I've become so sensitive Ramblings of fiddur

    • Spirituality

Growing up in Sweden, I learned that emotions should be controlled. Other kids will try to startle and scare you, and if you can't keep your cool and shrug it off, you've failed, you'll get laughed at. The grown-ups showed their mastery in this; I can't remember ever seeing my parents crying, or any adult for that matter.  Even laughing was something to keep under control or to the right situations.
Excitement could be put in slightly approving words, like "OK, that sounds like a good idea".  But never should you let your feeling of excitement go up into a "WOW HELL YEAH LET'S DO IT, I CAN'T WAIT!". And there too, in kid play culture it was almost systematically suppressed. One kid would offer a suggestion of something really good, and as soon as excitement was shown, it could be laughed at as "Did you really think you could join in?" or whatever the suggestion might have been.
Slowly but surely, before I was a teenager I was quite adept at not showing emotions. Exciting suggestions were met with a "mhmm". Instead of laughter, I mostly had a short inaudible titter through my nose, almost more sounding like a snort than a laugh. Crying was gone completely. Going to amusement parks and riding a roller coaster was basically relaxing, and mostly an exercise in showing how untouched I could be.
I never wanted to stop feeling. I never consciously viewed emotions as anything bad, and I even saw myself as being in good contact with my emotions, but also in control over my expression.
My journey in self development, my spiritual path, and maybe just general maturation as a human adult, at last got me to start expressing more. In the last 3 years, I've started letting go of inhibitions around allowing my emotions to show, and it quickly became so clear that the expression is part of the emotion itself. When I let it express, I let it flow. Laughing out loudly, the joy gets to fill the space and flow through and around me. Screaming and banging in rage takes the tension and blockage out of my body. Crying out and having tears flow down my face, my whole being is overtaken by the sadness, and there is a profound ecstasy in feeling that movement in my body. Sadness, when I can let it move, isn't something to avoid, it is a beautiful intense emotion putting colours to my experience of the life!
But still, often when I relax and allow myself to feel, I notice the patterns of wanting to shy away and suppress the uncomfortable emotions, especially if someone can see me. Often when we have gatherings here at Hökås, circling and sharing intimately, letting down our defences, I have some hours when I face feelings of being unwanted or not included in the group. At the same time I can see myself keeping others at a distance because of the habits of hiding my emotions. I go away to the corner of the room, I put on a neutral face whenever someone is looking toward me. But then, catching myself doing this, relaxing into that it is OK to feel and be seen feeling, I can see the patterns from everything I suppressed when being teased as a kid and all much worse things my mind made up around it.
The emotions come with triggering thoughts, like that I'm unwelcome, unworthy, unwanted, and my mind starts working at plans and strategies to fix it! Maybe if I'm smart enough, if I look better, or can make people laugh, they'll want me to join?
So many emotions had been bottled up during decades of fears and inhibitions going under the fancy names of "self control" and "fitting in". But emotions are energy, and energy that doesn't flow gets stuck, creating tension and blockages. For me, I would guess that the frequent headaches I've had since I was a kid at least partly are due to blocked emotions, leading to tensions in jaws, neck, and shoulders.
In Sanskrit sources of classical tantra and Indian philosophy, they talk about samskaras (संस्कार), stored up impressions in your energy body (both mental and emotional). It is similar to the west

Growing up in Sweden, I learned that emotions should be controlled. Other kids will try to startle and scare you, and if you can't keep your cool and shrug it off, you've failed, you'll get laughed at. The grown-ups showed their mastery in this; I can't remember ever seeing my parents crying, or any adult for that matter.  Even laughing was something to keep under control or to the right situations.
Excitement could be put in slightly approving words, like "OK, that sounds like a good idea".  But never should you let your feeling of excitement go up into a "WOW HELL YEAH LET'S DO IT, I CAN'T WAIT!". And there too, in kid play culture it was almost systematically suppressed. One kid would offer a suggestion of something really good, and as soon as excitement was shown, it could be laughed at as "Did you really think you could join in?" or whatever the suggestion might have been.
Slowly but surely, before I was a teenager I was quite adept at not showing emotions. Exciting suggestions were met with a "mhmm". Instead of laughter, I mostly had a short inaudible titter through my nose, almost more sounding like a snort than a laugh. Crying was gone completely. Going to amusement parks and riding a roller coaster was basically relaxing, and mostly an exercise in showing how untouched I could be.
I never wanted to stop feeling. I never consciously viewed emotions as anything bad, and I even saw myself as being in good contact with my emotions, but also in control over my expression.
My journey in self development, my spiritual path, and maybe just general maturation as a human adult, at last got me to start expressing more. In the last 3 years, I've started letting go of inhibitions around allowing my emotions to show, and it quickly became so clear that the expression is part of the emotion itself. When I let it express, I let it flow. Laughing out loudly, the joy gets to fill the space and flow through and around me. Screaming and banging in rage takes the tension and blockage out of my body. Crying out and having tears flow down my face, my whole being is overtaken by the sadness, and there is a profound ecstasy in feeling that movement in my body. Sadness, when I can let it move, isn't something to avoid, it is a beautiful intense emotion putting colours to my experience of the life!
But still, often when I relax and allow myself to feel, I notice the patterns of wanting to shy away and suppress the uncomfortable emotions, especially if someone can see me. Often when we have gatherings here at Hökås, circling and sharing intimately, letting down our defences, I have some hours when I face feelings of being unwanted or not included in the group. At the same time I can see myself keeping others at a distance because of the habits of hiding my emotions. I go away to the corner of the room, I put on a neutral face whenever someone is looking toward me. But then, catching myself doing this, relaxing into that it is OK to feel and be seen feeling, I can see the patterns from everything I suppressed when being teased as a kid and all much worse things my mind made up around it.
The emotions come with triggering thoughts, like that I'm unwelcome, unworthy, unwanted, and my mind starts working at plans and strategies to fix it! Maybe if I'm smart enough, if I look better, or can make people laugh, they'll want me to join?
So many emotions had been bottled up during decades of fears and inhibitions going under the fancy names of "self control" and "fitting in". But emotions are energy, and energy that doesn't flow gets stuck, creating tension and blockages. For me, I would guess that the frequent headaches I've had since I was a kid at least partly are due to blocked emotions, leading to tensions in jaws, neck, and shoulders.
In Sanskrit sources of classical tantra and Indian philosophy, they talk about samskaras (संस्कार), stored up impressions in your energy body (both mental and emotional). It is similar to the west