Emotionally Tight-lipped

I haven’t done this in a while. I’ve let my tid-bits and tangents shuffle through my mind without much thoughtful attendance. A nod of acknowledgement perhaps, but there’s far too much to do to carve out space for anything more.

Yet this hypocrite sits on her phone for at least two hours every night drowning out all noises, even the internal ones.

It feels rotten to admit that those two hours are sometimes the highlight of my days. The two hours I am subconsciously trudging through the mud toward. No one needs me. No one is outwardly suffering within my physical vicinity. Nothing else needs to be tended to or cleaned up or soothed. My mental and emotional exhaustion outweighs my cravings for authentic attunement.

It finally happened last night, where my own emotionality outweighed my desire to sink into mind-numbing social media escapism. I was sitting with my head on my husband’s chest after we got our tumultuously teething toddler down for the night. The tears started from no solid pinpoint and the anxiety lingered throughout today. Being a human really gets in the way of being emotionally tight-lipped.

Building up a dam to the emotional turmoil that ricochets within my heart is far easier than allowing myself to feel the damn thing. I don’t have time to sit with the ache of my chronic fear and trepidation when there are so many other sources of pain surrounding me. So many people in and out of the therapy room are sputtering for air from the obstacles and challenges that grip their throats.

My whole career is built on a platform defined by the notion of ‘safe space’. A space in the world where others can come and hang up their masks and defenses at the door. To feel safe enough to peek at what lies beneath the armor and drives the misery, anxiety, depression, compulsion to drink, cut, argue; the list is endless.

The world is not safe. This is nothing new. The boogieman has crept around corners and within alleyways for as long as humanity has existed. Yet, the type of unsafe that is hammering into people is unnervingly unfamiliar. Rights that some argue come with humility are being revoked like angry parents snatching a child’s toy from their grasps without much rhyme or reason.
 As a therapist, my client’s well-being is my number one priority. I was raised by the book of ethics and nurtured by the hands of professionally powerful human rights advocates. Yet here I am, tears rolling down my face as I look at the wreckage of an ocean’s worth of demolished presumed safety.

I am not writing these words to ask for validation or understanding. I just keep thinking about those who sit across from me with pain echoing behind their eyes. I have become way too savvy at seeing pain others try so desperately to keep quiet from the outside world. It’s not safe to feel unwell right now. It’s difficult to shake the modified natural selection that is swirling in the air. Buck up, button up, and whatever you do, do not look vulnerable.

Vulnerability is dangerous.
Because its antidote is empathy.

I think that’s what I crave. I crave for empathy to lose its derogatory connotation. I crave for the fixers to pause their agenda to see the pain behind so many eyes, their own eyes even. It’s so hard to sit with so much pain in and out of the therapy room.

I’ll be OK.
We will be OK.

Even my tumultuous teething toddler with the patience of a fly will be OK.
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There’s just so much relief in letting words hit the air.
Letting uncomfortable emotions escape the confides of your lips. Your feelings are safe within the cozy walls of my eclectic office. Your experiences, your pain, your perspectives are all inarguably yours to hold and process. Let’s just let it all hit the air. Let’s start there.