Emotion to Action

I mentioned in a previous post that my therapist and counsellor said that I live from the neck up, meaning that I suppress emotion, I think everything through and don't act on feeling.

I used to wear the fact that I live my life with as little emotion as possible as a badge of honor. Acting on emotion or feelings typically leads to regrettable mistakes when you get caught up in the moment. Stripping yourself of emotion and looking at everything objectively with no internal bias allows you to see the world for what it really is, and lets you make what we perceive as the right choices for the greater good.

But over the past few months I've come to realize that living without emotion is not really living at all. Being human is all about making those mistakes, having wants and needs, and expressing the emotions to others.  Memories that matter are created only from emotion, and are recalled with the same emotions. Genuine friendships and relationships spawn and are maintained with emotion and die off without them.

Also, I think for me, emotion is tied to action.  In my current frenzy of emotion, brokenness and desperation I find I've been a beacon of productivity. I'm no repair-man, but I managed to fix our broken down dishwasher. I did some maintenance on my car. I've started working out again. I took the kids on a day-long trip to the zoo. I repaired some light fixtures in our kitchen, cleaning them along the way. I have contacted and met with friends I have not seen in a long time. I attribute my action to the emotions I'm feeling, but also to the sobriety with intention that I have been working on.

Addiction is a funny thing.  It allows a person to easily suppress any negative emotions that come their way. I mean, the six basic emotions are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise.  Of the six, only one (arguably two) could be regarded as positive. Most of us would prefer not to deal with the rest.  Addictions allow us to escape from those emotions by immediately giving us what we want or crave. While I agree with that, it has always been difficult for me to attribute my lack of emotion to my addiction.  The reason for that is I only relapse once every few months... surely to live as robotically as I do now it would require daily maintenance, right?

Perhaps the difference this time is I refuse to fall back into relapse.  I don't have my addiction as a safety net for my emotions, and I put my heart on the line with everything I do now.  Of course, my wife pursuing a divorce also helps get the floodgate of emotions out, but that's the easy and unsustainable reason to live a life more emotional.

In the meantime, I feel like I need to clean up this basement I'll be living in these next few weeks.