Some Feelings You Can’t Put Into Words
You’re not alone in having inexplicable feelings impact you.
I have no words to describe what I’m feeling at this moment. I think the issue is that there’s no single what or how to the feelings I’m currently experiencing. The trouble is, because I can’t express this, neither can I release it.
A little backstory. Today, there was a gathering of specific individuals in my life that always comes with complexities, challenges, and stress. What’s more, it’s mostly subtle, a product of years of habit and inaction and action, coupled with things implied and things said that are bizarre. (Yes, I’m being incredibly vague here. Sorry, not sorry.)
All gatherings with these people tend to leave me feeling this inexplicable, largely negative blend of what and how that can’t be explained. Yet, because of the uncertainty this creates, I find myself trying to put these feelings into words.
It doesn’t help that the sensation I’m experiencing is impacting me on all 4 levels of my health, wellness, and wellbeing. Mentally, I’m just unable to catch and examine all the thoughts the gathering with said individuals creates and produces, before, during, and after. Physically, I feel like I went 10 rounds with an MMA fighter and need a major nap. Emotionally, what and how I’m feeling is so mixed that it’s equally blaring and silent (like someone using an old-fashioned knob and raISING the volume then instantly LOWEring it). And Spiritually, I feel kinda lost and uncertain and blah.
Why do the words matter?
Because this has become a recurrent issue, I desire to understand what and how I’m feeling. Yet, these feelings are so mixed, so frenetic, so mashed up, that the what and how elude me.
The words matter (the what and how) because that offers an explanation. I love words, and being able to put these feelings into words helps me understand and better process them. When I can’t put them into words, I feel confused/lost/uncertain/flustered like I currently feel.
So, now I’m sharing this with you. Why? Two reasons. First, because by journaling about this, even with the necessary vagaries of it, I am working to grok it. When I can better understand it (in that deep, to-the-core way the word “grok” covers), I can find ways to act to mitigate this distressing aftermath that comes with it.
Second, because I know I’m not alone. Feelings are complicated, messy, and often contradictory. Further, as part of the ongoing mental health crisis in this country, often disregarded and not discussed. But as part of being human, we all have feelings. And the complicated ones that you can’t necessarily put words to are worth discussing and exploring.
My exploration of this helps me, but why not help others who might be in a similar boat? That makes me feel better, and this is all about feelings. And feelings are complicated at best.
Having words for these feelings helps in understanding the power of them and how they impact me both now and going forward.
Putting feelings into words is a matter of nontoxic positivity
Why is this about positivity? Because ignoring, disregarding, or otherwise pushing away feelings is disempowering. You can’t make mindful choices and decisions when you can’t know the what and how of your feelings.
Toxic positivity often pushes aside and puts on blinders to negative feelings. But that’s disingenuous to everyone because we are not made of only happy, shiny, positive feelings. We all have greater and lesser traumas, experience shit happening, have bad days, and feelings that make no sense are frequently low-frequency and negative.
Giving words to feelings doesn’t make them more powerful. Why? Because giving them words identifies them. When you can identify them, you can alter, change, or redirect them. You become empowered to take charge and use active conscious awareness to work through these things you can’t otherwise make sense of.
There are plenty of bits and pieces of my past that I learned to stop trying to identify. That’s because I found they don’t need to be known, here and now, to impact my present life. But the thoughts and feelings I can’t put into words are here, and now. Giving them words opens a way for me to move past this.
Why bother? Because I’m the only one in my head, heart, and soul. When those places aren’t comfortable, nobody but me can clean them up and rearrange them to make them comfortable. And while there are plenty of distractions and such to temporarily redirect myself – booze, drugs, TV, sex, etc. – these are only temporary. They are distractions that don’t let me learn the words to the feelings so that I might address them and/or change them.
What can I do?
My healing process
Right now, I’m writing about this. Thanks for coming along as I share my work to try and understand, to grok, what these odd, freaky, mixed incomprehensible feelings are. Writing this out and sharing it helps me find the words to understand what this is. Or, at the least, helps me through the necessary process so I can shift this undesirable sensation and make something constructive of it.
Other things I can do include going for a walk or bike ride. Pausing to do some deep breathing. Meditation. Handwriting this out in my private journal. Discuss all of this with a friend or my therapist.
The choice to act, to write this out, has helped me start to alleviate the physical exhaustion, the mental fog, the emotional uncertainty, and the spiritual dread. Addressing all 4 elements of my health, wellness, and wellbeing is imperative to healing. Especially when it’s such a bizarre, challenging unknown.
The positivity here is how it empowers me. Yes, this currently sucks. But it’s beginning to suck less, and I know that doing this work, making the choices and decisions I have in sharing this, will open and empower me to put words to these feelings. Even if I don’t find them, that doesn’t mean I’m not actively doing the work I can to improve this and better myself and my ability to cope and work with similar situations in the future.
Doing something to put words to incomprehensible feelings isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness (mindfulness) of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that feelings can impact you mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, when you can’t explain them for whatever reason, you can take action to find the words for them, which helps in the healing. Knowing that even if you can’t find the words, the choices and decisions made to do so can go a long way toward making sense of the senseless and finding peace and balance in your head, heart, and soul, where you alone abide.
This empowers you. When you’re empowered, that can, in turn, empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity — from the vast cylinder that exists between them — shifts life in ways that open you to more potential, possibility, and the like. From there, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you in the here and now.
The better aware you are of yourself, in the present, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you and empower them, too. That is an amazing conduit to help reason overcome fear in the collective consciousness.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the six-hundred-forty-fifth (645) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.
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