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How Are You Feeling?
A recent scene from a therapy session…
“How are you feeling?”
“I had a chicken parm for lunch, which I don’t normally eat. It’s delicious but too heavy. But this chicken parm? It was perfect. Just hit the spot.”
The first thing my therapist does at the start of every session is ask me how I’m feeling, and I know he’s not making small talk. So I just open my mouth and pull words out of my throat like a teenage birthday magician pulling scarves tied to scarves out of his sleeve.
“That’s how you feel?”
I thought it was a fair answer. I was being honest. It was a good sandwich. Then he hands me a ‘feelings wheel,’ which is a laminated, multicolored card featuring a whirlpool of super-specific emotions like insecure, lonely, frustrated. I can then point to the words that best express what’s going on inside. I’m just not good at knowing how I feel and then communicating those emotions in a normal human way. I can’t do both of those things in real time.
I will oftentimes, for instance, feel angry but I’ll be smiling, like a real maniac. Then someone I love will ask if I’m angry, and I’ll respond while smiling, “I am not angry,” but they know, and I know, that I am angry.
