The emotional rollercoaster of life
I laughed, I cried
Hello, and thank you for reading The Honesty Box. Today, I’m writing about emotions.
This newsletter is about life’s ups, downs and everything in between, and lately I’ve been feeling pretty emotional across that spectrum, as I’m sure many of us have. The pandemic, plus that gloaming period between Christmas and New Year that can feel restful, boring, listless, glorious, hopeful, hopeless - or all of the above - and now the advent of 2022, is a combination of stuff that has made me really feel all the feels.
Along with Deliveroo, chocolate, Joe Wicks workouts, chats with friends and family, being outside and listening to my favourite tunes on repeat, the TV show This Way Up has helped me navigate these first weeks of January.
Go for the Fleabag-standard writing and performances and stay for the sisterly love between Aine and Shona (the incredible Aisling Bea – who wrote the series - and Sharon Horgan, who is generally one of the best women I have ever seen on telly) and video sex that is so clumsy and awful it made me laugh out loud. I’m now on to Succession (late to the party), which is hilarious in its own way because the characters are all so bloody horrible to each other.
Speaking of laughter, the 13th century Persian poet Rumi wrote in his beautiful piece The Guest House that we ought to meet all emotions “at the door laughing, and invite them in.”
Rumi’s poetry has been described as “the mystery of opening the heart,” and I reckon that if most of us took a really close look at ourselves, we’d find our hearts are somewhat closed, whether we can admit it or not, deep down shielding us from rejection or whatever it is we most fear. (If you don’t know much about Rumi, like me, this HuffPost piece is useful background.)
In This Way Up, Aine generally deals with life by constantly making excellent jokes, her way of protecting herself and others from the breakdown she has emerged from at the start of the series.
Here’s a verse from The Guest House about embracing emotions:
“Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.”
When I cried before Christmas, I was in my kitchen, sitting on a small white stool, having switched off all distractions, and I let the tears flow. I guess you could call that wallowing, but it was my way of welcoming in a little sadness and acknowledging that it’s ok to have the odd bawl. I felt masses better afterwards.
If you remain generous / Time will come good - John O’Donohue, from his poem Time to be slow
Emotions can sometimes be overwhelming, and another way to let them in without them getting the better of you is to think about them as being a chimp, according to the psychologist Steve Peters. In his eye-opening book The Chimp Paradox, Steve writes about the parts of the brain that are emotionally reactive as being a chimp. We are each born with our own chimp, which is as individual to us as eye colour - and while we can never completely control the emotions the chimp elicits, we can learn to manage them.
Along with the chimp, we all have our rational side, which Steve calls the human, and a computer, which our human refers to for examples of how we have responded to situations in the past.
Say for example you’re driving and someone cuts in front of you. Your immediate reaction might be anger (that’s your chimp) but looking at the bigger picture, and letting your human think more rationally, who cares? When I have an immediate reaction to something (frustrating feedback at work, for example), I can start to distance myself from it and realise it’s my chimp responding. I give it some time and can then try to react calmly.
One way to determine whether it’s your chimp or human reacting to something is to ask yourself “Do I want to feel like this?” If the answer is no, it’s the chimp. Thank you to David Edmonds for coaching me on this.
The door of my heart is ajar … is yours?
Things I like
Time will come good
The Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue’s poem “Time to be slow” gets me every time. I first saw it on the London Underground between 2020 lockdowns on the way to a date, and it comforted me on the way home after a frustrating evening.
It’s about being calm and quiet while the “bitter weather” passes. “Try, as best you can, not to let / The wire brush of doubt / Scrape from your heart / All sense of yourself / And your hesitant light,” are lines that give me tingles as I type. “If you remain generous / Time will come good,” he writes, which for me is a reminder to carry on contributing, even if I’m feeling low. You can buy a selection of Poems on the Underground here.
Emotional baggage
Natalie Lue is an incredible blogger, author and expert in relationships of all sorts. She writes the Baggage Reclaim blog and runs courses on creating boundaries, managing anxiety, understanding perfectionism, tapping into your intuition and more. The London Writers’ Salon recently hosted a video interview with her, and I can’t believe I haven’t come across her before. I’m looking forward to learning from her wisdom.
Thank you to Nick Page and Unsplash for the image that goes with this post when it’s viewed on The Honesty Box desktop homepage.