Checking in (Part 2)

 Here's the problem with the checking in exercise: 

I don't even have to do anything about what I learn when I check in. I don't have to change or fix anything. There's a good chance there's not even anything to fix. I can just be feeling what I'm feeling.

I wrote that last week like it's a good thing(?), and today it doesn't feel good at all. Because I woke up, took a couple of deep breaths, and started crying. Today, I'm feeling many of the feelings in a much feel-ier way than is comfortable for me. 

In the famous words of Chris Evans's nephew, "I don't wike it..." [Scroll down for video.]

I learned at a very young age not to let the sun go down on my anger. Moreover, I learned that even feeling angry--or sad, or fearful, or disgusted, or generally bad--wasn't good. Which is really weird because I learned this as part of a Christian tradition, and Jesus himself exhibits all the above-mentioned "negative" emotions in the Gospels. I guess the religion of my childhood took from the sacred texts of Star Wars as much the sacred texts of our faith.

I was also taught that the secret to true J.O.Y. was putting Jesus first, then Others, and then Yourself. Yourself always came last. (Seriously, I made a J.O.Y. wall hanging at camp one summer that stayed on the wall of my room until I graduated high school.) And as a good girl / oldest daughter / evangelical / people-pleaser / Honors student / well-raised Southerner / Enneagram 3, I knew I always had to be joyful--or at least keep up the appearance of being joyful--so that no one could ever accuse me of not putting Jesus first.*

Ummm... Did you know there were
this many feelings? Because I didn't.

This means I allowed myself only two of the seven colors on the feelings wheel--happy (orange) and surprised (green). Actually, it's more like 1 ½ if you don't think you should acknowledge the confused, disillusioned, and dismayed side of green, which I didn't. If anything from the wrong 5 ½ colors started to creep into my mind, heart, or gut, I denied it. Just stuffed those suckers way on down, and instead busied myself with deeds, actions, and achievements that could prove how good I was, how strong, and how on the right side of right. 

I leaned hard on the busy-ness--my crutch to help distract from (at best) and suppress (at worst) the feelings I didn't want because I didn't think I should have them. And that busy-ness, that productivity, eventually came to define me and my sense of worth.

This may have something to do with why I bawled my eyes out watching Inside Out 2. (Five stars highly recommend)

So, yeah, even after a lot of unlearning (and a lot of meditating on what it means to "Be still"), I'm still more comfortable doing rather than feeling. I like keeping my brain occupied with others' voices so that there's less obligation (or even opportunity) to listen to my own. Which is why the checking in exercise is sometimes problematic and always necessary. The urgency of the assignment lies in the fact that, after five decades of this kind of behavior, my crutches just aren't doing it for me anymore. I think I've leaned on them so heavily that they are starting to break.

I will admit to being lucky in that my crutches are socially acceptable and don't get me labeled as having a problem, even though I use them in the same way that any "functioning" addict uses their crutches of choice:

• work
• travel and travel planning**
• my daily regimen of online NYT games (Wordle, Connections, Strands, Spelling Bee, Crossword--in that order every day except for Sundays when I do the Crossword first, on paper, and in ink) 
• audiobooks and podcasts
• self-help books about how to be better at feeling my feelings
• Instagram, including feeds about how to be better at feeling my feelings
• Netflix, Hulu, PrimeVideo, Max, AppleTV+, Disney+, and "Friends" re-runs on Nick@Night

And sometimes, for good measure, 1-2 glasses of wine "to unwind" [nay! to numb!] at the end of the day.

The goal in acknowledging these choices is to move toward [oops! almost wrote "to achieve"!] emotional sobriety--to learn to live with, regulate, and free myself from the least comfy feelings, not just today but over the long haul, without misusing these or more damaging crutches.

So here I am, audiobook paused, checking in instead of scrolling Instagram, still sniffling and super squeamish about how I feel. Per the wheel, I'm a little in the blues, a little in the pinks, a little in the purples, and definitely on the wrong side of the greens. [Cue Kermit.]

I will admit, however, that a couple of other things are happening. First, as I name the feelings, I find a couple of oranges mixed in with the other colors. Alongside my feelings of isolation from living in a city where I don't know a lot of people lives thankfulness and love for the five friends who will shortly be traveling here to spend a weekend with me. Alongside worry about the Thespian finding his way in college lives a sense of awe that he's attending his dream school. 

Second, I am giving myself tacit permission to have these feelings, which is the key to taking from them what I need and letting the rest go. [Cue Elsa.]

Maybe Yoda was right all along, as long as we read him through more of a Buddhist and less of a Southern Baptist lens. It's not the having but the holding onto that puts us on the path to the dark side. We cannot banish emotions without first being conscious of them, and that requires a calm mind.

To that I'll add my own: Being busy will only block things out for so long. And sometimes there has to be crying in baseball.***

“Remember, Sadness, wherever I go, you go too.” -Joy

*At this point, I would like to apologize to everyone in my world to whom I proselytized positivity. You never asked for Pollyanna as a friend or family member, and I'm sorry I showed up as her. If you want to give me a chance to show up better and are going through something hard, I promise to shut up and sit with you in it while you share. No matter what you are feeling.

**Note that when travel includes visits to or time with friends--especially the truth-telling types of friends mentioned in Checking in (Part 1)--then there may be a chance of some de-stuffing of the feelings. For example, last year I spent a weekend in the mountains of Colorado with Margaret (she of the "sweet pea" in my previous post) and Heather. It was two weeks before my birthday, and they surprised me by baking cupcakes. When they pulled them out of the oven and started to sing, I promptly burst into unstoppable tears. Not because I was sad about the birthday but because I was overwhelmed with gratitude for these women who have supported me along the roughest parts of my road. Apparently that kind of crying is a good thing(?). Yet another reason why I love my realest friends.

***If you don't know this about me yet, I love movie references and have no qualms about mixing and matching them.

Checking in

 I love catching up with Justine.

It doesn't happen that often--not nearly often enough--as she lives in Brooklyn and works in finance for an international arts organization, and I live in St. Louis and work in communications for an international professional services organization. We both have two children in varying stages of late teenagerdom / early adulthood, dogs, husbands who were also college classmates, siblings, nieces, and mostly non-overlapping friend groups. But when we do have an opportunity to talk, I relish every minute. 

The first funny hat that
I ever saw Justine wear

Justine and I have known each other since we were 18 and assigned to live together in a first-year quad at our alma mater. We found out after moving in that, by square footage, ours was the smallest quad in our residential college. She was a polyglot from Toronto with one of the best senses of humor I had ever encountered. I was a debutante from South Carolina with evangelical tendencies. She befriended me anyway. We bonded over Strange Brew and convinced a classmate from Dallas that she had gone to high school every day on a dog sled, which was difficult because dogs are color blind and could not tell whether the traffic lights were red or green. She taught me about the Barenaked Ladies, and I taught her about grits. Her first experience tasting them went something like this:

"It doesn't really taste like anything."
"Crumble some bacon in it and try again."
"Oh, OK. Now it tastes like... bacon."

I think it's her honesty that I appreciate the most. 

Justine knew me before I learned I could give myself permission to be someone other than who I was taught to be my parents, teachers, church, geography, and gender norms. More than thirty years later, while my sense of self has changed, my appreciation for our friendship has not. This morning she called to chat about some volunteer work for our upcoming college reunion. The obligatory part of the conversation took about 10 minutes, and then we stayed on the phone for another 45, during which we both began multiple sentences with phrases like "I wouldn't tell a lot of people this..." and "Just between you and me..." She is a person I trust completely with the whole truth of me. Or at least as much of it as I know thus far.

Now when we get together,
we wear lots of orange
and new funny hats

I have been fortunate in my life to have several friends, like Justine, to whom I can turn when I need to exhale, lower all my defenses, or not put on any kind of show. These friendships are sealed in moments of authenticity. We've let each other vent, cry, and ask taboo questions. We've sat in silence and doubled over in laughter. We've held each others' hair and rubbed each others' backs--both when drunk and when painfully sober. We've watched relationships come and go. We've moved around the country and around the world. We've struggled through kids, from non-sleeping, puking infants to non-sleeping, puking young adults. We've burned brightly and burned out. 

Thanks to these friends, I have found relief from always feeling like I have to keep up appearances, read the room, meet or exceed others' expectations, and derive my sense of worth from (a very American, capitalist understanding of) productivity and achievement. While I feel obligated to show much of the world how many items I can check off my to-do list, these friends show incredible patience, support, and love as I continue to figure out what's on my to-be list.

I recently started a practice, recommended by my therapist, of trying to check in with myself in the same way that I would check in with my friends or they would check in with me. This means that at certain moments during the day--yes, I set an alarm--I pause, take a few deep breaths, and ask, "How are you feeling?" Feeling, in this sense, could mean physical (shallow breathing, tight shoulders, butterflies) or emotional (nervous, tired, content). My friend Margaret even encouraged me to take it a step further by putting a hand over my heart and adding a term of endearment: "How are you feeling today, sweet pea?"

The goal is to get into the habit of actually noticing and acknowledging when there is a change in how I am feeling without the alarm. I guess this is why they call it a practice. 

Checking in is not a new, difficult, or even particularly deep idea, but it is radical for someone like me who prefers to stay busy, let her thoughts dominate her choices, and--to co-opt a phrase from another southern debutante--feel about that tomorrow. And here's the kicker... I don't even have to do anything about what I learn when I check in. I don't have to change or fix anything. There's a good chance there's not even anything to fix. I can just be feeling what I'm feeling. It's a moment to discern what I'm tasting and accept it--the bare naked, inside out, true grits of me. No bacon required.