Life Lessons
Nervously Regulating Myself at 30, Finally
Why it has taken millennials this long to learn the fundamentals, and what the process actually is
“When you were having negative emotions and crying, what you wanted was for someone to be present with you. Not to invalidate your emotions or whisk away the feeling.” — Teal Swan.
So many parts of me healed that day when my mother let me have my tantrum for a whole twenty minutes (or at least what felt like it), without telling me what I needed to feel instead.
I had just lost a part in a school play and was cast in the role of a BOY instead of the beautiful female heroine I wanted to play.
I was devastated. I cried and cried and clung to her, all the while feeling supported and seen like I had never felt before. She had never allowed me this privilege before.
A part of me was amazed and rejoiced that she was letting me vent and melt in this manner. A part of me also wanted to cry even more raucously in her arms, fearing that at any minute she would start yelling at me to stop the drama and go back to my room.
I suddenly had the space to truly feel my feelings, and in the back of my sobbing mind, I was determined to not let that go. I was going to feel the crap out of them, as she embraced me with support and pats.
While my mother had never let me break down fully without nipping it in the bud with a harsh look, I realized that I had very rarely allowed myself to let go like this as well, because I wasn’t really sure how one got out of the black hole of their feelings at age nine.
The whole human experience of feeling and then tempering those feelings was a stranger to me. So of course when I was emotional I was TOO emotional; when I was angry, I crossed the border to destructive; and when I happy-danced, I was delirious.
It was all a bit much, so I would hold up a traffic cone at myself. But of course when I stopped emoting, I ended up being TOO stoic.
I overdid everything because I was not taught the skill of regulating my emotions. I am finally learning at the ripe little age of thirty.
Improving for our offspring
Somewhere along the way, our parents were taught dehumanizing proverbs like ‘Children should be seen and not heard’, which they apparently swore into their lives as biblical adages, no questions asked.
The idea that children are incapable of rational thought and need to be left alone was probably implanted into their heads by some old fellow who was given way too much say.
So us millennial kids-in-adult-sizes suck in our emotions with our bellies. We learn that it’s a bad idea to be vulnerable lest the world stomp on your face, and always a bad time to ask for help.
No wonder the flex phrase in recent years is ‘dysregulated nervous system’.
A lot of us are just a bunch of nervous nelly neurons swatting at/off each other.
Some of the fortunate ones have managed to catch the last train to meditation station and reparenting rejuvenation before they have kids and manage to screw up another generation in the same predictable way (although I am sure we can find special new ways to mess up as well.)
I resonate very much with what Adam Grant says “The responsibility of each generation is not to please their predecessors. It’s to improve things for their offspring. It’s more important to make your children proud than your parents.”
There’s so much work that needs to be undone, so much insidiousness that needs to be sifted. So I think I will break down how this problem manifested in my life, and how I am learning to deal with it.
What repression did to me
After so many years of fending off my emotions in an effort to not deal with their intensity (obedient kids do as they are taught), I suddenly had this realization that no one in my life, not even my close’uns, really knew me.
I was indignant for a while. It’s like I had all this appreciation and love from my people for a person who was NOT actually fully me, just a whiff of me. Why couldn’t they see me just as I was?
Then I realized it was because I didn’t know how to show them who I was.
I had lost the ability to express myself in my own authentic way, and adopted other people’s ways that I figured were more widely acceptable.
If my expressions weren’t my own, I wasn’t going to feel all that awful if someone rejected me, right?
This meant that along with my clothes, I was putting on a made up personality coat every morning.
This also meant I had to be hyper vigilant in front of folks — couldn’t let the act drop or what would they think?
It was like having a second pair of eyes every time I interacted with someone. The first set of eyes to do the seeing, and the second pair to judge how the other person was taking my words. Did they have issues with what I was saying? Was I making a favorable enough impression?
The shift began when I started becoming conscious of being so conscious.
I realized I needed to understand how to work through what I was feeling so I could prevent repressed emotions from changing my insides without my knowledge.
Here’s how we can retrace our steps to process emotions better:
1. Feel the feelings
Sit in your feelings for a bit without asking the why/how/wherefore questions. Get in tune with how they make your body feel, give them some acknowledgement. Be me when I was venting and melting, no shame.
2. Tag thy emotions
Example: I am feeling distressed, and ashamed for not being able to speak up during a tense roommate situation (this incident actually happened, not making it up for the purpose of this article).
3. Examine the trigger
Example continued: My roommate and I had an argument in which I mostly skirted around my real feelings about the issues we were having, all the while feeling hot under the collar for not being able to speak my truth.
Why I felt distressed: I think I feared the risk of becoming all the things my mother said people would think of me if I kept up my personality — loud, difficult to live with, stubborn. I needed to get away from that narrative as fast as possible. The only way to do that was to become the antithesis of all that she claimed I had been as a child.
So I learnt to shut up so I could be liked. And suffered in silence.
4. Question its validity
I asked myself, “Am I actually difficult to live with? Have I really not been able to get along with any of my roommates?”
Nope, some of my best memories have been with them. Obviously with the exception of a few that took a wrong turn. Hence proved, I am not unlovable. I am a value addition in other people’s lives. And a disagreement does not mean the end of decency.
5. Accept it for what it is
“I had a couple of heated moments with someone I live with, and that is A-OK. It happens. This doesn’t spill over into all my relationships. I don’t have to love all people, and all people don’t have to love me. I am allowed to hold my stance in front of my roommate, without labeling myself as difficult. Feeling bad for someone else doesn’t negate my own feelings.”
Basically run a hand over the emotion’s head. It just wants to be soothed and seen, like a little child. Then, it’s easy come, easy go.
Emotion literally has the word motion in it. It won’t stick around if you stop resisting it, trust me. I am learning to do this more effectively as I move up the experience ladder (life).
So if you are a parent who isn’t already doing so, hopefully this article inches you toward seeing, hearing, and holding your child as they let out all their feels.
After all, we want to live in a world where people can be vulnerable with each other and know that ultimately, they rule their emotions, not the other way around.
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