Each year I take a break from writing to come back to myself. It can feel as if, over time, I become distant from who I am, and when I begin to feel this, I know it’s time to focus on myself before I can share any of what I’m working on with you all.
I realized earlier this year that to protect myself from painful and difficult emotions, I was emotionally numbing myself so I didn’t have to feel that pain. However, in doing so, I was also numbing myself to what felt good. Soon everything felt bleak and boring, and I didn’t feel like I could connect with most of my life.
The emotional events, music, and movies I used to watch no longer impacted me. I would think, “Ehh, maybe I was seeing something that wasn’t there.” As it turns out, I wasn’t seeing what was actually there. Every moment was packed with a multitude of emotions, but I had unknowingly trained myself to block it all out. It felt like I was watching someone else go through the motions of my life.
As a result, I set out with one goal in mind this summer – to reconnect with my emotions and, in doing so, build an emotional vocabulary for what I was experiencing.
My journey first began with re-reading a few books on meditation and mindfulness. I started with breathing and becoming aware of what was happening within. I know by now that no change is possible without an awareness of what is happening. I may feel nothing. I may feel boredom. There may be anger or excitement. But regardless, my goal was to spend time sitting and looking at whatever I could see within myself each day.
I wanted to create a practice that I could stick with every day – that would allow me to come back wanting more, not to feel burnt out, and something that I could repeat easily, even on days in which all I wanted to do was climb into bed at the end of it. Each morning and each night for the last three months, I’d spend time meditating, and next to me would be my journal. My only goal at the end of the meditation would be to reflect on any repeating ideas or feelings that crept up. At first, I could only tell if I felt good or bad. But this soon began to take on a new form. Just like our eyes in the dark, my emotional eyes began to adjust to what I was seeing.
Regardless of what I felt, I had just one idea, one motto that I would come back to: STAY.
The “Secret” of life that we are all looking for is just this: to develop through sitting and daily life practice the power and courage to return to that which we have spent a lifetime hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment – even if it is a feeling of being humiliated, of failing, of abandonment, of unfairness.
Charlotte Joko Beck
When I felt difficult emotions, I often had the most trouble sitting and remaining present. I would watch my mind do what it had evolved to do – protect me from pain. It would do so by taking me on adventures down different paths in my mind. Sometimes, old memories would be brought up; sometimes, I would begin planning the day ahead. One thing was certain, my mind wanted to be anywhere but where I was.
But when I became aware of this, all I had to was accept I had become distracted and compassionately bring my mind back to the breath. What began as a numb feeling of being unsure of what I was feeling within soon became something I was fascinated by.
I could see each emotion more clearly. Just like different types of food – sweet, savory, fatty, or salty – I realized there were no emotions better or worse than any others. Some days I might want tacos, others a salad, and sometimes just a comical amount of ice cream. My emotions were no different. I tuned in to see that each emotion had its own unique flavors and sensations.
In learning to stay with difficult emotions, experiences, and sensations, I was learning to be present despite what my reality may be. Instead of avoiding aspects of life, I began to welcome it all. And each emotion I learned to feel consequently changed my perception of the world around me in its own way.
Notice how the world can do no wrong when you’re happy and excited. You’re more patient in traffic as you listen to your favorite music. You are friendlier to people you see. You’re more loving toward yourself. Now, pay attention to how you view the world when you’re stressed and anxious. It feels like the whole world is in your way. The people walking slowly on the sidewalk in front of you piss you off beyond belief. You rush through your meals. You opt into distractions like your phone more often. You avoid the present moment because it doesn’t feel good. It’s not your reality that is different; it is just your moods impacting your acceptance or resistance to it: bad feelings = avoidance of life, while good ones = a deeper sense of acceptance and gratitude for everything in it.
As I’ve gotten better at staying with and experiencing the emotions I was avoiding, I’ve learned I can now appreciate them for what they are. You can be happy to feel these other aspects of life, like when you cry during a sad movie. It’s part of the experience. It’s part of what makes it so beautiful rather than something to avoid.
Sadness and pain can be beautiful if you let yourself feel them. Connecting to the pain we feel shows us that we aren’t rejecting parts of life, and by actually sitting with the emotions, we can process and feel through them simply by watching them.
But my emotional growth was not done here…
I soon noticed that despite being able to better identify an emotion I was feeling, it felt like I was still missing much of the puzzle. I realized that similarly to the complex combination of flavors that make up one of my favorite dishes, there is rarely just one emotion we are feeling. It is, more often than not, a mosaic of many emotions.
This was very confusing at first. There are typically strong and subtle ones, but what threw me off the most was how I would feel so-called good and bad emotions simultaneously. For a while, this felt wrong to me. When I was angry, I would feel the excitement of the energy. When I was sad, I would feel gratitude for caring so much about something. The dichotomy of emotions bewildered me for weeks until I realized something. It was ok, and even natural, to feel both.
Last week, for example, I was with some friends talking through an argument we had, and I felt an overwhelming sense of pain and sadness well up. I didn’t know where all of it was coming from, but I knew the argument had been a catalyst for me to feel these things, and more importantly, I recognized it was ok to feel what I was feeling. I ended up sobbing my eyes out.
And although I now better understand the causes of this moment, at the time, I had no idea that pain was even there to begin with. What struck me the hardest was how even while crying, there were periods in which I smiled. I smiled because I was so happy and grateful to be feeling these emotions that I had rejected and pushed down for so long. Even more so, I was proud of myself for getting to the point where I had the courage to do so. I was also so thankful for my friends and the situation for bringing these emotions to the surface. Finally, I could see that this pain, sadness, and hurt were not something to fear but something to appreciate as part of being human. It was magnificent. It felt like I was learning to appreciate a rose in a thunderstorm.
In learning to stay with whatever is present and accept it as part of my reality, I have been able to reconnect with parts of me that have been lost for years. In being patient with this process, I have gone from viewing my emotions as black or white to understanding that they are a tessellation of different sensations, perceptions, and experiences, each a critical part of who I am. Some days my mind is watching an action movie; others, it’s a romcom or feel-good, and others, it’s heartbreaking. But each has its own beauty to it. Each has the ability to paint life a different color, and by learning to watch it all patiently, the dullness toward life I had felt has faded and what has taken its place is a vivid, technicolor adventure through this life.
This process has not been easy. I’ve learned patience with myself and have developed a deep trust that I have the courage to face and even appreciate whatever life brings. This is what makes it so worth it. Emotion is what makes us human; it makes life rich with color like you’ve turned up the saturation on a tv. It’s made me once again feel truly alive.