Words: Clare Dwyer Hogg
Image: Barney Beech
Does it ever happen to you that the most mundane little thing, the most minute exchange, suddenly triggers a much bigger explosion of feeling than you expect? Instinctively, I hate this kind of event. It’s the equivalent of walking along a peaceful country lane admiring the cowslips, bending down to pick one, and being mowed down by an articulated lorry that roars out of the soil.
My instinct in these situations is to pick myself up, bruised, and shake my fist at the lorry, fast retreating into the distance. Then I’ll stare at the cowslip in my hand, and fervently wish I’d never picked the damned thing. Wish I’d never looked at it. If only I hadn’t walked down that lane. Should have taken a different route. Could have planned a different day… Like I say, I hate the onslaught of being blindsided by unexpected emotion. I would much rather avoid the experience.
It has become clear to me, though, that brushing myself down and stoically walking on, isn’t a way to avoid this experience. It’s a way to guarantee it keeps happening when I least expect it – for the rest of my life. Which isn’t heartening, if I don’t try to change my response. It is very encouraging, however, if I do. If I can bear to sit on the roadside and work out where that crash of emotion came from, I can put a stop to it. And not just put a stop to it: I can institute a change in me, for the better.
The point is, those lorries just don’t come from nowhere. They are deep in an underground car-park, waiting. They’re loaded with emotional cargo, packed with messy emotion and feelings, all tangled and spiky. They may have been there for some time. At some point, I must have unwittingly decided to park them, underneath the surface of my conscious brain. All they need is a little opening above the surface, as small as a gap in the soil, to rev up and emerge at full pelt.
Part of the reason why it is so difficult not just to curse the lorry, fling down the cowslip, and walk on, is because what triggers the emotional onslaught often seems so non-consequential, compared to the force of the reaction. It is often extremely difficult to stand still as unarticulated emotions bash and crash into you from within. Then it’s excruciating to wait until the smoke clears to figure out what their characteristics are. It’s not easy accommodating something we don’t understand.
Staring inwards too much means less chance of engaging in life. But when the slightest opening reveals a drive-by in waiting – that has to be examined
Yet I have found that doing it – articulating the process of feelings, no matter how jumbled they are – reveals startlingly quickly what’s going on. Really. It surprised me that putting words to the feelings, no matter how far removed they apparently were from the events that prompted them, really helped. And then those words, all disorganised and in no particular order, would, laid out like a jigsaw, suddenly fit together to make sense.
I stress that this isn’t about deciding to embark upon a massive dig. It isn’t about prompting a naval-gazing exercise of trying to find problems. We’ll always find shards of glass or knotted roots or lost currency if we dig through our own soil. Staring inwards too much means less chance of engaging in life, I think. But when the slightest opening reveals a drive-by in waiting – that has to be examined.
What is really brilliant is when the feelings are named and you can make some links about why they might exist. Something of the power drains from them then, because you can expect them, rather than be unpleasantly surprised every time. And then you can place them. When they’re conscious, they’re more manageable. You might not completely get where they’re coming from straight off, but once they’re on your watch-list, it’s much easier to identify when they rise up each time. In that way, it’s also easier to consciously take a step back when they rear their heads. Rather than being mowed down by them, they’re identified and have boundaries.
Once this happens, it is possible to adjust some fundamentals about how you have previously lived. When I’ve engaged with this process, for instance, I’ve found that I’ve been walking around with certain ideas about myself that are untrue. Every time I ignored the drive-by incidents, though, they went unchallenged. It’s actually very empowering to be able to handle your own feelings and look at what they’re telling you. Their effects change from destructive to constructive.
And that, when you’re tending your own soil, is life-giving rather than soul-destroying.
