I saw Drew yesterday and he got me thinking about a recurring problem in my life. Throughout most of my life, people have tended to either decide for themselves what feelings I'm having without my input or discounted what I've said my feelings were and replaced those with whatever feelings they thought I should be having or whatever feelings were more convenient for them.
There are examples of this from my adolescence and on through to my life today, but that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is the REASON for this behavior. I learned very early in my life that it wasn't safe to share my feelings; and frankly it often wasn't safe to even HAVE most of my feelings. I spent a lot of my life burying my feelings deep inside -- hiding them from everyone, even myself. So, I guess there were a lot of blanks for people to fill in. My emotions, apparently, needed to be guessed and interpreted.
But, the fact of the matter is, even when I didn't know what I was feeling and people were filling in the blanks for me, they were filling them in incorrectly. When people guess my feelings and fill in any empty space with their interpretation of my feelings and emotions they are almost always wrong (clear exceptions are J and Drew, but probably because they don't guess -- they ask).
So, the point of this post is to let everyone know fully and finally, that I'm done with that shit! I want to fill in all that empty space on my own now. I plan to try anyway. Even if I'm not always 100% right about what I'm feeling, I'd rather the mistakes be mine and not yours. I no longer intend to go along with anyone else's interpretations of me and my feelings.
If you don't know what I'm feeling and you want to know, please, ask me! It will mean a lot to me that you've asked! It will mean that you care enough to want to know how I feel. It will mean that you respect me enough to allow me to present my feelings in my own way. And it will mean that you trust me enough to know myself better than you know me.
Iola
ReplyDeleteI am so very glad you have J and Drew. I know that I am partially responsible for what you are going thru, but I seem to have the same problem. I am working on it and I have told all my friends that I may correct them on how I feel. People who are used to being aroung you automatically think that what they thought you felt before is automatically what you think now and how you feel. We just did not bother to correct them before and maybe we did not know what we felt. I am working on that and an anger problem now I am so very confused and would like to go to theropy more, I think it would help. I love you and hope you are getting your feelings sorted out.
I know what you mean about the anger problem -- I'm dealing with the same thing now! I am so angry when I say what I'm feeling and am not heard and I have no idea what to do with that anger. I don't know how to vent it appropriately or constructively. I think that's going to be my next thing to tackle, but it scares me a little. Esh. What if it doesn't go well? I hear ominious music playing in the background...
ReplyDeleteI also wish I could go to therapy more! But, c'est la vie! We work with what we have.