In her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware shares stories of her life and those of her dying patients, she heard these five regrets the most:
- Courage to live true to myself
- Don’t work too hard -Last week’s post linked here
- Courage to express my feelings
- Stay in touch with friends
- Choose happiness
In the book, Bronnie Ware shared the story of a 94-year old man who regrets that his family does not know him at all, instead of expressing his feelings he buried himself in his work for most of his life and kept up walls for anyone to get too close.
In her book and the workshop I facilitate of the same name, Rising Strong, Brené Brown, PhD, shares that her research showed most of us were not raised with the beliefs or skills to value emotions and then share and process them effectively. A big part of the process I facilitate in the workshop is to “rumble” with your emotions about the fall. It is not easy and it takes courage.
Growing up, we had a white oval formica kitchen tables with the leaf in the middle to make it bigger. There were seven of us so all my memories include that “leaf.” I recall that we were all gathered at this table and my Mother had our dog, Streaker (we all have a good sense of humor), on her lap. He wasn’t moving and she had tears slowly streaming down her face. I recall my Dad saying something about Streaker died from choking on chicken bones that he got into and you know how emotional your Mother can get. I don’t recall any crying, only silence and suppressed tension.
Each one of my four siblings around that table probably got a different message, for me this scene and many others made the message vey clear: do not express your feelings, it is not helpful and can be unsafe. It was much safer to bury my feelings. If you’re starting to judge, know that I love my parents, they were doing the best they could and I’m sure I would have been a very similar parent (absent all the learning I’ve had and we’ll never know as I don’t have kids).
Avoiding feelings is a big part of our overall U.S. culture (and many other cultures around the world) and it was strong in the high tech corporate world where I spent my early (and majority to date) adult years working. Fortunately, as part of my work, I received world class training and personality assessments that gave me new insights, including that my personality preferences were on the thinking side versus the feeling side. I love logical arguments and logical problems that can be solved with logical solutions. And I started reading and learning about the power of emotions and how to balance them with logic to come up with the best solutions. And my year of living in Puerto Rico on a work assignment, where the culture is much more expressive, helped me to start making the shift too.
It takes courage to be deliberate in recognizing and expressing my feelings and then when I do, to not reach for some carbs, cheese or wine (my top choices for numbing out ) or to stay busy and not face the emotions like the 94-year old man in the book. Numbing out emotions is a norm in our culture, there are all kinds of ways to do it. Unfortunately, what the research shows is that when we numb out the bad we also dumb out the good and build walls keeping others at a distance.
Learning how to stop numbing out and start getting curious about my emotions and express them has been life changing, I’m no longer a yo-yo dieter because I don’t turn to food to numb like I used to (I’m not perfect, still growing in this) or bury myself in busy work, and I show up differently (better, more authentic) in my relationships.
I’m grateful I learned it now, before my end has arrived, and it is ongoing work to keep doing it! I still need courage which means it’s still scary. I wish this were not the case and I could say, now it’s easy! It takes practice and I keep at it.
How are you feeling today and how can you express that to those around you to tear down those walls and avoid this regret?