It is oddly true that what I say is often opposite to what I actually feel. Fore example:
I’m not mad actually means I am mad, perhaps even livid.
It’s not the money, it’s the principal, means, It’s the money.
I don’t care, means I care. Often it can mean I care deeply.
You didn’t hurt my feelings, can mean, I am hurt and there will be no scar because this wound will never heal.
Whatever you want, means, I know that you don’t care about what I want.
Why do I do this word dance? I’m a really bad dancer. Why do I so often say exactly opposite of what I feel? Of course, there are times when I am out right lying. I admit it. If someone I care about wants to do something I don’t want to do, I will still go along, hide my preferences, disguise my disappointment, and I will say the thing that gives the other person permission to drag me off to some event I know I’m just going to hate. I will swallow my own preference and give permission for us to buy something I don’t want, to allow something I would disallow if it were up to me ONLY. Actually, there is no single reason for why I lie or why I lie to myself, or why I am so ignorant of my real feelings that my lie is actually a mistake of ignorance. Saying one thing and meaning the opposite is, for me, an extremely complicated question.
The answer, of course is as faceted as a Tiffany cut diamond, Very often, I don’t say what I feel because I don’t know what I feel. To some people a feeling hits them like an ice pick and they know exactly where they hurt. For me, however, feelings are more like punches received in a struggle. I have these dull aches and I am never able to be sure where they came from, or which blow caused this deep indistinct pain.
I just noticed as I write that all my references to feelings in the last
paragraph are feelings of pain, and negativity. Does that mean I have no
feelings of joy, and happiness, or does it instead mean that I am allowing
negative feelings to dominate my mind and I have discounted all pleasure and
contentment?
The point is, in relationships and therapy, it is just not always helpful for the questioner to say, “Just tell me what you want,” or “Just tell me what you are feeling,” or “Tell me what’s wrong."
To me, the thing that gives my life meaning is the fact that I think. Thinking is my favorite activity. But if my thought processes don’t know what I feel then how reliable are my thoughts? Actually, all of my thoughts are a tower built on a foundation of incomplete information.
I wonder if thinking is my enemy. I think myself into corners. I trust my thoughts and they are being churned out by a defective brain and a wounded history. I wrote this poem about falling overboard and being left alone in the sea. I imagine that my will to live sends me swimming toward a shore but not thinking that I could be wrong about which direction the location of the shore can be found.
Thinking by tex norman
I fall off a fishing boat
into the ocean
on a moonless night
and start swimming for shore.
I could be heading toward shore.
I could be swimming further
out to sea.
I’m thinking about the shore.
I haven’t considered the very
real possibility that I could be
heading in the wrong direction.
Is action thinking?
Should I have tread water awhile
and arrived at some theory
based upon known facts
that would have given me
a chance that I might actually
be heading in the right rather
than wrong direction?
Can instinctual action be called
thinking?
But I was thinking.
In unknowable situations
thinking and knowing have
little in common.
I can drown just as easily
heading in the right direction
as the wrong one.
It wouldn’t matter if I was
heading right if the distance was
greater than my ability to swim.
Things look so utterly,
hopeless and unknowable
that I am tempted
(we are all tempted) to say
why bother thinking at all.
It doesn’t guarantee success.
The instinctual action
is just as likely
to get you back to shore
as drown you. And yet I think.
I choose thinking.
I wonder what I’ll be thinking
about when I inhale some of the sea?
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