Big Big Feelings

I am told I am exceptionally good with words. I am quick, I connect things, I like wordplay. I know I can write.

One would expect me to be a good communicator.

Often I find myself struggling to feel heard, but more than that, struggling to be understood. It’s become more problematic recently because it is now tied up with a trauma trigger and I lose my ability to regulate.

My flight response was always first pick but my nervous system broke down one day and flipped a switch into pure rage.

Rage. Not anger.

I flipped the table in my brain. Whatever regulatory system I had left was levelled. As I said, this is problematic. It’s not a virtue.

This is an actual brain injury.

For the record, though, I didn’t invent big feelings.

I remember discussing empathy once and being told it was less important or useful than I was making it out to be. I distinctly remember being told that my empathy was just me applying how I’d felt in situations to others and that I was assuming they felt the same way.

I tried from three of four different angles to explain that empathy has some relating involved, but ultimately if one approach doesn’t reach a person or resonate with them, I would pivot. It occurred to me after the fact that it becomes a hell of a lot harder to try and explain something to someone who thinks they already know.

I keep saying words of concern, frustration, outright disbelief. People are responding to me in ways I don’t understand. They keep talking about things I wasn’t talking about. The focus gets muddled, the message is being overlooked.

And I’m being made out to be immature. Out of control. The response is real, I’ll give you that much.

They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but I’m not here as a woman.

Hear me when I say a woman scorned has absolutely nothing on a mother.

I may never be heard. At this stage in my life I’m trying to be okay with people being incorrect about me. One thing that isn’t going to happen, though, is Lindsay the Doormat making a comeback.

The reaction is very real. So dig deeper.

I have no problem at all sharing what I’m reacting to.