Vulnerable

How vulnerable do you allow yourself to be?

I was discussing this with my good friend Emily not too long ago. (I really should give her full credit to this blog, because she is the one who brought it up). Emily and I realized that we have different practices when it comes to being vulnerable with others. She tends to be more closed off until she has a more established relationship. I tend to be more open to more people more easily.

She and I face different challenges in being vulnerable with others. Hers is to be able to let someone new in, while mine is to know when to close it off. You shouldn’t be vulnerable with everyone; don’t be an emotional whore because that is just asking for trouble. And how can you be a real friend/boyfriend/girlfriend without allowing your true self to shine through.

In our conversation we came to the realization you need to have a balance. Keep closed and open enough to build and deepen relationships, while still protecting yourself and not becoming  that whore.

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Being vulnerable is scary. Often times, no matter when or with whom, it can lead to regret (Thanks Mr. Jon Lukas for your insight!). Have you ever felt that twinge of regret after having poured your heart and soul out to another? Even if the other person doesn’t judge you or think negatively of you, you can’t help but feeling like maybe you shouldn’t have said it all. You want to take it all back. Let’s call it Vulnerability Remorse.

This remorse is too familiar to me. Remember when I said that I open up too much to too many different people? This leaves me feeling full of regret too often. It also prevents me from opening up to the person to which those feelings are linked causing more problems and drama between friends.

Think about how you allow or don’t allow you to be vulnerable. Now, why do you think this is? Is it past experiences? Is it a question of trust? Have you been hurt too many times and now you’ve closed yourself off? Or is it the opposite? Have you never been able to open up to anyone?

When we are vulnerable, we stand alone with a very real part of us visible. It takes trust. When our self-made walls crumble down, feelings are exposed leaving us emotionally naked in front of another.

As scary as it is, it is through vulnerability that friendships and relationships can be strengthened. We must find our own balance between the emotional whoring and being an iron vault.

One last thing, take the time to answer this quick poll. Use it as a way to start your personal reflection on how vulnerable you allow yourself to be.

Backpack Theory

I developed this little analogy to show the importance of dealing with our emotions and not just ignoring them. (As mentioned in my previous post- Guilty- Internal Struggle)

I dedicate this to my friend Jon who has been waiting so patiently for me to post this. Here you are my friend!

First, visualize your emotions as a small living thing.

See? They are cute! Why wouldn’t you want to spend time getting to know these little guys?

You can do one of two things with this cute little green guy. You can 1- ignore him or 2- deal with them.

Ignoring

What happens when you ignore these guys? Well, the neglected emotion does nothing. At. All. It sits there in your home, on your couch, probably watching tv, becoming a permanent fixture on your couch.

Eventually, it will get bigger in the waist and becomes a waste.

How could this situation be worse? Just imagine more than one little occupier … 2, 3, 4 …. Just add up the emotions you are ignoring. The feelings you push aside and don’t deal with. That’s one big mess and probably wouldn’t smell so good since I’m sure these little guys haven’t showered. Ick.

How many of us have emotional lives that are filled with these creatures? I will be the first to admit that I have a few in my life that I’m dying to get rid of. So what is the cure? How do we prevent this from happening, or how do we clean up the mess of delayed dealings?!

Dealing

Back to the beginning. You have this cute little creature, before he gets fat and joins the “occupy the couch” movement. You don’t want to end up with another couched emotion. So what do you do?

Acknowledge them. Give them a name.

I’ve said this before, naming the emotion makes it real. It does take some discernment on your part to determine what the emotion is and risk giving it the wrong name. Down the road we may have to change the name of the little guy and maybe it is necessary as the emotion changes as it gets put to work. How does your emotion work…

… give them a backpack and send them off to school!

Sometimes these emotions become so productive that they go off to college and never come back. They might keep in touch, but that might not always be the case. Is that a bad thing? It might be hard, we might miss them, but overall it’s better to have them out in the world rather than on the couch, taking up space.

Some of these emotions will come back after “college” and move in next door. You might be working through them the rest of your life. Does that mean you resent it? Maybe sometimes, but does that mean you let them become the trashy neighbors? No! Don’t give them the power to decrease your property value. Keep working on them.

Kicking off the couch

So what about the guys you have on your couch right now? Remember, it’s never too late to go back to school! Send them now. Clean them up, give them their name and give them a backpack! The only difference is you might not be giving them a Phineas and Ferb backpack.

I can’t help but think of Adam Sandler in Billy Madison singing, “Back to School, back to school…” Let your emotions prove to you that they are not fools! They can become working members of society.

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This might sound silly, but I can honestly say that coming up with this little analogy has helped me deal with what’s going on in my life. It allows me to separately identify and analyze each different emotional thing going on in my head/heart. Instead of looking at a clump of dirty, smelly things, you can see them individually working on their different projects for school.

So why the backpack? The backpack gives the emotion a purpose. It is a needed tool for the work they have ahead of them. When we go to school we use a backpack to help carry our books and other tools of learning. You are working through the emotion and it is not fighting against you, but working with you.

You can’t expect your emotions to take care of themselves or just disappear! If you don’t stick a backpack on it and send it to school, no one else will.

Void

There are different types of voids. There are the voids we feel when someone/something is removed from our lives, and there are the voids that are more ambiguous.

The first is the hollow that was once home to something – that teddy bear your mom sold at a garage sale when you were in college, the loss of a loved one after they have passed away, the friend or significant other who is no longer in your life… we have lost and now there is a void.

These loss voids are different depending on what was lost. They might get filled by other things over time. Someone or something could take its place. There is no rule for how this will play out. I am of the opinion that some of these voids will stay will us forever. You just get used to them being there.
[A word of warning about filling loss voids there are some things that should not be used to fill the emptiness that loss can bring. Temporary fixes are not always healthy. Even if it feels good at the time, it most likely will not help in the long-term. I could write a book on this topic! Perhaps I’ll dedicate a whole post to this down the road.]

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The second type of void is a little more difficult to explain. I have heard women (and some men who are willing to discuss such things) talk about how there is something missing in their lives. They have a void and they are trying to fill it, but they just can’t identify how the hole got there or how to fill it. You realize something is missing from your life and you want to fix it, but since, to your knowledge, it has never been filled, you haven’t the slightest idea how you should fill it. It has never been occupied.

The ambiguous void makes me think of my one of my favorite Shel Silverstein books, The Missing Piece –

Did you watch it? No really, it will be worth it.

The quest for the missing piece took It all over – land, sea, jungle, mountains. During Its journey, It was able to smell flowers, appreciate the butterflies and even make up a little song. It met lots of pieces that just didn’t fit the void. Until it met that one piece that fit perfectly and they rolled together. But during their rolling together, It could not do the things It enjoyed. In the end, It bids farewell to the piece that filled the void.

This makes me curious. There are apparently different views as to what Mr. Silverstein meant when he wrote this story, but I’m going to go ahead and use it for this topic: filling the void. We are in search of that perfect missing piece, but is it what we really need? Should we be constantly on the search?

This leads me to a second Shel Silverstein book, The Missing Piece Meets the Big O. And watch it … now!

I absolutely love the ending in this book. After changing who it was, trying so hard to find a place to fit, the missing piece realizes that it didn’t need to be a missing piece for something else. It rounded itself and rolled on its own.

Maybe we are like this missing piece and the It that was missing its piece. Maybe we should not go around trying to fill the ambiguous voids in our lives. Instead, maybe we should just enjoy life. Enjoy the flowers, grow as individuals and roll along with others. Don’t depend on others or things to complete us. Be content smelling the flowers and playing with butterflies and maybe we will be fortunate enough to have others rolling alongside.

Cut Deep

I have a theory about loss, hurt and pain that I’d like to share with you. I lost my mom to cancer just a little over two years ago. Since then, it has been a struggle juggling the “loss” feeling with everything else. As I was attempting to figure what was/is going on with me, I came up with a little illustration/metaphor. Bear with me as I try to explain it.

When we lose someone or something so important to us it can cut us down to our inner core. If this was a real injury, we could face the threat of hypovolemic shock from all the blood loss. This deep laceration does not heal easily. The tissue has been damaged and blood lost. As with any wound, it takes time, effort, and rest to heal.

Rest. Do we ever really give ourselves an “emotional rest” to properly allow ourselves to heal? Or is that even an option? We could seclude ourselves from the world and ignore all the external influences that trigger memories or remind us of the void we now have in our lives.

We risk getting cut again every day (since it is not practical for us to exclude ourselves wholly from the world). That next cut might be less severe, maybe even just be a little paper cut, but when we are faced with another challenge, another struggle, or loss that hits us a little too close to our BIG wound, it could cause that deep hurt all over again. Now that little pain hurts for what it is worth and also cuts us down to that deep place where we were cut before. Pain on top of pain.

Illustration

Those little cuts can make it hard to deal with the big thing in your life. They could be the loss of a job or someone else, a break-up, a newly damaged relationship, or countless other things that can cause you pain.

As I said before, this has been something I have struggled with since losing Mom. It’s not necessarily the small things that cause me so much trouble, but the fact that I’m still dealing with that big thing.

It took me being able to break it down to understand why every little thing seemed to bother me. Now I at least understand why I feel even if I don’t know how to help “heal” it.

Guilty – external

It’s hard to trust others with our emotions.

Someone decides to take a risk and share their emotions with you. They have made the decision to open up and share what is going on inside, a difficult task, indeed. How do you, the listener, respond?

Be careful here. These variables make for a volatile situation.

If you say the wrong thing, the person might shut down. Making a mental note that opening up was a HUGE mistake. Chances are, you’ll not be hearing anything from then again. Trust broken. Emotional vault closed.

This walks hand in hand with guilt. Feeling bad for feeling brought on by others. Your reaction to their feelings (as I’ve said before- a part of them) can make them feel that perhaps they shouldn’t be feeling that way. Maybe it’s wrong and bad. Let the guilt pile on!

This guilt is just as bad as if it was an internally-induced guilt. What might make it worse is the fact that someone else brought it on and relationships are now changed. Are you going to trust someone who marginalizes your feelings? So now you are left with the guilt and the task of being able to trust that person again. It will take time, unless you’re a very forgiving person.

So what to do with all of this? Be understanding and aware of others feelings. If someone decides you are trustworthy enough to open up to, THINK before you speak. Don’t pass judgment. Put yourself in their shoes and try to understand what they are going through.

This might sound easy and very obvious, but I have a suspicion that when confronted by others emotions we are lost with no road map to direct us. We are rather clueless. So take this advice. The results might surprise you.

Guilty – Internal Struggle

Guilt

How many of us have felt guilty, not for doing something wrong like cheating on a 6^th grade science test, or for getting in trouble when our parents found out we were the ones who broke the lamp, but for feeling?

When you were a child or even an adult, was there ever a time when we felt something connected to a memory, life event, etc. where we immediately thought “NO! Stop it. Bad.” and then you beat yourself up for the rest of the night over the feeling?  That guilt can be the worst. It forces you down into a pit of despair and often lasts longer than the initial feeling.

As I’ve said before, we feel things for a reason. Feelings are how we cope and react to our surroundings/interactions. There was something that stimulated that emotion, it just didn’t up and feel itself! To feel guilty about these reactions feelings is to feel guilty for that little (or big) part of who you are.

For example, your guy decides he doesn’t want to be with you anymore and your relationship has come to an abrupt stop. Weeks later you see a picture someone tagged of the two of you on Facebook, you find the earrings his family bought you on your birthday, or you pass that restaurant where you always wanted him to take you. Each of these “things” triggers an emotion- regret, sadness, longing, anger, or fill in the blank here. Typically these feelings are not welcome. So what is our instinct? We might try to force ourselves to stop the thinking, but in that stopping there is usually there twinge of guilt. “Craaap. Stupid girl. Why did you let yourself go there?!!!”

Don’t let your feelings force you to spiral into a self-induced depression of emotional guilt, look at the object or think about the memory that triggered the feeling. Identify the emotion, acknowledge its presence, and then ask yourself what you can do with it now. Mull over it for a while and ask yourself how you can work through it. Be productive with it, don’t just dwell. Maybe you need to un-tag photos, or give things away, or go to that restaurant with a friend so it ceases to be the place where “we” were supposed to go. Keep in mind we’re all different and because of this, our emotional analysis will not be the same.

Does this make sense? I call this emotional processing my “Backpack Theory”. I’ll get more into this later so this post doesn’t get too off topic.

Appropriate and Inappropriate feelings

There are situations where we feel things that are not helpful to us. At all. In these times we need to be able to recognize them as such and know how to deal with them accordingly. If you don’t deal with these or work through them, they can be harmful and lead to harmful behavior.  A married person having feelings and thoughts about someone else, or a child having violent thoughts against their parent are both situations I would label as inappropriate.

These inappropriate feelings area especially susceptible to feelings of guilt, unless our moral compass is off, and that’s a whole different issue that I am not sure I want to tackle on here.

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I know I have been and will continue to talk about how to deal with emotions yourself, but I want to make it very clear that if you’re having trouble dealing with things, I encourage seek help from a counselor, pastor or other trained professional. Sometimes we just need someone there to talk things through with.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to post comments and discuss. I would love to hear/read what others takes on this topic since I’m just me and I only know my own experiences and those who have been trusting enough to share.

Next post: Guilty – External Struggle

Trained to Repress & Ignore

Let’s just jump right in to this emotions business.

I had mentioned something in my first post that I don’t think we were well equipped to properly evaluate and deal with our emotions. I am not saying this is true for everyone. I hope there are those out there who grew up in homes where parents talked about feelings openly, paving the way for their children to do the same.

In my family it was understood that feelings were not to be trusted. They are not “certain” or concrete. Feelings change, but logic lasts. Work hard, do your duty, be responsible, and rely on God in all circumstances.

Yes, feelings can and do change, they can go away, or at least evolve into something else. Does that make them bad? Can they change when they are not given proper “attention”? Ignoring them completely won’t get you anywhere.

How common is this? How many of us were brought up to repress our emotions, ignore their existence, or feel guilty about having them? I plan on addressing the issue of guilt in a future post so for now let’s just focus on the repression and ignoring.

This might show that I’m still in my selfish post-adolescence, but if you don’t think about your emotions, no one else will. If you don’t open up and share them, take care of your emotional health, no one else will. There is no magic fairy who flies into your window, crawls into your subconscious and resolves issues, and explains feelings, leaving you all sorted out and in perfect psychological health the next day.

Your emotions are a part of you. Everything you feel has a reason and a purpose. They are your personal way of processing the world around you and reacting to it. To ignore these emotions is like ignoring a part of you. Those who choose to ignore their emotions risk minor and major issues down the road and you might miss out on something.

It happened to me. I was involved with someone who did not know how to identify and express their emotions. The end result?  When things got serious, they were confused and decided they didn’t know what was what and needed to take a step back. Ouch. If you can’t identify your feelings, how can you be sure what they are? It makes sense. Being familiar with your emotions brings on confidence. Confidence strengthens commitment.

I want to encourage you to think about how you process your emotions. Do you ignore your emotions? Are you comfortable identifying them?  The more comfortable we are with our emotions and feelings, the more familiar we are with ourselves and the better prepared we are to take on the stress of life.

Next Post: the guilt of feeling

The First Post

Feelings and emotions. They motivate, distract, hinder, and empower. They help us interact and thrive in (and with) our surroundings. Without them, we would be lost with no real connection to anything or anyone.

Have you ever stopped to think about how your emotions affect you? They are so much a part of you, spawned by your inner self. And yet, these things are such a mystery to us.

I want to use this blog as a means to process and uncover this “mystery”.

With the chance of sounding too much like Oprah or Dr. Phil, I believe we need to be aware of our emotions, need to know from where they come and what triggers them, and most importantly what do we DO with them. Very few have been taught how to do these things well and/or deliberately (but that’s a different soap box for a different post).

I will be using my own life stories and examples as I go, so if you are reading this, please be nice as you comment. I’m just a 20-something trying to figure things out and am using this blog as a means of self-exploration. With only a BA in Psychology, I’m no expert. I just let my common sense and small pool of life experience and knowledge guide me.

I’m looking forward to this little (big) “journey”. It should be interesting what thoughts and comments unfold.