As I work on long-format pieces for this blog, I keep thinking about other topics I’d like to explore in shorter posts, a #wordburst if you will. My solution to this is #backpocketposts, designed to fill in those gaps in time when I’m busy researching and putting together a more in-depth analysis of whatever my brain is chewing on at the time. At the conclusion of each post I’ll feature a song from an artist I admire. Words and music! I call that necessary sustenance.
Back Pocket Post No. 1
Hard to Love
December 7, 2020
I saw a meme recently with this quote: “I’m sorry if anyone made you feel like it’s hard to love you.”
It made me pause. I have felt that — unloveable. Prickly. My emotions were often right below the surface, waiting to blow at the nearest person or thing that lit my fuse. Did I know then what I know now? That I learned to default to anger for pretty much every emotion I felt? Fear blew up into anger. Anxiety erupted into rage. Perceived lack of control invited the slamming of doors and punching counters.
Diagnosed Bipolar II twenty plus years ago, I started taking psychiatric meds when I was just about 30. (Since then I have come to understand that I have an anxiety disorder and PTSD; my illness is closer to cyclothymia than Bipolar II. But I’m also quite wary of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM–5]). “Diagnoses” can be terribly misleading, and sometimes cause untold amounts of suffering, confusion and very real damage.)
Looking back, I can’t believe it took me so long to live un/strung out from chaos, from self-inflicted emotional ascents of the Pain Pitch. My family, particularly my father, was anti-psychiatric everything (God would provide — God didn’t create people with “mental illness,” etc.) and I had serious hangups about taking meds. No one seemed to know what the longterm effects of these SSRIs were, really, and I wasn’t interested in being a guinea pig. Then again, I was very interested in relief. Leaving behind great pitches of emotion that carried me through days with tears in my eyes the whole time, crying jags that made me hide in my office — leaving behind self sabotoge just so I could feel something — leaving behind explosions that were completely disproportionate to the matter at hand.
The relief I felt from leveling out for the first time in my life was incredible. I had energy and motivation; I managed to keep up with an exercise regimen and weight loss program (Weight Watchers at the time), and lost 35 lbs. Slowly, with the help of a therapist, I began to understand better what had been “wrong” with me all these years. It would take more than a decade plus more before I could even begin to unravel the giant spool of how my family and my upbringing fed my mental illness. Without knowing it, I had become the “identified patient,” carrying the emotional baggage of family members who categorically refused to recognize their own issues and how they contributed to an atmosphere of denial and compartmentalization. Want to box up your emotions and put them on a shelf, over and over again? I have the consummate guide for that.
The point here is this: No one should feel hard to love. No person should hold back to a spectrum of emotions just to appease the “adults” in his/her/their life. Behind every hard emotion is an even harder story, one that has developed such a protective shell that it appears impenetrable.
Receptivity helps. Listening can make all the difference in the world. Once we realize that the barbs being thrown our way by the people we love aren’t meant to pierce — they are mere defense mechanisms designed to protect and insulate one from perceived harm — then hopefully we can create a loving boundary with our loved one. Because beneath that rage is pain. On the other side of those words that feel so ugly is a person struggling to express thus far-unnameable emotions.
No one is too hard to love. But despite our good intentions, humans can definitely make it difficult for a person to feel seen, and heard. Perhaps one way to stay out of the dark canyons of conflict and misunderstanding is to listen more and get out of your own way. If a loved one is raging, don’t keep listening for some slight or insult that you need to defend. Listen to listen. Remove yourself from the equation. This isn’t about you, even if it seems that way on the surface. Realizing that and applying it is more than half the battle: It’s the key to healthy growth in relationships with every single person we know.
Everything is Always Over 