Waves
I can remember counselors in rehab telling me that “feelings are not facts.”
I can remember them telling me that and I can also remember wanting to
punch them in the face when they said it.
In my mind they could not possibly have experienced the depths of
feelings that I had and if they had, they would not be saying anything quite
that trite and cliché.
I spent a great deal of time in my previous life
experience, identifying with my emotions.
I became those feelings. When I
was sad, I wallowed in the depths of despair and clung to the familiarity of
the weight of it. It was almost as
though if I let go I would lose myself.
I think I had lived so long in that sort of depressed state that I was
afraid that if I let it go, I would no longer know who I was.
I see that with others I speak with who are still in rehab
or still living in their sickness even if they are no longer drinking. It is as though they have their talons sunk
so deep into the flesh of their emotions that they see no way of setting
themselves free.
Through the process of being introduced to mindfulness,
meditation and some other Eastern philosophies as well as learning more about
religion and spirituality, my perspective on emotions began to change.
I can remember our marriage counselor encouraging me to no longer
identify with my feelings. He suggested acknowledging
them and experiencing them but then letting them go. The image he used was that of a balloon floating
by. He was saying that our emotions were
like these balloons floating by and for ones that were unpleasant you could
imagine that in your mind you are pushing them along gently with a leaf. To some this will sound hokey and it did to
me at first, but I understand it better now.
Now I have feelings and they are transient. All of them, good and bad. I am never always going to be sad, and I am
never always going to be happy. I am
just going to be, and in the course of simply being, I will be visited by
various emotions and feelings.
This same marriage counselor also encouraged me to say
things like, “I have sadness” or “I am experiencing sadness” rather than to say “I am sad”.
I thought that was pretty stupid at first but I use this inwardly now. When I have feelings I could do without, I
take a moment and say to myself, “I have anxiety about this” or “I have sadness about this” because when I phrase it that way in
my head it makes it something that is in passing, something that is not going
to stay. You know what? It works every time.
Feelings to me are like waves. They come toward me and wash over me in
varying degrees of intensity. Some of them are so strong that they knock me
down. A few years ago, when I got
knocked down by a wave of emotion, I would simply lay there in the surf and
wait to drown. Then I learned to stand
back up again because that wave had passed.
Now I stand back up again, face the surf and recognize that even though
some of the waves are strong, the surf still holds beauty and I look forward to
seeing what the next wave will bring.
