"Do You Feel Like You Were Allowed to Show Emotion As a Kid?"

For the past few months, I've been getting closer to a friend who enjoys the same kinds of conversations I do: marriage, spiritual exploration, coping with depression, personality types, emotional intelligence, childhood development, boundaries—you know, the fun stuff XD

In some ways, I consider myself to be an open book, or at least a book that is willing to be opened. I don't go around wearing my heart on my sleeve and I can usually hide socially inappropriate thoughts and feelings, but I will answer almost any question you ask me. There are VERY few topics that are off-limits for me. This friend has never asked me anything that I wasn't happy to answer—but she has asked me a lot of things no one has asked before.

A few weeks ago, during a conversation that I'm gonna simplify into "having difficulty expressing feelings," she asked,

"Do you feel like you were allowed to show emotion as a kid?"

I hesitated for a second because I'd never considered that question before. I think I probably dry chuckled before saying,

"Well, the short answer is yes...but with two big conditions. I do think my parents believed that emotions were natural and healthy, but for one parent, the emotion had to make sense. Emotions that were irrational or of unknown origin were often unacceptable. For the other parent, I was allowed to have emotions as long as they were polite. Emotions that came out in ways that were perceived as disrespectful were not treated as legitimate."

I think when I was growing up, society emphasized...I honestly don't even know. Appearances, maybe? Kids were trained to appear normal and polite, and the neatest way to do that was to teach them to get rid of everything inside that was inconvenient. Lots of "YOU MAY NOT THROW A TANTRUM" and less "Your feelings are very real. I recognize that you are three and you do not have the cognitive development to manage your disappointment in the way that I, an adult, would. You are having big feelings and I am going to be in this moment with you calmly, and after I've helped you regulate yourself, we'll talk about better ways to manage your disappointment in the future."

I'm still processing all of this, and while I do, I'm also holding a lot of other truths in mind:

1) Every generation of parents tries to do better than the one before.

2) Every generation of parents is doing the best they can with the knowledge they do have.

3) As far as I know, these findings about how children's brains develop is new-ish, or at least new enough that parents twenty, thirty, forty years ago didn't know they were asking their kids to do things that their kids were developmentally incapable of doing.

4) Science and philosophy are constantly evolving. It's possible that what I believe now may be deemed ridiculous and inappropriate by the time I have grandkids.

5) I have no children and have no idea how difficult it is to go the long route when it comes to helping a child develop emotional intelligence. All this stuff may sound great in theory until I have to do it. Maybe I'll get to see one day.

I'm definitely not blaming my parents for being feelings-repressed myself. I think I was born that way. On the enneagram, I'm dominant in Type Eight, and Type Eights are, in fact, feelings repressed. In MBTI, I'm an ENFJ, which is other-peoples'-feelings dominant, but my-feelings repressed. That checks out too. It's just interesting to think about the frameworks we were raised with, and how they manifest as an adult. Growing up is about learning, but it's about unlearning too.

I'm so grateful that God gave me Gabe, who is my opposite in most ways. Enneagram-wise, he's feelings-dominant; MBTI-wise, he's his-feelings dominant. He's slowly teaching me that there really is a place for feelings and that MY feelings—independent of anybody else in any way—deserve a second glance. They're not always the deciding factor (which is what he's learning), but they deserve to be dug up and acknowledged.

Sometimes my feelings aren't going to make sense—and that's actually okay. They don't have to be logical to be real. Feelings aren't truth, but neither are they trash. Sometimes my feelings aren't going to manifest politely—and, as an adult, it's my job to figure out how to fix that, so that if we ever have kids, I can teach them to do it too.

Starting to think that becoming a good human is gonna take a lifetime ;)

~Stephanie

I Wasn't Myself This Morning

Until this morning, I'd forgotten the extent to which books influenced me as a child.

When I was little, books weren't just a pastime for me, they were...bodily organs? When I was reading a Little House on the Prairie book, there was something fundamentally different about me as a human than when I was reading Beezus and Ramona or one of the Betsy-Tacy books. The kind of book I was reading temporarily reshaped my...something. My brain? My soul? I was still Me, but I was Me as if I were living in the late 1800s in the Dakotas/1950s Portland/Deep Valley around the turn of the century. The words of my thoughts would change; the plans I had for my days would change.

It was like inhabiting a different version of myself. It was inspiring and refreshing. It was nice to get a break from being Regular Me and become a Book Me—like the seasons changing. We're all a little excited when the seasons change because it's something different. We wear the clothes we haven't worn in a while, do the activities we remember from years past. It's just different. That was what being a Book Me felt like.

It also made me try out different ways of living. When I read some books, it made me set my alarm early and get my chores done right away. When I read other books, it made me a more responsible big sister—even a little tired of the childish antics I'd employed the day before.

The Book Mes that I became were always very...respectable, which is so surprising to realize because I never actually cared about being respectable. I was always more interested in thieves and rogue heroes. The characters I wrote stories about were never "respectable." However, when I would wake up as a Book Me, it was always a Book Me who got things done and held her head high and spoke clearly and wanted to be efficient and good.

I'm baffled. Somehow, counter to everything I think and have thought about myself, I must've found "good" characters the most compelling and worthy of being emulated.

Of course, that's exactly why we want children to read good literature. We want them to be inspired by the good and right. We want the good and right to be so compelling that it molds children into better people.

I guess I just never realized that it actually WORKS.

I was suddenly, vividly reminded of Book Mes today as I read an Agatha Christie novel over breakfast. I wanted to keep reading, but I had finished my food and thought, in a very Gudgeon-the-butler sort of tone, "Yes, well, one doesn't always get to do what one wants, does one?" and I got up and started clearing the table. It was pretty easy to make myself do it, and that's when I realized with a shock:

For the first time maybe in years, I'd become a Book Me again. I'd become a brisk, dutiful, mildly cheerful servant who knew what life entailed and had quite made peace with it. I felt like I could do my day, when just moments ago the tasks before me had felt a little dark and heavy. I had had the vague impression that maybe I was going to try to get out of as many things as I could.

But that impression wouldn't have occurred to the servants and noble people of the Agatha Christie novel, and so, when I became Book Me, the impression evaporated for me too.

I've read hundreds of books in the last 10+ years, but I can't remember the last time I became a Book Me. I can tell you for sure that none of the thriller mysteries I've read have transformed me. None of the YA fantasy I've read lately has transformed me. None of those books felt like a bodily organ inhabiting my person and triggering an alternate version of myself.

Even as an almost-thirty-year-old, it's still the old, classic literature that transforms me.

In the words of Ross Geller saying the wrong name again, "Gah, what IS that?"

Is it really that there's something enduring and magical about older, well-written books? Maybe it's the same kind of magic that inhabits the real Statue of David compared to the copy in the Duomo Square. You can feel that. The copy is not the same, and it's downright eerie.

Maybe classical educators really are onto something when they insist that children read old classics. If they could inspire a little wannabe villain like me to get up at 7:00 and sweep, they're capable of almost anything good.

I like the Book Mes so much. I'm going to see if I can hold onto this one, a least a little bit longer.

~Stephanie

Boundaries: Let Your Yes Be Yes

I've never considered myself to be a "yes" person. I've never considered myself to be someone who finds it difficult to say No.

But I think I've been considering myself wrong, for a while now.

Maybe I used to be a Non-Yes-Person, a person who found it easy to say No. I can imagine that part of my personality being so loud and so effective as a child that it was inconvenient for those around me. I can imagine being trained out of my easily accessible No.

To some extent, we all have to do things we don't want to do; that's part of life. But it's part of life; it's not all of life. Somewhere along the road, I completely lost that distinction. I began should-ing all over myself, 24/7.

I don't know if it's being a Christian, a southerner, or part of a pastor's family, but I internalized a ton of "shoulds." If people expect you to, you should. If no one else is going to, you should. If you can, you should. What you want doesn't matter. What you feel doesn't matter. You do the things anyway. I am strong enough to do what I don't want to do, all the time. My feelings don't matter. What I want doesn't matter. This is the way things are, and it is right and true.

(And then I married the King of Feelings, who not only acted on his feelings, but did not see the need to support them with anything else, like, I don't know, reasons. Ask us about the first several years of marriage sometime XD We have each walked about a billion miles just to meet in the middle.)

In this headspace, it became impossible to know what I wanted—ever. It's like a brand of overthinking. It became impossible to answer the question, "Do you even want to X?" I would sit and gape at the question, butting against firewalls of Shoulds and cringing against their blaring alarms. Do I want cake? I shouldn't eat cake; I've had enough sugar the past few days. Do I want to go to church? I should go to church; the Bible tells us fellowship is important, as is keeping one's commitments. Do I want to go to my friend's birthday party? I should go; the friend has always been supportive of me. Do I want to stay inside and read? I shouldn't; I should go walk outside instead so I don't waste the nice weather.

Do I even want to do X? The muscle that answers that question has well and truly atrophied.

For years, a very small percentage of my Yeses have been real, biblical Yeses. This isn't anyone's fault but my own. It wasn't that people were forcing me to say yes, it's that I didn't and don't have the neural pathway to say yes and mean it. Everything gets routed directly through Should Station and exits as whatever the "correct answer" is. Feelings and desires don't matter.

After therapy, reading Boundaries, and having lots of conversations with Gabe, he and I have decided that I basically need an Anti-Should Bootcamp for the next six months. For the next six months, I'm not going to do anything that I simply "should," unless I feel a seed of genuine desire toward the thing.

This sounds INSANELY privileged and indulgent to me, and I think long-term, it would be. However, I think healing from wounds and (very little T) trauma can only happen in a space of absolute safety. I need to practice saying No until I start to believe that I have the freedom to do that. Only when a person can freely say No can she also freely say Yes. I need to prune away the weeds of all the Shoulds in my heart and see what healthy interests, desires, and joys might be trying to grow. What do I actually want?

I don't think I'm a lazy person anymore. I don't think this six-month bootcamp is in danger of turning me into a spoiled, capricious prima donna who thinks the world revolves around her desires. I think this is something I need to do in order to grow and heal, and I think I'll "come back" in six months happier, healthier, and able to show up spiritually to all the things I decide to say Yes to.

Because it's not a Yes if you didn't believe you could say No.

~ Stephanie

Stand Up for the Strong Kids

Princess Diaries came out in 2001, but I’m guessing the VHS didn’t come out until 2002 probably, which means I was eight years old when I saw the Krystal Harris “Supergirl” music video. I loved how antithetical its vibe was to the other music video on the tape, Myra’s “Miracles Happen.” Krystal had spiky hair and heavy eyeliner and kind of headbanged when she played the piano.

There was also a line in the song that resonated with me. This might’ve been the first time I related to lyrics. The chorus says, “I’m supergirl, and I’m here to save the world, but I wanna know: who’s gonna save me?” The next iteration is, "I'm supergirl, and I'm here to save the world, but I wanna know why I feel so alone."

I remember staring at the TV screen with a mix of excitement, elation, and...some other emotion I can't name. I think it's in the Frustration Family. (Gabe helps me categorize emotions when I can't name them so that we can at least narrow it down.)

I confided this feeling to an adult. "I love that song because that's how I feel," I said, emitting mostly excitement and elation. (Maybe the other emotion is actually in the Sadness Family?) "I feel like I'm supergirl, but there's no one who's gonna save me."

The adult gave a disinterested "huh" and looked at me like I'd grown a horn by choice, like I was too ignorant and unwise even to be considered cute for the sentiment. The adult didn't ask why I felt that way. Her reaction made me feel stupid for confiding in her, and stupid for feeling the way I did. I mean, I was a kid. How presumptuous of me to assume I was doing anything heavy or heroic in my little life. I guessed I must been misperceiving my experiences.

But I did feel that way. I felt like I was strong and stood up for people a lot, but whenever I was lonely or persecuted, people just kind of watched it happen, unwilling or unable to step in.

When I got older, I was told that this is because I come off like I don't need any help. People assume that helping me would be an insult, or they worry that I might perceive it as such. Hearing that gave me mixed feelings as much as the "Supergirl" lyrics did.

On the one hand, HA. People are RIGHT. I DON'T need any help. If I have a problem with someone or something, I can and will handle it. Your support is icing on the cake, if that.

On the other hand...like, damn, I'm tired. Could people just do it anyway, maybe push through the fear that I might misinterpret their support?

I have a few memories of straight up asking people to stand up for me, but I always seemed to pick the wrong people, people who were only able to stick up for me in a passive aggressive, apologetic, submissive, barely-a-step-above-just-rolling-over-for-the-oppressor way, which I found worse than nothing.

I also remember the people who stuck up for me the "right" way, without being asked. Meredith Andrews, you're on the list 💚 

This post definitely isn't meant to throw shade at everyone I've ever known for assuming I'm a strong, capable person XD I appreciate that—and I genuinely like being one of the Supergirls in my sphere. I can't imagine getting tired of being an advocate for the people I love. It's something I'm good at and enjoy doing.

I think this post is more about the little eight-year-old me, who was already feeling the ambivalence of being "the strong one" in her life, and the dismissal that happened when I shared that feeling. I've talked about this before (here and sort of here too), but I believe it's so important to take kids and teenagers seriously. Maybe there's a place for disillusioning them, but only after you've validated their feelings*. Only after you've asked questions and listened and tried to understand. If you want kids and teenagers to come to you with big stuff, listen to the small stuff, because—to them—it's all been big stuff.

Oh, and stand up for the strong kids too. We're tired.

~Stephanie

* and I mean "validate." A post on "truth versus validity" is in my drafts to be finished one day.