Codependency Part Two: Difficulty Identifying Feelings
I like to think of myself as emotionally intelligent. I live most of my life in my head, in my feelings. When people say you need to “ground yourself,” and “look inward,” it’s always stressed me the fuck out because it’s like, “holy shit, how can I navel gaze any harder??? All I do is think about my feelings!!” Again, forest through the trees and all that shit- I think about my feelings too hard. I overthink them. I think about them so much that I don’t even trust them anymore; they dissolve under the laser of my analysis. Then everything stops meaning anything.
You can rationalize away every thought you’ve ever had, if you have the time and are as self-obsessed as I am. Like, the very fabric of your internal reality can easily crumble with enough scrutiny. Soon, absolutes are replaced with more questions, more variables. You stop trusting your impulses, your gut. “Am I angry? Anger isn’t a primary emotion. Is this fear? What am I afraid of? Am I afraid of being abandoned? That tracks… is this fear of abandonment even valid? Yeah, he’s ignoring my texts and saying he’s home when his IG story says otherwise, but this is probably just MY trauma. I’m damaged. I’m crazy. I’m just gonna sit over here and not mention this ever, while my entire torso feels like it’s just been nuked by an atomic bomb. Let’s just figure out where this fear of abandonment comes from:” You gaslight yourself.
You unravel every notion, every mother of every notion, until you’re right back where you started. The knot is just an endless circle. And then you’re stuck staring at a smooth loop that means nothing, wondering where the starting point even is.
It becomes easy to give up, and wait for someone else to take the lead; to pick a place to begin. To pick an emotion, a story, a vantage point. It becomes easier to just stay quiet, because you’re embarrassed that you don’t even know what you feel about anything anymore.
Maybe that’s why I like to drink; drinking allows you to cut down to the strongest emotion. When it doubt, drink it out. Whatever comes out is sometimes ugly, sometimes ironically unprocessed, but it’s raw and it’s immediate.
The question then becomes, how do you find that primary emotion more quickly, and more naturally? How do you deduce what’s most true, without having to first poison yourself?
And is it more “true,” just because it’s base and instinctive? Is that really your higher self speaking? The tailspin begins again.
I think, by rereading everything I’ve just written, I’ve realized, there is no “starting point.” There is no “truth.” It’s not that complicated. You cannot outwit your gut. You cannot rise above yourself, because you are yourself. And that’s ok. Nobody needs you to be better than a person, which is what you are. You are a person just trying to make the right choices for yourself. You are a person who just wants to feel safe and loved. And whatever initial feelings you have ARE THE THING. It IS NOT COMPLICATED.
It’s easier to internalize chaos because it allows you to avoid confrontation.
If you dissolve every thought and feeling and fear in the toxic acid of your own mania, then you never have to defend your feelings to someone else. You never have to publicly admit you overreacted, or were wrong, or cared too much. You avoid the conversations altogether. You spare yourself any embarrassment, or shame, or vulnerability.
But it’s ok to fuck up. It’s ok to learn a lesson you should already know, in front of someone else.
It’s ok to trust whatever your first feelings are, no matter how absurd they may be. They are not set in stone. You’re allowed to reconsider later on, and then verbalize your new feelings. Every conversation is not a final exam.