America Is Having Big Feelings
The fragility of inner peace, hiding in the bathroom, and emotional orgies
America is having some pretty big feelings. And it can get kind of wild.
There is, of course, the political discourse. There’s moral highgrounds to camp out on. There are ethical and humanitarian causes. No shortage of platforms to expose.
We are all - in our feelings - as the kids these days are saying.
And feelings can be… weird. They can be an awkward thing to navigate, right?
I used to hate emotional outbursts. I mean, that sounds strange, because who likes that? But my idea of an emotional outburst was anything shared with even a minute amount of extra passion and, oh boy, let’s not even get into how actual conflict made (makes?) me feel.
I’d literally rather walk barefoot across a living room floor covered in mini-legos than find myself in the middle of any type of conflict.
My life has felt like one big performance, tap dancing across the stage for approval and soothing everyone else’s egos like a magician to keep the peace.
I’m not sure at what point I just became too exhausted to keep that up though. Well, many times, actually. But those were all times I was able to withdraw and ghost everyone.
Then I had kids. And those little vultures seem to be able to find me no matter how clever I think I am. They have a sixth sense about where mom is at all times. It’s creepy, as my six year old would say.
Suddenly I couldn’t control the outbursts, meltdowns, and conflicts - but I also couldn’t get away from it. I started to lean into the chaos. And at first, that’s exactly what it felt like - total chaos.
My own emotions got swept away in theirs and suddenly it felt like everyone was in on the mission to break me down. Because that’s what I thought it was, a mission to break me.
Okay, so it worked. They broke me. I’m broken now.
Just kidding (am I though?) - I did learn a few things about emotional outbursts though. Namely, that those of us who call them “outbursts” are the ones who are just praying to dear little baby Jesus that other people will keep their ever loving shit together.
Because our own inner peace is fragile AF.
When we aren’t putting in the work to make sure that we ourselves are grounded in our own sense of self and tending to our inner landscape, the outer landscape starts to look a bit… unhinged.
That’s not to say that we aren’t allowed to have our own big feelings, because we are. And if you think the goal is to tamp down all that “childish” stuff, then you’re probably going to tamp it all down until there’s nowhere left for it to go but all over the place (gross).
So what does that mean? We don’t want anyone else to have big feelings and we certainly don’t want our own big feelings exposed but if we shove it all inside it will just end up coming out anyway and we’re all just going to be sitting around looking at each other’s big ‘ol naked feelings.
That’s a lot of feelings.
It looks alot like what’s happening right now, actually - particularly on social media. So many naked feelings just spiraling around in the ether.
When I’m in a good place, I can look at all that and say, “That’s okay. Let people express their feelings. I get it.”
When I’m an emotional cluster myself, I look at all that and feel even more stirred. “It’s okay, I get it” is not something I think in those moments. I usually just yell back, add to the noise, and then recoil in embarrassment and try to hide until my kids inevitably come pounding on the bathroom door (because the bathroom is the only logical place to hide from the internet, obvs).
Look, I don’t claim to have perfect answers here and if you’ve read this far and now are like “WTF?! She took me all this way just to say she DOESN’T HAVE ANY ANSWERS?!”, I hear you. I get it. Let those big feelings out, babe.
Here is what I do know, though. If we spend our lives avoiding big feelings, we will eventually explode and that will be super uncomfortable for everyone involved.
But if we can figure out how to let those big feelings exist, maybe lean into them a bit without letting them detonate, they seem to start dissipating on their own as we come back down to baseline.
Figuring out what that looks like for YOU, is your job. I can share what works for me but it might not have the same effect for you. We are highly unique individuals navigating very similar emotions. We will both feel anger, but how we manage that feeling will probably be different.
The stories we have around certain emotions, the experiences we’ve lived through around other people’s emotions, will all inform what happens within us when we start feeling our feelings.
I do know this for sure: whatever your process looks like, feeling our feelings is the whole point.
So let yourself feel your feelings. And I’ll feel mine. And we’ll all become more and more okay with everyone feeling their feelings like one big emotional orgy.
Find a way to get that inner peace so the next time someone else is in their feelings, you don’t lose your mind and panic because you can’t find a sense of control (it’s me, I’m the one panicking).
Control is not peace.
If the only time you feel at peace is when everything around you is going well, it’s not peace you feel, it’s control. But that’s a topic for another essay.
For now, let’s just work on our own emotional liberation. Find a way to feel your feelings today. Notice when someone else is in theirs and see what happens when you just go, “okay I see you, that’s cool.” High five their big ass feelings and mind your own.
America is having big feelings. And that’s okay. We’re going to be okay.