Words: Clare Dwyer Hogg
Image: Barney Beech
It keeps happening. I think I have a difficulty sorted. Yet as soon as I’m reminded of it: here we go again. The rise of uncomfortable feelings. The twists of emotion. Waves of worry. So I haven’t sorted things out after all? Couldn’t be more frustrating.
Frustrating because I’ve been very deliberate in being consciously OK with situations I’ve found difficult. Such as: lowering expectations; thinking through reasons, logic and explanations of why I felt hurt; acknowledging the part I played; thinking about my personality and why I hold on to things; how not to hold on any more. It’s a long list (even longer than that). I feel like I must have at least done the groundwork for moving along, for the love of God. Which is why I get pretty fed up if it hasn’t worked.
This week I bumped into a friend who was feeling bad because he’d had to negotiate a confrontation at work. He knew he’d done nothing wrong. But he felt rubbish. In my infinite wisdom, I told him that if he’d done the right thing, just to sit with the feeling. I said it was natural to feel those things. Oh how the hypocrite can talk!
Later, I realised that I should practice what I preach. I’m so intent on banishing bad feelings – I always have been prone to this – that I think bad feelings are bad. As strange as it sounds (even to me) I’m starting to wonder if it really is always bad to feel those things. I think of one issue I’m grappling with, for instance: I’ve been struggling to be at peace with it for a while. I really believe I am close to being at peace with it. But when I start to think about it, the stormy cloud in the pit of my stomach still rises. Then I feel discouraged, as if all my work and rational thought has come to nought.
I can’t let my emotions come in like a tsunami and destroy all the structures I’ve just built. I can’t sink under them every time they rise
Yet – what if your mind can figure something out first, and your emotions just need time to catch up? I suppose I just expected my mind and emotions to link, pronto. But it isn’t as simple as that. I don’t want to listen to my emotions, because my mind has been intent on figuring it out, precisely to nullify those emotions. I feel that I have some answers about how to behave around the issue now. So when the emotions rise up noisily, I want to tell them to take a hike.
In a way, of course, I can’t let my emotions come in like a tsunami and destroy all the structures I’ve just built. I can’t sink under them every time they rise, because then I really would be back to square one. What I can do, though, is appreciate that those feelings are still there because – they are. I feel sad about some things. I wish I didn’t, but I did. Process understood (finally).
Here’s the encouraging bit: I’m not back to square one. Those feelings can exist without controlling me or clouding the rest of my day. That’s because, yes, I have put in the work. I’ve been thinking. I’ve been building the little structures, the dams, the water towers, the sluices and canals, that will give my feelings a place to flow through. And as they flow through, they will rage less, will be more definable. More the demarcation of a water-level than a tidal wave. I’ll be able to look at them without being intimidated – or, at the very least, without drowning.
The hope is that the water level will decrease as time goes on. It should. But until then, my feelings have a certain amount of validity. I can’t pretend they aren’t there, because they are, so that’s that. The idea is that the muddy waters stirred up by unhelpful thought patterns will drain away once they pass through my validity questionnaire (Am I unfairly interpreting a situation just because of an old hurt? Have I turned on extra-sensory perception to imagine a non-existent subtext? And a host of other questions, just as much fun to answer.) The rest? Maybe they’ll go, maybe they won’t. But I have a way of containing and looking at them now, and not being disheartened that they exist.
