What emotion do you try to avoid? What triggers this emotion within you?
I started going through a list of shadow work prompts, since my shadow work therapist believes that journaling will help me a lot. Gonna do 20-minute sprints of journaling every day until our next meeting on the 18th of March. Not sure if that'll help me process what's in my head, but I might as well try to get some of my thoughts down on virtual paper. Would at least give me something interesting to read a decade from now, just like I did in January when I was reading shit from like 2003 in this journal.
Today's question kind of has me stumped though. What emotion do I try to avoid? One of the things that people have always complained about when it comes to me is that I am "too emotional". I've recently learned that I can look them back in their face and say "I'm not too emotional, you just have a low tolerance for other people's feelings." I love the reframing of that. There is such a beauty in being able to claim those emotions and know that they give me power. They're not something to hide from. I know I need to learn how to aim them better. Like, when I was having that really tense conversation with Ken, I slapped Jim's table so hard when I was just trying to get up - just BAM!! It surprised me just as much as anyone. My emotions can be explosive like that. Well, I am a fuck up, apparently, we'll just roll with it.
So I looked over a long laundry list of emotions tonight. I was like 'I'm fine with that, whatever, that one's cool, I don't mind that one'. So again, I'm stumped.
I used to have issues with showing joy to other people. I remember overhearing my father telling my mother "the only time she smiled is when I let her go off on her own" when we came home from my first ever Renaissance Faire. It wasn't that I wasn't having a blast - I mean, it was my FIRST EVER rennie experience and my dad was pretty cool to hang out with, I just didn't know how to express that. I'm pretty sure I hurt him by not showing how excited I was around him. He used to call me Daria, because he saw that cartoon and the sardonic resting bltchface was absolutely me.
So... is it joy? Can I not feel joy around others?
It's happened a few other times. I think everyone at one of my previous jobs thought I hated them. My boss even remarked "I never thought you liked me" once. Truth was, I absolutely looked up to her, thought she was amazing and honestly feel her finding me gave me a way out of constantly worrying about being homeless again. She saved me and she thought I didn't like her.
Maybe I'm just afraid to be vulnerable with others. That was the emotion on the list that made my stomach groan the most. I never even realized it was an emotion, I just figured it was a way of being, one that I have yet to fully get comfortable with. And it's funny, because I absolutely love having those 3am type conversations, the ones where me and friends are like sitting in their cars while rain showers trickle down and it's a little foggy and we're just talking about life, the universe, our feelings, past nostalgia and all the little things that float through our brains at the wee hours of the morning. I haven't had a moment like that in a long while. I haven't had a friend I could really do that with in a longer while.
As a therapist, it's my job to sit in that place of vulnerability with others, to have these kinds of conversations... but maybe it's easier to open OTHER people up than myself.
I remember one of my friends told me many years ago, "It's very hard to know you, Janet."
And I was like, "What the hell are you talking about? I'm right here. Doesn't anyone see me at all?" Because back then, all I wanted was to be known, so maybe I WANT to be vulnerable, I just don't know how to go about getting to the point where I am.
I just always feel like if I lay it all out there, if I smile too much while I'm enjoying something, if I leave information out there-- well, then, what if I give them the key to knowing what they can take away if they decide they no longer want anything to do with me. "To klll this girl," as Angel once said on Buffy, "you have to love her."
I'm not afraid of others stabbing me in the front. I can hold my own.
One of the things that came up when I was talking to Ken recently was how I found out that his friends had been laughing about how I should be "thrown over the atrium" at Wicked Faire. He tried to explain that it was an inside joke that I interpreted wrong, because during the convention they were all so tense that they were saying it about everyone and everything that was stressing them out. So, okay, maybe they didn't laugh about murdering me?
He tried to explain that no one wanted to hurt me in that group and that no one had any intentions of ever doing harm to me. But that ain't it. It never was. I'd rather get into a physical fight and work off some anger than have people I trusted laugh about me behind my back. Come at me with anything but the idea that I trusted the wrong people, that I was vulnerable with the wrong people, that my ability to pick people in my life is ultimately flawed and broken.
Just stab me in my front. Please and thank you.
Don't let me make the mistake of loving someone who doesn't care. I've made that mistake far too many times and been left with beautiful memories I have no place to put when it's over. And like Violet says in (the oh-so-horrible other than this one perfect line) movie Ultraviolet when the little boy asks her why she can't let anyone in, "Because... these moments... as beautiful as they are... they're evil when they're gone."