Recent reflectionsSharing is caring, especially when it comes to our feelings In case you missed it, Liverpool won the league championship recently. We are firmly back on our perch. As I write this - sitting in Pocket Cafe in the centre of the city - preparations are underway for the victory parade at the weekend, in which close to a million people will take to the streets to celebrate this wonderful achievement. As someone who has lived and breathed Liverpool football club since my first match at Anfield on 7 March 1984, I know how emotional and important these moments will be for many people, from Liverpool and around the world. Just as there were when we clinched the title at home to Tottenham three weeks ago, there will be an outpouring of overwhelming emotion, including tears of joy, and tears of love, and tears of loss. Many of those, myself included, who shed tears when the league was won, and will do so again this weekend, will be thinking about those who are not here to enjoy the moment. Fellow reds. Loved family and friends. Fans we shared a row and a hug with during one goal, or one match, or one season, or more. People who were taken from us by Hillsborough, on the day and as a result of the day. People whose names we didn’t know but with whom we shared a connection and a bond. I think of those people, my dad included, who died in December last year with us top of league and riding high. I think of him - 71 years since he started going to Anfield - and all those no longer with us, when we win and I think of the joy it would have given them. I think too about how easily the feelings and emotions flow on these occasions and how “normal” (a word not loved by therapists!), it is for a man, woman or child to show raw, unfiltered emotion at a football match or watching a movie, or when listing to a piece of music or when watching something moving on TV, and yet we often find it harder to express similar levels of emotions when in conversations with those we love the most. There is something un-inhibiting about being with others who are experiencing and expressing similar emotions to us - perhaps it is, in part, safety in numbers - that means we can cry openly in a public place surrounded by strangers - but cannot show that feeling with the people with whom we feel the safest. Of course, as with so many things in life, it’s complicated. We sometimes hold on to our feelings and try hard not to show them to those closest to us for fear of upsetting them or changing how they view us. It can be uncomfortable to be vulnerable to those for whom we want to be strong. or supportive. or in a role in which they look to us for guidance, security or stability. It is one of the most common things for clients to say to me when discussing their feelings, that they didn’t want to add to the worries that someone they care about already had: “they have enough on their plate”. And yet, this suppressing of our feelings can lead to us storing up trouble for the future. Like a game of whac-a-mole, just when you think everything is under control and the feelings are tightly pushed down and hidden from view, they pop up again. Normally when we least expect them, want them or welcome them. They can pop up again when it feels like there is nothing going on that would cause them - leaving us confused: “I’m not sure why I feel like this about this issue - it’s such a small thing”. The problem is that when we don’t express our feelings and try to bury them or put them in a box and hide them in the cupboard, under the stairs in our minds, they don’t stay there forever. They reappear, often in the very uncontrolled way we have sought to manage. What’s the answer? Listening to our guts is a big part of it. Listening to our emotions. Listening to the feelings of stress and anxiety that accompany these experiences, and go with them. We don’t have to be at the match or watching a weepy movie, or The Piano on Channel 4 (it makes me cry every week!) to express our biggest, deepest feelings. We can show them at other times, especially when we feel them. Suppressing our feelings doesn’t remove them, process them, or deal with them: it just mutes them for a period. But only for a period. That volume level can change at any time and so the answer is to ideally find a safe, measured and thoughtful way of putting words to the feelings and sharing them. Sharing is caring.
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