Big emotions
I have always been an emotional creature. How I showed up in the world was often predicated on what raw emotion was present when I woke up. I was in touch with my emotions; I knew exactly how I felt at any moment. Happy and excited, giddy and wild, morose and sad, defeated and bereft. Emotions ran the gamut, changing throughout the day, and you—the global you—knew exactly what I was feeling when you looked at me. My third grade teacher told my mother that I would have a difficult life because I felt so deeply and was a deeply sensitive creature.
This was a good thing, the being in touch with my emotions, knowing what I felt, allowing those feelings to dictate my days. I don’t know if I used the excuse that being a creative—a writer and visual artist—required big feelings in order to be productive but it was a latent belief that I didn’t want to lose because what would happen to my art if I gave up the volatility? What would happen if my big emotions weren’t accessible to me? Would people no longer gravitate toward me? In high school, people wanted to be around me, until I was in one of my moods (it’s silly to me how I navigated the world when I was younger).
And then, somewhere in the middle of my last relationship, I learned about emotional regulation in one of our couple’s therapy sessions. I was too chaotic with my emotions, my partner too flat and reserved with hers. I had to learn to dial it down, to not make wild emotional outbursts, especially around anger, hurt, or fear. The anger I learned from my upbringing, coming from a very expressive Italian and Irish heritage, where emotions are meant to be expressed, hand gestures and all. The hurt and fear usually arose because I didn’t feel loved or seen, feeding into the deep-seated belief that I was unworthy of love, that my situation was too unique to be seen or understood. Some of this is true; while some of my life, others could relate to but the events that truly shaped my life and how I viewed it couldn’t be understood.1
I thought the world of my ex, and so it was easy to work on my emotional outbursts (although, outbursts might be too strong of a word) and try to be more nuanced and deliberate with my words and actions, not relying on the raw emotions to dictate how I showed up. Yet, we were on the downward slope of our relationship, so the work I did here was too little, a bit too late. Afterward, becoming single again opened up my days to swaths of time, and I spent so much time trying to figure out what went wrong, what I did incorrectly, how I could have been a better partner. A result of all this was that I’ve gotten deeper into meditation and the science behind mindfulness2 in an effort to sit with these hard feelings, to cope with them. It’s not fun revisiting one’s mistakes and missteps but it’s the only way to move forward positively. Understanding why I reacted a certain way helps tremendously now when similar circumstances arise.
Big emotions are fun. They are intoxicating things, which makes the world feel bigger, more magical, wondrous even. Big emotions are what allow me to write in a way that connects with others, that seem to resonate with others. Big emotions are not good with the people you love, or the people that are a constant in your life. Big emotions create chaos and an unsettling. And it’s unfair to the people in your life. It’s unfair to ask them to navigate your wild and unruly feelings. It isn’t their responsibility to manage them, to make you feel worthy, to give you a reason for existing in the world. Big emotions—raw and unfiltered, the innocent joy, the bereft tears—immediately connected me to people. I believe when we are raw, there’s a non-surface level connection between people. It doesn’t last, though. Big emotions should be felt and understood, and that needs to happen with some interior distance. Yes, I have felt unmoored and unloved after my breakup. This was almost too much to bear, and this showed up as hard contractions in my chest, resulting in sobs (have I mentioned I have big emotions?). Now I have started to be able to look back on the me during that time and give her some grace, forgive her, understand her.
Working on myself continues. It is a forever process, something with indefinite time and undefined results. I’m not looking for results, I’m looking for kindness. I’m looking to not deny the big emotions, just to manage them better. To know that those big emotions don’t define me, they don’t make me who I am. I have no control over what arises inside me. I do have control in how they manifest outwardly. I do have control in how I respond to them (I’m learning that we should not react to big emotions, to anything really…considered responses are better). There’s a calmness that is growing in me, each and every time I sit with big emotions, not allowing them to rock my even keel. I want to be a better friend to those in my life, and a better partner whenever my next relationship takes place. I want to show up with confidence and deliberateness. The work I’ve put in this past year is moving me in that direction.
Footnotes
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The accident I was involved in when I was twenty altered my life for the next few decades; it greatly affected my life and how I operated in it. ↩
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My last course at HES went deeper into how mindfulness and meditation can foster resilience, and how that helps find meaning in life. ↩