I give myself permission to be […]

I have so many thoughts and ideas in my head. They are incessant sometimes, bouncing around in my mind then colliding with one another to create new ones. Some are good, some are bad, some are depressing, and some are terrifying.

This blog is one of my ways of getting these thoughts out of my head. The challenging part is getting to the point where I can articulate what I’m thinking or feeling enough that I can write it down and share it. Feelings are the hardest to decipher. I don’t know about you, but I certainly wasn’t taught how to identify my feelings, let alone decipher what they meant.

I’ve also been speaking more openly about my mental health with my family. Now that we’re beginning to open the emotional vault, it’s becoming clear that this is a generational issue. It seems that each generation has tried to protect the one after it from emotional hardship by simply avoiding the topic altogether.

“I took it on so they didn’t have to.”

“They don’t need to know about my issues. They’re just kids!”

“I don’t want to spoil their youth with this ugliness. Let them be happy.”

Let me be clear and say that I am not a parent. I can’t imagine the feelings of trying to raise and protect a little human being. Deciding how to raise your child, including what to say to them and when and how, is a challenge I have not had to face. However, I was once a child who was raised by parents, so I have some experience on the receiving end, as we all do.

My parents and I have spoken about this lack of emotional sharing during my youth. Speaking like this to my parents is new for both of us. Even though the topics can get sad or complicated at times, the understanding that comes out of it is always worth it and it brings me so much warmth and joy to get to know my parents better.

As I said before, this wasn’t always the case. My parents’ parents, my grandparents, didn’t teach them about how to identify or handle their emotions either. And neither did my parents’ parents’ parents, and so on. The majority of my family was raised under the Catholic church, where sharing your dark feelings is generally discouraged (“It is God’s will. He knows best, my child. Now stop asking questions, you’re making me uncomfortable.”)

I also come from a long line of farmers and immigrants from Europe. When I think about the challenging times that my ancestors were raised in it makes sense to me why this was at the bottom of their To Do lists:

To Do List:

1. Raise crops

2. Feed family

3. Secure farm loan

4. Pay bills

5. Fix house

6. Fix barn

7. Play with kids

8. Kill those damn beavers

9. Dig ditch

[….]

163. Learn about emotional intelligence

Our ancestors had to fight to survive on a near daily basis. As is hilariously depicted in the 2014 Seth McFarlane film “A Million Ways to Die in The West”, there was always something trying to kill you. They HAD to be strong to survive. We still face incredible hardships today, skyrocketing housing and gas prices, increasing climate emergencies, and global pandemics to name a few. Though these hardships generally take more time to cause serious or noticeable damage. It’s almost like we’ve transitioned from an acute threat to a chronic one.

We have more time to think about the situation rather than simply react to it. Often times the threat is hard to see or conceptualize unless you’re right in the middle of it, like the invisibility of chronic pain. We’ve also become incredibly reliant on technological advances that do most of the repetitive mundane work for us which leaves even more empty time for thoughts and feelings to surface.

Silence and the noise that follows

With so much time-saving inventions like indoor plumbing and the microwave, we can poop in comfort within the warmth of our homes and make a meal in seconds. With all this time on our hands, we’ve had to fill it with other things to keep from hearing those unpleasant thoughts. For me, that used to be adventure, exercise, gardening, volounteering, and work. Now that those things are essentially gone from my daily life (for now), I have SO MUCH empty time on my hands.

At first, this time was agonizing. All these emotions that I’d been ignoring my whole life suddenly became very loud. I had no more distractions keeping me from hearing them. They were foreign to me and I didn’t care for them. They would manifest as new and increasing pains in different parts of my body. Aches in my back, nerve spasms in my neck, left arm, coccyx, and left leg, and a sensitivity to all kinds of sensations. What used to be a favorite shirt felt more like sandpaper on my skin. Particularly during the pandemic, I had the freedom to do away with things like bras and underwear which were starting to feel like suffocation devices. Even the touch of my partner became too much to bear and I shied away from him physically.

Eventually I was encouraged to seek professional support for my deteriorating mental health and I sought out a counsellor. It took a couple tries to find the right one, but once I did it was a game changer. Finally I had someone asking me “..and how does that make you feel?” To which I would often reply: “I don’t know”.

Many sessions later, I am beginning to understand the role my emotions play in how my body experiences pain. My counsellor didn’t solve any of my issues, nor did they try to. They simply gave me a platform on which to bring them out and examine them. Like looking at your poop in the toilet bowl instead of immediately flushing it down the drain.

Me: “What wisdom do you have for me today?”

Poop: “You forgot to chew the corn again.”

Me: “I knew I forgot something. I’ll do better next time. Thank you for your guidance. Fair travels” – FLUSH

Giving myself permission to feel

Our bodies have so much to tell us, but we rarely take the time needed to listen and understand. I’m realizing now that my body has been trying to tell me for years, decades even, that my lifestyle is not working. That I was hurting myself more than I was helping. It began with a gentle poke, then a prod, then over the years it turned into a desperate plea, and finally my body took control and simply shut itself down.

Although I was never taught how to feel I’m learning now with help from professionals and my own interest in continuing education. I think of this as researching a topic, and the topic is ME. I’ve picked up many tools to help me in my research: counselling, mindfulness or noting exercises, compassion, and psilocybin (magic mushrooms). I’ll have more to say about each of these in future articles. For now, I want to point out that this is near impossible to do on your own. At least it has been for me.

Part of letting the feelings come up is accepting that you have feelings in the first place. One of my counsellors encouraged me to come up with a mantra that would help me navigate difficult emotions. I came up with: “I Give Myself Permission To Be”. It reminds me everyday that I am allowed to simply be and not do (ie, not distract myself from what is happening no matter how unpleasant). It also reminds me that I am allowed to feel any and all feelings without wallowing in them.

Notice that I have positive emotions in their as well. I’ve noticed through my “research” that I often tuck away positive feelings as well as negative ones. I think of all the times I’ve had to hide my joy to prove that I was ill enough (If I look too happy they’ll think I’m better). All the times I’ve not allowed myself to celebrate successes for the underlying fear that the pain would come and take it all away (better not get too excited, it’s just going to hurt later anyways).

I believe that when we dismiss an emotion it doesn’t simply vanish in a cloud of smoke. Our bodies have to figure out what to do with it so they store it away in our tissues. I’ve had over twenty years of emotion trapped in my body waiting to come out. I ignored it for as long as I could and now I’m paying the price.

I’m working to accept this painful reality, let myself feel all the feels as they come, then move forward.

The hardest thing to accept is the pain itself. I’ve been fighting it for so many years, trying all the while to FIX IT when it reality, there’s nothing to fix but my attitude towards it. In the end, I’m always the loser in the fight.

I may never have children of my own, but I’m committed to breaking the cycle of hiding my emotions.

I give myself permission to be…in pain.