Feel All of It 

Emotions are complicated. And at the same time, family is where we first learned how to relate to other people and express our emotions. It is also where we should have learned how to feel and process emotions. Unfortunately, for many of us, the opposite is actually true. 

Growing up, my home was chaotic. Arguments, contention, and elevated voices were commonplace, especially between my parents. But, as with most families, we did our best to display harmony and love in public. That’s not to say that we didn’t love each other. We did. However, we were never given the tools for how to:

1. Identify the emotions we were feeling
2. Time and space to feel those emotions
3. Safe environments that provide support without judgement
4. Understand what those emotions were teaching us
5. Process the emotions out of us

My parents were part of the baby boomer generation, so to be fair, I’m not sure language for emotional intelligence were even uttered, let alone discussed. So, my parents did the best they could to nurture our unique emotions, but I think because they were struggling with life in general, it was way too big a task to undertake.

This meant that you only had a short window of time to express your emotions and after that, you had better figure out how to either suppress or channel those emotions elsewhere. 

At the same time, we were heavily involved in religion. I won’t simply say that we went to church because I think it minimizes the immense dedication we had to our church organization. Our church life felt paramount to anything else that was going on. 

For some reason, you would think that being in such an environment rich with emotions would be the perfect place to express freely and honestly. Unfortunately, it was quite the opposite. Much like putting on our best clothes to represent a physical exterior that was put together, we did the same for our mental and emotional bodies. It was as if we were all pretending for each other that everything was good. 

It felt like the behavioral code was “make it look good even if it isn’t good.” And for those who dared expressed otherwise went through a rigorous process to be “fixed” or they were shamed and made to feel guilty for anything outside of expressing the joy of the Lord.  

Our family pledged our allegiance to that code and at 9:00 am every Sunday morning, the truth of what occurred behind the closed and locked doors of our home remained hidden. No one would have ever known that there were issues in my family because there was no safe place to uncover truth in a church building that was ironically called a sanctuary. 

Then, the unthinkable occurred. On a Monday evening, my mother received a call from a woman claiming to be my dad’s mistress. The moment I saw my mom slumped over on the bed with the phone loosely hanging from her hand, I knew life would never be the same. And it wasn’t.

I remember feeling so sick to my stomach that I couldn’t eat and woke up most mornings dry heaving. It felt like I was drowning in my emotions, and I wanted it all to stop. I wanted a life line. 

The rest of the week was a whirlwind of emotions that I had no idea what to do with. But, my family didn’t spend a great deal of time talking about it in depth. Once we expressed our initial emotions amongst each other, we did what we’ve always done… continued living as if everything was fine. That was our trend. Feel the initial emotion, experience a temporary response, numb yourself to the pain, and then move on. 

But this time, it was different. I couldn’t numb this pain no matter how much I avoided it, shoved it down, or pretended that it didn't exist.

On the first Sunday morning after the implosion of my family, I was walking from my car towards the church’s entry way. I had my, “make it look good,” face on and every real emotion tucked away. Before I reached the front door, I saw a church leader walk toward me. From the look of concern on his face, I knew he knew what had happened, but I was unsure of what he was about to say. 

The secret space of my heart yearned for him to see the utter pain and devastation in my eyes. I wanted him to recognize the grief that had struck my soul and honor it with his words and actions. However, that was not the case.
 
His tone of voice was somber and with sadness in his voice he said, “Amy, I spoke with your dad last night, and he told me what happened. I’m so sorry, honey. But he has repented. He is so sorry. And we must remember that forgiveness and love are required by God.”  
 
I was speechless. It wasn’t that I disagreed with this statement, but it was the idea that the only response I was allotted after this traumatic incident were forgiveness and love. But, it wasn’t just his words, it was the overall concept that I became angry with. It was a concept I knew well and followed whole heartedly. Only, in that moment, it didn’t make sense.

When something “bad” happens or when uncomfortable emotions are present, we believe that are main job is to get over it or to rid ourselves of these feelings. It’s like we are on a countdown the moment something off putting occurs. We may even feel the pressure from our family and friends to feel “better.” And the narrative is spoken in a way for us to believe that it is for our good. 

But this leader’s dismissiveness sounded so similar to my own dismissiveness that it wasn’t him that angered me as much as it was my own programming. I had the right to feel all of my emotions, especially those that may make people (and myself) uncomfortable. 

So, here is what I have come to understand, years after leaving this religious organization and discovering spirituality for myself. All emotions – every single one of them – are valid and necessary. Emotions are true. They are factual. And if you allow it, they can be a direct line into your soul and spirit to increase self awareness.

You know what else I discovered? The emotions that have the most value for me are usually the ones I initially want to get rid of quickly. Those are the emotions that challenge me to look at myself and the world differently. They are the ones that help me break patterns and shift me into a more peaceful state. 
 
I spent years shoving down my emotions. Praying them away. Rebuking them. Being ashamed of them. Every emotion that did not have to do with happiness and joy were demonized. In fact, I didn’t really learn how to feel my emotions until I was in my early 30s. 
 
The problem with dismissing emotions and inaccurately telling people that “your emotions lie to you,” robs people of the gift of going through the process of growth. To relegate my emotions to simply demanding love and forgiveness without allowing me to go through the necessary process of feeling the tumultuous effects of this trauma is absolutely irresponsible and ignorant.
 
Feelings are like symptoms. For example, if you wake up tomorrow with a sore throat, your problem isn’t necessarily a sore throat. While that is the pain point, the real problem is the internal infection that has caused the sore throat. This is why it’s important to treat the infection as opposed to just the symptom. If you have a cough and are only sucking on cough drops all day, you may decrease the amount of times you cough, but those drops will not do much in terms of getting rid of your internal infection in your lungs. 
 
The symptom then becomes the key to both achieving and maintaining physical health. Without the symptom, infection would ravage our insides without us being aware. The same is true of our emotions. They are symptoms alerting us that something internally is out of whack, and it needs to be tended to. This is where the value of feeling your emotions comes into play. The feeling of anger isn’t just attached to the event that upset you. Rather, that emotion is usually attached to something deeper that has yet to be dealt with. The internal, emotional infection that has been ignored. 
 
My anger towards my dad wasn’t just about the affair, although that was the catalyst. The anger actually went much deeper. The emotional infection was the years of neglect and abandonment I felt. It was the pain of his absence. The anger led me to the depth of how I really felt about my dad. Anger gave me the give of self-reflection. It gave me the gift of vulnerability. It let me know that I needed to stop and look within because something wasn’t operating at its highest capacity.  
 
So it is with our feelings. If we choose to pray them away, shove them down, dismiss them, ignore them or dishonor them with an “I’m fine,” emotional infections will ravage our entire body until all that is left is a physical dressing that surrounds a hollow shell. Every feeling we dismiss takes a piece of us away with it. Every time we choose the façade over vulnerability, we distance ourselves from our true, genuine nature. 
 
Positivity is not the highest feeling, no matter what popular culture tries to coax us to believe. Positive vibes only are dangerous when they are used to replace real vibes. All emotions are valid and all of them deserve their time to shine. Each feeling is used to activate a different part of our past and present to help us break generational patterns that are continuing to keep us and those that come after us in emotional dungeons. 
 
So, right now, I give you permission to feel because whatever you are feeling right now is valid. Feel it. Don’t try to use logic to get out of it or justify it to other who are too small minded to let you be human. Simply identify the emotion and feel it in all its glory. And while you are feeling it, talk through it. Use the symptom to get to the infection. What is this symptom trying to tell you? What is the feeling trying to tell you about you? And rest assured, the message always has a positive ending.
 
Your feelings are for you and not against you. They are merely messengers. The message may be difficult to hear, and it may seem like it’s coming to condemn. But it’s not. The message is an alert. Its source is love. Your feelings are saying that they love you enough to let you know that it’s time to deal with deeper issues that will exacerbate into life threatening emotional conditions that will eventually steal your spirit away from you.