MENTAL HEALTH
My Head Determines What My Heart Feels
There’s a helper inside me, shielding my heart from pain and sadness
During my last appointment with my coach, I repeated something I had said before.
I get into situations where I know I should feel something, but I don’t. Or I do, but I don’t feel it in my heart; in my body. I have to think how to react, and then my reaction follows my thoughts.
“You feel with your head,” the coach said.
I heard her words and just sat there, staring at her. It immediately made sense. I knew she was right.
It’s not like I never feel pure joy or love or anger. I do, many times, and I express those feelings.
But then there are those situations where what I feel is determined by what my head decides. Only then do I react in the ‘appropriate’ way. It’s like in a split-second my mind observes the situation and the person or people around me, decides what reaction will be ‘correct’, and whether my reaction will make the others feel uncomfortable.
I react, but I don’t feel my reaction.
I don’t even notice the process of my mind assessing the situation.
It just happens.
And you know what? This — allowing my head to determine my feelings — is limiting. It feeds the ‘over-liver’ inside me.
In Dutch, the word for live is ‘leven’ and for survive it’s ‘overleven’ where the direct translation for the latter is ‘over-live’. For so much of my life I have been in survival mode — over-living — that it has become the norm.
Survival mode — a state we get in instead of actually living our lives.
I know the word ‘over-liver’ doesn’t exist, and strictly the Dutch word ‘overlever’ translates to ‘survivor’, but that’s a word that doesn’t fit here.
You see… that ‘over-liver’ inside me is one of the ‘helpers’ that has gotten me to where I am now. I have gone through terrible times in my life. Hard times. In terms of that, I suppose I can describe myself as a survivor, and yes, I sometimes feel like one, but, as said, in the context of this writing, that word doesn’t feel right.
As the coach described it: the ‘over-liver’ thinks it’s protecting and helping me, and stands with its arms spread wide, shielding me from the authentic feeling.
This behavior — the not-feeling — is learned.
As a child, I had learned not to show my feelings, as those were not welcomed. Neither my parents could deal with my sensitive side, and showing it was ‘making it all about myself’.
Learning at a young age that no one appreciated my pure feelings taught me to determine ‘the lay of the land’ before I reacted. That was safer. I could react how I thought others wanted me to react, and ‘play it safe’. I suppressed my true feelings.
The ‘over-liver’ in me had taught me to do this, and learning this at a too-young age meant it became part of my DNA.
Unlearning this kind of behavior is hard.
And scary.
The coach asked me: “What will happen when you feel with your heart, and not with your head?”
I sat there, thinking about my answer. Seeing moments before me where my head had determined how I should feel.
Then the tears came.
I knew the answer.
If I feel with my heart, I also feel the pain.
I allow the pain.
Through my tears, I gave her my answer. I told her allowing my heart to determine my reaction means I have to feel. Not only to feel, but to show my feelings.
It makes me vulnerable, and where I believe in showing vulnerability, the pain can be too intense to handle. When I sense the pain might be too much, I revert to allowing my head to decide my reaction.
I allow the ‘over-lever’ to shield me away from an authentic reaction.
The coach watched me as I continuously dabbed at the tears leaking from my eyes, trying to contain my emotions.
“You are hard on yourself. Life has taught you to be,” the coach said. “It was the only way the child could ‘over-live’. When you allow your heart to feel, to authentically react, it softens you. Really feeling melts away the hardness; makes it fluid.”
With those last words, she made a flowing motion from her eyes, down her cheeks and down her body, mimicking the flow of my tears and my body softening because I allowed myself to feel.
I know I am hard on myself.
I have always been, and always had to be, to survive everything life had thrown my way. To mention some: a teenage pregnancy, being a single mom, abuse of my child, two divorces, being mentally and physically abused, immigration, losing my mom, discovering life-changing lies of way back, and last but not least, my husband’s health.
Like my beautiful daughter said: “Mom, we had to be hard; that’s the only way we could survive.”
Yes, she said ‘we’.
Because she went through hard times too. Of my children, she’s the one who remembers most of the hardships; who lived through the difficult times with me; who has grown into the most beautiful person, being not only my daughter but also my confidante. I tell her everything about my coaching sessions, because I know it also helps her.
I’m hard on myself, and constantly in survival modus, which means my head has to help me feel what my heart doesn’t have the courage to do. Bit by bit, and with the help of the coach, I will peel away the layers, and get to where my heart is strong enough to do all the feeling.
It just takes time.
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