“You want me to pay attention to my feelings?!”
As though I’d asked him to commit blasphemy As though I were calling him to violate an age-old unspoken rule.
“Yes,” I replied, “right now, as you were just talking about having to take care of your mother, what feelings do you notice in your body?”
This was something he’d learned not to do. Not explicitly, but out of necessity. Growing up in the midst of parental conflict, with a highly anxious mother, he quickly learned that his needs were not his parents’ priority. In fact, while still a child, he was thrust into the role of his mother’s caregiver. Her needs demanded attention and his own drifted into the background. They didn’t cease to be, of course, but distant as they’d become, were increasingly experienced as inconvenient, problematic, and ultimately, the presenting problem with which he came to me.
Alex, as I shall call him to protect his confidentiality, struggled to “hold it together” under all the pressure he’d been piling onto himself for much of his life. He blamed himself for struggling, as though he should be able to manage. And most of the time he did fairly well, until something seemingly small tipped the scales and he found himself lashing out at his loved-ones. He sought counselling to acquire tools to better control his emotions.
He is not alone. There are many whose stories share a similar theme. Take Annie, another pseudonym, for example, who from her earliest recollection had been appointed the “live-in babysitter” of her siblings by her own mother, who was often absent. Annie, who at the age of 49, after years of taking care of others, struggled with the realization “I don’t know who I am”.
Both Alex and Annie had learned quite early in life that their own emotional needs were to be sidelined by the expecations laid upon them by their families, and by extension, the larger socio-cultural milieu. Over time, they learned not to feel. They still had moments of pleasure, no doubt, and anger, and sadness, and all the rest in fleeting moments, as one might expect, but on a deeper level, a certain pain endured.
To speak it evoked anger and resentment: “How could you do this to me?”, which simultaneously evoked fear and shame. This anger cried: “what about me”, they’d locked away and lost the key. Neither Annie nor Alex dared approach it… at least not at first.
Yet that anger turned out be the key to access emotional vulnerability. To grieve the missed opportunities, to release unwarranted blame and responsibility, and to learn to love themselves more completely, from one moment to another.
Neither Alex nor Annie is a unique client. Each is an amalgam, a multiplicity of clients whose stories echo a similar theme of disconnecting from self in a desperate attempt to connect with others. Therein lies the wound.
Healing is a process. It will take time. Learning to give ourselves permission to articulate a healthy anger, and tend to all the hurt it conveys, can be the work of a lifetime. But it’s high time to begin. You deserve to feel. You deserve to heal.