Why is it so hard for most of us to be honest about how we feel or what we are going through?
Most of us have been carefully taught to follow a precise socially-accepted script on a daily basis. You know the one I'm talking about:
"Hi. How are you?"
"I'm fine. How are you?"
I don't know about you, but I'm never fine. I am always stressing about something, worrying about something, or am in physical or emotional pain about something. Don't get me wrong, I practice mindfulness. I practice staying in the present moment, I practice breathing exercises, and various forms of gratitude. But I am never truly fine, whatever that means.
As a trauma survivor, I am often reminded of the horrific wounds of my past and as a trauma survivor, I'd also been conditioned that I was not allowed to say that I was not OK. I was taught that I need to feel grateful for what I had and if I was not able to feel gratitude, then I'd better feel ashamed of my ingratitude.
When I was a teenager, pretending to be OK when I wasn't created such a feeling of disconnect in me that I began to feel extremely depressed. It wasn't until I became an adult that I realized that shutting out our emotions and our inner truths is a form of internalized self-oppression and that its effects are toxic and harmful to our mental health. Internalized self-oppression of any kind can cause people to feel depressed, angry, irritable, occasionally leading to panic attacks (as a way of releasing repressed emotion), and in some cases, thoughts of suicide.
When we suppress our emotions, we suppress our voice, our inner self, our humanity, the very part of ourselves that needs to speak, to be seen and heard in that moment. Sadly though, for many of us, expressing who we are and what we are going through might be extremely challenging and we might not even know where to start.
In my case, I have found it easier to open up about myself through fiction. I've always loved books. As a child, I read voraciously and as a teenager, books and pop culture movies and television shows saved my life because they helped me to understand that I was not alone.
Sometimes fiction gives us the bridge into our own inner truth, allowing us to better understand our own story and to be able to share it with others. For me, it was when I was watching the X-Men that I first realized that most people feel alone at some point, that most of us feel like we don't quite fit in. Yet, we all very much want to belong, to be loved, and to be accepted.
Sometimes, writing out our own story can help us to better understand our old wounds, so that we can help ourselves heal. However, directly writing out our painful experiences is hard for many people. In this case, we can always write it out as a fictional piece.
A creative writing course I am currently taking at Oxford University assigned a very clever piece of homework: introduce yourself as a fictional character. This means to tell your story, to tell your truth in a disguised fictional way. I was surprised at how honest I was able to be when writing my trauma story in a fictional way.
Here is what I wrote:
The full moon seemed to have wrapped the entire mountain in its silver glow. Serano, the Harpy Queen, stood at the head of a long table, her tiara glittering in the reflection of the moonlight. The shimmering light made Rowena wince from the pain. Not now. She stood at her place on the queen’s right, while the other harpies sat at their respective places.
“This month we celebrate an all-time high in our monthly quota.” Serano’s raspy voice sounded like an eerie opening door. “All of you have really outdone yourselves. All except one.”
The harpy queen turned toward Rowena. “Approach.”
Rowena took a step toward her.
“Closer,” hissed Serano.
Rowena swallowed and took another step.
The queen’s claw hit her face, piercing her cheek before she even saw it coming. Tears filled her eyes like cruel spectacles and she covered herself with her enormous raven-like feathers, so as to hide her shame.
“Look at me!” the queen demanded.
Slowly, Rowena lowered her wings, forcing herself to look up at her queen. “Yes, mother,” she forced herself to say.
“Your soul collection numbers are abysmal.”
Rowena lowered her head again.
“LOOK AT ME!” the queen shouted, slapping her once again. “For the last five months, your numbers have looked worse and worse. And you have left me no other choice.”
Rowena’s lip trembled. “No, please, mother. Don’t.”
“I will banish you! And you will be all alone. And NOBODY will ever love you. You leave me no other choice. You are hereby demoted—”
“Mother, no …”
“Silence! You will sit at the far end of the table now. Go!”
Slowly, trying to look straight ahead of her, Rowena walked past the sniggering harpies toward the other end of the table.
As she sat down, it was as if someone had pulled a protective sheet from under her and the migraine came on like a slaughter. The shimmering lights made her eyes throb in agony. For a moment, she considered clawing them out but thought better of it.
“Dig in,” Serano ordered.
Not waiting for another invitation, the harpies devoured the contents of the plates in front of them—the decaying carcasses of the wild game, blood vials, and two souls each for dessert.
Rowena’s stomach churned at the sight of it all. The sounds of the breaking bones, normally so appetizing, now made her want to vomit. It felt as if she had multiple heartbeats inside her head, right behind her eyes. Every sound was deafening, every shimmer - agonizing, and every scent - sickening.
She closed her eyes, thinking of Peter, a human healer whom she sometimes secretly saw. Why don’t you tell them about your condition? He would ask her.
Because I am not weak, she would always reply.
“I’m not weak,” she silently said to herself now as her head felt like it were being stabbed with two thousand daggers. “I’m NOT weak.”
Somehow, writing this piece gave me the freedom to tell my truth in a way that felt safe, in a way that allowed me to get some things off my chest, while still feeling safe enough to play with the mask of fiction.
This is a technique I sometimes implement with some of my clients who are also trauma survivors. And what I have ultimately found is this—our truth is our superpower. We are not meant to hide away the scars of our past. We are meant to show them. The very things that you might have believed you need to hide from others are some of the most lovable things about you. And the more we can share and process our inner truth, the more we can strengthen. When we share our inner truth either with ourselves or others, we, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, are making a profound statement. We are saying, "I am a phoenix and I have awakened."
