De-Cluttering This Feeling
I’ve been quiet for a few days; I’ve not written anything since Tuesday, actually. Not because I’ve nothing to say; on the contrary, I think that perhaps, I’ve had too much to say. Too many thoughts and feelings and too much to process, as of late. My mind has been like a hoarder’s house; every corner, filled with unnecessary junk and things I’m seemingly not willing or able to let go of just yet. I’ve been emotionally and psychologically hoarding these thoughts and emotions and feel a massive purge coming on.
I’ve always been an over thinker; a deep thinker and analytical by nature. Someone who has to find the ‘source’, or ‘get to the bottom of’ how I feel about people, things and experiences. Someone who, analyzes every interpersonal encounter and relationship I have with others. This makes things difficult for me as, I need intense and excessive communication; both with others and within my own thought processes. It makes me want to think and talk through things that I feel; or think I feel. It makes me over analyze everything.
I’ve been doing that a lot lately, as a way of trying to remove the clutter. Unfortunately, it’s only served to create more clutter in my mind. I’ve been having a hard time with this, lately. Having difficulty both understanding what I’m feeling, and communicating that to others. Which, I suppose is part of the reason my mind has become like a messy room full of junk and clutter. Why my thought patterns have been so scattered and disorganized lately.
I’ve been trying to articulate what I’ve been feeling about the past year and all of its events and experience; interpersonal relationships and emotional evolution. And, what I have felt or feel about the people who’ve come and gone to and from my life. I’ve been trying so hard that I’ve gone back to sleepless nights, fraught with nightmares, mid-night waking and, tossing and turning. I’ve been trying to sort out what I’m feeling about all of these things; so, I can process these feelings. Trying but failing.
So, I sought help again. I returned to Neurofeedback; to help me re-organize my brain. In doing so, I found out that what I’ve really been doing; not feeling my feelings, but thinking my feelings. I learned that this is a common reaction to trauma; that many replace feeling the emotions with thinking about the feeling, itself. This thinking is accompanied by a ‘symptom’ like depression or anxiety; along with a somatic reaction to the feeling like, shortness of breath, headache or nausea (symptoms of anxiety). That, because of the traumas someone has experienced and the resulting damage it may have done to their relationship templates, every time they are in a position to feel something for someone new; where trust doesn’t yet exist between them, they have an anxiety reaction to that feeling and do not ‘feel’ it, or process it. They simply acknowledge the feeling and think through the feeling. Acknowledge what they think it feels like.
The problem with that, is that when they have experienced early trauma/childhood trauma, or have trauma of any kind, or have broken relationship templates, they don't really understand the complexity of these emotions. They cannot feel it if they cannot describe, define or articulate what it should feel like. If they come from a dysfunctional origin family, who’s own relationship templates were also warped, they may not really even know what that emotion is supposed to feel like.
Like someone who is born with a vision problem and sees the world through their own, unique, strained or clouded vision. They see colours and images through their own unique perception and, the only way that they can identify flaws in their vision, is through sight correction. Apparently, I need emotional sight correction; glasses for my emotions to help me feel them without flaws. To help me feel them, period. I experienced the early trauma, later first hand and vicarious trauma, and come from a dysfunctional origin family, as well. That is why my emotional vision is distorted, as well.
I need sight correction, myself. But I need to let go of some things in order to make room for this ‘sight correction’. Clear the path so, I can move around, move on and can see things from an unobstructed view point. I feel like I need to “Konmari” my mind. To discard the things that aren’t bringing me joy and allow myself to keep the things that are.
In the Konmari method listed in this website, there are ten ways to de-clutter and make room for joy (or in my case, make room to feel that joy and process it as an emotion; to correct my emotional sight).
1. Visualize your destination; which in my case translates to, visualize or realize what the ultimate outcome I want is. Ask myself questions, like; what do I want to accomplish with this and where will it take me in this journey? Is this just for me? Or do I want to make myself healthier for a future relationship? What would that look like and what do I need to do to get there?
2. Dress the part; or, take on the responsibility for and take ownership of my flawed emotional vision. Agree to do the work to make a change in this area of my life. In this case, that means seeking help and not trying to do this alone.
3. Focus; or allow myself to recognize what I’m looking for and how to find that within me. Focus on what I’m trying to find while doing this exercise, as well as on what I’m trying to achieve by doing so.
4. Tidy by category; which translates to, dealing with each emotion one by one. Learning what each emotion feels like to me, what it should feel like and how to accept each of them, as well as, my reaction to them regardless of what that looks or 'feels' like.
5. Hold everything; so, sit with these feelings, one at a time. Allow them to be, and allow myself to feel them whether they are comfortable and pleasant, or unpleasant and uncomfortable. And, have compassion for myself for having and feeling these emotions, and accept myself, flaws and all.
6. Does it spark joy; figure out what that looks like. Ask myself; what does joy truly feel like with this sight correction? What does it feel like without joy? What do I want to feel? What makes me feel like that? If this doesn’t feel the way that joy is supposed to feel then I need to let it go.
7. Discard first, store later; in other words, in this case let go. Let go of the things that are weighing me down. Reprint thought and feelings, and recreate my templates. Feel and then discard the thought patterns that are toxic or harmful to myself or others and store the emotional response it elicited, in order to recall it later in similar situations.
8. Designate a place for each thing; in this case, designating a place being the same as setting priorities for myself. Or, allowing myself to give greater importance and weight to the more positive things like love, happiness and joy, and to set limitations on the negative. To feel them, process them and then store them again; without trying to micromanage or suppress them, even when they don’t feel good.
9. Find the right storage; in other words, give space to both, the negative and unpleasant, as well as the positive and pleasant. Allow myself to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. But don’t allow myself to dwell in the uncomfortable. Like in number 5, allow myself to sit with it long enough to know where to file it but not long enough to dwell there.
10. Follow your intuition; this is self-explanatory. Simply allow intuition to lead me in the right direction. To know myself enough to understand what I can do on my own and to recognize when I need to seek help from others. And, to do so when necessary.
In a nutshell, to find the peace and help me re-focus, I need to stop hoarding these thoughts and becoming overwhelmed by them. To de-clutter my mind to make room for the feelings to come that bring me joy; and to understand what that is supposed to feel like. Allow the things that don't, to take up a small, limited amount of space in my mind, body and life. And, to make more room for the ones that do. And, to seek out assistance in doing this by recognizing that no-one can do everything alone; and that no-one truly wants to. That, in taking time alone, I finally recognize the importance of others and what they bring to my life; to everyone's life. And, that now that I've been alone awhile and accomplished this, I have to work towards allowing new people into mine. I have to take what I've learned and find the same peace and perspective with others that I've found, alone. And, to do that, I need to reprint my brain's reactions to these interactions and re-create the feelings elicited by these interactions.
Off to do this in the coming weeks. I'll keep you posted with my progress.