I Didn't Move On

I often hear people say or post things on social media that are along the lines of “it's okay if you feel bad about something you thought you moved on from”. I agree with the sentiment–things like this aren't linear, and sometimes you do take steps backwards. However, I realized that I simultaneously do and do not relate to this.

I’ve written a bit in earlier posts about how disconnected I was from my emotions for a large part of my life. It's only been in the last few years (with the help of therapy) that I have begun to truly feel what I have been through. For example, my diabetes diagnosis. At the time, I was completely numb. I looked my doctor in the eye and said “Okay” when they told me I had come close to dying. I would often escape unpleasant emotions by dissociating and hiding in my thoughts. It still takes conscious effort for me to sit with pain and sadness.

So, I wondered, have I ever really moved on from anything?

Have I ever allowed myself to move into anything?

I’ve been unpacking the fact that the answer to both of those questions is…no. As I grew up, I stuffed everything down. Sadness, anger, all of it. I stuffed things down so far and so tight that, with time, I simply forgot that those things ever happened at all. I convinced myself that those things didn’t matter—I was fine. Always fine.

Back to my diagnosis. Eventually, a psychologist was sent in to talk to me. I assumed that she was there for some other reasons that I won’t go into right now. She almost immediately told me that my behavior showed signs of an anxiety disorder, and she would become my very first therapist.

Toward the end of the year that I saw her, she brought up the first time we met. She asked if I knew why she had come in to talk with me. I said no, and she explained that it was because my doctors were so worried about me. “They said you were like a robot”, she told me. After hearing this, something happened in my brain. It was almost like an alarm bell ringing in the back of my mind. They’re on to us, it said.

This was odd to me because, as I said, this was never something I consciously chose to do, it was a coping mechanism. A bad coping mechanism, to be specific.

I have definitely made a lot of progress since I was in the hospital, but I also know I have quite a way to go. Maybe I’ll never be fully able to let myself feel my feelings, but practice makes perfect, right?

—Abbie