Hurricanes. Flooding. Wild fires. Earthquakes. Several unpredictable occurrences are happening in the world. During it all, we are met with a constant stream of disaster news coverage in the media.
As a therapist, I expect to see an increase in anxiety and depression symptoms during difficult times. After hurricanes Katrina and Rita, I worked as a crisis counselor driving from home to home, providing support in rural areas. Something surprised me as I met with entire families living in tiny FEMA trailers, having lost nearly everything. Most people are not taught how to feel.
Regardless of their age, social status, religious or political views, most people that I work with were not taught how to express emotion. I often hear that “it isn’t necessary”, there isn’t enough time in the day”, “I’m just too tired”, “who needs feelings anyway?”.
Not knowing how to emote might seem fine when life is running smooth, but when the unexpected happens, which it inevitably will, expressing emotion is healthy and necessary. Several years ago, my first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. I took a few days off work and then life, seemingly, returned to normal. The only hitch was that I hadn’t shed a tear. When I tried to “feel something” all I could sense was numbness. About a month later, I walked into my office and as a coworker greeted me, I burst into tears. All morning, I sat at my desk sobbing. I felt so embarrassed. My boss came in and I kept apologizing. I even said that I’d tried to “deal with this” away from the office at night and on weekends. How absurd, I tried to schedule in my grief over the loss of my first baby!
This is a perfect example of why we aren’t taught how to express emotion. We live in a world where feelings are an inconvenience. It makes sense. Feelings can be messy, raw, and outright scary.
As a society, we are taught that it’s better to be quiet, calm, and peaceful. The problem with this is that our bodies were also made to cry, scream, laugh, weep, exalt. We are made to express. There’s more room outside than inside. This is true for farts and feelings.
This avoidance of feeling is true in parenting as well. Here are some of the innocent comments I hear parents say to their young children which halts the natural process of sensing and feeling:
You can’t be hungry, you just ate. (How many of us don’t notice when we’re hungry or thirsty and rely on a clock to dictate when we eat and drink?) I don’t care if you aren’t tired, it’s bedtime. What are you crying for? This isn’t a big deal. Stop yelling. Pull it together.
As a Peace Corps volunteer, living in West Africa, I saw first-hand how a village supports its members in expressing emotion. Whether in grief or joy, celebrating a death, birth, or a drought, emotions were encouraged. In fact, the belief is that emotions that do not get expressed cause illness later.
There wasn’t a day that I did not observe laughter, guffawing, crying, weeping, joke telling, jumping, dancing, and singing. When someone was grieving in the village, friends and family surrounded the person, supporting them in letting their feelings flow out of them in the form of movement, sound, and tears.
Here are some things you can do to let your emotions flow (even in the middle of cleaning up a flooded house or volunteering to help others affected by a disaster.):
Take a break from what you are doing. Stop and notice sensations in your body. This is how you begin to feel. Notice tightness, pain, tingling. Observe the sensation. Try not to label the emotion, stay curious. Focus on what you are feeling. Try not to shut it down.
When you do find yourself feeling something, try the following:
Find a safe space and enlist a friend or family member to support you. Allow yourself to yell, weep, jump around, exhale deeply. Try not to stop yourself from crying, even if your kids might see you. Sing, laugh, move around. Moan, holler, yip, growl, spit, exhale. Get it all out. Every bit.
Once you get it all out. Take a few deep breaths. If you have time, take a hot shower or bath. Drink something warm. You might even need a nap. (Think about a baby wailing and then passing out for a solid nap.)
You will likely feel uncomfortable. Your brain will probably say “this is stupid”. Your brain wants to keep you safe and it likes things to be predictable. Feelings aren’t predictable. Life isn’t predictable. By getting better at feeling your emotions, you increase your threshold to deal with the unexpected. You get better at coping with life.
Try to do this once a day. Model it for your kids, friends, students, parents. Notice how peaceful you feel after your emotions flow out of you. Notice how much better you feel and how much more energy you have when you aren’t so busy not feeling.
Erica Thibodeaux is a licensed professional counselor in private practice in Winona, MN. Erica has taught mindfulness meditation in diverse settings such as universities, corporate environments, and local organizations. Erica is also the founder of Camp Empower, an organization dedicated to empowering teen girls in SE Minnesota. Learn more about her at http://augustintegrativetherapy.com, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/august_integrative/