I come from a family in which we do not show a lot of emotion. Crying and anger are wasted energy. The old saying, ‘There’s no point in crying over spilled milk’ was like a motto. We kept our emotions to ourselves and we NEVER discussed family business, even with each other.
I remember having my first experience with death when I was about 15 years old. I went to school one day and found out that a good friend of mine had been killed in a car accident. I was devastated. When I got home from school I went directly to my mom, needing a hug, and I broke down into a mess of tears. I was only allowed to cry for a few minutes and then she put her hands on my shoulders and said, “That’s enough now, there’s nothing you can do about it and crying won’t bring her back.” My mom wasn’t trying to be cruel, it was all she knew. And so I learned, as did my mother and her mother before her, that emotions were a weakness; something to be controlled and kept to yourself.
When you’re a stoic person who has been taught to control your emotions, everybody admires your strength. They say things to you like:
“I don’t know how you do it!”
“I would be a mess.”
“You’re so strong!”
They ask, “how are you?” The response is always, “I’m fine.”
The funny thing is that the conversation doesn’t usually go too much farther than that. People are so used to you ‘being strong’ that they don’t really push it any farther.
You never give them the real answer, the true answer. The answer that screams down deep inside of you:
“I am not ok. I’ve shut down and buried everything deep down inside. Layers and layers of grief, shame, anger, and disappointment have all been packed away in a pretty little basket and disguised with a flowery blanket of smiles and ‘I’m fines’ and ‘It’s not really that big of a deals’ and ‘No, I don’t mind at alls’.”
The problem is that this pretty little basket can only hold so much before it starts to come apart. And then one day out of the blue these years and years of pain and grief and anger start spilling out through the cracks, showing up as anxiety, high blood pressure, depression, physical aches and pains, cancer. The emotional pain, grief and anger shows up in so many different ways that you don’t even realize what the real problem is. I did yoga, I tried meditation, body talk, and so many other things. I was told by a therapist that I needed to learn how to be angry. It was frustrating when nothing seemed to work for me.
I like to think of myself as one of the lucky ones. It took me 50 years but I finally found something that would work for me. During my first Breathwork session I heard the phrase: “You’ve got to feel it to heal it.” At that point I knew that I had to acknowledge these emotions and set them free, before the basket fell apart. No more pretty little basket. No more flowery blanket disguise.
It wasn’t easy. It was raw and hard and went against everything I had ever been taught. I had to reprogram my brain with the idea that its ok not to be ok. Once I started to release the anger and pain I thought it would never stop. Sometimes there were silent tears and sometimes there were screams that came right from my gut. It was exhausting. I was healing wounds that were not only mine, but had been carried by generations before me.
Emotions are a vital part of being human. We have the ability to feel…love, happiness, pain, grief, and anger. Every emotion serves a purpose, and every emotion is necessary. Allow yourself the beautiful experience of expressing every one of them. To feel pain and grief is to know that you have felt love and happiness. Real strength lies in being able to acknowledge each emotion, which gives you the opportunity to discover why things are happening FOR you, rather than why they are happening TO you. Once you can make that distinction, nothing is impossible.
Much love,
Sandy