Listening Instead of Escaping

I've always thought I was good at dealing with difficult emotions.

I'm beginning to realise I wasn't dealing with them at all.

I was detaching from them.

I could convince myself that I was fine, throw myself into work, keep busy and carry on as though nothing had happened. On the surface, I genuinely believed I'd moved on.

But emotions don't seem to work like that.

They don't disappear simply because we've stopped paying attention to them. Sometimes they wait quietly until the distractions fade, and then they find another way to make themselves heard.

A few days ago I spent an entire day battling cravings for something sweet. The strange thing was that I wasn't actually hungry. I'd eaten well, but I couldn't stop thinking about chocolate, cake or something sugary.

It was frustrating because I couldn't understand where the cravings had come from.

Then, after talking it through, I realised they hadn't really started that day at all.

They had started the day before.

Something had disappointed me, and I'd done what I've always done. I told myself it was fine, carried on with my day and convinced myself I'd moved past it.

Except I hadn't.

The feeling hadn't gone anywhere.

It had simply been waiting.

Years ago, while I was tattooing a client, I walked into the kitchen and saw her fourteen-year-old daughter sitting on the worktop eating a bowl of fruit and nuts.

I commented on how healthy it looked.

She smiled and said, "My boyfriend's just broken up with me. I'm going to love me if nobody else does."

I remember standing there thinking, Who taught you that?

Because that wasn't my instinct.

My instinct would have been to reach for KitKats, ice cream or anything else that promised comfort, even though I now know those things leave me feeling sluggish, tired and wanting even more.

That conversation has stayed with me for years.

Looking back now, I can see that many of my habits have had one thing in common.

They weren't really about the thing itself.

For different periods of my life, the way I escaped changed. Sometimes I buried myself in work. Sometimes it was cannabis. More recently, it's been sugar.

The coping strategy changed, but the reason behind it didn't.

I wasn't trying to solve the emotion.

I was trying not to feel it.

What I'm slowly learning is that emotions aren't something to fear or silence.

They're information.

They're asking us to pause for a moment and pay attention.

Sitting with an uncomfortable feeling isn't easy, but escaping from it often comes at a much greater cost.

The feeling doesn't disappear. It simply waits until we're quiet enough to hear it.

I'm learning to pause before reacting.

To ask myself, "What am I actually feeling right now?"

Maybe that's what authenticity really is.

Not pretending we don't have difficult emotions.

Not judging ourselves for having them.

But having the courage to listen to them instead of immediately trying to escape.

— Jody Valentina