You came back for more? I am encouraged by this. These pieces are not purely for others benefit but also my own. Reflection and self-awareness are skills that grow and mature, as we age and move through life's complex and intense experiences. I am by no means a good writer and I am sure many of you are screaming at the screen, confused by my grammar, and lost in my maze of ideas.
My first experience of needing to reflect and become more self-aware was in my very first job that involved people. I was young, naïve, and felt invincible to the threat of their past loyalties. I believed I was likeable, agreeable, and conscientious. Traits that would naturally draw them to my side. In theory my personality was a perfect match for management. How wrong was I! You see I could insert all sorts of academic references within this post to reference my thoughts and prove my claims but often reality and theory are not quite perfect matched partners. Let me be clear this journaling is not to be read as a source of pinpoint accurate information, instead it is to draw you out into feeling less lonely in how you feel and for me to process how I feel. I am trying to use language to articulate feelings so that we all stop and think.
Returning to my management story, what I had underestimated was that these colleagues were grieving their previous leaders on top of dealing with a structural change at work and in their own lives. All my colleagues had worked for the company for ages and the changes they were facing did not align to the romantic memories they held of the past. I will elaborate and add meat to the story in later posts but for now I want to touch on the concept of grief. Bear in mind my male, Christian perspective.
I think the first time I experienced some sort of true grief was when I was a young boy. I lived abroad, my parents were missionaries and so my social circles were intertwined with other missionary children. They came and went regularly. To be quite brief, I lost several friends to something I could not control. To make it worse, I didn’t really like the ones that stayed a long time and I got resentful, bitter and even hostile towards them. These are big feelings for a child, and I coped by simply ignoring these feelings. Internalising how I felt and telling myself that I was fine on my own, in control of my own environment. To clarify what internalising my feelings means for me, is that I spend time alone intentionally justifying my feelings and once there is a logical reason for these feelings, I decide that they should have no place in my mind and do not reflect how I believe I should react/behave. As a young boy if I was angry then I would have been sent to my room and told to calm down, an unhelpful yet normalised way of dealing with young person's emotions. Now further down the line as a grown up I find myself handling these similar feelings which are much stronger in a similar way. I attempt to resolve on MY terms and then simply walk away internalising my feelings until I justify avoiding the situation or person for whatever they have done or not done. All this from the grief of childhood.
Now add losing a child into the mix and you concoct a cocktail of grown up, overwhelming and mood killing feelings! In November 2019 we found out that one of our twins was no longer alive in the womb. To be as honest as I can be, it felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest and all that was left was a hole. I dived into work and held a brave face for my wife who was dealing with the grief at the same time as me. However, I returned to my age-old tactic of rationalising the loss, internalising the feelings and trying to forget it happened. This came to a head in November 2021 when I was diagnosed with post-natal depression, rage and PTSD. BOOM BOOM BOOM!
I sought help because I was unreasonably angry at my wife and kids, I was shouting, and I didn’t know why. My mood was awful, I felt alone, I felt ignored by everyone, I felt under-appreciated for staying strong for so long and to cap it off it was dawning on me that all these ‘’heroic’’ feats were detrimental to my family, the group of humans I was trying to protect.
The overarching point of my thoughts today are to try and open our minds to appreciating how we feel in the moment. It is ok to be angry, sad, cross, happy, discontent, ignored and frustrated. Its ok to feel these things. It is good. Some of us will respond well to growing our capabilities to feel. Some of us will be frustrated that we feel a certain way, but I ask a simple question to end my second post. How can we ‘’move on’’ if we never really landed or stopped in the first place? Learning to reflect on past events, ones that stick in your memories, trying to remember exactly how you felt is vital to maintaining good mental health. I have put a tool below to help you think about digging a bit deeper into how you feel. Please do not use this to spitefully list how someone is making you feel during an argument, instead use it to figure out why you may have felt sad, angry, afraid, loved, joyous or surprised.
Thank you so much for getting to the end and God bless.
Simon.
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