Turns Out Processing Emotions Isn't Just for Therapists
Let me preface this post by saying that I am a 49 year old lady who has lived a life and seen some things. I know about stuff. Which is why the revelation I have had this past year is quite embarrassing.
Like everyone, I have had a few years of tumult, confusion and emotional distress. Some personal stuff has been painful and I see a therapist about once a month to talk through all my weirdness, including why I became so deeply emotionally invested in Joel Miller, Pedro Pascal’s character in The Last of Us, a TV series about mushroom zombies and why I get so enraged when speakers go over their time limits at conferences.
Anyway, one particularly painful issue has been plaguing me for years and for a while I was obsessing about it. It was basically all I could talk about with my friends, my husband, my family members and of course my therapist.
One time when we were diving into it yet again in our Zoom session I apologized to her. (I am nothing if not a people pleaser and getting my therapist to like me and think I am funny is one of the primary reasons I continue to pay her). I said, “I’m so sorry, I don’t know why this is the only topic I seem to be able to talk about.”
She looked at me and said, very simply, “Well, you’re processing your emotions.”
Let me return to the first line of this entry… I am a 49 year old lady. I should have known this, but it was revelation. I had not understood, until that moment, that you could process your emotions by talking about them. If I am honest I didn’t believe you could ever ACTUALLY process something, but if I thought about it at all (which I worked very hard not to do, often by distracting with rants about speakers going over time at conferences and obsessively googling clips of Pedro Pascal being tough but tender) it never occurred to me that just by yapping about a hard thing I could get my head around it and maybe, possibly, eventually, move on from it.
40+ years of walking around in grumpy denial of things and I finally learned there was a better way. One that didn’t involve mushroom zombies!
Astounding.
Did you know that you should process your emotions? How do you do it? Tell us in the comments below.
Article Roundup!
This really made me chuckle, especially the stuff about Braden. He’s such a turkey.
That Time My Teen Asked to Talk to Me About Something
Can he smell my desperation? I oh-so-subtly tap my nose to my pit and smell my own desperation. I turned to natural deodorant when I was afraid my antiperspirant was giving me Alzheimer’s but now I smell like some wrong combination of fish and sauerkraut and I still can’t remember a goddamn thing.
7 Luxury Trains with Ultra-Glamorous Bar Cars
Why is train travel so much more exciting than plane travel? I don’t know, but it just is. These trips look WILD.
The Seven Stars Kyushu, which operates ultra-opulent journeys all throughout the Japanese island of Kyushu, is so-named because it offers seven-star luxury service. The car where that luxury reaches its apex is undoubtedly the Blue Moon Lounge. Encased in rich wood paneling with coffered ceilings and retro brass lamps, this “saloon on wheels” feels like a portal into another era. The lounge doubles as the train’s dining car, but come cocktail hour the space is transformed by atmospheric live piano music and the sunset shining in through the panoramic windows.
Stalked: A ‘Baywatch Star’s 13-Year Nightmare
I don’t usually link to these kinds of articles but this one was fascinating about the ins and outs of celebrity stalkers. This poor woman endured over a decade of torment, and her experience wasn’t unusual:
Doomanis believes 100 percent of A-listers in the United States “always have some type of pursuer, whether a true stalker or someone exhibiting stalker-like behavior.”
Book Stuff
It was just the two-year Book-aversary of my novel, Speak for the Dead!
My main character, Dr. Cate Spencer is a little more grumpy than my usual protagonists. She’s a deeply lonely alcoholic coroner… but wait, it’s a good read, I promise! Twisty turns! Layered characters! Evocative setting. It’s based on a real job I once had… managing the move the highly explosive nitrate negatives from a disused and very creepy building at the edge of a military base to a brand new state of the art facility.
It's a steamy summer Ottawa day when Dr Cate Spencer is called out to the nitrate
facility to investigate an apparent suicide. The eerie building is filled with
deteriorating nitrate film that could literally spontaneously combust. When
Cate's life is threatened by a stray spark, she suspects the suicide might
be murder. Despite pressure from the police to pronounce on cause quickly, Cate
is bloody-minded enough to keep investigating. Whether she's looking for
answers because of her dedication to justice, or as a distraction from the
grief she feels over her brother's recent death, her inquiries plunge her into
a world of military secrets, contentious Indigenous protests and a seventy-year-old mystery with deadly implications.
“[A] strong sequel to 2022’s The Foulest Things . . . Tector smoothly balances her lead’s struggles with alcohol in the wake of her brother’s death with developments in this well-crafted mystery. Temperance Brennan fans will be pleased.”
-Publishers Weekly
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P.S. My house has endured the Noro Virus this week and it was a reminder of how we should all be grateful for every second of our lives when we don’t feel nauseous. Also, it is insane how delicious, sweet and refreshing a glass of water can taste. #TheSimpleThings
Who knew emotional regulation is a thing? Late onset menopause and undiagnosed ADHD set off a storm for me at a time when my life was in serious upheaval with a lot of trauma. Now diagnosed I have to learn a lot about understanding myself. I hear you so clearly and can completely relate to your words. I am 65, Mom to 2 incredible young women and wife to a pretty amazing man who puts up with me and my whirlwind of unfinished projects, stacks of books and my unpredictable emotions. My village constantly surprises me with accepting me as I am and supporting me through some difficult times. I can only hope that others who like you and like me can find their village and their person.
46 year old woman here, and I just learned how to regulate my emotions last year. I'd had several unhealthy coping mechanisms for years, but all I was really doing was avoiding what made me feel uncomfortable. Honestly, it started after I watched the show Couples Therapy. I just started therapizing myself. When the familiar feeling of discomfort would appear, instead of doing anything and everything in my power to not think about it, I started getting curious about it. What is causing me to feel this anxiety? I went in reverse, peeling back the layers until I could dig no deeper.
I started inviting my demons to sit down with me and have a cup of tea and try and find out why they showed up in the first place. I did this over and over. Neural plasticity is an amazing thing, I created a new habit. I replaced the avoidance/running away knee jerk reaction with radical self acceptance. Which led to radical self love.
There's a lot of tools in my toolbox I can use when life throws me a curveball, and I add to that toolbox all the time.
All of this to say, I had to create a safe space for myself. I'd been doing it for the people I care about for years. I started speaking to myself internally the same way I do to my best friend. Or the way I'd speak to 10 year old me. It felt so awkward to be kind to myself at first, like I was faking it. But faking it til you make it actually works.
And it turns out that once you get past that initial barrier of fear, what's on the other side is always less scary than the fear was.