When I was a kid I was extremely emotional. It wouldn't take much for me to cry. Those around me, especially my mother, never reacted well when I expressed myself emotionally. She/They would say things to stop it, even make me feel like something was wrong that I should be doing so. So in time I learnt how to internalise my emotions, which made me seem more in control when in fact it was just a façade. But the trouble is, if you practice hiding your feelings long enough, the image you put out is what others see and reflect back, so that who I appear to be is not me. I had no idea the effect this would have on me.
There is an advantage to being in control of one’s emotions, especially when attempting to fit into a world that seems to value being in control. But what it did took me further and further from who I really was. I forgot about this sensitive boy, and just got used to being someone who would observe without becoming emotionally involved, to the point where I was no longer even aware of feeling my feelings any more.
Feelings would still arrive, but often be delayed or arrive with uncertainty about what they meant; I knew I was feeling something I just had no idea what it was. I’d become so out of touch with my feelings, that the people I was around, who identified with me because they were like that, only helped to reinforce the illusion that I was like them. And I believed it because I had forgotten how to be that sensitive emotional kid.
I’d be reminded of him every now and then, but it was difficult to deal with those experiences, so it just became easier not to go there. Then, something unexpected would happen, which would cause me to get emotional and really cry, and that crying opened things back up, and I felt so much more real again and knew how important feeling my emotion was. And yet because I was living in a world that did not want me to be that way and would not accept it, that would take advantage of it and see it as weakness, that was even harder to deal with, further reinforcing the internal nature of my experience, making me solidify the part that I now found myself playing.
My true self wasn't gone, I just had no real way to access him, that would be accepted or believed. I wasn't around artists or performers, poets or writers, who would have recognised and accepted the emotion and encouraged it. I was around neuro-typical thinkers, just as I appeared to be, and just like those who feel the need to suppress their true self, who hide themselves in the proverbial closet because they feel they are safer there, I lived most of my life trying to be somebody else.
That doesn't mean I didn't experience and learn things, have fun, live life, but I wonder what difference would it have made had I been who I actually was inside and not appear to be who I thought I needed to be in order to be accepted.
The idea of being accepted seemed more important than anything else. Yet no matter what I did, I never really was, so the price of being somebody else didn't even give me what it was I thought I was looking for. When I felt like I was being accepted, which would happen from time to time, because it wasn't me they were accepting, I had to use so much energy to maintain the idea that they had of me. What a waste.
I know I'm not the only one who's experienced things like this, and while there will be similarities, our experiences are of course unique. I just wanted to share this feeling I've had today to talk about it and see what that produces.
There is an advantage to being in control of one’s emotions, especially when attempting to fit into a world that seems to value being in control. But what it did took me further and further from who I really was. I forgot about this sensitive boy, and just got used to being someone who would observe without becoming emotionally involved, to the point where I was no longer even aware of feeling my feelings any more.
Feelings would still arrive, but often be delayed or arrive with uncertainty about what they meant; I knew I was feeling something I just had no idea what it was. I’d become so out of touch with my feelings, that the people I was around, who identified with me because they were like that, only helped to reinforce the illusion that I was like them. And I believed it because I had forgotten how to be that sensitive emotional kid.
I’d be reminded of him every now and then, but it was difficult to deal with those experiences, so it just became easier not to go there. Then, something unexpected would happen, which would cause me to get emotional and really cry, and that crying opened things back up, and I felt so much more real again and knew how important feeling my emotion was. And yet because I was living in a world that did not want me to be that way and would not accept it, that would take advantage of it and see it as weakness, that was even harder to deal with, further reinforcing the internal nature of my experience, making me solidify the part that I now found myself playing.
My true self wasn't gone, I just had no real way to access him, that would be accepted or believed. I wasn't around artists or performers, poets or writers, who would have recognised and accepted the emotion and encouraged it. I was around neuro-typical thinkers, just as I appeared to be, and just like those who feel the need to suppress their true self, who hide themselves in the proverbial closet because they feel they are safer there, I lived most of my life trying to be somebody else.
That doesn't mean I didn't experience and learn things, have fun, live life, but I wonder what difference would it have made had I been who I actually was inside and not appear to be who I thought I needed to be in order to be accepted.
The idea of being accepted seemed more important than anything else. Yet no matter what I did, I never really was, so the price of being somebody else didn't even give me what it was I thought I was looking for. When I felt like I was being accepted, which would happen from time to time, because it wasn't me they were accepting, I had to use so much energy to maintain the idea that they had of me. What a waste.
I know I'm not the only one who's experienced things like this, and while there will be similarities, our experiences are of course unique. I just wanted to share this feeling I've had today to talk about it and see what that produces.
