I’ve never been good at holding anything back. A big part of my life story involves my big emotions and my tendency to dump them on others. I feel the most guilt about negative emotions, of course. Emotional tirades have been an issue for me since childhood. When I didn’t get what I wanted I let people know. One of my earliest memories is of going, or maybe being sent to, my room crying this loud yelling cry that I’m really good at. (Yes, still.) As I made my way to my room after some kind of argument with my mother I heard my father say in a frustrated voice, “What’s the tragedy now?” And he was right. He was right that I acted like everything was a tragedy, and he was right to be frustrated by that. I know because this is one of those situations where my parents got some payback. My kids do it too. My boys in particular are both especially good at building entire mountain ranges out of a few mole hills.
Of course as I’ve grown I’ve learned that people don’t want to hear my tragedies. Frustrated comments like the one my dad made peppered my childhood, but when I got older and my problems got bigger, and I still threw my big emotions around, the emotions themselves became my problems. I had no problem crying loudly in the hallway in high school when my boyfriend broke my heart, but the snickers and mocking remarks of passersby still sting to this day, and I doubt my presentation was very attractive for my boyfriend either. Yet whenever I tried to hold back, whenever I just kept the feelings inside, or wrote them in my journal without telling someone else, I kept feeling them twenty-four hours a day. I just carried them around with me and I was constantly aware of them. I’m not someone who can pretend these things aren’t there. So then, when more bad things happened, I added more big emotions to the heap of others sitting inside me, and I felt ALL of them at once. Over time the emotions became impacted. I’m not talking about years of piling these things up; I never lasted that long without exploding. But the emotional constipation hurt like crazy, and when I finally got it out, it felt great.
Until it didn’t, of course. Because no one wanted to hear how bad I felt. I get that. It’s never comfortable when someone unloads a pile on you, even when nothing you’ve done is in the pile. The problem is that because I feel every emotion in a big way, when those big emotions get impacted, those hurts start telling me what to do and who I am. I start wanting to hurt people, sometimes even physically. I start thinking about how much I hate certain types of behavior that hurt me, and then I see it in everyone I meet. I become paranoid. Why is he looking at me like that? Does she think I’m too fat to be wearing this? Maybe my husband is cheating. I bet he is. That’s why he doesn’t like it when I rummage through his bags. I’m so ugly. No one should still get zits at 37. I know it – I’m sick. I have cancer, or an auto immune disease. I have psoriasis, so it’s definitely auto immune. WebMD says I need emergency treatment. But the people in the emergency room always send me home. I irritate them. They don’t care about me because I suck. I’m a waste of oxygen.
The problem with emotional shit is that it can talk, and the more of it there is sitting inside me, the more it tells me. Nothing it tells me is good, and nothing it tells me is truth. But that doesn’t stop me from believing it. The messages my piled up emotions send me are like those radio commercials for car dealerships. They always make sure to include a catchy jingle that you’ll hate, but will still become an ear worm, repeating itself over and over in your brain. Emotions love to talk shit about me, and I’m the only one they talk to.
Why am I writing this? Why, for goodness sake, would I ever want to write this out and give this information to the general public? Who cares? Anyone who reads it will think I’m a wacko.
I’m writing this because I’m not wacko. I’m human.
“Finally, we begin to see that all people, including ourselves, are to some extent emotionally ill as well as frequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance and see what real love for our fellows actually means. It will become more and more evident as we go forward that it is pointless to become angry, or to get hurt by people who, like us, are suffering from the pains of growing up.”
This is not a quote from a famous blogger or a motivational speaker. As far as I know these words have never appeared in a TED talk. Those words were written by a member of AA, in a book originally published in 1952. This is not new information, and it wasn’t written by a millennial.
When you find information like this, information that is timeless, it’s easier to trust it as truth. Emotional backup isn’t my condition; it’s the human condition. There’s a post that bops around on social media that says something like, “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you don’t know about.” That’s the truth. Kindness, politeness, humility, and open-mindedness can take us a long way, and so can being carefully honest about our true feelings.
I’ve done a lot of thinking and research to learn how I can be emotionally open and honest without getting myself into trouble, along with how I can avoid interpersonal troubles in the first place. I know what works for me, but that’s for another post. Here’s my encouragement to you: Be honest about what you are feeling, but be prudent with your honesty. Practice boundaries. Think carefully about how another person will react to what you need to say, and judge accordingly. Don’t let it all out without being mindful about when, where, and who hears it. I’m not suggesting you develop emotional diarrhea. I’m suggesting that we all learn to express our feelings, that we learn how to do it in a way that enables us to begin healing but without indiscriminately hurting those around us. I’m also suggesting that, if someone close to you dumps their emotions, try not to take it too personally. Recognize that what someone else says, even in an attempt to intentionally hurt you, reveals more about the speaker than it does the audience. Give them, and yourself, some grace. Life is hard.
I’m suggesting a steady diet of emotional fiber. I’m suggesting tolerance of other people’s emotional digestion. I’m suggesting that, if you know you are emotionally constipated, take that load to an open-minded friend, a mentor, or a therapist. Don’t take an emotional dump on the person that hurt you.
Shit stinks. So do painful emotions. But when they’re flowing in a healthy way, and when we encourage others to keep them flowing in a healthy way, we’ll all feel a lot more comfortable.
Photos by rawpixel, Jason Roswell, Anna Dziubinska, and Hien Olviera via Unsplash.
