I grew up in a Protestant Norwegian/English home, so openly expressing feelings readily or easily (or nearly at all) was just not a normal thing. For someone who feels deeply, that was not a comfortable scenario.
Since starting with a challenging approach for being openly expressive, my life has been a journey of learning to be aware of and able to walk through my feelings — all of them, with less fear and hesitation. This has taught me that words we use have a lot of power, especially when we use them to identify and label rather than describe or share. For example, consider “I am angry” vs “I am feeling angry”. The first self-identifies and says you pretty much ARE anger, where the second more accurately describes a condition you are experiencing. While this is a common shorthand we nearly all use when saying these types of things, we also lose clarity and awareness when we do.
Trying Different Clothes
I recently saw a suggestion of “trying things on” in the context of exploring life and its options, but this idea applies nicely to emotional expressions as well. Feelings really are remarkably like clothing. We show up and wear our emotional expressions: humor, delight, anger, frustration, fear, hurt, wonder, joy, and peace. Normally, we of course wear multiple items at the same time. Those items may be fresh and clean, a bit worn and dirty, and they often coordinate nicely, or we may find ourselves confusingly (or embarrassingly) clashing with what we are wearing, like plaids with stripes, we may find ourselves experiencing fear with curiosity, love with anger, or joy with confusion (e.g. why am I feeling good?).
We can also be showing up in clothing that doesn’t fit the situation: a heavy coat in the heat or indoors; pajamas at a symphony, or formal wear when we want to really relax. And of course, we find we will always wear certain outfits around specific people or situations – regardless of how that may really work. This is not to say any of this is wrong or better – here, it is about understanding what we have been doing, and how, and why, we are showing up in a given situation as we do.
We Are Not Our Clothes
The key is that in all these situations, these are simply our clothes. They show and express something about how we are in that moment, but they do show the parts under the clothes, and the clothes are not (or should not) define us. Of course, when those around us see us consistently in the same clothing, it can become a uniform of sorts; they may start to expect the clothes to be the same and see really only what we have selected to wear around them. That can be just fine, but it also can be limiting if you want to change how you are interacting with the other person.
In the vein of clothing and trying on different outfits, we can change what we show up in and how we express when we chose to. The first step for doing this is knowing that we are wearing something, not being something. In that space of awareness that what we wear is outside, and what we do and who we are is inside, we can start to see what we are choosing to show up as. We can be okay with a casual outfit because we need to feel relaxed, or we can wear our police uniform because we need to be firm and set boundaries, or we can be dirty and messy because we had a bad day, and not feel a need to apologize. And the next day, we can show up with our clothes freshly washed and ironed because we know that how we show up makes a difference in how we feel, too.
Expressing Fully
When we realize and remember that we are simply expressing, and that expression is how we feel in that moment and so show to others, we start to see ourselves, and others responses to us, more clearly. When we wear the same clothes all the time, we start to look a little dull; too, when we work so hard to show up with only one style consistently, we wear ourselves out, we forget to relax, or to allow what is underneath to show more. But seeing this, we can chose different clothes (i.e. try on different styles and looks) and be open that what we wear is our fullest expression of all of us, allowing those moments of comfort, embarrassment, laughter, disappointment, and all to be shown.
Love, and until next time.
