0003-Emotion Stuffing - What it can mean for relationships and friendships

As Emily Nagoski notes in her book, "Come As You Are", "We've locked ourselves, culturally, into our own fear, rage, and despair." See, we learn, somehow someway at a young age to inhibit ourselves so we better fit in – so we can survive. In this episode, I explore some of the nefariousness that emotion stuffing has contributed to in my life. 

Transcript from the show:
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Today, I want to chat about emotion stuffing because I'm grossly guilty of it. Your mileage may vary, of course, but emotion stuffing has been a big player in my lost friendships and relationships over the years.

What's emotion stuffing? Well, it's pretty much as it sounds. You're going about your life as usual and something happens, and this feeling creeps in that you don't like. Maybe you're not exactly in the space to deal with that emotion (maybe you're in public, like school or work) or maybe you just especially hate it (like me, with expressing the anger I feel when someone pisses me off). If you "can't" deal with that sneaky emotion, WHAT are you supposed to do with it? I mean, it can't come out right now! That's not gonna happen! So you stuff it. Whatever it is you're feeling, you enlist the help of whatever muscles are nearest to that feeling in your body, grab it, and shove that bad boy away! NOW'S NOT THE TIME! GO AWAY!

So, don't slay me, but I'm gonna go back to Emily Nagoski's book for a minute ("Come As You Are" in case  you missed it):

"… even without medication and an emotion-dismissing culture, our ultrasocial human brains are really good at self-inhibition, stopping the stress response midcycle because, 'Now is not an appropriate time for Feels.' We use this self-inhibition in order to facilitate social cooperation - i.e., not freak anybody out. But unfortunately, our culture has eliminated all appropriate times for Feels. We've locked ourselves, culturally, into our own fear, rage, and despair. We must build time, space, and strategies for discharging our stress response cycles."

I have to wonder where we learned this self-inhibition. Was it our parents disregarding our hurt knees when we fell and scraped them? Was it when we were crying out about how our sibling wronged us somehow and we were loudly chastised, "you better stop crying or I'll give you a something to cry about!"? Have our peers contributed to this by laughing at us when the emotions come up, "teaching" us that public displays of emotion aren't permissible? 

Thinking back, I learned it sometime before the age of 7, though the details are missing. The one lone memory I have that stands out is this one: I'm angry at something. I don't even remember what it was anymore, but I'm angry; and I storm off to my room, slamming the door. Still angry, I storm to my bed, grab the closest stuffed animal and throw it at the door. This time, once it hit the door, I immediately felt remorse. I didn't understand why I felt the way I did, and my stuffed animal - I LOVED my stuffed animal, so why would I "hurt" it because I was mad? At the age of seven, I made the conscious decision to curb my anger from that point forward.

I was always so proud of that. Like, man was I just this great little cognizant being who saw what anger could do and nipped that right in the bud before it got out of control! No one was going to see that terrible, senseless emotion from me!

Here's the kicker - All I learned that day was to invalidate myself.

Sit with that for a moment.

I taught myself, at the age of seven, that my feelings are not worth expressing or sharing. That they're unsafe. They're invalid. I taught myself that normal emotions are undesirable and are better left for me to deal with.

No one ever taught me otherwise, either. I have TWENTY SEVEN YEARS of invalidation to overcome, that I helped teach myself and others helped solidify.

When I felt the anger well up inside of me, I clenched it tightly. I subdued it with whatever I had inside me to "be the better person" and not let the other person know they were getting to me. To be fair, I DO feel it helped minimize additional ridicule in school, since classmates couldn't "get a rise out of me," but I also never actually dealt with the feelings I had. I stuffed them down and that's where they stayed. My goal was to assimilate. To not draw attention to myself so I wouldn't become a target. Acknowledging feelings or responding to them meant that I was at risk of being seen. 

I remember another time as a child where I wanted my parents to stop calling me a kid. I remember the stepbastard laughing and asking me what I was then, if not a kid. I was ADAMANT that I was a "child" but being so young, I didn't know how to properly convey why I felt that way. So, because I couldn't figure out how to explain the difference, I was "laughed at" and left feeling unheard and subsequently disregarded.

Since my feelings and wishes didn't seem to matter to others, it only helped to cement the invalidation of my feelings. I started stuffing other emotions because, why bother? I wasn't going to be heard anyway.

As an adult in my thirties, I struggle speaking up for myself. I struggle ACTUALLY speaking. I kinda feel like the experience where I couldn't differentiate "kid" from "child" and why it mattered to me played a part in this. There's nothing quite like feeling so strongly about something, but being unable to defend yourself and then being made to feel foolish for trying.

I feel more comfortable writing things out so I can take my time with my thoughts and orchestrate them in a way that hopefully helps the other person fully understand my position. I can "defend" myself better when I write. It's driven many a man up the wall too. One would read my letters and never respond to them. And nearly all the others - they would express great frustration that I wouldn't actually *talk* about anything and resorted to writing instead, making me feel guilty about how I handled things that were difficult for me. I still feel guilty when I think back to all those situations where I was "called out" for writing instead of talking. And no matter how often I got "chastised" for writing instead of speaking, it didn't change how I chose to approach things. It was either the written word, or silence. And since the written words weren't always well-received, silence was the answer. And with silence came emotion stuffing.

Closing in on how this all has impacted my friendships and relationships…I mean…it's harmed them. Most of my friendships have a "lifespan" of 2-4 years and my relationships with men have been similar in length. My husband and I have been married for 5 years, together for 6, but the same shit that has impacted my past relationships has "snuck in" and threatened our marriage.

Imagine being married to someone who doesn't really talk to you or doesn't make efforts to engage with you otherwise. Imagine being that person that doesn't talk about much of anything, doesn't ask for what they need, or voice opinions on…well…anything. It's a miserable existence for both parties. If you're not nourishing each other, helping each other, communicating and connecting, where do you think the relationship is going?

But, that's exactly who I've been. My inability to speak up for myself and demand that I be heard just encouraged me to retreat. Once I start to feel like my words don't matter, that's ALL I can see. So if *I* don't matter to someone else (my own perceptions, mind you), I quit sharing. I withdraw. On the surface, that might sound reasonable, but is it really? Like, if someone talks over me once and I don't call them out on it but just take that as a "sign" and begin withdrawing, is that REALLY reasonable? Is it? I'm thinking it's not. What it is though, is an inability to set boundaries. And with me, it's such a twisted web of core beliefs that may or may not make sense.

This is why I'm in therapy. I thought, for many years, that I could figure things out on my own. While I've made some progress with some things, it's become very obvious that the things I'm battling are buried deeper than I can reach. It hasn't mattered how much I KNOW I need to speak up if I want things to change; it physically feels impossible. I've stuffed those emotions so far and so well that even acknowledging what I'm feeling and why is foreign to me. And if I can tap into what and why I'm feeling a certain way, bringing the words up to the surface and OUT is next to impossible.

I'm scared to talk. Scared to admit how I feel. I feel like my words could destroy another person if I said them. Or, I feel like I won't be heard, or I'll be discounted, shrugged off, or invalidated for admitting how I feel. Or worse yet, someone will try to argue with me about how *I* feel, as if my emotions aren't actually my own! And then, that makes me feel angry. And remember, I don't do "anger" so time to stuff that down because it's such an "unbecoming" emotion.

It's a shitty cycle once you get into the habit of stuffing emotions, if you haven't noticed. Truthfully, that's another reason for this podcast - to give me an avenue to practice saying the things I'm feeling, without having to say them to another person and see their response. It gives me that chance to put my shit out there without being interrupted.

Going forward, I want my friendships and relationships to have substance. I *can* be a fun person and I've been one a time or three but I want more consistency there. I want to be able to feel freely and express myself freely, knowing that the people near to me respect and value me as I am, and not the person I think they want to see and be around.

When you stuff your emotions away, you take away your right to feel those feelings. You teach your body to ignore things that are important to your continued growth and well-being. You limit your ability to meaningfully contribute to other people's lives and stories. You limit your ability to connect with other people.

Unstuffing those emotions isn't the only means to this end, but it's a start. To connect with people on a meaningful level, you need to share vulnerabilities with them. You need to *be* vulnerable with them. Not everyone, mind you, but those you feel closest to. And to be vulnerable, you need to know what your emotions are, have access to them, and be willing and able to share them.

As scary as it seems, you need to dig up those sun-loving emotional plants and get them out from the understory of the towering trees and move them to a place where they'll grow and flourish. Uproot them carefully and move only a few at a time so you can make sure they're doing well in their new spot. Water them well and tend to their needs.

And those plants that prefer the canopy of the trees but are withering away in the bright light, move those too. Not every emotion needs to take center stage, but they do need a place where they can be seen when needed and given the same care and consideration that the others get.

Sometimes I feel silly talking in metaphors. But then the other part of me doesn't really care what you all think about that, so take it or leave it ;)

Do you have space to freely deal with or acknowledge your emotions? What does it look like? Shoot me an email at questionyourgarden@gmail.com

Anywho, thanks for listening guys! Your support means a lot to me, even if it's just a simple share on social media or to a friend or family member who you feel might enjoy the podcast too. Also, I can't forget to give a shout out to both Kevin MacLeod at Incompetech.com and Scott Buckley at scottbuckley.com.au for the music transitions they  provided for use in the show. Be sure to check out the show notes for any links or additional information from the episode.

Until next time, keep weeding!