THE INS & THE OUTS
I am an internaliser.
I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that most people fit into one of the two categories – having an internal or external means of processing emotions.
I will also go out on a limb and suggest that neither way is better than the other. There are pros and cons to both and like most things, there are degrees.
AND I AM A FAIRLY EXTREME INTERNALISER
This hasn’t stood me in good stead. My ability to talk things over with other people is at best, terrible. In my own defence, I have got better over the past five years. Prior to that, I didn’t talk about my emotions at all. Like ever. Never ever ever. Everything was buried so deep that I didn’t know I experienced emotions. I just thought I was a cold heartless person who happened to care deeply about other people.
I know. That sounds like a contradiction. I am a contradiction.
But internalising emotions is something I learned as a child. I am not a researcher so I do not know if it is inherently a nature or a nurture thing but at the end of the day, I am now 55 years old so the origins of my internalising is somewhat of a moot point. It is what it is and I am what I am.
One thing I am not is a tree. I can get up, move and make change. So since my spectacular fall from grace – repeatedly – I have been learning to externalise my emotions and that is primarily done through writing.
For those of you who naturally externalise perhaps you think it’s cheating – share all my innermost thoughts on a public blog but never divulge these thoughts when I’m face to face. Well all I can say, is that it’s the best I can manage and it has taken an enormous amount of work and courage to get this far.
WATCHING EXTERNALISERS HAS NOT INSPIRED ME
I notice people. As do you. We all notice. And seeing people externalising emotions has not always inspired me to want to do the same. Some people have a quiet conversation where they muddle through the thoughts in their head or have a cry or express their worries or excitements or fears or dreams. I wish I could be like those people – vulnerable and courageous.
Some people explode with emotional intensity, raining their distress around them, for all and sundry to catch and absorb. I am extremely good at catching and absorbing people’s emotions so extreme externalising can cause me extreme distress. Which I, in turn, internalise.
The thing I do notice is that people who externalise – whether a little or a lot – seem to be able to move on from that emotional intensity quite quickly. It’s like vomiting up the contents of your stomach. Once it’s gone it’s gone and life goes on. Except the internalisers in the immediate vicinity have soaked everything up.
For us internalisers, that vomit can pool and poison us from the inside out. It often feels like there is no outlet and there is an exponential build-up of worry and fear that has nowhere to go. That is when maladaptive coping mechanisms often originate. Overeating, drugs and alcohol, self-harm, gambling, shopping, binge-watching television, gaming, work obsession. Absolutely anything that provides sufficient distraction from the immediate emotional needs. It’s not healthy. I know that.
DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH COURAGE IT TAKES TO TALK THINGS OUT WHEN YOU’RE AN INTERNALISER?
I have tried at different times to talk things through. It is enormously anxiety-inducing – before, during and after. Many a time the fears I express are dismissed as inconsequential, exaggerated, irrelevant. Something that means the world to me may mean nothing to someone else. Telling me not to worry does absolutely nothing whatsoever to decrease my level of worry. Saying that the thing I fear is going to happen is really unlikely to happen doesn’t diminish my fear. I am usually aware of the probabilities – I am just afraid of the small chance, not the large likelihood.
My head is a very busy place and I am able to process a million different catastrophic scenarios simultaneously. In order to talk myself down from a complete nervous breakdown, I have to gain perspective and I almost always do it alone. And I almost always do it through writing. I have been transcribing journals from the last 12 months and I have 100,000 words. That is a lot of words. They are all the words I couldn’t say to you. They are all the ridiculous scenarios I would never voice out loud because even I know they are ridiculous – yet still, I worry.
Over the past five years, I have learned some of the subtle art of externalising. I have – in a small number of circumstances – divulged my emotional buildups in private conversations. They are few and far between and rarely repeated. Since I was a small child, I have had trust broken more times than I can ever count. But those rare conversations have also provided me with enormous clarity and I am grateful for those small moments of external emotional outlet. I can see how beneficial it can be.
I ALSO KNOW THAT WILL NEVER BE MY STANDARD METHOD
It is not in my nature – or from my nurture – to explode. I can, however, implode and that is something I need to be acutely aware of. Despite what I believed for 50 years I am an intensely emotional person and there has to be an outlet. That outlet for me is the written word. The infrequent posts I share with you, my anonymous reader, and the frequent journaling I share with nobody but me.
Emotions impact every single one of us and the way we deal with these emotions – regardless of whether or not other people think they’re valid – is a key aspect of good psychological health. In the process of my recovery from mental illness, I have had to learn how to process emotions and not just swallow them whole and hope to never see them again.
