Emotional

                                               

 I have always been emotional, very emotional. I also grew up in a home where being emotional was bad.  I tried so hard to not be emotional.  I tried to keep all of those emotions inside so that I wouldn't get in trouble for having them.  The harder I tried to not feel my emotions, the more depressed and angry I became.  And when I say angry, I mean seriously rage filled.

As an adult finally facing the past, there have been a lot of emotions.  I've blogged about this before but there have been times that I have had to feel some of the pain of my past and I thought the emotions would carry me away.  I thought they would kill me.  I had bottled the tears for so very long that I was convinced that I would never stop crying if I started.

The flow of emotions started at an intensive therapy weekend.  Our assignment was to cry.  Yep, cry.  I thought they were crazy.  I curled up under my blanket and made myself cry.  As I cried I felt things I had never before felt.  The words I found myself saying were, "Why wasn't I worth protecting?"  And I mourned not so much the loss of innocence but the feelings of being too insignificant to protect.

Since that point I have really actually had to feel some of the things I have run from my entire life.  Just this past fall I ran into something I had been running from since I was about six.  I thought feeling this was going to kill me.  It hurt more than I have ever hurt before.  I didn't think the pain would ever end.  I know why I use my eating disorder for comfort.  When I focus on my food, on my body, I have something tangible to concentrate on.  I can avoid feeling when I am restricting.

It took every ounce of my strength to stay in the moment and keep feeling that.  Every instinct said to run hard and fast from that intensity of pain.  I don't actually understand how it happened, but when I stayed present in the pain, I made it through the pain.  It didn't kill me even though for days I thought it would never end.  And now that memory is a memory, not a flashback.

I still struggle with staying present when I have big emotions.  My first instinct is to restrict, to not feel them.  Some of the things I have to face come with a lot of pain but now I know that the pain won't kill me.  I know that if I cry, eventually I will stop.  If I hold back my emotions they only get stronger and then they come out on their own without my permission in the form of horrible, angry, awful ways.

It is ok to feel.  It is good to feel.  It is ok that I am extremely emotional.  It is how God made me (for you Miers/Briggs people, I'm an NF, emotional to the very core of my being).  My emotions won't kill me and eventually, feeling them will bring healing not more hurt.

temperamental life coaching

I just spoke with a life coach about my "friend".  Yes, I talked to him about me.  And, yes, I am that big of a weenie that I didn't tell him we were talking about me.  I'm pretty sure he knew though.  I thought if we were on the phone, he would buy my story as my friends rather than my own.  Now I chuckle at myself.  We were on the stinkin phone not face to face, why on earth was I scared to tell him that it was my life that is so messed up, not my friends?

I've been studying temperaments a lot lately.  So far, the person I have resonated with the most has been Ray W. Lincoln (click here for his website).  In doing the temperament test, I am a NF.  In a nutshell, that describes me better than I ever could.  I am part of only 4% of the population who have this temperament.  It is characterized by deep introspection, perfection tendencies, idealism, and deep sensitivity.  As I have been studying the 4 temperaments (NF, NT, SP and SJ), I began to see some patterns. It seemed to me that the NF has the most to lose emotionally from deep trauma and has the hardest time to moving past it, so I emailed Ray and asked if this was true. He agreed.

My next question was how do you help anyone recover from trauma but especially a NF who internalizes it more than the others.  In telling him my "friend's" story he told me that my friend probably needs some professional help.  While I could help to raise her spirits and that would help on a temporary level, she needs more.  She needs help continuing to see hope for the future.  When she doesn't see a calling, a passion a hope for the future, she will spiral into deep depression.  The cycle will continue.  Giving her a break from her atmosphere, bringing beauty to her life, and helping her to see hope for tomorrow will help but only temporarily.  The trauma must be dealt with so that she can be who God created her to be on the inside.

I know this.  I live this.  I do better for a time, then I spiral out of control to such a dark place that I forget what light looks like.  I guess I had hoped that someone would tell me an easy way to do this.  I guess I had hoped that someone would just say, "Oh yeah, you can do this.  No big deal, you'll make it through on your own."  Somehow that is not the case.  The universal consensus from everyone I talk to is that I need help getting through this.  My psychiatrist says I'm looking better than the last time I saw him but still recommends that I seek professional help in the form of EMDR, counseling, or coaching.  My PCP recommends that I get professional help.  So I know that I need to get help, why am I dragging my feet so much on actually doing it?  What am I so afraid of?

I'm interested to hear what temperament types others fall into.  If you feel like taking the temperament quiz in the link above (it takes about 10 min), would you mind sharing with me what your temperament is? (to get to the test, go to the this link.  Add the temperament test to your shopping cart, IT IS FREE.)