I have to let myself feel
So, I have been told by the therapy family, and I have read in the workbooks, and it has been reiterated by my support community...it is ok to feel. It is ok to feel ALL emotions. I'm sorry, even after all this time, there are still some emotions that I just do not like to feel. I am thinking I could go through a lifetime of "emotional regulation" training and I am still not going to enjoy feeling sad, lonely, afraid, scared, or apprehensive. I may not even get comfortable with "sitting" with those emotions. Call it willfulness, call it stubbornness, call it whatever, yet I just do not like those feelings.
They still happen though. They still happen and they still stick around and there is still nothing I can do about it to make them go away.
When I went through the Lonnie stuff, I remember it was an emotional roller coaster. I am sure it was even more than I remember as there are parts of it that are kind of a blur or just kind of ran together. I had emotions coming to the surface that I had not felt...or had managed not to feel, in a long time. I also remember not choosing the best methods of handling those. Sometimes I really do wonder how my therapy family has not sent me on my way. They all say I do not frustrate them. Maybe we all just have different definitions of frustration.
This new abuse stuff has stirred up the emotion bucket again, yet it is different than the Lonnie stuff. I am not even sure how to describe the difference, yet it is. Maybe it is the verbal/non-verbal stuff. With the Lonnie stuff I didn't have words for the emotions because I was not aware of the correct word to put with the emotion I was feeling. With this, it is not a matter of not knowing which multiple choice item to pick, it is a matter that the actual skill of verbal communication is compromised. The whole concept of communication is different, so why wouldn't the emotional communication be different too?
A piece I have learned from this all so far - I have to let myself feel. This is hard to do as I have spent so many years shutting my feeling down. I have learned that my emotions are a communication. If I am feeling something, especially something I want to shut down, it is generally something in me trying to get a message across. It is very difficult to be patient and treat that emotion with respect and feel it when all you want to do is run as far away from it as you can.
I have a long way to go with it. 99% of the time, I have no clue what the communication is because I am too busy having this fight with myself between wanting to shut down the emotion and knowing that I can't, that I need to feel it and try to listen to it. That argument is so loud, I can't hear what the emotion is trying to tell me. At least I try, that is a big step right there.
It hurts. Feeling hurts. The "flashes" that the hurt produces are violent as well. Trust me, my brain can be very convincing in that "make it stop" department. I am working on not flipping the anger switch, hiding behind being mad. It is hard, again, lots of years of practice.
So if I go back and look at the questions from the last round in the book and look at the need to work on the dissociation, I am reminded of the thoughts I had the other day while thinking of it all. I was thinking to myself, do I really need to "feel it", can't it be ok to just leave it as "someone hurt my little girl"? I mean, I acknowledge that it happened, I am tying pieces together, yet do I really have to have this moment where I have to feel it personally? Can't I just keep it as the Littlest One? It sounded good in my mind.
I rationalized even more with it all, even thinking about my being upset that someone hurt my littlest one. Had I "sufficiently" been upset enough? If I was going to leave it as "someone hurt her" then was I fully feeling/reacting in the role I was placing my active self? I took a moment and thought, what if were 35, what if it were Lora? What if someone hurt them? How would I react? Would my reaction, or the intensity of my reaction, or anything else be different? And the answer was a yes. I would be furious, livid, and out for blood. Someone would have hurt someone I cared dearly for and I would be out for war. Seeing that I was not having those same level of emotions in regards to myself made me think that leaving things dissociated is not a good idea. Now, how to change that? I have no clue at all. Not even a creative idea, yet all I know is leaving it dissociated at the level it is currently is only my way of avoiding having to feel anything that I can't deflect or brush off.
It is all work I have to figure out how to do. Don't think there is really directions on how to pull it off, I figure it is just time and practice. I imagine a lot of trust in yourself - there is a big scary piece. It has always been easy to feel the happy-go-lucky stuff, even if you knew it might come back to bite you, and the stuff on the other end of the spectrum - anger, hate - not too hard to feel either. That stuff in the middle, yah, that is the scary stuff. What is that phrase once more......getting comfortable with the uncomfortable.
They still happen though. They still happen and they still stick around and there is still nothing I can do about it to make them go away.
When I went through the Lonnie stuff, I remember it was an emotional roller coaster. I am sure it was even more than I remember as there are parts of it that are kind of a blur or just kind of ran together. I had emotions coming to the surface that I had not felt...or had managed not to feel, in a long time. I also remember not choosing the best methods of handling those. Sometimes I really do wonder how my therapy family has not sent me on my way. They all say I do not frustrate them. Maybe we all just have different definitions of frustration.
This new abuse stuff has stirred up the emotion bucket again, yet it is different than the Lonnie stuff. I am not even sure how to describe the difference, yet it is. Maybe it is the verbal/non-verbal stuff. With the Lonnie stuff I didn't have words for the emotions because I was not aware of the correct word to put with the emotion I was feeling. With this, it is not a matter of not knowing which multiple choice item to pick, it is a matter that the actual skill of verbal communication is compromised. The whole concept of communication is different, so why wouldn't the emotional communication be different too?
A piece I have learned from this all so far - I have to let myself feel. This is hard to do as I have spent so many years shutting my feeling down. I have learned that my emotions are a communication. If I am feeling something, especially something I want to shut down, it is generally something in me trying to get a message across. It is very difficult to be patient and treat that emotion with respect and feel it when all you want to do is run as far away from it as you can.
I have a long way to go with it. 99% of the time, I have no clue what the communication is because I am too busy having this fight with myself between wanting to shut down the emotion and knowing that I can't, that I need to feel it and try to listen to it. That argument is so loud, I can't hear what the emotion is trying to tell me. At least I try, that is a big step right there.
It hurts. Feeling hurts. The "flashes" that the hurt produces are violent as well. Trust me, my brain can be very convincing in that "make it stop" department. I am working on not flipping the anger switch, hiding behind being mad. It is hard, again, lots of years of practice.
So if I go back and look at the questions from the last round in the book and look at the need to work on the dissociation, I am reminded of the thoughts I had the other day while thinking of it all. I was thinking to myself, do I really need to "feel it", can't it be ok to just leave it as "someone hurt my little girl"? I mean, I acknowledge that it happened, I am tying pieces together, yet do I really have to have this moment where I have to feel it personally? Can't I just keep it as the Littlest One? It sounded good in my mind.
I rationalized even more with it all, even thinking about my being upset that someone hurt my littlest one. Had I "sufficiently" been upset enough? If I was going to leave it as "someone hurt her" then was I fully feeling/reacting in the role I was placing my active self? I took a moment and thought, what if were 35, what if it were Lora? What if someone hurt them? How would I react? Would my reaction, or the intensity of my reaction, or anything else be different? And the answer was a yes. I would be furious, livid, and out for blood. Someone would have hurt someone I cared dearly for and I would be out for war. Seeing that I was not having those same level of emotions in regards to myself made me think that leaving things dissociated is not a good idea. Now, how to change that? I have no clue at all. Not even a creative idea, yet all I know is leaving it dissociated at the level it is currently is only my way of avoiding having to feel anything that I can't deflect or brush off.
It is all work I have to figure out how to do. Don't think there is really directions on how to pull it off, I figure it is just time and practice. I imagine a lot of trust in yourself - there is a big scary piece. It has always been easy to feel the happy-go-lucky stuff, even if you knew it might come back to bite you, and the stuff on the other end of the spectrum - anger, hate - not too hard to feel either. That stuff in the middle, yah, that is the scary stuff. What is that phrase once more......getting comfortable with the uncomfortable.