Emotionally Avoidant
Recognizing emotional avoidance and moving forward
No time to sit and read? Listen on the run…..
Thank you for Listening.🦋💚
Wow. I do it a lot, I thought, referring to my avoidance of my emotions.
I had read chapter five of the book Hattie had recommended. It read of the various emotions people avoid and gave some examples as to why. At the end of the chapter, it had space to write down the emotions you avoid each day for a weeklong period, and more space to explain. I don’t avoid anything but anger, I thought, I’m not going to fill these spaces. As I rode around at work, I realized I avoided much more than I thought. It wasn’t just anger.
Why would I avoid joy? Who doesn’t want to be in a good mood? I thought
As I thought about it, I realized it wasn’t just the joy that I feared, it was what followed. As a child more often than not my expression of joy was not appreciated nor accepted. Even a smile was not received well by my mother. I felt I had no freedom to feel anything.
What was it about this feeling of joy?
It wasn’t uncommon for me to laugh and smile at work. Why all the sudden the avoidance? I tried to reflect on what I was thinking about before joy crept in. I could not make a connection to what could have caused such a sudden shift.
Maybe somewhere in my distant past something happened on a beautiful day, and I never trusted the sun again.
More memories had come forward. Maybe that was related. I wasn’t sure exactly what brought them forward. Something to be addressed at another time, I thought. I had avoided facing them for a couple weeks, but they kept coming forward and it was getting to the point where I was having flashbacks again and talking to myself. To avoid some awkwardness at work, I finally wrote them down hoping it would at least stop me from randomly freezing and talking to myself in front of someone. Most of the memories had no negative emotion attached to them. It was as if I merely had to tell someone the story and then let it go. There was gratitude in response to these traumatic memories because in each situation it could have been worse. There was also an understanding for the people who took the action that caused the trauma. Within that understanding there was no room for victimhood. It happened, I experienced it, I felt I understood both sides and now I could let it go.
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The rest of that week I recognized myself avoiding panic, overwhelming feelings, and feelings of being a burden. I avoided every single one by working. I would refocus on work. I would take more overtime, and volunteer to do more stuff. Anything that would allow me to not have to think about what I was trying to avoid. It worked. Emotions were avoided. I didn’t deal with any of them. When I started to panic or feel overwhelmed, I would simply change the subject in my mind. When I started to feel as if I was a burden to my friends, I would stop texting back, stop reaching out and just work more. I did try the exercises from the book, but they didn’t seem to help at all. I would just find myself thinking: Why am I even bothering?
Walter, my newly named stone frog, was always with me but even he wasn’t much help either. I would become foggy and hold him in my hand in my pocket while telling myself We are here. We have to stay here. I would then get slightly foggy, lose my ability to focus on conversations and not be able to understand the words people were speaking. It was frustrating but at least now I knew what was going on and could calm it down a bit even if I couldn’t completely stop it.
As time went on my anger, although not violent, was hard to control and would show itself at work. I found myself saying things even when I didn’t mean to.
“Well, this is fucking dumb.”
It became a very common phrase. It was as if the filter between my brain and my mouth had been destroyed. My feelings of liberation started to become worry as I had less and less control over myself. What is up with me? I would think after I would walk away from a stressful situation muttering “well fuck this then.” People noticed I was off, and I noticed that they noticed and yet, I changed nothing. Maybe I was done with my job. Maybe I was self-sabotaging because I didn’t have the courage to leave an unfulfilling job unless forced. I kept trying to remind myself that I didn’t hate my job, I just wasn’t pursuing my passions through work. I tried to remind myself that this job paid for my therapy, my dentist, and gave me paid time off. But this job also really frustrated me, and I was worried that one day I would lose control and tell my supervisor to go fuck himself.
After a long weekend of work, I took the whole day off before therapy. Although I still woke early, I was refreshed. I spent the day planting my pumpkins and flowers, taking Charlie to the dog park, and reading outside in the sunlight. By the time I got to therapy I was in a very good mood and ready to do whatever.
Hattie and I started by reviewing some of the work I did in the book. I was slowing down on my reading so that I could average about a chapter a week. I felt that the book spoke to me as an individual and I tried to do each homework and exercise the book gave. As we reviewed, a lot of it was repetitive and some of it we had recently gone over in therapy which helped validate my experiences.
When we switched to IFS, I was calm and ready to speak to whatever part felt needed to come forward. As soon as I focused within it was as if I stepped onto a gravel trail and in front of me were Amy and Tony, voices raised, discussing whether Tony should step forward. Tony seemed agreeable and willing to converse, but Amy was skeptical. By stepping forward Tony would have power and if he refused to step back, he could hold that power until someone else was willing to challenge him. Both parts knew of my presence and talked to me as if to argue their individual perspective. After much debate, Amy stepped back with a “whatever” wave of her hand and agreed to allow Tony to come forward.
When Tony stepped forward to discuss his role in my life, he did so with a desire to fully communicate how he had developed.
I’m not just anger. I’m a defense. I defend against your insecurities, shame, fear. Every instance of anger is simply a defense of an emotion you did not want to feel. I protect you from yourself.
As I sat with this information, my eyes closed in deep focus, I realized that he was right. Every moment where I was afraid, ashamed, or insecure I would put my shields up. I would become more aggressive, less patient and less willing to be open to suggestions, either from myself or others. I was the master of emotion avoidance and had been for most of my life. Tony stepped back when we had finished our conversation. Amy willingly stepped forward into her role again.
When I initially wanted to address Tony, I expected a fight. I expected tension in my body and a sense of panic. None of this happened. I wondered if giving him space to step forward and speak was all that was needed. He just wanted to be heard. There was no shaking or fogginess. It was as if I sat and had a conversation with a regular person. Hattie did not dig as deep as usual. The session was short and light. She had mentioned that taking my therapy at a slower pace might be what was needed and after that session I felt she was right. Although I had an attitude of “let’s get shit done” I had been so exhausted after therapy the last few times that I had no energy to do anything else following. I would go home, eat, and lay down. I would have easily gone to bed hours earlier than usual if I hadn’t had Charlie, who needed a chance to play.
The following day at work I was very tired. I slept in my car at lunch and did my best to survive the last couple hours. Just as any day following therapy, I was unmotivated. I really had to push myself to do the minimum which was not much. I found myself slightly irritated at times but knowing it’s about that time of the month again, I decided that was probably PMS.
When I arrived home after work, I was extremely fatigued and just wanted to go to bed as soon as possible. I made dinner, watched a single episode of a show, read some of my book and decided 7:30pm was not too early to go to sleep. I felt guilty that I did not have the energy to even take Charlie for a walk, but I couldn’t help it and the guilt faded as my exhaustion grew.
My bed was calling... and I had to go.
Thank you for reading. 🦋💚
How are you now? Do you feel that you are still avoiding emotions and experiences that you should be surrendering to or fully present for?