Emotions and Me

I’ve never fit the cultural mold of manliness. When I was in 13, I was 4’10” and weighed about 100 pounds. I grew up with two older sisters, which meant I took part in a lot more sarcasm than I did wrestling matches. I played sports, but in my spare time I was much more interested in video games and music. I took the Myers-Briggs assessment for the first time that year, and while I don’t remember what each letter that I scored was, I remember one very clearly.

F. Feeling.

The memory is so strong in my mind; I can picture the layout of the desks in Ms. Otto’s 7th grade English class, the seat that I was in, and the embarrassment that I felt when my teacher surveyed each student’s type and I was one of only two boys in the whole class that scored “feeler.” My teacher was kind about it, but I felt a deep shame at who I was. This was only compounded as my teacher explained that boys typically score as “thinkers,” but tried to offer consolation that I’d probably make a good husband.

I was always a sensitive kid. It didn’t take much to hurt my feelings, and I was well acquainted with the phrase “stop taking everything so personally.” It was true, I felt things deeply. At 13, I was in a rough place, having just moved halfway across the country where I knew no one as I began the horror that is middle school. I was shy, and I suppose every facet of my being made me an easy target. I was called “emo” because I seldom spoke, I didn’t look very happy, and I simply didn’t stand up for myself.

If you’ve known me in the last few years, all of that may come as a surprise to you. I’ve tested as a “thinker” on the Meyer’s Briggs since my freshman year of college. If you’re familiar with the Enneagram, I’m a type 5. I love to learn and heavily invest myself in new areas of knowledge. For much of my life, I feel that I have made decisions based on objectivity (if there really is such a thing in decision-making) and rationale. I really value facts and context and desire so strongly to understand why the world is the way that it is, and to respond to that.

I don’t put a lot of stock in the Myers-Briggs test, and I believe humans are infinitely more complex than any single personality typing test can explain. However, I can’t help but believe that my experience being a shy, tiny, awkward boy in an unfamiliar place was enough for me to bury something about my personality deep within my soul. In high school, I almost had this weird pride that I “hadn’t cried in years,” like my unwillingness to cope with emotion like a real human was some kind of badge of honor. Somewhere through my adolescence, I had decided that if I was going to survive this life, if I was going to be a man as I had come to understand one to be, I needed walls that would protect me from ridicule and embarrassment. I built a fortress to house my emotion.

The problem with this is that when you keep your emotions inside a fortress, it typically means that you have less empathy to give to others, and the reality is that one way or another, it will find a way to get out. When I entered college, I also began to love the Bible and was really interested in studying it; the truth is, I was more interested in forming strong opinions about secondary theological issues than I was actually following Jesus. To say that I became arrogant and cold was an understatement.

For some reason, all of this starting to come to mind while I was at work and it began to rain. My mind immediately flashed to a couple of moments where the cracks in my walls began to show. My grandfather’s Alzheimer’s. My dad’s battle with cancer. Losing both of my grandfathers within months of my wedding. I remember vividly where I was in each of those moments of revelation. I had begun to fear that I didn’t have the capacity to enter those places and feel those things deeply, but God tenderly led me into the pain, and coaxed me to open the gates of the fortress around my heart.

The last seven years have been a journey of rediscovering how to balance emotion in my life again. I’m not afraid of sadness the way I used to be and have learned how to enter into those spaces. I find myself moved at times while reading a story, or listening to a sermon or a song, and tears come. I feel life is richer because of those moments. Yet, while I’m not afraid of them anymore, I can’t help but feel that some of that shame is still present. It’s much easier for me to write this out than for me to face you and tell you that I cry when I hear a moving story. I have to believe that a healthy balance of emotion in life can be a compelling thing; it has made much of my life so much richer, so could it help others too? All I know is that if this is who I am, I shouldn’t withhold that from others. So, at least I’ll try.