I Thought Everyone Was Constantly Fighting Their Emotions
This morning I watched a short video about an older man with dementia.
Within seconds, I could feel the tears building up.
Not normal sadness. Not “that’s unfortunate.”
It felt physical, like the emotion had nowhere to go inside my body.
I have reactions like this constantly – songs, television scenes, random thoughts, memories, animals, nature, strangers, stories. Almost anything with emotional weight can hit me instantly and intensely.
For most of my life, I assumed everyone else was working just as hard to contain it.
During one relationship I would often cry over a movie or television show and he would literally laugh about it every time. Of course now I realize that was an issue with him and not me, but at the time it was always very hurtful.
I never mentioned it because I had been fighting my emotions for so long, I just assumed this was another thing I needed to learn to push down.
It’s not just sadness either. Most of my reactions are immediate and in most situations I have to use a lot of energy just to contain them. Rage, laughter (often at inappropriate times), happiness, excitement. Happiness is the only one that seems to be socially acceptable.
I eventually realized many of my strongest emotional reactions were not actually about inconvenience or small annoyances. They were about perceived injustice, cruelty, carelessness, or vulnerability.
I’ve been known to get a bit of road rage. I could bore you with several examples of this, but the realization here is that it usually isn’t the act of the other driver itself that enrages me. It’s the injustice of the situation.
My son and I were in a drive-thru when he was younger. We were in the second outermost line. There was an elderly woman at the speaker in the innermost line and a young man bumped her with his car and proceeded to just sit there and do nothing. No apology, no concern, no care in the world. A complete disregard of his negligence.
This instantly enraged me.
I couldn’t focus on anything else. I immediately vocalized this to my son and debated confronting the young man in defense of the elderly woman. My son thought this was utterly ridiculous and we discussed it all the way up until placing our order. I never confronted him, but I deeply wanted to.
When I was around 8 or 9 months pregnant I was at the grocery store and a woman reached out and touched my stomach while making some sort of comment. I honestly have no idea what she even said because I was working so hard to suppress the immediate rage I felt from someone invading my space. I politely responded in an appropriate manner while internally feeling the exact opposite.
Even writing posts like this creates intense emotions for me.
Every single time I write one, I cry.
Sometimes it’s while reliving memories. Sometimes it’s because I finally have words for feelings I have spent my entire life trying to hide. Sometimes it’s simply the intensity of revisiting emotions that never really left my body in the first place.
However, I often take several moments to visibly react to things in social situations. If something doesn’t trigger an immediate emotional response, I usually need time alone to fully process it.
For a long time this confused me.
I remember attending the funeral of a spouse’s aunt whom they weren’t particularly close with. She wasn’t very old and had cancer. She had teenage children and a husband and during the funeral they played videos of her life with her family.
This immediately became overwhelmingly intense for me and I absolutely could not contain my emotions. I was crying uncontrollably while trying desperately not to be too loud or noticeable. I remember wondering what everyone else thought about my reaction. I had never even met this woman.
Years later my favorite grandma passed away and I only teared up at the funeral.
The truly intense emotions about losing her wouldn’t hit me until years later.
That contradiction confused me for a very long time.
How could I sob uncontrollably for a stranger, yet process the loss of someone I deeply loved years later?
Eventually I realized my emotions were never absent. They just didn’t always arrive on a socially expected timeline.
When I was around 14, I was at a sleepover at a friend’s house. Her parents weren’t home and she lived far out in the country at the end of a long lane. At some point while we were horsing around they locked me outside at night.
I remember becoming instantly overwhelmed with panic and rage and started pounding on the door to be let back in. They thought I was overreacting once they let me back inside.
In high school during a debate class, the class had been split in half so we were all facing one another. One of my friends quietly started doing something funny that only I could see and I completely lost control of my laughter. We were both hysterical trying to hold it in quietly. I had tears all over my desk from laughing so hard.
The teacher came over and asked if there was a problem. My friend was visibly trying not to laugh and I could barely speak. I just waved my hand and said, “Go away, you’re making it worse.”
During one factory job over the years people would often share painful stories with me while we worked. Stories about abuse, family trauma, losing pets, deaths, horrible childhoods.
I absorbed their emotions instantly.
I would have to wave my hand in front of my eyes to stop tears from spilling over while trying to continue working normally. By the end of some shifts I felt emotionally exhausted from carrying so many emotions that weren’t even technically mine.
Oddly, there are also moments where my emotional reactions don’t match what people expect at all.
One time I was in a public bathroom at Target and two grade school girls were washing their hands beside me. I am heavily tattooed and one of the girls looked at me in the mirror and calmly stated, “Tattoos are gross.”
My immediate reaction was amusement.
I appreciated her honesty and just chuckled and said, “Yeah, some people don’t like tattoos.”
When I was a kid I somehow learned to hold the tears back. To hide my reactions for fear of judgment.
As an adult, this became harder and harder.
The strange part is that most people probably never knew any of this was happening internally.
By adulthood I had become very skilled at translating intense emotions into socially acceptable reactions. Smiling when I was overwhelmed. Staying quiet when I was enraged. Looking composed while trying not to cry.
I thought everyone else was doing the same thing.