Then it turned out because I was avoiding anger, I was also avoiding a whole cluster of other feelings that would provoke anger.
Sad because I felt like someone had let me down? Numb that. Frightened because I was asked to clean up someone else's mess? Avoid.
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I don't know if you do any fishing. I used to do that as a kid.
If you get the hook tangled, say in some reeds, sometimes it just disappears. Other times, you have to struggle endlessly until eventually, the entire damned cluster of shit emerges from the water. This? Like that.
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Just tiny things, reminders of past indignities, would trigger all sorts of weird, embodied feelings.
Stuff I'd only realize was there when something mildly ticked me off.
And then the whole tangle would emerge from the water, soggy and dripping brackish water onto everything.
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So things have been very rocky for a while, but the damnedest thing has happened: I hold back less and less, all the time.
I've got a range of emotional expression now, that I don't think I've ever had before. And I have fewer and fewer anxious holding patterns as time goes on.
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Sometimes a wound will open up when I realize something I'm doing is unnecessary, or otherwise unmerited, and I'll plunge into temporary despair.
But then it's *been felt*, and it slowly just stops mattering altogether. When that happens, it's feels like my entire body lightens.
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My Twitter persona, for example, would keep changing - and I realized it was a function of anxiety surrounding certain people I'd talk to here.
So I divided them in two: people I'd no longer interact with, and people I'd change my interactions with to something that felt better.
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Stuff like this happens -all the time- now.
I'll have feelings that are almost unbearably intense, but then when they are simply felt, they decamp and take entire problem areas with them.
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I'm starting to get the sense that I've had a lot of emotional failure modes that I wasn't aware of.
Stuff that would plunge me into anxiety, depression or rage, and leave me stuck there.
Now it feels like my entire emotional body is slowly, painfully rewriting itself.
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So my mood *regulation* is awful. I have very little control over how I feel at any given time, because I've lost some ability or will to filter it.
But the flip side is my baseline mood keeps improving all the time, on the sly. With ups and downs, of course. It's not glamorous.
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Think that's about it. Feel free to ask about anything I've said, if you feel like it.
Also, thanks for asking. Felt good to get all that off my chest.
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Thanks for sharing that - I'm glad it felt good. Lots of interesting stuff there, that I can relate to. I like your fishing analogy also, makes good sense to me.
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