hot dogs & high fives

First things first–I didn’t have the best modeling for how to handle emotions as a kid. My mother would often tell me to write about it in my journal, but I never had an opportunity to safely express my feelings or work towards a solution. There was never a chance to process and talk through what those feelings meant. In a sense, I spent a lot of time “talking” to myself about how mad, sad and/or powerless I felt. 

On top of that my mother’s emotions were always all over the place. I don’t remember her doing a lot of yelling and shouting, but I remember her freaking out plenty. I think she buried her emotions and settled for less than she deserved (aka never prioritized herself), which resulted in bouts of extreme sadness and withdrawal.

It was all really frustrating and confusing, leaving me ill-equipped to have grown up emotions or work out real world problems. I spent a lot of years withdrawing too. I didn’t know how to name my emotions, I didn’t have a partner to find the root cause with, I didn’t think my feelings were worth burdening others with, and on and on. I’m sure a lot of people feel this to a degree, but damn did it take me a long time to get better at feeling feelings.

In my teens and early twenties I was pretty fucking angry. Anger was the end result of everything. Instead of doing something about it (how would I even start?) I drank socially and was just generally weird and was always looking for a distraction. In my mid-twenties a switch flipped and I was sick of being angry and sick of having a negative outlook and sense of humor on everything, which led to a HUGE change in direction in my life. (More on that later). However, I still had feelings, so while being less angry, I just became more sad. I spent the rest of my twenties sad and lost.

Sometimes I still get sad and feel lost, but getting pregnant was a great reset for me in a lot of ways. Now, I’m not going to tell you that my kids saved my life, because barf, but it was very helpful for me to have something to focus on besides myself. I was able to reflect on what kind of adult I wanted to be for my kids, which allowed me to grow and mature. (A teeny bit). 

I recognized that I wanted my kids to be able to name their emotions and feel validated. So as annoying as it might be I never dismiss their feelings, I acknowledge them. I respond authentically as I would to an adult, “Yeah, that really sucks. I see that you’re mad. What can we do to fix this?”, or something to that effect. I want them to feel seen while reaffirming that I’m there for them and want to work through it with them. Who knows what kind of monsters I’m creating, but this is a priority for me that I hope they someday appreciate.

The takeaway for me is simple, I can speak the same way about how I feel too, “This really sucks and I’m super mad, I’m going to do things differently next time”. I’m not perfect and it doesn’t always work, but it’s put me light years from where I was before. However, I have ALWAYS struggled with anger. I find it so unproductive.

My husband is someone who can be quick to feel angry, or rather readily expresses that is how he feels, and just as quickly moves past it. I hate feeling angry; I think it is so stupid! I’ve never understood the point. I don’t want to be angry because it isn’t doing anything for me. For me, anger begets anger. Why would I want to feel that way? SK is always encouraging me to let myself be angry and let it out, but I cannot. It doesn’t feel right.

Recently, I was in a therapy session (shout out to free therapy through university), and I expressed what a stupid unproductive emotion it is and she agreed with me. I cannot tell you how less crazy that made me feel affirming that was. To have a grown up with education in psychology tell me I don’t need to feel angry was a weight lifted off my shoulders. For so long I’ve been bothered and assumed there was something wrong with me. But what she told me changed my perspective and allowed me to accept my feelings about anger.

“Anger isn’t anger. Nobody wants to walk around feeling angry all the time. There is something causing the anger”

It is such a simple truth that hit me so hard; I am so bothered by anger because it isn’t solving anything and that’s because anger isn’t The Thing, that is something deeper down. It’s resentment, annoyance, frustration, feeling powerless, and on and on. 

So, from now on I will be passing on that unproductive emotion Anger in favor of focusing on the root cause. 

It’s nice to feel a little less crazy, eh?

High five,

KB