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Emotions...Can You Trust Them?

"Feelings suck." My counselor laughed.
"You really are an emotional person," he said.
"Emotional people are unreliable. I don't want to be like that," I countered.
"Emotions are what help you experience life," was his final answer.

I really do hate feelings. They're a nuisance. I'd rather wrap them up and hide them away in the attic of my mind. In fact, I've got a storage unit filled with repressed anger, fear, worry, and joy. I anesthetize my mind. I shut down at the first sign of an emotion. It's a beautiful existence filled with no ups and downs. Or so I think.

I tried an experiment the other day. A particular issue reared its head, and I confronted it. In the past, I would have ignored it and then reacted in a passive-aggressive manner. I'd make a sarcastic remark. I'd find a way to criticize. I'd ignore or not speak.

Instead, I faced the rage within me head on. I went for a drive and realized that I was trying numb myself. (In the back of my mind, I think anger is bad thing, and I feel guilty when I get mad.) I came home, pulled out my journal and crawled into the bathtub. It was the only place I could think of where he wouldn't look for me. I needed to be alone.

With my eyes closed, I focused on the anger. I welcomed it. The rage just burned within me. I couldn't believe the images and thoughts that came to my mind. I hit bottom in my thoughts. My emotional anesthesia tried to creep in occasionally, but I shut off the IV. I needed to face this monster once and for all. The anger turned to utter despair. I really didn't know what to do with it, so I wrote down the thoughts in my head.

I'll spare you the details because they are pretty scary. I did, however, write a poem a few days later that captures the essence of what was going on.

Black
Consumes me
Surrounds me
Silhouettes my skin
Crawls in my nostrils
Infects my brain
So that all I recognize
Is the empty pain
Squeezing the breath out of my chest
Screaming in my ears
"Nothing!"
"Nothing!"
"Nothing!"

I went outside and sat in the breeze. I continued to write. The feelings were so overwhelming that I crawled under my quilt and took a nap. I couldn't speak. I was consumed by the darkness. A few hours later, I was back in the land of the living, and I even was able to talk with a modicum of normalcy about what was going on.

In the end, I was amazed at how much stronger I felt. The beast had been tamed...at least for the moment. Emotions are like a credit card statement. You can ignore it, pay the miminum balance, and get by. The more you ignore it, the worse the situation gets. You reach the point where you just can't bear to even think about it. How much simpler and reasonable it is to face the situation and deal with it...even in small chunks.

I'm not there yet, but I do hope that I will eventually learn how to navigate my emotions and celebrate the fact that God made me this way.

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