After fifty years, I have come to realise I have a rinky-dink philosophy which is so deeply rooted that I struggle to implement upgrades to my thinking. Repressively speaking, nostalgia is my pimp. I’m complicit in my own obliviousness; unwittingly ignorant in my own ignorance. So my old school philosophy feels like it’s being dragged kicking and screaming into the present. In fact, I’m not sure that I know what that philosophy looks like and thus don’t know how it feels. The clue is in what it “looks like” insomuch as how that determines how I feel. Which is to say, I’m a pragmatist. Or, in simple terms, I’m left-brain-centric.
Like most male disciples of Generation X and before, I’m an ‘Outside-In’ kind of guy. Which is to say, I take my cues from my environment and the people who inhabit it. As much as I am a sentient being, feelings done “to us”, in the form of discipline, took precedence over feelings done “by us”, in my youth. My formative years, quite naturally, were to live by proxy, the abdication of responsibility to Family, Responsible Elders and virtually every Tom, Dick and Harry of consequence. So while I have never wanted to crawl back up into my mother’s womb, those formative years have cast a pernicious shadow over my life. Life was as much duty, if not more than love.
The only time I recall crying was when I cut my knee, having fallen over in the playground at primary school. And that habit ensued for an ephemeral period of childhood until I was five or six. By process of osmosis I became the adage “big boys don’t cry”. That’s what growth looked like - one of life’s embodied badges of honour. Little did I know that I was strangling my emotional spectrum and hijacking my identity.
Now I don’t want you to get the impression that this is some sort of sob story. To paraphrase Bruce Hornsby, that's just the way shit worked! In spite of the upheaval of my parent’s divorce, I had a happy childhood. I just didn’t know how to be happy in myself because that wasn’t a concern for my generation. I was settling! Settling for the norms and standards of the day. Now, when I say it like that, I’m inclined to take it back! It is a sob story! I just don’t feel sad because my feelings were/are repressed! Which means I’m doubly sad! Doh!
But I digress. For I maintain I am not the victim I might seem to suggest. Within the home, as a kid, aside of the humdrum of homework and chores like hoovering, ironing, doing the dishes and mowing the lawn, we played in the streets after school, on weekends and holidays; Footy, Biking, building dens, Climbing Trees, Kerby, Knock Down Ginger, Scrumping in the Summer, building snowmen and Snowball fights in the Winter. Childhood was joyous. It was a social experience based on human interaction and for that I’m grateful. Life was IRL! Not a series of virtual open-loops that define social mediums like Tik Tok, Instagram or Twitter of today.
I do, however, vaguely remember feeling, what I now know to be anxiety, when I realised we were a family who couldn’t afford to keep up with the Jones’s or, more specifically, I didn’t have the luxuries my friends did; the latest trainers/clothes, lunch money, holidays abroad or even staycations, were beyond our means in a single-parent family. But I never starved, had a roof over my head and knew I was loved. So within a context like that, and knowing there were others who were worse off, I was doing okay.
Nevertheless, when it came to my wants, I was too scared to ask for what I wanted and that became a feature of my life, most notably in my marriage. More specifically, in my material deprivation, I always thought, or rather, was led to believe, tantrums and strops were not the solution to that problem. If only because they were invariably a one-way ticket to discipline, also known as ass-whoopings! I learned to swallow my anxiety and frustration, I was a convenient kid; convenient to my parents and elders. So how could I be the inside-out kid that is true of the Millennials and Generation Z’s these days? Honouring your feelings first is the default setting to them. “Trust your gut!”, they say. If I couldn’t gazump my gut by subcontracting my responsibility to some totem of authority, I didn’t know who I was and that never really changed when the responsibility was handed over to me in my Wonder years. Sure, as a teen, I developed abstract thought, but the tone had already been set. I just became adept at dissociating from my frustration to avoid my caregivers' rejection. But it worked! I became a degree-educated-professional able to command a six-figure salary. I was groomed for maturity and respectability. Until I wasn’t! For that pathway took a detour off a cliff into incarceration and shame that torments me to this day. Little did I know that the tantrums and strops I avoided were acts of courage and compassion; the ability to dare to connect with your feelings, or self-regulate, was an alien concept to most of my generation. The minority of naughty kids who, somehow, got it, were right all along!
We lived with an impending sense of doom when interacting with our hierarchically-biassed elders. For Love was only one side of the coin. Discipline was the counterbalance to Love. For discipline was the agent of Fear. You see, by today’s weights and measures, the discipline of the seventies/eighties I experienced would now be considered child abuse. But what’s more, I am here to bear witness, that’s not how I feel about my Mom’s parenting style. Even in her advancing years, I have nothing but love for her given my upbringing. And the rare ass-whooping never did me any harm. Which is ironic since I never laid a finger on my son. Sign of the Times. Thanks to present day luminaries like Dr Becky we know better now. Dr Becky would say we are here to help our children find their North Star. We, on the other hand, were taught our Parents, or whoever was in charge, were our North Star. Which is how I have now come to the realisation that I don’t innately love myself. I love myself by proxy. I’m a repressive perfectionist which means I hold myself to inhumanly high standards that I can reach but not maintain. How I see myself is how I perceive you to see me. Which is why I see you holding me to ultra high standards that I must attain. How could it be any other way? I was never nurtured to trust my feelings, I was nurtured to trust other people’s feelings. The result, now I have carte blanche to honour my feelings, is I’m emotionally constipated! Which probably explains why, though I crave them, I am absolutely crap in monogamous loving relationships.
Much as it would be the cogent conclusion to reach, I’m not a complete Zombie. I now have an Emotions Wheel (see above) that gathers dust other than those oh-so-rare moments when my conscience is pricked and I have an urge to question why I think what I think. And yet even if those moments are oh-so-rare they oh-so-happen! If my marriage was anything to go by, I did happy pretty well, couldn’t fake it if I tried. Where I struggled was with what might be considered to be negative emotions. For instance, I did fear, though it tended to grab me by the throat; I was held hostage in a freeze state during my ten year marriage by the distinct possibility that it might end, a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it turned out. I suppressed my anger and disgust, as a consequence of said fear, hence my emotional constipation meant I was mute about my feelings to my wife. In retrospect, when my marriage imploded, even though I was groomed for failure throughout said relationship, I was nevertheless in shock when it ended. I simply didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to name my feelings, which meant I was cemented in a stuckness.
Simply put, the two hemispheres of my brain are at war. My right-brain lives under occupation of my left-brain. My left-brain snubs my right-brain in all disrespect; the way Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to stick it to Palestine. My left-brain is a sanctimonious virtue signaller, surreptitiously pointing the finger at my right-brain. My right-brain just wants some love and respect from its sibling but my left-brain doesn’t trust it and thus executes an insidious fascism. Fifty years down the road and this is a shocking revelation to me. I present as a Socialist to the world while operating under the auspices of a dictatorship! Like WTF! My left-brain is a BFF and a bully. Which is to say, it’s got me this far given that, since my parents' divorce at the age of seven, I’ve spent most of my life in survival mode. It be like “I got your back, Billy, I’ve got old rightie in the corner! Just the way we like it!” But since embarking on this emotional/spiritual awakening, nine years in the making since commencing Psychology, I’m still finding my way back to my Self. Still trying to make peace and harmonise with the stranger that is my right-brain. So much so that my left-brain has been like “Woah! First Yoga? Now you’re doing Meditation? Are you trying to do me dirty? Are you fixing to kick me to the kerb? Don’t you dare! I’ll choke you out if you continue with this madness!” I’m in an insidious hostage situation which means I can’t do grace or justice to my right-brain. Ninety percent of the time my mind is still and I’m okay but it’s time well wasted. I paint in broad strokes rather than the nuances/complexities of producing the fine art that life is. As such, it’s, invariably, only a matter of time before shit kicks off! Consequently my right-brain freaks out and be like “Motherfucker! This is what you get for keeping your foot on my neck!” All hell breaks loose. Chaos ensues. Complete nervous system breakdown and emotional dysregulation. And there is no anti-social behaviour, it’s all in my head. As yet, I have not learned how to talk myself down or self-soothe in these situations, all I can do is allow my left-brain to ignore my right-brain, as it wreaks carnage. My left-brain is like a passive-aggressive parent sending its child to its room. Time, guilt and boredom will thus compel my right-brain to stand down like a chastised kid. So what I am is a ticking time bomb. I don’t know when I’m going to get triggered by some shit or other, as exemplified in my Panic Attack post from two weeks back, but, at some point, I will.
Right now, I’m struggling to see how my left-brain and my right-brain can co-exist. Hence why I batten down the hatches and live a hermit’s life. No friends, minimal family contact - this is the aftermath of the shame of incarceration. But I know this is not healthy, hence why I’ve been taking steps to do the shadow work and delve into my own abyss to find peace and harmony. I am in the midst of a revolution to de-fascisise my brain. For none of us; my left-brain, my right-brain or my Self, are free until we are all free. I am the victim and the culprit for why I am being held hostage but there is no longer any room for either impostor.
As ever, all views are appreciated, feel free to let me know how you feel in the Comments.
when my conscience is pricked and I have an urge to question why I think what I think...
The EMOTION chart is a wonderful guide. That's a new one I haven't seen.
My dad (due to his upbringing) could not access his emotions. It was logic every step of the way.
My mom was highly emotional, deeply over feeling everything (also due to her upbringing)
I have my mom's depth and my dad's inability to handle it.
NONE of us were taught to access our feelings and yet THAT IS WHAT ART DOES.
You are an artist.
Being a Hermit is natural to an artist so they can figure themself out and express that self.
You are on your road.
Other people will integrate back in once you start loving yourself and your process more.
Since, as you say, “none of us were taught to access our feelings”, is it true that none of us can possibly truly love ourselves? If not, why not? Because in all repression, I do believe I love myself. But I get the impression that it is a love that lives in all ignorance of my true feelings. The logical conclusion, under those circumstances, therefore, is I can’t possibly love myself.