Why Can’t They Tell?

I used to think I was easy to read—my emotions were written all over my face, weren’t they?

Well, not as much as I thought. When I was younger and felt sad or angry about something, I would mostly suffer in silence, waiting for anyone to notice and ask me what was wrong. Surprise: No one did! This only made me feel worse, and when someone would finally ask me if I was okay, I would essentially be sulking or ready to have an outburst.

I think this can be blamed on one of the biggest aspects of my personality. I am terrible at articulating my feelings. When I first started therapy, I had no idea how to tell my therapist what I was feeling or where those feelings came from. Everything in me was so bottled up, if I let even a drop out, it would all spill. This was a completely unconscious action on my part. I had no idea I was doing this!

Over the last year or so, I finally learned something important: No one can read my mind. They just can’t! Unless I tell someone that I’m upset, they don’t know! What a concept, right? In hindsight, this is something I should have put together on my own. Whenever I’m frustrated at work—especially with a mask on—my face hardly ever betrays how I’m feeling. Although, I am working on how to show my emotions through my eyes (this also feels like a positive sometimes, being that I can be glaring at someone and, as far as they know, I'm smiling behind my mask).

When you're used to bottling your emotions up, it's very hard to get used to voicing them. You could say, well, practice makes perfect, but getting into the habit of even just saying “Hey, I'm upset about this” is incredibly difficult. It's still a reflex for me to just say that I'm fine whenever someone asks me if I'm okay. Fine, fine fine. It's the simplest answer–no one questions fine. Maybe you'll get one follow-up question (“Are you sure you're okay?”) but if you just keep saying it, they'll leave you alone.

Last summer, my therapist recommended a workbook to me that she thought would be helpful. It's called Anxiety, Phobias, and Panic by Reneau Z. Peurifoy. Fun fact, I got the name for my blog from one of the activities it recommends at the end of each lesson.

I just finished a lesson in the book about self-defeating behaviors, and this is definitely one that I've struggled with. It isn't fair to the people around me to have such expectations for assuming they know what I'm feeling, and it's not fair to myself to suffer in silence.

If you're like me, identifying your emotions is the first step in the process, and it is not easy. Identifying what triggered that emotion can be even harder. When I was seeing my first therapist, I would tell her something that happened and how I felt, and she would ask me why I felt that way. I never had any idea.

Practice is hard, but it does pay off. By no means am I saying I'm cured, but I've definitely made progress.

Be kind to yourself.

–Abbie