6. All Emotions Are Valid

Sep 20, 2019

6 min read

Updated: May 4, 2024

There can be so many layers and shades of color to create the whole picture.

**Please note: In this post, I do not write about specific traumas. I never write any explicit details.**

The Full Spectrum of Emotions

What are emotions? When given space to show up, emotions manifest as a combination of feelings and physical sensations, and we can sometimes partner these with words to describe such experiences. Emotions are responses to situations, people, and events. Emotions in and of themselves are experienced personally, though there can be common threads of emotions that people share.

I'd like to advocate for the full spectrum of emotions for many reasons. To start, emotions are naturally occurring. We have them in response to any situation in our lives. Everyone has emotions. They are part of the human experience. In addition to being natural, they are also reflections of information, and can cue us to areas of our self-perception that may need extra support. Our emotions can convey helpful messages to us about how we are doing and how we perceive ourselves and others. When we acknowledge our emotions, we can work on understanding them, why they show up, what they mean, and what we can do with them. And most powerfully for healing, emotions can provide opportunities to acknowledge injury and offer guidance that can facilitate the healing process.

Some people freely experience their emotions, which can either go really well or pretty poorly. Some people have experienced backlash for showing their emotions, which has led to them fearing emotions. Some people have been taught that only certain emotions are ok to have, which can result in hiding or repressing other emotions. Some people have been taught that emotions are messy and better avoided all together, which can result in separating the self from the emotional side.

But how do you heal from something if you can't even feel how you feel about it? I wouldn't know where to begin. Could ignoring how I feel about what happened actually make any of it go away? For me, it's not possible to ignore. Is it possible to have an emotion, but not necessarily act on it? Sometimes just sitting with my emotions has relieved some of the tension. They can also be expressed in a variety of ways, with distinction between expressions that release as compared to expressions that exacerbate. Could it be possible to have an emotion, really feel it, and find a safe way to express it? I have found various channels through which to express my emotions in ways that are safe for both myself and others. Could expressing emotions in safe ways actually facilitate healing? I have noticed that when I allow my emotions space to show up, when I feel them, when I listen to them, and when I express them in safe ways, they turn out to be unexpected portals that transition both me and my emotions to new locations in healing.

No One Else Can Decide How You Feel

All of your emotions are appropriate in response to what you lived through. Your feelings are your own. You experience your feelings as a part of your body processing through what it experienced. Your body is allowed to process what happened. It can be frightening to feel some of these emotions. It can be relieving to feel some of these emotions. The variety of potential emotions after sexual trauma exemplifies the complexity of the influence of trauma.

No one has the right to tell you what emotions you can or cannot have as the result of sexual trauma. No one else is you, so no one else lived what you experienced, even if they experienced similar traumas. Just because some people feel certain ways and have those feelings in common with other survivors, doesn't mean that everyone will. There's no script for how you should feel. There's no such thing as the right way to feel or the wrong way to feel.

WITH A KEY EXCEPTION:

Any and all feelings of guilt for being victimized are harmful to survivors. Any feelings of shame or perceptions of fault only rightfully belong to those who harmed you.

Potential Emotions After Sexual Trauma

Here’s a list of possible feelings you might or might not resonate with. I’m sure there are so many more. Just because I have experienced many of these doesn't mean that everyone would and it certainly isn't a full list of all the types of ways people can feel in the aftermath of sexual trauma.

I've felt sad, scared, afraid, overwhelmed, betrayed, deceived, mislead, tricked, manipulated, preyed upon, victimized, degraded, abused, assaulted, tortured, distraught, mistrustful, closed off, hidden, trapped, frustrated, angry, livid, raging, depleted, exhausted, separate, apart, broken, shattered, anxious, depressed, triggered, wronged, tormented, belittled, downplayed, and not listened to. All of these and more are completely valid to feel. For some emotions, it has been consequential to allow myself to feel them, but also work toward differentiating between feeling them and being them or self-identifying as them.

Working With Emotions As Guides

When I felt negative emotions in the aftermath of sexual trauma, and then began to view myself negatively because of them, it was harmful to my self-perception and healing. Eventually, I recognized them as valid emotions and also misperceptions about myself. For example, in the above list, I included that I had felt broken in response to sexual trauma. I did feel both emotionally and energetically broken and it was a very accurate word to express the type of damage I felt had been done to me. Yet allowing myself to recognize I felt broken ran the risk of me personally identifying myself as broken, and unfortunately, I inadvertently accepted this self-perception for a long time. Eventually, I had to dismantle this self-perception in order to heal. The emotion of feeling broken by trauma is valid, and also, it doesn't mean that I have to take on the identity of being broken.

Overall, I no longer see myself as broken, though I still recognize and resonate with the word broken to express some of the emotions I have about my sexual trauma. And during the less frequent moments I still slip back into perceiving myself as broken, I now remind myself that the most beautiful ceramics are those that have been broken and put back together with gold, the art of Kintsugi. It's crucial to remind myself that the type of repair work I have been doing to heal from sexual trauma doesn't repair me by reverting me back to who I was before. It repairs me by making me an amazing reinvention out of the pieces that felt broken. But if I hadn't allowed myself to acknowledge and sit with my true emotion of feeling broken, how would I have ever seen this newest glowing version of myself, infused with gold to hold together all of the pieces that were once separated? I've put down the belief that being broken prevented me from healing. Maybe I was broken, but I've been collecting all of my pieces and reattaching myself with a dazzling superglue that makes the original me look plain by comparison, so while I would still never wish to be broken in the first place, I recognize that unexpected growth has resulted from the hard work I have put in after it.

Important Note

I do not intend to write anything suggesting that sexual trauma creates super-humans, or that enduring sexual trauma results in people becoming better than they were prior to their traumas. There is nothing positive that results from sexual trauma itself. Every positive accomplishment from survivors is a testament to our own shining lights, our own incredibly hard work, and our own drive to release the terrible burdens of sexual trauma. I will never glorify sexual trauma, downplay the damage it can do, or excuse it based on the hard-earned successes of survivors. All triumph and credit reflects only upon survivors, and never the hell we've faced.

Using Emotions To Aid Healing

Emotions can be big, they can be heavy, they can be painful, they can be embarrassing, and they can be discouraging. For me, there hasn't been any way forward other than to allow the emotions to tell me about themselves. Sometimes, I've felt an emerging emotion and recognized that I needed more support, energy, rest, etc. before I would be able to sit that that emotion and give it the space it has required. Generally, I have found that welcoming emotions and giving them the time and energy they need to feel seen and understood has made it possible to experience and release them. If they are not yet ready to be released, I can allow them to stay for however long they are needed. Sometimes, emotions stay for a long time. Eventually, they give me indications that they are either no longer needed or no longer serving me.

#MeToo

#AllEmotionsAreValid