EMOTIONS SUPPRESSED

 

Hi, I’m Sam,

 

On some days I always say to myself, “At some point Sam you are going to start going to Therapy” because there are some coping mechanisms I use concerning my emotions that I am not 100% sure are healthy but I still use them and probably will continue using it until I know better and truth be told, this coping mechanism come easy to me and works like magic, who does not care for a short cut once in a while.

I always avoid anything emotional because I think that we can’t control how we feel and I hate not being in control, and as much as I don’t see myself as a control freak, I still love to be in control. I went through something emotional a while back and I had such intense feelings that I had no idea as to the best way to react or put my feelings under control. You know how people say, mind how and when to burn bridges? At the peak of the emotions I was feeling, I did not feel like I was standing on any bridge, it even felt as though the bridge was pulled from under my legs, and needed a way to react in that moment that I would still be proud of myself in months and years to come. I still believe that we cannot control our emotions but we can control how we react as a result of those emotions because the dust will settle and we will be left with whatever mess or not mess we created and the result of those emotions will either leave us proud, ashamed or cringed at our emotional self.

 

There are levels of truths to our emotions and trying to see the truth while being intensely emotional is a tricky thing to do because so many factors come into play. We are either trying to act tough for ourselves or others, or we are trying to play/ be the victims in that situations, or we are concerned as to how the event will narrate the best or we are perfectly concerned as to how we want people to see us as a result of being emotional; whatever the case may be, there is still some truth to it and we need to feel our emotions but we need to be honest and discerning to determine what the truth might be. Sometimes we are so focused on trying to react that we completely miss the point as to what is happening. No matter how you feel at any point in time, always remember that life will certainly go on and as such take the future you into consideration. 

 

I really tried to process my emotions but I haven’t done that before so I didn’t know exactly what to do or say so I said nothing. I had questions but who would I ask to give me answers and did I even want to know the answers, what if I’m being told what I wanted to hear and not what was? I didn’t know how to answer the question “How are you?” from my best friend because I didn’t want to lie to him but at the same time I didn’t know what the correct answer was because I had not found the best way to process my feelings. I didn’t want to talk about what had happened but I also wanted to be heard and the worst part was that I didn’t know the words to use to express myself. If I opened my mouth to speak, I simply felt like the words I was using were not the right words which meant that the chances of anyone listening to me misunderstanding me were quite high and as such whatever advice they might give would not feel right to me. 

 

As hours turned to days and days turned to weeks and weeks to months, I realized how incredibly difficult it was to answer the question “How are you?”, I was split between saying positive things so that would be my reality and being truthful, but what was the truth? No single word could exhaustively describe exactly how I was feeling at a given time; so it’s either I have to always update my answer to the question every time my feelings changed or not answer the question at all and leave it to be a blank check. There was a significant amount of betrayal, pain, dishonesty, shame, and disdain. Shame didn’t come from what I was doing but how what I was doing was received without my knowledge. At some point, I did feel like something was wrong somewhere but I was made to believe that even if something was wrong it could be fixed if I wanted it to be and I did want it to be fixed but one thing I didn’t realize then was I couldn’t fix it alone and it instantly made me remember the passage in the Bible that says, “Can two walk together except they agree?” (Amos 3:3). 

 

Suppressing my emotions was what I knew how to do best consciously or unconsciously, so that was the route I took. At first, I thought I was being mature with the whole thing but it took me a while to realize it was my coping mechanism at work and not really about what I wanted to do or not. It felt safer not to talk about what happened or just pretend it wasn’t there because really, what was any other option going to give me? It certainly wasn’t going to change what had happened, so if you asked me then, I was on the right track to healing funnily enough, I didn’t think I needed healing then because I didn’t understand what I was feeling so healing wasn’t an expected or desired result. I was able to function and carry on with my suppressed emotions because I generally felt like nothing had happened but I did feel like everything wasn’t as it should be; something was out of place but for now, let us suppress it and not ask too many questions.