Part one…
This will be about how I grew up thinking and what I think about it today
How I grew up…
I grew up getting told I was too sensitive, that I was too emotional, and I learned very quickly that emotions where a bad thing.
It was only when I smiled, I felt accepted so putting up a smile was my way of showing my front to the world.
It became my mask.
I taught myself to never cry, and I did this so well that I don’t ever remember showing anyone that I cried.
I remember when I hurt my knee so badly at a soccer game, that I needed surgery, that I laughed when it happened.
I remember when I fell off my bike and broke my bike helmet in two, I didn’t cry, I laughed.
Everyone around me described me as always smiling and happy, but I wasn’t.
I had learned to hide everything I was feeling, because in my world, feelings weren’t accepted.
If I was angry I was taught to calm myself and get over it.
If I was sad I was taught to take a time out and come back when I was happy.
It was only when I was on my own, I shed tears, but mostly I would draw and write poems, and the drawings I drew where of a girl with her back watching the sea rise.
I remember I drew this a lot, and for me it was about a girl I read about in a story, a girl who wanted to walk into the ocean and drown herself. She watched the waves crashing and was trying to get the courage to walk into the sea.
I remember writing poems about death, because in secret I wanted to die.
In my teenage years I was so used to hiding how I felt that I believed that I was fine, and if I wasn’t I would just put it into the box of concealed emotions.

When I was 18 it all crumbled.
When I was 18 I was diagnosed with PTSD, I was dealing with trauma, and the box of emotions I had hid for many years it opened, and suddenly I found myself not being able to hide any of them anymore.
I would burst into tears every where I went, in the classroom, in the street, I would get the feeling of uncontrolled anger bursts, and I didn’t know how to handle any of it.
I wanted to put it into the box again, but my body wouldn’t let me. Every time I tried it would magnify the feeling I had and leave me embarrassed.
When I had my emotional outbursts, I instead learned to flee. I ran from class, I ran from my friends, boyfriend, I did everything I could to avoid the subject of talking about my emotions, and just give them the I’m fine speech.
I didn’t know how to handle my emotions because no one had ever taught me how.
I was never taught emotional control I had only taught myself how to bury them.

When I was 25
I no longer had PTSD and I had learned to somewhat bury my feelings again.
I was at this point suffering from several mental disorders, and I believed I was broken, I felt depressed and I wanted so badly to feel nothing, so after a while I taught myself to feel just that.
I burrowed everything deeper and learned how to feel less. Sometimes it still got out somehow and when it did, I was so embarrassed of having shown my strong emotions, that I started to inflict self-harm on myself.
Every time I felt too much, I would pinch my skin, so I felt only psychical pain.
I eventually lived a life where I felt nothing at all, I didn’t feel joy, I didn’t feel sad, I didn’t feel angry, I just felt numb.
I felt so lifeless that I started to think I had done it; I had turned my life into being a robot.
I got up I ate, I went to the store to buy food, I went home, played my computer, cooked, cleaned and went to bed, this was how my life felt like. The same every day.
I had cut every friend I had out of my life.
I had a few left but would only talk to them if and when I was in a good mood, if I wasn’t I would spend my time alone.
At this time in my life I was living with my boyfriend from Scotland and I close myself off from him as well, we would hardly ever talk, or spend time together, we just lived together.
A few years later..
A few years later my mentor, told me about highly sensitive personality, and I started reading about this new phenomenon.
The day I read about it, I still remember the feeling of for the first time being seen, being understood, and I suddenly didn’t feel alone.
It wasn’t just me who was feeling this way. There where others.
There wasn’t something wrong with me, I was just a highly sensitive person, and a switch in my brain just clicked.
I can’t describe the feeling but it was like the world suddenly had colours and I could finally see again.
After this everything changed.
I fell in love with a guy I played with in a game. I was still living with my boyfriend, and I realised then, that I had to change my life, I learned that I had lived so many years feeling nothing.
That I didn’t want to feel this way anymore.
I learned I had to be brave to show and deal with my emotions and that putting them into my box was of the past.
I made a promise to myself after that. That I would never again hide or diminish how I feel.
I would handle every emotion, even the ugly ones when they arose.
I got out of my relationship, and I was left heartbroken by the guy I had played games with, but I was suddenly happier than I had been in years.
I felt free, I felt alive again, for so long having felt nothing.
Pain, anger, sadness, joy it all came back, and it was a rollercoaster ride, but not a negative one, since I embraced them all equally for what they were.
Today:
Today I am forever changed. Since that crucial day I committed to the idea that emotions are not something I should hide or feel shame for or see as weakness.
Today I’m alive, I’m Human and stronger than I ever was in my past.
I am truer to myself and able to connect with people around me.
I’m creative, brave, compassionate and eager to try and learn new things.
Why this big change?
What happened?
Well when I learned how to allow myself to feel again, and deal with it, talk about it, and teach myself emotional control, I feel stronger for it, I know there isn’t something that can beat me down as it did in my past anymore.
I wont fall not knowing how to get up again.
And all this I got the day where I accepted that emotions aren’t a weakness. When I learned to be vulnerable and that its okay to be, it gave me strength to get myself up.
When I shared with people around me that I was in a vulnerable state I managed to create connections and friendships that I know will last a lifetime.
So, for me, emotions aren’t a weakness, its strength.
I grew up thinking emotions was weakness, and there are so many times I wish I could go back and tell my teenage self that I was wrong.
I know I’m strong today despite it, I know I’m strong because I had to teach myself this lesson, and because of the adversity in my life, and that I overcame my obstacles, but I still think what if?
What if I learned back then that emotions weren’t a weakness, how would my life have been today?
Im gonna write the next chapter of emotions next.
It will be about emotions being a strength and why?
So stay tuned..












