Painting with Emotions

Will emotional curiosity kill the emotional cat?

Photo by Caryn Sandoval on Unsplash

“I’m afraid to cry because once I start, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”

I was in the middle of facilitating a presentation on trauma and emotional overwhelm when a parent on the verge of tears blurted out this honest self-reflection.

I was suspended in one of those moments of choosing between being professional and personal. After giving a quick read the room, I ended up delivering a professionally honest response that normalized sadness and gave practical tips for creating space to cry.

Although this exchange happened weeks ago, I still think about it. It lingers in my mind because I wish I could have given her my raw honest personal answer.

I wish I could’ve just told her, “Me too,” and then just cry together for the rest of the presentation.

I find myself empathizing with this parent because these days, I can sense my body housing a few unsettling and painful emotions. I, too, feel scared that once I allow myself to really feel them, they’ll overcome me.

And here’s an honest confession: I’m a therapist, yet there are many moments where I feel squeamish about attuning to my own emotions.

(Disclaimer before going on: thank God for my own therapist who clocks whenever I’m being emotionally avoidant. Therapists for therapists are the unsung heroes.)

When it comes to my own emotions, I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to feeling and embodying two seemingly conflicting emotions at the same time. This discombobulating experience leaves me wondering why heartache seems to be the key that opens the door to deeper nuanced emotions.

Why is it that some emotions are only made accessible after sitting with an unpleasant one first? Why are certain conflicting emotions close companions? They always feel like they’re at war with each other, so why must they insist on traveling in pairs?

I think about how the difference between confidence and courage is that courage is felt through the passage of fear.

The difference between kindness and compassion is that compassion is stirred by feeling one’s brokenness.

Relief is felt after acknowledging and tending to pain.

There’s no need to be comforted in the absence of sorrow or distress.

Hope feels more concrete after it’s been forged through a season of grief and despair.

I wonder. Why is it that the emotions that seem designed to humanize us are often preceded by some sort of challenge, struggle, or suffering?

I don’t particularly enjoy sitting in my feels, which I struggle to admit as a therapist. The bulk of my day job consists of co-creating spaces of emotional safety with all of my clients. We build a container that can hold all their emotions, and I remind my clients to be still and present with their emotions and their bodies. We build emotional stamina together as we practice mindfulness and allow ourselves to simply acknowledge and feel.

Even though I actively engage with others in this work on the daily, I still have a hard time doing it for myself. If I’m being completely honest, I often do it for myself because I don’t want to be a hypocrite. In their unawareness, my clients often hold me accountable to practice what I preach. If I can’t be present with my own emotional tension, how can I expect anyone else to do it?

So, I have to swallow the pill, too--a pill that makes me attune to the clusters of emotions that my finite body can barely contain. I must choose to be present and allow myself to just feel. And, as someone who’s most comfortable residing in the realm of my mind, I don’t quite like venturing to the realm that dwells 18 inches below.

The heart is finicky, fickle, and fierce. I’d rather think through 200 intrusive thoughts than sit still in the tension of 2 conflicting emotions without trying to pacify or reason with them.

And yet, in those sacred moments when my heart and head reconcile and finally decide to work in tandem, I enter into an expansive experience. Things still don’t usually make sense, but the synergy feels right.

The heart releases the mind from black and white thinking. The mind synthesizes and assigns names to all the colors the heart feels. The soul is awakened to paint a new picture. The body feels it all and manifests the spiritual into a physical experience that can exist in nature. A truly natural phenomenon, a circle within the circle of life.

The conflict of emotions acts like primary colors blending together to reveal new colors. Somehow, sitting still in a storm of emotions paints a picture with a poignant assortment of shades and hues. It rarely ends with a canvas smeared in shit brown. But, even if you do end up with a messy blob, it’s still something significant and worthwhile. You’ve engaged in something many people fear, suppress, ignore, and avoid.

I’ve practiced and taught on mindfulness, body awareness, and emotional wellness for quite a while now. Yet, I still don’t feel completely comfortable feeling a multitude of emotions. At times, I still scared to death of feeling too deeply because what if this time, I’ll lose control?

Maybe it’s because a part of me knows deep down that emotional attunement tethers me to my humanity. But at some point, curiosity makes me wonder what other colors and hues I’ve yet to know. I’ll tiptoe for a while. And eventually, I’ll take a deep breath and canon-ball into the colorful depths of emotions, even if it kills me.