Don’t tell me my feelings are wrong.
My feelings can be illogical. Sometimes I need to fact check and sort out the truth from the story I am making. Sometimes I make assumptions that are less than charitable.
Here’s the thing.
I know that I need to fact check. (You could even gently suggest some facts to me.)
I know my logic gets fuzzy, especially when I am feeling shamed or feeling attacked. (I welcome help with parsing my logic.)
I know my stories can be false or incomplete.
I know I make assumptions.
But for the love of all things holy, DON’T TELL ME MY FEELINGS ARE WRONG!
When you say, “I don’t know why you choose to waste your energy feeling that way,” that is not helpful.
What you are saying is how you feel is wrong. Your process is wrong. You are wrong. You want me to skip over the work and just not have any ugly emotions ever.
I have been told all my life, especially in my professional life, that my feelings are wrong.
I have been told, by hundreds of messages from my bosses, my peers, the media, the world – that I SHOULD feel:
- Meeker
- Bolder
- Calmer
- Braver
- Happier
- Gentler
- Stronger
- More grateful
- More joyful
- Less angry
- Less silly
- Less hurt
- Less tired
- Less everything
Most of all I have been told over and over that I should hold my emotions in check and be a mother fucking professional (aka “adult”).
Let’s talk about professionals.
I have met many “professional” people who squelch their emotions. They are cool and poised…for a while. And then you see the truth roiling beneath it all. Anger, frustration, sadness, loneliness, blame, shame and deep disconnect. And then you see how unhealthy and unhelpful that makes them.
I have been that person. I have squelched my emotions because I thought it was the “right” thing to do. To be “good”. To be “professional” to be “respectable.”
That way led to my confusion, pain and misery. This way made me a less effective manager, coach or friend.
I am changing. Now, I have my emotions. And I do my very best to NOT let them have me.
I have a checklist – a process. When I am seized by a “negative” or challenging emotion, I breathe. I move. I fact check. I look for my own responsibility and own it. I make sure I am not playing a victim card. I take all the information I have gathered, council I seek, and I actively rewrite the story. And in that the hard emotions were important to the process. They are valuable signposts just like the happier emotions.
I try to acknowledge all my emotions. I recognize my pain. I dance with it. I accept that it IS and then figure out where it really should be in my narrative.
Some days this works with relative ease. It’s like a magic trick. I think “Hey! I cracked the code! I’m adulting!”
Others days I struggle like a bamboozled t-rex, unable to wrap my tiny futile arms around everything I am processing. Not so adulty after all. Wah. Wah. Better luck next time.
But it is about the process, always. And that process definitely includes my emotions. My “feels.” My real stuff.
I want to have my emotions. All of them. Even the uggy ones.
It is when I take my emotions out into the warm sunlight, take them for a walk around the block, ask them a few questions and stop shaming myself for their very existence – that is when I can rewrite the story and that is when I am most powerful as a human being.
