🌊On Sharing Troubled Feelings

+ Sunday Springs

Here’s one thing on my mind lately: I’m good at sharing positive feelings, but not negative ones.

If there’s something I feel troubled and unresolved about, my default is to not express it to others.

It’s automatic and subconscious: it won’t even really occur to me to express the feelings, in most cases.

Sometimes I may not even fully notice the feelings myself.

I can see how this situation came about. Early in life I learned that my role was to be strong and steady, so others could depend on me for co-regulation—and that there was no one who could reliably do the same for me.

It was unsafe to express my dysregulated feelings. It messed up the fragile emotional ecosystem around me.

Now I’m grown up and things are different…but my brain hasn’t caught up yet.

I need to be able to trust my close loved ones (the adults, of course, not my children!) to be show up for me when I’m having a hard time, in the way I do for them.

I strongly value honest, authentic relating (and writing!!), and that can’t happen when I’m keeping my troubled feelings to myself.

But this is not just a matter of deciding to “be more honest,” or the like. My inner protectors, who block me from sharing and sometimes even seeing my troubled feelings, have good reasons for doing so. They don’t trust that it’s safe—that sharing troubled feelings won’t lead to more trouble.

So I think the work (borrowing from the concepts of Internal Family Systems therapy and the book No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz) is to practice conscious listening to them, finding out what they need, and looking for ways to proactively take care of those needs. (For example: boundaries, small steps, and asking for what I need from others.)

That’s where I’m at currently. Thank you for witnessing. Do let me know if you have any wisdom to share about this!

I also wrote about some aspects of this experience in an essay post last year, “Practicing Transparency,” in which I also shared this poem:

Life was something to cope with alone
and people were as well—
to manage, help, appease, or save—
their heaven built my hell.

But now life is for living linked
with others—and myself—
and letting my experience
be witnessed, shared, and helped.

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Twin 1 being loved on by all three of our current dogs

the dogs in the snow this morning

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Sunday Springs

Posts from my other sections last week (though now it’s Monday; I didn’t get to finish this post yesterday):

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New section: 🖋️Writer’s Waters

🖋️Introducing Writer's Waters

Some excerpts from this post:

“I’ve long been wanting to add a section for writing about writing, to have a designated “container” for it. I have quite a lot of things to say about various aspects of writing—process, genres, craft, and the inner aspects of creating and writing.”

“Then followed a period of years in which writing was mostly lost to me, during the mental, physical, and spiritual strains of my teenage years and early twenties. Those were dark days indeed.”

“Here’s the catch: I know that writing brings me joy, but trauma shaped me to pursue threat-management instead of joy.”

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🪷Serenity Splashes

(I’m going to start posting the text of the poems here, too, instead of just the links.)

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🪷Instead of Future-fretting

A reminder-rhyme for myself in times of stress & worry:

You don’t have to know
how the future will go.
Just be on the ride
and stay on your side.

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🪷Guard my joy like treasure

I didn’t always know,
and I’m still trying to learn,
that I can just say no—
it’s a right I need not earn.

My needs and feelings matter.
Let others cope with theirs.
Guard my joy like treasure—
then I’ll have more to share.

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🪷Each Moment's a Gift

A song I’m working on:

Each moment’s a gift,
a new chance to live
and to be the person I want.
There’s no guarantee;
there’s just reality.
So I’ll take whatever gets done—
whatever I get,
whatever needs met,
and every last breath
as a gift.

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🪷 Question like the GOATs

“Things have always been this way.”
“That’s just how things are.”
“They wouldn’t allow it if it was bad.”
“Aren’t you taking this too far?”

These are the words of submissive sheep
with comfortable, matching coats.
I used to be one. Now I want
to question like the GOATs.

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🪷The World I Want

Reflections & wishes inspired by current events:

In our world,
     the vulnerable--
     like women--
          need protecting
     from the men
          who make the plans.

I want a world where
     women
          make the plans
     and men
          do the protecting
     of the vulnerable.

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