These are not my feelings

I have feelings. A lot of feelings. Like a lot-a lot. Happy and sad. Anxious and carefree. Regretful and glad. Ashamed and gratified. Well, a lot.

The pleasant feelings are not really a problem. I can enjoy those. But the not so pleasant ones …. That’s a whoooole other story!

So, I set out to do something about that.

I proceeded from the premise that all the feelings I am feeling are mine. Or, to put it differently, I thought all my feelings were being triggered by something personal, like a recent interaction, a relationship or a childhood experience.

Well, that turned out to be a myth! Not all of them are.

Like this one time, when a surge of anxiety had taken me on a terrifying, relentless ride. Interestingly, I noticed my body’s response to the anxious emotion long before I even realized the thought or behavior that had triggered the anguish.

And when I tried to remember what I had thought or done that had triggered such an overwhelming fear, I found it wasn’t something that had happened to me.

Nuh uh!

The fear I was feeling was related to something I had watched on TV: A woman had been in a domestic violence situation. Paramedics offered to help her, but she was too afraid to leave her abusive husband. An hour after I had watched that scene, I was breathing heavily, my heart was racing and I felt her fear.

Another time I was overcome by a whole armada of unpleasant feelings, like shame, guilt, and remorse. On that occasion I caught myself thinking about something I had done many, many years ago – something that I truly regretted.

In search of a reason why I would conjure this particular memory, I discovered the same cause: It was something I had seen on TV. This time the lead character regretted having yelled at her children. And here I was, days later, feeling that same regret.

But not only was I feeling the protagonist’s emotional state.

Nuh uh!

My unobserved mind had used the shame, anger, and sorrow that had been played out on the screen to pull up incidents from my past related to those very same feelings: Something I had seen on television evoked memories that normally wouldn’t have resurfaced.

In other words, movies and TV shows have the ability to make me go through the motions of a completely fictitious setup and revive painful experiences that have long been resolved. That’s bad enough in itself. But if I don’t pay attention, I might even mistake this as something I have to address instead of just letting it go.

Oh joy …

Brigitte Schneider
aka Ms. Refused: Return-to-Sender

Copyright © 2021, Brigitte Schneider. If you wish to quote text from this article contact the author by leaving a comment.