pain.  That one hits me unexpectedly and suddenly.  Usually in the form of a sweet memory of a moment no longer present in my life.  Moments that I miss.  Like allowing and watching my 3 year-old son take of his shoes to feel the soft summer lawn.

Followed by a headache remembering how my own parents let me go everywhere without shoes, bragging about my toughness or puzzled I wasn't hurt.  And then the realization that I was hurt and my brother had foot surgery because we weren't protected from our childhood whims, given a limit to our shoeless feet or coatless adventures that lead to hypothermia.  And my childhood friend's joke about us hippie-raised children when she says "where were all the grown-ups?"

Then relief and sighs at the sweet release of emotion, not unbearable, simply real & true.  No more clown faces with exaggerated smiles.  No more hiding.  I'm being set free, and coming home, to my own serenity.

[schrödinger's cat]

That's what I needed to hear this morning, so thanks, C. I've been wondering what on earth I should do with this vague, nebulous sense of grief I'm feeling. Your post made me realize I was looking in the wrong direction - I was trying to get away from it, when I should probably move into it a bit and find out what it's like and what it's about. What fun.    But it's necessary, isn't it?

[C.]

Exactly.  That's my current stage with my childhood reality.  Grief.  I know that I couldn't allow myself to feel it before b/c I couldn't regulate.  I think that I knew on a subconscious level that the pain would shut off my brain and then anything, eating, personal hygiene, reading, working became nearly impossible.  With therapy, this forum, Faith, and Walker's book I've learned and am ready to feel these emotions b/c I know that they will pass.  I find myself writing, reading and watching shows that help me experience the pain...it's kind of like they're a doorway in but I now have control and can turn around to leave when it's time.