Giving Space to My Emotions

The biggest thing I have learned is that no matter how upset, troubled, and anxious I am, emotions are fleeting, whether they’re positive or negative. A lot of the time, I need to figure out if this is something I can do anything about or if it’s something that I just need to push through. What I mean is this: Can my actions have an effect on what I’m feeling or dealing with at the moment? Can I change my circumstances? It seems like most of the time, the answer is “yes.”  For example, if I’m bored, I can find something to do that either needs to be done or is entertaining.

However, there are times when I just need to accept my emotions. I just need to lean into them and “feel” them for lack of better words. Like when my cat just recently died, I was very sad, and I missed him terribly, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I mean, I could have ignored the emotion, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a healthy thing to do. Since I tend to shove away and “stuff” my emotions, so I don’t feel them, they eventually explode, usually at the most inopportune times.

Also, since I tend to push down my emotions and try not to feel them, it makes it harder to identify what I’m feeling and why I’m feeling the way I am. I’ve numbed myself so much over the years. I find it so much easier to express emotions through reading sad books, watching sad movies, or even listening to sorrowful songs. Maybe it’s because the emotions aren’t mine, and I’m able to create distance between myself and the art form. I’m not quite sure, but I think that it is a common thing to want to partake in these emotional avenues, such as songs, movies, and the like. I wonder if other people do the same thing as I do.

I wish that I had learned the skills of emotional regulation as a child. I know that the ability to hide my emotions was a skill that was taught to me via my family of origin. I wish I had been taught how to unpack my emotions and that it was safe to feel them. However, I don’t think my parents learned how to do that either as adults or as children. They were “fixers” or people who made things better but didn’t necessarily acknowledge the more negative things in life. As a result, I never really learned this skill.

I know I am not alone in this, and I know it’s not just because of my Autism that I struggle with this. I think I will continue to struggle with this issue for the rest of my life so I will continue to try my best to be aware of my emotions and to express them in a healthy manner. Sending encouragement and reassurance to the readers who may struggle with this as well.