Where Are All the Emotional Personal Trainers?

Originally posted 7 Mar, 2008.

Sometimes Rage is a living thing, built of fear, self-loathing, anger, frustration, sorrow, longing… So many feelings swirling about with no way to ease or express them. Direct it outward, and you end up with the psychopaths and thugs, raining their fury of emotions on everyone around them, blaming their problems on others or the world itself. Send it all inward, and you get people like me. Everything is their own fault. The rage, frustration, disgust, all fall inward, smothering. Both types are based on the same squirming, burning teem of emotions churning inside, building until it can cause physical pain, nausea, tears, madness…

But the real question is, why us? What makes us so much more incapable of dealing with our emotions than others? Are the feelings actually stronger for us, like a tooth that’s more sensitive to heat or cold? Do we lack the proper ventilation to release the emotions, to let off the excess pressure? Or do emotional events that should be temporal, fading as the tide, instead carve deep runnels in our brains, fixing themselves permanently in our psyche? Why are we the way we are? So many times I have found myself rubbed raw by the assault of emotions against my mind and heart, stripped of what little protections I have by the constant pressures, until I feel naked as a wound, and every new touch leaves me screaming like sandpaper on a sunburn. Try to disconnect, try to go numb, and end up broken in another way.

So, what’s an emotionally-handicapped person to do? Every cure seems but a band-aid on a bleeding jugular, a bit of plywood trying to board up a crumbling dam. We are “weak” - We need to “just get over it.” Are we weak? Is it a failing, something missing in our upbringing or DNA? “Fix it,” I want to say, “Teach me. I can learn.” But, I remain broken. Our medicine, not up to repairing my damaged heart and mind. Or my own abilities failing me. If I really were intelligent, I could figure this out, couldn’t I? I could break the code, solve the puzzle... All I know is that I’m tired. That which does not kill me… is still leaving me battered and bleeding on the side of the road.