A Hard Lesson

One of the hardest lessons I've had to learn as I've grown up and gone through a couple rounds of therapy is that the people around me can't read my mind. Now, this probably sounds obvious, no one can read minds. However, for a large chunk of my life, I desperately wanted someone to.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought why can’t they tell that I’m upset?, thinking that my feelings must have been written all over my face. It turns out that I have a pretty good poker face—up a certain point, that is (ask my coworkers, I can show my frustration clearly when I need to).

Now that I'm becoming more comfortable showing my true feelings and voicing them, I'm realizing that there are still many people in my life who become very uncomfortable when I do so. There is one example of this that I can't get out of my head, no matter how much time has passed.

Last November, I was helping my mom at a church event that we volunteer at every year. We always serve food, and it can get busy and hectic very fast. There were a lot of people helping, which is good, but the kitchen we were working in is not exactly built to have ten or more people bustling around it. Things were getting mixed up, orders missed, you name it. Even with all of the practice I've had, I still struggle to express my feelings in a healthy and/or constructive way. At this particular moment, all that came out was I'm gonna explode.

We made it through the rush in one piece, and a while later this person came up to me and quietly said, “You did a good job handling your anger earlier.”

I was so taken aback by this that I couldn't think of anything to say. I think thanks was all that came out, but…what?

For the record, I wasn't angry when I said that. I was frustrated, sure, and stressed out, but definitely not angry. Why did they immediately assume that was what I was feeling? Did it sound mad?

The more I think about this situation, I come up with the same explanation: This person, and most of the people I grew up around, are not used to seeing me express any feeling besides a baseline I'm fine, which was all I allowed myself to show people after countless eye rolls and comments about how I was too sensitive and dramatic.

Who knows, maybe these people aren't comfortable with their own emotions and project that onto me?

Maybe the even harder lesson for me to learn here is that being open with my complicated, sometimes loud feelings will be uncomfortable for some people to experience. But that doesn't mean that my feelings are not valid, or that I shouldn't be having them. I do, however, struggle with knowing who is a safe person to be my true self around. I suppose it's a trial and error kind of thing, but sometimes it's a huge error.

Do you struggle to feel your feelings? If so, try not to be too hard on yourself. It's a long and difficult process to unlearn all of those habits. Just know that you're not alone, and I'm rooting for you all the way.

–Abbie