One of the waves of emotion that washes over me, perhaps once or twice a day is embarrassment and humiliation. It comes unbidden, uninvited, without warning — a sick, nauseated feeling in the pit of my stomach that spreads out all through my chest, shoulders and arms in a wash of anxiety. It’s a hammering reminder that I was so stupid to believe I had something beautiful when it was all just a lie.
I feel like a fool for having bragged on, believed in, loved and given my all to someone who was just acting as if he loved me too. I’ll be glad when that wave doesn’t crash over me anymore. It’s ebbing… it isn’t as frequent, but I’m ready for it to be gone completely.
Yes, logically I know this isn’t the case. I know that there is value in loving. I posted something about this on my personal Facebook wall. I had people telling me I shouldn’t feel that way, explaining logically why the opposite was true. I also had someone tell me to turn it around and look at it with gratitude that I had loved unconditionally. Yes, I am doing that.
You Can’t Reason With Emotion
All of this I intellectually know. I really don’t need anyone to tell me the logic of why I shouldn’t feel embarrassed. But emotions are not logical and you do not deal with them with the logical mind.
The waves of embarrassing emotion are not coming because I’m “thinking wrong” at the time. They come out of nowhere and I think they are just wanting to be felt and acknowledged.
I’ll be curious to see if they abate now that I’ve verbalized them publicly. For me, acknowledging the emotions and releasing the shame around them by verbalizing them tends to make the emotions process on through. Telling them something else is true instead doesn’t usually do it for me… at least not that alone.
I’m beginning to question whether all this “positive thinking” psychology hasn’t done some damage to us as a society … where we believe that “negative” emotions are somehow invalid or dangerous. So we feel the need to flip them around all the time. And when that isn’t successful, we have an an entire population on anti-depressants and Prozac because we don’t know how to adequately feel and process our emotions.
I’m not saying we need to wallow in emotions nor that you shouldn’t use various techniques such as EFT or energy therapy to deal with it. But I believe those feelings must be experienced on some level and acknowledged for what they are before we can successfully release them.
