Tag: emotions

am i bad?

I had a conversation at church today because I’ve had a lot of battles in my mind and I felt like I just needed to speak to someone about it.

I don’t know about anyone else who is a Christian and came to faith as an adult, but I’ve always had this nagging feeling that I’m evil and that I’m going to be one of those people that is going to hell. I feel this even more because my mum doesn’t talk to me and I feel like you do have to be really evil for your mother to turn her back on you.

I have got to the point where I’m questioning myself and whether or not I’ve deserved the abandonment. However, speaking to someone at church they told me that she has pushed the whole family away, not me.

It’s just interesting that we hang onto the feelings that we have as a child that if our parent is angry at us we must have done something wrong. Perhaps that’s just me as I do know that it was something I explored when I went to counselling.

Since I was really small I was always worried that my mum was going to kill herself because of me and those feelings have lingered into my adult life. Whenever I upset her, as a child, she could sometimes disappear for days or wouldn’t speak to me for weeks. I thought that was quite normal but at therapy I was told that it’s bordering on neglect.

My point is, that we carry a lot from our childhoods and being a Christian has sometimes really not helped me at all because I feel like there is no such thing as a loving parent; their love must always come with conditions.

I’m working through this and I think that I need to read my Bible more and listen to talks and remind myself that there is love in this world, and anyone who is feeling the same as me needs to be reminded that too.

Much Love

Rachel xx

a little bit happy and a little bit sad

cute dog wearing a party hat
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

Emotions,

Strange little things

That march across your heart.

I imagine them to be

Yellow, like minions,

Capable of causing palpitations,

But also hard to know

Which is which

And why I cry

Or why I laugh

So ridiculously hard.

I know that emotions are really hard to put into words, and I know that it’s even harder to do this when you’re a teenager and you have all those hormones whizzing round your body.

However, I do find it worrying how bad some of my students are at understanding emotions and putting them into words. Some of them only seem to know happy and sad. The whole rainbow of other emotions seem to be totally lost to them and I find that heartbreaking.

There have been many occasions where I have asked them what a poem makes them feel and they just say ‘happy’. When I raise an eyebrow they then backtrack and go for ‘sad’. They don’t seem to have any sense of what these things mean?!

I hope that it’s not the internet and their reliance on their mobile phones that has done this as I don’t know if that kind of damage is repairable. They are so disconnected that I worry they have lost their human-ness. I hope I’m wrong.

Much Love

Rachel xx

am i dealing with this right?

carton box and tape with scissors on shabby table
Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

The boxes packed and sealed with packing tape,

As rooms stand empty, sunlight in the dust,

There’s tears and tantrums buried here

But just a silent thought or two

Is all I need right now.

My childhood home that I always imagined that I would inherit from my parents and live in until I was old is all packed up and empty. My mother has torn the whole of our world apart and this feels like such a sad moment.

But, I really don’t know how I am supposed to deal with this. I couldn’t go to the house and I just got my dad to pick up anything that I still had there. I just couldn’t face the house and now I have the feeling that my dad’s friends think I’m a heartless bitch leaving him to empty the house with them.

It’s not that I was lazy or didn’t want to support him, but the anxiety I have around moving house and then the anxiety over everything that happened in that house when she was going crazy and pulling furniture apart and barricading me and Noah out. It’s just a lot to deal with.

And then, how might I have dealt with those feelings if I had actually gone with him? What if I had broken down or started screaming or hyperventilating? What would they all think of me then?

It’s really bloody hard to know what to do and how to react and I feel that I have always been told that my emotions make me bad, so I’m scared to show them. I will just sit here and do my best, but I think my whole family are a little bit broken at the moment.

Much Love

Rachel xx

i’m not normally a crier but…….

It must all build up inside my brain,

My eyeballs like little wine bottle stoppers

Holding back the tears and when they burst

It just comes and comes.

I just can’t stop until I fall

Into a puffy sleep where breathing’s hard

And dreams are such a sweet escape.

I’m not normally a crier, but…….. when those tears come, I find it really hard to stop. I admire all those people who can have a little cry and then put it behind them and crack on with work.

I’m like a burst dam that just keeps leaking. I once got shouted at by a customer at work and my manager had to send me home because I couldn’t pull myself together. I went home and carried on crying for another four hours!

Tonight I watched a sad programme and the tears started right at the end. It’s an hour later and although I’m no longer sobbing like I was that day at work, I do still feel like a snotty mess. And I feel flat, the kind of flatness that can only be shifted with sleep. I’m very familiar with that feeling.

I know that the reason I struggle to stop crying when I start is because I let my horrible inner voice take over. It’s the voice that tells my I’m nasty, that nobody likes me and that I’m a waste of oxygen.

It’s a nightmare and I’m sure there are tonnes of you out there who struggle with the exact same thing. I can tell you that I am getting better though. I’m learning to tell myself that the voice is talking bollocks.

I make mistakes because I’m human, but that doesn’t make me worthless. And we’re all allowed to have a good cry now and then and still come out the other side feeling like a valued human being. Because we all have an incredible amount of value and we must remember that.

Much Love

Rachel xx

Kobe Bryant and Grief

To wake and find your whole life changed,

And often for the worse.

They say it eases with the passing of some time,

Like eyes adjusting to a darkened room,

It won’t take long to make out blurry shapes

And navigate your way around

The furniture that’s been there for so long

But now feels like it’s just been put

There in the way to make you stumble and to fall.

But it’s all a load of crap,

You’ll never really see again.

The world will always be

A darker version of the one you used to know.

The chairs and tables move about

To trip you with a terrifying frequency.

It’s cruel to learn the truth,

But once that special person’s gone,

You’ll never have your perfect sight

To guide you through your life again.

The passing of Kobe Bryant is news that has shocked the world. And it has got me thinking a lot about grief. All I can thin about is what his wife must be feeling now, to have lost both a husband and a daughter so suddenly and so tragically.

I can imagine that her world is feeling very dark right now and I am sure that there are a lot of well meaning people telling her that things will get better and that time is a great healer. While this is true, I do think that something so awful leaves a mark on a person that cannot ever be erased. I think that once something so awful happens, your world is always a little darker. And furthermore, it feels like people are deliberately moving around the furniture to make your life even harder.

If you have lost someone, I really hope that you are healing, but don’t feel bad if you are still suffering years down the line. Grief is something that can hit you at any point along your journey and you must accept the emotion and work with it; pushing it down and pretending it is not there is unhealthy and it will only come back to haunt you.

Much Love,

Rachel xx

How do I master my feelings (plus poem)

I don’t know about you but I really struggle to master my feelings when emotion is running high. It’s like I lose the ability to act like a normal human being (or at least a normal adult human being).

Have you ever found yourself in a stressful situation and all that you can do is cry? Have you ever wanted to keep your cool and found yourself screaming at the top of your voice? Well, I think we’ve all been there at one point or another and apparently it’s completely normal.

Now, I’m all for showing your vulnerabilities because I believe that it helps to foster good relationships with others. Showing that you’re vulnerable and that you do have feelings makes you more much easier to relate to. However there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Don’t become known as the drama queen!

If you’re always kicking off and making a scene you’re going to become really unpopular pretty quickly. We all know that one person who we shrink away from when things go wrong.

So how do you master those emotions and become a little more zen when the proverbial shit has hit the fan? Here are three ways to change your thinking so that you can stay as cool as a cucumber in an emergency:

  1. Learn the art of meditation. It will help you to stay calm especially if you practice it in the morning, before you start your day. There are tonnes of guided meditations on Youtube that you can use for free.
  2. Remember that emotions can’t hurt you. You lash out at people and cry because you are frightened. The little kid in you is just trying to scare off the perceived attack. If you can tell yourself that the feeling won’t hurt you it’s much easier to curb that fear and stay calm, at least on the outside!
  3. Don’t engage with the person who has wound you up. Tit for tat is not going to work if you want to master your feelings. If somebody says something that is hurtful and would normally set you off try saying “Thank you for your input. I will take that on board.” It will totally stump the other person and they won’t really feel like they have made a chink in your armour. It actually becomes quite funny to watch them try and come back from that.

Bonus Poem – Emotions

Sometimes I really do not know

In which direction I should go,

When I’m pinned against the wall,

And this person’s gunning for my fall.

I feel like maybe I should cry,

I cannot fight but also cannot fly.

I’m trapped with no control,

You’re crushing my very heart and soul.

I used to drink to dampen down

The feelings and to place the crown,

Of painful thorns upon my head.

Now it goes without it being said,

That letting feelings flow and ebb,

Will free me from that sticky web,

Of tears and screams and then the losing

Of the words and actions of your choosing.

But those feelings will not hurt you,

So take it down a notch or two.

Don’t fight back or engage

And dissipate your angry rage.