Being the analytical beast I am, I have an intense resistance to emotions I can’t explain or figure out how to manipulate. If I can feel it, I want to be able to understand it, and thereby have more or less of it over time as I figure out how it works and how to get it/avoid it. This works for me most of the time. Sometimes it doesn’t, and learning how to deal with the times it doesn’t has been a long-term struggle of mine.
Last week I think I levelled up.
My partner was on a date with someone else. In accordance with the terms we have in place, he texted me afterward to let me know Shenanigans Had Taken Place. I had the response that I have about 60% of the time, which is a sort of sick feeling of horrible dread. This was quickly exacerbated by my exasperation, as I do not wish to be the sort of person that has this response. I want to feel happy and secure and not threatened and not jealous. I want to be more evolved than this! I started automatically trying to figure out why I was feeling this way this time, the way I usually do. Then I stopped. In therapy, the biggest thing my therapist keeps repeating is for me to quit arguing with how I feel. Just feel it. Sit there and feel bad. Shut up. Feel bad if you feel bad.
So I tried.
And, as almost always happens when I can actually force myself to do this, the bad feeling instantly began to dissipate. I started to feel better. It didn’t disappear right off, but there was a huge lessening of intensity, and in a few minutes, it was about 97% gone. I was chatting with Chaos at the time, and I mentioned all of this, and grumbled about how I hate it when she’s right, and I hate this being the answer.
I’ve been working on this problem for years, since before I started with polyamory. I felt irrationally jealous and threatened when I was monogamous too, and I’ve been doing science to it forever. Change this variable, change that one. Control for the element of surprise. Control for trust. Change who it is, when it is, how it is. And it seems utterly random. Sometimes I feel bad, sometimes I don’t, and while there are a few trends, there’s nothing that reliably prevents me feeling bad.
I told Chaos that I’m about to throw up my hands and call it an uncontrollable hormonal response. Which pisses me off, because I would really like to just stop having it. Which goes back to the “sit there and feel bad” thing. I don’t want to sit there and feel bad. I want to fix it. I don’t want to accept it. “It feels like letting the terrorists win,” I told him.
“No,” he said. “It’s letting the terrorists think they’ve won.”
The penny dropped.
“Oh.”
I wasn’t reasonably trying to fix my problem anymore. I had long since exhausted all the solutions. I was simply arguing. My feelings were wrong on the internet. I was feeding the trolls. The jealousy was baiting me, and I was biting. And, just like those unfortunate folks who find joy in stirring up trouble, when there was no trouble to be found, it went off in search of a more gullible fish.
The literature on depression calls this rumination, responding to distress by worrying over it and picking it apart, and thus enhancing rather than ameliorating it.
I think there is a lot to be gained from analysis and metacognition. Obviously, since I devote a considerable portion of my life to it. But there is a point where you’ve done what you can and you have to just stop and say, “Okay. I feel bad, and I can’t do anything about that, so I’m just going to feel bad now.” And hopefully the trolls will tire of commenting into the void and take their business elsewhere.
I too have been doing a lot of emotional work over the last year. This has primarily been prompted by taking a workshop called “Personal Power and Prosperity“. It’s incredibly transformative. I have the same tendency to interrogate my emotional responses and try to figure them out. And I came to the same conclusion as you during the workshop: that often it’s just faster and easier to let it out (appropriately), let yourself feel it, and then it’s over. No more introspection required.
I find it to be liberating. I can have an emotional response to something, and it doesn’t have to be a Big Thing About The Relationshop Or My Parents Or Whatever. It’s just a feeling, like weather.
Weather is a really good analogy. ‘Cause you can kinda deal with it, and in many cases learn to affect it on a large scale over a long period of time, but probably never ultimately have absolute control of it.