Saturday, January 9, 2016

It's not wrong to have feelings


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One thing I've been pondering in my mind lately is how I feel like so many emotions have been so repressed in our culture. People are told to shovel their feelings underneath the canopy. This can happen especially in the "Christian" culture where in the churches, they tell you it is wrong to be angry, or sad or full of grief. I always felt like I was a bad person in some religious circles to suffer from depression or to ever be upset at my lot. It's like you were told you always had to be happy and if you weren't that you were a "bad person". It was really horrible at the last phony church I left.

 I'm not interested in becoming a pod person. Leave that for the cults. Let Anna Duggar go on about how her feelings should be shut down for her cult and taking back her pedophile abuser husband who beats prostitutes. Narcissists want people to have no emotions, it gives them more control. Our emotions come out of our consciences and intuition to warn us of things. How many of you ACONS had narcissistic parents that shouted about you were "too sensitive"?

Around the narcissists I wasn't allowed to have emotions either. I was always told to repress them. Sometimes I worry that this has affected my relationships. With the inner circle, I can be open and affectionate but there's alway this constant inner censorship and repression but then I have paid too often for being vulnerable and telling people how I feel. It is a constant battle and now I worry "Can I be me?" or will I just get squashed? The inner voice of "Did I say and do the wrong thing?" seems to never let up. Some of our healing is getting rid of those false voices. A big part of my healing is not wasting time on people I can't be authentic around.

  The narcissists in our society put pressure on people not to have emotions. They have none except anger and glee so they want that evidence of human consciences shut down. Tears unless fake crocodile tears never come to any of their eyes. It's frozen wasteland in there.

Have any of you seen old movies and books? Seen how people used to cry more and be more expressive? Sure some polite rules were even more instilled but I think of the Victorian era and how people would send flowers and write mourning poetry or collect locks of hair. You wonder about our society now, as it grows colder and less emotionless. The iron jawed professional who is cold and steely is honored as the most successful.

I grew up being told I was "sensitive" and that feelings were bad and not to be shown. One was to always be "positive" and "smiling" and never cry. Both of my narcissist parents would slap me hard if they saw any emotion from crying and sadness to even too much enthusiasm and joy. Many ACONS go through this where they are separated from their own emotions. This actually sets us up for more heartache as our emotions are closed off and so our internal warning systems are shut down.

Some of us have to ask, what are our true feelings? Some ACONS may numb out to survive a lot of their pain. Abuse via CPTSD will cause people to numb out and do anything to escape reality. Some take that route via drugs or alcohol. Anything to avoid the hard emotions. I had to deal with some of my emotions head on over these past years. One thing is dealing with a body that is in serious decline, what does this mean? Some of us must cross that barrier of dealing with what life is REALLY LIKE then what we would like it to be. Americans especially are told to focus on possibilities to the point often reality is set on the back shelf.

I don't want to waste time with workaholics and others who support the society that hates being human, and actually believe those stupid articles that to be strong women we have to forgo all emotions and show our confidence. Those are more articles that just want to turn people into narcissists.  I had enough of that with my family. For God's sake, I was an artist most of my life, I am not an accountant or a hard nosed career woman, what do they expect? Getting to know ourselves, we can begin to accept ourselves. It's not wrong to have feelings. I want to be who I am, someone who does have feelings and wants to be able to express them.

It's not wrong to have feelings. People who make us feel "bad" for having emotions, we should avoid like the plague. Some of this goes beyond cultural precepts but is a nation that is growing more narcissistic by the minute. Narcissists in their coldness hate emotions, they hate feelings. They want to separate people form their God given emotions for more control. People who show no vulnerability or no true closeness are who no longer know themselves or even know others. When every social interaction becomes nothing but "business", the human heart is lost.  There's a reason that the message now is never to have emotions, to be closed off, to be a good positive pod person. If you never cry or can feel loss, do you even love? Narcissists don't love.

So if you are crying, or even feeling happy today, it's not wrong to have feelings. Don't let those without any tell you that you shouldn't have any.

2 comments:

  1. This week in the obituary there is an 18 year old. And yet everyone is out there running around, doing this and that, having this thinking that they will go on forever.

    I keep wondering how many quilting projects I'll do before I die. I'm eating a muffin for my breakfast and I can hear the voice saying, "You better hurry up and get your work done." This spoils such a wonderful muffin moment.

    And sewing feels so silly, now with our fast paced world. That I am out of touch. I enjoy it, but it feels like I'm not supposed to enjoy it.

    It is always the next thing, then the next. As fast as possible. So that you can look good, and get that approval.

    Or if I talk about a problem, someone will tell me that I'm not supposed to feel that way. Being just angry or happy all the time is not the multi-dimensional way that humans are supposed to be.

    It is more painful to cry than it ought to be. It should be comforting, but it feels shameful.

    In my relationship, I can stop a fight dead in its tracks by showing my full authentic emotion. If I did that with any of my ex's it would have been dangerous. The first ex-husband would have killed me, the second one would probably have ran away. It only works on humans it seems.

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  2. Hi, Peep! *Raises hand and waves it eagerly* My dad used to tell me often that I was overly sensitive, too! Even while my mom was playing the eternally divine role of overwrought drama queen!

    Seriously, all I had to do was frown or clench my jaw or otherwise indicate I was upset and dear dad would jump all over me, shut me down with intimidation and threats as quickly as he could. Obsessively controlling, that was my dad. I was afraid of him while growing up. I still am -- he can do a lot of damage, very quickly, when he feels like it. Spent most of my life hiding in my bedroom so I would not get in trouble for existing. Learned to shut every - and I mean *every* - strong emotion down, including desire and happiness, to keep from getting smashed. Used to run my fingernails down my arms beneath my sleeves to keep from crying at church. Left those tears embedded in angry red lines in my skin, but just until I could get home. Safe in my room, I could cry... except that by the time I got there, the tears were all dried up, and stayed in a tight, freeze-dried ball in my chest until now, it seems, when I often find myself weeping for seemingly little reason other than decades of pain and anger and grief turned inward.

    The pain has to go somewhere. All of our emotions do. They are meant to be experienced. They are meant to be expressed -- appropriately. Makes me wonder whether those who seem to scream at the first sight of anger or grief in another simply never learned how to tolerate strong emotions. If someone can't sit with strong emotions - listen to them, learn from them, redirect them or just let them be what they are - then how can that person tolerate the same in others?

    In addition to control, I think that denial of strong emotions may also be about convenience. Especially with narcs. Narcs are not interested in your feelings, not only because they may be frightened by them, not knowing how to handle them, but they also fear - I think, deep down - what types of stories those emotions are telling. Any type of conflict or pain may mean there is something wrong, something difficult that needs to be addressed, and narcs - the social-emotional toddlers that they are - do not have much capacity to address real people, real problems, real life.

    I am with you on finding it rather alarming that so many supposedly *negative* emotions are so strongly condemned in American culture. I have seen it, as you have, especially in the positive thinking cult and organized religion (as if God could not handle or help us with our strongest, most negative emotions?)

    It is not only counterproductive to healthy relationships to sweep anything and everything unpleasant under the rug, but it is also unhealthy to the individual. Makes me wonder how much of the cancer and diabetes and heart disease in our society may be traced to buried emotions? Because burying anger or fear or grief, as well as canning the normal (or not, as with abuse) human experiences that caused them, can bring on a hell of a lot of stress.

    I read recently on another blog about last year's Pixar movie *Inside Out*, which supposedly addresses the importance of negative emotions in the big picture called LIFE. I have not seen the movie (not big on films), but from what I have seen/read, the overall message seems to be that certain negative emotions (such as anger, sadness) were required for the child in the movie to successfully process a stressful life event (moving to a new city). If you have seen this little flick, I would be interested in hearing your comments on it.

    Once again, an awesome post.

    - Lisa

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