My emotions are valuable and I attend to them
Twelve years ago I had the opportunity to teach my first class. 13 students and I met 3 times per week in a small office building located off campus. The class started at 7am and I relied on an office administrative assistant to unlock the building each morning. Just a few weeks into class I arrived one morning to find the doors still locked. My anxiety began to rise as students showed up and I still had no classroom for us to meet in. 7 o'clock came and went with no sign of help. I had what I deemed important information to share and I couldn't bring myself to even consider cancelling class. The temperature was crisp and without anywhere to sit the parking lot seemed to be no place to hold a college class.
One of the students mentioned they worked at a local grocery store so I made the executive decision to move class to the deli/bakery section of the grocery store roughly a mile up the street. Everyone piled into their vehicles and we reconvened in a small cluster of red and white plastic tables with swivel chairs attached to them. I was more than a little bit distracted by the smell of fresh donuts, the droning of Musak on the speakers overhead and the quizzical looks of grocery shopper passers-by. I dutifully trudged forward doing my best to facilitate an interesting discussion among the midst of constant distractions. I worried that what little credibility I might have with them was quickly diminishing. In addition to all of the constant distractions for the students I had the additional issue of having a wall mounted television on in the corner of the room facing me. A few minutes later I looked up to see a plane smash into the second tower of the World Trade Center.
That moment is frozen in my mind along with a set of powerful emotions, some are personal to me and others are even shared collectively among many other people who experienced the tragedies and trauma of that day. Although I clearly remember that moment the rest of the details of that day are blurry. As I tried to prepare for when class would meet again I knew that this was an experience that could not be ignored. Instead of what I had originally planned to cover on the syllabus we began class by talking about emotion and telling our stories of the impact of what was happening for each of them. It was a milestone in my development as a teacher but until today I had not thought about what that might also have taught me about the importance of attending to emotions.
Emotions are a defining characteristic of the human experience. Even when they do not reach the level produced by trauma they are crucial to be recognized and addressed. Ignoring what I feel, or what I think and do based on those feelings is not an option for me if I want to live a healthy life. At times I have tried to bury many of the strong emotions I have felt and they inevitably rise up from the ground like the walking dead, or come out sideways in unexpected and uncontrollable ways. No matter what I have wrongly learned about what emotions I should or should not express, which are acceptable to feel, or what I should think about myself based on what emotions I experience, I can no more ignore them than I can pretend that I didn't see that plane full of people explode as it flew into that building 12 years ago. I am learning how I feel emotion, how to express it in healthy ways, and how it can help me grow if I listen carefully to what it has to teach me. As I learn and practice those skills I will remember that my emotions are valuable and that I am committed to attending to them.
