Feel the way — a reflection on 2020
By: Anne P.
Tags: 2020, Memoir, Essay, Mental Health, Feelings

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

2020 turned out to be a turnkey year in terms of feelings.

For me, this year started with a bang. Having just raised a significant investment for my company, I was happy, grateful for visiting events all over the world. At home I had the sweetest little girl and supportive partner waiting for me. I was on fire and filled to the core with adrenaline. On top of the world, what could go wrong?

March 2020. We all know that story.

And I came crumbling down. All that was left of me, was a pile of nothingness. I had burnt out. In a lockdown. There was nothing to feel quite literally. I could touch my own skin as much as I wanted to but it was like a surgeon had cut through all my nerves. Zero left. The adrenaline had kicked out and to my own surprise, it was hardly possible for me to feel anything at all. I was a head with a body and there was a separation between the two much bigger than the 1.5m distance I had to keep from everybody else. Lying in my bed for days on end was suddenly the only passtime I could think of.

Ever since I was a kid, my life revolved around becoming ‘better’, ‘smarter’, ‘more’. I had to improve myself and my surroundings. Every second spent in this life had to have a fabulous ROI or I would feel like a failure. Feelings were merely disturbances to my — in hindsight — robotic behaviour.

Growing up we had to talk about our feelings a lot at home. Sitting at the diner table, we were not allowed to go to our rooms if there was even the slightest hint of ‘something wrong’. There was never any taboo in my family home and I am forever grateful to my parents for creating such a safe space.

They had ample reason to make me talk though, facing severe depressions and anxiety disorders since I was a teenager. They did what they believed to be the right thing and wouldn’t let me crumble under my own fears and dark thoughts. So, we talked. We analysed every thing that was making me angry, sad or straight up depressed. We discussed how I could approach situations in my life differently through my actions. How I could steer my mind towards more positive thoughts. How in fact I had everything I could ever wish for so there was no need to feel anxious all the time. Therapists loaded me up with a bag full of tricks to play my mind. To win it over and start thinking happy thoughts.

You know what, after nearly 10 years of therapy on top of those diner table conversations, to no (major) avail, I was just done talking. So I simply stopped talking about feelings. And to take that extra step as I was used to, I stopped feeling them.*

How to stop feeling feelings you might wonder? Well, that is actually easy! If this were a modern self-help book I would describe it like this:

feelings, they are here to make you feel better. If they get in the way of you trying to achieve your wildest dreams and to visualise the life you want to have, actively ask them to move over. Because they then will. Because you are the master of your life and your thoughts AND your feelings. If you’re not, you’re doing it wrong.

Scratch that. What actually works when you are so out of tune with your own feelings is something much more difficult and dirty and no fun at all. The solution lies in feeling those feelings.*

Mind = blown.

The biggest lesson 2020 has taught me is to feel.

The mistake a lot of us make is that we think feelings are always here to teach us things, or to improve us, or to take us down for that matter. We want to mould the feelings, make them better. Because the feelings represent us. We think we become those feelings. And if anything, it would be great if we could please get rid of the negative ones completely because it would be a shame to end up that whining individual.

Wild thought. What if our feelings are here to make us feel. Nothing more, nothing less. You are not your feelings, but your feelings are a part of you. Don’t judge your feelings of sadness, anger, disappointment. Try not to find out where those feelings came from all the time. Give them some light of day and a good feel. Because the feelings most denied a feel are those we consider negative. Are they really?

So during the course of this weird ass year, I’ve taken on a needle and thread of my own — to sow back together those cut nerves of mine. I cried my eyes out on my own in a room filled with nothing but my sadness. I screamed for the love of life, secretly wishing no one would call the emergency services fearing something terrible happened in my home. I stopped trying to control my face from showing how I really felt all hours of the day. I can’t even count the times my partner asked me ‘what’s wrong?’.

My answer to him? “Nothing, really. Right now I’m experiencing my actual feelings. They might be old, they might be relatively new, but I’m creating space for them.”

2020 and all its feels.

I wish you a lot of felt feelings. Now, and forever more.

*I feel (pun intended) the need to post this disclaimer. This personal essay in no way states that depressions or disorders are caused by not handling your feelings or that therapy will never work. Nor does it glorify my own experience of mental disorder. I am not cured of that. This essay is one piece of the puzzle that is my life. Please seek help if your mental health is too much for you to take on alone.