Vulnerability Volume 1: The Lies We Believe

Do You Trust Your Heart Beat?

I pose that question for a deeper purpose...but before I unpack that, I have a story...

So about 3 months ago my wife -- struggling with 'her' issues -- said to me, "I think we need to see them". She was referencing the husband and wife counseling team who are based in Georgia that several of our friends have gone to over the past several years.

My first response was, "You need to give up the idea of us doing that because it is never going to happen. That sounds exhausting."

What sounded so bad to me was that the counseling involved a week-long program of sessions -- 4 hours each day for 5 days -- and I couldn't fathom that I'd ever have the energy to go through that.

Experiencing emotions had exhausted me for nearly all of my adult life, and this leads to the first lie that I've believed since I was a child: some people are just more emotional than others.

On its face, in a sense, it's true -- some people do seem to express emotions more readily than others.  But the lie that's beneath the surface of that statement is this:  only some of us have real emotional needs.

After 20 hours of counseling -- which involved many tears, much grief, and left me exhausted -- I've come to understand how pervasive that lie is.

Every person should be wearing a t-shirt that says "I'm Emotionally Needy" on the front.  And on the back?  "Please hug me -- I need it..."

How is it that at age 45 I'm just now understanding that the reason experiencing emotions previously left me so exhausted isn't that experiencing them is exhausting; it's that I'd almost never done it.

What I learned through counseling is that the dynamic is supposed to work like this:  I feel an emotion; I experience the emotion; the emotion passes.

My 7 year old lives this every day of her life.  All kids do, until we screw them up.  She wakes up in the morning and is on top of the world because we have Cheerios in the pantry.  Then she's so frustrated at not being able to get the remote control to work that within a few seconds she's almost in tears.  Then, when the t.v. finally comes on, she's elated -- Disney Junior!!!

It would be easy as an adult to poo-poo this.  Kids are emotional, but we aren't supposed to behave that way as adults, right?  What would it mean if I burst into tears at work because I couldn't get the coffee maker to work, and then was overjoyed to see I had email?  Wouldn't that be unhealthy?

It would be unhealthy.  But not because we don't need to experience emotions as adults.  Rather it's because our understanding of the world is just more sophisticated than a child's.  We know that sometimes the coffee maker won't come on so you figure out the problem -- the coffee maker is unplugged; the plug doesn't work; the coffee maker really is broken -- and you move on.

Until you can't.  You've a had a long week already, and it's only Wednesday.  Your boss has just reamed you over the coals because you're late completing a project, and he's already warned you once in veiled language that it's time to shape up or find a new job.  You're behind on paying your mortgage and if you get fired you don't know at age X how long it might take to find another job...

And you plug in the coffee maker and it doesn't work.

And you burst into tears.

So in that moment, do you trust your emotions?

The following is the kind of ridiculous statement that I heard preachers recite over and over and over again when I was growing up and it's lie number two of this post:  you can't trust your emotions because they change.  You should only trust the Bible.

The issue I have with this is that some well meaning preachers tried to explain in very damaging language that in the times when you feel far from God it doesn't mean that you're far from God.  The Bible tells us that God is everywhere.  So even though your emotions are telling you one thing -- that you feel far away from God -- God really is right there beside you, grieving your loss.

But here's the intriguing thing to think about.  If you read the last sentence of that last paragraph, it doesn't say that God is far away...it says that you feel far away from God, because, guess what?  That's what you're feeling.  The emotion is the truest expression of what you're experiencing -- you're lonely!

Why is it so hard for us to just believe that?  I think our knee jerk reaction is that it sounds like I'm blaming God for not being close by.  But that's isn't what the emotion is telling us -- the emotion isn't telling us that God is at fault, and this leads to the third lie we've come to believe:  I should only experience hurt if the person who hurt me intended to hurt me.

If someone says something that hurts me, and I say to that person, "That really hurt," what's read into that is, "You're blaming me."  So what we get in return is, "I didn't mean it that way!" or "How can you say that?  I'm trying to help!", or "You're always so sensitive!"

Exactly.  I'm sensitive because, guess what?  Humans are sensitive...

So back to the question at the beginning:  do you trust your heart beat?  Because it's as much a part of you as your emotions...

Can you trust your heart beat?  Is that a thing that it's even possible to do???  Or is the question something that can't be answered, like, "what does imagination taste like?"

We could try to force an answer, something like this:  your heart should always be beating, but if it isn't beating properly or at all, you have a problem, a medical condition of some kind.  Is the same true of emotions?

The gut reaction, I think, is to first think of clinical conditions like manic depression or bipolar disorder.  These would be just like arrhythmia is to the heart, right?  So you can't trust emotions -- what if they're broken?

Aaahhh, but here's the thing.  If you have arrhythmia, isn't that a symptom that needs to be addressed? Doesn't it mean there's an underlying bigger issue?  To say I don't trust my heart beat because something doesn't work right is to deny reality, isn't it?  Don't I need to pay attention to arrhythmia?

Which gets us back to the original question:  can you trust your emotions?

It's a ridiculous question, because it's the wrong one to ask...

My final thought:  every emotion is important.  Every single one.  What I learned after 20 hours of counseling is this:  your emotions matter because they're at the core of who you are, to be experienced for what they are: a human response to a very imperfect and terrifying and beautiful world that we have the joy and heartbreak of living in every day.

They aren't supposed to just be talked about; they're supposed to be experienced.

How did it take me 45 years to understand this?  Why are we so desperately denying ourselves this experience?  I'll unpack that later.

So...

I apologize to my wife for denying reality.  She was saying we had a problem, because, guess what? We had a problem.


Next Post:  Shame