Waves

                  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.