[Issue #34] When The Walls Come Closing In
A short essay on the importance of being able to sit with hard emotions
"The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to."
-John Cleese
The tears swell and roll, like small boulders or points of lead, out from somewhere deep within me. This shit, I think to myself, has been eating away at the sinew inside me as church bells sing the tune of 3pm, California time. This isn’t the first session with this therapist I’m seeing, temporarily, but it’s one of the harder ones within the 2 weeks we’ve been working together.
The overwhelming weight of my fear, trepidation, angst, anger, sadness, comes blowing out, boiling over like water, seething and fizzing onto the hot stovetop’s glass surface - the reflection filled with greasy lines painting something like remorse, or maybe regret. I’m not sure what all these emotions are, sitting there with my head in my hands, nearly sobbing to a very real human on the other side of my iPad screen.
It all started when I mentioned something offhand that had been bothering me far longer than I’d known - and all this shit began bubbling outwards, pulling me into an ether of emotional morass during a still-too-recent summer in which a young acquaintance took their own life; Shuddering, shaking, intense infiltration of triggers filled my periphery after this. It pulled me into a big ‘ol pit of rumination (which is defined as a maladaptive way of coping with depression and trauma by obsessively thinking about the trauma). And then, not long after, I had my own crisis and it became more than clear that I needed a serious mental health intervention.
Enter round 2 of intensive PTSD therapy (if you’d like to read about my time there, you can find the first issue in a series of 3 here) and this moment, where tears of hard and smooth regret wash out the boulders of the past. I’m unearthing and somehow re-birthing in the same breath and all my therapist does is sit with me. At first he asks a few questions and then, when the weight of what I’ve said pulls me, he does the most frustrating, liberating thing: he just sits with me, not allowing me to diverge from my discomfort by lobbing some humor grenades over this wall I've built. He slaps away my attempts to change the subject and apologize, making excuses about how I shouldn’t have brought this up. And because sitting with these emotions is so terrifying, so overwhelming, so thrashing, and because his whole job is dealing with horrific trauma within the veteran community, he doesn’t let me get away with any of my typical sleights of hand.
“Why the fuck is it so hard for me to do this, to sit with these emotions and not think, oh, you’re such a fucking idiot, or like I shouldn’t feel all this shit, I should be grateful…”
And because he’s an empathetic person with a big heart and he’s damn good at his job, my therapist refutes, “This is hard for everyone. Especially someone like you, who’s had not just one or two bad, terrible things happen, but a lot of bad shit. You’ve been carrying it around and now it’s time to let it go. This, sitting in this shit, which I know feels fucking awful, but it’s the only way forward. And I know you can do it.”
Why We Get Flooded
Before we get into some better, healthier ways of dealing with our hard emotions, let’s define what hard emotions are, in this context. For our purposes today, hard emotions is defined by Merriam-Webster like this:
“Feelings of dislike or anger toward someone that you think has mistreated you (She felt/had no hard feelings towards him).”
But, that’s not the full definition for us.
Emotions such as sadness, anger, guilt, shame, fear, envy, and depression are all considered “hard emotions” because they are able to cause extreme reactions within our systems. And because these emotions have the power to cause extreme reactions is the exact reasoning in the argument that learning to sit with these emotions is imperative to our mental and physical health (individually and collectively).
We’re gonna go down a dark alley, but I promise you, right now, we will come out at the light - no tricks. Consider this a small trigger warning, if you will, for some heavy trauma - but again, we will come back out to the light.
Deep breath, and…
How a Dark Fantasy Almost Killed Me
It’s taken years to get to this point where my regular therapist breaks the news: my suicide ideation is a fantasy, a place of comfort I go when my emotions flood me and I collapse. By thinking about an exit, I pull all my attention and energy away from the present moment, from whatever got me to this precipice of shame to begin with, and instead I chase a really dark future that I feel like I have full control of.
This is the place I went when my emotions felt like they were too heavy. The emotion that got me to this precipice the quickest, of course, was shame. And this is why learning to sit with this shame, for me, was the best, most effective way for me to stop jumping to suicidal thoughts or ideation. Learning to sit with my shame, even when it feels like I’m drowning in it, has saved my life.
My suicide ideation and fantasy are maladaptive coping mechanisms - that is to say, a very unhealthy way of attempting to cope with difficult emotions. Self harm falls into this category, so do eating disorders and other addictions - all of those are consequences of being unable to be uncomfortable with our emotions.
We numb them. We drink. We do lines of powder in some random bar at 2am. We call, begging for money, one last time. We cry, screaming about how life isn’t fair and no one seems to give a shit. We get overly involved in other people’s business. We do anything to look away from the truth of our own reality.
What a life I missed while looking away. I see parts of it, flashing before me.
Learning to Sit With Difficult Emotions
So, how do we sit with, navigate, deal with our difficult emotions and not yell at the airport attendant or scream at the kids?
It’s not that easy, but we can get a head start. I’ve mentioned CBT previously, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and that is the therapeutic modality I worked within with my PTSD therapist. We did a lot of work on mindfulness (which is the practice of being present in the moment and observing one's thoughts and emotions without judgment), loving-kindness meditations (check out my friend
All of which were a lot more difficult than being in war itself. With war, I knew what to expect. With my PTSD and symptoms, I never felt like I knew when I would be triggered, or where it would happen, or what would trigger me. Even now, after all this time, I still have an exaggerated startle response - my poor wife unintentionally scares me at least once a week.
Some better alternatives to cope with life than being an asshole also include self-compassion, therapy, and purposeful strenuous exercise. Self-compassion is being kind and respectful to ourselves. Purposeful strenuous exercise is a heavy-duty and physical way to learn what your true limits are VS what you think they are and will challenge your own perceptions of your abilities, worthiness, and strength. I love weightlifting, I have a good friend that loves to run.
It’s Complicated
This idea of holding our rough-edged emotions alongside the lighter, more positive-affect emotions has a moniker in the psych world - Emotional complexity. The opposite of the ability to hold competing emotions is emotional simplicity.
And, of course, people who are able to hold competing emotions at the same time are more prone to satisfying, happy relationships, better mental health, and a more fulfilling sense of Self. Emotional simplicity keeps us shut into our small inner world. People who aren’t effective at holding competing emotions are more prone to depression, anxiety, and don’t cope well with stress or change.
We already know how trauma impacts the brain, so it’s no surprise that our ability to regulate and sit with all of our emotions is impacted by trauma. PTSD specifically, affects how well we deal with hard emotions in a variety of ways:
Memories: People with PTSD may have difficulty sitting with hard emotions because the emotions are associated with traumatic memories. The memories of the traumatic event can be triggered by certain stimuli, and the hard emotions can be a reminder of the trauma - For a long time, I wasn’t able to play the game Jenga without being flooded with terrible memories (I can play now, most of the time, without becoming emotionally flooded)
Hypervigilance: People with PTSD may have difficulty sitting with hard emotions because they experience a heightened level of emotional arousal which can make regulating and processing emotions difficult.
Avoidance: Avoiding certain situations, people, or emotions associated with trauma is a way we cope with PTSD. This can make it difficult to sit with hard emotions when they come up because there’s been no practice with feeling the hard feelings.
Emotional numbing: Shutting ourselves off, building walls so no one gets in, in the name of self-protection. All emotional numbing does is enhance feelings of loneliness. Emotional numbing makes it difficult to feel any emotion, not just the harder ones.
The Fantasy is Now
With all that intensive therapy under my belt, I haven’t had a dark moment like that in quite some time, which I’m incredibly grateful for. A part of me is in awe and disbelief that I no longer feel the torment of despair and anger.
It was well worth the work.
I hope this issue helps clarify some things about hard emotions and our belief that we are incapable of handling such emotions. I often thought, “If I try, I’ll probably just blow up” or “If I do that, I will probably fall apart",” totally unfair to myself. This just assumes I’m not capable of handling hurt feelings, or feelings of shame or guilt or anger, and that’s not true.
Part of our work now is remembering to give ourselves chances to succeed instead of creating excuses for failure. PTSD enjoys cracking open a drink, kicking back in our favorite chair, and watching its dark and hallowed lens eat away at our reality. But we know PTSD is full of shit.
Now we get to crack open a beverage of choice, kick back in some comfy seated position, and look at the life that lies right before us.
And now, I can’t help but wonder, what have I been so afraid of?
"Feelings are something you have; not something you are."
-Shannon L. Alder
It’s pretty rare to find someone that will let me sit in emotional shit and not try to extricate me. One therapist I have will say “I’m sorry you experienced that.” And nothing else. As simple as that statement was, he was acknowledging it, not downplaying normalizing it, or anything. It was an acknowledge that I appreciated and was meaningful to me. I know it’s a simple thing to do, but yet so hard for me to do for someone else.