Dealing with the split personality of life
I’ve been playing with this app called How We Feel. It’s a log for your emotional life. You can tag how you feel, where you are, what you’re doing, and who you’re with. Over time, it shows you patterns. Mine for example is that I seem to feel jittery only in the afternoon, when with kids, and hungry. Could be diabetes. Could be parenthood realness. Who knows.
Anyways, I like the app. But the thing is… it doesn’t allow me to tag multiple emotions at one time. Whoever built this product maybe had some supernatural ability to only feel one thing at a time.
Because the really confusing experience of living in my skin is that… I mostly feel many, many emotions all at the same time.
Like right now. I feel relaxed and spent. Also feel inspired, because writing this is fun. And proud, because I was uber productive today. I also feel disappointed that I haven’t moved my body in the past 3 days. And then I feel a little tense, because I have a big thing happening later this week.
They're all just there. All the layers of my emotional make-up. Equal in their influence over my emotional state. Not a single “dominatrix” in that crew.
All this has been making me think a lot about how polar opposites can in fact coexist. Not going to lie. It’s been a pretty big revelation that life isn’t all black and white. And that reducing stuff to simplistic interpretations mostly ends up hindering me.
(It feels weirdly adult to appreciate this. And yet in a very “late to the party” kind of way. Like… When did my peers find out about this “life dialectic"? How long have I been missing out?)
Lately, I’ve been using the expression “two things can be true” a lot. It’s like that genius HSBC campaign. The same scenario or context or behavior can be interpreted in vastly different ways.
Something about the combination of two opposing ideas or feelings or experiences or relationships (or whatever!) feels really true to the experience of life as a whole. I see this in so many places.
Freedom and responsibility. More like freedom through responsibility. Or the freedom found in discipline.
Tradition and progress. Can progress ever be achieved if we don’t know where we’re coming from or what we are rebelling against?
Accountability and forgiveness. Reinforcing the lessons and forgiving to move on. Offering grace based on lessons learned.
Equality and hierarchy. That’s a tough one for me. Still working to find (or envision!) a fair, equitably distributed hierarchy that works towards equality for all.
Competition and cooperation. Ticked the box on this one with WIN: Women in Innovation. Our entire model started out as a “co-opetition” and it made us stand out in a crowded “women’s networks” space.
Science and spirituality. I have this woo-woo side to me, that’s curious and flowy. And yet, I’ll be the first one to ask “so where’s the data to support this stuff?” or dig up research studies.
Nature and nurture. This is an easy one. It has to be both. No way around it.
Chaos and order. My favorite. The law of entropy. Systems will tend to move towards a state of greater disorder over time. In other words - order always defaults to chaos. Chaos does not exist without order.
Those dialectics have also become a means to a very personal layer of self-knowing, self-acceptance, maybe even self-actualization.
I can show up knowledgeable and humble.
I can be strong and vulnerable.
I can seek independence and be a team player.
I can feel anxious and excited.
I can accept who I am and I can change if I wish to.
Then I stumbled on research that compared East Asian holistic thinking styles with Western analytical thinking styles, and their impact on mental health. What emerges from those studies is not really what I would have hoped for. Holistic thinkers tend to experience lower lows with difficult emotions, but also more mellow highs with positive emotions. So when you’re feeling anger, shame, or sadness - it’s better to be a holistic thinker. But when you’re experiencing joy, gratitude, or love - it’s better to lean into the Western pedigree and really go for it. That’s where my head went, but then… I stumbled on some more research.
A fascinating study that involved MRI brain scans, found that holistic thinkers have a tendency “not to pursue high-arousal positive emotions, probably because their reactivity to emotions is higher. In other words, it is because they are so responsive to emotions that something less emotionally arousing can satisfy their need for emotion, so they do not need to pursue extreme positive emotional acquisition.” So if we learn to live with the dualities - our capacity to experience positive emotions stretches and it’s easier to feel the joy, gratitude, love. I can buy into that.
But before I became besties with all these conflicting opposites, I used three evidence-based practices to grow those muscles. Check them out to see whether these will help you savor the delicious dialectic.
Practice 01
Solid research supports the idea that naming especially difficult emotions helps tame them. Having rich vernacular around emotions builds awareness, which in turn gives us power over how we decide to behave. This - in my limited experience - is all the more helpful when you’re feeling conflicting emotions. Here’s a “MECE” list of 87 human emotions and a quote from the gallant Brené Brown to arm you with a starting point.
“When we name an experience or an emotion, it doesn’t give that emotion or experience more power, it gives us more power” - Brené Brown
Practice 02
To name an emotion is a big thing. You know what’s even bigger? Connecting that emotion to a bodily sensation or a place in our body where the emotion “sits”. That’s when magic happens! Which is probably a topic for a separate post on somatic intelligence and all that. But until then - I’ll leave you with this nugget that changed my understanding of emotions and feelings, and what to do when difficult ones arise. According to Harvard’s Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor feelings are like waves — they rise, crest and recede. The whole “wave” lasts 90 seconds. That’s all. If you can ride the emotional wave, move through your feelings, and not let them spiral out - you’re winning at life.
Practice 03
The number of times I’ve found myself in therapy saying something along the lines of: “Well a part of me is thinking / feeling / wanting xyz, but then this other part of me is pulling me in a completely different direction”... wouldn’t even be able to tell you. Getting guidance on unpacking conflicting, confusing, sometimes competing parts of me - has led to profound personal breakthroughs. On a wide variety of things, too! From reasons behind why I feel triggered by my kids in some situations; to why I am so “great” at self-neglect; to where and when and why did my perfectionist parts originated in the first place.
If any of this resonates with you - take a look at the work of Richard Schwartz (especially this book) and the Internal Family Systems (IFS). It’s a psychotherapy model that views a person's mind as consisting of multiple "parts", each with its own unique traits, emotions, and experiences. The goal of IFS is to help individuals understand and heal the relationships between these parts, leading to greater self-awareness and personal growth through self-compassion and non-judgmental curiosity.
To wrap it all up - a dialectics manifesto.
Look out for antitheses.
Enjoy the clashes and the mergers.
Find concessions in conflict.
Balance the contrariety.
Aim for a synthesis.
Bathe in the dialectics.
Life is complex.
Things are never just cleanly one thing.
It always takes two to tango.
Rumi gets it.
“How does a part of the world leave the world? How can wetness leave water? Don’t try to put out a fire by throwing on more fire! Don’t wash a wound with blood! No matter how fast you run, your shadow more than keeps up. Sometimes, it’s in front! Only full, overhead sun diminishes your shadow. But that shadow has been serving you! What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest. I can explain this, but it would break the glass cover on your heart, and there’s no fixing that. You must have shadow and light source both.” - Rumi