I’m feeling blah. Bleh. Meh. Hmph. Ergh. Blech. A whole host of other indescribable feelings. I’m not used to this. I’m used to immediately going to: “every feeling that is not pleasant must be about the past”. And by the past, it meant my childhood trauma. This was a mantra from my ex-abusive therapist and part of a belief system that our therapeutic community lived by. Nothing in the present could truly be upsetting because nothing could be more upsetting than how horrendously our parents treated us. Any anger, hurt, or upset in the present had to be represed feelings from childhood. We couldn’t be that upset about racism because it was worse to be treated abusively by our parents and for our parents to hate us for who we were.
And the thing is, there was always some truth or useful insight to this idea. Why was it, that when I spoke about racism, I could get all animated and infuriated, but when I talked about being raped, I would feel numb and even shame? Displacement of feelings is not a new concept. We all do it. But what if I was both displacing anger about my childhood AND had a present reason to be upset about something…like racism, sexism, or even just being cut off while driving?
Ugh, so part of where I am at today is not wanting to do the work of figuring out why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling. Especially because lately, it mostly is about my past and memories that are coming up for me. I’m so tired of doing the work of sorting, sifting, naming, framing, talking it out, blah blah blah. I’ve had to do this for so much of my adult life and for a good part of that adult life, my willingness to take responsibility for my own feelings was used against me. My ex-therapist wanted me to be one of his protegés. Blech. He lauded me for always processing my feelings, for not suppressing them, for going towards the trigger - ARGH!!!! And all these things are really useful in my life now. Really really useful. But it was narcissistically gratifying to him. So once again, like my childhood, I had a man, narcisstically gratifying himself on me. BLECH.
This is one “story of my life” that I am so sick of - learning things that are useful for a functioning, enjoyable adult life - FOR SOMEONE ELSE’S SAKE. For someone with power over me to use for their own benefit. And it wasn’t, “let’s teach you this to help you as an adult.” It was more “let’s force you to do this because it gratifies me, and oh, you’ll thank me later”. So…being trained by my therapist to always take issues back to my past helps me to take ownership over my own feelings, refrain from projecting on to others, and helps me understand what might be happening for me emotionally. What sucks about it is that (a) I’m driven to overanalyse situations (b) I’m not good at just accepting my feelings (c) I feel a resentment about needing to tend to my emotional world (d) I have to rebuild my relationship to the process of processing my feelings. ARGH!!!
It’s exhuasting. It’s an energy suck that is low grade happening all the time on my mind, heart, and body. And with so many ways in the modern world to distract, this low grade blah, irritation, annoynace and rage can build up. And since I’ve struggled to maintain high levels of physical activity over the past few years, I have few ways to get out my aggression. This frustration builds up and I want to throw a temper tantrum. UGH. I’m slowly rebuilding my avenues to express anger in health sport competition but that also has a minefield of triggers and traumas. So SIIIIGGGH.