Stuffing Your Feelings

Years ago…many years ago actually, I was taught that holding feelings inside is an unproductive and unhealthy thing to do. When I was learning about this it was called “stuffing your feelings”. I would often visualize a limp stuffed animal when it was called stuffing your feelings and I would mentally stuff the animal with all the feelings I kept inside

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Anyone that knows me would tell you that I do not have a problem with stuffing my feelings any longer. I am generally an up front and honest person. I do not wish to hurt or upset anyone, but I say what I need to say in the best way I can…until now. Lately I have become a powder keg. I know that the fact that I am in the middle of many things at once is attributing to this, but I also know that there are other factors that have pushed my feelings down, instead of out. As I talked with my sister over the weekend, I was lamenting being so “busy” and her response was “Everybody is busy!” She is right and that slap of reality snapped me into sorting through all my stuffing to see what I could deal with and let go of. Honestly nobody is going to sit back and say “WOW, you are busy” when every single one of us is hustling back and forth every day.

This powder keg of feelings I have created inside myself is an atomic mixture of my own creation and I am the only one that can single out each little piece and look it over and deal with it. I have decided to speak up and pull the stuffing out. I realize that inside each little ball of fluffy tension and stress there is a piece of responsibility that I must own. Things that I feel others are “doing to me” or have done are part of a response to something I am doing or have done. If I want these things to stop, I must change what I am doing too. I cannot complain about being busy when I continue to put myself in that position. I also cannot be annoyed or complain about a relationship when I walk into it knowing that the other person is not going to change. People only change when they want to change.

Ideally I hope that my speaking my truth will encourage my relationships and my realities to alter. If nothing else I have to stop stuffing this mental teddy bear, his seams are at the bursting point and honestly so are mine. So if you will excuse me, I have a fluffy little mental teddy bear that I need to beat the stuffing out of!