Karla McLaren - The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You

On the morning of Friday, July 3, 2009, three days before I was due to turn in my first draft of this book, my friend Esm called to tell me that she couldnt awaken my mother. It was a shock, but I knew what it meant because Mom had been on and off hospice with end-stage renal failure for five years. I told Esm that Id be right over, and I grabbed my son, Eli, just in case we had to lift Mom or, I dont know ... something.

As we drove over to Moms apartment, I was calm but focusedthinking ahead about whom to call; going through Moms meds in my mind; seeking possible drug interactions; letting Eli know what we might see; and preparing myself. When we arrived at Moms twenty minutes later, and I saw my mothers body, gray and motionless in her bed, my own body began to sob boom, as quickly as that. My mind was considering possibilities and ideas, but my body knew what was going on. I dropped immediately into full-on grief, but because I was immersed in this book youre holding, I didnt fight my grief or try to appear pulled together. I trusted my body and my emotions to do what was necessary, and I didnt interfere.

We called doctors, the hospice, and family; we organized food and learned (clumsily) how to care for Moms comatose body, and I cried throughout the days and nights that followed. I didnt cry ceaselessly, because thats not how grief works; I cried in a kind of responsive rhythm, in waves. I was able to function and cry, sleep, eat, cry, order meds and report to hospice, talk on the phone, cry, organize things, cry, welcome visitors, go home and shower, and cry.

On Saturday night (about twenty hours into her coma), after everyone had watched Fourth of July fireworks from the balcony at Moms, I was alone with her. I set up some cushions on the floor next to her bed so that I could hear if she needed anything, and I tried to sleep. But I couldnt. I was completely exhausted, but all I could do was cry about the despair and losses in Moms life, the pileup of estrangements that haunted her, the continually missed opportunities for her to be honest and vulnerable with others. And suddenly, I realized that I couldnt stop crying because I was feeling my moms grief instead of my own. I couldnt relax, I couldnt stop obsessing about her losses, and I couldnt sleepwhich told me that this wasnt my grief, because my grief doesnt torment me like that.

So I got up on one elbow and said out loud, Mom, Ive done enough. Im not going to feel all the grief you refused to feel. You know I love you, but you screwed up! I cant fix it for you, and I need some sleep. My body relaxed, I lay back down, and I rolled over and went to sleep. Not for long, because comatose bodies need a lot of care, but I did sleep. That miserable and alien form of grief never returned, but my own comforting grief did, and I cried and grieved in healthy ways throughout the rest of the long weekend.

Mom died on Monday morning, July 6, and with the help of my sister-in-law Janelle, Moms hospice nurse, Carmen, and Esm, we washed and dressed Moms body. I did Moms makeup because she came from an age when women didnt go out without their face on, and as we waited for the van from the crematorium to arrive, I felt ... fine. Complete. I didnt need to cry anymore. And this surprised me. I had prepared for her death in my mind for years, and I always saw myself grief-stricken, angry, exhausted, and wanting to be completely alone for weeks or months on end. But I was wrong. My emotions jumped in and totally took care of me.

After a few days of sleeping, I got right back to this book, and I turned it in just two weeks late. I think people were expecting me to fall apart, but I didntbecause I did the falling apart while Mom was dying. I dont have to do it for the rest of my life. Thats the astonishing secret that lives inside the emotional realm: If you trust and attend to your emotions, theyll take care of you. If you dont, your life will be pretty miserable, and youll leave a mess for others to clean up.

Emotions kept me company and protected me on one of the hardest weekends of my life. I am grateful to them and I love them; theyre astonishing, powerful, healing, and humorous, and Im honored to be able to translate their language into something that I hope will help you as much as it helps me. Welcome.

A note before you begin: The work I do occurs in a sacred and private space that does not lend itself to the presentation of case studies or composite histories. In this book, I rely instead upon storytelling, analogies, and personal experiences in order to create a similar kind of sacred space with you.

You are the expert of your own experienceno book, system, ideology, or person should ever be allowed to supplant your own wisdom. If the ideas and practices in this book make sense to you, use them with my blessing. If they dont make sense, ignore them with my blessing. If youre struggling with repetitive anxieties, depressions, panics, rages, or any other emotional state that isnt working for you, its important to get yourself checked out by your doctor or therapist. Theres help for all of us now, and its good help; therefore, if your chemistry, your heredity, or your past history have created imbalances in your brain or your emotional realm, then by all means, get thee to the doctor. There will definitely be work for you to do with all of your emotionsquestions to ask, things to considerwhether youre on medications or not. The important thing is to make sure youre safe, comfortable, and well cared for before you begin. Honor your individuality and your unique emotional makeup, make changes at your own pace (or not at all), and approach this work with due caution and a deep dedication to your own integrity.

How would it feel to set strong boundaries for yourself while simultaneously building close and healthy relationships? Or to have full-time intuitive knowledge about yourself and your surroundings? What could you accomplish if you had an internal compass that unerringly brought you back to your truest path and your deepest self? Or if you had free access to a constant source of energy, rejuvenation, and certainty?

Each of these abilities lives within you right now; they live within your emotions. With the help of your emotions, you can become selfaware and immensely resourceful in your relationships. If you can learn to focus and work honorably with the incredible information inside each of your feeling states, you can become intimately connected to the source of your intelligence, you can hear the deepest parts of yourself, and you can heal your most profound wounds. If you can learn to see your emotions as tools of your deepest awareness, youll be able to move forward as a whole and functional person. This should be wonderful news, but our cultures deeply conflicted attitudes about emotions make this rather difficult to accept.

Our current understanding of emotion lags far behind our understanding of nearly every other aspect of life. We can chart the universe and split the atom, but we cant seem to understand or manage our natural emotional reactions to provoking situations. We work with nutrition and exercise to increase our energy, but we ignore the richest source of energy we possessour emotions. We are intellectually brilliant, physically resourceful, spiritually imaginative, but emotionally underdeveloped. This is a shame because emotions contain indispensable vitality that can be channeled toward self-knowledge, interpersonal awareness, and profound healing. Unfortunately, we dont treat them as such. Instead, emotions are categorized, celebrated, vilified, repressed, manipulated, humiliated, adored, and ignored. Rarely, if ever, are they