When you have big, overwhelming feelings to not so big things

My favorite teacher was Mrs. White in 3rd grade. She was an older white lady with short, white hair styled in a 50s or 60s do that she’d probably been wearing for a long time. She was the school’s resident pianist and could play anything by ear. One day during class, I took a spelling test and missed a word, making my grade just short of 100. I cried hot tears of shame with my head down and arms crossed on my desk. Mrs. White instinctively knew why and let me retake it and, of course, I scored 100 the second time around. I was painfully shy until 3rd grade when I had Mrs. White. She told my mom during their parent-teacher conference how much of a gem I was and how coming out of my shell meant I wouldn’t stop talking in class.

When we are little, it is our parent’s job, or the adult’s whose care we are in, to help us process our big feelings. My family grew up with a lot of big feelings in our home but my father was the only one allowed to express them. His expression came with little control or predictability and no explanation. When we grow up in households where we don’t talk or process feelings, which is most of us, we tend to hold a lot of unprocessed feelings in our bodies. Then we find ourselves as adults having big, overwhelming feelings to things we should be able to handle as adults.

When I used to be a perfectionist, I remember being so afraid of making any little mistake that when I did, I would feel so much shame that I would spiral and end up feeling like I was completely worthless. My solution to feeling this way on a daily basis was to numb my feelings the best I could by distracting myself with lots of projects and hobbies, avoiding anything difficult and over excelling at everything I did.

These unprocessed feelings can show up in life events, big or small. They can show up when someone says no to an invitation or when we interview for a job that we don’t get. As adults, we should be able to handle these events with relative ease, recognizing that life has its ups and downs but most of us are stuck in our childhood bodies that still hold all the trauma of our painful experiences. It doesn’t take much to poke at and disturb these stored feelings.

So what do we do when we have big, overwhelming feelings to not so big things?

The key to healing these unprocessed parts of us is not necessarily soothing the adult versions of us but the children inside of us. You can try the following next time you feel this way:

1. Give yourself permission to have these feelings and instead of running away from them, let yourself feel how you feel.
2. Reflect back on your past to remember when you’ve felt this way before to reconnect to that child inside of you.
3. Soothe that child and be the adult you needed when you were that age. You can do that by validating your inner child’s feelings, explaining to them the help they should’ve gotten but didn’t, and words of affirmation. You can do this by talking to yourself aloud or internally, or do what I personally find most helpful and write about it.

The beauty of seeing yourself as the adult soothing your inner child is that it gives your adult self the power to take care of your inner child and in turn, your inner child can feel empowered. This is not something you’ll do once and heal from but a practice that will get you closer and closer to seeing that you are worthy and that you matter, no matter how imperfect you may be.

Photo by Elīna Arāja.