Authentic Feelings
It’s the second week of gift-giving in December! Today I offer authentic feelings in a pretty box with a bow on top 🎁. It may take some time to get there, but your feelings are real and waiting for you to release them. Like all gifts, use them, embody them, then offer them to someone else. Enjoy! ~ Lyn
Authentic Feelings
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Authentic Feelings 〰️
Long ago before I was diagnosed, I was numb most of the time. Occasionally, I had over-the-top feelings that seemed out-of-control but, mostly, I was just spaced out, disconnected, numb.
I hadn’t always been that way. Before I began to split apart, I felt wells of deep love for everyone and everything. The babies I carried in my belly, then in my arms, then on my back, then hand-in-hand as they grew into little tiny human beings. The guinea pig pups with eyes still closed and hair wet as sea otters, finding their way through the sawdust to their mother. The people who were poor or marginalized or in great need, all of these drew on my compassion, sometimes bringing tears to my eyes and love in my heart.
Gradually, I lost touch with those feelings of connection. Slowly, they slipped away, out of my grasp. I felt them yesterday, but I couldn’t feel them today. No love, no hate, no laughter, no authentic sadness. Only numbness. When you’re numb, it’s hard to identify what you’re missing because it’s all around you, in the air you breathe.
One day, while I was in a quaint little town nearby, I stopped at a coffee shop and bought a cup of tea and a scone. I picked up the local newspaper and read a story while I sipped my tea — it turned out that a litter of cats had died from neglect while the owner of the mother cat was away. As usual, I was blank, but all of a sudden I recognized that the blank was out-of-the-ordinary for most people who would feel concern for this sad set of circumstances. Instead, I was blank about everything. I couldn’t feel sadness for these kittens but, more tragically, I couldn’t feel love for my children, or compassion for my family, or myself, or for anyone or anything else for that matter. Something wasn’t right, and I didn't like it!
This numbness, of course, was dissociation, but I didn’t know it at the time. Still, becoming aware that my blankness was not the only possible response was one of the first steps toward addressing it. The rest of the story is long and hard (I share it my memoir, Crazy: Reclaiming Life from the Shadow of Traumatic Memory) but, over time, I began to reimagine what feeling real feelings would be like again. Gradually and slowly, my healing process helped me to lower my dissociative coping strategy so I could rediscover my authentic emotions — good and bad, happy and sad, exhilarated and deflated — all of them. My numbness had done a good job of hiding them but hard therapeutic work broke through the dissociation a little bit at a time.
We are all entitled to feel our authentic feelings as a part of being human. My gift to you this week is the knowledge that your hard work will lower your dissociative coping strategies so you can feel your real feelings. Instead of being numb, invite yourself to test out happiness, anger, joy, pride, love, fear, friendship, compassion, and more as you are ready. You deserve to feel all your feelings. Your parts deserve to feel all your feelings. They belong to all of you and you’re worth it!
Speaking of Gifts
The best gift ever … !
Why not consider buying my memoir, Crazy: Reclaiming Life from the Shadow of Traumatic Memory? You can give it to yourself — because you're worth it — or to a friend or therapist who might benefit from it. Click here and Amazon will send it to your door! And while you’re at it, leave a rating or review 👍.
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Authenticity is all about being real. Genuine, not an imitation.
~ Coco Chanel
Lyn