Just as Sydney J. Harris would find things while looking for other things, sometimes I'll get an epiphany about one thing while I am dealing with another thing.
Kathy and I were talking about some things in our relationship, working a few things out, and in the process of talking to her about them, I recalled something from my relationship with Wilma which explained a lot of things to me.
One thing from which many ACoAs suffer (and I am one of those that does suffer) is a detachment from their own feelings and bodies. That is to say we feel things but we have been so confused by admonitions to not feel and mislabeling feelings for politeness sake, that we don't really know what we're feeling or what they are saying to us. We are strangers in a way from our own bodies.
Well, in the conversation I had with Kathy, I recalled my time with Wilma where we discovered that my demeanor with her changed to the negative when I was hungry. I was somehow labeling my hunger as anger and taking it out on her. Wilma learned to simply stop and feed me and all would be right again in our situation.
From this I have extrapolated that some of the feelings I have been having lately are not what I thought the feelings were (which makes sense given the absence of evidence that would otherwise support those feelings). I have lately been very tired, sleepy, and tonight was hungry and thus I wasn't even feeling what I thought I was feeling. I was mislabeling this combo based on previous life experience.
So the next time I am feeling melancholy, I think I will try curing it with a sandwich and a nap first.
Morris Albert.
Kathy and I were talking about some things in our relationship, working a few things out, and in the process of talking to her about them, I recalled something from my relationship with Wilma which explained a lot of things to me.
One thing from which many ACoAs suffer (and I am one of those that does suffer) is a detachment from their own feelings and bodies. That is to say we feel things but we have been so confused by admonitions to not feel and mislabeling feelings for politeness sake, that we don't really know what we're feeling or what they are saying to us. We are strangers in a way from our own bodies.
Well, in the conversation I had with Kathy, I recalled my time with Wilma where we discovered that my demeanor with her changed to the negative when I was hungry. I was somehow labeling my hunger as anger and taking it out on her. Wilma learned to simply stop and feed me and all would be right again in our situation.
From this I have extrapolated that some of the feelings I have been having lately are not what I thought the feelings were (which makes sense given the absence of evidence that would otherwise support those feelings). I have lately been very tired, sleepy, and tonight was hungry and thus I wasn't even feeling what I thought I was feeling. I was mislabeling this combo based on previous life experience.
So the next time I am feeling melancholy, I think I will try curing it with a sandwich and a nap first.
Morris Albert.
No comments:
Post a Comment