I didn’t learn how to feel my feelings until I was 28.

It t is possible that there was a point in my childhood when I had the ability to feel my feelings, but I don’t ever remember being taught how to sit with my emotions without feeling guilt or shame about them. In my teens, I went into a long period of depression and disassociation. And then for most of my twenties there I was severely overmedicated, or was at the very least prescribed the wrong medication.

Over the course of a decade, I quite literally became numb to just about everything.

For nearly 5 years, everything was dull. Highs were eh, lows were…well everything was pretty low.

Getting off of those antidepressants, on which I had become completely physically dependent in a way that I didn’t even realize was possible, became a priority for me.

So I weaned myself off, microgram by microgram. It was hard. It took 9 months.

After the last remnants of the drug had finally left my system, my emotions came back. But now they were in control.

Being out of practice of feeling the actual physical manifestations of emotions for years, the intensity of those emotions took me by surprise. I realized at one point that I was completely driven by them. Like a bull being tugged around by a sensitive new nose ring, I would turn from one state of mind to another with the slightest provocation.

During this chapter of my life, I made more erratic decisions than at any point since my teens.

It wasn’t until life really felt like it had gotten out of hand, that I received this realization: it is possible to feel your feelings, and not feel guilty about them, and also not to act on all of them.

This was a completely novel concept to me.

I learned to let my feelings wash over me like a wave: they will burst up, but then crash and pull back. So in the time that it takes for those feelings to rise to a peak, and then dissipate, I wait (or I try to).

It is a constant practice to not take action in the heat of the feeling. It is not easy, and it is not something that I claim to always succeed in.

But, like many things, I’m working on it.