"Daddy my head hurts"

I attend to the needs of my whole self

My eldest daughter has recently been suffering from headaches. She has often come home from school complaining that her head hurts. I thought maybe she was not eating enough or drinking enough water. The complaints continued no matter what advice was given for her to try. A few days ago she spent most of the night awake with severe pain and every time I gave her medicine she would throw it back up.

It is a very frustrating and painful feeling for me when my children experience something hard that I feel helpless to fix. I had heard that using essential oils had helped some people with recurring headaches so the next morning I went to a neighbors house to borrow some. We talked for a bit and at one point she asked me if my daughter was a worrier. Suddenly everything started to click together.

I was looking at the situation as a very specific physical problem and had narrowed my frame of vision to only see certain things. I began to realize I was only tending to the symptoms of what was likely a much deeper need. I borrowed a blend of oil called "letting go" and went back home. She was propped up in bed on a mound of pillows looking perfectly miserable. She said the four words I had heard frequently, "Daddy my head hurts."

I sat down and started rubbing her feet using a little of the oil I had borrowed. I then started to talk to her about how she was feeling. I told her that I have had experiences where my emotions made it so my body felt bad because I was holding them in. I asked her about how she felt inside and what was going on in school lately. She started to talk and did not stop for 20 minutes. After about 5 minutes I could see something shift and when she had finished I asked her how her head was. She said she felt better and was ready to go do something fun. I let her know how proud I was of her for sharing how she was feeling inside and that I was happy that she could express it to me. We talked about some of the things I practice doing to express my emotions. She especially liked the idea of writing about them. Together we went to the store and bought her a journal and some stickers to decorate it. We talked about how she could use it to express what she was feeling and she asked me if drawing pictures was something she could do to express them. "What a fantastic idea!" I said. It was hard seeing her draw herself with tears of sadness but I was also overwhelmed with gratitude that I was able to be a witness and support for what she is going through.

My mind, body, and emotions are not separate systems. When I ignore any of them it is to my own detriment. If I ignore my emotions long enough by holding them in, denying, or numbing them; eventually they will find a way to force me to face them. I think of the many times I have gotten sick by not dealing with the stress in my life or the variety of nagging aches and pains that seemingly have no explanation. Today I will recognize my whole self and care for the variety of needs I have mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, and in each of the other areas of my life.

The Big 4

 I will feel everything while holding on to nothing

Healthy emotional expression is an ongoing struggle for me.  My tendency is to hold on to certain emotions by choosing not to express them.  Anger, sadness, fear, and loneliness are probably my big four. I define those emotions in negative terms and that is part of why I keep them to myself.

One of the ways I can change this is to start thinking about my emotions differently.  Anger can teach me what's important to myself, it can also be an expression of self-worth when my boundaries have been violated.  The tears of sadness can be cleansing and allow me to mourn loss and move on. If I allow myself to feel these emotions I can start to let them go.  If I hold on to them by not expressing them in healthy ways anger can morph into bitterness, and sadness may lead me into a feeling of despair or hopelessness.  Even an emotion I define in more positive terms like happiness can trap me in the past if I try to hold on to it and focus on what was, instead of what is.   

I have more work to do in this part of my journey.  For today I will be present through all my experiences, let my feelings flow through me, and then release them.

Crying in the dark

I can share my feelings with others

I have come to realize that my emotions have a heavy sway on my life.  I think that ever since I was a child I was keenly sensitive to the feelings of myself and others.  Emotions are what makes me human and gives richness to my life, but knowing what to do with them has not always been my strong suit. 

I learned a few things about my emotions growing up, not all of which have helped me cope with them competently.  I learned as a kid that I should only feel certain emotions, and no matter what I was feeling there are very strict rules about expressing them.  I learned to ignore certain emotions, hide others, and I even learned to shame myself if I felt a certain way.  I learned in school to ignore my feelings if they did not match what I thought.  I started to question the way I had often made decisions based on my "gut" and this further disconnected me from my emotions.  I did not learn until much later in life that I was exhibiting symptoms of chronic depression from a very early age and that not everyone feels emotion the same way I always had.  

Middle School was a rough time for me and I often endured bullying along with the normal awkwardness that comes for all kids that age.  My parents had a collection of records from the Time Life Classical Composers series.  Nothing spoke to the depths of my sorrow and struck the chords of sadness like Grieg could.  Sometimes after school I would go down into the basement, turn off the lights and listen to one song over and over in the dark.  I would lay on the floor and cry as the music and my emotions crashed over me in waves.  I was learning that certain emotions should be experienced alone, and kept to myself.  Some of these lessons have stuck with me and I am now working to unlearn them.  

Isolation and putting on masks to hide how I am feeling does not work for me anymore.  I can not live an authentic life or develop the type of deep and meaningful connections with others I want unless I am willing to share how I feel.  This does not mean I do it indiscriminately or without purpose, but with those I trust I must learn to share all of me and that includes the emotions I have always kept hidden.  Sharing them helps me gain perspective, receive support and guidance, bonds me with others and relieves me of the burden of carrying around unresolved emotions.  

I have had some of those feelings this week I had previously learned to hide.  I have been more withdrawn and it has affected many areas of my life.  I stopped writing here for a couple of days and isolated myself from others.  I am fortunate to have the encouraging support of friends and family whose reaching out during that time, unbeknownst to them, helped me find a way to express my feelings and come up from the basement of my childhood and find voice for my emotions. 

Healing resentment

I am letting go of resentment and embracing compassion

I have noticed that as I focus on the process of walking my path I frequently experience more vivid dreams.  I had another dream last night and I woke up feeling a swirling mix of negative feelings.  Emotionally I was exhausted and dreading what the rest of the day would hold.  I did not feel like anything good could happen today based on how I was feeling after that dream. As it is with most of my dreams there was a lot of disjointed things happening that are hard to explain or make sense of but what is always very clear are the emotions I am experiencing during it.  Even when I wake up knowing it was a dream the feelings stay with me.

I have learned that when I feel such powerful emotions it is a mistake for me to ignore or repress them.  I decided to look for help in dealing with them.  Instead of keeping them hidden I shared them with someone else and with my my Higher Power.  I certainly wanted to be rid of what I was feeling, but I knew that I would have to understand them and experience it before that could happen.

One of the strongest feelings I was experiencing was anger and resentment towards someone who had hurt me and that I had also hurt in return.  Even though I think neither of us purposefully intended the pain caused, we had both been selfish in our treatment of the other. I think it is sometimes hardest to recognize hurt we cause others when it isn't overt or malicious in intent.

As I willingly and openly shared my emotions with someone else and my Higher Power I recognized a shift in how I was feeling.  I was suddenly able to recognize that the hurt done to me was coming from a place of pain in the other person.  My resentment began to transform into compassion and I felt the swirl of discomfort and pain inside me begin to dissipate.  Although that compassion does not heal the relationship or the dysfunction; by letting myself openly share it, experience it, and letting go of it let me begin to heal my own pain.

That compassion has since expanded and helped me see how much each of us suffer from the wounds inflicted upon us by others.  Left untreated those wounds often spread to others close to us.  Today I want to let go of resentment so that instead of spreading my own pain to others I can heal myself and others through compassion. 

All in...no bluffs

I love playing poker.  I hope to get worse at it.

One of the keys of being a great poker player is the ability to hide all signs of emotion.  Being capable of acting the same way whether you are going all in on a bluff, or attempting to coax a call when you have the best hand, is the difference between a great player and someone that can only play the cards they are dealt.  The more carefully I can mask or completely hide my emotions the more successful I can be at the table.  Great for playing poker, awful for life.

Emotions do not want to be suppressed, ignored, buried, hidden, numbed, denied, judged, stuffed, avoided, smoothed-over, boxed-up, or compartmentalized.  Emotions are powerful and determined.  I believe that even if we try to get rid of them they will refuse to go away.  They scream to be acknowledged, understood, felt, and expressed. The only way past an emotion is to go through it. 

I get stuck when I am critical of my emotions. If I judge anger to be a bad emotion and then attempt to bury or ignore it I find that it festers. Often it will either grow into something more powerful like resentment, bitterness, or contempt; or it will find a way to come out sideways.  Suddenly I'm finding a reason to be critical of others or feeling sorry for myself.  I can not select which emotions I feel.  They are intertwined and rely on each other to exist.  Without pain and sorrow could I experience joy and gratitude?

I get too caught up in controlling my emotions.  Emotions are at the core of my humanity.  It is what makes me human and capable of indescribable beauty but also unspeakable evil. They can be powerful teachers.  When I get wrapped up in deciding which emotions are bad or good and what I should or shouldn't feel I mistreat my emotions.  Anger for example can teach me what is important to me and how to stand up for myself and others.  It helps me capture my voice and express myself.  It's easy to see why I might not be alone in judging emotions when all around me I see anger turning to rage.  When emotions are mismanaged it can leave a wake of devastation.

I will learn to acknowledge my feelings:  What emotions am I experiencing?

I will learn to understand them: How do they express themselves within me physically?  What was the triggering event?  What experiences from my past shape the way I think about emotions?

I will learn to feel them:  How do I try to avoid what I am feeling? In what ways do I numb, hide, deny, or stuff my feelings away?  What can I do to learn how to "lean into" my feelings instead of moving away from them?

I will learn to express them:  How should I express my emotions? Should I share my feelings with others? (I usually want to say NO when the answer is often yes.)



My feelings are central to who I am and to deny them is to deny myself.

I embrace my emotions.  I will acknowledge, understand, feel and express them.