There are no Bad Emotions

“There are No Bad Emotions”

This has become my mantra for a year that seems full of them. 

Anger, fear, anxiety, rage, despair, heartbreak - These are just a few of the emotions I fluctuate through in a week’s time in the 2020 landscape and I know I am not the only one who feels this way.

Even in a normal season of life, I am an emotional person. What I mean when I say “emotional” is that I experience a wide range of emotions and I experience them fully and deeply. Becoming a mother only seemed to increase the depth to which I experienced emotion (and, let’s be honest, also increased the rate and range of emotions I can experience in an hour's time). 

For most of my life, this has been reflected to me as a negative trait. In my family and in my upbringing, emotions were seen as a weakness that get in the way of living life. A refrain that was constantly told to me growing up was to “shut off your heart and think with your head.” Not only was this so frustrating to hear in the middle of a meltdown, but it was even more frustrating when I couldn’t do it. 

As I have shared before on the Perfectionist in Recovery Podcast, perfectionism is a very real struggle for me. Part of my struggle with perfectionism is that I like being good at everything, even when trying something new. Not being able to “shut off my heart and think with my head” at times when I was really struggling with emotions only made me sink into the harsh self-criticism of my perfectionism at times when I really just needed an objective listener. This cycle only led me to compound my struggles to experience emotions with more shame.

I have spent much of my adult life, with the help of a trusted therapist, learning to navigate, experience, and express my emotions in ways that are healthy and safe. Writing that even sounds like a funny concept to me, but the truth is that I was not taught what to do with my emotions, it was not clear to me what purpose they served, and being taught only to ignore them had proven to be an unsuccessful way for me to manage them. 

In a recent therapy session, I was sharing with my therapist that I was struggling with my anxiety and fear more so than usual, and that the feelings were becoming unmanageable. I was in a particularly heightened state of distress on this occasion and at a loss for what I could do to move forward. 

“There are no bad emotions,” she said. 

Then she asked me, “What would your fear look like if you painted it?” 

I saw it in my head immediately, and it was beautiful. In the moment of that exchange, I went from a heightened state of fear to the obsessive feeling of inspiration. I couldn’t get the image out of my head and had to come home to paint it immediately. 

I couldn’t paint it fast enough. And then, I couldn’t start the next painting fast enough. Rage poured out of me in an afternoon. My husband, bless him, said “it was uncomfortable to watch” as I was painting! Hahaha! The walls of our living room were shaking. The words of a mentor and artist whose work I admire, A’Driane Nieves (a Philadelphia based abstract artist and founder of the nonprofit Tessera Arts Collective supporting womxn and LGBTQ artists of color), were always in the background of my mind - “Whatever you are experiencing, your art can take it.”

This poem poured out of me as I painted my rage.

“My Rage is Like a Flower Garden”

My rage is like a flower garden 

That is generous in its blooms. 

It is hot and sticky like blood and summer-

But in the south where it tends to linger. 

My rage is like a flower garden 

Tangled with knots of vines-

The start of one and the end of another-

Just webs of stories woven together. 

My rage is like a flower garden 

Full of thorns like teeth,

That bite, and tear, and leave their marks,

Protecting the roots that are buried deep. 

My rage is like a flower garden 

Smoking with steam from a heavy rain. 

So much so, it makes it hard to swallow, 

So I carry it in my mouth-

Boiling,

Shaking, 

And spilling it as I go. 

Next came hopelessness (which, in painting, I realized I was not actually hopeless at all. I am, instead, so hopeful that it hurts), then loneliness, then resentment, then insecurities, and on and on and on. 

Searsha joined periodically and painted with me. Her brushstrokes and bold color choices (though, at times, a little anxiety inducing) inspired me to be more free and more expressive in my own painting and style. Her courage, freedom, and play were a welcomed addition to balance the heaviness of my own worries and concerns. Star, a new friend of mine and local makeup artist, pointed out that Searsha’s name is Gaelic for “freedom” and how appropriate it is that my daughter, named for “freedom”, inspires such freedom in my work. 

In the experience of painting my emotions, I was able to truly witness and give attention to the myriad of emotions that were bound together like knotted thread without becoming overwhelmed or paralyzed. By choosing to paint my emotions, I became removed enough from the experience of them, that I could just witness them, that I could get to know them, that I could give voice to them, without getting lost in them. This experience has been deeply healing and nutritive to my heart and soul in a time that is so depleting and disheartening. It has also healed my relationship to my emotions and, ultimately, to myself. I no longer see them as a hindrance needing to be stuffed away so no one trips over them. I view them with curiosity and inquiry, following their tangled threads like a new mountain trail. I now see them for all of their beauty, power, strength, and lessons. 

The collection concludes with a painting of what security looks like. Security in myself, security in my identity as an “emotional person”, security in the experience of my emotions and all that I learn from them. This collection as a whole has freed me from the notion of “too much” - a concept I have also internalized over time due to messaging from the world around me. I have been told all my life that I am “too much”. Too much energy, too emotional, too crazy, too many ideas (too much fun 😜). And in many ways through my art, I explore that concept of “too much” - what’s too messy? What’s too crazy? Having been told that my feelings are “too much” for so long has left me scared of going “too far” - until now. This collection is my liberation.