Methodical Musings

I’m not really sure why I’m writing this post… maybe a small part of me hopes it helps someone else out. “Let me… help you… help yourself” – or so it goes.

I’ve probably had some pretty whacked ideas in the past, and I hope this post doesn’t fall into that category. Here goes.

Growing up I always either suppressed my real feelings or let them out at the wrong times. Things only grew more and more conflicted as I got deeper into Christianity, but to some extent that is beside the point of this article. The point is that I had an agent that was teaching me to feel certain things and not feel others. Ultimately, I felt all of my emotions were either hijacked by these spiritual voices telling me what I was supposed to feel or suppressed by spiritual voices telling me that I was not supposed to feel a certain way. When emotions are a crime, you can get really fucked up.

So this last year I’ve been learning how to feel again. To feel what comes naturally without those constant urges to not feel that way or to feel differently or to fear certain potential feelings.

One way I have been doing this by letting myself address the exact feelings that I feel, even if they are slight. I used to sometimes stay home all evening and just… do nothing… just let myself feel whatever came to me. Sometimes this lead to extreme anger at people in my past who I felt had hurt me and yelling or cursing them in the privacy of my apartment. Sometimes it lead to getting drunk, other times it lead to going out and drinking at random bars, and other times I would just spend all evening watching porn.

My point is that I let myself feel exactly what I needed to feel in a safe way. Eventually this lead to be open and honest with individuals… letting my emotions be known. And finally that came to a head recently when I really let my parents – in particular my dad – know what I genuinely thought. The emotions were thick and heavy, but I had to get it out.

Since then, I’ve been so much calmer. Something has definitely changed. I feel more alive, more ready to face the world. I find myself feeling more in control of my environment – and even my own emotions. I’m sleeping better and dreaming. I feel feelings I haven’t literally felt since I was probably a child… from emotionally connecting with the tiniest gusts of wind to the excitement of a phone call or just enjoying my little side hobbies in a way I haven’t in a long time.

So I guess what I’m saying is that being honest with yourself about exactly what you feel – even if it scares you – is important. Life is too short to live, but not feel. And if you want to feel, you have to be honest about what you feel and what you want to feel. But you’ll never feel what you want to feel until you acknowledge exactly what you do feel… right now.

If you can’t trust your feelings when you feel like absolute shit or hate the entire world, you won’t truly trust your feelings when you are feeling marvelous – you’ll be suspicious of them and never truly enjoy the beauties of life.

This is especially true for those of us who were Christians are are dealing with all the hijacking that religion did in our lives. You probably have a lot of feelings you don’t want to admit because admitting it will make you feel dirty, and you don’t want to feel dirty. But you need to feel dirty. You need to acknowledge it and recognize it for what it is: conditioning by a group of self-righteous ignorant pricks who wanted you to feel dirty for being normal. Who fucking cares what they thought? This is your only life. Feel it. Better to feel like shit, and feel something, than to ignore it and feel nothing at all. Find a safe place, scream at the top of your lungs. Write out all your awful feelings on a piece of paper. Make a dart board with your pastor’s face. I don’t care, but make sure you find a safe way to express what you truly feel.

Why?

So that you can move on and not feel that – or have to suppress it – anymore. You might be surprised, thinking expressing what you truly feel will unleash a massive beast that will consume you. The honest truth is that you only feed the beast and make it bigger and more dangerous when you don’t let it out regularly.

Oh, one final thing. Most people (that I have met) love emotional honesty, even if it is what they don’t want to hear. Why? Because often they are already suspicious that you feel that way anyway and being honest with them helps them move on too.

Oh, one more thing. If you’ve been suppressing your feelings for a long time, don’t be surprised if you don’t know what you feel about a lot of things. Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out.

Anyway, my probably worthless $0.02…

Cheers,

- Josh