Leveraging Storytelling To Mask My Emotions

black and white printer paper

I have to be mindful of the words I choose to describe my journey.

Lately I feel like I’ve been wrestling with intruding thoughts but I also don’t want to feel like I’m battling myself.

I don’t want to feel struggle.

I don’t want to feel excluded.

I don’t want to feel ignored.

I don’t want to feel stuck.

I don’t want to feel left behind.

And yet I can’t find the words that embodies these emotions without naming them as such. One of the reasons why I love storytelling is that I get reframe my perspective. I can pretty up ugly words. I can put lipstick on the inner critic.

It got me wondering if I am micro-managing my growth by intellectualizing the experiences that don’t *fit* in the box I need them too. I was watching a video about how someone struggled with therapy because they are so adept to analyzing their emotions that the therapists will say “you are so self-aware,” a phrase I often hear with therapists myself.

I’ll chuckle and say “well yea but knowing my shit doesn’t make me good at healing it.”

That took me down a rabbit hole of discovering somatic therapy which triggered so much shit in me when I read what it’s all about. As much as it scares me is just as equally important to consider it.

Because feelings are just feelings but without allowing them to be *just* feelings, they develop a life of their own. They become conflicting beliefs. They evolve into echos of an overwhelmed mind.

All the effort to keep emotions from becoming a *thing* ends up becoming the very thing that fuels them.

I’m experiencing a solar return season. My birthday is coming up and I’m not as anxious as I’ve been in the past. Instead, I am having nightmares that resemble spiritual attacks, and honestly, I don’t know which is which anymore.

One night I’ll have a dream about burning in bed while screaming and no sound coming out of my mouth. Another night I’ll have a dream about demons staring into my room while the room is burning up.

Both times I wake up not wanting to go back to sleep especially when the backdrop of my dreams are often my room itself. There’s something mentally sinister about having nightmares in the same place you find solace.

Fire is a symbol of passion or what’s considered *hell.*

Why am I not able to share my passion? Why do I feel stuck where no one can hear me? Why is hell a place that is even on my radar, consciously or otherwise?

Dreams offer a whimsical lens into our shadow world and from what I’ve gathered with my unconscious adventures, I need to release my emotions before they suffocate me.

My passions need to be realized before I am taken to a place where dreams don’t exist.

Or maybe I should lay off the sleeping aids that affect the chemistry of my brain.

Probably a combination of both.