Feelin' Ain't Easy
Feeling felt like a curse from an early age. Too sensitive. So emotional. I heard that a lot. One of the earliest stories my mother shared about me was how much I cried as an infant. My family thought it would be amusing to tape record me crying, it was that much. Guess no one thought to wonder why I cried so much. Let’s unpack that another time.
I learned to carry the burden of overwhelming emotion alone. Learned to smile on the outside or be the quiet one, while drowning in a puddle of tears internally. My earliest somatic memories are how someone’s hurtful words entered my chest like knives. Or rejection sizzled in my palms and folded my body in on itself.
I believed something might be wrong with me. Some hex had been cast on me and I was destined to live an excruciating life. This is partially true. I would just add an excruciating AND beautifully rich life.
Nothing was wrong with me. Nothing is wrong with me. I only lacked the understanding and skills of how to feel. No one taught me, and I’m betting no one taught you. Like most people I talk to, I thought my emotions would consume me and maybe even kill me. It is only the avoidance of feeling emotions that ends up consuming us. Feeling everything actually liberates us.
I have learned how to feel. The greatest path there has been the somatic understanding and practice I’ve cultivated. It is indeed a practice. Clumsy at first, and still at times. More awareness dawns, more pause, more capacity to connect to the inner sensations. I’ve learned other methods and skills, allowing me to get into relationship with emotions and allow them to do what they do. Transmute and transform. They never stay the same with attention and relationship and acceptance. Don’t try to change them, because like an obstinate child they will dig their heels in. Parts work has been crucial in this regard.
I thought I’d share an example of what this looks like in reality. Its not smooth or graceful. Its fitful and at times difficult to catch oneself before the reactivity train has left the station. But wherever I can jump on, I put it into practice. Even if its after a big emotional reaction.
Which brings me to about a week ago when I had one of the most emotionally dysregulated days I’ve had in a really long time. It pretty much took my day for a detour and consumed it.
Although feeling emotions is my daily practice, like exercise or meditation, I still often find myself in the position of trying to find my way out of feeling through projection, distraction, or victimhood. I can get lost in the story and upsetting details, telling it over and over to anyone who will listen (or even those who don’t want to listen). I see myself doing it, and sometimes I just can’t slow down enough to do something different in the moment.
That something different is to feel what’s happening in my body. To be able to just notice what is actually present. To follow it’s path to whatever it wants to show me. To carry through the impulse it wants to express that would allow it to complete it’s arc.
There are a few triggers that can really take me from my frontal cortex right into my hind brain and bring the scared child in me front and center. Typically they have to do with boundary violations/territorial issues, sensory overload, and disregard/disrespect. I definitely have more, but these are a few I had to contend with on that day, from various avenues, all at the same time.
I kinda wanted vengeance if I’m being honest. A primal protector in me came raging up to take care of the scared child who was very present. Some of it was petty stuff, but when you have a repeated track of how certain violations feel, you often make a mountain out of a mole hill. In other words, it feels big even when it isn’t because it reminds you of the same experience you had when it was big and you were small.
Between the various circumstances heaping one on top of the other that day, I was not doing well. My body was in a real state and I could be found walking around the house grumbling and cursing, after I had already had a couple of reactive confrontations. Beyond that mental stuff, my body was super tense, I was feeling heart palpitations, I couldn’t think clearly, and a lot of adrenaline was running through my body. I felt internally overwhelmed by my own emotions as well as everyone else’s, and I was overly reactive in my response to everything.
There was finally a moment where I knew I had to tend to it and get present with myself to process what was happening in my body. I started off by taking a shower, because negative ions and nervous system regulation. I began just noticing all the sensations in my body. I didn’t try to fix any of it or change it, I just noticed it and allowed it to be there. I narrated it to myself and felt the physical sensations for as long as I could. I also asked what parts of me were showing up through those feelings. I could identify a very young part that wanted her needs to matter but didn’t feel they did. I could also identify a part that wanted to protect that younger part fiercely. That protector part was the one raging and taking over. After the shower, I sent a voice note to a friend who I knew would understand and would be okay with my venting it out. That validation of my experience was actually something these parts needed, so I found a way to meet their needs consciously.
Then I moved on to mirror work because I knew the energies needed movement, release, and integration. Doing that in front of the mirror would allow me to really send the message back to my system that the trajectory of needs was being completed. It makes a massive impact on the integration of parts.
In the mirror I allowed first the young part of me to show herself. I played her energy out through my movements, gestures, and words. The protector part then came online and I allowed that part to play out in the same way. They were very different energies but both wanting the same thing, to make sure I mattered and my needs were relevant in some way. I began to think about a workshop I recently attended, by Sarah Kimberly, on the shadow personalities of chronic illness and the healthier archetype that could be embodied to resolve the needs the shadows were trying to achieve. I remembered one of her sets of shadow girls, as she calls them, and the archetype to work toward embodying. The shadow girls are outraged girl and entitled girl, and the embodied version of these is the warrior. I felt the warrior was the energy that could hold both my young vulnerable part and the protector part in an integrated way. So, after I allowed those parts to play out in the mirror, I began embodying the energy of the warrior. I stood proudly and fearlessly. I was fierce in my desire to protect myself but in a much more grounded way. A confident energy began to take over. It was full of don’t mess with me vibes but it was not coming from fear. It was coming from knowing and loving myself. It felt calm and certain and safe. From that energy I brought into my heart these other identified parts and spoke to them lovingly. In that moment we formed a trinity that relaxed those parts into the warrior in me. The warrior who is both a loving open hearted woman and one who will safeguard her boundaries and well being. Very Queen of Swords energy.
Once I could feel my body relax, I closed out and moved on to getting in bed and writing. Writing is one way I can feel the tangle of jumbled threads in my head unravel and be put into their individual rightful place. So I did a timed free write to get out anything I hadn’t accessed yet or still needed to be expressed. When I do a timed free write, my pen stays on the paper and I write without thinking of what to write. It ensures I get closer to what is under the surface of things. I was able to fall asleep after that.
By the time I woke up the next day, my body felt different. I was able to move on and not hold on to the story or loop it repeatedly in my mind. I could feel that the whole experience was sitting differently within me and my emotions had completed their arc. They transmuted and I transformed. I made the changes and took the actions needed. Everything I did brought me into closer relationship with myself. Did I have to feel a lot of uncomfortable stuff? Yes. Was it easy? No. But the war within was no longer raging, and the sweetness of self intimacy was well worth it.
These emotions are no longer a curse. They are my path home.