Feeling our Feelings
Recovery
When I talk about my recovery, I’m not talking about drink, drugs, smoking, sex, gambling, shopping. So you might think recovery is not an appropriate word. I get that but I can’t find another word that adequately describes what I’ve been through. It feels like a recovery but what I am recovering from is people-pleasing, co-dependency and suppressing my feelings. So it is a recovery. Here I’m going to talk about recovery from suppressing my feelings and what follows is my story. I tell you this in case it is useful for you to read and it might give you some insight into how you or someone you care about might be feeling.
The things that affected me the most over the years, had the biggest impact, and were consequently the hardest to deal with were, in no particular order, my Dad leaving, my Mum’s drinking and my body image which led to Binge Eating Disorder. I laugh now when I think I used to tell people I had a rubbish childhood but it hadn’t really affected me. The truth was it had affected me so badly I spent a lot of time and energy suppressing the pain.
Control
In the year or two leading up to January 2017, when I lost the sight in my eye that catapulted me into my recovery process, as I got more and more angry and frustrated I realised at last that it couldn’t carry on. I was so confused as to why I suddenly couldn’t cope with it anymore and I knew I needed help. I wonder now whether it was to do with finally getting what I’d always wanted; a husband, my kids, good job, nice house. I should feel safe and secure but I just felt lonely and angry. If I hadn’t lost the sight in my eye I don’t know if I would have sought help. Losing the sight made me face my greatest fear: that if I couldn’t see I would no longer be useful and I wouldn’t be wanted. There was no point in me existing anymore. In fact I had no right to exist. That fear ran so deep it terrified me. It still makes me teary when I think about it.
I found help with a therapist and she helped me unlock my feelings. It was a very slow process so I didn’t get overwhelmed. I had a family and a job and didn’t want to fall apart completely. She did challenge me at times to think about what it would be like to let myself fall apart. I couldn’t actually imagine what it would be like and all I could think about was being out of control and not knowing what would happen next. The chaos of my childhood, never knowing what would happen next, made me feel unsafe and the only way I had found so far to bring myself to a place I felt safe was to be in control at ALL times. Always being on alert, looking out for potential problems, keeping safe is exhausting but I didn’t know how else to exist. When I was out with friends, if I could see one had got really drunk I switched instantly to being the one who looked after them, made sure they stayed safe and got them home. Even if that meant I missed out on something or it was at the expense of me having a good time. I just couldn’t carry on regardless. It also meant I didn’t drink much until my mid-20s. I did drink a bit at university but I only got drunk when I felt safe so that was either at home or when I was out with people I trusted.
There is one memorable evening when I was out with my flat mate and some of his friends. I tried to match the guys pint for pint (as you do!) and I ended up very drunk. My poor friend had to get me home and that involved a very slow zig zag walk with a lot of sitting down on the pavement and me wanting to just fall asleep. He persevered and got me home and made sure I wasn’t ill in the night. When I woke up next morning he was sitting in a chair at the end of my bed. I felt safe being out with him which is the only reason I was able to get so drunk.
In my late 20s when I was living in a flat share in London, I discovered the joy of drinking and losing my inhibitions. It was a miracle to me that after just a drink or two I forgot about my hyper-vigilance and relaxed. I was not going to be an alcoholic like my mum and in the back of my mind I think I worried that might happen if I didn’t get myself out of that environment. I don’t drink very much alcohol these days but when I do, I enjoy it. Sometimes I will drink quite a lot but the hangovers last three days these days so it’s not really worth it. I am not anti-alcohol but I find it hard being around people who are really drunk because it’s boring and it reminds me of my mum. It’s not something I enjoy as much lately now I’m looking after myself better.
Trust
My desire for control is one thing I had to overcome in my recovery and another was trust. I had to trust my therapist when she told me I needed to feel my feelings, I had to trust adult me to look after my inner child while we revisited those feelings and I had to trust the whole process. I had to trust I was doing the right thing and just go with it. “Trust the process” is a phrase you hear a lot around therapy and it’s something my friends who have been in therapy and I joke about quite often. The process can be hard and painful but it is worth it. It’s a process of recognising, acknowledging, understanding and accepting. It’s a process that has no end really as there is always more to learn. It’s like most things, starting is the hard part but for me sticking with it at times was also hard. I am very glad I did.
Feelings
I embarked on the feelings journey with great trepidation. Once the lid came off, it was very overwhelming at times but we went slowly in therapy. Most of the time I wanted to go quicker but my therapist held me back. I am grateful for that now. Rushing around all the time had helped me suppress the feelings so I definitely needed to do the complete opposite. Slowing down, breathing. Feeling instead of rushing, keeping busy and changing the subject was a hard habit to break. For me the busyness hid an insidious desire to suppress my feelings which was a survival strategy at first, keep busy and not feel the pain, and then was a habit and the more the feelings were suppressed the bigger they became so the busier I had to be to keep them down. It was real vicious circle. Of course I didn’t know or see that at the time and I wore my busyness as a badge of honour sometimes. Look at me, I’m super busy, I have so much to do. Actually it was damaging my physical and mental health. You might be familiar with the book “The body keeps the score” by Bessel van Der Kolk the premise of which is that our body stores all out stress, tension, anxiety and other feelings and there comes a point where it can’t hold it anymore and we become ill. I firmly believe that I had failed to hear earlier messages from my body telling me to slow down so my body sent me something I couldn’t ignore and that’s when I lost my sight.
I felt the pain of being abandoned by my dad, I felt the pain of believing my mum thought more about drinking than she did about me, I felt the pain of not feeling I had a right to exist, I felt the pain of all the things I have written about in my book. I did get overwhelmed at times and I went through a phase of having panic attacks. Utter panic when I felt like I couldn’t breath and I wanted to just run away. I only had a few over about nine months and then they stopped but they were scary when they happened. The first one was really bad and it was like an out of body experience: I knew I was sitting in a chair on my counselling course in a room full of people but it felt like I was falling down a huge, bottomless, black cavern. I really feel for people who have panic attacks.
Self-care is really important. To nurture yourself, to be kind to yourself helps a sense of self to grow and the reassurance of doing that, for me, allowed me to access the deeper feelings. I had to be prepared to go there, to listen, to heal. I was ready to do that and I needed material to work with so I wanted to dig. I cried a lot and I was angry at times. I was very angry about what happened to me when I was just a child. I was also angry with myself for allowing it to continue into my adult life but my growing sense of self helped me have self-compassion and know that I did the best I could. I was still using survival techniques like shutting down my feelings, people-pleasing etc when I didn’t need to as I was no longer fighting for survival.
I have emerged from my therapy a stronger person, more in control because I have skills to help me in the tough times yet less controlling and able to flex if I need to when things don’t go quite as planned. I am much easier to live with and be with, I am happier and find joy every day. Sorry if this is corny but life is a gift which I try and embrace every day.
If you want to read more of my story you can find my book here
If you want some support getting to know and love yourself, or feeling your feelings, book a call and we can chat over a coffee. Click the button below to contact me
