self help – Briana Hansen

I will no longer tame or apologize for them.

I’ve always been an expressive human being. I came into this world screaming and crying, and I haven’t stopped since.

For years as I was growing up and into my adulthood, I’ve been warned not to show emotions. I’ve been manipulated or called out because of them. I’ve had to learn to keep them in check. I’ve had to chain a large portion of myself in order to properly function in society. I’ve been told to keep emotions out of important discussions.

I’ve learned how to cage them. I’ve learned how to hide them. I’ve learned how to ignore them. All in the name of survival.

I recently got into an intense discussion about a topic I’m both knowledgeable and passionate about with a loved one. At one point, I started to get emotional. As my emotions started welling up, I felt the familiar “mayday” feeling in my body, along with the practiced physicalities that go along with attempting to hold everything back.

But then I thought, “Fuck that.” And I let my emotions run free.

Suddenly, I felt liberated. I felt like myself for the first time in years.

I didn’t start uncontrollably sobbing. I didn’t start angrily screaming. I simply let myself feel what I wanted to feel, and communicated that feeling in my words and tone.

I was debating something that was personal and important to me. Part of me feared if my emotions entered the equation, I wouldn’t “win” the debate. But whether or not I showed them, emotions were already involved. They always are, even though I keep them internally hidden.

Emotions are intrinsic to our humanity. Pretending that only worthwhile discussions are the most “logical” and “emotionless” ones is divorcing humans from what makes us special. And it’s also a tool used by the patriarchy to discount and diminish women and their contributions (though that’s a discussion for another time).

For me, I figured it was worth “losing” a debate in order to express myself authentically. I’m tired of this perpetuated notion that we should somehow be divorced from our emotions at all times in order to live our lives. Sure, sometimes we do need to compartmentalize in order to survive. But those instances aren’t as common as we think.

In everyday life, we all should feel free to let our emotions be as much involved in our discussions as our logic. One isn’t inherently more important than the other. They’re both parts of who we are and both worthy of respect. The more we repress our emotions or pretend that they can be divorced from our everyday existence, the more out of touch we get with them and the more power than can gain. When they do rear their head up (which is inevitable) we have no understanding of what’s happening or what we’re feeling. So it all becomes overwhelming and sometimes even dangerous.

Regularly expressing, feeling, living with, and understanding emotions can make us not only more effective human beings, but also generally better and more healed ones.

For example, if I recognize and admit I’m frustrated or sad when it begins to happen, I can take note of my situation, what might be causing those emotions, and express them in order to learn from and heal them. But if I feel those things and simply ignore them, they tend to only get stronger and stronger until I can’t control either myself or anything about the situation I’m in that makes me feel them.

In marriages, research shows that the couples who are willing to express all their emotions (and argue about them) stand the best chance of staying together long-term. They don’t repress or ignore or bottle up. They let it out when it comes then grow from the experience.

The same is true in our everyday lives. I am both a thinking and a feeling person. My thoughts and my emotions are both constant and, at times, overwhelming. And while I don’t need to share every single emotion as it happens just as I don’t need to share every single thought when it comes up, I can at least honor and respect them as equals.

So I, for one, won’t be apologizing for my expressed emotions anymore. Nor will I chain and hide them from the world. They’re as much a part of me as my limbs and my organs. And from now one, I will treat them as such.

I suggest you do the same.

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I’ve been through a number of physical, emotional, personal, and spiritual transformations lately. And yes, all at once.

It started slow, like a trickle. But then it hit hard, like a waterfall. I eventually had no choice but to simply throw myself over the falls and hope for the best. To give up the land I was standing on for the rapids below. And to allow myself to drown so that I could breathe again in my new nature with a newfound sense of my own power and a commitment to respecting it.

In the past whenever I’ve ever transformed, I feared people saying “I don’t even recognize you anymore.”

That simple phrase used to wreck me. I used to think I was disappointing them. I wondered who I was to get too far out of the norm they saw me in. I worked hard to fit in. I wanted to be accepted. To be liked. To be loved. To be admired. To prove to myself and others that I could get along with everyone. To prove to myself and others that I was special because I was universally loved.

I needed the external validation.

I don’t anymore.

I didn’t realize that was a way to try to control me. I didn’t realize that I don’t owe anyone anything, let alone making sure they’re “comfortable” with my presence. I didn’t realize how I would hide major parts of myself to simply become what other people wanted me to be. I didn’t realize I would even pride myself on being someone who would go along with whatever you wanted, losing myself and my own preferences in the process.

But now I do. So now I say this:

If you no longer recognize me, you never actually saw me.

It’s not entirely your fault. I was a master chameleon. I naturally built others up and made them believe I was their favorite person to be around because I made them feel interesting and funny. I needed to be around others in order to prove that I was worthy of companionship. I didn’t believe I was enough on my own, so I became very good at attracting others to me.

I was afraid of my own light. It was bright and powerful. Anytime I shined before, I was told by the world around me to be careful. I was told to tone it down. I was told it was too much. I was too much. In order to survive, I had to keep it under wraps. I didn’t have the power to protect myself from those who wished to dim it. So I dimmed it myself.

But I have the power now. I’ve discovered it during this transformative and incredibly difficult time on my own. I’ve listened to myself in the silence and trusted what I heard.

I am enough. My light is not something that needs to be covered or caveated or condensed. It is what it is. I am who I am.

I am more myself than I have ever been. The young me that thrived before the conventions started shackling her down has been slowly, and painstakingly freed from them. When I realize one still has a hold of me and that I have more growth to do to be liberated from an agenda or a narrative that is not my own, I am grateful that I recognize it. And I remember all the work I’ve done to get here and the power I have to overcome it. Then I give myself grace, space, and patience to work through it and let it go with the rest of the remnants of my past self that I unconsciously took on.

There are plenty in my close inner circle who still see me. In fact, because I shine more brightly now, they see me more clearly. But I know there are those who won’t and who don’t. And I have accepted that’s the way it is.

Too many people spend their lives so concerned with conforming to what others want or what they believe they “should” do, they lose their inner purpose in the process. They never remember their own light.

I won’t be one of them anymore.

As long as I like myself and I work on myself and I listen to myself, I’m okay with the outcome. I know there will be people who are attracted to that energy and others who are repelled by it. I also know that I am not on this planet to constantly listen to other people’s opinions of what I should be doing.

I have other things to do. Come along or move along.

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Tag: self help

My Feelings Are My Superpower

I will no longer tame or apologize for them.

To Those Who No Longer Recognize Me…