“E” is for Emotions

This is the 5th post in the A to Z Blogging Challenge.

Well I skipped yesterday, which was “E”. I am back-dating this post to April 6th so that it fits with the challenge, but I’m actually writing it on the 7th. Today’s post is going to be about emotions, for the letter E.

I was really really upset about the Crossfit thing from Sunday. It caused a HUGE anxiety spiral, and from there I crashed. I was unable to use any of the tools I learned in therapy, I was angry with myself, with society, with everything. All my previous negative thought patterns returned. So I was in a very emotional state.

Why did such a thing bother me so much? I think the fact that I felt like I didn’t measure up to others was a triggering event for me. All my life I’ve felt like I don’t measure up to others, for a variety of reasons that I’m not going to get into here (maybe in other posts). I’ve made a lot of progress in dealing with that in therapy. I’ve gotten better at “swimming” through the waters. But figuratively I am a novice swimmer, and so when a big wave comes along, I may be knocked out. Apparently the “wave” that was my experience on Sunday was a big one, and it knocked me out for the rest of that day and all of Monday. I could barely get out of bed on Monday and only managed to step outside long enough to take out the trash. I was an emotional wreck. I didn’t give a shit about anything, I didn’t have the energy to use my tools. All I wanted to do was sleep.

I guess the sleep helped, because I felt much better today. My head has cleared. I’m not going to judge myself for reacting the way I did. I’m not going to “take it back”. All emotions are valid, and they are what they are. The Crossfit experience brought up a lot of emotions, and I rode out the storm. I’ll examine them, of course, and see if I can figure out why I was affected the way I was, but I’ll do so in a non-judgmental way.

Dealing with emotions can be difficult. It’s too bad that we can’t see our emotions visually. I think if we could see them they’d be easier to handle since they’d be more concrete and less abstract.